Contemporary Psychology

1. Contemporary Psychology

2. The lack of history… • Regarding the homage (or lack thereof) to 19th century psychology and prior: • “No introductory course in psychology and certainly no concentration or ‘major’ in psychological studies is considered complete or even respectable unless the great old names are periodically trotted out, dusted off, congratulated for having seen farther than most, and then gently returned to their crypts as psychology gets on with more pressing matters.” • Even the history classes always begin with the Greeks, may spend a bit with Aquinas and Augustine, move on to the modern era with paid respects to Descartes and Locke, then the ‘real’ study of psychology can begin. • “This approach to the foundations of the discipline virtually guarantees to each generation of psychologists the privilege of rediscovering some of the more compelling ideas in the history of thought. It also confers on psychology that state of perpetual youth which is proclaimed by most of its spokesmen in all of its ages” • ~ Daniel Robinson, The Intellectual History of Psychology

3. Recent times • Functionalism • Behaviorism • Gestalt Psychology • Psychoanalysis • Humanistic Psychology • Cognitive Psychology • Today?

4. Functionalism • Offshoot of the pragmatic thought of Dewey, James and Peirce • Early philosophy and psychology in the U.S.: • Stage one, moral and mental philosophy: • Psychology included topics such as ethics, divinity, and philosophy. • To learn psychology was to learn the accepted theology of the day. • Stage two, intellectual philosophy • Psychology became a separate discipline and became primarily influenced by the Scottish common sense views (Reid and others)

5. Functionalism • Stage three, the U.S. Renaissance • Psychology becomes an empirical science. • The late 1880’s saw the publishing of John Dewey’s textbook, the first issue of the American Journal of Psychology, and in 1890 James’s Principles of Psychology. • Psychology began emphasizing individual differences, adaptation to the environment, and practicality. • Stage four, functionalism • science, emphasis on the individual, and evolutionary theory combined into the school of functionalism.

6. Functionalism • Never a well-defined school with one recognized leader and an agreed-on methodology. • Common themes, however, ran through the work of whose calling themselves functionalists: • Opposed the elementarism of structuralism • Wanted to understand the function of the mind, not a description of its contents. The function was to aid the organism in adapting to its environment. • Wanted to be a practical science, apply findings to the improvement of the human condition • Urged that research include animals, children, and abnormal humans as subjects. • They also urged the use of any methodology that was useful. • Concern for the “why” of mental processes led directly to an interest in motivation. • Accepted both mental processes and behavior as legitimate interests for psychology • More interested in individual differences among organisms than similarities. • Influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution.

7. Key Figures in Functionalism • Harvard • William JamesJames • Hugo Munsterberg • Mary Whiton Calkins • G. Stanley Hall • Francis Sumner • Kenneth Clark • Chicago • John Dewey • James Angell • Harvey Carr • Columbia • James Cattell • Robert S. Woodworth • Edward L. Thorndike

8. Behaviorism • The zeitgeist of the time resulted in the developing of the philosophy and psychology of behaviorism. • Objective psychology was already established in Russia and several functionalists were discussing openly many ideas later emphasized by John Watson. • The strain between those using introspection (structuralism and many functionalists) and those proposing a strict objective science of psychology created the atmosphere which ultimately led to the “behaviorist revolution.”

9. Key Figures in Behaviorism • Russian objective psychology • Ivan Sechenov • Ivan Pavlov • Vladimir Bechterev • American Behaviorism • Watson • Psychology is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. • Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. • Introspection forms no essential part of its method. • The behaviorist, in his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response, recognizes no dividing line between man and brute.

10. Neobehaviorism • Ideas and concepts preceding development of neobehaviorism: • Positivism in various forms had been active for centuries. • Essentially, positivism argues that what constitutes appropriate data are observations that are public domain. • Also, it is important to avoid or at least, minimize theoretical speculation from the data. • Logical positivism (developed by the Vienna Circle) divided science into two parts – the empirical and the theoretical. • In turn, it wedded the two together, by adding theory as a part of empirical science • Abstract theoretical terms were allowed only if such terms could be logically tied to empirical observations.

