Infinitely gentle infinitely suffering thing

CHAPTER OUTLINEI.THE WORLD OF PSYCHOLOGY: AN OVERVIEWWhat is psychology and how did it grow?Psychology is the science that seeks to understand behavior and mental processes, and to apply that understanding in the service of human welfare. Positive psychologyfocuses on the factors that make life most worth living.A.Subfields of PsychologyPsychologists in different subfields of psychologystudy different topics.1.Cognitive psychologists study basic mental processes and their relationship to behavior in areas such as sensation, perception, learning, memory, judgment, decision making, and problem solving.2.Biological orphysiological psychologistsorneuroscientists study how biological structure and function affect behavior and mental processes.3.Personality psychologists study individuality—the uniqueness of each person—and whether some combinations of personality traits predict patterns of behavior.4.Developmental psychologists study and describe changes in behavior and mental processes over the life span.5.Quantitative psychologists use statistical methods to describe,analyze, and interpret data collected by psychologists in other subfields.6.Clinical psychologistsgenerally have a Ph.D. in psychology, provide therapy, and many study the causes of disorders. Counseling psychologists have either a Ph.D. or a master’s degree in psychology and work as mental health counselors. Community psychologists try to help prevent stressful conditions that lead to disorders. Psychiatristsare medical doctors who specialize in abnormal psychology. 7.Educational psychologists conduct research and develop theories about teaching and learning.8.School psychologists specialize in testing and diagnosing learning disabilities, and establish programs to improve student achievement and success.9.Social psychologists study the ways that people influence one another.10.Industrial-organizational psychologistsstudy factors that affect the efficiency, productivity, and satisfaction of workers and the organizations that employ them.11.Others include health psychologists, sports psychologists,forensic psychologists,engineering psychologists,environmental psychologists,and many others.B.Linkages Within Psychology and Beyond1.The overlapping subfields are somewhat arbitrary descriptors of a diverse field. Most psychologists “fit” several subfields and interact with psychologists in other subfields.2.Psychology embraces and overlaps with many other academic disciplines.C.A Brief History of Psychology1.Interest in behavior and the mind can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.a)Scientific psychology has its roots in philosophy.2.In the 1600s philosophers such as John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume argued for empiricism—that knowledge comes through experience and observation.
a)A person is born a tabula rasa—a “blank slate,” with no inborn knowledge, but on which experiences of life “write” to give knowledge through direct sensation.3.Wilhelm Wundt founded the first psychology research laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, in 1879. He attempted to use empirical research methods to study consciousness—the mental experiences that arise from our sensory-perceptual systems. Five research directions emerged in psychology in the late 1800s.a)Wundt, and later Edward Titchener in the United States, used the technique of introspection, in which highly trained subjects carefully describe each aspect of their conscious sensory experiences. This approach was called structuralism, because it focused on describing each of the separate elements that make up conscious experience.b)Gestaltpsychologistsfrom Europe, led by Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Kohler, saw consciousness as a whole experience that could not be studied as separate parts.c)In Vienna, Austria, Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis,a theory that behavior and conscious experience stem from unconscious conflicts and desires.d)In the United States, William James was influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. James’s approach, functionalism, emphasized the study of what consciousness does—how it functions to help people adapt to their environments. The focus was on ever-changing patterns of sensations, memories, and other mental events rather than on the parts that make up consciousness.e)John Watson, also in the United States, argued that psychologists should ignore mental events and concentrate only on observablebehaviors. His behaviorismapproach held that learning is the most important cause of behavior.(1)Behaviorism was developed further by B. F. Skinner’s functional analysis of behavior, which focused on how rewards and punishments shape behavior.f)In psychology today the focus is once again on mental activity as information processing. Biotechnology has opened new ways to study the biological bases of mental processing.I.APPROACHES TO THE SCIENCE OF PSYCHOLOGYWhy don’t all psychologists explain behavior in the same way?A.Each of the approaches to psychologyexplains behavior or mental processes from a different point of view. Most psychologists are eclectic, combining the features of several approaches.1.A biological approach presumes that biological factors (e.g., genes, hormones, brain systems) affect behavior and mental events.2.An evolutionary approach emphasizes how behavior and mental phenomena are a result of evolution through natural selection, generation-to-generation adaptations of organisms in order to survive in their environments.3.The psychodynamic approach,founded by Freud, sees constant unconscious conflicts within a person as the main determinant of behavior and mental life.4.The behavioral approach,from the behaviorism of Watson and Skinner, focuses entirely on observable behaviors and how these behaviors are learned.