Page: Textbook - Chapter 2 Excerpt

Figure 1.5 Functionalist School. The functionalist school of psychology, founded by the American

psychologist William James (left), was influenced by the work of Charles Darwin (right).

of evolutionary psychology, a branch of psychology that applies the Darwinian theory of natural selection to

human and animal behaviour (Dennett, 1995; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). Evolutionary psychology accepts the

functionalists’ basic assumption, namely that many human psychological systems, including memory, emotion,

and personality, serve key adaptive functions. As we will see in the chapters to come, evolutionary psychologists

use evolutionary theory to understand many different behaviours, including romantic attraction, stereotypes and

prejudice, and even the causes of many psychological disorders. A key component of the ideas of evolutionary

psychology is fitness. Fitness refers to the extent to which having a given characteristic helps the individual

organism survive and reproduce at a higher rate than do other members of the species who do not have the

characteristic. Fitter organisms pass on their genes more successfully to later generations, making the characteristics

that produce fitness more likely to become part of the organism’s nature than characteristics that do not produce

fitness. For example, it has been argued that the emotion of jealousy has survived over time in men because men

who experience jealousy are more fit than men who do not. According to this idea, the experience of jealousy

leads men to be more likely to protect their mates and guard against rivals, which increases their reproductive

success (Buss, 2000). Despite its importance in psychological theorizing, evolutionary psychology also has some

limitations. One problem is that many of its predictions are extremely difficult to test. Unlike the fossils that are used

to learn about the physical evolution of species, we cannot know which psychological characteristics our ancestors

possessed or did not possess; we can only make guesses about this. Because it is difficult to directly test evolutionary

theories, it is always possible that the explanations we apply are made up after the fact to account for observed data

(Gould & Lewontin, 1979). Nevertheless, the evolutionary approach is important to psychology because it provides

logical explanations for why we have many psychological characteristics.

Psychodynamic Psychology

Perhaps the school of psychology that is most familiar to the general public is the psychodynamic approach

to understanding behaviour, which was championed by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and his followers.

Psychodynamic psychology is an approach to understanding human behaviour that focuses on the role of

unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories. Freud (Figure 1.6) developed his theories about behaviour through

19 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

extensive analysis of the patients that he treated in his private clinical practice. Freud believed that many of the

problems that his patients experienced, including anxiety, depression, and sexual dysfunction, were the result of the

effects of painful childhood experiences that they could no longer remember.

Figure 1.6 Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud and the other psychodynamic

psychologists believed that many of our thoughts and emotions are

unconscious. Psychotherapy was designed to help patients recover and

confront their “lost” memories.

Freud’s ideas were extended by other psychologists whom he influenced, including Carl Jung (1875-1961), Alfred

Adler (1870-1937), Karen Horney (1855-1952), and Erik Erikson (1902-1994). These and others who follow

the psychodynamic approach believe that it is possible to help the patient if the unconscious drives can be

remembered, particularly through a deep and thorough exploration of the person’s early sexual experiences and

current sexual desires. These explorations are revealed through talk therapy and dream analysis in a process called

psychoanalysis. The founders of the school of psychodynamics were primarily practitioners who worked with

individuals to help them understand and confront their psychological symptoms. Although they did not conduct

much research on their ideas, and although later, more sophisticated tests of their theories have not always supported

their proposals, psychodynamics has nevertheless had substantial impact on the field of psychology, and indeed

on thinking about human behaviour more generally (Moore & Fine, 1995). The importance of the unconscious in

human behaviour, the idea that early childhood experiences are critical, and the concept of therapy as a way of

improving human lives are all ideas that are derived from the psychodynamic approach and that remain central to

psychology.

1.2 THE EVOLUTION OF PSYCHOLOGY: HISTORY, APPROACHES, AND QUESTIONS • 20

Behaviourism and the Question of Free Will

Although they differed in approach, both structuralism and functionalism were essentially studies of the mind. The

psychologists associated with the school of behaviourism, on the other hand, were reacting in part to the difficulties

psychologists encountered when they tried to use introspection to understand behaviour. Behaviourism is a school

of psychology that is based on the premise that it is not possible to objectively study the mind, and therefore that

psychologists should limit their attention to the study of behaviour itself. Behaviourists believe that the human mind

is a black box into which stimuli are sent and from which responses are received. They argue that there is no point in

trying to determine what happens in the box because we can successfully predict behaviour without knowing what

happens inside the mind. Furthermore, behaviourists believe that it is possible to develop laws of learning that can

explain all behaviours. The first behaviourist was the American psychologist John B. Watson (1878-1958). Watson

was influenced in large part by the work of the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), who had discovered

that dogs would salivate at the sound of a tone that had previously been associated with the presentation of food.

Watson and the other behaviourists began to use these ideas to explain how events that people and other organisms

experienced in their environment (stimuli) could produce specific behaviours (responses). For instance, in Pavlov’s

research the stimulus (either the food or, after learning, the tone) would produce the response of salivation in the

dogs. In his research Watson found that systematically exposing a child to fearful stimuli in the presence of objects

that did not themselves elicit fear could lead the child to respond with a fearful behaviour to the presence of the

objects (Watson & Rayner, 1920; Beck, Levinson, & Irons, 2009). In the best known of his studies, an eight-monthold boy named Little Albert was used as the subject. Here is a summary of the findings: 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 Albert’s 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.

In line with the behaviourist approach, the boy had learned to associate the white rat with the loud noise, resulting

in crying.

The most famous behaviourist was Burrhus Frederick (B. F.) Skinner (1904 to 1990), who expanded the principles

of behaviourism and also brought them to the attention of the public at large. Skinner (Figure 1.7) 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 (Skinner, 1957, 1972).

Research Focus: Do We Have Free Will?

The behaviourist research program had important implications for the fundamental questions about nature

and nurture and about free will. In terms of the nature-nurture debate, the behaviourists agreed with the

nurture approach, believing that we are shaped exclusively by our environments. They also argued that there

is no free will, but rather that our behaviours are determined by the events that we have experienced in our

past. In short, this approach argues that organisms, including humans, are a lot like puppets in a show who

don’t realize that other people are controlling them. Furthermore, although we do not cause our own actions,

we nevertheless believe that we do because we don’t realize all the influences acting on our behaviour.

Recent research in psychology has suggested that Skinner and the behaviourists might well have been right,

at least in the sense that we overestimate our own free will in responding to the events around us (Libet,

1985; Matsuhashi & Hallett, 2008; Wegner, 2002). In one demonstration of the misperception of our own

21 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

Figure 1.7 Skinner. B. F. Skinner was a member of the behaviourist school

of psychology. He argued that free will is an illusion and that all behaviour

is determined by environmental factors.

free will, neuroscientists Soon, Brass, Heinze, and Haynes (2008) placed their research participants in a

functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scanner while they presented them with a series of

letters on a computer screen. The letter on the screen changed every half second. The participants were asked,

whenever they decided to, to press either of two buttons. Then they were asked to indicate which letter was

showing on the screen when they decided to press the button. The researchers analyzed the brain images to

see if they could predict which of the two buttons the participant was going to press, even before the letter at

which he or she had indicated the decision to press a button. Suggesting that the intention to act occurred in

the brain before the research participants became aware of it, the researchers found that the prefrontal cortex

region of the brain showed activation that could be used to predict the button pressed as long as 10 seconds

before the participants said that they had decided which button to press.

Research has found that we are more likely to think that we control our behaviour when the desire to act

occurs immediately prior to the outcome, when the thought is consistent with the outcome, and when there

are no other apparent causes for the behaviour. Aarts, Custers, and Wegner (2005) asked their research

participants to control a rapidly moving square along with a computer that was also controlling the square

independently. The participants pressed a button to stop the movement. When participants were exposed

to words related to the location of the square just before they stopped its movement, they became more

likely to think that they controlled the motion, even when it was actually the computer that stopped it. And

Dijksterhuis, Preston, Wegner, and Aarts (2008) found that participants who had just been exposed to firstperson singular pronouns, such as “I” and “me,” were more likely to believe that they controlled their actions

than were people who had seen the words “computer” or “God.” The idea that we are more likely to take

ownership for our actions in some cases than in others is also seen in our attributions for success and failure.

1.2 THE EVOLUTION OF PSYCHOLOGY: HISTORY, APPROACHES, AND QUESTIONS • 22

Because we normally expect that our behaviours will be met with success, when we are successful we easily

believe that the success is the result of our own free will. When an action is met with failure, on the other

hand, we are less likely to perceive this outcome as the result of our free will, and we are more likely to

blame the outcome on luck or our teacher (Wegner, 2003).

The behaviourists made substantial contributions to psychology by identifying the principles of learning. Although

the behaviourists were incorrect in their beliefs that it was not possible to measure thoughts and feelings, their ideas

provided new ideas that helped further our understanding regarding the nature-nurture debate and the question of

free will. The ideas of behaviourism are fundamental to psychology and have been developed to help us better

understand the role of prior experiences in a variety of areas of psychology.

The Cognitive Approach and Cognitive Neuroscience

Science is always influenced by the technology that surrounds it, and psychology is no exception. Thus it is no

surprise that beginning in the 1960s, growing numbers of psychologists began to think about the brain and about

human behaviour in terms of the computer, which was being developed and becoming publicly available at that

time. The analogy between the brain and the computer, although by no means perfect, provided part of the impetus

for a new school of psychology called cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology is a field of psychology that

studies mental processes, including perception, thinking, memory, and judgment. These actions correspond well

to the processes that computers perform. Although cognitive psychology began in earnest in the 1960s, earlier

psychologists had also taken a cognitive orientation. Some of the important contributors to cognitive psychology

include the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), who studied the ability of people to remember

lists of words under different conditions, and the English psychologist Sir Frederic Bartlett (1886-1969), who

studied the cognitive and social processes of remembering. Bartlett created short stories that were in some ways

logical but also contained some very unusual and unexpected events. Bartlett discovered that people found it very

difficult to recall the stories exactly, even after being allowed to study them repeatedly, and he hypothesized that the

stories were difficult to remember because they did not fit the participants’ expectations about how stories should

go. The idea that our memory is influenced by what we already know was also a major idea behind the cognitivedevelopmental stage model of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980). Other important cognitive psychologists

include Donald E. Broadbent (1926-1993), Daniel Kahneman (1934-), George Miller (1920-2012), Eleanor Rosch

(1938-), and Amos Tversky (1937-1996).

