Psychology Continues To Grow
As you have seen in this brief overview of psychologys history, this discipline has seen dramatic growth and change since its official beginnings in Wundts lab. The story certainly does not end here.
Psychology has continued to evolve since 1960 and new ideas and perspectives have been introduced. Recent research in psychology looks at many aspects of the human experience, from the biological influences on behavior on the impact of social and cultural factors.
Today, the majority of psychologists do not identify themselves with a single school of thought. Instead, they often focus on a particular specialty area or perspective, often drawing on ideas from a range of theoretical backgrounds. This eclectic approach has contributed new ideas and theories that will continue to shape psychology for years to come.
Behaviourism And The Question Of Free Will
The most famous behaviourist was Burrhus Frederick Skinner , who expanded the principles of behaviourism and also brought them to the attention of the public at large. Skinner used the ideas of stimulus and response, along with the application of rewards or reinforcements, to train pigeons and other animals. And he used the general principles of behaviourism to develop theories about how best to teach children and how to create societies that were peaceful and productive. Skinner even developed a method for studying thoughts and feelings using the behaviourist approach .
Dualism And The Origin Of Psychology
Renowned French philosopher René Descartes stated that contrary to popular belief at the time, the mind and body were two separate entities that make up how we experience human life. This belief in the separation of mind and body is known as dualism. It laid the foundation for the study of the mind, separate from natural sciences like biology and medicine. Descartes work on dualism later suggested that the mind was non-physical, a state of consciousness and self-awareness that is not purely biological. This became and remained the model within the fields of biology and medicine for around three centuries. Separating the concepts of mind and body made it clear that a study of the mind on its own was needed.
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Psychology As A Profession
As the roles of psychologists and the needs of the public continued to change, it was necessary for psychology to begin to define itself as a profession. Without standards for training and practice, anyone could use the title psychologist and offer services to the public. As early as 1917, applied psychologists organized to create standards for education, training, and licensure. By the 1930s, these efforts led to the creation of the American Association for Applied Psychology . While the American Psychological Association represented the interests of academic psychologists, AAAP served those in education, industry, consulting, and clinical work.
Emergence Of German Experimental Psychology
Until the middle of the 19th century, psychology was widely regarded as a branch of philosophy. Whether it could become an independent scientific discipline was questioned already earlier on: Immanuel Kant declared in his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science that psychology might perhaps never become a “proper” natural science because its phenomena cannot be quantified, among other reasons. Kant proposed an alternative conception of an empirical investigation of human thought, feeling, desire, and action, and lectured on these topics for over twenty years . His Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View , which resulted from these lectures, looks like an empirical psychology in many respects.
Johann Friedrich Herbart took issue with what he viewed as Kant’s conclusion and attempted to develop a mathematical basis for a scientific psychology. Although he was unable to empirically realize the terms of his psychological theory, his efforts did lead scientists such as Ernst Heinrich Weber and Gustav Theodor Fechner to attempt to measure the mathematical relationships between the physical magnitudes of external stimuli and the psychological intensities of the resulting sensations. Fechner is the originator of the term psychophysics.
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History Of The Concept
Reinforcement is closely linked to evolutionary principles, in that it represents adaptive functioning with obvious survival implications, and applies to all species capable of benefitting from experience. Its origin as a formal principle of modern psychology derives from Thorndike’s Law of Effect: the occurrence of a satisfying event stamps in the behavior that was instrumental in producing it. Hull’s influential learning theory proposed that the increase is in the strength of the association between a prior stimulus and the response, with the mechanism underlying reinforcement being the reduction in a basic biological drive. However, many stimuli can serve as reinforcers when they have only incentive value .
Much past research has been devoted to the question of whether reinforcement is necessary for learning to occur the present consensus is that it is not. The question, however, may be a spurious one, since it is difficult to imagine a behavior that has no consequences, and the positive nature of the outcome might be as simple as reducing constraints on the individual, or predicting future pleasures.
W. Schönpflug, in, 2001
Can Applied Psychology Change The World
When we ask Can psychology change the world?, we might rephrase it as Can psychology make a positive impact on the quality of human life?. It is hard to think of a more crucial question to be asked by any field of study. If modern applied psychology can address this question, what other areas of study could be of greater importance?
Research conducted in 2015 showed that up to 61% of working-age adults find it difficult to understand public health and wellbeing information. This confusion is referred to as health literacy, and impacts peoples capacity to handle long term distress or make calculated decisions about their health and wellness.
Mental Wellness Literacy is a term that can define how well people can direct their own self-awareness and mental wellbeing, via personal development, ongoing education, peer accountability, and individual responsibility.
As part of their studies, students of Modern Applied Psychology naturally engage in the journey of developing self-awareness, personal improvement, social awareness, people skills, and an ability to drive positive social change.
