This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative

Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without

attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

1
 Preface
When I first started teaching Introduction to Psychology, I found it difficult—much harder than
teaching classes in statistics or research methods. I was able to give a lecture on the sympathetic
nervous system, a lecture on Piaget, and a lecture on social cognition, but how could I link these
topics together for the student? I felt a bit like I was presenting a laundry list of research findings
rather than an integrated set of principles and knowledge. Of course, what was difficult for me
was harder still for my students. How could they be expected to remember and understand all the
many phenomena of psychology? How could they tell what was most important? And why,
given the abundance of information that was freely available to them on the web, should they
care about my approach? My pedagogy needed something to structure, integrate, and motivate
their learning.

Eventually, I found some techniques to help my students understand and appreciate what I found
to be important. First, I realized that psychology actually did matter to my students, but that I
needed to make it clear to them why it did. I therefore created a more consistent focus on the
theme of behavior. One of the most fundamental integrating principles of the discipline of
psychology is its focus on behavior, and yet that is often not made clear to students. Affect,
cognition, and motivation are critical and essential, and yet are frequently best understood and
made relevant through their links with behavior. Once I figured this out, I began tying all the
material to this concept: The sympathetic nervous system matters because it has specific and
predictable influences on our behavior. Piaget’s findings matter because they help us understand
the child’s behavior (not just his or her thinking). And social cognition matters because our
social thinking helps us better relate to the other people in our everyday social lives. This
integrating theme allows me to organize my lectures, my writing assignments, and my testing.

Second was the issue of empiricism: I emphasized that what seems true might not be true, and
we need to try to determine whether it is. The idea of empirical research testing falsifiable
hypotheses and explaining much (but never all) behavior—the idea of psychology as a science—
was critical, and it helped me differentiate psychology from other disciplines. Another reason for
emphasizing empiricism is that the Introduction to Psychology course represents many students’
best opportunity to learn about the fundamentals of scientific research.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

2
The length of existing textbooks was creating a real and unnecessary impediment to student
learning. I was condensing and abridging my coverage, but often without a clear rationale for
choosing to cover one topic and omit another. My focus on behavior, coupled with a consistent
focus on empiricism, helped in this regard—focusing on these themes helped me identify the
underlying principles of psychology and separate more essential topics from less essential ones.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

3
Approach and Pedagogy

I wrote this book to help students organize their thinking about psychology at a conceptual level.
Five or ten years from now, I do not expect my students to remember the details of most of what
I teach them. However, I do hope that they will remember that psychology matters because it
helps us understand behavior and that our knowledge of psychology is based on empirical study.

This book is designed to facilitate these learning outcomes. I have used three techniques to help
focus students on behavior:

1. Chapter openers. I begin my focus on behavior by opening each chapter with a chapter
opener showcasing an interesting real-world example of people who are dealing with
behavioral questions and who can use psychology to help them answer those questions.
The opener is designed to draw the student into the chapter and create an interest in
learning about the topic.

2. Psychology in everyday life. Each chapter contains one or two features designed to link
the principles from the chapter to real-world applications in business, environment,
health, law, learning, and other relevant domains. For instance, the application in Chapter
6 "Growing and Developing"—“What Makes a Good Parent?”—applies the concepts of
parenting styles in a mini handbook about parenting, and the application in Chapter 3
"Brains, Bodies, and Behavior" is about the difficulties that left-handed people face
performing everyday tasks in a right-handed world.

3. Research focus. I have also emphasized empiricism throughout, but without making it a
distraction from the main story line. Each chapter presents two close-ups on research—
well-articulated and specific examples of research within the content area, each including
a summary of the hypotheses, methods, results, and interpretations. This feature provides
a continuous thread that reminds students of the importance of empirical research. The
research foci also emphasize the fact that findings are not always predictable ahead of
time (dispelling the myth of hindsight bias) and help students understand how research
really works.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

4
My focus on behavior and empiricism has produced a text that is better organized, has fewer
chapters, and is somewhat shorter than many of the leading books.

