Page: Textbook - Chapter 1
Chapter 1. Introducing Psychology
1. Introducing Psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behaviour. The word “psychology” comes from the Greek words
“psyche,” meaning life, and “logos,” meaning explanation. Psychology is a popular major for students, a popular
topic in the public media, and a part of our everyday lives. Television shows such as Dr. Phil feature psychologists
who provide personal advice to those with personal or family difficulties. Psychological television crime dramas
such as Cracked, Criminal Minds, Psyche, CSI, and others feature the work of forensic psychologists who use
psychological principles to help solve crimes. And many people have direct knowledge of psychology because they
have visited psychologists, such as school counsellors, family therapists, and religious, marriage, or bereavement
counsellors.
Because we are frequently exposed to the work of psychologists in our everyday lives, we all have an idea
about what psychology is and what psychologists do. In many ways I am sure that your conceptions are correct.
Psychologists do work in forensic fields, and they do provide counselling and therapy for people in distress. But
there are hundreds of thousands of psychologists in the world, and most of them work in other places, doing work
that you are probably not aware of.
Most psychologists work in research laboratories, hospitals, and other field settings where they study the behaviour
of humans and animals. For instance, my colleagues in the Psychology Department at the University of Maryland
study such diverse topics as anxiety in children, the interpretation of dreams, the effects of caffeine on thinking,
how birds recognize each other, how praying mantises hear, how people from different cultures react differently
in negotiation, and the factors that lead people to engage in terrorism. Other psychologists study topics such as
alcohol and drug addiction, memory, emotion, hypnosis, love, what makes people aggressive or helpful, and the
psychologies of politics, prejudice, culture, and religion. Psychologists also work in schools and businesses, and
they use a variety of methods, including observation, questionnaires, interviews, and laboratory studies, to help them
understand behaviour.
This chapter provides an introduction to the broad field of psychology and the many approaches that psychologists
take to understanding human behaviour. We will consider how psychologists conduct scientific research, with an
overview of some of the most important approaches used and topics studied by psychologists, and also consider the
variety of fields in which psychologists work and the careers that are available to people with psychology degrees.
I expect that you may find that at least some of your preconceptions about psychology will be challenged and
changed, and you will learn that psychology is a field that will provide you with new ways of thinking about your
own thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Attributions
Figure 1.1:
• “Friendly smoking” by Valentin Ottone (http://www.flickr.com/photos/saneboy/3595175373/) is licensed
under CC BY 2.0.
2
Figure 1.1 Psychology is in part the study of behaviour. Why do you think these people are
behaving the way they are? [Long Description]
• “At the beach” by Julian Schüngel (http://www.flickr.com/photos/medevac71/4468071278/) is licensed
under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
• “Bar Trek and friends” by Jim H (http://www.flickr.com/photos/greyloch/10970542456/in/photostream/)
is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
• “Physical therapist” by U.S. Navy photo (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:US_Navy_081610-A-6522B-002_Physical_therapist_Lt._Cmdr._Mitchel_Ideue,_Officer_in_Charge_of_Inpatient_Services_is in the public domain.
• “couple yelling at each other” by Vic (http://www.flickr.com/photos/59632563@N04/6238711264/in/
photostream/) is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Long Descriptions
Figure 1.1 long description: Five photos:
1. Man in hospital bed with broken leg; a soldier is lifting his leg as is if to give physical therapy.
2. Young girl smoking a cigarette.
3. A man doing a hand stand on a beach with sun setting in background.
4. A man and woman yelling at each other with their heads touching.
5. One man and four women dressed up like Star Trek characters and aliens. [Return to Figure 1.1]
3 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION
1.1 Psychology as a Science
Learning Objectives
1. Explain why using our intuition about everyday behaviour is insufficient for a complete
understanding of the causes of behaviour.
2. Describe the difference between values and facts and explain how the scientific method is used
to differentiate between the two.
Despite the differences in their interests, areas of study, and approaches, all psychologists have one thing in
common: they rely on scientific methods. Research psychologists use scientific methods to create new knowledge
about the causes of behaviour, whereas psychologist-practitioners, such as clinical, counselling, industrialorganizational,
and school psychologists, use existing research to enhance the everyday life of others. The science
of psychology is important for both researchers and practitioners.
