Professional Documents
Culture Documents
HISTORY AND
PHILOSOPHY OF
PSYCHOLOGY
Dr Chavi Bhargava Sharma
Dr Anita Gupta
Self-Test 2 41
References 41
Topic 5 Behaviourism 99
5.1 Introduction to Behaviourism 99
5.1.1 What is Behaviourism? 100
5.1.2 History of Behaviourism 100
5.2 Foundations of Behaviourism 103
5.2.1 Watsonian Behaviourism 103
5.2.2 Watsonian Behaviourism: Systematic Criteria 104
5.2.3 Methodological Behaviourism 105
5.2.4 Watsons Views and Concepts 106
5.3 Psychology and Science of Behaviour 111
Summary 113
Key Terms 114
Self-Test 1 114
Self-Test 2 114
References 114
INTRODUCTION
ABPG1203 History and Philosophy of Psychology is one of the courses offered
by the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences at Open University Malaysia (OUM).
This course is worth 3 credit hours and should be covered over 8 to 15 weeks.
COURSE AUDIENCE
This course is offered to all learners taking the Bachelor of Psychology with
Honours programme.
STUDY SCHEDULE
It is a standard OUM practice that learners accumulate 40 study hours for every
credit hour. As such, for a three-credit hour course, you are expected to spend
120 study hours. Table 1 gives an estimation of how the 120 study hours could be
accumulated.
Study
Study Activities
Hours
Briefly go through the course content and participate in initial discussions 3
Study the module 60
Attend 3 to 5 tutorial sessions 10
Online Participation 12
Revision 15
Assignment(s), Test(s) and Examination(s) 20
TOTAL STUDY HOURS ACCUMULATED 120
COURSE OUTCOMES
By the end of this course, you should be able to:
COURSE SYNOPSIS
This course is divided into 10 topics. The synopsis for each topic can be listed as
follows:
Topic 9 discusses the new structuralism, the new mentalism, and analyses the
concept of professional psychology.
Learning Outcomes: This section refers to what you should achieve after you
have completely covered a topic. As you go through each topic, you should
frequently refer to these learning outcomes. By doing this, you can continuously
gauge your understanding of the topic.
Summary: You will find this component at the end of each topic. This component
helps you to recap the whole topic. By going through the summary, you should
be able to gauge your knowledge retention level. Should you find points in the
summary that you do not fully understand, it would be a good idea for you to
revisit the details in the module.
Key Terms: This component can be found at the end of each topic. You should go
through this component to remind yourself of important terms or jargon used
throughout the module. Should you find terms here that you are not able to
explain, you should look for the terms in the module.
PRIOR KNOWLEDGE
Learners are not required to take any pre-requisite course prior to this.
ASSESSMENT METHOD
Please refer to myVLE.
REFERENCES
Brennan, J. F. (1998). History and systems of psychology. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Fancher, R. E., & Yahaya, M. (1994). Perintis psikologi. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia:
Dewan Bahasa Pustaka
Leahey, T. H. (1991). A history of modern psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Smith, N. W. (2001). Current systems in psychology: History, theory, research,
and applications. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
X INTRODUCTION
Perhaps the most fascinating and mysterious universe of all is the one within
us.
In academic terms, psychology is the study of the mind and behaviour. The
discipline embraces all aspects of the human experience from the functions of
the brain to the actions of nations, from child development to care for the aged.
In every conceivable setting from scientific research centres to mental healthcare
services, the understanding of behaviour is the enterprise of psychologists
(American Psychological Association, 2015).
Definition of Psychology
The first attempt to define psychology was made on the basis of its
terminological derivation. The word psychology comes from the Greek words
psyche which means the soul and logos which means to study or know
about. Thus, psychology was defined as the study of the soul.
The term behaviour refers to actions and responses that we can directly
observe; it is everything we do that can be observed directly. Since behaviour is
so complex, the scientific study poses many special challenges.
The term mental processes refer to internal states and processes such as
thoughts and feelings that cannot be seen directly and that must be inferred from
observable, measurable responses. Although our thoughts, feelings, motives,
memory and our private experiences are not visible and observed directly, they
are very real. All of these form part of our mental processes and the mind.
SELF-CHECK 1.1
One of the hallmarks of taking the scientific approach involves adopting the
scientific method. The scientific method is essentially a four step process:
(a) Conceptualising a problem;
(b) Collecting research information or data collection;
(c) Analysing the data; and
(d) Drawing conclusions or making inferences.
