Exploring Psychology: Understanding Behavior and Minds

1. Unit One: Chapter One Introduction to Psychology

2. Warm Up • Give me three examples of why someone would choose to study psychology.

3. Why Study Psychology? • Behavior and Mental Processes • Behavior is an observable action • You writing these notes • If another person can’t see it, it’s not behavior • If you can see it by performing a test it is also considered behavior • Heart rate and blood pressure can be seen with machines • Mental processes • Cognitive activities • Dreams, perceptions, thoughts, and memories • Other people cannot see your dreams or thoughts • Psychological Constructs • Way of identifying things that we cannot measure • Ie feelings

4. Why Study Psychology? • The Goals of Psychology • Better understand mental processes and behaviors • Predicting or changing unwanted behavior • Behavior of a person only changes, if they want to change it

5. Why Study Psychology? • Psychology as a Science • Linked with the natural sciences in studying the functions of the brain. • Research • Surveys and experiments • Human or animal behavior • Some believe that research done with animals can be applied to humans • Do you think that this is ok?

6. Why Study Psychology? • Psychology as a Science • Psychological theories • Theory is someone trying to explain why things are they way they are. • Behavior, mental processes, and biological processes • Allows psychologist to predict the behavior or mental process of another person • Principle is a rule. There is no question that it is the way things work. • Theories can be revised but principles cannot.

7. Vocabulary Chapter One • Behavior • Cognitive activities • Constructs • Theory • Principle • clinical psychologist • counseling psychologist • Basic research • introspection • Associationism • Structuralism • Functionalism • Behaviorism • Gestalt Psychology • Psychoanalysis • Psychodynamic thinking • Psychological perspectives • Ethnic group

8. Warm Up • What does a psychologist do? • How many different types of psychologists do you think there are?

9. What psychologists Do • There are many different types of specialization for psychologists • Clinical Psychologists • Largest group • What people usually think of when they think psychologist • Help people with psychological problems or problems dealing with some aspect of their life • Not a psychiatrist – not a medical doctor

10. What psychologists do • Counseling Psychologists • Treat people with adjustment problems rather than psychological disorders • Difficulty making decisions about future plans • Conflict with family, peers, etc. • School psychologists • Help students that have problems that interfere with learning • Deal with problems with the peer group or family • IQ and achievement tests • Advise teachers on how to help students meet educational goals • Recommendations on placement of students

11. What psychologist do • Educational Psychologists • Helping students learn • Not focused on specific student but the entire district • Developing instructional methods for a district • Help develop standardized tests • Developmental Psychologist • Study changes throughout a person’s lifetime • Physical, emotional, cognitive, social • Nature vs. nurture • Most study adolescence

12. What psychologists do • Personality Psychologists • Identify characteristics and traits • Friendly, nice, outgoing • Study the development of traits • Why are some people more prone to other traits than others? • Social Psychologists • Deal with people’s behavior in social situations • Gender differences, attraction, conformity, group membership • Prejudice, discrimination, and aggression

13. What psychologists do • Experimental Psychologists • Experimental research • Functions of the nervous system • Called biological psychologists • Engage in basic research • Has no immediate application and is done for its own sake • Industrial and Organizational Psychologists • People in the work place • Improve working conditions and increase worker output

14. What psychologists do • Environmental Psychologists • Focus on the way influence or are influenced by their environments • Consumer Psychologist • Study the habits of shoppers • Do you think that advertisements were developed by psychologists? • Forensic Psychologists • Work within the criminal justice system • Health Psychologists • How behavior and mental processes effect your health

15. Advertisement • Create a job advertisement for a psychologist in of the specializations we discussed in class. • Describe the duties of psychologist, but do not write which field they are. • Post the advertisement somewhere in the room.

16. Advertisement • With a partner, walk around the room and try to figure out which psychologist the advertisement is for • Write your guesses in your notebook. • Exit Ticket: Then describe one type of psychologist in your own words.

17. Warm Up • Draw your own Rorschach Ink blot • Tell me why you think this test is no longer used

18. History of Psychology • Ancient Greece • Socrates – we can learn about ourselves by examining our thoughts and feelings • Aristotle – experiences remind us of experiences of the past • People are motivate to seek pleasure and avoid pain • Peri Psyches • Associated psychological problems with supernatural • Gods punishing people

19. History of Psychology • Middle Ages • Believed that psychological problems were due to be possessed by a demon • Punishment for sinning • Water-float test – if you could keep your head above water you were considered in leagues with the devil. If you sunk you were considered pure, but you also drowned. • Modern Science • John Locke – knowledge is formed through experience • Study of behaviors and mental processes more similar to chemistry (natural sciences)

20. History of Psychology • Structuralism • Wilhelm Wundt • Discovering the basic elements of consciousness • Objective sensations - sight and taste are reflections of the outside world • subjective feelings – emotional responses and mental images • Human mind functions by combining objective sensations and subjective feelings

21. History of Psychology • Functionalism • William James • Experience is a “stream of consciousness” • How mental processes help organisms adapt to their environment • Introspection and laboratory experiments • Successful actions will become habits

22. History of Psychology • Behaviorism • John Watson • Consciousness only known by the individual • Focused on only observable behaviors • Reinforcement • B.F. Skinner • If you are rewarded for an action, you are more likely to repeat it

23. History of Psychology • The Gestalt School • Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Kohler • Perceptions are more than the sum of their parts • Cat is still a cat even if it’s missing its tail • Doesn’t believe thought can be broken down into parts

24. History of Psychology • Psychoanalysis • Sigmund Freud • Importance of unconscious motives and internal conflict • Freudian slip – shows unconscious thought when you misspeak

25. Find a partner to show your ink blot design to • Write down what your partner says and using psychoanalysis interpret what they are thinking.

26. Timeline • Create a timeline, using the book, of the events, studies, and psychologists that we went over in class. • It needs to be decorated with at least two pictures and include all of the earlier schools of psychology

27. Interpreting Primary Sources • You will receive a primary source written by one of the men we talked about today. • Read the source and try and determine who wrote it. • In your notebook, write who you thought it was and why you thought it was that person.

28. Warm up • Dou you think that all psychologists agree? • Why would they disagree?

29. Contemporary Perspectives • Biological perspective • Mental processes are made possible by the nervous system • The brain • Influence of hormones and genes • What effect would these things have on personality traits? Or your psychological health? • Evolutionary Perspective • Hereditary basis of behavior

30. Contemporary Perspectives • Cognitive Perspective • Studying mental processes to understand human nature • Information processing – memory cycle • How can processing information differently effect your behavior? • Humanistic Perspective • Self-fulfillment • Consciousness is a force to shape personality

31. Contemporary Perspectives • Psychoanalytic Perspective • Unconscious motives influence behavior • Learning Perspective • More concerned with what someone does than why they do it • Reinforcement and influence from environment are important • Social-learning theory – learn by observing others • Values can influence whether you choose to learn something or not

32. Contemporary Perspectives • Sociocultural Perspective • How Ethnicity, gender, culture, and socioeconomic status effect behavior and mental processes • Cultural expectations of different groups • How does that effect your behavior?

33. Chapter One quiz • If you finish early, go back through your notebook and finish anything that needs to be completed.