The War of the Ghosts

The War of the Ghosts is a story that was used by Sir Frederic Bartlett to test the influence of prior

expectations on memory. Bartlett found that even when his British research participants were allowed to read

the story many times, they still could not remember it well, and he believed this was because it did not fit

with their prior knowledge. One night two young men from Egulac went down to the river to hunt seals, and

while they were there it became foggy and calm. Then they heard war-cries, and they thought: “Maybe this

is a war-party.” They escaped to the shore, and hid behind a log. Now canoes came up, and they heard the

noise of paddles and saw one canoe coming up to them. There were five men in the canoe, and they said:

“What do you think? We wish to take you along. We are going up the river to make war on the people.” One

of the young men said, “I have no arrows.” “Arrows are in the canoe,” they said. “I will not go along. I might

be killed. My relatives do not know where I have gone. But you,” he said, turning to the other, “may go with

23 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

them.” So one of the young men went, but the other returned home. And the warriors went on up the river to

a town on the other side of Kalama. The people came down to the water and they began to fight, and many

were killed. But presently the young man heard one of the warriors say, “Quick, let us go home: that Indian

has been hit.” Now he thought: “Oh, they are ghosts.” He did not feel sick, but they said he had been shot.

So the canoes went back to Egulac and the young man went ashore to his house and made a fire. And he

told everybody and said: “Behold I accompanied the ghosts, and we went to fight. Many of our fellows were

killed, and many of those who attacked us were killed. They said I was hit, and I did not feel sick.” He told it

all, and then he became quiet. When the sun rose he fell down. Something black came out of his mouth. His

face became contorted. The people jumped up and cried. He was dead. (Bartlett, 1932)

In its argument that our thinking has a powerful influence on behaviour, the cognitive approach provided a distinct

alternative to behaviourism. According to cognitive psychologists, ignoring the mind itself will never be sufficient

because people interpret the stimuli that they experience. For instance, when a boy turns to a girl on a date and says,

“You are so beautiful,” a behaviourist would probably see that as a reinforcing (positive) stimulus. And yet the girl

might not be so easily fooled. She might try to understand why the boy is making this particular statement at this

particular time and wonder if he might be attempting to influence her through the comment. Cognitive psychologists

maintain that when we take into consideration how stimuli are evaluated and interpreted, we understand behaviour

more deeply. Cognitive psychology remains enormously influential today, and it has guided research in such varied

fields as language, problem solving, memory, intelligence, education, human development, social psychology, and

psychotherapy. The cognitive revolution has been given even more life over the past decade as the result of recent

advances in our ability to see the brain in action using neuroimaging techniques. Neuroimaging is the use of various

techniques to provide pictures of the structure and function of the living brain (Ilardi & Feldman, 2001). These

images are used to diagnose brain disease and injury, but they also allow researchers to view information processing

as it occurs in the brain, because the processing causes the involved area of the brain to increase metabolism and

show up on the scan. We have already discussed the use of one neuroimaging technique, functional magnetic

resonance imaging (fMRI), in the research focus earlier in this section, and we will discuss the use of neuroimaging

techniques in many areas of psychology in the chapters to follow.

Social-Cultural Psychology

A final school, which takes a higher level of analysis and which has had substantial impact on psychology, can be

broadly referred to as the social-cultural approach. The field of social-cultural psychology is the study of how the

social situations and the cultures in which people find themselves influence thinking and behaviour. Social-cultural

psychologists are particularly concerned with how people perceive themselves and others, and how people influence

each other’s behaviour. For instance, social psychologists have found that we are attracted to others who are similar

to us in terms of attitudes and interests (Byrne, 1969), that we develop our own beliefs and attitudes by comparing

our opinions to those of others (Festinger, 1954), and that we frequently change our beliefs and behaviours to be

similar to those of the people we care about—a process known as conformity. An important aspect of socialcultural psychology are social norms—the ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are shared by group members

and perceived by them as appropriate (Asch, 1952; Cialdini, 1993). Norms include customs, traditions, standards,

and rules, as well as the general values of the group. Many of the most important social norms are determined by

the culture in which we live, and these cultures are studied by cross-cultural psychologists. A culture represents

the common set of social norms, including religious and family values and other moral beliefs, shared by the people

who live in a geographical region (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, & Nisbett, 1998; Markus, Kitayama, & Heiman, 1996;

Matsumoto, 2001). Cultures influence every aspect of our lives, and it is not inappropriate to say that our culture

defines our lives just as much as does our evolutionary experience (Mesoudi, 2009). Psychologists have found that

there is a fundamental difference in social norms between Western cultures (including those in Canada, the United

1.2 THE EVOLUTION OF PSYCHOLOGY: HISTORY, APPROACHES, AND QUESTIONS • 24

States, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand) and East Asian cultures (including those in China, Japan,

Taiwan, Korea, India, and Southeast Asia). Norms in Western cultures are primarily oriented toward individualism,

which is about valuing the self and one’s independence from others. Children in Western cultures are taught to

develop and to value a sense of their personal self, and to see themselves in large part as separate from the other

people around them. Children in Western cultures feel special about themselves; they enjoy getting gold stars on

their projects and the best grade in the class. Adults in Western cultures are oriented toward promoting their own

individual success, frequently in comparison to (or even at the expense of) others. Norms in the East Asian culture,

on the other hand, are oriented toward interdependence or collectivism. In these cultures children are taught to focus

on developing harmonious social relationships with others. The predominant norms relate to group togetherness and

connectedness, and duty and responsibility to one’s family and other groups. When asked to describe themselves,

the members of East Asian cultures are more likely than those from Western cultures to indicate that they are

particularly concerned about the interests of others, including their close friends and their colleagues (Figure 1.8,

“East vs West”).

Figure 1.8 East vs West. In Western cultures social norms promote a focus on the self

(individualism), whereas in Eastern cultures the focus is more on families and social groups

(collectivism).

Another important cultural difference is the extent to which people in different cultures are bound by social norms

and customs, rather than being free to express their own individuality without considering social norms (Chan,

Gelfand, Triandis, & Tzeng, 1996). Cultures also differ in terms of personal space, such as how closely individuals

stand to each other when talking, as well as the communication styles they employ. It is important to be aware of

cultures and cultural differences because people with different cultural backgrounds increasingly come into contact

with each other as a result of increased travel and immigration and the development of the Internet and other

forms of communication. In Canada, for instance, there are many different ethnic groups, and the proportion of

the population that comes from minority (non-White) groups is increasing from year to year. The social-cultural

approach to understanding behaviour reminds us again of the difficulty of making broad generalizations about

human nature. Different people experience things differently, and they experience them differently in different

cultures.

The Many Disciplines of Psychology

Psychology is not one discipline but rather a collection of many subdisciplines that all share at least some

common approaches and that work together and exchange knowledge to form a coherent discipline (Yang & Chiu,

2009). Because the field of psychology is so broad, students may wonder which areas are most suitable for their

interests and which types of careers might be available to them. Table 1.5, “Some Career Paths in Psychology,” will

help you consider the answers to these questions. You can learn more about these different fields of psychology and

the careers associated with them at http://www.psyccareers.com/.

25 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

Table 1.5 Some Career Paths in Psychology.

[Skip Table]

Psychology

field Description Career opportunities

Biopsychology

and

neuroscience

This field examines the physiological

bases of behaviour in animals and

humans by studying the functioning

of different brain areas and the

effects of hormones and

neurotransmitters on behaviour.

Most biopsychologists work in research settings—for instance, at

universities, for the federal government, and in private research

labs.

Clinical and

counselling

psychology

These are the largest fields of

psychology. The focus is on the

assessment, diagnosis, causes, and

treatment of mental disorders.

Clinical and counseling psychologists provide therapy to patients

with the goal of improving their life experiences. They work in

hospitals, schools, social agencies, and private practice. Because the

demand for this career is high, entry to academic programs is highly

competitive.

Cognitive

psychology

This field uses sophisticated research

methods, including reaction time and

brain imaging, to study memory,

language, and thinking of humans.

Cognitive psychologists work primarily in research settings,

although some (such as those who specialize in human-computer

interactions) consult for businesses.

Developmental

psychology

These psychologists conduct research

on the cognitive, emotional, and

social changes that occur across the

lifespan.

Many work in research settings, although others work in schools

and community agencies to help improve and evaluate the

effectiveness of intervention programs such as Head Start.

Forensic

psychology

Forensic psychologists apply

psychological principles to

understand the behaviour of judges,

lawyers, courtroom juries, and others

in the criminal justice system.

Forensic psychologists work in the criminal justice system. They

may testify in court and may provide information about the

reliability of eyewitness testimony and jury selection.

Health

psychology

Health psychologists are concerned

with understanding how biology,

behaviour, and the social situation

influence health and illness.

Health psychologists work with medical professionals in clinical

settings to promote better health, conduct research, and teach at

universities.

Industrialorganizational

and

environmental

psychology

Industrial-organizational psychology

applies psychology to the workplace

with the goal of improving the

performance and well-being of

employees.

There are a wide variety of career opportunities in these fields,

generally working in businesses. These psychologists help select

employees, evaluate employee performance, and examine the

effects of different working conditions on behaviour. They may also

work to design equipment and environments that improve employee

performance and reduce accidents.

Personality

psychology

These psychologists study people and

the differences among them. The

goal is to develop theories that

explain the psychological processes

of individuals, and to focus on

individual differences.

Most work in academic settings, but the skills of personality

psychologists are also in demand in business—for instance, in

advertising and marketing. PhD programs in personality psychology

are often connected with programs in social psychology.

School and

educational

psychology

This field studies how people learn in

school, the effectiveness of school

programs, and the psychology of

teaching.

School psychologists work in elementary and secondary schools or

school district offices with students, teachers, parents, and

administrators. They may assess children’s psychological and

learning problems and develop programs to minimize the impact of

these problems.

1.2 THE EVOLUTION OF PSYCHOLOGY: HISTORY, APPROACHES, AND QUESTIONS • 26

[Skip Table]

Psychology

field Description Career opportunities

Social and

cross-cultural

psychology

This field examines people’s

interactions with other people.

Topics of study include conformity,

group behaviour, leadership,

attitudes, and personal perception.

Many social psychologists work in marketing, advertising,

organizational, systems design, and other applied psychology fields.

Sports

psychology

This field studies the psychological

aspects of sports behaviour. The goal

is to understand the psychological

factors that influence performance in

sports, including the role of exercise

and team interactions.

Sports psychologists work in gyms, schools, professional sports

teams, and other areas where sports are practiced.

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 learn—learning to study

effectively and to remember information is just like learning any other skill, such as playing a sport or a video game.

To learn well, you need to be ready to learn. You cannot learn well when you are tired, when you are under stress,

or if you are abusing alcohol or drugs. Try to keep a consistent routine of sleeping and eating. Eat moderately and

nutritiously, and avoid drugs that can impair memory, particularly alcohol. There is no evidence that stimulants such

as caffeine, amphetamines, or any of the many “memory-enhancing drugs” on the market will help you learn (Gold,

Cahill, & Wenk, 2002; McDaniel, Maier, & Einstein, 2002). Memory supplements are usually no more effective

than drinking a can of sugared soda, which releases glucose and thus improves memory slightly.