In a sense all humans are scientists. We all have an interest in asking and answering questions about our world. We
want to know why things happen, when and if they are likely to happen again, and how to reproduce or change
them. Such knowledge enables us to predict our own behaviour and that of others. We may even collect data (i.e.,
any information collected through formal observation or measurement) to aid us in this undertaking. It has been
argued that people are “everyday scientists” who conduct research projects to answer questions about behaviour
(Nisbett & Ross, 1980). When we perform poorly on an important test, we try to understand what caused our failure
to remember or understand the material and what might help us do better the next time. When our good friends
Monisha and Charlie break up, despite the fact that they appeared to have a relationship made in heaven, we try to
determine what happened. When we contemplate the rise of terrorist acts around the world, we try to investigate the
causes of this problem by looking at the terrorists themselves, the situation around them, and others’ responses to
them.
The Problem of Intuition
The results of these “everyday” research projects can teach us many principles of human behaviour. We learn
through experience that if we give someone bad news, he or she may blame us even though the news was not
our fault. We learn that people may become depressed after they fail at an important task. We see that aggressive
behaviour occurs frequently in our society, and we develop theories to explain why this is so. These insights are part
of everyday social life. In fact, much research in psychology involves the scientific study of everyday behaviour
(Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1967).
The problem, however, with the way people collect and interpret data in their everyday lives is that they are not
always particularly thorough. Often, when one explanation for an event seems right, we adopt that explanation as
the truth even when other explanations are possible and potentially more accurate. For example, eyewitnesses to
violent crimes are often extremely confident in their identifications of the perpetrators of these crimes. But research
4
finds that eyewitnesses are no less confident in their identifications when they are incorrect than when they are
correct (Cutler & Wells, 2009; Wells & Hasel, 2008). People may also become convinced of the existence of
extrasensory perception (ESP), or the predictive value of astrology, when there is no evidence for either (Gilovich,
1993). Furthermore, psychologists have also found that there are a variety of cognitive and motivational biases that
frequently influence our perceptions and lead us to draw erroneous conclusions (Fiske & Taylor, 2007; Hsee &
Hastie, 2006). In summary, accepting explanations for events without testing them thoroughly may lead us to think
that we know the causes of things when we really do not.
Research Focus: Unconscious Preferences for the Letters of Our Own Name
A study reported in the Journal of Consumer Research (Brendl, Chattopadhyay, Pelham, & Carvallo,
2005) demonstrates the extent to which people can be unaware of the causes of their own behaviour. The
research demonstrated that, at least under certain conditions (and although they do not know it), people
frequently prefer brand names that contain the letters of their own name to brand names that do not contain
the letters of their own name.
The research participants were recruited in pairs and were told that the research was a taste test of different
types of tea. For each pair of participants, the experimenter created two teas and named them by adding
the word stem “oki” to the first three letters of each participant’s first name. For example, for Jonathan and
Elisabeth, the names of the teas would have been Jonoki and Elioki.
The participants were then shown 20 packets of tea that were supposedly being tested. Eighteen packets were
labelled with made-up Japanese names (e.g., Mataku; Somuta), and two were labelled with the brand names
constructed from the participants’ names. The experimenter explained that each participant would taste only
two teas and would be allowed to choose one packet of these two to take home.
One of the two participants was asked to draw slips of paper to select the two brands that would be tasted
at this session. However, the drawing was rigged so that the two brands containing the participants’ name
stems were always chosen for tasting. Then, while the teas were being brewed, the participants completed a
task designed to heighten their need for self-esteem, and that was expected to increase their desire to choose
a brand that had the letters of their own name. Specifically, the participants all wrote about an aspect of
themselves that they would like to change.
After the teas were ready, the participants tasted them and then chose to take a packet of one of the teas home
with them. After they made their choice, the participants were asked why they chose the tea they had chosen,
and then the true purpose of the study was explained to them.
The results of this study found that participants chose the tea that included the first three letters of their own
name significantly more frequently (64% of the time) than they chose the tea that included the first three
letters of their partner’s name (only 36% of the time). Furthermore, the decisions were made unconsciously;
the participants did not know why they chose the tea they chose. When they were asked, more than 90% of
the participants thought that they had chosen on the basis of taste, whereas only 5% of them mentioned the
real cause — that the brand name contained the letters of their name.
Once we learn about the outcome of a given event (e.g., when we read about the results of a research project),
we frequently believe that we would have been able to predict the outcome ahead of time. For instance, if half
of a class of students is told that research concerning attraction between people has demonstrated that “opposites
attract” and the other half is told that research has demonstrated that “birds of a feather flock together,” most of the
5 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION
students will report believing that the outcome that they just read about is true, and that they would have predicted
the outcome before they had read about it. Of course, both of these contradictory outcomes cannot be true. (In fact,
psychological research finds that “birds of a feather flock together” is generally the case.) The problem is that just
reading a description of research findings leads us to think of the many cases we know that support the findings, and
thus makes them seem believable. The tendency to think that we could have predicted something that has already
occurred that we probably would not have been able to predict is called the hindsight bias.
