Review On The Schools of Thought and Areas of Specialization

Review on the Schools of Thought and Areas of Specialization
Recap!
 The 4 Primary Goals of Psychology
 Description
 Explanation
 Prediction
 Control
 Types of Psychological Professionals

 Psychiatrist – M.D.
 Psychologist – Ph.D., Psy.D., Ed.D.
 Psychoanalyst – M.D./Ph.D. with focus on psychoanalysis
 Psychiatric Social Worker – concerned with environmental
factors that affect behavior
Recap!
 School of Thought: Structuralism
 Founded by Edward Titchener, a student of Wilhelm
Wundt’s
 The task of psychology is to analyze consciousness
into its basic elements and investigate how these are
related.
 Every experience could be broken down into its
individual emotions and sensations.
 Study could be done through introspection – the
careful, systematic self-observation of one’s own
conscious experience.
Recap!
 School of Thought: Functionalism
 Founded by William James, and it talks of the
belief that psychology should investigate the
function or purpose of consciousness, rather than
its structure.
 Studies the “stream of consciousness” rather than
the static points in it (individual elements).
 More interested in people’s behavior and the
application to the real world (e.g. Mental testing,
patters of development in children, effectiveness
of educ. practices, etc.)
Recap!
 School of Thought: Gestalt
 Founded by Czech-born psychologist Max
Wertheimer, along with Kurt Koffka and
Wolfgang Kohler.
 The whole is greater than the sum of its parts:
psychological elements like sensation and
perception could not be broken down and still be
properly understood.
 Proposed the belief that people naturally seek out
patterns (or wholes) in the sensory information
available to them.
Recap!
 School of Thought: Psychoanalysis
 Started by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud
 Psychoanalytic theory attempts to explain

personality, motivation, and mental disorders by
focusing on unconscious determinants of behavior.
 Introduced the idea of the unconscious, which

contains thoughts, memories, and desires that are
well below the surface of conscious awareness but
that nonetheless exert great influence on behavior.
Recap!
 School of Thought: Behaviorism
 Founded by John B. Watson, and argues that scientific
psychology should abandon the study of
consciousness completely and study only observable
behavior.
 Behavior – any overt (observable) response or activity
by an organism.
 Nature vs. Nurture: Give me a dozen healthy infants,
well-formed, and my own special world to bring them
up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and
train him to become any type of specialist I might select
– doctor, lawyer, artist, and yes, even beggar and thief.
Recap!
 School of Thought: Behaviorism
 B. F. Skinner – behaviorist who also subscribed to
Watson’s philosophies.
 B.F. Skinner on behavior: Organisms tend to

repeat responses that lead to positive outcomes,
and they tend not to repeat responses that lead to
neutral or negative outcomes.
 People are controlled by their environment: free

will is an illusion.
Recap!
 Modern Perspectives
 Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic
 Unconscious motives and experiences in early
childhood govern personality and mental disorders.
 Behavioral
 Only observable events (s-r relations) can be studied
scientifically.
 Humanistic
 Humans are free, rational beings with the potential
for personal growth, and they are fundamentally
different from animals.
Recap!
 Biopsychological/Biological
 An organism’s functioning can be explained in terms
of the bodily structures and biochemical processes
that underlie behavior.
 Cognitive
 Human behavior cannot be fully understood without
examining how people acquire, store and process
information.
Recap!
 Sociocultural
 How one behaves or thinks is influenced by both the
people around them and the culture they are
exposed to.
 Evolutionary
 Behavior patterns have evolved to solve adaptive
problems.
Areas of Specialization
 Research Areas
 Developmental psychology
 Looks at human development across the life span. Devotes a
great deal of research to adolescence, adulthood, and old age
 Social psychology
 Focuses on interpersonal behavior and the role of social forces
in governing behavior. Typical topics include attitude
formation, prejudice, conformity, attraction, aggression,
intimate relationships, etc.
 Experimental psychology
 Encompasses the traditional core of topics that psychology
focused on heavily in its first half-century as a science:
sensation, perception, learning, conditioning, etc.
 Research Areas
 Physiological psychology
 Examines the influences of genetic factors on
behavior and the role of the brain, nervous system,
endocrine system, and bodily chemicals in the
regulation of behavior.
 Cognitive psychology
 Focuses on “higher” mental processes, such as
memory, reasoning, information processing,
language, problem solving, decision making, and
creativity.
 Research Areas
 Personality psychology
 Is interested in describing and understanding individual’s
consistency in behavior, which represents their
personality; also concerned with the factors that shape
personality and with personality assessment
 Psychometrics
 Is concerned with the measurement of behavior and
capacities, usually through the development of
psychological tests; also concerned with the
development of new techniques for statistical analysis.
 Principal Professional Specialties
 Clinical Psychology
 Focus on the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of
individuals with psychological disorders, as well as
the treatment of less severe behavioral and
emotional problems.
 Counseling Psychology
 Has some overlap with clinical psychology in terms
of methodology, but clientele is different: people
struggling with everyday problems of moderate
severity. This includes family, marital, or career
counseling.
 Principal Professional Specialties
 Educational/School Psychology
 Works on improving curriculum design, achievement
testing, teacher training, and other aspects of the
educational process.
 Industrial-Organizational Psychology
 Performs a wide variety of tasks in the world of
business and industry. These tasks including running
human resource departments, working to improve
staff morale and attitudes, striving to increase job
satisfaction and creativity, etc.
Thursday’s Agenda
 Week 1
 The Scientific Method
 Week 2 – Biological Factors in Behavior
 The Nervous System (Central and Peripheral)

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Review on the Schools of Thought and Areas of Specialization

 Types of Psychological Professionals

 Psychoanalytic theory attempts to explain

 Introduced the idea of the unconscious, which

 B.F. Skinner on behavior: Organisms tend to

 People are controlled by their environment: free

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