General Psychology 10:10 MWF FALL 2010

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Carson Konrade

There have been many questions about psychology since its earliest beginnings. Some of these questions are what issues should psychology be concerned with, what research methods should be used, and should psychology focus on behavior or mental processes? Eventually, philosophers decided to use scientific methods to study and draw conclusions about thought and behavior.

In the mid 1800’s, Wilhelm Wundt used research methods to study reaction times. In 1874 he published a book titled Principles of Physiological Psychology that showed many connections between thought and behavior. He then opened the world’s first psychology lab in 1879, which was considered the start of psychology.
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Psychology became well known during the late 1800’s when William James published a book that explained the idea of functionalism. James was given the title, father of American psychology, after publishing this book. Functionalism is the study of how behavior works to help people live in their environment. Functionalists believe consciousness exists as a continuous and changing process.
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Sigmund Freud changed psychology in a big way, having his own theory about personality. Freud worked with patients who had ailments such as hysteria and came up with the idea that childhood experiences and the unconscious mind contribute to the development of adult personality and behavior. These unconscious thoughts are often thought to be expressed through dreams. Freud thought these disorders came from unconscious conflicts becoming extreme or unbalanced. Although Freud’s ideas weren’t all correct they had a huge impact on 20th century thought.
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The next big change in psychology was during the early 20th century when behaviorism was introduced. Behaviorism deals with observable behavior rather than focusing on the conscious and unconscious mind as before. Ivan Pavlov was the first to research this topic by looking at digestive systems of dogs. In his experiments he showed that learning processes could be used to make a connection between a stimulus from the environment and a naturally occurring stimulus.
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John B. Watson contributed greatly to behaviorism in 1913 when he offered his own definition of this area. He felt behaviorism is the behavior of the human being and neither definite or usable. These contributions were so great that it led to further information gained from another psychologist named B.F. Skinner. Skinner came up with the idea of operant conditioning which shows the effect punishment and reinforcement have on behavior. Although behaviorism isn’t studied as much in psychology anymore, its principles are still widely used in today’s society.

While the first half of the century focused on behaviorism and the mind, the second half of the century focused on humanistic psychology which is considered to be found by Carl Rogers. Humanistic psychology focuses directly on environmental causes over power of free will and self-determination.
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Psychology has changed many times since the very beginning when Wundt created the first psychology lab. Psychology is continuously changing today and will continue to change forever. Today’s psychologists focus on a particular area rather than a whole field of study like in the past.

Sources

http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/History_of_Psychology.htm

http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/history/history_nonflash.html


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