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A Brief Look At The People And Events That Shaped Modern Psychology
The history of modern psychology spans centuries, with the earliest known mention of clinical depression appearing in 1500 BCE on an ancient Egyptian manuscript known as the Ebers Papyrus. However, it wasn’t until the 11th century that Persian physician Avicenna made a connection between emotions and physical responses in a practice dubbed “physiological psychology.”
Understanding the history of modern psychology provides insight into how this field has developed and evolved over time. It also gives a better understanding of the thought processes of some of the most influential figures in the field, ultimately emerging into psychology as we know it today.
The World Needs More Achologists
The key philosophy of Modern Applied Psychology is that when people are taught to turn their focus away from disorder and towards wellness, it becomes possible for people to encounter significant improvements in their mental health and overall wellbeing.
Improving mental health literacy is about equipping people to make informed decisions about their mental wellness and personal growth, while expressing their creativity and applying their imagination, in light of taking full control of their lives.
Many mental health groups focus on diagnosing misinterpreted aspects of human behaviour instead of taking time to understand the basic factors that cause many of the regular difficulties people face.
The Academy of Modern Applied Psychology draws a worldwide membership of learners who are devoted to becoming champions of mental wellness, personal responsibility, and individual growth.
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Hall’s Prolific Scholarly Achievements During His Presidency
By his death on April 24, 1924, Hall had established psychology as an American discipline and study, almost entirely graduated the next generation of psychologists , and secured the role of behavioral and genetic psychology as being an integral part. To insure the continuation of his work, Hall’s estate established at Clark an endowment for a genetic psychology professorship and for his educational journal that was redirected and renamed The Journal of Genetic Psychology.
Hall’s most significant contribution may be the creation of developmental psychology and its relationship to education . His research on child study, adolescence, and old age enabled him to argue for five stages of human development: childhood adolescence middle life, from 25 to 45 senescence, after 40 and senectitude, approximately near the end of life . His psychological and educational ideas and practices were focused on what he believed, would further the human race. His Darwinian and Spencerian concepts of evolution pervaded his understanding of human genetic development. He consistently maintained these ideals, even in the face of demands for coeducation in schools, growing behaviorism in psychology, and expansive progressivism in education. Hall was a man of his times, his scientific worldview centered on the mid- to late nineteenth century ideas and their implications for professional practice.
J. Wang, … J. Ye, in, 2016
Pavlov Watson Skinner And Behaviorism
Early work in the field of behavior was conducted by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov . Pavlov studied a form of learning behavior called a conditioned reflex, in which an animal or human produced a reflex response to a stimulus and, over time, was conditioned to produce the response to a different stimulus that the experimenter associated with the original stimulus. The reflex Pavlov worked with was salivation in response to the presence of food. The salivation reflex could be elicited using a second stimulus, such as a specific sound, that was presented in association with the initial food stimulus several times. Once the response to the second stimulus was learned, the food stimulus could be omitted. Pavlovs classical conditioning is only one form of learning behavior studied by behaviorists.
Behaviorism dominated experimental psychology for several decades, and its influence can still be felt today . Behaviorism is largely responsible for establishing psychology as a scientific discipline through its objective methods and especially experimentation. In addition, it is used in behavioral and cognitive-behavioral therapy. Behavior modification is commonly used in classroom settings. Behaviorism has also led to research on environmental influences on human behavior.
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Transition To Contemporary Psychology
Phrenology began as “organology”, a theory of brain structure developed by the German physician, Franz Joseph Gall . Gall argued that the brain is divided into a large number of functional “organs”, each responsible for particular human mental abilities and dispositions hope, love, spirituality, greed, language, the abilities to detect the size, form, and color of objects, etc. He argued that the larger each of these organs are, the greater the power of the corresponding mental trait. Further, he argued that one could detect the sizes of the organs in a given individual by feeling the surface of that person’s skull. Gall’s ultra-localizationist position with respect to the brain was soon attacked, most notably by French anatomist Pierre Flourens , who conducted ablation studies which purported to demonstrate little or no cerebral localization of function. Although Gall had been a serious researcher, his theory was taken by his assistant, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim , and developed into the profitable, popular enterprise of phrenology, which soon spawned, especially in Britain, a thriving industry of independent practitioners. In the hands of Scottish religious leader George Combe , phrenology became strongly associated with political reform movements and egalitarian principles . Spurzheim soon spread phrenology to America as well, where itinerant practical phrenologists assessed the mental well-being of willing customers .
The Third Force In Psychology
While the first half of the 20th century was dominated by psychoanalysis and behaviorism, a new school of thought known as humanistic psychology emerged during the second half of the century. Often referred to as the “third force” in psychology, this theoretical perspective emphasized conscious experiences.
