This document provides an overview of the history and major approaches of psychology. It discusses key figures from the 19th century who influenced the early development of psychology as a field, including Wundt who opened the first psychology lab. The major historical approaches are explained such as structuralism, functionalism, Gestalt psychology, psychoanalysis, and behaviorism. Finally, the major contemporary approaches - biological, behavioral, psychodynamic, humanistic, cognitive, sociocultural, and evolutionary - are defined in one to two sentences each.

1. The History of
Psychology

2. Super Important
Psychology is … the scientific study
of behavior and mental processes

3. Before it became
psychology…

4. 1649
1859
1861
1874
1879
1887
1890
RENEE
DESCARTES:
Mind & body
separate
PIERRE PAUL
BROCA:
l & r hemispheres
= separate
functions
WILHELM
WUNDT:
1st experimental
psych lab in
Lepzig
WILLIAM
JAMES:
1st Psych
textbook:
Principles of
Psych
CHARLES
DARWIN:
Origin of
Species –
inherited traits,
survival of fittest
CARL WERNICKE:
Evidence that
damage to specific
area of brain
causes specific skill
loss
G. STANLEY
HALL:
1st Pres of APA –
1st ed of Journal
of American
Psych

5. Galen
 Humor: body fluid
 Levels of humors =
effect personality
 4 temperaments
 Sanguine: too much
blood
 Phlegmatic: too much
phlegm
 Choleric: yellow bile
 Melancholic: black bile
 Early suggestion of a
mind / body
connection

6. Ancient Greeks
Socrates &
Plato
 Mind separate from
body, knowledge was
innate
 Dualism
Aristotle
 Mind & body
connected,
knowledge from
experience

7. Renee
Descartes
Mind & body
connected, knowledge
from experience
Believed mind was a
tabula rasa (blank
slate) at birth &
experience was written
on it
“Let us suppose the mind to
be, as we say, white paper,
void of all characters.”
John Locke

8. Psychology is born…

9. Wilhelm Wundt
“The exact description of the consciousness is the sole aim of experimental
psychology”
 Father of psychology
 1st psych lab built in 1879 (Leipzig, Germany)
 1st to apply scientific principles to study of human
mind
 Believed mind = thoughts, experiences, emotions &
other elements
 Students had to think objectively

10.  Objective introspection: objectively examining &
measuring own thoughts
 Examining basic sensory processes
 Sensations = 3 components:
 Quality, Intensity, Feeling-tone
 Ex: Dead rat = nauseating quality, strong intensity,
stench feeling-tone
 Wundt experiments (Time lag):
 Press button when hearing sound of a ball dropping
 Press button when consciously aware of perceiving
the sound
 Demonstrating choice reaction time Wundt styleFUN FACT: Wundt believed that meaning is more impt than language as
evidenced by the fact that we often remember the general meaning of what a
person said long after we’ve forgotten the words that were used to convey it.

11. Why is Wundt considered the
first psychologist?

12. Structuralism

13. Edward Titchener
 Student of Wundt
 Structuralism: Titchner’s idea that objective
introspection can be used on physical sensations
(Wundt) + thoughts
 Ex: Use Titchner’s structuralist view on objective
introspection to explain a rose (What sensations
would you have and what thoughts?)
Margaret F. Washburn
 Student of Titchner
 1st PhD in Psych
 Studied the animal mind

14. Functionalism
Competing view arising at same time
(also after Wundt’s lab was formed)

15. William James
 Taught at Harvard
 1st US school to have psych
 Author of the Principles of
Psychology
 How the mind allows ppl to
function in real world
 Live, work, play, adapt etc
 Consciousness = an indiv’s
awareness of his/her own
thoughts, incl sensations,
feelings, memories
 Stream of consciousness –
constant chg in response to

16. Mary Whiton Clakins
 Student of James
 Denied Harvard degree – offered from Radcliffe
– refused
 Became first female pres of APA

17. Structuralism vs
Functionalism
 Structuralism: What the mind is
Vs.
 Functionalism: What the mind is for
 No longer major viewpoints

18. Charles Darwin
 On The Origin of Species
 Theory of natural selection: an evolutionary
process in which organisms that are best
adapted to their environment will survive and
produce offspring
 Genes are inherited
 If random genetic mutation that is beneficial gets
passed down it becomes more common in the
species
 How might this be connected to psychology?

