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The Evolution of Psychology: History, Approaches, and Questions

16 February, 2016 - 09:24

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, and Figure 1.2 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 and Figure 1.2 both represent a selection of the most important schools and people; to mention all the approaches and all the psychologists who have contributed to the field is not possible in one chapter.

The approaches that psychologists have used to assess the issues that interest them have changed dramatically over the history of psychology. Perhaps most importantly, the field has moved steadily from speculation about 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

Structuralism

Uses the method of introspection to identify the basic elements or “structures” of psychological experience

Wilhelm Wundt, Edward B. Titchener

Functionalism

Attempts to understand why animals and humans have developed the particular psychological aspects that they currently possess

William James

Psychodynamic

Focuses on the role of our unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories and our early childhood experiences in determining behavior

Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Erik Erickson

Behaviorism

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

John B. Watson, B. F. Skinner

Cognitive

The study of mental processes, including perception, thinking, memory, and judgments

Hermann Ebbinghaus, Sir Frederic Bartlett, Jean Piaget

Social-cultural

The study of how the social situations and the cultures in which people find themselves influence thinking and behavior

Fritz Heider, Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter

 
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Figure 1.2 Timeline Showing Some of the Most Important Psychologists 
Although it cannot capture every important psychologist, this timeline shows some of the most important contributors to the history of psychology. 

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). 2The 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 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.