`In short, I think that this book will provide a useful and productive synthesis between your goals
and the goals of your students. I have tried to focus on the forest rather than the trees and to bring
psychology to life—in ways that really matter—for the students. At the same time, the book
maintains content and conceptual rigor, with a strong focus on the fundamental principles of
empiricism and the scientific method.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

5
 Chapter 1
Introducing Psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. 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. Crime dramas such as CSI, Lie to Me, and others feature the
work of forensic psychologists who use psychological principles to help solve crimes. And many
people have direct knowledge about psychology because they have visited psychologists, for
instance, school counselors, family therapists, and religious, marriage, or bereavement
counselors.

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
counseling 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 behavior 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 such topics 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 behavior.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

6
This chapter provides an introduction to the broad field of psychology and the many approaches
that psychologists take to understanding human behavior. 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.

1.1 Psychology as a Science

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Explain why using our intuition about everyday behavior is insufficient for a complete understanding of

the causes of behavior.

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 behavior, whereas psychologist-
practitioners, such as clinical, counseling, industrial-organizational, 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
behavior 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 behavior
(Nisbett & Ross, 1980). [1] 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

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

7
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
behavior. 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 behavior 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 behavior (Heider,
1958; Kelley, 1967). [2]

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 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). [3] 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). [4] 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). [5] 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.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

8
Research Focus: Unconscious Preferences for the Letters of Our Own Name
A study reported in the Journal of Consumer Research (Brendl, Chattopadhyay, Pelham, & Carvallo,
[6]
2005) demonstrates the extent to which people can be unaware of the causes of their own behavior. 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 labeled with made-up Japanese names (e.g., “Mataku” or “Somuta”), and two were labeled 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 needs 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

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

9
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 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 behavior, 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

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

10
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 the
United States 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 "Examples of Values and Facts in Scientific
Research", 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 capital
punishment on the crime rate in the United States may also be determinable. This factual
information can and should be made available to help people formulate their values about
abortion and capital punishment, 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 U.S. government has recently supported and provided
funding for research on HIV, AIDS, and terrorism, while denying funding for research using
human stem cells.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

11
Table 1.1 Examples of Values and Facts in Scientific Research
Personal value Scientific fact

Welfare payments should be reduced for The U.S. government paid more than $21 billion in
unmarried parents. unemployment insurance in 2010.

There were more than 30,000 deaths caused by handguns in the

Handguns should be outlawed. United States in 2009.

More than 35% of college students indicate that blue is their

Blue is my favorite color. favorite color.

It is important to quit smoking. Smoking increases the incidence of cancer and heart disease.

Source: Stangor, C. (2011). Research methods for the behavioral sciences (4th ed.). Mountain View, CA:

Cengage.

Although scientists use research to help establish facts, the distinction between values and facts
is not always clear-cut. Sometimes statements that scientists consider to be factual later, on the
basis of further research, turn out 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
behavior 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 behavior. 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). [7]

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

12
The same topic can be studied within psychology at different levels of explanation, as shown
in Figure 1.3 "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). [8] 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
the United States, Canada, and Europe, than in Eastern cultures, such as in India, China, and
Japan (Chen, Wang, Poland, & Lin, 2009; Seedat et al., 2009). [9] 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 behavior.

Figure 1.3 Levels of Explanation

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). [10]

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

13
A major goal of psychology is to predict behavior 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 behavior, 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

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

14
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 behavior is that almost all behavior 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 behaviors, 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 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 behavior 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 behavior.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior.

• 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.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

15
• 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 behaviors.

• 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 behavior 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 behavior?

[1] Nisbett, R. E., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice Hall.

[2] Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum; 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.

[3] 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;

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.

[4] Gilovich, T. (1993). How we know what isn’t so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life. New York, NY: Free Press.

[5] Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (2007). Social cognition: From brains to culture. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.; 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.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

16
[6] 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.

[7] 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.