11. Neobehaviorism • Operationism – the insistence that all abstract scientific terms be operationally defined. • An operational definition is the defining of an abstract, theoretical concept by the procedures used to measure it. • In other words, operational definitions tie theoretical terms to observable phenomena. • Thus, there is no ambiguity about the definition of the theoretical term. • Once operationism was presented most psychologists agreed with the logical positivists that unless a concept can be operationally defined it is scientifically meaningless. • Physicalism – the desire for the unification of and a common vocabulary among the sciences including psychology. • One outcome of logical positivism was that all sciences were viewed as essentially the same – following the same principles, with the same assumptions and all attempting to explain empirical observations. • Why shouldn’t they use the same terminology?

12. Neobehaviorism • Neobehaviorism – The combination of behaviorism and logical positivism • Though there were major differences among the neobehaviorists, they all tended to agree on a few important issues. • If theories are used, they must be used in ways demanded by logical positivism. • All theoretical terms must be operationally defined. • Nonhuman animals should be used as research subjects for two reasons: • Relevant variables are easier to control in animals than when using human subjects. • Perceptual and learning processes in nonhuman animals differ only in degree from those processes in humans – the information gained from research with nonhuman animals can be generalized to humans. • Learning processes are of prime importance because learning is the primary mechanism by which organisms adjust to a changing environment.

13. Key Figures in Neobehaviorism • Edward C. Tolman • Clark L Hull • Edwin R. Guthrie • B. F. Skinner

14. Status of Behaviorism Today • Skinner remains the most influential of all the behaviorists • As evidence of his influence, in a survey (in 1991) of historians of psychology and chairpersons of graduate programs in psychology were asked to rank the most important psychologists of all time and the 10 most important contemporary psychologists. • On the “all time” list historians ranked Wundt first and Skinner eighth, chairpersons ranked Skinner first and Wundt sixth. • On the “contemporary” list, Skinner was ranked first by both groups. • While there are not as many strict behaviorists in psychology today, the behavioristic perspective has not been entirely abandoned • And it would be silly to do so

15. Gestalt Psychology • Antecedents of Gestalt psychology • Several German psychologists took issue with Wundt’s elementism – arguing that consciousness could not be reduced to elements without distorting the true meaning of conscious experience. • Which of course wasn’t really his view at all • People experience things in meaningful, intact configurations (Gestalt) • They advocated an approach which concentrates on phenomenological experience – mental experience as it occurred to the naïve observer, without further analysis (experience as it appears in consciousness).

16. Gestalt Psychology • Philosophers/antecedent views • Immanuel Kant believed that consciousness cannot be reduced to sensory stimulation, and conscious experience is different from the elements that compose it. • Ernst Mach postulated that two perceptions, space form and time form, appeared to be independent of the particular elements that composed them. • Christian von Ehrenfels influenced Wertheimer as an instructor of several of his courses. • Ehrenfels (and Mach) proposed that form is something that emerges from the elements of sensation. • William James postulated a stream of consciousness in contrast to the mind being composed of isolated mental elements. • The stream should be the focus of psychological inquiry, any attempt to break it up for more detailed analysis must be avoided. • Act psychology proposed by Brentano and Stumpf, which focused on the acts of perceiving, sensing, or problem solving had an influence on the Gestaltists. • The act psychologists and the Gestaltists were both phenomenologists. • Also, all three individuals who are seen as the founders of Gestalt psychology studied under Stumpf.