Psychologists have studied the ways that best allow people to acquire new information, to retain it over time,

and to retrieve information that has been stored in our memories. One important finding is that learning is an

active process. To acquire information most effectively, we must actively manipulate it. One active approach is

rehearsal—repeating the information that is to be learned over and over again. Although simple repetition does help

us learn, psychological research has found that we acquire information most effectively when we actively think

about or elaborate on its meaning and relate the material to something else. When you study, try to elaborate by

connecting the information to other things that you already know. If you want to remember the different schools

of psychology, for instance, try to think about how each of the approaches is different from the others. As you

compare the approaches, determine what is most important about each one and then relate it to the features of the

other approaches.

In an important study showing the effectiveness of elaborative encoding, Rogers, Kuiper, and Kirker (1977) found

that students learned information best when they related it to aspects of themselves (a phenomenon known as the

self-reference effect). This research suggests that imagining how the material relates to your own interests and goals

will help you learn it. An approach known as the method of loci involves linking each of the pieces of information

27 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

that you need to remember to places that you are familiar with. You might think about the house that you grew up

in and the rooms in it. You could put the behaviourists in the bedroom, the structuralists in the living room, and the

functionalists in the kitchen. Then when you need to remember the information, you retrieve the mental image of

your house and should be able to “see” each of the people in each of the areas.

One of the most fundamental principles of learning is known as the spacing effect. Both humans and animals more

easily remember or learn material when they study the material in several shorter study periods over a longer period

of time, rather than studying it just once for a long period of time. Cramming for an exam is a particularly ineffective

way to learn. Psychologists have also found that performance is improved when people set difficult yet realistic

goals for themselves (Locke & Latham, 2006). You can use this knowledge to help you learn. Set realistic goals for

the time you are going to spend studying and what you are going to learn, and try to stick to those goals. Do a small

amount every day, and by the end of the week you will have accomplished a lot.

Our ability to adequately assess our own knowledge is known as metacognition. Research suggests that our

metacognition may make us overconfident, leading us to believe that we have learned material even when we have

not. To counteract this problem, don’t just go over your notes again and again. Instead, make a list of questions and

then see if you can answer them. Study the information again and then test yourself again after a few minutes. If

you made any mistakes, study again. Then wait for a half hour and test yourself again. Then test again after one day

and after two days. Testing yourself by attempting to retrieve information in an active manner is better than simply

studying the material because it will help you determine if you really know it. In summary, everyone can learn to

learn better. Learning is an important skill, and following the previously mentioned guidelines will likely help you

learn better.

Key Takeaways

• The first psychologists were philosophers, but the field became more empirical and objective as

more sophisticated scientific approaches were developed and employed.

• Some basic questions asked by psychologists include those about nature versus nurture, free will

versus determinism, accuracy versus inaccuracy, and conscious versus unconscious processing.

• The structuralists attempted to analyze the nature of consciousness using introspection.

• The functionalists based their ideas on the work of Darwin, and their approaches led to the field of

evolutionary psychology.

• The behaviourists explained behaviour in terms of stimulus, response, and reinforcement, while

denying the presence of free will.

• Cognitive psychologists study how people perceive, process, and remember information.

• Psychodynamic psychology focuses on unconscious drives and the potential to improve lives

through psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.

• The social-cultural approach focuses on the social situation, including how cultures and social

norms influence our behaviour.

1.2 THE EVOLUTION OF PSYCHOLOGY: HISTORY, APPROACHES, AND QUESTIONS • 28

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. What type of questions can psychologists answer that philosophers might not be able to answer

as completely or as accurately? Explain why you think psychologists can answer these questions

better than philosophers can.

2. Choose one of the major questions of psychology and provide some evidence from your own

experience that supports one side or the other.

3. Choose two of the fields of psychology discussed in this section and explain how they differ in

their approaches to understanding behaviour and the level of explanation at which they are

focused.

References

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Asch, S. E. (1952). Social Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Beck, H. P., Levinson, S., & Irons, G. (2009). Finding Little Albert: A journey to John B. Watson’s infant

laboratory. American Psychologist, 64(7), 605–614.

Benjamin, L. T., Jr., & Baker, D. B. (2004). From seance to science: A history of the profession of psychology in

America. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson.

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Press.

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Dennett, D. (1995). Darwin’s dangerous idea: Evolution and the meanings of life. New York, NY: Simon and

Schuster.

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self-attribution of authorship for events. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(1), 2–9.

Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117–140.

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Fiske, S. T. (2003). Social beings. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

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Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (4th ed., pp. 915–981). New York, NY: McGrawHill.

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Harris, J. (1998). The nurture assumption: Why children turn out the way they do. New York, NY: Touchstone

Books.

Hunt, M. (1993). The story of psychology. New York, NY: Anchor Books.

Ilardi, S. S., & Feldman, D. (2001). The cognitive neuroscience paradigm: A unifying metatheoretical framework

for the science and practice of clinical psychology. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 57(9), 1067–1088.

James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York, NY: Dover.

Libet, B. (1985). Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behavioral and

Brain Sciences, 8(4), 529–566.

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2006). New directions in goal-setting theory. Current Directions in Psychological

Science, 15(5), 265–268.

Markus, H. R., Kitayama, S., & Heiman, R. J. (1996). Culture and “basic” psychological principles. In E. T.

Higgins & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (pp. 857–913). New York,

NY: Guilford Press.

Matsuhashi, M., & Hallett, M. (2008). The timing of the conscious intention to move. European Journal of

Neuroscience, 28(11), 2344–2351.

Matsumoto, D. (Ed.). (2001). The handbook of culture and psychology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

McDaniel, M.A., Maier, S.F., & Einstein, G.O. (2002). Brain-specific nutrients: A memory cure? Psychological

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1.2 THE EVOLUTION OF PSYCHOLOGY: HISTORY, APPROACHES, AND QUESTIONS • 30

Skinner, B. (1972). Beyond freedom and dignity. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

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7(2), 65–69.

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of APA journal citations (1970–2009). Review of General Psychology, 13(4), 349–356.

Image Attributions

Figure 1.2: https://twitter.com/sureteduquebec/status/353519189769732096/photo/1

Figure 1.3: Plato photo (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Platon2.jpg.) courtesy of Bust of Aristotle by

Giovanni Dall’Orto, (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/

File:Busto_di_Aristotele_conservato_a_Palazzo_Altaemps, _Roma._Foto_di_Giovanni_Dall%27Orto.jpg) used

under CC BY license.

Figure 1.4: Wundt research group by Kenosis, (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wundt-researchgroup.jpg) is in the public domain; Edward B. Titchener (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

File:Edward_B._Titchener.jpg) is in the public domain.

Figure 1.5: William James (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_James,_philosopher.jpg). Charles

Darwin by George Richmond (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_Darwin_by_G._Richmond.jpg) is

in public domain.

Figure 1.6: Sigmund Freud by Max Halberstadt (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/

File:Sigmund_Freud_LIFE.jpg) is in public domain.

Figure 1.7: B.F. Skinner at Harvard circa 1950 (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/

File:B.F._Skinner_at_Harvard_circa _1950.jpg) used under CC BY 3.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/

licenses/by/3.0/deed.en).

Figure 1.8: “West Wittering Wonderful As Always” by Gareth Williams (http://www.flickr.com/photos/

gareth1953/7976359044/) is licensed under CC BY 2.0. “Family playing a board game” by Bill Branson

(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Family_playing_a_board_game_(3).jpg) is in public domain.

31 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

1.3 Chapter Summary

Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behaviour. Most psychologists work in research laboratories,

hospitals, and other field settings where they study the behaviour of humans and animals. Some psychologists are

researchers and others are practitioners, but all psychologists use scientific methods to inform their work.

Although it is easy to think that everyday situations have commonsense answers, scientific studies have found that

people are not always as good at predicting outcomes as they often think they are. The hindsight bias leads us to

think that we could have predicted events that we could not actually have predicted.

Employing the scientific method allows psychologists to objectively and systematically understand human

behaviour.

Psychologists study behaviour at different levels of explanation, ranging from lower biological levels to higher

social and cultural levels. The same behaviours can be studied and explained within psychology at different levels

of explanation.

The first psychologists were philosophers, but the field became more objective as more sophisticated scientific

approaches were developed and employed. Some of the most important historical schools of psychology include

structuralism, functionalism, behaviourism, and psychodynamic psychology. Cognitive psychology, evolutionary

psychology, and social-cultural psychology are some important contemporary approaches.

Some of the basic questions asked by psychologists, both historically and currently, include those about the relative

roles of nature versus nurture in behaviour, free will versus determinism, accuracy versus inaccuracy, and conscious

versus unconscious processing.

Psychological phenomena are complex, and making predictions about them is difficult because they are multiply

determined at different levels of explanation. Research has found that people are frequently unaware of the causes

of their own behaviours.

There are a variety of available career choices within psychology that provide employment in many different areas

of interest.

32

Chapter 2. Introduction to Major Perspectives

2. Introduction to Major Perspectives

Jennifer Walinga

Scientific areas of study are often guided by a paradigm (prevailing model). In astronomy, Ptolemy placed Earth

at the centre of the universe and thereby shaped the way people conceived of all things related to that science.

Later, the Copernican paradigm placed the Sun at the centre of the universe, which shifted perspectives and

understandings. A paradigm presents a generally accepted approach to the whole field during a particular era. A

paradigm equips scientists and practitioners with a set of assumptions about what is to be studied as well as a

set of research methods for how those phenomena should be examined. In physics, the Aristotelian view of the

composition of matter prevailed until Newton’s 17th-century mechanical model emerged and overtook it, which in

turn was expanded by Einstein’s 20th-century relativity paradigm (Watson, 1967). With each shift in knowledge

and insight, a form of revolution occurs (Kuhn, 1970).

However, psychology lacks a guiding or prevailing paradigm due to its youth and scope. Instead, the field of

psychology has travelled the course of several movements, schools of thought, or perspectives, which provide

frameworks for organizing data and connecting theories but no overall guidance or stance. In psychology, each new

line of thinking emerges in response to another. New ideas or ways of thinking challenge prior thinking and require

further research in order to resolve, clarify, or expand tensions between concepts. Often, new methodologies1

emerge as well, and new questions demand new tools or approaches in order to be answered.

Major psychological perspectives discussed by researchers and practitioners today include biological,

psychodynamic, behaviouristic, humanistic, cognitive, and evolutionary perspectives (Figure 2.1, “Major

Psychological Perspectives Timeline”). It appears that a new perspective emerges every 20 to 30 years.

Figure 2.1 Major Psychological Perspectives Timeline [Long Description] (by J. Walinga)

This list of perspectives changes, of course, as the field of psychology grows and evolves, and as our

conceptualization of psychology expands and develops. The first structuralist psychologists, such as Wilhelm

Wundt and Edward B. Titchener of the late 1800s, thought of psychology in biological or physiological terms and

focused on the elements of human experience and sensation — the “what” of human experience. But the wave of

functionalist, behavioural, and cognitive psychologists to follow began to include the “how” of human experience.