Theories organise and connect observations and research. The overall meaning of
the large amounts of research studies being conducted in psychology would be
difficult to grasp if theories did not provide a structure for summarising and
understanding them and putting them in a context with other research studies.
SELF-CHECK 1.2
The following are the descriptions of the five main steps involved in a scientific
method.
(a) Observation
The first step in a scientific method is to observe the object of study closely
and carefully. This observation requires the various types of apparatus and
instruments used to be correct and exact.
Basically, there are three requirements which are as shown in Figure 1.2:
(b) Recording
Another step in the scientific method is the recording of whatever is
observed. This requires detached objectivity.
(c) Classification
After the data are gathered, the scientist classifies according to facts. As
Karl Pearson writes, The classification of facts, the recognition of their
sequence and relative significance is the function of the science. The
classification is done in such a way that a certain relation and pattern may
be observed in the scattered data.
Copyright Open University Malaysia (OUM)
6 X TOPIC 1 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF PSYCHOLOGY
(d) Generalisation
It means that if scientific laws are discovered in the classified data and hold
true for the larger population, they may be generalised.
(e) Verification
The last step is verification of the laws that have been discovered. Scientific
facts are veridical. They can be verified by anyone under suitable conditions.
From what is done and said, psychologists can and do make inferences about the
feelings, attitudes, thoughts and other mental processes which may be behind the
behaviour. In this way, internal mental events can be studied as they manifest
themselves through what people do their behaviour. Thus, it is through
behaviour that we can actually study and come to understand internal processes
that would otherwise be hidden from us. When we define psychology as science
of behaviour, we are not excluding the mind; we are saying that what a person
does his or her behaviour is the avenue through which internal mental events
can be studied. This proves that psychology is a science.
The scope of modern psychology stretches from the borders of medicine and the
biological sciences to those of the social sciences. Because we are biological
creatures living in a complex social world, psychologists study an amazing array of
factors to understand why people behave, think and feel as they do. Psychology is
also intricately related to many disciplines as shown in the Table 1.1.
But, whether our brain activities cause our associated thoughts or vice-
versa is still actively in debate. However, many psychologists consider our
thoughts and our brain activity as one in one.
Scientist still engage in this fundamental argument, that is, which one is most
important, our heredity or our environment especially in terms of learning.
Since man existed, he sought to explain, find the cause, understand and predict
natural events and his behaviour. Various people at different times sought to
explain the causes of human behaviour and so there are diverse and divergent
systems and views. History of psychology can be divided into the pre-scientific
phase and the scientific phase.
Psychology more than any other science has had its pseudo-scientific period no
less than its scientific period (Baldwin, 1913). The occultisms, spiritisms,
mysticisms, psychic magic, pseudo-religious isms of all times, earliest and
modern, and of all races, oriental and occidental, have claimed the right to name
themselves psychological. Each makes pretence to a specific way of thinking of or
interpreting the mind, soul and spirit whatever the spiritual principle is known
for. Each reflects how a period a succession of men has understood and
endeavoured to elucidate its own mental being and activity. This is the sort of
thing we souls are, say uniformly the sorcerers, the ghost-seers, the spiritual
prophets and the speculative thinkers.
We are animated bodies, we are warm air, we are astral presences, we are
indivisible atoms, we are ghosts in migration, we are the seeds of things,
we are fallen gods, we are pure spirit all these and many more are kinds of
psychosophic opinions which have at one time or another gained currency and
played their role in practical and social life. They are only by indulgence
permitted to be called science.
We will now discuss the history of the pre-scientific era in detail in the following
paragraphs:
Plato derived another view from Aristotle's empiricism called rationalism. This
view emphasised reasoning as the form of understanding phenomena. For
him, knowledge is derived from reason which is as valid as the reason itself.
Plato replaced the essence that Socrates sought with the concept of
form as the aspects of reality that was permanent and therefore
knowable. He believed knowledge existed in two worlds, which are,
World of Phenomena and World of Forms. He also established a
form of thought that is now referred to as Moral Psychology. He
died in 347 BC.
(iii) Aristotle (384 to 322 BC)
He was a Greek philosopher who was the founder of formal logic. He
disagreed that knowledge relied on reasoning not sensory experience.
According to him, knowledge should be based on observations of the
external world.