17. Key Figures in Gestalt Psychology • Founding of Gestalt psychology • Max Wertheimer proposed that our perceptions are different than the sensations that comprise them • The phi phenomenon, a perception of apparent movement when the elements of the experience are, in fact, stationary • The paper describing this phenomenon is customarily taken as the formal beginning of Gestalt psychology. • Kurt Koffka • wrote several books and articles regarding Gestalt psychology and was essentially the spokesman for the school. • Wolfgang Kohler • Did research regarding aspects of learning which greatly influenced Gestalt ideas. • These three individuals are considered the cofounders of Gestalt psychology.

18. Basic principles of Gestalt psychology • Field theory • Gestaltists propose that the brain contains structural fields of electrochemical forces. • Upon entering a field, sensory data both modify the structure of the field and are modified by the field. • Our experience results from the interaction of the sensory data and the force fields in the brain. • Psychophysical isomorphism • Comes from the Greek meaning “similar shape.” • The force fields in the brain transform incoming sensory data and that is the transformed data that we experience consciously. • The patterns of brain activity and the patterns of conscious experience are structurally equivalent. • Top down analysis • Organized brain activity dominates our perception, not the stimuli that enter into that activity. • Therefore, the whole is more important than the parts, thus reversing one of psychology’s oldest traditions.

19. Basic principles of Gestalt psychology • Law of Prägnanz – • the psychological organization will always be as good as conditions allow because fields of brain activity will always distribute themselves in the simplest way possible under the prevailing conditions. • The law assets that all cognitive experiences will tend to be as organized, symmetrical, simple, and regular as they can be, given the pattern of brain activity at any given moment. • This is what “as good as conditions allow” means. • Perceptual constancy – • the way we respond to objects as if they are the same, even though the actual stimulation our senses receive may vary greatly. • This phenomenon is not a function of learning but is a function of the ongoing brain activity and the fields’ activity.

20. Basic principles of Gestalt psychology • Principles of perceptual organization • Figure-ground – the perceptual field can be divided into two parts, the figure and the ground. • Continuity – stimuli that have continuity with one another (intrinsic togetherness, seem to go together) will be experienced as a perceptual unit to make a whole. • Proximity – stimuli, which are close together, tend to be grouped together as a perceptual unit. • Inclusiveness – when there is more than one figure, we are most likely to see the figure that contains the greatest number of stimuli. • Similarity – objects that are similar in some way tend to form perceptual units. • Closure – incomplete figures in the physical world are perceived as complete ones.

21. Psychoanalysis • Antecedent ideas • A case can be made that all components of the theory existed prior to the theory • Leibniz’s monadology proposed levels of awareness from clear to unaware • Herbart suggested that there was a threshold above which an idea is conscious and below which an idea is unconscious • Goethe described human existence as consisting of a constant struggle between conflicting emotions and tendencies, which no doubt influenced Freud (Goethe was one of Freud’s favorite authors) • Schopenhauer believed that humans were governed more by irrational desires than by reason • He also anticipated Freud’s concepts of repression and sublimation

22. Antecedents of Psychoanalysis • Nietzsche also saw humans as engaged in a perpetual battle between the irrational and the rational. • Helmholtz’s concept of the conservation of energy within humans influenced Freud to postulate a use of psychic energy to be distributed in various ways. • It may be said that Freud’s theory was a synthesizing of his philosophical heritage and a product of the zeitgeist of his time.

23. Early direct influences on the development of psychoanalysis • Josef Breuer • Freud worked with Breuer with the famous case of Anna O. • Using hypnosis as his therapeutic method Breuer found that discovering the origin of physical symptoms, which were usually a traumatic experience, resulted in the symptom being relieved. • He called this the cathartic method. • The phenomena which were to be called transference and countertransference were also observed during this case. • Jean-Martin Charcot • Freud studied with Charcot for a while during which he learned several lessons which later influenced him in his work. • Development of free association • Freud found hypnosis to be ineffective in several cases and thus attempted to find another method. • He eventually found that simply encouraging the patient to speak freely about whatever comes to mind seemed to work just as well as hypnosis at uncovering memories once you can get past the resistance displayed by the patient.