Why Psychologists Rely on Empirical Methods
All scientists, whether they are physicists, chemists, biologists, sociologists, or psychologists, use empirical
methods to study the topics that interest them. Empirical methods include the processes of collecting and
organizing data and drawing conclusions about those data. The empirical methods used by scientists have
developed over many years and provide a basis for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data within a common
framework in which information can be shared. We can label the scientific method as the set of assumptions, rules,
and procedures that scientists use to conduct empirical research.
Although scientific research is an important method of studying human behaviour, not all questions can be answered
using scientific approaches. Statements that cannot be objectively measured or objectively determined to be true or
false are not within the domain of scientific inquiry. Scientists therefore draw a distinction between values and facts.
Values are personal statements such as “Abortion should not be permitted in this country,” “I will go to heaven
when I die,” or “It is important to study psychology.” Facts are objective statements determined to be accurate
through empirical study. Examples are “There were more than 21,000 homicides in Canada in 2009” or “Research
demonstrates that individuals who are exposed to highly stressful situations over long periods of time develop more
health problems than those who are not.”
Because values cannot be considered to be either true or false, science cannot prove or disprove them. Nevertheless,
as shown in Table 1.1, research can sometimes provide facts that can help people develop their values. For instance,
science may be able to objectively measure the impact of unwanted children on a society or the psychological
trauma suffered by women who have abortions. The effect of imprisonment on the crime rate in Canada may also
be determinable. This factual information can and should be made available to help people formulate their values
about abortion and incarceration, as well as to enable governments to articulate appropriate policies. Values also
frequently come into play in determining what research is appropriate or important to conduct. For instance, the
Canadian government has recently increased funding for university research, designating $37 million annually to
the three major research councils dealing with health, social science, and the sciences (Research Canada, 2014).
1.1 PSYCHOLOGY AS A SCIENCE • 6
Table 1.1 Examples of Values and Facts in Scientific Research.1
[Skip Table]
Personal value Scientific fact
The environment should be
protected.
The Canadian government has reduced environmental funding by $200 million but annually
pays more than $1.4 billion in subsidies to the oil and gas industry.
Practical work experience
helps to develop skilled
workers.
More than $100 million for interest-free loans will be available in 2014 through the Canada
Apprentice Loan program, an expansion of the Canada Student Loans Program.
Technology is increasingly
necessary.
The federal government in Canada will invest $305 million over five years to extend highspeed
broadband to some 280,000 homes in 2014.
It is important to quit smoking. The Canadian government will raise the cost of cigarettes by more than $4 on a carton in
2014.
Although scientists use research to help establish facts, the distinction between values and facts is not always clearcut.
Sometimes statements that scientists consider to be factual turn out later, on the basis of further research, to be
partially or even entirely incorrect. Although scientific procedures do not necessarily guarantee that the answers to
questions will be objective and unbiased, science is still the best method for drawing objective conclusions about the
world around us. When old facts are discarded, they are replaced with new facts based on newer and more correct
data. Although science is not perfect, the requirements of empiricism and objectivity result in a much greater chance
of producing an accurate understanding of human behaviour than is available through other approaches.
Levels of Explanation in Psychology
The study of psychology spans many different topics at many different levels of explanation, which are the
perspectives that are used to understand behaviour. Lower levels of explanation are more closely tied to biological
influences, such as genes, neurons, neurotransmitters, and hormones, whereas the middle levels of explanation refer
to the abilities and characteristics of individual people, and the highest levels of explanation relate to social groups,
organizations, and cultures (Cacioppo, Berntson, Sheridan, & McClintock, 2000).
The same topic can be studied within psychology at different levels of explanation, as shown in Table 1.2, “Levels
of Explanation.” For instance, the psychological disorder known as depression affects millions of people worldwide
and is known to be caused by biological, social, and cultural factors. Studying and helping alleviate depression can
be accomplished at low levels of explanation by investigating how chemicals in the brain influence the experience
of depression. This approach has allowed psychologists to develop and prescribe drugs, such as Prozac, which
may decrease depression in many individuals (Williams, Simpson, Simpson, & Nahas, 2009). At the middle levels
of explanation, psychological therapy is directed at helping individuals cope with negative life experiences that
may cause depression. And at the highest level, psychologists study differences in the prevalence of depression
between men and women and across cultures. The occurrence of psychological disorders, including depression, is
substantially higher for women than for men, and it is also higher in Western cultures, such as in Canada, the United
States, and Europe, than in Eastern cultures, such as in India, China, and Japan (Chen, Wang, Poland, & Lin, 2009;
Seedat et al., 2009). These sex and cultural differences provide insight into the factors that cause depression. The
study of depression in psychology helps remind us that no one level of explanation can explain everything. All levels
of explanation, from biological to personal to cultural, are essential for a better understanding of human behaviour.