When did the scientific era of psychology begin? Psychology was a branch of
philosophy until 1879, when psychology developed as an independent scientific
discipline after Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) founded the first laboratory
dedicated exclusively to psychological research in Leipzig, Germany.
All these roots have greatly influenced psychology and helped establish
psychology as a discipline and gave birth to the various schools of psychology.
Each of these schools sought to explain behaviour in diverse ways and have
contributed to the development of psychology as a science.
(b) Functionalism
Functionalism can be defined as a philosophy of the mind according to
which mental states are defined by their causes and effects. As interest in
psychology grew, many were not satisfied with structuralism and felt
compelled to initiate new systems and explanations. This was founded by a
group of psychologists in Chicago University John Dewey, James Angel,
Harvey Carr, Cattell and others.
(c) Associationism
Associationism can be defined as a theory that states that association is the
basic principle of mental activity. Associationism refers to the idea that
mental processes operate by the association of one state with its successor
states.
(d) Behaviourism
The term behaviourism refers to the school of psychology founded by
John B. Watson. The thought for the initiation was based on the belief that
behaviours can be measured, trained and changed. Behaviourism was
established with the publication of Watson's classic paper Psychology as the
behaviourist views it (Watson, 1913). This school of psychology regarded
the objective observation of the behaviour of organisms as the only proper
subject for study. It refused to postulate any intervening mechanisms
between the stimulus and the response.
The school emerged against structuralism. John Watson was the father of
behaviourism. He was a trained functionalist but he became dissatisfied
with functionalism. Watson did not believe that consciousness could be
studied scientifically since one had to rely on subjective reports of
individuals trained in introspection. The proper subject matter for
psychology he maintained was behaviour and only behaviour. The
behaviourists emphasised that behaviour was learned and they rejected the
idea of instincts. They stated that the environment shapes the individual.
Watson's ideas were reinforced by Pavlov's experiments.
(f) Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis was born in the twentieth century with the publication of
Interpretation of dreams in 1900 by Sigmund Freud (Freud, 1924).
Carl Jung and Alfred Adler were two of Freud's students who later
disagreed with Freud and established their distinct approaches of
analytical psychology and individual psychology respectively.
Freud's theory generated lot of controversies and diverse views and led to
many psychologists attempting to modify and bring flexibility in Freudian
theory. They constituted the Neo-Freudians like Karen Horney, Eric
Fromm, Eric Erikson and H.S. Sullivan.
Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and a few others emphasised the role of a
person as an integrated, unique and organised whole. To know a person as
a whole, one needs to collect information about the person's whole life
story. Self-realisation or actualisation is the basic and ultimate goal of an
individual's life. The nature of an individual is basically good and possesses
creative and positive potentialities.
Table 1.2: Summary of Subject Matter and Goal According to Classical Psychological
System
The Psychology
School of Subject Matter Goal
Thought
Pre-ancient Research on clinical Improvement in treatment cases.
period (1550 BC) depression
Greek period (500 Nature of knowledge Led to naturalistic observation, analysis
to 300 BC) and the essence of things and classification of natural phenomena
into meaningful descriptive categories,
formulation of hypotheses of cause and
effect on the basis of such analyses; and
value of quantitative methods (Euclid
and Pythagoras).
Islam period (981 Mental issues Huge improvement upon the treatment
to 1406 CE) of European ideas of demonic
possession and witchs curses.
Structuralism Elementary structures of Academic: goal to set psychology apart
(1880 to 1920) consciousness from philosophy; sensation, attention,
*Main idea: Introspection judgments and affective states.
(mental reduction)
Darwin Humans and animals Led to comparative psychology and
(1900 to 2000) have a lot in common researchers making inferences about
human behaviours such as learning,
memory, emotions and even social
interactions based on observations and
experiments with animals. Also led to
research on individual differences.
Functionalism Functions (mental Utilitarian: education, mental illness,
(1890 to1930) processes) developmental.
*Main idea: Evolutionary,
eclectic
SELF-CHECK 1.3
ACTIVITY 1.1
1. As soon as you finish reading subtopic 1.3, prepare a flow chart
explaining the history of psychology.
2. Think about the various schools of psychology and choose your
favourite school and the reason for choosing so.
The scope of modern psychology stretches from the borders of medicine and
the biological sciences to those of the social sciences.
