1. Psychology’s History

2. Early Psychology Plato and Socrates – believed all knowledge was innate Aristotle – believed all knowledge was gained from experience 1600s – Rene Descartes (mind / body distinct entitites) – Francis Bacon (humans see patterns where they do not exist) – John Locke (empiricism – knowledge arises from experience, observation, experimentation)

3. Wilhelm Wundt Dec. 1879 – Leipzig, Germany First psych experiment – measured delay between an individual hearing a ball drop and pushing a button. Compared to when they were aware of their awareness. Modern psychology born!

4. Fun loving, joyful Harvard professor. Godfather was Ralph Waldo Emerson and good friends with Mark Twain and Sigmund Freud Functionalism=emphasized the exploring of the mind including emotions, memories, and streams of consciousness. First to admit a woman, Mary Calkins, into Harvard’s Psychology program. “Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look around cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.” William James Influential early psychologist Harvard University 1880s

5. John B. Watson John Hopkins Psychology professor 1913 Behavioralism = emphasized that the science of psychology should dismiss introspection. Only focus on observable behavior! “Little Albert” experiments. (Fear the rat!!!) "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, and, yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, tendencies, abilities, and race.” Viewpoints later adopted by B.F. Skinner, perhaps the most influential psychologist of the 20 th century.

6. Psychology… …the study of behavior and mental processes.

7. Remember! Each of psychology’s above perspectives is helpful, but each by itself fails to reveal the whole picture.

9. The Yates Family

10. QUESTIONS FOR THE DAY: Why are the answers that flow from the scientific approach more reliable than those based on intuition and common sense? What are the three main components of the scientific attitude?