7 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION
Table 1.2 Levels of Explanation
[Skip Table]
Level of
Explanation
Underlying
Process Examples
Lower Biological • Depression is in part genetically influenced.
• Depression is influenced by the action of neurotransmitters in the brain.
Middle Interpersonal
• People who are depressed may interpret the events that occur to them too
negatively.
• Psychotherapy can be used to help people talk about and combat
depression
Higher Cultural and
social
• Women experience more depression than do men.
• The prevalence of depression varies across cultures and historical time
periods.
The Challenges of Studying Psychology
Understanding and attempting to alleviate the costs of psychological disorders such as depression is not easy
because psychological experiences are extremely complex. The questions psychologists pose are as difficult as those
posed by doctors, biologists, chemists, physicists, and other scientists, if not more so (Wilson, 1998).
A major goal of psychology is to predict behaviour by understanding its causes. Making predictions is difficult, in
part because people vary and respond differently in different situations. Individual differences are the variations
among people on physical or psychological dimensions. For instance, although many people experience at least
some symptoms of depression at some times in their lives, the experience varies dramatically among people. Some
people experience major negative events, such as severe physical injuries or the loss of significant others, without
experiencing much depression, whereas other people experience severe depression for no apparent reason. Other
important individual differences that we will discuss in the chapters to come include differences in extraversion,
intelligence, self-esteem, anxiety, aggression, and conformity.
Because of the many individual difference variables that influence behaviour, we cannot always predict who will
become aggressive or who will perform best in graduate school or on the job. The predictions made by psychologists
(and most other scientists) are only probabilistic. We can say, for instance, that people who score higher on an
intelligence test will, on average, do better than people who score lower on the same test, but we cannot make very
accurate predictions about exactly how any one person will perform.
Another reason that it is difficult to predict behaviour is that almost all behaviour is multiply determined, or
produced by many factors. And these factors occur at different levels of explanation. We have seen, for instance,
that depression is caused by lower-level genetic factors, by medium-level personal factors, and by higher-level
social and cultural factors. You should always be skeptical about people who attempt to explain important human
behaviours, such as violence, child abuse, poverty, anxiety, or depression, in terms of a single cause.
Furthermore, these multiple causes are not independent of one another; they are associated such that when one cause
is present, other causes tend to be present as well. This overlap makes it difficult to pinpoint which cause or causes
1.1 PSYCHOLOGY AS A SCIENCE • 8
are operating. For instance, some people may be depressed because of biological imbalances in neurotransmitters in
their brain. The resulting depression may lead them to act more negatively toward other people around them, which
then leads those other people to respond more negatively to them, which then increases their depression. As a result,
the biological determinants of depression become intertwined with the social responses of other people, making it
difficult to disentangle the effects of each cause.
Another difficulty in studying psychology is that much human behaviour is caused by factors that are outside our
conscious awareness, making it impossible for us, as individuals, to really understand them. The role of unconscious
processes was emphasized in the theorizing of the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), who argued
that many psychological disorders were caused by memories that we have repressed and thus remain outside our
consciousness. Unconscious processes will be an important part of our study of psychology, and we will see that
current research has supported many of Freud’s ideas about the importance of the unconscious in guiding behaviour.
Key Takeaways
• Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behaviour.
• Though 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 think they are.
• The hindsight bias leads us to think that we could have predicted events that we actually could not
have predicted.
• People are frequently unaware of the causes of their own behaviours.
• Psychologists use the scientific method to collect, analyze, and interpret evidence.
• Employing the scientific method allows the scientist to collect empirical data objectively, which
adds to the accumulation of scientific knowledge.
• Psychological phenomena are complex, and making predictions about them is difficult because of
individual differences and because they are multiply determined at different levels of explanation.
Exercises and Critical Thinking
1. Can you think of a time when you used your intuition to analyze an outcome, only to be
surprised later to find that your explanation was completely incorrect? Did this surprise help you
understand how intuition may sometimes lead us astray?