American psychologist Carl Rogers is often considered to be one of the founders of this school of thought. While psychoanalysts looked at unconscious impulses and behaviorists focused on environmental causes, Rogers believed strongly in the power of free will and self-determination.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow also contributed to humanistic psychology with his famous hierarchy of needs theory of human motivation. This theory suggested that people were motivated by increasingly complex needs. Once the most basic needs are fulfilled, people then become motivated to pursue higher level needs.
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The Birth Of Experimental Psychology: How Do We Measure Beginnings
When was psychology born as a science? Image credit: Horia Varlan, Creative Commons.
Thursday 26th July saw the launch of SciLogs.com, a new English language science blog network. SciLogs.com, the brand-new home for Nature Network bloggers, forms part of the SciLogs international collection of blogs which already exist in German, Spanish and Dutch. To celebrate this addition to the NPG science blogging family, some of the NPG blogs are publishing posts focusing on “Beginnings”.
Participating in this cross-network blogging festival is nature.coms Soapbox Science blog, Scitable’s Student Voices blog and bloggers from SciLogs.com, SciLogs.de, Scitable and Scientific Americans Blog Network. Join us as we explore the diverse interpretations of beginnings from scientific examples such as stem cells to first time experiences such as publishing your first paper. You can also follow and contribute to the conversations on social media by using the #BeginScights hashtag.
Its 1879, and psychology is just about to be born. The place: the University of Leipzig. The birth parent: Wilhelm Wundt. The deed: establishing the first official university laboratory for the study of psychology, an event taken by many as the line that marks unofficial explorations from empirical, accepted science.
That, at least, is the most straightforward story.
But even with that narrowed scope, we still come up against the same problem: can we really call Wundt the point of origin?
Books By Sigmund Freud
- Studies on Hysteria
- The Interpretation of Dreams
- The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
- Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
- Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious
- Delusion and Dream in Jensen’s Gradiva
- Totem and Taboo
- Beyond the Pleasure Principle
- The Ego and the Id
- The Future of an Illusion
- Civilization and Its Discontents
- Moses and Monotheism
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The Birth Of Modern Psychology
Some say that modern psychology was born in the 18th century, which is largely due to William Battie’s “Treatise on Madness,” published in 1758. Others consider the mid-19th century experiments conducted in Hermann von Helmholtz’s lab to be the origin of modern psychology.
Still others suggest that modern psychology began in 1879 when Wilhelm Wundtalso known as the father of modern psychologyestablished the first experimental psychology lab. From that moment forward, the study of psychology would evolve, as it still does today.
Psychology In Everyday Life: How To Effectively Learn And Remember
One way that the findings of psychological research may be particularly helpful to you is in terms of improving your learning and study skills. Psychological research has provided a substantial amount of knowledge about the principles of learning and memory. This information can help you do better in this and other courses, and can also help you better learn new concepts and techniques in other areas of your life. The most important thing you can learn in college is how to better study, learn, and remember. These skills will help you throughout your life, as you learn new jobs and take on other responsibilities. There are substantial individual differences in learning and memory, such that some people learn faster than others. But even if it takes you longer to learn than you think it should, the extra time you put into studying is well worth the effort. And you can learn to learnlearning to study effectively and to remember information is just like learning any other skill, such as playing a sport or a video game.
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The Rise Of Behaviorism
Psychology changed dramatically during the early 20th-century as another school of thought known as behaviorism rose to dominance. Behaviorism was a major change from previous theoretical perspectives, rejecting the emphasis on both the conscious and unconscious mind. Instead, behaviorism strove to make psychology a more scientific discipline by focusing purely on observable behavior.
Behaviorism had its earliest start with the work of a Russian physiologist named Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov’s research on the digestive systems of dogs led to his discovery of the classical conditioning process, which proposed that behaviors could be learned via conditioned associations.
Pavlov demonstrated that this learning process could be used to make an association between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus.
An American psychologist named John B. Watson soon became one of the strongest advocates of behaviorism. Initially outlining the basic principles of this new school of thought in his 1913 paper Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, Watson later went on to offer a definition in his classic book “Behaviorism“ , writing:
The impact of behaviorism was enormous, and this school of thought continued to dominate for the next 50 years. Psychologist B.F. Skinner furthered the behaviorist perspective with his concept of operant conditioning, which demonstrated the effect of punishment and reinforcement on behavior.
Why Was Introspection Considered Scientific
Although it appears to be an unscientific method by todays standards, introspection introduced the foundations for modern methods of psychological inquiry. Wundts introspections were conducted in highly controlled environments. In addition, the process participants were asked to follow was the same each time, helping to produce more accurate results.
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