Influenced by Charles Darwin’s theories, William James and others later began to consider the “why” of human

experience by focusing on interactions between mind and body, including perceptions and emotions, as well as the

influence of environment on human experience (Figure 2.2, “The Elements of Psychology”).

Reflecting on psychological developments today (e.g., positive psychology, multiple intelligences, systems

thinking), we can foresee psychology moving toward an integrative approach that incorporates much of the

prior learning that has come before it. Dr. Evan Thompson, a professor of philosophy at the University of

British Columbia, who works in the fields of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and crosscultural philosophy, especially Asian philosophy and contemporary Buddhist philosophy in dialogue with Western

philosophy and science, speaks and writes about an integrative psychology, which is psychology that combines the

34

Figure 2.2 The Elements of Psychology [Long Description] (by J.

Walinga)

nature and actions of mind, body, and spirit (Varela, Rosch, & Thompson, 1992). Perhaps an integrative perspective

will be the next developmental stage for the field of psychology and will move the field that much closer to its own

established paradigm.

References

Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete

works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 4). London: Hogarth Press.

Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper.

Neisser, U. (1967). Cognitive Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Pavlov, I. P. (1927). Conditional reflexes (G. V. Anrep, Trans.). New York: Oxford University Press.

Rogers, C. R. (1942). Counseling and psychotherapy: Newer concepts in practice. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Varela, Francisco J., Rosch, Eleanor, & Thompson, Evan. (1992). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and

Human Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Watson, R. I. (1967). Psychology: A prescriptive science. American Psychologist, 22, 435–443.

35 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

Long Descriptions

Figure 2.1 Long Description – Major Psychological

Perspectives Timeline.

Physiological Perspective Year Person

1874 Wundt

Biological – Physiological Psychology

1898 Titchener

Phsychodynamic – Interpretation of Dreams 1990 Freud

1927 Pavlov

Behaviouristic – Stimulus and Response

1938 Skinner

1942 Rogers

Humanistic – Self Actualization

1954 Maslow

Cognitive – Information Processing 1967 Neisser

Evolutionary – Adaptation 1999 Buss

[Return to Figure 2.1]

Figure 2.2 long description: There are three elements of psychology: Why? How? and What? “Why” deals

with things like evolution, environment, and culture. “How” deals with things like cognition, behaviour, and

subconscious. “What” deals with sensations, emotions, thoughts, perceptions, and actions. [Return to Figure 2.2]

Notes

1. Research study design principles.

2. INTRODUCTION TO MAJOR PERSPECTIVES • 36

Jennifer Walinga

Learning Objectives

1. Understand the core premises of biological psychology and the early thinkers.

2. Critically evaluate empirical support for various biological psychology theories.

3. Explore applications and implications of key concepts from this perspective.

Biological psychologists are interested in measuring biological, physiological, or genetic variables in an attempt

to relate them to psychological or behavioural variables. Because all behaviour is controlled by the central nervous

system, biological psychologists seek to understand how the brain functions in order to understand behaviour. Key

areas of focus include sensation and perception; motivated behaviour (such as hunger, thirst, and sex); control of

movement; learning and memory; sleep and biological rhythms; and emotion. As technical sophistication leads

to advancements in research methods, more advanced topics such as language, reasoning, decision making, and

consciousness are now being studied.

Biological psychology has its roots in early structuralist and functionalist psychological studies, and as with

all of the major perspectives, it has relevance today. In section 1.2, we discuss the history and development

of functionalism and structuralism. In this chapter, we extend this discussion to include the theoretical and

methodological aspects of these two approaches within the biological perspective and provide examples of relevant

studies.

The early structural and functional psychologists believed that the study of conscious thoughts would be the key

to understanding the mind. Their approaches to the study of the mind were based on systematic and rigorous

observation, laying the foundation for modern psychological experimentation. In terms of research focus, Wundt

and Titchener explored topics such as attention span, reaction time, vision, emotion, and time perception, all of

which are still studied today.

Wundt’s primary method of research was introspection, which involves training people to concentrate and

report on their conscious experiences as they react to stimuli. This approach is still used today in modern

neuroscience research; however, many scientists criticize the use of introspection for its lack of empirical approach

and objectivity. Structuralism was also criticized because its subject of interest – the conscious experience – was

not easily studied with controlled experimentation. Structuralism’s reliance on introspection, despite Titchener’s

rigid guidelines, was criticized for its lack of reliability. Critics argued that self-analysis is not feasible, and that

introspection can yield different results depending on the subject. Critics were also concerned about the possibility

of retrospection, or the memory of sensation rather than the sensation itself.

Today, researchers argue for introspective methods as crucial for understanding certain experiences and

contexts.Two Minnesota researchers (Jones & Schmid, 2000) used autoethnography, a narrative approach to

introspective analysis (Ellis, 1999), to study the phenomenological experience of the prison world and the

consequent adaptations and transformations that it evokes. Jones, serving a year-and-a-day sentence in a maximum

37

security prison, relied on his personal documentation of his experience to later study the psychological impacts of

his experience.

From Structuralism to Functionalism

As structuralism struggled to survive the scrutiny of the scientific method, new approaches to studying the mind

were sought. One important alternative was functionalism, founded by William James in the late 19th century,

described and discussed in his two-volume publication The Principles of Psychology (1890) (see Chapter 1.2 for

details). Built on structuralism’s concern for the anatomy of the mind, functionalism led to greater concern about

the functions of the mind, and later on to behaviourism.

One of James’s students, James Angell, captured the functionalist perspective in relation to a discussion of free will

in his 1906 text Psychology: An Introductory Study of the Structure and Function of Human Consciousness:

Inasmuch as consciousness is a systematising, unifying activity, we find that with

increasing maturity our impulses are commonly coordinated with one another more

and more perfectly. We thus come to acquire definite and reliable habits of action.

Our wills become formed. Such fixation of modes of willing constitutes character. The

really good man is not obliged to hesitate about stealing. His moral habits all impel him

immediately and irrepressibly away from such actions. If he does hesitate, it is in order

to be sure that the suggested act is stealing, not because his character is unstable. From

one point of view the development of character is never complete, because experience

is constantly presenting new aspects of life to us, and in consequence of this fact we

are always engaged in slight reconstructions of our modes of conduct and our attitude

toward life. But in a practical common-sense way most of our important habits of

reaction become fixed at a fairly early and definite time in life.

Functionalism considers mental life and behaviour in terms of active adaptation to the person’s environment.

As such, it provides the general basis for developing psychological theories not readily testable by controlled

experiments such as applied psychology. William James’s functionalist approach to psychology was less concerned

with the composition of the mind than with examining the ways in which the mind adapts to changing situations

and environments. In functionalism, the brain is believed to have evolved for the purpose of bettering the survival

of its carrier by acting as an information processor.

1 In processing information the brain is considered to execute

functions similar to those executed by a computer and much like what is shown in Figure 2.3 below of a complex

adaptive system.

The functionalists retained an emphasis on conscious experience. John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, Harvey A.

Carr, and especially James Angell were the additional proponents of functionalism at the University of Chicago.

Another group at Columbia University, including James McKeen Cattell, Edward L. Thorndike, and Robert S.

Woodworth, shared a functionalist perspective.

Biological psychology is also considered reductionist. For the reductionist, the simple is the source of the complex.

In other words, to explain a complex phenomenon (like human behaviour) a person needs to reduce it to its elements.

In contrast, for the holist, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Explanations of a behaviour at its simplest

level can be deemed reductionist. The experimental and laboratory approach in various areas of psychology (e.g.,

2.1 BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY • 38

Figure 2.3 Complex Adaptive System. Behaviour is influenced by

information gathered from a changing external environment.

behaviourist, biological, cognitive) reflects a reductionist position. This approach inevitably must reduce a complex

behaviour to a simple set of variables that offer the possibility of identifying a cause and an effect (i.e., the biological

approach suggests that psychological problems can be treated like a disease and are therefore often treatable with

drugs).

The brain and its functions (Figure 2.4) garnered great interest from the biological psychologists and continue to be

a focus for psychologists today. Cognitive psychologists rely on the functionalist insights in discussing how affect,

or emotion, and environment or events interact and result in specific perceptions. Biological psychologists study

the human brain in terms of specialized parts, or systems, and their exquisitely complex relationships. Studies have

shown neurogenesis2 in the hippocampus (Gage, 2003). In this respect, the human brain is not a static mass of

nervous tissue. As well, it has been found that influential environmental factors operate throughout the life span.

Among the most negative factors, traumatic injury and drugs can lead to serious destruction. In contrast, a healthy

diet, regular programs of exercise, and challenging mental activities can offer long-term, positive impacts on the

brain and psychological development (Kolb, Gibb, & Robinson, 2003).

Figure 2.4 Functions of the Brain. Different parts of the brain are

responsible for different things.

The brain comprises four lobes:

39 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

1. Frontal lobe: also known as the motor cortex, this portion of the brain is involved in motor skills,

higher level cognition, and expressive language.

2. Occipital lobe: also known as the visual cortex, this portion of the brain is involved in interpreting

visual stimuli and information.

3. Parietal lobe: also known as the somatosensory cortex, this portion of the brain is involved in the

processing of other tactile sensory information such as pressure, touch, and pain.

4. Temporal lobe: also known as the auditory cortex, this portion of the brain is involved in the

interpretation of the sounds and language we hear.

Another important part of the nervous system is the peripheral nervous system, which is divided into two parts:

1. The somatic nervous system, which controls the actions of skeletal muscles.

2. The autonomic nervous system, which regulates automatic processes such as heart rate, breathing,

and blood pressure. The autonomic nervous system, in turn has two parts:

a. The sympathetic nervous system, which controls the fight-or-flight response, a reflex that

prepares the body to respond to danger in the environment.

b. The parasympathetic nervous system, which works to bring the body back to its normal

state after a fight-or-flight response.

Research Focus: Internal versus External Focus and Performance

Within the realm of sport psychology, Gabrielle Wulf and colleagues from the University of Las Vegas

Nevada have studied the role of internal and external focus on physical performance outcomes such

as balance, accuracy, speed, and endurance. In one experiment they used a ski-simulator and directed

participants’ attention to either the pressure they exerted on the wheels of the platform on which they were

standing (external focus), or to their feet that were exerting the force (internal focus). On a retention test, the

external focus group demonstrated superior learning (i.e., larger movement amplitudes) compared with both

the internal focus group and a control group without focus instructions. The researchers went on to replicate

findings in a subsequent experiment that involved balancing on a stabilometer. Again, directing participants’

attention externally, by keeping markers on the balance platform horizontal, led to more effective balance

learning than inducing an internal focus, by asking them to try to keep their feet horizontal. The researchers

showed that balance performance or learning, as measured by deviations from a balanced position, is

enhanced when the performers’ attention is directed to minimizing movements of the platform or disk as

compared to those of their feet. Since the initial studies, numerous researchers have replicated the benefits

of an external focus for other balance tasks (Wulf, Höß, & Prinz, 1998).

