PSY 111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Terror Management Theory, Empiricism, Psy

• School: Tunxis Community College
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 111
• Professor: Percy

Document Summary

Focuses on the role of the external environment in shaping and governing our actions: behaviour influenced by learned habits and by stimuli in the environment. John watson lead movement of behaviourism in 1920s: proper subject matter of psychology is observable behaviour, not unobservable inner consciousness, devoted efforts to discovering laws that govern learning and performance. B. f. skinner believed mental events, images, and feelings from within are behaviours and not causes. Behaviour modification techniques alter problem behaviours and increase positive behaviours through alterations in environmental factors. Emphasizes free will, innate tendencies towards growth, and attempt to find ultimate: rejected images of behaviour control from unconscious forces. Understand role of internal personality processes, but stress importance of conscious motives, freedom, and choice. Active force toward growth and self-actualization (reaching individual potential) Terror management theory constructs reality, often involving afterlife and sense of order and stability, to have sense of personal value.