[8] 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.

[9] 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; 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.

[10] Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience: The unity of knowledge. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

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 1.2 "The Most Important
Approaches (Schools) of Psychology", and Figure 1.5 "Timeline Showing Some of the Most
Important Psychologists" presents a timeline of some of the most important psychologists,
beginning with the early Greek philosophers and extending to the present day. Table 1.2 "The
Most Important Approaches (Schools) of Psychology" and Figure 1.5 "Timeline Showing Some
of the Most Important Psychologists" 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.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

17
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 behavior toward a more objective and scientific approach as the
technology available to study human behavior has improved (Benjamin & Baker, 2004). [1] There
has also been an increasing 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.

Table 1.2 The Most Important Approaches (Schools) of Psychology

School of
psychology Description Important contributors

Uses the method of introspection to identify the basic elements or Wilhelm Wundt, Edward B.
Structuralism “structures” of psychological experience Titchener

Attempts to understand why animals and humans have developed the

Functionalism particular psychological aspects that they currently possess William James

Focuses on the role of our unconscious thoughts, feelings, and Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung,
Psychodynamic memories and our early childhood experiences in determining behavior Alfred Adler, Erik Erickson

Based on the premise that it is not possible to objectively study the

mind, and therefore that psychologists should limit their attention to John B. Watson, B. F.
Behaviorism the study of behavior itself Skinner

The study of mental processes, including perception, thinking, Hermann Ebbinghaus, Sir
Cognitive memory, and judgments Frederic Bartlett, Jean Piaget

The study of how the social situations and the cultures in which people Fritz Heider, Leon Festinger,
Social-cultural find themselves influence thinking and behavior Stanley Schachter

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

18
Figure 1.5 Timeline Showing Some of the Most Important Psychologists

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

19
Although it cannot capture every important psychologist, this timeline shows some of the most important

contributors to the history of psychology.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

20
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
behavior of individuals and in accounting for differences among people? Most scientists
now agree that both genes and environment play crucial roles in most human behaviors,
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). [2] The proportion of the observed differences on 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 of “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 behaviors 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 behaviors
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
behavior than we think we do (Wegner, 2002). [3]
• Accuracy versus inaccuracy. To what extent are humans good information processors?
Although it appears that people are “good enough” to make sense of the world around
them and to make decent decisions (Fiske, 2003),[4] 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

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

21
 gain material wealth and to see ourselves positively and by emotional responses to the
events that happen to us.
• 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 behaviors 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 behavior 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 asked many of the same questions that today’s
psychologists ask; 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 atabula rasa) and that knowledge
is primarily acquired through learning and experience.

European philosophers continued to ask these fundamental questions during the Renaissance. For
instance, the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) also considered the issue of free
will, arguing in its favor 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

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

22
(the physical aspects of life). Descartes believed in the principle ofdualism: 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 Liepzig 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 colors, 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 colored 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 what sound they had just heard than to simply

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

23
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 theperception of that stimulus,
and the idea of using reaction times to study mental events has now become a mainstay of
cognitive psychology.

Perhaps the best known of the structuralists was Edward Bradford Titchener (1867–1927).
Titchener was a student of Wundt who came to the United States in the late 1800s and founded a
laboratory at Cornell University. 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, the goal of
William James and the other members of the school of functionalism was to understand why
animals and humans have developed the particular psychological aspects that they currently
possess(Hunt, 1993). [5] For James, one’s thinking was relevant only to one’s behavior. As he put
it in his psychology textbook, “My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing”
(James, 1890). [6]

James and the other members of the functionalist school 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

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

24
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 ofevolutionary psychology, a branch of psychology
that applies the Darwinian theory of natural selection to human and animal behavior(Dennett,
1995; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). [7]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 behaviors 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 jealously leads men to be more likely to protect their
mates and guard against rivals, which increases their reproductive success (Buss, 2000). [8]

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). [9] Nevertheless, the evolutionary approach is important to

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

25
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 behavior, which was championed by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
and his followers. Psychodynamic psychology is an approach to understanding human behavior
that focuses on the role of unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories. Freud developed his
theories about behavior through 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 the person could no longer remember.