Another balance task, riding a paddle boat, was used by Totsika and Wulf (2003). With instructions to focus

on pushing the pedals forward, participants showed more effective learning compared to participants with

instructions to focus on pushing their feet forward. This subtle difference in instructions is important for

researchers of attentional focus. The first instruction to push the pedal is external, with the participant

focusing on the pedal and allowing the body to figure out how to push the pedal. The second instruction to

push the feet forward is internal, with the participant concentrating on making his or her feet move.

In further biologically oriented psychological research at the University of Toronto, Schmitz, Cheng, and De

2.1 BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY • 40

Rosa (2010) showed that visual attention — the brain’s ability to selectively filter unattended or unwanted

information from reaching awareness — diminishes with age, leaving older adults less capable of filtering out

distracting or irrelevant information. This age-related “leaky” attentional filter fundamentally impacts the way

visual information is encoded into memory. Older adults with impaired visual attention have better memory

for “irrelevant” information. In the study, the research team examined brain images using functional magnetic

resonance imaging (fMRI) on a group of young (mean age = 22 years) and older adults (mean age = 77 years)

while they looked at pictures of overlapping faces and places (houses and buildings). Participants were asked to

pay attention only to the faces and to identify the gender of the person. Even though they could see the place in

the image, it was not relevant to the task at hand (Read about the study’s findings at http://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/

main/newsitems/brains-ability).

The authors noted:

In young adults, the brain region for processing faces was active while the brain region

for processing places was not. However, both the face and place regions were active in

older people. This means that even at early stages of perception, older adults were less

capable of filtering out the distracting information. Moreover, on a surprise memory

test 10 minutes after the scan, older adults were more likely to recognize what face was

originally paired with what house.

The findings suggest that under attentionally demanding conditions, such as a person looking for keys on a cluttered

table, age-related problems with “tuning in” to the desired object may be linked to the way in which information is

selected and processed in the sensory areas of the brain. Both the relevant sensory information — the keys — and

the irrelevant information — the clutter — are perceived and encoded more or less equally. In older adults, these

changes in visual attention may broadly influence many of the cognitive deficits typically observed in normal aging,

particularly memory.

Key Takeaways

• Biological psychology – also known as biopsychology or psychobiology – is the application of

the principles of biology to the study of mental processes and behaviour.

• Biological psychology as a scientific discipline emerged from a variety of scientific and

philosophical traditions in the 18th and 19th centuries.

• In The Principles of Psychology (1890), William James argued that the scientific study of

psychology should be grounded in an understanding of biology.

• The fields of behavioural neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and neuropsychology are all

subfields of biological psychology.

• Biological psychologists are interested in measuring biological, physiological, or genetic variables

in an attempt to relate them to psychological or behavioural variables.

41 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Try this exercise with your group: Take a short walk together without talking to or looking at

one another. When you return to the classroom, have each group member write down what they

saw, felt, heard, tasted, and smelled. Compare and discuss reflecting on some of the assumptions

and beliefs of the structuralists. Consider what might be the reasons for the differences and

similarities.

2. Where can you see evidence of insights from biological psychology in some of the applications

of psychology that you commonly experience today (e.g., sport, leadership, marketing,

education)?

3. Study the functions of the brain and reflect on whether you tend toward left- or right-brain

tendencies.

Image Attributions

Figure 2.3: Complex Adaptive System by Acadac (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Complex-adaptivesystem.jpg) is in the public domain.

Figure 2.4: Left and Right Brain by Webber (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Left_and_Right_Brain.jpg)

is in the public domain.

References

Angell, James Rowland. (1906).”Character and the Will”, Chapter 22 in Psychology: An Introductory Study of the

Structure and Function of Human Consciousness, Third edition, revised. New York: Henry Holt and Company, p.

376-381.

Ellis, Carolyn. (1999). Heartful Autoethnography. Qualitative Health Research, 9(53), 669-683.

Gage, F. H. (2003, September). Brain, repair yourself. Scientific American, 46–53.

James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Co.

Jones, R.S. & Schmid, T. J. (2000). Doing Time: Prison experience and identity. Stamford, CT: JAI Press.

Kolb, B., Gibb, K., & Robinson, T. E. (2003). Brain plasticity and behavior. Current Directions in Psychological

Science, 12, 1–5.

Schmitz, T.W., Cheng, F.H. & De Rosa, E. (2010). Failing to ignore: paradoxical neural effects of perceptual load

on early attentional selection in normal aging. Journal of Neuroscience, 30(44), 14750 –14758.

Totsika, V., & Wulf, G. (2003). The influence of external and internal foci of attention on transfer to novel situations

and skills. Research Quarterly Exercise and Sport, 74, 220–225.

2.1 BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY • 42

Wulf, G., Höß, M., & Prinz, W. (1998). Instructions for motor learning: Differential effects of internal versus

external focus of attention. Journal of Motor Behavior, 30, 169–179.

Notes

1. A system for taking information in one form and transforming it into another.

2. The generation or growth of new brain cells, specifically when neurons are created from neural stem cells.

43 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

2.2 Psychodynamic Psychology

Jennifer Walinga

Learning Objectives

1. Understand some of the psychological forces underlying human behaviour.

2. Identify levels of consciousness.

3. Critically discuss various models and theories of psychodynamic and behavioural psychology.

4. Understand the concept of psychological types and identify applications and examples in daily

life.

Sigmund Freud

The psychodynamic perspective in psychology proposes that there are psychological forces underlying human

behaviour, feelings, and emotions. Psychodynamics originated with Sigmund Freud (Figure 2.5) in the late 19th

century, who suggested that psychological processes are flows of psychological energy (libido) in a complex brain.

In response to the more reductionist approach of biological, structural, and functional psychology movements, the

psychodynamic perspective marks a pendulum swing back toward more holistic, systemic, and abstract concepts

and their influence on the more concrete behaviours and actions. Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis assumes that

much of mental life is unconscious, and that past experiences, especially in early childhood, shape how a person

feels and behaves throughout life.

Consciousness is the awareness of the self in space and time. It can be defined as human awareness of both

internal and external stimuli. Researchers study states of human consciousness and differences in perception in

order to understand how the body works to produce conscious awareness. Consciousness varies in both arousal and

content, and there are two types of conscious experience: phenomenal, or in the moment, and access, which recalls

experiences from memory.

First appearing in the historical records of the ancient Mayan and Incan civilizations, various theories of multiple

levels of consciousness have pervaded spiritual, psychological, medical, and moral speculations in both Eastern

and Western cultures. The ancient Mayans were among the first to propose an organized sense of each level of

consciousness, its purpose, and its temporal connection to humankind. Because consciousness incorporates stimuli

from the environment as well as internal stimuli, the Mayans believed it to be the most basic form of existence,

capable of evolution. The Incas, however, considered consciousness to be a progression, not only of awareness but

of concern for others as well.

Sigmund Freud divided human consciousness into three levels of awareness: the conscious, preconscious, and

unconscious. Each of these levels corresponds to and overlaps with Freud’s ideas of the id, ego, and superego. The

44

Figure 2.5 Group Photo. Front row (left to right): Sigmund Freud, G.

Stanley Hall, Carl Jung; Back row (left to right): Abraham A. Brill,

Ernest Jones, Sándor Ferenczi.

conscious level consists of all those things we are aware of, including things that we know about ourselves and

our surroundings. The preconscious consists of those things we could pay conscious attention to if we so desired,

and where many memories are stored for easy retrieval. Freud saw the preconscious as those thoughts that are

unconscious at the particular moment in question, but that are not repressed and are therefore available for recall

and easily capable of becoming conscious (e.g., the “tip of the tongue” effect). The unconscious consists of those

things that are outside of conscious awareness, including many memories, thoughts, and urges of which we are

not aware. Much of what is stored in the unconscious is thought to be unpleasant or conflicting; for example,

sexual impulses that are deemed “unacceptable.” While these elements are stored out of our awareness, they are

nevertheless thought to influence our behaviour.

Figure 2.6 The Levels of Consciousness.

Figure 2.6 illustrates the respective levels of id, ego, and superego. In this diagram, the bright blue line represents

the divide between consciousness (above) and unconsciousness (below). Below this line, but above the id, is

the preconscious level. The lowest segment is the unconscious. Like the ego, the superego has conscious and

unconscious elements, while the id is completely unconscious. When all three parts of the personality are in dynamic

equilibrium, the individual is thought to be mentally healthy. However if the ego is unable to mediate between the

id and the superego, an imbalance occurs in the form of psychological distress.

45 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

While Freud’s theory remains one of the best known, various schools within the field of psychology have developed

their own perspectives. For example:

• Developmental psychologists view consciousness not as a single entity, but as a developmental process

with potential higher stages of cognitive, moral, and spiritual quality.

• Social psychologists view consciousness as a product of cultural influence having little to do with the

individual.

• Neuropsychologists view consciousness as ingrained in neural systems and organic brain structures.

• Cognitive psychologists base their understanding of consciousness on computer science.

Most psychodynamic approaches use talk therapy, or psychoanalysis, to examine maladaptive functions that

developed early in life and are, at least in part, unconscious. Psychoanalysis is a type of analysis that involves

attempting to affect behavioural change through having patients talk about their difficulties. Practising

psychoanalysts today collect their data in much the same way as Freud did, through case studies, but often without

the couch. The analyst listens and observes, gathering information about the patient. Psychoanalytic scientists today

also collect data in formal laboratory experiments, studying groups of people in more restricted, controlled ways

(Cramer, 2000; Westen, 1998).

Carl Jung

Carl Jung (1875-1961) expanded on Freud’s theories, introducing the concepts of the archetype, the collective

unconscious, and individuation — or the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious

with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy (Figure 2.7). Jung focused less on infantile

development and conflict between the id and superego, and more on integration between different parts of the

person.

Figure 2.7 Jung’s Theory.

The following are Jung’s concepts that are still prevalent today:

Active imagination: This refers to activating our imaginal processes in waking life in order to tap into the

unconscious meanings of our symbols.

Archetypes: These primordial images reflect basic patterns or universal themes common to us all and that are

present in the unconscious. These symbolic images exist outside space and time. Examples are the shadow, animus,

anima, the old wise person, and the innocent child. There are also nature archetypes, like fire, ocean, river, mountain.

2.2 PSYCHODYNAMIC PSYCHOLOGY • 46

1. Anima is the archetype symbolizing the unconscious female component of the male psyche.

Tendencies or qualities often thought of as feminine.

2. Animus is the archetype symbolizing the unconscious male component of the female psyche.

Tendencies or qualities often thought of as masculine.

3. Self is the archetype symbolizing the totality of the personality. It represents the striving for unity,

wholeness, and integration.

4. Persona is the mask or image a person presents to the world. It is designed to make a particular

impression on others, while concealing a person’s true nature.