19. Gestalt Psychology

20. Max Wertheimer
 Perception & sensation couldn’t be broken down into
smaller pieces and still be understood
 Ex: A melody is made up of indiv notes that alone
don’t = a song
 “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”
 Ppl naturally seek out patterns and wholes in sensory
info
 Today part of cognitive psychology

21. Psychoanalysis

22. Sigmund Freud
 Neurologist – patients had nervous disorders
 Proposed an unconscious mind into which we
repress (push) unwanted/threatening thoughts
 Repressed thoughts result in nervous disorders
 Personality formed in first 6 yrs of life
 Psychoanalysis – theory & therapy based on work of
Freud (dream analysis, word association, etc)
 Psychotherapy – based on psychoanalysis – trained
professional helps patient gain insight into own behavior
 Criticized for being unscientific
 Followers:
 Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Anna Freud, Erik Erikson

23. Behaviorism

24. Ivan Pavlov
 Reflex could be caused by unrelated stimuli
 Conditioning – learned reflexive response

25. John B. Watson
 Behaviorism – focus only on observable behavior
 No focus on consciousness
 All behavior is leaned
 Stimuli (environmental events) + responses (physical
reactions)
 Little Albert – taught to fear a rat by making scary
noise – eventually other white fluffy things scary
(Watson & Rayner)
 Little Albert update…
 Opposed to Freud (phobia result from repressed

26. B F Skinner
 Included the idea of reinforcement into
behaviorism
 Environmental stimuli that encourage or
discourage responses

27. Mary Cover Jones
 Little Peter – countering fear of rabbit
 Counterconditioning – slow exposure to rabbit to
eliminate fear

28. The Approaches
to
Psychology

29. Many psychologists
today use an eclectic
approach

30. The Biological Approach
 Sometimes called biopsychological
 Attributes behavior to biological events
 Criticized for that
 Genetic inf, hormones and nervous system
 Behavior is the direct result of events in
the body
 Ex: Investigate why heart races when you
are afraid

31. The Behavioral Approach
 Scientific study of observable behavior
responses & their environmental
determinants
 We do what we do bc of the conditions we
have experienced
 Ex: Child is well-mannered bc parents have
rewarded that behavior
 Applied to help ppl chg behavior for better
 Today not all reject cognition (thought

32. The Psychodynamic
Approach
 The idea that behavior comes from
unconscious drives & conflicts
 Conflict btwn biological drives and societal
demands & early experiences
 Originates with Freud
 Today: less emphasis on sexual drives and
more on experience

33. The Humanistic Approach
 Emphasizes a person’s positive qualities,
capacity for growth & free will to chose destiny
 Ppl controls their lives, their environments don’t
 Humans have free will & strive for self-
actualization (achievement of ones full potential)
 Differs from psychoanalytic: Not driven by
unconscious impulses
 Differs form behaviorism: Not driven by external
rewards
 Can aim for altruism

34. The Cognitive Approach
 Focuses on mental processes involved in
knowing
 How we direct our attn., perceive, remember,
think, solve probs
 Ex: How we solve math problems, why we
remember somethings for only a short time but
others a long time, how we use our imagination
to plan for the future
 Differs from behaviorism: not driven by external
forces
 rather the indiv mental processes are in control of

35. The Sociocultural
Approach
 Focuses on relationship btwn social & cultural
environments inf on behavior
 Understanding a person’s behavior requires
understanding the cultural context in which it
occurs
 Compares behavior across countries and
different ethnic groups within a country
 Ex: A smile is a smile everywhere

36. The Evolutionary
Approach
Note: Sometimes not considered one of the approaches
 Focuses on the biological basis of the universal
mental characteristics of all humans
 Uses evolutionary ideas to explain level of
aggressiveness, fears, mating patterns, etc.
 All are traceable to probs early humans faced
 Ex: Aggressiveness is more necessary in men
bc they fought off other animals
 Believe they have umbrella approach that
underlies all others