2. Describe the scientific method in a way that someone who knows nothing about science could
understand it.
3. Consider a behaviour that you find to be important and think about its potential causes at
different levels of explanation. How do you think psychologists would study this behaviour?
9 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION
References
Brendl, C. M., Chattopadhyay, A., Pelham, B. W., & Carvallo, M. (2005). Name letter branding: Valence transfers
when product specific needs are active. Journal of Consumer Research, 32(3), 405–415.
Cacioppo, J. T., Berntson, G. G., Sheridan, J. F., & McClintock, M. K. (2000). Multilevel integrative analyses
of human behavior: Social neuroscience and the complementing nature of social and biological
approaches. Psychological Bulletin, 126(6), 829–843.
Chen, P.-Y., Wang, S.-C., Poland, R. E., & Lin, K.-M. (2009). Biological variations in depression and anxiety
between East and West. CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics, 15(3), 283–294.
Cutler, B. L., & Wells, G. L. (2009). Expert testimony regarding eyewitness identification. In J. L. Skeem, S.
O. Lilienfeld, & K. S. Douglas (Eds.), Psychological science in the courtroom: Consensus and controversy (pp.
100–123). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (2007). Social cognition: From brains to culture. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Gilovich, T. (1993). How we know what isn’t so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life. New York, NY:
Free Press.
Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Hsee, C. K., & Hastie, R. (2006). Decision and experience: Why don’t we choose what makes us happy? Trends in
Cognitive Sciences, 10(1), 31–37.
Hufffington Post. (2014). 2014 Canadian Budget Highlights: What You Need To Know. Retrieved May 2, 2104
from http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/02/11/2014-canadian-budget-highlights_n_4769700.html
Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on
motivation (Vol. 15, pp. 192–240). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Nisbett, R. E., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Research Canada. (2014). Budget 2014 – What it means for us. Retrieved May 2, 2014 from http://www.rc-rc.ca/
blog/budget-2014-research-canadas-analysis
Seedat, S., Scott, K. M., Angermeyer, M. C., Berglund, P., Bromet, E. J., Brugha, T. S., & Kessler, R. C. (2009).
Cross-national associations between gender and mental disorders in the World Health Organization World Mental
Health Surveys. Archives of General Psychiatry, 66(7), 785–795.
Wells, G. L., & Hasel, L. E. (2008). Eyewitness identification: Issues in common knowledge and generalization.
In E. Borgida & S. T. Fiske (Eds.), Beyond common sense: Psychological science in the courtroom (pp. 159–176).
Malden, NJ: Blackwell.
Williams, N., Simpson, A. N., Simpson, K., & Nahas, Z. (2009). Relapse rates with long-term antidepressant drug
therapy: A meta-analysis. Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental, 24(5), 401–408.
Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience: The unity of knowledge. New York, NY: Vintage Books.
1.1 PSYCHOLOGY AS A SCIENCE • 10
Notes
1. Source: Huffington Post, 2014.
11 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION
1.2 The Evolution of Psychology: History, Approaches, and Questions
Learning Objectives
1. Explain how psychology changed from a philosophical to a scientific discipline.
2. List some of the most important questions that concern psychologists.
3. Outline the basic schools of psychology and how each school has contributed to psychology.
In this section we will review the history of psychology with a focus on the important questions that psychologists
ask and the major approaches (or schools) of psychological inquiry. The schools of psychology that we will review
are summarized in Table 1.3, “The Most Important Approaches (Schools) of Psychology,” while Table 1.4, “History
of Psychology,” presents a timeline of some of the most important psychologists, beginning with the early Greek
philosophers and extending to the present day. Table 1.3 and Table 1.4 both represent a selection of the most
important schools and people; to mention all the approaches and all the psychologists who have contributed to
the field is not possible in one chapter. The approaches that psychologists have used to assess the issues that
interest them have changed dramatically over the history of psychology. Perhaps most importantly, the field has
moved steadily from speculation about behaviour toward a more objective and scientific approach as the technology
available to study human behaviour has improved (Benjamin & Baker, 2004). There has also been an influx
of women into the field. Although most early psychologists were men, now most psychologists, including the
presidents of the most important psychological organizations, are women.
12
Table 1.3 The Most Important Approaches (Schools) of Psychology.