5. Shadow is the side of a personality that a person does not consciously display in public. It may have

positive or negative qualities.

6. Dreams are specific expressions of the unconscious that have a definite, purposeful structure

indicating an underlying idea or intention. The general function of dreams is to restore a person’s total

psychic equilibrium.

7. Complexes are usually unconscious and repressed emotionally toned symbolic material that is

incompatible with consciousness. Complexes can cause constant psychological disturbances and

symptoms of neurosis. With intervention, they can become conscious and greatly reduced in their impact.

Individuation: Jung believed that a human being is inwardly whole, but that most people have lost touch with

important parts of themselves. Through listening to the messages of our dreams and waking imagination, we can

contact and reintegrate our different parts. The goal of life is individuation, which is the process of integrating the

conscious with the unconscious, synergizing the many components of the psyche. Jung asserted: “Trust that which

gives you meaning and accept it as your guide” (Jung, 1951, p. 3). Each human being has a specific nature and

calling uniquely his or her own, and unless these are fulfilled through a union of conscious and unconscious, the

person can become sick. Today, the term “individuation” is used in the media industry to describe new printing

and online technologies that permit “mass customization” of media (newspaper, online, television) so that its

contents match each individual user’s unique interests, shifting from the mass media practice of producing the same

contents for all readers, viewers, listeners, or online users (Chen, Wang, & Tseng, 2009). Marshall McLuhan, the

communications theorist, alluded to this trend in customization when discussing the future of printed books in an

electronically interconnected world (McLuhan & Nevitt, 1972).

Mandala: For Jung, the mandala (which is the Sanskrit word for “circle”) was a symbol of wholeness, completeness,

and perfection, and symbolized the self.

Mystery: For Jung, life was a great mystery, and he believed that humans know and understand very little of it. He

never hesitated to say, “I don’t know,” and he always admitted when he came to the end of his understanding.

Neurosis: Jung had a hunch that what passed for normality often was the very force that shattered the personality of

the patient. He proposed that trying to be “normal” violates a person’s inner nature and is itself a form of pathology.

In the psychiatric hospital, he wondered why psychiatrists were not interested in what their patients had to say.

Story: Jung concluded that every person has a story, and when derangement occurs, it is because the personal story

has been denied or rejected. Healing and integration come when the person discovers or rediscovers his or her own

personal story.

Symbol: A symbol is a name, term, or picture that is familiar in daily life, but for Jung it had other connotations

besides its conventional and obvious meaning. To Jung, a symbol implied something vague and partially unknown

47 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

or hidden, and was never precisely defined. Dream symbols carried messages from the unconscious to the rational

mind.

Unconscious: This basic tenet, as expressed by Jung, states that all products of the unconscious are symbolic and

can be taken as guiding messages. Within this concept, there are two types:

1. Personal unconscious: This aspect of the psyche does not usually enter an individual’s awareness,

but, instead, appears in overt behaviour or in dreams.

2. Collective unconscious: This aspect of the unconscious manifests in universal themes that run through

all human life. The idea of the collective unconscious assumes that the history of the human race, back to

the most primitive times, lives on in all people.

Word association test: This is a research technique that Jung used to explore the complexes in the personal

unconscious. It consisted of reading 100 words to someone, one at a time, and having the person respond quickly

with a word of his or her own.

Psychological Types

According to Jung, people differ in certain basic ways, even though the instincts that drive us are the same. Jung

distinguished two general attitudes–introversion and extraversion–and four functions–thinking, feeling, sensing, and

intuiting:

1. Introvert: Inner-directed; needs privacy and space; chooses solitude to recover energy; often

reflective.

2. Extravert: Outer-directed; needs sociability; chooses people as a source of energy; often actionoriented.

3. Thinking function: Logical; sees cause and effect relations; cool, distant, frank, and questioning.

4. Feeling function: Creative, warm, intimate; has a sense of valuing positively or negatively. (Note that

this is not the same as emotion.)

5. Sensing function: Sensory; oriented toward the body and senses; detailed, concrete, and present.

6. Intuitive: Sees many possibilities in situations; goes with hunches; impatient with earthy details;

impractical; sometimes not present

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure

psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. The original developers of the

Myers-Briggs personality inventory were Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs-Myers (1980,

1995). Having studied the work of Jung, the mother-daughter team turned their interest in human behaviour into

a practical application of the theory of psychological types. They began creating the indicator during World War

II, believing that a knowledge of personality preferences would help women who were entering the industrial

workforce for the first time to identify the sort of wartime jobs that would be “most comfortable and effective.”

The initial questionnaire became the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), first published in 1962 and emphasizing

the value of naturally occurring differences (CAPT, 2012). These preferences were extrapolated from the

typological theories proposed by Jung and first published in his 1921 book Psychological Types (Adler & Hull,

2014). Jung theorized that there are four principal psychological functions by which we experience the world:

sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking, with one of these four functions being dominant most of the time. The

MBTI provides individuals with a measure of their dominant preferences based on the Jungian functions.

2.2 PSYCHODYNAMIC PSYCHOLOGY • 48

Research Focus: The Theory of Buyer Behaviour

Jungian theory influenced a whole realm of social psychology called Consumer Behaviour (Howard &

Sheth, 1968). Consumer behaviour is the study of individuals, groups, or organizations and the processes

they use to select, secure, and dispose of products, services, experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs, and

the impacts that these processes have on the consumer and society. Blending psychology, sociology,

social anthropology, marketing, and economics, the study of consumer behaviour attempts to understand

the decision-making processes of buyers, such as how emotions affect buying behaviour (Figure 2.8); it

also studies characteristics of individual consumers, such as demographics, and behavioural variables and

external influences, such as family, education, and culture, in an attempt to understand people’s desires.

Figure 2.8 Neuromarketing.

The black box model (Sandhusen, 2000) captures this interaction of stimuli, consumer characteristics,

decision processes, and consumer responses. Stimuli can be experienced as interpersonal stimuli (between

people) or intrapersonal stimuli (within people). The black box model is related to the black box theory

of behaviourism, where the focus is set not on the processes inside a consumer, but on the relation

between the stimuli and the response of the consumer. The marketing stimuli are planned and processed

by the companies, whereas the environmental stimuli are based on social, economic, political, and cultural

circumstances of a society. The buyer’s black box contains the buyer characteristics and the decision process,

which determines the buyer’s response (Table 2.1).

49 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

Table 2.1 Environmental Factors and Buyer’s Black Box1

[Skip Table]

Environmental Factors Buyer’s Black Box

Marketing Stimuli

Environmental

Stimuli

Buyer

Characteristics Decision Process Buyer’s Response

• product

• price

• place

• promotion

• economic

• technological

• political

• cultural

• demographic

• natural

• attitudes

• motivation

• perceptions

• personality

• lifestyle

• knowledge

• problem

recognition

• information

search

• alternative

evaluation

• purchase

decision

• postpurchase

behaviour

• product

choice

• brand

choice

• dealer

choice

• purchase

timing

• purchace

amount

Dreaming and Psychodynamic Psychology

Freud showed a great interest in the interpretation of human dreams, and his theory centred on the notion of

repressed longing — the idea that dreaming allows us to sort through unresolved, repressed wishes. Freud’s theory

described dreams as having both latent and manifest content. Latent content relates to deep unconscious wishes or

fantasies, while manifest content is superficial and meaningless. Manifest content often masks or obscures latent

content.

Theories emerging from the work of Freud include the following:

Threat-simulation theory suggests that dreaming should be seen as an ancient biological defence mechanism.

Dreams are thought to provide an evolutionary advantage because of their capacity to repeatedly simulate potential

threatening events. This process enhances the neurocognitive mechanisms required for efficient threat perception

and avoidance. During much of human evolution, physical and interpersonal threats were serious enough to reward

reproductive advantage to those who survived them. Therefore, dreaming evolved to replicate these threats and

continually practice dealing with them. This theory suggests that dreams serve the purpose of allowing for the

rehearsal of threatening scenarios in order to better prepare an individual for real-life threats.

Expectation fulfillment theory posits that dreaming serves to discharge emotional arousals (however minor) that

haven’t been expressed during the day. This practice frees up space in the brain to deal with the emotional arousals

of the next day and allows instinctive urges to stay intact. In effect, the expectation is fulfilled (i.e., the action is

completed) in the dream, but only in a metaphorical form so that a false memory is not created. This theory explains

why dreams are usually forgotten immediately afterwards.

Other neurobiological theories also exist:

2.2 PSYCHODYNAMIC PSYCHOLOGY • 50

Activation-synthesis theory: One prominent neurobiological theory of dreaming is the activation-synthesis theory,

which states that dreams don’t actually mean anything. They are merely electrical brain impulses that pull random

thoughts and imagery from our memories. The theory posits that humans construct dream stories after they wake up,

in a natural attempt to make sense of the nonsensical. However, given the vast documentation of realistic aspects to

human dreaming as well as indirect experimental evidence that other mammals (e.g., cats) also dream, evolutionary

psychologists have theorized that dreaming does indeed serve a purpose.

Continual-activation theory: The continual-activation theory of dreaming proposes that dreaming is a result

of brain activation and synthesis. Dreaming and REM sleep are simultaneously controlled by different brain

mechanisms. The hypothesis states that the function of sleep is to process, encode, and transfer data from short-term

memory to long-term memory through a process called “consolidation.” However, there is not much evidence to

back up consolidation as a theory. NREM (non-rapid eye movement or non-REM) sleep processes the consciousrelated memory (declarative memory), and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep processes the unconscious-related

memory (procedural memory).

The underlying assumption of continual-activation theory is that during REM sleep, the unconscious part of a

brain is busy processing procedural memory. Meanwhile, the level of activation in the conscious part of the brain

descends to a very low level as the inputs from the senses are basically disconnected. This triggers the “continualactivation” mechanism to generate a data stream from the memory stores to flow through to the conscious part of

the brain.

Nielsen and colleagues (2003) investigated the dimensional structure of dreams by administering the Typical

Dreams Questionnaire (TDQ) to 1,181 first-year university students in three Canadian cities. A profile of themes

was found that varied little by age, gender, or region; however, differences that were identified correlated with

developmental milestones, personality attributes, or sociocultural factors. Factor analysis found that women’s

dreams related mostly to negative factors (failure, loss of control, snakes/insects), while men’s dreams related

primarily to positive factors (magic/myth, alien life).

Research Focus: Can Dreaming Enhance Problem Solving?

Stemming from Freudian and Jungian theories of dream states, researchers in Lancaster, UK (Sio &

Ormerod, 2009; Sio Monaghan, & Ormerod, 2013) and in Alberta, Canada (Both, Needham, & Wood,

2004) explored the role of “incubation” in facilitating problem solving. Incubation is the concept of

“sleeping on a problem,” or disengaging from actively and consciously trying to solve a problem, in

order to allow, as the theory goes, the unconscious processes to work on the problem. Incubation can

take a variety of forms, such as taking a break, sleeping, or working on another kind of problem either

more difficult or less challenging. Findings suggest that incubation can, indeed, have a positive impact on

problem-solving outcomes. Interestingly, lower-level cognitive tasks (e.g., simple math or language tasks,

vacuuming, putting items away) resulted in higher problem-solving outcomes than more challenging tasks

(e.g., crossword puzzles, math problems). Educators have also found that taking active breaks increases

children’s creativity and problem-solving abilities in classroom settings.