It can be said that psychology has a long past but a short history. It has a long
past because the roots of psychology lie in our curiosity to understand
ourselves and understand our fellowmen. But psychology has a short history
because it emerged as an organised body of scientific inquiry only in the last
hundred odd years.
History can be divided into the pre-scientific phase and the scientific phase,
wherein the pre-scientific era refers to ancient Greek philosophers and to the
period of Islam.
Behaviourism Psychoanalysis
Humanistic psychology Psychology
Pre-scientific era Scientific era
Passer, M. W., & Smith, R. E. (2003). Psychology: The science of mind and
behaviour. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
1. Discuss the psychology of Wilhelm Wundt;
2. Describe the historical background of structuralism;
3. Explain the theoretical orientation of Edward B. Titchener; and
4. Describe the theoretical tenets of Franz Brentano.
X INTRODUCTION
Consciousness means awareness. It has become a new approach in psychology.
The structural psychology of Wundt and Titchener had a threefold aim which are
to describe the components of consciousness in terms of basic elements; to
describe the combinations of basic elements; and to explain the connections of the
elements of consciousness to the nervous system. Consciousness was defined as
immediate experience, that is, experience as it is being experienced. Mediate
experience, in contrast, is flavoured by contents already in the mind such as
previous associations and the emotional and motivational states of a person. The
immediate experience was presumed to be unprejudiced by mediate experience.
The experimental method proposed to secure appropriate analysis of the mental
contents via introspection. In this topic, we are going to discuss psychology of
consciousness in detail.
Wundt was born in the south-western German province of Baden and was the
son of a Lutheran pastor. During his childhood and adolescence, he was allowed
only a strict regimen of learning, with little or no time for play or idleness. This
upbringing produced a rather serious person, totally committed to intellectual
endeavours of a systematic kind. He studied physiology and finished his
doctorate in medicine and joined Helmholtz in his laboratory. Between 1873 and
1874, Wundt published his works on the call for psychology as a new discipline.
The impetus for Wundt's work on the Outlines came from the 1893 publication of
Oswald Klpe's Grundriss der Psychologie. Wundt's objective was not only to
offer students an introduction to psychology but to offer a counter text to that of
Klpe that would provide students with the correct idea of the nature and
scope of psychology. He made a clear distinction between psychology and
natural science, defining psychology in such a way as to preclude its reduction to
biology, divulging the full range of complex psychological phenomena beyond
sensation, arguing for a severe restriction of the role of experimentation in
psychology and recognising the theoretical importance of purely psychological
constructs.
In discussing these more complex phenomena, Wundt made it clear that he did
not, by any means, share faith in the broad relevance of the experimental
method. Wundt drew a sharp distinction between those aspects of psychology
for which experimentation was useful (viz., the analysis of simpler psychical
processes in the individual) and those for which it was not (viz., the more
complex psychical processes of value and meaning elaborated in interactions
between individuals). For Wundt, the higher processes were unapproachable by
means of experiment.
In the last section of the book, Wundt (1897) laid out his argument for the
necessity of purely psychological constructs. Re-emphasising the distinction
between psychology (which studies immediate experience dependent on the
experiencing subject) and natural science (which studies mediate experience in
abstraction from the subject), and arguing that the parallelism between mediate
and immediate experience was only partial. Wundt pointed to the existence of
phenomena that lie entirely outside the sphere of experience to which the
principle of parallelism applies.
Purely psychological phenomena of this sort (for example, value, meaning and
purpose) could, for Wundt, only be understood through psychological analysis.
Moreover, the existence of such phenomena required the recognition of an
independent psychical causality, just as physical causality as the point of view
adopted in psychology is different from the point of view taken in the natural
sciences. In psychical causality, Wundt believed that he had found the basis not
only for psychology's right to exist in independence of biology, but for
psychology's claim to serve as the foundation for all of the human sciences. It is
hardly any wonder that he loathed seeing this principle lost in an over
assimilation of psychology to natural science (Wundt, 1897).
The view that it is not a difference in the objects of experience, but in the way of
treating experience, that distinguishes psychology from natural science has
come to be recognised more and more in modern psychology.
On the basis of these three general principles, his theoretical orientation can be
summarised as follows:
(a) Psychologists should construct theory from phenomena and, consequently,
construction of theory produces a hunt for data. All scientific research looks
for underlying causal relationships that are logical.
(b) Dualist orientation and major focus was on mental processes and examined
behaviour that reflected mental processes.