[Skip Table]
School of
Psychology Description Important Contributors
Structuralism Uses the method of introspection to identify the basic elements or “structures”
of psychological experience
Wilhelm Wundt, Edward
B. Titchener
Functionalism Attempts to understand why animals and humans have developed the particular
psychological aspects that they currently possess William James
Psychodynamic Focuses on the role of our unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories and
our early childhood experiences in determining behaviour
Sigmund Freud, Carl
Jung, Alfred Adler, Erik
Erickson
Behaviourism
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
John B. Watson, B. F.
Skinner
Cognitive The study of mental processes, including perception, thinking, memory, and
judgments
Hermann Ebbinghaus, Sir
Frederic Bartlett, Jean
Piaget
Social-cultural The study of how the social situations and the cultures in which people find
themselves influence thinking and behaviour
Fritz Heider, Leon
Festinger, Stanley
Schachter
Although most of the earliest psychologists were men, women are increasingly contributing to psychology. Here
are some examples:
• 1968: Mary Jean Wright became the first woman president of the Canadian Psychological Association.
• 1970: Virginia Douglas became the second woman president of the Canadian Psychological Association.
• 1972: The Underground Symposium was held at the Canadian Psychological Association Convention.
After having their individual papers and then a symposium rejected by the Program Committee, a group
of six graduate students and non-tenured faculty, including Sandra Pyke and Esther Greenglass, held an
independent research symposium that showcased work being done in the field of the psychology of
women.
• 1976: The Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women was founded.
• 1987: Janet Stoppard led the Women and Mental Health Committee of the Canadian Mental Health
Association.
Although it cannot capture every important psychologist, the following timeline shows some of the most important
contributors to the history of psychology. (Adapted by J. Walinga.)
13 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION
Table 1.4 History of Psychology.
[Skip Table]
Date Psychologist(s) Description
428 to
347
BCE
Plato Greek philosopher who argued for the role of nature in psychological development.
384 to
432
BCE
Aristotle Greek philosopher who argued for the role of nurture in psychological development.
1588 to
1679 CE Thomas Hobbes English philosopher.
1596 to
1650 Ren. Descartes French philosopher.
1632 to
1704 John Locke English philosopher.
1712 to
1778
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau French philosopher.
1801 to
1887 Gustav Fechner
German experimental psychologist who developed the idea of the “just noticeable
difference” (JND), which is considered to be the first empirical psychological
measurement.
1809 to
1882 Charles Darwin British naturalist whose theory of natural selection influenced the functionalist school and
the field of evolutionary psychology.
1832 to
1920 Wilhelm Wundt German psychologist who opened one of the first psychology laboratories and helped
develop the field of structuralism.
1842 to
1910 William James American psychologist who opened one of the first psychology laboratories and helped
develop the field of functionalism.
1849 to
1936 Ivan Pavlov Russian psychologist whose experiments on learning led to the principles of classical
conditioning.
1850 to
1909
Hermann
Ebbinghaus
German psychologist who studied the ability of people to remember lists of nonsense
syllables under different conditions.
1856 to
1939 Sigmund Freud Austrian psychologist who founded the field of psychodynamic psychology.
1867 to
1927
Edward Bradford
Titchener American psychologist who contributed to the field of structuralism.
1878 to
1958 John B. Watson American psychologist who contributed to the field of behavioralism.
1886 to
1969 Sir Frederic Bartlett British psychologist who studied the cognitive and social processes of remembering.
1896 to
1980 Jean Piaget Swiss psychologist who developed an important theory of cognitive development in
children.
1904 to
1990 B. F. Skinner American psychologist who contributed to the school of behaviourism.
1.2 THE EVOLUTION OF PSYCHOLOGY: HISTORY, APPROACHES, AND QUESTIONS • 14
[Skip Table]
Date Psychologist(s) Description
1926 to
1993 Donald Broadbent British cognitive psychologist who was pioneer in the study of attention.
20th and
21st
centuries
Linda Bartoshuk;
Daniel Kahneman;
Elizabeth Loftus;
Geroge Miller.
American psychologists who contributed to the cognitive school of psychology by
studying learning, memory, and judgment. An important contribution is the advancement
of the field of neuroscience. Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his
work on psychological decision making.
1850 Dorothea Dix Canadian psychologist known for her contributions to mental health and opened one of the
first mental hospitals in Halifax, New Brunswick.
1880 William Lyall;
James Baldwin
Canadian psychologists who wrote early psychology texts and created first Canadian
psychology lab at the University of Toronto.
1950
James Olds; Brenda
Milner; Wilder
Penfield; Donald
Hebb; Endel Telving
Canadian psychologists who contributed to neurological psychology and opened the
Montreal Neurological Institute.