There are several hypotheses that aim to explain the conscious-unconscious effects on problem solving:

1. Spreading activation: When problem solvers disengage from the problem-solving task, they naturally

expose themselves to more information that can serve to inform the problem-solving process. Solvers

51 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

are sensitized to certain information and can benefit from conceptual combination of disparate ideas

related to the problem.

2. Selective forgetting: Once disengaged from the problem-solving process, solvers are freer to let go of

certain ideas or concepts that may be inhibiting the problem-solving process, allowing a cleaner, fresher

view of the problem and revealing clearer pathways to solution.

3. Problem restructuring: When problem solvers let go of the initial problem, they are then freed to

restructure or reorganize their representation of the problem and thereby capitalize on relevant

information not previously noticed, switch strategies, or rearrange problem information in a manner more

conducive to solution pathways.

The study of neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) seeks to link activity within the brain to subjective human

experiences in the physical world. Progress in neurophilosophy has come from focusing on the body rather than

the mind (Squire, 2008). In this context, the neuronal correlates of consciousness may be viewed as its causes, and

consciousness may be thought of as a state-dependent property of some undefined complex, adaptive, and highly

interconnected biological system. The NCC constitute the smallest set of neural events and structures sufficient for

a given conscious percept or explicit memory (Figure 2.9).

Figure 2.9 The Neuronal Correlates of Consciousness.

In the investigation into the NCC, our capacity to manipulate visual percepts in time and space has made vision

a focus of study. Psychologists have perfected a number of techniques in which the seemingly simple relationship

between a physical stimulus in the world and its associated principle in the subject’s mind is disturbed and therefore

open for understanding. In this manner the neural mechanisms can be isolated, permitting visual consciousness to

be tracked in the brain. In a perceptual illusion, the physical stimulus remains fixed while the perception fluctuates.

The best known example is the Necker Cube (Koch, 2004): the 12 lines in the cube can be perceived in one of two

different ways in depth (Figure 2.10).

Figure 2.10 The Necker Cube.

A number of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments have identified the activity underlying

visual consciousness in humans and demonstrated quite conclusively that activity in various areas of the brain

follows the mental perception and not the retinal stimulus (Rees & Frith, 2007), making it possible to link brain

activity with perception (Figure 2.11).

2.2 PSYCHODYNAMIC PSYCHOLOGY • 52

Figure 2.11 fMRI scan.

Key Takeaways

• Psychodynamic psychology emphasizes the systematic study of the psychological forces that

underlie human behaviour, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate to early experience.

• Consciousness is the awareness of the self in space and time and is defined as human awareness to

both internal and external stimuli.

• Sigmund Freud divided human consciousness into three levels of awareness: the conscious,

preconscious, and unconscious. Each of these levels corresponds and overlaps with his ideas of

the id, ego, and superego.

• Most psychodynamic approaches use talk therapy to examine maladaptive functions that

developed early in life and are, at least in part, unconscious.

• Carl Jung expanded upon Freud’s theories, introducing the concepts of the archetype, the

collective unconscious, and individuation.

• Freud’s theory describes dreams as having both latent and manifest content. Latent content relates

to deep unconscious wishes or fantasies while manifest content is superficial and meaningless.

• Unconscious processing includes several theories: threat simulation theory, expectation

fulfillment theory, activation synthesis theory, continual activation theory.

• One application of unconscious processing includes incubation as it relates to problem solving:

the concept of “sleeping on a problem” or disengaging from actively and consciously trying to

solve a problem in order to allow one’s unconscious processes to work on the problem.

• The study of neural correlates of consciousness seeks to link activity within the brain to subjective

human experiences in the physical world.

• In a perceptual illusion, like the Necker Cube, the physical stimulus remains fixed while the

perception fluctuates, allowing the neural mechanisms to be isolated and permitting visual

consciousness to be tracked in the brain.

• Activity in the brain can be studied and captured using functional magnetic resonance imaging

(fMRI) scans.

53 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Utilize the principles of the psychodynamic school of thought to reflect on a recent dream you

experienced. What might the dream imply or represent? Try to trace one of your qualities or

characteristics to a prior experience or learning.

2. Jung has influenced a variety of practices in psychology today including therapeutic and

organizational. Can you identify other areas of society where “archetypes” may play a role?

3. Debate with your group the value or danger of “mass customization.” What issues or

controversies does the concept of customized marketing and product development pose?

Image Attributions

Figure 2.5: Freud Jung in front of Clark Hall (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/

Hall_Freud_Jung_in_front_of_Clark.jpg) is in the public domain.

Figure 2.6: Visual representation of Freud’s id, ego and superego and the level of consciousness

(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Id_ego_superego.png) used under CC BY SA 3.0 license

(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en).

Figure 2.7: Graphical model of Carl Jung’s theory – English version by Andrzej Brodziak

(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scheme-Jung.jpg) used under CC-BY-SA 2.5 Generic license

(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en).

Figure 2.8: Neuromarketing schema by Benoit Rochon (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/

File:Neuromarketing_fr.svg) used under CC BY 3.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en).

Figure 2.9: Neural Correlates Of Consciousness by Christof Koch (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/

File:Neural_Correlates_Of_Consciousness.jpg) used under CC BY SA 3.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/

licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en).

Figure 2.10: Necker’s cube, a type of optical illusion by Stevo-88 (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/

File:Necker%27s_cube.svg) is in the public domain.

Figure 2.11: FMRI scan during working memory tasks by John Graner (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/

File:FMRI_scan_during_working_memory_tasks.jpg) is in the public domain.

References

Adler, G., & Hull, R. F.C. (2014). Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 6: Psychological Types. Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press.

Both, L., Needham, D., & Wood, E. (2004). Examining Tasks that Facilitate the Experience of Incubation While

Problem-Solving. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 50(1), 57–67.

2.2 PSYCHODYNAMIC PSYCHOLOGY • 54

Briggs-Myers, Isabel, & Myers, Peter B. (1980, 1995). Gifts differing: Understanding personality type. Mountain

View, CA: Davies-Black Publishing.

CAPT (Center for Applications of Psychological Type. (2012). The story of Isabel Briggs Myers. Retrieved from

http://www.capt.org/mbti-assessment/isabel-myers.htm

Chen, Songlin, Wang, Yue, & Tseng, Mitchell (2009). Mass Customization as a Collaborative Engineering Effort.

International Journal of Collaborative Engineering, 1(2), 152–167.

Cramer, P. (2000). Defense mechanisms in psychology today. American Psychologist, 55, 637–646.

Howard, J., & Sheth, J.N. (1968). Theory of Buyer Behavior. New York, NY: J. Wiley & Sons.

Jung, C. G. (1951). Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (Collected Works Vol. 9 Part 2). Princeton,

N.J.: Bollingen.

Koch, Christof (2004). The quest for consciousness: a neurobiological approach. Englewood, US-CO: Roberts &

Company Publishers.

McLuhan, Marshall, & Nevitt, Barrington. (1972). Take today: The executive as dropout. New York, NY: Harcourt

Brace.

Nielsen, Tore A., Zadra, Antonio L., Simard, Valérie Saucier, Sébastien Stenstrom, Philippe Smith, Carlyle, &

Kuiken, Don (2003). The typical dreams of Canadian university students dreaming. Journal of the Association for

the Study of Dreams, 13(4), 211–235.

Rees G., & Frith C. (2007). Methodologies for identifying the neural correlates of consciousness. In: The Blackwell

Companion to Consciousness. Velmans, M. & Schneider, S., (Eds.), pp. 553–66. Blackwell: Oxford, UK.

Sandhusen, R. (2000). Marketing. New York, NY: Barron’s Educational Series.

Sio, U.N., & Ormerod, T.C. (2009). Does incubation enhance problem solving? A meta-analytic review.

Psychological Bulletin,135(1), 94–120.

Sio U.N., Monaghan P., & Ormerod T. (2013). Sleep on it, but only if it is difficult: Effects of sleep on problem

solving. Memory and Cognition, 41(2), 159–66.

Squire, Larry R. (2008). Fundamental neuroscience (3rd ed.). Waltham, Mass: Academic Press. p. 1256.

Westen, D. (1998). The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological

science. Psychological Bulletin, 124(3), 333–371.

Notes

1. Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_behaviour by J. Walinga.

55 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

2.3 Behaviourist Psychology

Jennifer Walinga

Learning Objectives

1. Understand the principles of behaviourist psychology and how these differ from

psychodynamic principles in terms of theory and application.

2. Distinguish between classical and operant conditioning.

3. Become familiar with key behaviourist theorists and approaches.

4. Identify applications of the behaviourist models in modern life.

Emerging in contrast to psychodynamic psychology, behaviourism focuses on observable behaviour as a means

to studying the human psyche. The primary tenet of behaviourism is that psychology should concern itself with

the observable behaviour of people and animals, not with unobservable events that take place in their minds.

The behaviourists criticized the mentalists for their inability to demonstrate empirical evidence to support their

claims. The behaviourist school of thought maintains that behaviours can be described scientifically without

recourse either to internal physiological events or to hypothetical constructs such as thoughts and beliefs, making

behaviour a more productive area of focus for understanding human or animal psychology.

The main influences of behaviourist psychology were Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), who investigated classical

conditioning though often disagreeing with behaviourism or behaviourists; Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949),

who introduced the concept of reinforcement and was the first to apply psychological principles to learning; John

B. Watson (1878-1958), who rejected introspective methods and sought to restrict psychology to experimental

methods; and B.F. Skinner (1904-1990), who conducted research on operant conditioning.

The first of these, Ivan Pavlov, is known for his work on one important type of learning, classical conditioning.

As we learn, we alter the way we perceive our environment, the way we interpret the incoming stimuli, and

therefore the way we interact, or behave. Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, actually discovered classical conditioning

accidentally while doing research on the digestive patterns in dogs. During his experiments, he would put meat

powder in the mouth of a dog who had tubes inserted into various organs to measure bodily responses.

Pavlov discovered that the dog began to salivate before the meat powder was presented to it. Soon the dog began to

salivate as soon as the person feeding it entered the room. Pavlov quickly began to gain interest in this phenomenon

and abandoned his digestion research in favour of his now famous classical conditioning study.

Basically, Pavlov’s findings support the idea that we develop responses to certain stimuli that are not naturally

occurring. When we touch a hot stove, our reflex pulls our hand back. We do this instinctively with no learning

involved. The reflex is merely a survival instinct. Pavlov discovered that we make associations that cause us to

generalize our response to one stimuli onto a neutral stimuli it is paired with. In other words, hot burner = ouch;

stove = burner; therefore, stove = ouch.

