PSY 451 A

Basic Tenets of
Psychology

Dr. Ark Verma

Is Psychology Just Behaviour Modification?

NO, It is not.

Subject Matter of Psychology

What do Psychologists Study?

A science which studies mental processes, experiences

& behaviour in different contexts.

mental processes: What goes on in the mind?

brain activity? or mental activity?

such as learning, remembering, perceiving, feeling,

understanding.

experiences: subjective feelings.

what is your reality/awareness/soul?

what are you feeling at this point of time?

normal/altered or active/passive?

behaviors: responses or reactions to the events & actions

in the world.

simple or complex.

overt or covert.

basically like stimulus (S) & response (R).

Is Psychology a Science or Common Sense?

Consider these statements?

1. Memory is more accurate under hypnosis.
2. All people dream during a night of normal sleep.
3. As the number of bystanders at an emergency increases, the time it takes
for the victim to get help decreases.
4. Humans do not have a maternal instinct.
5. Older adults tend to express less satisfaction with life in general than
younger adults.

1. Eyewitness testimony is often unreliable.

2. Children with high IQs tend to be less able physically than their
peers.
3. Creativity and high intelligence do not necessarily go together.
4. When it comes to close personal relationships, opposites attract.
5. The majority of teenagers have good relationships with their
parents.

Probably not Common Sense!!!

Common Sense has problems!!!

e.g. confirmation bias,

stereotypes etc.

How is Psychology Structured!

as a Discipline:

seeks to understand and explain, how the mind works &

how the different mental processes lead to different
behaviours.

tries to minimise biases in explanations of behaviour and

experience in various ways.

however, also recognises the importance of subjectivity

in some cases; though tries to develop a scientific
understanding.

most importantly it consists of two streams:

one, which makes use of the methods in physical &

biological sciences & the other which uses the methods
in social & cultural sciences in studying various psychosocial phenomena.

in the first case, psychology focuses largely on biological

principles to explain human behaviour.

in the other, psychology focuses on how behavioural

phenomena can be explained in terms of the interaction
that takes place between the person & the social context.

as natural science:

psychology applies the scientific method.

emphasises objectivity.

uses what is called a hypothetico-deductive model.

theory drives the scientific endeavour.

Ranjita and Shabnam were in the same class. Although, they were in the same class,
they were just acquainted with each other and their lives were quite different.
Ranjita came from a farmers family. Her grandparents, parents and elder brother
worked on their farm. They lived together in their house in the village. Ranjita was a
good athlete and was the best long distance runner in the school. She loved meeting
people and making friends.
Unlike her, Shabnam lived with her mother in the same village. Her father worked in
an office in a town nearby and came home during holidays. Shabnam was a good
artist and loved staying home and taking care of her younger brother. She was shy
and avoided meeting people.

as a social science:

psychological looks at the behaviour of the individuals in light of their

social context.

finally, psychology attempts to understand mind &

behavior.

mind What is MIND?

read Penrose!

VS Ramachandran for phantom limbs.

A Brief Background of Psychology

The word PSYCHOLOGY

Psychology the word basically derives from a

combination of two Latin words:

psyche: soul

logia: the study of

So, ideally the psychology began as the study of soul!!!

The Origins

the birth of psychological investigations came from

philosophy.

a subject that seeks to explore & explain human nature

through introspection.

also uses tools of thought like epistemology, logic etc.

Also, inputs came from physiology.

a subject dedicated to understanding the functioning

of the human body.

The Early Psychologists

Hippocrates (460 - 377 B.C.):

proposed that mental illness
was not caused by demons but
by physical malfunctions.

dissected human cadavers

& living organisms to
conclude
that
mind
controlled the body.

importantly
suggested
that mind resides in the
brain.

The Early Psychologists

Plato (427-347 B.C.):

suggested that reality exists

in our minds & the head is
the seat of the mind.

knowledge
is
gained
through
thinking
&
analysing as an effort to
understand the world.

mind & body are different,

but they interact.

The Early Psychologists

Aristotle (384-222 B.C.):

felt that mind & body were the

same thing.

believed
that
we
can
understand the mind by
studying the body.

rely on concrete objects &

actions, rather than thoughts.

reality lies in the concrete

world.

was an empiricist.

Moving on to Modern Thinkers!

The Modern Psychologists

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

a French mathematician &

philosopher.

introspection & reflection are

better
methods
than
observation.

mind & body are two

separate things. spiritual &
material.

Cogito ergo sum.

The Modern Psychologists

John Locke (1632-1704)

relationship between mind &

body is an equal relationship of
the two aspects of the same
phenomenon.

mind depends upon the body

through the senses for its
informations, while the body
depends on the mind to process
& store sensory experiences.

empiricist & believed in tabula

rasa.

The Modern Psychologists

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

proposed that humans have

a set of faculties - senses,
understanding & reasoning,
which work together to
control the link between
mind & body.

two types of knowledge

needs to be used:

a posteriori

a priori

Taking a pause

So, the early thinkers basically affected the broad subject

matter of psychology.

it had to be the elusive relationship between mind &

body.

mind could be studied through various ways, observable

behaviour was an important element.

body on the other hand could be studied via the

biological/neural substrates.

