General Psychology Ch.1 Terms, Key People

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Wilhelm Wundt

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"Founder" of Psychology,
Primary Focus: Consciousness
Said Psychology must be as scientific as chemistry, or physics.
Also studied: Attention, Memory, Sensory Processes, and reaction time.

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John B. Watson

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"Founded" Behaviorism
Wanted to abandon Consciousness to study only observable behavior.
Said "give me 12 children, and I'll give you..."

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Margaret Floy Washburn

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1st Female PhD in Psychology
1921 became 2nd female president of APA.
Only allowed as a guest student, later received Doctorate from Cornell, 1894.
Wrote influential Animal Mind 1908

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B. F. Skinner

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Boosted Behaviorism to new heights
Stressed importance of animal research
Focus: Observable behavior, and environment.
Said "Free will is an illusion"

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Martin Seligman

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Launched Positive Psychology
APA presidency 1997

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Carl Rogers

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Advocated Humanism
Gained influence around 1950
Argued that behavior is governed by a sense of self, which animals lack.
Utilized Person Centered Therapy

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William James

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Led Functionalism movement
Trained in medicine, looked to psych for a challenge
Wrote "Principles of psychology", one of psychs most influential texts

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Leta Stetter Hollingworth

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Did pioneering work on adolescent development, mental retardation, and gifted children.
coined term 'gifted'
Debunked theories that women are inferior, and that mentral cycles are reliably associated with performance decrements in women.

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G. Stanley Hall

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Briefly studied with Freud.
Particularly important contributor to the rapid development of psych in usa.
Series of firsts in american psych:1st lab at John Hopkins, 1st psych journal, driving force behind APA, and 1st president.

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Sigmund Freud

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Austrian Physician
Used Introspection
Pioneered Psychoanalytic theory
Attracted Carl Jung, Alfred Adler

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Mary Whiton Calkins

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Invented Widely used memory studying technique
1st female president of APA
No PhD, could only be a 'listener' at hardvard, later xfer'd to Radcliffe, and denied their degree

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Applied Psychology

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is the use of psychological principles and theories to overcome problems in areas, such as mental health, business management, education, health, product design, ergonomics, and law.

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Behavior

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is the actions of a system or organism, usually in relation to its environment, which usually includes other systems or organisms, as well as the physical environment. It is the response of the system or organism, to various stimuli or other inputs, internal or external.

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Clinical Psychology

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The branch that deals with diagnosis and treatment of psychological problems, and disorders.

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Cognition

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refers to the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge.

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Critical thinking

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purposeful, reasoned, goal-directed thinking that involves solving problems, formulating inferences, working with probabilities, and making carefully thought out decisions.

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Culture

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widely shared customs, beliefs, values, norms, institutions, and other products of a community that are transmitted socially across generations.

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Empiricism

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the premise that knowledge should be acquired though observation

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Ethnocentrism

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the tendency to view one's own group as superior to others, and as the standard for judging the worth of foreign ways.

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Evolutionary Psychology

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examines behavioral processes in terms of their adaptive value for members of a species of the course of many generations.

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Functionalism

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based on belief that psychology should investigate the function or purpose of consciousness, rather than its structure.

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Humanism

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the theoretical orientation that emphasizes the unique qualities of humans, especially their freedom, and potential for personal growth.

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Introspection

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the careful, systematic self observation of one's own conscious experience.

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Natural selection

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heritable characteristics that provide a survival or reproductive advantage, are more likely than alternative characteristics to be passed on to subsequent generations and thus become 'selected' over time.

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Positive psychology

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uses theory and research to better understand the positive, adaptive, creative, and fulfilling aspects of human existence.

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Psychiatry

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is a branch of medicine concerned with diagnosis, and treatment of psychological problems and disorders.

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Psychoanalytic theory

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attempts to explain personality, motivation, and mental disorders by focusing on unconscious determinants of behavior.

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Psychology

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the science that studies behavior and the physiological and cognitive processes that underlie it, and it is the profession that applies the accumulated knowledge of this science to practical problems.
AKA: "The study of the mind"

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Behaviorism

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is a theoretical orientation based on the premise that scientific psychology should study only observable behavior