The importance of history can be easily overlooked because today’s fast paced society is focused on the future, on what comes next, on what is planned for tomorrow. History has much value and can even give some insight on what will happen in the future. When looking into the history of psychology it is apparent that much transformation took place. After the formal beginnings of modern psychology different ideas began to transform into various schools of thought. They began with the study of the conscious with structuralism and functionalism then moved onto the unconscious with psychoanalysis. Soon the mind was not the center of concentration, the research expanded to behavior with behaviorism and gestalt psychology offered a deeper look into
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Watson felt that the covert behavior that was being studied by the previous schools of thought had no scientific ground (coomarsingh, 2012). He wanted to be able to prove his theories true with science and create facts that were indisputable, something that could not be done studying the mind through subjective techniques. Behaviorists based their experimentation off observable behavior, and believed behavior could be explained by observing the relationship between stimuli and responses. They held the belief that the core of psychology is the study of learning and that no matter how complex can be accounted for by the laws of conditioning. Although the idea of conditioning goes all the way back to Ivan Pavlov and his dogs, Watson expanded on this notion with his own experiments and proved that conditioning in humans is possible (Schultz & Schultz, 2011). This discovery reinforced the belief that humans had no free will and that we were a result of our environment. Adult behavior was said to have come from childhood experiences and that to avoid unwanted behaviors in adulthood certain child upbringing techniques should be used. Not only could this form of behavior therapy work for children to ensure healthy adult behaviors, it could also be used to rid adults of their already learned abnormal behaviors. While behaviorism was making …show more content…
Basically it explains that perception can be broken down into smaller parts that appear different than the whole we see. There are multiple laws that were created within this practice that explain why we see objects in certain ways. An example would be the law of closure that states that even when there is a break in an object, such as a square, we still see the object as a whole (Schultz & Schultz, 2011). Our mind takes the foreign picture we see and completes it to turn it into something familiar, something that is easily understood. Gestalt psychology can be easily associated with illusions because it primarily deals with deception within perception. Another area that this school of thought explores is insight. Insight Is described as an immediate apprehension or cognition, a sudden recognition of the gestalt principle (Schultz & Schultz, 2011). Experiments were performed by Wolfgang Köhler with apes to test this theory of insight. One experiment took place with an ape named Sultan, a banana was placed outside his cage just out of his reach and sticks were put inside his cage. Sultan pondered the sticks for a short while until suddenly using the stick to retrieve the banana, showing insight learning (Boeree, 2000). From this school of thought psychology gained a greater understanding of perception and a further understanding of the learning
Watson felt that the covert behavior that was being studied by the previous schools of thought had no scientific ground (coomarsingh, 2012). He wanted to be able to prove his theories true with science and create facts that were indisputable, something that could not be done studying the mind through subjective techniques. Behaviorists based their experimentation off observable behavior, and believed behavior could be explained by observing the relationship between stimuli and responses. They held the belief that the core of psychology is the study of learning and that no matter how complex can be accounted for by the laws of conditioning. Although the idea of conditioning goes all the way back to Ivan Pavlov and his dogs, Watson expanded on this notion with his own experiments and proved that conditioning in humans is possible (Schultz & Schultz, 2011). This discovery reinforced the belief that humans had no free will and that we were a result of our environment. Adult behavior was said to have come from childhood experiences and that to avoid unwanted behaviors in adulthood certain child upbringing techniques should be used. Not only could this form of behavior therapy work for children to ensure healthy adult behaviors, it could also be used to rid adults of their already learned abnormal behaviors. While behaviorism was making …show more content…
Basically it explains that perception can be broken down into smaller parts that appear different than the whole we see. There are multiple laws that were created within this practice that explain why we see objects in certain ways. An example would be the law of closure that states that even when there is a break in an object, such as a square, we still see the object as a whole (Schultz & Schultz, 2011). Our mind takes the foreign picture we see and completes it to turn it into something familiar, something that is easily understood. Gestalt psychology can be easily associated with illusions because it primarily deals with deception within perception. Another area that this school of thought explores is insight. Insight Is described as an immediate apprehension or cognition, a sudden recognition of the gestalt principle (Schultz & Schultz, 2011). Experiments were performed by Wolfgang Köhler with apes to test this theory of insight. One experiment took place with an ape named Sultan, a banana was placed outside his cage just out of his reach and sticks were put inside his cage. Sultan pondered the sticks for a short while until suddenly using the stick to retrieve the banana, showing insight learning (Boeree, 2000). From this school of thought psychology gained a greater understanding of perception and a further understanding of the learning