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 behavior
more generally (Moore & Fine, 1995). [10] The importance of the unconscious in human
behavior, 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.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

26
Behaviorism 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 behaviorism, on the other hand,
were reacting in part to the difficulties psychologists encountered when they tried to use
introspection to understand behavior. Behaviorism 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 behavior itself. Behaviorists 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 behavior without knowing what happens inside the mind. Furthermore,
behaviorists believe that it is possible to develop laws of learning that can explain all behaviors.

The first behaviorist 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 behaviorists began to use these
ideas to explain how events that people and other organisms experienced in their environment
(stimuli) could produce specific behaviors (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 behavior to the presence of the stimulus (Watson & Rayner, 1920; Beck, Levinson, &
Irons, 2009). [11] In the best known of his studies, an 8-month-old 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

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

27
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 behaviorist approach, the boy had learned to associate the white rat with the loud
noise, resulting in crying.

The most famous behaviorist was Burrhus Frederick (B. F.) Skinner (1904–1990), who expanded
the principles of behaviorism and also brought them to the attention of the public at large.
Skinner 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
behaviorism 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 behaviorist approach (Skinner, 1957, 1968, 1972). [12]

Research Focus: Do We Have Free Will?

The behaviorist 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 behaviorists 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 behaviors 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 behavior.

Recent research in psychology has suggested that Skinner and the behaviorists 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 &
[13]
Hallett, 2008; Wegner, 2002). In one demonstration of the misperception of our own free will, neuroscientists
[14]
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 one-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

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

28
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 press as

long as 10 seconds before the participants said that they decided which button to press.

Research has found that we are more likely to think that we control our behavior 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
[15]
apparent causes for the behavior. 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
[16]
was actually the computer that stopped it. And Dijksterhuis, Preston, Wegner, and Aarts (2008) found that

participants who had just been exposed to first-person 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. Because we normally expect that our behaviors 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
[17]
blame the outcome on luck or our teacher (Wegner, 2003).

The behaviorists made substantial contributions to psychology by identifying the principles

of learning. Although the behaviorists 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 as well as the question of free will. The ideas
of behaviorism 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 behavior in terms of the computer, which was
being developed and becoming publicly available at that time. The analogy between the brain

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

29
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 cognitive-developmental 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–), Eleanor Rosch (1938–), and
Amos Tversky (1937–1996).

The War of the Ghosts

The War of the Ghosts was a story 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.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

30
 “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 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.
[18]
He was dead. (Bartlett, 1932)

In its argument that our thinking has a powerful influence on behavior, the cognitive approach
provided a distinct alternative to behaviorism. 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 behaviorist
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 behavior 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). [19] These images are used to diagnose brain disease and injury, but they also allow

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

31
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 behavior. Social-cultural psychologists are particularly
concerned with how people perceive themselves and others, and how people influence each
other’s behavior. 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), [20] that we develop our
own beliefs and attitudes by comparing our opinions to those of others (Festinger, 1954), [21] and
that we frequently change our beliefs and behaviors to be similar to those of the people we care
about—a process known as conformity.

An important aspect of social-cultural 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). [22] 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 theculture 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). [23] 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). [24]

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

32
Psychologists have found that there is a fundamental difference in social norms between Western
cultures (including those in the United States, Canada, 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.

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). [25] 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 the United States, 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 behavior reminds us again of the difficulty of making

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

33
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). [26]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 1.3 "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.apa.org/careers/psyccareers/.

Table 1.3 Some Career Paths in Psychology

Psychology field Description Career opportunities

This field examines the physiological

bases of behavior in animals and
humans by studying the functioning of
different brain areas and the effects of Most biopsychologists work in research settings—for
Biopsychology and hormones and neurotransmitters on instance, at universities, for the federal government, and in
neuroscience behavior. private research labs.