(c) Voluntarism was a concept given by him. It states that all psychic activity is
influenced by the will. Cognitive processes never occur in a vacuum. They
are always influenced by the motives of people. Humans are not rational
organisms.
(d) Apperception (experiences related to past) is the process by which a mental
event enters the focal area of consciousness and involves the manifestation
of volition.
(e) Consciousness is a process of creative synthesis. Mental constructions from
component processes always produce novel consequences. The whole is
different than the sum of the parts.
(f) The principle of Psychological Relations states that there is an innate level
of organisation operating in the human mind that prevents psychical
phenomena from being reduced to a level that would destroy an organism.
This allows for the elementary processes of the mind to occur in an
organised fashion rather than a series of discrete events.
(g) The principle of Psychological Contrasts states that opposing mental
experiences intensify each other. Thus experiences are relative, not
absolute.
(h) The principle of Heterogeneity of Ends occurs due to developmental
changes that occur in individual's social groups. Emergent unanticipated
results, not originally planned for, will inevitably occur.
(i) The principle of Mental Growth states that mental development occurs in a
manner similar to embryological development.
(j) The principle of Development Toward Opposites states that cyclical
patterns of development characterise both individuals and society.
Activities tend to fluctuate between two opposite extremes. One type of
mental experience increases the tension to operate in the opposite manner.
(k) Wundt studied three phenomena: cognitions, emotions and motivations.
His goal was to isolate each construct for study and then see how each was
integrated. Emotion drives cognition and motivation drives them both.
Voluntary attention processes are the units of consciousness. All
psychological constructs need to be construed in willing terms.
(l) To understand immediate experience, one needs to determine the elements
of consciousness; determine the mechanisms responsible for synthesis;
discover the laws guiding synthesis and examine the inputs for conscious
experience which are memory and sensory inputs.
No. Contributions
1. Founded the first laboratory and established experimental psychology as a
discipline.
2. He taught the first course in psychology; founded the first department of
psychology; founded the first journal (Philosophische Studien) and wrote the first
textbook (Gundzge der physiologische Psychologie).
3. He came up with the idea of voluntarism. He studied the ideas of will and
choice, or voluntary action or movement, etc. He stated that all psychic activity
is influenced by the will. His programme was all about applying to psychology
the principles that had made physiology scientific in the previous decades
(Helmholtz, et al.). This was precisely what was meant by "physiological
psychology.
4. He developed the technique of introspection to study behaviour objectively.
Introspection is the examination of one's own thoughts, feelings or mental states.
Wundt argued that conscious mental states could be scientifically studied using
introspection.
5. He believed consciousness could be broken down (or reduced) to its basic
elements without sacrificing any of the properties of the whole. Wundt
concentrated on three areas of mental functioning; thoughts, images and feelings.
The basic mental activity was designated by Wundt as apperception. These are
the basic areas studied today in cognitive psychology. This means that the study
of perception can be traced back to Wundt.
6. He also conducted a number of memory experiments. He investigated
phenomena through experiments that would fall under the modern headings of
iconic memory, short-term memory and the enactment and generation effects.
7. The first experimental studies on memory are his contributions. The oft-forgotten
Folk Psychology is one of them. Of the 10 volumes of that work, only one
condensed volume has appeared in English.
SELF-CHECK 2.1
Titchener was one of Wundts students who imported Wundts system to the US.
Titchener was born in southern England to a family of old lineage but with little
money. He entered Oxford University on a scholarship to study philosophy and
got interested in Wundt's writings. However, since Wundts writings were not
accepted in Oxford, Titchener resolved to go to Leipzig and work directly under
Titchener carried the basic ideas of Wilhelm Wundt to the US. Titchener called
Wundt's ideas structuralism, and tried to study the structure of mental life or
consciousness. He also coined the term structuralism and functionalism.
each element of the mind is, how those elements interact with each other and
why they interact in the ways that they do was the basis of reasoning that
Titchener used in trying to find structure to the mind. This approach is known as
structuralism.
The objectives of structuralism were to analyse the sum total of mental processes;
identify their elements; discover the laws of connection among the elements; and
determine the correlations between the mind as well as the nervous system. In
Titchener's structuralism, the subject matter of psychology is experience,
dependent on the experiencing person. The problem of psychology involves the
questions What, How and Why. What questions deal with the basic elements
of the subject; How questions deal with appearances of things, and Why
questions deal with the causes of observed phenomena. Adding meaning to the
experience (such as using names, functions, prior experiences, etc.) was called
stimulus error, or reading unwanted meanings into experience.
