PSYC 2000 : PSYC Test 1 Notes
Document Summary
What is psychology: definition: the scientific study of behavior and mental processes, behavior: any action, mental processes: perceptions, thoughts, feelings, latent constructs: unobservable processes aka mental processes. Goals of psychology: describe, explain, predict, control. Pre-psychology (ancient philosophy: aristotle: tabula rasa, clean state, plate: believed mind pre-existed. Pre-psychology (modern philosophy: rationalist, cartesian dualism (physical vs mental, mind is made of something different from the body, empiricist (only way to have knowledge of anything is through observation, locke, hume, berkley. Psychophysics (1840s ish: weber, just noticeable difference, fechner, stimulus intensity, ebbinghaus. Gestalt psychology: argued against behaviorism and structuralism, the whole is different than the sum of its parts, visual illusions, muller-lyer illusion, kamizsa triangle illusion, old lady and young lady. Scientific method: scientific method: a system for reducing bias and error in the measurement of data, use in psychology to accomplish the goals of description, explanation, prediction, and control.