Clinical and counseling psychologists provide therapy to

These are the largest fields of patients with the goal of improving their life experiences.
Clinical and psychology. The focus is on the They work in hospitals, schools, social agencies, and in
counseling assessment, diagnosis, causes, and private practice. Because the demand for this career is
psychology treatment of mental disorders. high, entry to academic programs is highly competitive.

This field uses sophisticated research

methods, including reaction time and Cognitive psychologists work primarily in research
Cognitive brain imaging to study memory, settings, although some (such as those who specialize in
psychology language, and thinking of humans. human-computer interactions) consult for businesses.

Many work in research settings, although others work in

These psychologists conduct research schools and community agencies to help improve and
Developmental on the cognitive, emotional, and social evaluate the effectiveness of intervention programs such
psychology changes that occur across the lifespan. as Head Start.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

34
 Psychology field Description Career opportunities

Forensic psychologists apply

psychological principles to understand Forensic psychologists work in the criminal justice
the behavior of judges, attorneys, system. They may testify in court and may provide
Forensic courtroom juries, and others in the information about the reliability of eyewitness testimony
psychology criminal justice system. and jury selection.

Health psychologists are concerned

with understanding how biology, Health psychologists work with medical professionals in
behavior, and the social situation clinical settings to promote better health, conduct research,
Health psychology influence health and illness. and teach at universities.

There are a wide variety of career opportunities in these

fields, generally working in businesses. These
Industrial-organizational psychology psychologists help select employees, evaluate employee
Industrial- applies psychology to the workplace performance, and examine the effects of different working
organizational and with the goal of improving the conditions on behavior. They may also work to design
environmental performance and well-being of equipment and environments that improve employee
psychology employees. performance and reduce accidents.

These psychologists study people and Most work in academic settings, but the skills of
the differences among them. The goal is personality psychologists are also in demand in business—
to develop theories that explain the for instance, in advertising and marketing. PhD programs
Personality psychological processes of individuals, in personality psychology are often connected with
psychology and to focus on individual differences. programs in social psychology.

School psychologists work in elementary and secondary

This field studies how people learn in schools or school district offices with students, teachers,
School and school, the effectiveness of school parents, and administrators. They may assess children’s
educational programs, and the psychology of psychological and learning problems and develop
psychology teaching. programs to minimize the impact of these problems.

This field examines people’s

interactions with other people. Topics
of study include conformity, group Many social psychologists work in marketing, advertising,
Social and cross- behavior, leadership, attitudes, and organizational, systems design, and other applied
cultural psychology person perception. psychology fields.

This field studies the psychological

aspects of sports behavior. The goal is Sports psychologists work in gyms, schools, professional
Sports psychology to understand the psychological factors sports teams, and other areas where sports are practiced.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

35
 Psychology field Description Career opportunities

that influence performance in sports,

including the role of exercise and team
interactions.

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 effectively study 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,
[27]
Cahill, & Wenk, 2002; McDaniel, Maier, & Einstein, 2002). Memory supplements are usually no more effective

than drinking a can of sugared soda, which also 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

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

36
from the others. As you make the comparisons among 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
[28]
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 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. Then you could put the behaviorists 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
[29]
(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 asmetacognition. 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 1 day and after

2 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.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

37
 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 behaviorists explained behavior 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

behavior.
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 behavior and the level of explanation at which they are focused.

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

Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson.

[2] Harris, J. (1998). The nurture assumption: Why children turn out the way they do. New York, NY: Touchstone Books; Pinker,

S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York, NY: Penguin Putnam.

[3] Wegner, D. M. (2002). The illusion of conscious will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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

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

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

38
[6] James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York, NY: Dover.

[7] Dennett, D. (1995). Darwin’s dangerous idea: Evolution and the meanings of life. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster; Tooby,

J., & Cosmides, L. (1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In J. H. Barkow & L. Cosmides (Eds.), The adapted mind:

Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (p. 666). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

[8] Buss, D. M. (2000). The dangerous passion: Why jealousy is as necessary as love and sex. New York, NY: Free Press.

