History Of Psychology
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History Of Psychology
Psychology is defined as "the scientific study of behavior and mental processes". Philosophical interest in the human mind and behavior dates back to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Persia, Greece, China, and India. Psychology as a field of experimental study began in 1854 in Leipzig, Germany, when Gustav Fechner created the first theory of how judgments about sensory experiences are made and how to experiment on them. Fechner's theory, recognized today as Signal Detection Theory, foreshadowed the development of statistical theories of comparative judgment and thousands of experiments based on his ideas (Link, S. W. Psychological Science, 1995). In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt founded the first psychological laboratory dedicated exclusively to psychological research in Leipzig, Germany. Wundt was also the first person to refer to himself as a ''psychologist''. A notable precursor to Wundt was Ferdinand Ueberwasser (1752–1812), who designated himself ''Professor of Empirical Psychol ...
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Psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feelings, and motivation, motives. Psychology is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the Natural science, natural and social sciences. Biological psychologists seek an understanding of the Emergence, emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups.Hockenbury & Hockenbury. Psychology. Worth Publishers, 2010. A professional practitioner or researcher involved in the discipline is called a psychologist. Some psychologists can also be classified as Behavioural sciences, behavioral or Cognitive science, cognitive scientists. Some psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in i ...
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Experimental Psychology
Experimental psychology is the work done by those who apply Experiment, experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ Research participant, human participants and Animal testing, animal subjects to study a great many topics, including (among others) Sense, sensation, perception, memory, cognition, learning, motivation, emotion; Developmental psychology, developmental processes, social psychology, and the Neuroscience, neural substrates of all of these. History Early experimental psychology Wilhelm Wundt Experimental psychology emerged as a modern academic discipline in the 19th century when Wilhelm Wundt introduced a mathematical and experimental approach to the field. Wundt founded the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany. Other experimental psychologists, including Hermann Ebbinghaus and Edward Titchener, included introspection in their experimental methods. Charles Bell Charles Bell was ...
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Operant Conditioning
Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process in which voluntary behaviors are modified by association with the addition (or removal) of reward or aversive stimuli. The frequency or duration of the behavior may increase through reinforcement or decrease through punishment or Extinction (psychology), extinction. Origins Operant conditioning originated with Edward Thorndike, whose law of effect theorised that behaviors arise as a result of consequences as satisfying or discomforting. In the 20th century, operant conditioning was studied by Behaviorism, behavioral psychologists, who believed that much of mind and behaviour is explained through environmental conditioning. Reinforcements are environmental stimuli that increase behaviors, whereas punishments are stimuli that decrease behaviors. Both kinds of stimuli can be further categorised into positive and negative stimuli, which respectively involve the addition or removal of environmental stim ...
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John B
John Bryn Williams (born 1977), known as John B, is an English disc jockey and electronic music producer. He is widely recognised for his eccentric clothing, wild hair, and his production of several cutting edge drum and bass tracks. John B ranked number 76 in '' DJ Magazine''s 2010 Top 100 DJs annual poll, announced on 27 October 2010. Career Williams was born on 12 July 1977 in Maidenhead, Berkshire. He started producing music around the age of 14, and now is the head of drum and bass record label Beta Recordings, together with its more specialist drum and bass sub-labels Nu Electro, Tangent, and Chihuahua. He also has releases on Formation Records, Metalheadz and Planet Mu. Williams was ranked 92nd drum and bass DJ on the 2009 '' DJ Magazine'' top 100. Style While his trademark sound has evolved through the years, it generally involves female vocals and trance-like synths (a style which has been dubbed "trance and bass", "trancestep" and "futurestep" by listeners). Hi ...
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Behaviorism
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understand the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex elicited by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior, deriving from Skinner's two levels of selection: phylogeny and ontogeny. they focus primarily on environmental events. The cognitive revolution of the late 20th century largely replaced behaviorism as an explanatory theory with cognitive psychology, which unlike behaviorism views internal mental states as explanations for observable behavior. Behaviorism emerged in the early 1900s as a reaction to depth psychology and other traditional forms of psychology, which often had diffic ...