Various Schools of Psychology

Structuralism

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

developed the first psychology
laboratory in Leipzig, Germany.

focussed on the nature of

consciousness itself.

believed that it was possible to

analyse the basic elements of
the mind & conscious
experience.

founded structuralism.

structuralism

a school of psychology whose aim was to identify the basic

elements or structures of the psychological experience.

to create something like a periodic table of elements of

sensations.

used the method of introspection to attempt a map of

consciousness.

asked participants to describe exactly what they experience as

they work on mental tasks, such as viewing colors, reading
etc.

also used reaction times as a measure to systematically assess

the workings of the mind.

detection of sound took longer than identification (Wundt)

distinguished between sensation & perception.

Edward Titchener (1867-1927) claimed to identify more

than 40,000 sensations, as vision, hearing & taste.

the approach was rigorous & scientific.

quantifying mental events.

had limits: introspection.

Functionalism

William James (1842-1910)

founded functionalism

to understand why animals &

humans have developed the
particular
psychological
aspects.

My thinking is first & last

and always for the sake of my
doing (James, 1890).

basically their perspective derives from, Darwins (1809-1882)

theory of natural selection.

physical characteristics of animals & humans have evolved

because they serve a purpose, useful.

it now exists under the name of evolutionary psychology.

which believes that mental functions as memory, emotion &

personality, serve key adaptive functions.

concept of fitness: characteristics are passed on to

generations to the extent that they are helpful in survival &
propagation. e.g. jealousy.

has its own limitations. testability.

Psychodynamic Approach

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

rockstar

founded psychoanalysis

an approach to understand
human behaviour that focuses
on the role of unconscious
thoughts, feelings, & memories.

developed
his
method
by
extensive analysis of his patients.

believed that many of his patients problems like anxiety,

depression etc. were rooted in their painful childhood
experiences.

influenced a whole lot of other psychologists & theorists

as Carl Jung (1875-1961), Alfred Adler (1870-1937),
Karen Horney (1855-1952) & Erik Erikson (1902-1994).

proposed that these patients can be helped if the

unconscious drives can be remembered, particularly
through a deep exploration of their sexual experiences.

talk therapy & dream analysis: psychoanalysis.

Behaviorism

John B. Watson (1878 - 1958)

founded behaviorism

based on the premise that it is

not possible to objectively
study the mind.

psychologists should limit their

attention to the study of
behaviour (overt) itself.

mind is a black box.

no point in trying to determine,

when we can predict behaviour.

Behaviorists explain the behaviour in terms of S-R.

e.g. Watson found that systematically exposing a child to

fearful stimuli in presence of harmless stimuli could lead
the child to fear them:

The boy was placed in the middle of a room; a white laboratory rat
was placed near him and he was allowed to play with it. The child
showed no fear of the rat. In later trials, the researchers made a loud
sound behind Alberts back by striking a steel bar with a hammer
whenever the baby touched the rat. The child cried when he heard the
noise. After several such pairings of the two stimuli, the child was
again shown the rat. Now, however, he cried and tried to move away
from the rat.

Behaviorism: Classical Conditioning

Russian physiologist, Ivan

Pavlov studied the effects of
pairing
two
completely
unrelated stimuli, on learning.

He paired:

food > salivating response.

food + bell > salivating

response.

bell > salivating response.

Behaviorism: Operant Conditioning

B .F. Skinner (1904-1990)

used
reinforcements
&
punishments
to
modify
behavior.

used theses principles to

develop theories about how
to teach children & create
peaceful societies.

influenced a lot of marketing

strategies.

The Cognitive Approach

Cognitive Psychology

a field of psychology that

studies mental processes,
including perception, thinking,
memory, language, problem
solving, emotions etc.

Contributors like Hermann

Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), Sir
Frederick
Bartlett
(1886-1969),
Donald
Broadbent (1926-1993) etc.

the cognitive approach provides a distinct alternative to

behaviourism

as thinking is recognised as important.

ignoring the mind will never be sufficient because

people will interpret the stimuli that they experience.

Uses modern methods like neuroimaging (fMRI, PET),

eye tracking etc.

Sociocultural Psychology

studies how the social situations and the cultures in which

the people find themselves in influence thinking &
behaviour.

e.g. we are attracted to people who are similar to us in

attitudes & interests (Byrne, 1969).

e.g. we develop our beliefs & attitudes by comparing

our opinions to those of others (Festinger, 1954).

e.g. we frequently adjust our beliefs & behaviours to be

similar to those of the people we care about - conformity.

an interesting idea is that of norms

ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are shared

by group members and perceived by them as
appropriate (Asch, 1952).

cultures represent common set of social norms,

including common religious & family values
shared by people who live in a particular
geographical area.

e.g. Western norms are different to ours. ~

individualism vs collectivism.