1960 Albert Bandura Canadian psychologist who developed ‘social learning theory’ with his Bobo doll studies
illustrating the impact that observation and interaction has on learning.
1970 Hans Selye Canadian psychologist who contributed significantly in the area of psychology of stress.
Although psychology has changed dramatically over its history, the most important questions that psychologists
address have remained constant. Some of these questions follow, and we will discuss them both in this chapter and
in the chapters to come:
• Nature versus nurture. Are genes or environment most influential in determining the behaviour of
individuals and in accounting for differences among people? Most scientists now agree that both genes
and environment play crucial roles in most human behaviours, and yet we still have much to learn about
how nature (our biological makeup) and nurture (the experiences that we have during our lives) work
together (Harris, 1998; Pinker, 2002). The proportion of the observed differences of characteristics
among people (e.g., in terms of their height, intelligence, or optimism) that is due to genetics is known as
the heritability of the characteristic, and we will make much use of this term in the chapters to come.
We will see, for example, that the heritability of intelligence is very high (about .85 out of 1.0) and that
the heritability of extraversion is about .50. But we will also see that nature and nurture interact in
complex ways, making the question “Is it nature or is it nurture?” very difficult to answer.
• Free will versus determinism. This question concerns the extent to which people have control over their
own actions. Are we the products of our environment, guided by forces out of our control, or are we able
to choose the behaviours we engage in? Most of us like to believe in free will, that we are able to do what
we want—for instance, that we could get up right now and go fishing. And our legal system is premised
on the concept of free will; we punish criminals because we believe that they have choice over their
behaviours and freely choose to disobey the law. But as we will discuss later in the research focus in this
section, recent research has suggested that we may have less control over our own behaviour than we
think we do (Wegner, 2002).
• Accuracy versus inaccuracy. To what extent are humans good information processors? Although it
15 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION
appears that people are good enough to make sense of the world around them and to make decent
decisions (Fiske, 2003), they are far from perfect. Human judgment is sometimes compromised by
inaccuracies in our thinking styles and by our motivations and emotions. For instance, our judgment may
be affected by our desires to gain material wealth and to see ourselves positively and by emotional
responses to the events that happen to us. Many studies have explored decision making in crisis situations
such as natural disasters, or human error or criminal action, such as in the cases of the Tylenol poisoning,
the Maple Leaf meats listeriosis outbreak, the SARS epidemic or the Lac-M.gantic train derailment
(Figure 1.2).
Figure 1.2 Lac-M.gantic Derailment. Psychologists study the causes of poor
judgments such as those made by executives like the three criminally charged in
relation to the Lac-M.gantic train derailment in 2013. This picture was taken from a
S.ret. du Qu.bec helicopter on the day of the derailment.
• Conscious versus unconscious processing. To what extent are we conscious of our own actions and the
causes of them, and to what extent are our behaviours caused by influences that we are not aware of?
Many of the major theories of psychology, ranging from the Freudian psychodynamic theories to
contemporary work in cognitive psychology, argue that much of our behaviour is determined by
variables that we are not aware of.
• Differences versus similarities. To what extent are we all similar, and to what extent are we different?
For instance, are there basic psychological and personality differences between men and women, or are
men and women by and large similar? And what about people from different ethnicities and cultures?
Are people around the world generally the same, or are they influenced by their backgrounds and
environments in different ways? Personality, social, and cross-cultural psychologists attempt to answer
these classic questions.
Early Psychologists
The earliest psychologists that we know about are the Greek philosophers Plato (428-347 BC) and Aristotle
(384-322 BC). These philosophers (see Figure 1.3) asked many of the same questions that today’s psychologists ask;
1.2 THE EVOLUTION OF PSYCHOLOGY: HISTORY, APPROACHES, AND QUESTIONS • 16
for instance, they questioned the distinction between nature and nurture and the existence of free will. In terms of
the former, Plato argued on the nature side, believing that certain kinds of knowledge are innate or inborn, whereas
Aristotle was more on the nurture side, believing that each child is born as an “empty slate” (in Latin, a tabula rasa)
and that knowledge is primarily acquired through learning and experience.
Figure 1.3 Early Psychologists. The earliest psychologists were the Greek Philosophers Plato (left)
and Aristotle (right). Plato believed that much knowledge was innate, whereas Aristotle thought
that each child was born as an “empty slate” and that knowledge was primarily acquired through
learning and experience.