Psychology, for Titchener was about conscious experience from the perspective
of the person who was actually experiencing it, that is, not objective time but
time as it is experienced. For example, sometimes one hour seems longer than
another, though the objective reality is the same.
Titchener attempted to reduce the complex experience into smaller parts. Wundt
tried to make a synthesis from smaller parts. Titchener also held a mechanistic
view. For him, observers could operate like machines. They were like
measuring instruments. Similarly, people were viewed as machines; elements
combined automatically, etc.
No. Contributions
1. He experimented on sensations, images and feelings. It led to important
findings like attention. It was interpreted as an increase in the vividness of a
sensation (or image).
2. He gave the core-context theory of meaning.
3. Titchener personally directed 56 students into getting doctoral degrees in
experimental psychology.
Who was the founder of structuralism? The founder was Wilhelm Maximilian
Wundt (1832-1920). His student, Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927), first
coined the term to describe this school of thought. The main goal of structuralism
is to describe the structure of consciousness of mind by carefully observing
conscious experience by breaking it down into it components; mainly perception,
sensation and affection.
SELF-CHECK 2.2
His Act Psychology spoke about the inseparable interaction between the
individual and the environment. As such he defined psychological events as
phenomena, that is, events that cannot be reduced to component elements
without losing their identity. This is where he provided an alternative to Wundts
structural psychology. He moved towards the development of a
phenomenological method for psychology. He influenced a lot of thinkers and
Husserls thesis is greatly influenced by Brentanos thinking.
SELF-CHECK 2.3
ACTIVITY 2.1
As soon as you finish reading subtopic 2.3, prepare a short note
depicting the contributions of Wundt, Titchener and Brentano.
1. What is intentionality?
2. How is Brentano's system different from that of Titchener and Wundt?
Patel, A. P., & Mehta, A. (2014). Person of the issue: Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920).
The International Journal of Indian Psychology, 1(4), 1-5.
INTRODUCTION
In the previous topic, you studied about the psychology of consciousness. In this
topic, you will study the psychology of the unconscious mind and the
psychology of adaptation. The main contributors in this regard are Sigmund
Freud, Charles Robert Darwin, William James and John Dewey.
Freud's scientific method was a direct descendant of the British and French
empiricism, represented by Francis Bacon's criticism of bias idols and John
Stuart Mill's canons. In the best tradition of empiricism, Freud proceeded from
observable phenomena to generalisation and interpretation. He was not a naive
empiricist nor did he refrain from inquiry into unobservable phenomena.
Freud found that nervous disorders often made no neurological sense. He began
to hypnotise his patients, encouraging them to talk freely about the
circumstances surrounding the onset. Freud's views evolved continually
throughout his long career. The collective result of his extensive writings is an
elaborate system of personality development. Freud described personality in
terms of an energy system that seeks equilibrium of forces. This homeostatic
model of human personality was determined by the constant attempt to identify
appropriate ways to discharge instinctual energies which originate in the depths
of the unconscious.
Freud put forth three structures of personality; the id, ego and super ego, which
he believed were essentially formed by seven years of age. These structures
maybe diagrammatically represented in terms of their accessibility to a person's
awareness or extent of consciousness as shown in Figure 3.2. The id is the most
primitive and least accessible of the structure of personality. As originally
described by Freud, the id is pure libido or psychic energy of an irrational nature
and sexual character which instinctively determines unconscious processes. The
id is not in contact with the environment, but rather relates to the other structures
of personality that in turn must mediate between the id's instincts and the
external world.
Immune from reality and social conventions, the id is guided by the pleasure
principle, seeking to gratify instinctual libidinal needs either directly (through a
sexual experience) or indirectly (by dreaming or fantasising). The latter, indirect
gratification was called the primary process. The exact object of direct
gratification in the pleasure principle is determined by the psychosexual stage of
the individual's developments.
The final differentiation of the structures of personality called the super ego
appears by the age of five. In contrast to the id and ego, which are internal
developments of personality, the superego is an external imposition. The super
ego is the incorporation of the moral standards perceived by the ego from some
agent of authority in the environment, usually an assimilation of the parents'
views. Both positive and negative aspects of these standards are represented in
the super ego.
