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Psychology’s Roots and
PerspectivesThinking Skill: Demonstrate an
understanding of how Psychology has evolved as an
academic discipline
Psychology’s Roots
Pre-scientific Psychology Influence of Philosophy Are ideas inborn or is
the mind a blank slate filled by experience? “nurture works on what nature endows…”
Psychology’s Roots
Pre-scientific Psychology Empiricism
knowledge comes from experience via the senses
science flourishes through observation and experimentation
7th Century B.C. Psamtik I, King of Egypt
First “Scientific Method”?
Psychology’s Roots
Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig
Conscious perception (apperception) experiment
Birth of modern psychology (1879)
Psychology’s Roots
Structuralism used introspection
(looking inward) to explore the elemental structure of the human mind
Psychology’s Roots
Functionalism focused on how
behavioral processes function - how they enable organism to adapt, survive, and flourish
William James “Father of
American Psychology”
Psychology’s Roots
Gestalt psychology emphasized the immediate experience of the whole organism
Antithesis of Wundt
Max Wertheimer Kurt Koffka
Wolfgang Köhler
Psychology’s Roots
Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalysis Unconscious forces
Psychology’s Roots
Behaviorism –the science of observable behavior
John Watson BF Skinner
“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief.”
-John B. Watson
Psychology’s Roots
Contemporary Definition of Psychology The science of behavior (what we do) and
mental processes (sensations, perceptions, dreams, thoughts, beliefs, and feelings)
Contemporary Perspectives
Applying the Perspectives
Marsha wants to ask her boss for a salary increase however, her heart races
and she begins to perspire uncontrollably
every time she even approaches her boss.