24. Key Figures in Psychoanalysis • That one dude • Theory of Personality and Consciousness • Id, Ego Superego • Defense mechanisms • Sublimation, reaction formation etc. • Dream interpretation • Psychosexual stage theory of development • Oral, anal etc.

25. Contributions of Psychoanalysis • Psychoanalysis (obviously) – created a new, unique way to deal with mental disorders • Expansion of psychology’s domain • Much of psychology today could be said to be a reaction to the theory or some aspect of it • Understanding of normal behavior • Provided information about normal behavior as well as abnormal behavior • Generalization of psychology to other fields expanded psychology’s relevance to all sectors of human existence

26. Common criticisms of Psychoanalysis • Method of data collection – no control • Definition of terms – not clear, not operationally defined • Dogmatism – no toleration for conflicting ideas • Overemphasis on sex – many of his followers broke with him just for that reason • Self-fulfilling prophesy – he found what he was looking for because he was looking for it. • Length, cost, and limited effectiveness of psychoanalysis – takes too long and too costly for most people. • Lack of falsifiability - a good theory must have this characteristic. • Well… let’s just say it wasn’t scientific in general before getting into grand assumptions of how science progresses.

27. Humanistic (Third-force) Psychology • Antecedents to humanistic psychology • History – by the mid-20th century structuralism, functionalism, and Gestalt psychology had lost their distinctiveness as schools of thought. • Only behaviorism and psychoanalysis remained influential. • In the 1960s the views of humans provided by behaviorism and psychoanalysis were viewed by many as incomplete, distorted, or both. • Many were looking for a new view, one that emphasized the human spirit rather than strictly the mind or body.

28. Humanistic psychology • In the early 1960s, led by Abraham Maslow a group of psychologists started a movement referred to as third-force psychology. • This was a reaction to the shortcomings (as they saw them) of behaviorism and psychoanalysis to deal fully with the human condition. • What was needed was a model of humans that emphasized their uniqueness and their positive aspects. • This third force combines the philosophies of romanticism and existentialism • Humanistic psychology

29. Antecedents to humanistic psychology • Phenomenology - focuses on cognitive experience as it occurs, in intact form not reduced to component parts. • Brentano – focused on psychological acts such as judging, recollecting, expecting, doubting, fearing, hoping, or loving and including the concept of intentionality within the acts. • Husserl – believed that phenomenology could create an objective bridge between the outer, physical world and the inner, subjective world. He developed what he called pure phenomenology with the purpose of discovering the essence of conscious experience – the person inward. • This pure phenomenology soon expanded into modern existentialism. • However, the existentialists were interested in the nature of human existence • Existentialism – concerned with two ontological questions, what is the nature of human nature? What dose it mean to be a particular individual? • Heidegger on

30. Key Figures in Humanistic Psychology • Abraham Maslow • Tenets of humanistic psychology • Little of value can be learned about humans by studying animals. • Subjective reality is the primary guide for human behavior. • Studying individuals is more informative than studying what groups of individuals have in common. • A major effort should be made to discover those things that expand and enrich human experience. • Research should seek information that will help solve human problems. • The goal of psychology should be to formulate a complete description of what it means to be a human being. • Hierarchy of needs • Self-actualization

31. Key Figures in Humanistic Psychology • Carl Rogers • Theory of personality • Postulated an innate human drive toward self-actualization, if people use this actualizing tendency as a frame of reference in living their lives they are said to be living according to the organismic valuing process. • A problem usually arises because in childhood we have a need for positive regard but we receive this only if we act or think in certain ways, this sets up conditions of worth. • This stunts the organismic valuing process. • The only way to avoid imposing conditions of worth on people is to give them unconditional positive regard. • Only people who receive unconditional positive regard can become a fully functioning person. • Rogers’ person-centered psychology has been applied to such diverse areas as religion, medicine, law enforcement, ethnic and cultural relations, politics, and organizational development.

