history-of-psychology

History and Scientific Method of Psychology

Emergence

• Psychology will never be born unless we think of ourselves in another way — spiritual element follows natural laws, too.
• ==Philosophy + Biology ⇒ Psychology==

Philosophy

• This trend starts with Rene Descartes — Cartesian Dualism
  • Human body is mechanistic
  • However, “soul” can intervene and control the machine
• John Locke — maybe the mind is also mechanical?
• James Mill — “materialism”

Biology

• Luigi Galvani and his frogs.
• Paul Broca anatomy — Broca’s area in the brain for producing speech, localism in the brain. High level functionality is also mechanistic!

Before Freud

• Psychology was born in Germany
• Hermann von Helmholtz
  • Measuring the speed of the neural signal
  • 25 - 38 meters per sec.
• Ernst Weber
  • the difference threshold Just Noticeable Difference (JND)
  • Weber fractions: $\Delta I/I=k$
  • The stronger the initial stimuli, the harder it is to detect the difference
• Wilhelm Wundt — the 1st Psychologist, the Father of modern psychology
  • The founding of the first psychological lab
  • Train observers to perform Introspection
  • Structuralism of conscious experience
• William James
  • Functionalism, inspired by Charles Darwin
  • “Why” the features exist? What they’re good for?
  • Publishing psychological topics

Freud

• See freud for more info.
• Id, Super-Ego, and Ego
• Clinical Psychology (what works works)
• Scientifically untestable?

After Freud

• Behaviorism - SR psychology - only observable stimuli and response
• Little Albert Experiment
  • Furry rabbit and a baby
  • Clanging the hammer when the baby approaches the critter
  • The baby is now scared of anything furry.
• New trends over time
  • Cognitive Psychology - information processing system of our mind
  • Social Psychology
  • Individual Differences
  • Cross Cultural Psychology
  • Clinical Psychology (including Positive Psychology)
  • Biological Revolution

Truth Seeking

• Rationalism, knowing by thinking vs. Empiricism, knowing by senses
• Seeking questions
  • Observational Research
  • Correlational Research
• Seeking answers
  • Experiments and Contrasts
  • Manipulating the independent variables and examine the dependent ones

Knowledge Association

• Intervening variable = influenced by independent variable, and influences dependent variable (no direct causality between the vars we’re interested in)
• There could be a 3rd var, though

Knowledge by Contrast

• T-Test
  • Measures between group and within group differences to determine if the difference is significant
  • Inferential statistics — make predictions

What Makes Good Science?

• Interesting and relevant
• Replicable
• Generalizable