PSYC 2000 Chapter : Chapter 1 Notes
Document Summary
1/21/2016 10:53:00 pm: scientific study of behavior and mental processes, behavior any action, mental processes perceptions, thought, feelings, latent construct: cannot be directly observed. Goals of psychology: describe, explain, predict, control. History of psychology: pre-psychology (ancient philosophy, aristotle, tabula rasa: means blank slate. Based on wax slate used to write on. The human mind is a blank slate which experience writes upon: plato, the mind pre-exists, modern philosophy, rene descartes, rationalists, cartesian dualism (physical and mental) Hume: known for being the most ardent, thought there was no such thing as cause, psychophysics (1840"s ish) Berkley: weber, how we perceive intensity, just noticeable difference (jnd) For us to notice a difference between two things there must be at least a 5% difference between the two things: feshner, stimulus intensity, ebbinghaus. Structualism (mentalism: wilhelm wundt, faster of modern psychology, academic family tree. Over half the psychologists today would trace back to wundt.