32. Criticisms and contributions of humanistic psychology • Contributions include • Expansion of psychology’s domain • Development of positive psychology – explores positive human attributes. • Criticisms include: • Criticizes behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and scientific psychology in general, but all three have made significant contributions to the betterment of the human condition. • Rejects traditional scientific methodology but offers nothing to replace it of any substance. • By rejecting animal research – turning their backs on a valuable source of knowledge about humans. • Many terms and concepts that humanistic psychologists use defy clear definitions and verification.

33. Psychobiology • The physiological roots of psychology are very old as we’ve discussed • Hippocrates etc. • Biological psychology attempts to explain psychological phenomena in terms of their physiological underpinnings • While obviously has contributed a great deal to our understanding, many are wary of the materialistic viewpoint to which such a perspective often speaks

34. Key Figures in Psychobiology • Karl Lashley – used the ablation method with learning paradigms. • Mass action - loss of ability to perform a particular learned behavior following destruction of parts of the cortex is related more to the amount of destruction than to the location, the cortex appeared to work as a unified whole. • Equipotentiality - any part of a functional area of the brain can perform the function associated with that area. • Lashley spent decades searching for the engram – the neurophysiological locus of memory and learning. • He eventually conceded that it was not possible to locate the engram.

35. Key Figures in Psychobiology • Donald Hebb • Neural interconnections develop with experience. • “When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A's efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased” • Roger Sperry • Split-brains and hemispheric specialization • The disunity of consciousness

36. Psychobiology • Behavioral genetics • The study of genetic influence on cognition and behavior. • Ethology – the study of instinctive animal behavior. • Of major importance to ethologists is species-specific behavior – how members of a species typically behave under specific environmental conditions. • Sociobiology attempts to explain complex social behavior in terms of evolutionary theory. • Noam Chomsky argues that the human brain is genetically programmed to generate language. • Each child is born with brain structures that make it relatively easy to learn the rules of language. • Bouchard • Heritability of intelligence and IQ

37. Cognitive psychology • Historically, psychology has always been (a few exceptions) cognitively oriented. • A brief period – 1930s to 1950s – was a time when behaviorism was highly influential and interests in cognitive topics were relatively low. • From Neisser 1967 • “Cognition refers to all the processes by which the sensory input is transformed, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used… sensation, perception, imagery, retention, recall, problem-solving and thinking, among many others, refer to hypothetical stages or aspects of cognition” • Cognitive Psychology is the domain of psychology involved in the scientific analysis of mental processes in order to better understand behavior

38. Development before 1950 • Throughout psychology’s history human cognitive abilities have been studied philosophically, and later experimentally. • The work of Jean Piaget demonstrated that the child’s interactions with the environment become more complex and adaptive as its cognitive structure becomes more articulated through maturation and experience. • The behavioral theorists Tolman and Hull postulated intervening variables in their theories, • For Hull, these variables were mainly physiological, but for Tolman they were mainly cognitive. • Hebb was a critic of the behavioral views and contributed to the rise of cognitive interests with his book The Organization of Behavior which encouraged an interest both biological explanations and cognitive processes. • Claude Shannon • Information Theory influenced many who were to be associated with the ‘cognitive revolution’

39. Development during the 1950s • George Miller argues that a symposium on information theory sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) marked the beginning of modern cognitive psychology. • Allen Newell and Herbert Simon presented papers on computer logic, Noam Chomsky presented his views on language, and Miller presented his research on short-term memory. • With the advent of computing technology, a ready analogy was available to help understand how humans deal with and interact with their environment • Broadbent, Perception and Communication, (1958)