[9] Gould, S. J., & Lewontin, R. C. (1979). The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: A critique of the

adaptationist programme. In Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (Series B, Vol. 205, pp. 581–598).

[10] Moore, B. E., & Fine, B. D. (1995). Psychoanalysis: The major concepts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

[11] Watson, J. B., Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3(1), 1–14; Beck, H.

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

64(7), 605–614.

[12] Skinner, B. (1957). Verbal behavior. Acton, MA: Copley; Skinner, B. (1968). The technology of teaching. New York, NY:

Appleton-Century-Crofts; Skinner, B. (1972). Beyond freedom and dignity. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

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

Sciences, 8(4), 529–566; Matsuhashi, M., & Hallett, M. (2008). The timing of the conscious intention to move. European Journal

of Neuroscience, 28(11), 2344–2351; Wegner, D. M. (2002). The illusion of conscious will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[14] Soon, C. S., Brass, M., Heinze, H.-J., & Haynes, J.-D. (2008). Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human

brain. Nature Neuroscience, 11(5), 543–545.

[15] Aarts, H., Custers, R., & Wegner, D. M. (2005). On the inference of personal authorship: Enhancing experienced agency by

priming effect information. Consciousness and Cognition: An International Journal, 14(3), 439–458.

[16] Dijksterhuis, A., Preston, J., Wegner, D. M., & Aarts, H. (2008). Effects of subliminal priming of self and God on self-

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

[17] Wegner, D. M. (2003). The mind’s best trick: How we experience conscious will. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(2), 65–69.

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

[19] Ilardi, S. S., & Feldman, D. (2001). The cognitive neuroscience paradigm: A unifying metatheoretical framework for the

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

[20] Byrne, D. (1969). Attitudes and attraction. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 4, pp. 35–

89). New York, NY: Academic Press.

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

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

39
[22] Asch, S. E. (1952). Social psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall; Cialdini, R. B. (1993). Influence: Science and

practice (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Harper Collins College.

[23] Fiske, A., Kitayama, S., Markus, H., & Nisbett, R. (1998). The cultural matrix of social psychology. In D. Gilbert, S. Fiske, & G.

Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology(4th ed., pp. 915–981). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill; Markus, H. R., Kitayama,

S., & Heiman, R. J. (1996). Culture and “basic” psychological principles. In E. T. Higgins & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social

psychology: Handbook of basic principles (pp. 857–913). New York, NY: Guilford Press; Matsumoto, D. (Ed.). (2001). The

handbook of culture and psychology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

[24] Mesoudi, A. (2009). How cultural evolutionary theory can inform social psychology and vice versa. Psychological Review,

116(4), 929–952.

[25] Chan, D. K. S., Gelfand, M. J., Triandis, H. C., & Tzeng, O. (1996). Tightness-looseness revisited: Some preliminary analyses

in Japan and the United States. International Journal of Psychology, 31, 1–12.

[26] Yang, Y.-J., & Chiu, C.-Y. (2009). Mapping the structure and dynamics of psychological knowledge: Forty years of APA

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

[27] Gold, P. E., Cahill, L., & Wenk, G. L. (2002). Ginkgo biloba: A cognitive enhancer?Psychological Science in the Public Interest,

3(1), 2–11; McDaniel, M. A., Maier, S. F., & Einstein, G. O. (2002). “Brain-specific” nutrients: A memory cure? Psychological

Science in the Public Interest, 3(1), 12–38.

[28] Rogers, T. B., Kuiper, N. A., & Kirker, W. S. (1977). Self-reference and the encoding of personal information. Journal of

Personality & Social Psychology, 35(9), 677–688.

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

15(5), 265–268

1.3 Chapter Summary

Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Most psychologists work in research
laboratories, hospitals, and other field settings where they study the behavior 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

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org

40