Notes from Yale's Introduction to Psychology
Note: These notes are from Ongoing Course. I will update them as I go along.
Table of Contents
Foundations
History of Psychology
Precursors to American psychology can be found in philosophy and physiology. Philosophers such as John Locke (1632–1704) and Thomas Reid (1710–1796) promoted empiricism, the idea that all knowledge comes from experience. The work of Locke, Reid, and others emphasized the role of the human observer and the primacy of the senses in defining how the mind comes to acquire knowledge
German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) measured the speed of the neural impulse (An electro-chemical signal that enables neurons to communicate). and explored the physiology of hearing and vision. His work indicated that our senses can deceive us and are not a mirror of the external world. Such work showed that even though the human senses were fallible, the mind could be measured using the methods of science. In all, it suggested that a science of psychology was feasible.
The formal development of modern psychology is usually credited to the work of German physician, physiologist, and philosopher Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920). In 1879, he complemented his lectures on experimental psychology with a laboratory experience, laboratory psychology: an event that has served as the popular date for the establishment of the science of psychology. Students were trained to offer detailed self-reports of their reactions to various stimuli, a procedure known as introspection (A method of focusing on internal processes).
mental chronometry, more commonly known as reaction time
A student of Wundt’s, Edward Bradford Titchener brought to America a brand of experimental psychology referred to as “structuralism.” Structuralists were interested in the contents of the mind—what the mind is. For Titchener, the general adult mind was the proper focus for the new psychology, and he excluded from study those with mental deficiencies, children, and animals
Striking a balance between the science and practice of psychology continues to this day
“functionalism.” Influenced by Darwin’s evolutionary theory, functionalists were interested in the activities of the mind—what the mind does.
William James (1842–1910) is regarded as writing perhaps the most influential and important book in the field of psychology, Principles of Psychology, published in 1890. Opposed to the reductionist ideas of Titchener, James proposed that consciousness is ongoing and continuous; it cannot be isolated and reduced to elements.
Gestalt psychology: an attempt to study the unity of experience, believed that studying the whole of any experience was richer than studying individual aspects of that experience. The saying “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is a Gestalt perspective. Consider that a melody is an additional element beyond the collection of notes that comprise it. The Gestalt psychologists proposed that the mind often processes information simultaneously rather than sequentially.
the work of the Gestalt psychologists served as a precursor to the rise of cognitive psychology: the study of mental processes
Behaviorism The study of behavior. emerged early in the 20th century, ejected any reference to mind and viewed overt and observable behavior as the proper subject matter of psychology. Through the scientific study of behavior, it was hoped that laws of learning could be derived that would promote the prediction and control of behavior.
Pavlov's classical conditioning. notion that learning and behavior were controlled by events in the environment and could be explained with no reference to mind or consciousness
Pioneers of cognitive psychology: Jerome Bruner (1915–), Roger Brown (1925–1997), and George Miller (1920–2012)
Brown conducted original research on language and memory, coined the term “flashbulb memory" A highly detailed and vivid memory of an emotionally significant event. ,” and figured out how to study the "tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon"
Miller's 1956 paper “The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information” is one of the most highly cited papers in psychology. A popular interpretation of Miller’s research was that the number of bits of information an average human can hold in working memory is 7 ± 2
Brain
Astonishing Hypothesis
Phineas Gage, summer of 1848, wounded by a tamping iron rod through his left side of the brain. He survived. His brain functions were intact, but it changed his behavior. fitful, irreverant, indulging at times in the grosseset profanity.
Brain is the source of mental life. Damage to the brain can have profound effect on who we are, and what we are.
Nobel Laurete, Francis Crick summarized. The Astonishing Hypothesis: "You," your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.
The mind is what the brain does. Materialism
Dualism
An idea that is present in every religion, every philosophy
Rene Decartes (1596-1650): Animals are matter, the doctrine of Materialism applies to them, but humans are different.
Human are composed two sorts of things: Material the body and Spiritual, seperate, mental, psychogoical, something that doesn't reduce to the material
Arguments for Dualism:
- The creativity and spontentiaty of human action
- Intuition. Method of doubt. "I think therefore I am": Descartes claims that the existence of the self as a thinking being is known intuitively. No matter how much he doubts, he cannot doubt that he is doubting, which proves the existence of his mind.
Dualism. out of common sense. In language we use terms like "my heart", "my arms". As if our body is seperate from us that we have
Personality identity. Same people after radical bodily changes. The much used concepts of "body swaps" in fiction
Conception of Self. Famous opening line of Kafka's metamorphisis:
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
In Ulyssess, the humans are transformed to pig, but their minds remain unchanged.
Idea that body and cells are seperate.
Idea of many people inhibiting same body. Multiple Personality Disorders.
The Idea of Demonic Posession, that body can be taken over by somebody else.
Bodies without minds = Corpses
Intelligent being without bodies = Gods/Angels
We are not our body.
The survival of the self after the destruction of the body. The idea that's prevalent in religions. Spirits, Souls, afterlife, heaven, hell.
Modern psychologists and neuroscientists believe that that the idea of Dualism is mistaken
Problems with Dualism\
- Doesn't help us explain few things that need to be explained. Doesn't answer important questions. Leaving things to an immaterial realm
- We now have better understanding of what physical things can do, compared to the time of Rene Decartes. Now, computer, robot can perform complex intelligent actions on level of humans.
- We now have strong evidence of the role of brain in everyday life. Physical things that affect the brain can affect ourselves. Coffee, Stimuli, Alzheimer's
- We can observe brain activities using fMRI scanner. From infering the patterns of brain activation, one can deduce what people may be thinking
Materialism is the view that science forces us to adapt