40. Development after 1960 • Hebb’s APA Presidential address urged the use of the scientific rigor of the behavioral researchers to study cognitive processes. • He noted the work of Festinger, Miller, Galanter, and Pribram as good starts toward this rigorous cognitive psychology. • He was also encouraged by the possibility of using computer models for studying cognitive processes. • Miller and his colleagues continued to move the interest in cognitive psychology along with several contributions. • Miller, Gilanter and Prebram argued that cybernetic concepts (such as information feedback) explain goal-directed human behavior better than S-R concepts do. • Miller and Bruner founded a center for cognitive studies through which Piaget’s ideas were popularized in the U.S. • Neisser publishes Cognitive Psychology 1967

41. Artificial intelligence • Special branch of computer science that investigates the extent to which the mental powers of human beings can be captured by means of machines.” • Information-processing psychology • Approach to studying cognition, which uses the computer as a model for human information processing. It follows the rationalist tradition, and has a strong nativistic component. • Information processing marks a return to faculty psychology and the recent discovery that the brain is organized into many “modules” (groups of cells) each associated with some specific function also contributes to this return to faculty psychology.

42. Connectionism • Neural networks - a model of a complex system of artificial neurons. As in the brain the associations among neurons in the network change as a function of experience. • In the networks synaptic changes (which occur in the brain as associations are made) are simulated by modifiable mathematical weights, or loadings among units in the network. • Strengths of the connections among units that are active together are increased by mathematically increasing their weights. • Within new connectionism, learning is explained in terms of changing patterns of excitation and inhibition (represented by mathematical weights) within the neural network.

43. Contemporary psychology • Diversity of contemporary psychology • Historically there was hostility among the different schools of thought. • Today there is a relatively peaceful co-existence among the various differing views in psychology. • The American Psychological Association was founded in 1892 with a handful of charter members. • Today there are 53 divisions representing diverse areas of interests and specialties. • And still nothing gets done  jk

44. Contemporary psychology • Uneasy relationship between scientific and applied psychology • From psychology’s inception as a science there was tension between those wanting psychology to be a pure science (such as Wundt) and those wanting psychological principles to be applied to practical matters (such as Hall, Cattell, and Munsterberg). • The founding of the APA did not decrease this tension. • The tension resulted in Titchener refusing to participate in any of its activities and he created his own organization, The Experimentalists. • Now known as The Society of Experimental Psychologists

45. Training of clinical psychologists • Lightner Witmer established the tradition that clinical psychology would be closely aligned with scientific psychology • Years later a new professional degree, the doctor of Psychology (PsyD) was instituted for those who were trained as applied clinicians without the research training • One may ask though- how can you apply a science you are not familiar with?

46. The rift • As APA continued to evolve the applied members began to outnumber the research oriented psychologists • In 1960 a group of scientific psychologists left the APA and formed their own organization – Psychonomic Society • Later, another group was organized to form the American Psychological Society (APS) • Now the Association for Psychological Science

47. Postmodernism • As we have noted throughout the course, ‘postmodernism’ is ancient • Postmodernism, also called social constructionism, began its attack on enlightenment ideals of experience and reasonin the mid-1960s • In essence, postmodernism believes that “reality” is created by individuals and groups within various personal, historical and cultural contexts • What postmodernism shares with the Sophists, skeptics, romantics, existentialists, and humanist psychologists, is the belief that “truth” is always relative to cultural, group, and personal perspectives • Fortunately they don’t act that way in their daily lives, otherwise cars, medicine, the internet etc. might pose problems

48. Psychology’s status as a science • There is no clear unifying principle, a group of facts with different interpretations • A question is: can psychology ever be unified? • The answer is based on the individual’s view of whether it even should it be • Most would agree that psychology is still a collection of different facts, theories, assumptions, methodologies, and goals

49. Psychological Science • Whatever psychology’s status as a science, it continues on though it’s unclear at this time what direction it may be heading • While its diversity is a mainstay and to be highlighted as a strength, perhaps a new paradigm is needed to push us forward • In any event, knowing psychology’s past will help us better understand its present, and prepare for its future