56

In his research with the dogs, Pavlov began pairing a bell sound with the meat powder and found that even when the

meat powder was not presented, a dog would eventually begin to salivate after hearing the bell. In this case, since the

meat powder naturally results in salivation, these two variables are called the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and the

unconditioned response (UCR), respectively. In the experiment, the bell and salivation are not naturally occurring;

the dog is conditioned to respond to the bell. Therefore, the bell is considered the conditioned stimulus (CS), and

the salivation to the bell, the conditioned response (CR).

Many of our behaviours today are shaped by the pairing of stimuli. The smell of a cologne, the sound of a certain

song, or the occurrence of a specific day of the year can trigger distinct memories, emotions, and associations. When

we make these types of associations, we are experiencing classical conditioning.

Operant conditioning is another type of learning that refers to how an organism operates on the environment or

how it responds to what is presented to it in the environment (Figure 2.12).

Figure 2.12 Operant Conditioning.

Examples of operant conditioning include the following:

Reinforcement means to strengthen, and is used in psychology to refer to any stimulus which strengthens or

increases the probability of a specific response. For example, if you want your dog to sit on command, you may

give him a treat every time he sits for you. The dog will eventually come to understand that sitting when told to will

result in a treat. This treat is reinforcing the behaviour because the dog likes it and will result in him sitting when

instructed to do so. There are four types of reinforcement: positive, negative, punishment, and extinction.

• Positive reinforcement involves adding something in order to increase a response. For example, adding

a treat will increase the response of sitting; adding praise will increase the chances of your child cleaning

his or her room. The most common types of positive reinforcement are praise and reward, and most of us

have experienced this as both the giver and receiver.

• Negative reinforcement involves taking something negative away in order to increase a response.

Imagine a teenager who is nagged by his parents to take out the garbage week after week. After

57 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

complaining to his friends about the nagging, he finally one day performs the task and, to his amazement,

the nagging stops. The elimination of this negative stimulus is reinforcing and will likely increase the

chances that he will take out the garbage next week.

• Punishment refers to adding something aversive in order to decrease a behaviour. The most common

example of this is disciplining (e.g., spanking) a child for misbehaving. The child begins to associate

being punished with the negative behaviour. The child does not like the punishment and, therefore, to

avoid it, he or she will stop behaving in that manner.

• Extinction involves removing something in order to decrease a behaviour. By having something taken

away, a response is decreased.

Research has found positive reinforcement is the most powerful of any of these types of operant conditioning

responses. Adding a positive to increase a response not only works better, but allows both parties to focus on the

positive aspects of the situation. Punishment, when applied immediately following the negative behaviour, can be

effective, but results in extinction when it is not applied consistently. Punishment can also invoke other negative

responses such as anger and resentment.

Thorndike’s (1898) work with cats and puzzle boxes illustrates the concept of conditioning. The puzzle boxes were

approximately 50 cm long, 38 cm wide, and 30 cm tall (Figure 2.13). Thorndike’s puzzle boxes were built so that

the cat, placed inside the box, could escape only if it pressed a bar or pulled a lever, which caused the string attached

to the door to lift the weight and open the door. Thorndike measured the time it took the cat to perform the required

response (e.g., pulling the lever). Once it had learned the response he gave the cat a reward, usually food.

Figure 2.13 Thorndike’s Puzzle Box.

Thorndike found that once a cat accidentally stepped on the switch, it would then press the switch faster in each

succeeding trial inside the puzzle box. By observing and recording how long it took a variety of animals to escape

through several trials, Thorndike was able to graph the learning curve (graphed as an S-shape). He observed that

most animals had difficulty escaping at first, then began to escape faster and faster with each successive puzzle

box trial, and eventually levelled off in their escape times. The learning curve also suggested that different species

learned in the same way but at different speeds. His finding was that cats, for instance, consistently showed gradual

learning.

From his research with puzzle boxes, Thorndike was able to create his own theory of learning (1932):

2.3 BEHAVIOURIST PSYCHOLOGY • 58

1. Learning is incremental.

2. Learning occurs automatically.

3. All animals learn the same way.

4. Law of effect. If an association is followed by satisfaction, it will be strengthened, and if it is followed

by annoyance, it will be weakened.

5. Law of use. The more often an association is used, the stronger it becomes.

6. Law of disuse. The longer an association is unused, the weaker it becomes.

7. Law of recency. The most recent response is most likely to reoccur.

8. Multiple response. An animal will try multiple responses (trial and error) if the first response does

not lead to a specific state of affairs.

9. Set or attitude. Animals are predisposed to act in a specific way.

10. Prepotency of elements. A subject can filter out irrelevant aspects of a problem and focus on and

respond to significant elements of a problem.

11. Response by analogy. Responses from a related or similar context may be used in a new context.

12. Identical elements theory of transfer. The more similar the situations are, the greater the amount of

information that will transfer. Similarly, if the situations have nothing in common, information learned in

one situation will not be of any value in the other situation.

13. Associative shifting. It is possible to shift any response from occurring with one stimulus to

occurring with another stimulus. Associative shift maintains that a response is first made to situation A,

then to AB, and then finally to B, thus shifting a response from one condition to another by associating it

with that condition.

14. Law of readiness. A quality in responses and connections that results in readiness to act. Behaviour

and learning are influenced by the readiness or unreadiness of responses, as well as by their strength.

15. Identifiability. Identification or placement of a situation is a first response of the nervous system,

which can recognize it. Then connections may be made to one another or to another response, and these

connections depend on the original identification. Therefore, a large amount of learning is made up of

changes in the identifiability of situations.

16. Availability. The ease of getting a specific response. For example, it would be easier for a person to

learn to touch his or her nose or mouth with closed eyes than it would be to draw a line five inches long

with closed eyes.

John B. Watson promoted a change in psychology through his address, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views

It (1913), delivered at Columbia University. Through his behaviourist approach, Watson conducted research on

animal behaviour, child rearing, and advertising while gaining notoriety for the controversial “Little Albert”

experiment. Immortalized in introductory psychology textbooks, this experiment set out to show how the recently

discovered principles of classical conditioning could be applied to condition fear of a white rat into Little Albert,

an 11-month-old boy. Watson and Rayner (1920) first presented to the boy a white rat and observed that the boy

was not afraid. Next they presented him with a white rat and then clanged an iron rod. Little Albert responded by

crying. This second presentation was repeated several times. Finally, Watson and Rayner presented the white rat by

itself and the boy showed fear. Later, in an attempt to see if the fear transferred to other objects, Watson presented

Little Albert with a rabbit, a dog, and a fur coat. He cried at the sight of all of them. This study demonstrated how

emotions could become conditioned responses.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner called his particular brand of behaviourism radical behaviourism (1974). Radical

59 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION

behaviourism is the philosophy of the science of behaviour. It seeks to understand behaviour as a function of

environmental histories of reinforcing consequences. This applied behaviourism does not accept private events such

as thinking, perceptions, and unobservable emotions in a causal account of an organism’s behaviour.

While a researcher at Harvard, Skinner invented the operant conditioning chamber, popularly referred to as the

Skinner box (Figure 2.14), used to measure responses of organisms (most often rats and pigeons) and their orderly

interactions with the environment. The box had a lever and a food tray, and a hungry rat inside the box could get

food delivered to the tray by pressing the lever. Skinner observed that when a rat was first put into the box, it would

wander around, sniffing and exploring, and would usually press the bar by accident, at which point a food pellet

would drop into the tray. After that happened, the rate of bar pressing would increase dramatically and remain high

until the rat was no longer hungry.

Figure 2.14 Skinner Box.

Negative reinforcement was also exemplified by Skinner placing rats into an electrified chamber that delivered

unpleasant shocks. Levers to cut the power were placed inside these boxes. By running a current through the box,

Skinner noticed that the rats, after accidentally pressing the lever in a frantic bid to escape, quickly learned the

effects of the lever and consequently used this knowledge to stop the currents both during and prior to electrical

shock. These two learned responses are known as escape learning and avoidance learning (Skinner, 1938). The

operant chamber for pigeons involved a plastic disk in which the pigeon pecked in order to open a drawer filled with

grain. The Skinner box led to the principle of reinforcement, which is the probability of something occurring based

on the consequences of a behaviour.

Research Focus

Applying game incentives such as prompts, competition, badges, and rewards to ordinary activities, or

gamification, is a growing approach to behaviour modification today. Health care has also applied some

early innovative uses of gamification — from a Sony PS3 Move motion controller used to help children

diagnosed with cancer to the launch of Games for Health, the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the

2.3 BEHAVIOURIST PSYCHOLOGY • 60

research and design of health games and behavioural health strategies. Gamification is the process of taking

an ordinary activity (like jogging or car sharing) and adding game mechanisms to it, including prompts,

rewards, leader-boards, and competition between different players.

When used in social marketing and online health-promotion campaigns, gamification can be used to

encourage a new, healthy behaviour such as regular exercise, improved diet, or completing actions required

for treatment. Typically, gamification is web-based, usually with a mobile app or as a micro-site.

Behavioural change campaigns require an understanding of human psychology, specifically the benefits and

barriers associated with a behaviour. There have been several campaigns using gamification techniques that

have had remarkable results. For example, organizations that wanted employees to exercise regularly have

installed gyms in their offices and created a custom application that rewards employees for “checking in” to

the gyms. Employees can form regionally based teams, check in to workouts, and chart their team’s progress

on a leader-board. This has a powerful effect on creating and sustaining a positive behavioural change.

Similar game mechanics have been used in sustainability campaigns aimed at increasing household

environmental compliance. Such sites use game mechanics such as points, challenges, and rewards to

increase daily “green” habits like recycling and conserving water. Other behavioural change campaigns that

have applied social gaming include using cameras to record speeding cars, which reduce the incidence of

speeding, and offering products that allow users to track their healthy behaviours through the day, including

miles travelled, calories burned, and stairs climbed.

Key Takeaways

• Behaviourist psychology should concern itself with the observable behaviour of people and

animals, not with unobservable events that take place in their minds.

• The main influences of behaviourist psychology were Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), Edward Lee

Thorndike (1874-1949), John B. Watson (1878-1958), and B.F. Skinner (1904-1990).

• The idea that we develop responses to certain stimuli that are not naturally occurring is called

“classical conditioning.”

• Operant conditioning refers to how an organism operates on the environment or how it responds

to what is presented to it in the environment.

• Reinforcement means to strengthen, and is used in psychology to refer to any stimulus

that strengthens or increases the probability of a specific response.

• There are four types of reinforcement: positive, negative, punishment, and extinction.

• Behaviourist researchers used experimental methods (puzzle box, operant conditioning or Skinner

box, Little Albert experiment) to investigate learning processes.

• Today, behaviourism is still prominent in applications such as gamification.

61 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION