• Very broad/How we..
• think
• perceive
• speaking
• remember
• problem solve
• sensation

example: What can interfere with studying?

Can we multitask?/How well?

Study of psychology across a lifetime

Development of:

• Moral reasoning
• Social development
• Issues (death/dying)

Example: How do our reasoning skills or emotional skills change as we age? 

How does parent/infant bonding affect adult relationships?

how brain/mind/behaviors are interconnected

might study brain functions involving:

• learning
• emotion
• social behavior
• mental illness

Example: what mechanisms does meditation alter in the brain?

Relationship between bodily systems and chemicals and how they influence behavior and thought

Example: effect of stress on hormones and behavior

*more broad than B.N.

study of what makes people unique

consistencies in people's behavior across time/situations

Example: 1.)do personality traits change or stay the same?

2.) do our personality traits affect our health/career choice/interpersonal relationships?

how does the prescence of others affect how we act?

could be either real or imagined people

Example: what we decide to wear in the morning may be influenced by how we *think* others will think

LARGEST SUBDISCIPLINE

Studies psychological disorders and treatments

promotion of psych health

Example: what is the most effective treatment for depression?

Roles of psychological factors in physical health and illness

EXAMPLE: 1.) what is the best/most effective behavior modification for treatment of obestity

2.) How stress affects people's lives and is linked to illness/immune

3.) role of social factors to how people interact with health care system

*disease/prevention/rehabilitation

Psychological factors of school

• combination of lots of disciplines (social/cognitive/development)
• attempts with special populations of students

EXAMPLE: 1.) how students learn/ affectiveness of teaching techniques

2.)How teacher anxiety affects students

**different from Educational Psychology

generally practiced by counselors in school settings

**one of fastests growing subdisciplines in psychology

• applies psychological concepts to work settings/problems
• practical focus or research focus

EXAMPLE: 1.)using social/personality info to select people for certain jobs

2.) how programs improve worker productivity/employment satisfaction

Psychological factors in sports and exercise 

• Improving performance through techniques like relaxation and visualization

EXAMPLE: how can meditation improve sporst performance?

Blend of psychology, law, and criminal justice

Often help to

• evaluate person's mental competency to stand trial
• state of mind of a defendant
• fitness of parent to have custody
• allegations of child abuse
• sometimes do criminal profiling

philosophical basis for psychology as a science

Debate began in Ancient Greece with Plato

JOHN LOCKE

• the idea that experience is everything
• We are born witiha blank slate and as we grow we learn from our environment and experiences
• use our senses to observe (extremely important concept)
• -Experience forms us as a person

ERNST WEBER and GUSTAV FECHNER and HERMMAN HELMHOLTZ

• 1st scientific form of psychology; lab studies on subjective experience of physical world
• Connection between sensory stimulus and subjective experience (sensory/perception)

 example: physics study light and sounds, psychophysics studies how people percieve " "

COLOR VISION

memory, pysiology

physics, music theory, meteorology, geometry

• 1879 built the first psych lab in Leipzig Germany

• now considered birth place of experimental psych

• applied scientific method of physiology to questions of philosophy

• 1st to earn a PHD in psych (u.s.)
• Mentored Francis Cecil Sumner (1st african american to get a PHD in psych)

studied with G. Stan. Hall at Harvard

• **founder of American Psychology
• First student of Hall's to get PHD in psych
• opened first psych lab in U.S.
• founded the Amer. Psych. Assoc. (APA)
• brought Sigmund Freud to speak in u.s.

first to complete all course work for psych PHD (fem)

1st woman pres. of APA

• Wilhelm Wundt
• idea of breaking down thought/behavior to their elemental  parts
• *coined by Edward Titchener
• believe detailed analysis of experience as it happened provides most accurate glimpse into working mind
• EUROPEAN STYLE

*introspection

• method of investigation for structuralists and functionalists
• looking into one's own mind for info about nature of experience
• challenged by behaviorism in early 20th century

• seek to understand why the mind works the way it does
• "What function does it serve?"
• CHARLES DARWIN/NATURAL SELECTION
• WILLIAM JAMES
• U.S. Style

EXAMPLE: why do people think, feel, or perceive, and how did these abilities come to be?

• Sigmund Freud
• clinical approach to understand psychological disorders
• unconscience mind=most powerful
• childhood experiences=very important in dev. personality
• mind must defend against unwanted unconscience thought/behavior

JOHN WATSON JOHN LOCKE B.F. SKINNER

due to frustration with Freud b/c it couldn't be proven/disproven

• challenge to introspection = psych should only examine observable behavior
• most clearly explains Locke's tabula rasa idea
• SKINNER made the idea popular
• *consequences shape behavior

EXAMPLE: how rats react w/ food or shock lever

• alternative to both psychoanalysis and behaviorism
• Humanistic: Personal growth and meaning as a way of reaching one's highest potential
• Positive: same but with appreciation for scientivic study

• humanistic psychology
• self actualization and idea that you should work towards the better you (if basic needs met)

• idea that mind perceives tings as whole not compilation of parts
• Reaction against behaviorism: b/c beh. is missing essential part of human experience (thought/feeling/emotion)
• way you think impacts the way you act

used the computer as a model to understand the mind

1. Sensation = input
2. perception = interpretation/processing
3. behavior/thoughts = output

• late 1960s to replace ther term "mental"

nature vs. nurture

Mind-body Dualism

• *more focused now on to what extent each plays a role in behavior
• SIR FRANCIS GALTON
• nature: twin studies, behavior genetics Eugenic (good genes)
• Nurtre: JOHN LOCK (tabula rasa), impact of parenting, influenza, schizophrenia, anything NOT in your genetic code

• idea that mind and body are seperate entities
• idea souls survives bodily death
• Pro: subjective experience (how it feels to you)
• where is the "mind"
• *zombies?
• Monoism: causal interaction
• breain damage (if they were seperate, damage to body aka, brain, wouldn't cause damage to mind)
• Occam's Razor