European philosophers continued to ask these fundamental questions during the Renaissance. For instance, the
French philosopher Ren. Descartes (1596-1650) also considered the issue of free will, arguing in its favour and
believing that the mind controls the body through the pineal gland in the brain (an idea that made some sense at the
time but was later proved incorrect). Descartes also believed in the existence of innate natural abilities. A scientist as
well as a philosopher, Descartes dissected animals and was among the first to understand that the nerves controlled
the muscles. He also addressed the relationship between mind (the mental aspects of life) and body (the physical
aspects of life). Descartes believed in the principle of dualism: that the mind is fundamentally different from the
mechanical body. Other European philosophers, including Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704),
and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), also weighed in on these issues. The fundamental problem that these
philosophers faced was that they had few methods for settling their claims. Most philosophers didn’t conduct any
research on these questions, in part because they didn’t yet know how to do it, and in part because they weren’t sure
it was even possible to objectively study human experience. But dramatic changes came during the 1800s with the
help of the first two research psychologists: the German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), who developed
a psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, and the American psychologist William James (1842-1910), who
founded a psychology laboratory at Harvard University.
Structuralism: Introspection and the Awareness of Subjective Experience
Wundt’s research in his laboratory in Leipzig focused on the nature of consciousness itself. Wundt and his students
believed that it was possible to analyze the basic elements of the mind and to classify our conscious experiences
scientifically. Wundt began the field known as structuralism, a school of psychology whose goal was to identify the
basic elements or structures of psychological experience. Its goal was to create a periodic table of the elements of
sensations, similar to the periodic table of elements that had recently been created in chemistry. Structuralists used
the method of introspection to attempt to create a map of the elements of consciousness. Introspection involves
asking research participants to describe exactly what they experience as they work on mental tasks, such as viewing
colours, reading a page in a book, or performing a math problem. A participant who is reading a book might report,
for instance, that he saw some black and coloured straight and curved marks on a white background. In other
studies the structuralists used newly invented reaction time instruments to systematically assess not only what the
participants were thinking but how long it took them to do so. Wundt discovered that it took people longer to report
17 • INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY - 1ST CANADIAN EDITION
what sound they had just heard than to simply respond that they had heard the sound. These studies marked the
first time researchers realized that there is a difference between the sensation of a stimulus and the perception of
that stimulus, and the idea of using reaction times to study mental events has now become a mainstay of cognitive
psychology.
Figure 1.4 Wundt and Titchener. Wilhelm Wundt (seated at left) and Edward Titchener (right)
helped create the structuralist school of psychology. Their goal was to classify the elements of
sensation through introspection.
Perhaps the best known of the structuralists was Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927). Titchener was a student
of Wundt’s who came to the United States in the late 1800s and founded a laboratory at Cornell University (Figure
1.4). (Titchener was later rejected by McGill University (1903). Perhaps he was ahead of his time; Brenda Milner
did not open the Montreal Neurological Institute until 1950.) In his research using introspection, Titchener and his
students claimed to have identified more than 40,000 sensations, including those relating to vision, hearing, and
taste. An important aspect of the structuralist approach was that it was rigorous and scientific. The research marked
the beginning of psychology as a science, because it demonstrated that mental events could be quantified. But the
structuralists also discovered the limitations of introspection. Even highly trained research participants were often
unable to report on their subjective experiences. When the participants were asked to do simple math problems, they
could easily do them, but they could not easily answer how they did them. Thus the structuralists were the first to
realize the importance of unconscious processes—that many important aspects of human psychology occur outside
our conscious awareness, and that psychologists cannot expect research participants to be able to accurately report
on all of their experiences.
Functionalism and Evolutionary Psychology
In contrast to Wundt, who attempted to understand the nature of consciousness, William James and the other
members of the school of functionalism aimed to understand why animals and humans have developed the
particular psychological aspects that they currently possess (Hunt, 1993). For James, one’s thinking was relevant
only to one’s behaviour. As he put it in his psychology textbook, “My thinking is first and last and always
for the sake of my doing” (James, 1890). James and the other members of the functionalist school (Figure 1.5)
were influenced by Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) theory of natural selection, which proposed that the physical
characteristics of animals and humans evolved because they were useful, or functional. The functionalists believed
that Darwin’s theory applied to psychological characteristics too. Just as some animals have developed strong
muscles to allow them to run fast, the human brain, so functionalists thought, must have adapted to serve a particular
function in human experience.
Although functionalism no longer exists as a school of psychology, its basic principles have been absorbed into
psychology and continue to influence it in many ways. The work of the functionalists has developed into the field
1.2 THE EVOLUTION OF PSYCHOLOGY: HISTORY, APPROACHES, AND QUESTIONS • 18
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.
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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
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