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Edward Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener (11 January 1867 – 3 August 1927) was an English psychologist who studied under Wilhelm Wundt for several years. Titchener is best known for creating his version of psychology that described the structure of the mind: structuralism (psychology), structuralism. After becoming a professor at Cornell University, he created the largest doctoral program at that time in the United States. His first graduate student, Margaret Floy Washburn, became the first woman to be granted a PhD in psychology (1894). Biography Education and early life Titchener's parents, Alice Field Habin and John Titchener, eloped to marry in 1869 and his mother was disowned by her prominent Sussex family. His father held a series of posts as a clerk or in accountancy before dying of tuberculosis in 1879. The family, of five surviving children (4 girls, 1 boy), moved at least 10 times during this time. When he was 9, Titchener was sent to live with his paternal grandparents and two ...
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Psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious mind, unconscious processes and their influence on conscious mind, conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on The Interpretation of Dreams, dream interpretation, psychoanalysis is also a talk therapy method for treating of mental disorders."All psychoanalytic theories include the idea that unconscious thoughts and feelings are central in mental functioning." Milton, Jane, Caroline Polmear, and Julia Fabricius. 2011. ''A Short Introduction to Psychoanalysis''. Sage Group, SAGE. p. 27."What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might be considered an unfortunately abbreviated description, Freud said that anyone who recognizes transference and resistance is a psychoanalyst, even if he comes to conclusions other than his own. … I prefer to think ...
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Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the Psyche (psychology), psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it. Freud was born to Galician Jews, Galician Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Příbor, Freiberg, in the Austrian Empire. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna. Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology and became an affiliated professor in 1902. Freud lived and worked in Vienna having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. Following the Anschluss, German annexation of Austria in March 1938, Freud left Austria to escape Nazi persecution. He died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1939. In ...
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Anthropometry
Anthropometry (, ) refers to the measurement of the human individual. An early tool of biological anthropology, physical anthropology, it has been used for identification, for the purposes of understanding human physical variation, in paleoanthropology and in various attempts to correlate physical with racial and psychological traits. Anthropometry involves the systematic measurement of the physical properties of the human body, primarily dimensional descriptors of body size and shape. Since commonly used methods and approaches in analysing living standards were not helpful enough, the anthropometric history became very useful for historians in answering questions that interested them. Today, anthropometry plays an important role in industrial design, clothing design, ergonomics and architecture where statistical data about the distribution of body dimensions in the population are used to optimize products. Changes in lifestyles, nutrition, and ethnic composition of populations ...
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Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton (; 16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911) was an English polymath and the originator of eugenics during the Victorian era; his ideas later became the basis of behavioural genetics. Galton produced over 340 papers and books. He also developed the statistical concept of correlation and widely promoted regression toward the mean. He was the first to apply statistical methods to the study of human differences and inheritance of intelligence, and introduced the use of questionnaires and Statistical survey, surveys for collecting data on human communities, which he needed for genealogical and biographical works and for his anthropometrics, anthropometric studies. He popularised the phrase "nature versus nurture". His book ''Hereditary Genius'' (1869) was the first social scientific attempt to study genius and greatness. As an investigator of the human mind, he founded psychometrics and differential psychology, as well as the lexical hypothesis of personality. ...
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James McKeen Cattell
James McKeen Cattell (May 25, 1860 – January 20, 1944) was the first professor of psychology in the United States, teaching at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He was a long-time editor and publisher of scientific journals and publications, including ''Science'', and served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as Society for Science from 1921 to 1944. At the beginning of Cattell's career, many scientists regarded psychology simply as a minor field of study, or as a pseudoscience like phrenology. Cattell helped establish psychology as a legitimate science, worthy of study at the highest levels of the academy. At the time of his death, ''The New York Times'' credited him as "the dean of American science." Cattell was uncompromisingly opposed to American involvement in World War I. Baron cites C. S. Gruber (1972), "Academic freedom at Columbia University: The case of James McKeen Cattell", ''AAUP Bulletin'', Autumn, pp. 297-305, with respect to C ...
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Lightner Witmer
Lightner Witmer (June 28, 1867 – July 19, 1956) was an American psychologist. He introduced the term " clinical psychology" and is often credited with founding the field that it describes. Witmer created the world's first "psychological clinic" at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896, including the first journal of clinical psychology and the first clinical hospital school in 1907. Witmer contributed to numerous branches of psychology including school psychology. He contributed to the field of special education. Little is known about Witmer's life. He is described as an introverted and private person. Early life Witmer was born in Philadelphia on June 28, 1867. He was born David L. Witmer Jr., but at age 50, he changed his name to Lightner. Witmer was born to a devout Catholic mother and father: David Witmer, a Germantown pharmacist who graduated from a Philadelphia College in 1862; and Katherine Huchel, about whom little is known. He was the eldest of four children, foll ...
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