The positive moral code is the ego ideal, a representation of the perfect behaviour
for the individual to emulate. The conscience embodies the negative aspect of the
super ego and determines which activities is to be taboo. Conduct that violates
the dictates of the conscience produces guilt. The super ego and id are in direct
conflict, leaving the ego to mediate. Thus, the super ego imposes a pattern of
conduct that results in some degree of self-control through an internalised system
of rewards and punishments.
In order to cope with anxiety, the ego develops defence mechanisms, which are
elaborate, largely unconscious processes that allow a person to avoid
unpleasantness. Freud placed great emphasis on the development of the child
because he was convinced that neurotic disturbances manifested by his adult
patients had their origins in their childhood experiences. Table 3.1 summarises
example of common defence mechanism.
Ego defences are not necessarily unhealthy as you can see in the examples above.
In fact, the lack of these defences or the inability to use them effectively can often
lead to problems in life. However, we sometimes employ the defences at the
wrong time or overuse them, which can be equally destructive.
If certain issues are not resolved at the appropriate stage, fixation can occur. A
fixation is a persistent focus on an earlier psychosexual stage. Until this conflict is
resolved, the individual will remain stuck in this stage. For instance, a person
who is fixated at the oral stage may be over-dependent on others and may seek
oral stimulation through smoking, drinking or eating. Table 3.2 shows the
characteristics of the psychosexual stages of development.
Phallic Age The pleasure zone switches to the genitals. Freud believed that
three to during this stage, boys develop unconscious sexual desires for
six the mother. Because of this, he rivals with his father and sees
him as competition for the mother's affection. During this time,
boys also develop a fear that the father will punish them for
these feelings, such as by castrating them. This group of
feelings is known as Oedipus Complex (after the Greek
Mythology figure who accidentally killed his father and
married his mother).
Later, it was added that girls go through a similar situation,
developing unconscious sexual attraction to their father.
Although Freud strongly disagreed with this, it has been
termed the Electra Complex by more recent psychoanalysts.
According to Freud, out of fear of castration and due to the
strong competition of his father, boys eventually decide to
identify with him rather than fight him. By identifying with his
father, the boy develops masculine characteristics and identifies
himself as a male, and represses his sexual feelings toward his
mother.
A fixation at this stage could result in sexual deviancies (both
overindulging and avoidance) and weak or confused sexual
identity according to psychoanalysts.
Latency Age six It is during this stage that sexual urges remain repressed and
to children interact and play mostly with same sex peers.
puberty
Genital Puberty The final stage of psychosexual development begins at the start
onwards of puberty when sexual urges are once again awakened.
Through the lessons learned during the previous stages,
adolescents direct their sexual urges onto opposite sex peers;
the primary focus of pleasure is the genitals.
Table 3.3 outlines the pleasure sources and conflicts in the psychosexual stages of
development (by age) suggested by Freud.
Table 3.3: Pleasure Sources and Conflicts in the Psychosexual Stages of Development
Stage Age Pleasure Source Conflict
Oral Birth to 2 Mouth: sucking, biting, swallowing Weaning away
years from mother's
breast
Anal 2 to 4 Anus: defecating or retaining faeces Toilet training
years
Phallic 4 to 5 Genitals Oedipus (boys);
years Electra (girls)
Latency 6 years to Sexual urges sublimated into sports and
puberty hobbies. Same-sex friends also help avoid
sexual feelings.
Genital Puberty Physical sexual changes reawaken Social rules; need
onward repressed needs. Direct sexual feelings to complete
toward others lead to sexual gratification. education or job
training
Source: Straker (2014)
The following are some of the descriptions of the famous Neo-Freudian thinkers:
(a) Carl Jung
Jungs theory separates the psyche into three parts. The first is the ego,
which Jung recognises with the conscious mind. Closely related is the
personal unconscious, which comprises anything which is not presently
conscious, but can be. The personal unconscious is similar to most peoples
understanding of the unconscious in that it comprises both memories that
are easily brought to mind and those that have been suppressed for some
reason. But it does not comprise the instincts that Freud would have it
include. Figure 3.3 shows an image of Carl Jung.
SELF-CHECK 3.1
3.2 DARWINISM
The following Figure 3.8 shows some basic information about Charles Darwin.
Seeing that Darwin lacked enthusiasm for becoming a doctor, his father
suggested he study for the clergy. Darwin was agreeable to the idea and enrolled
in the university at Cambridge, England, in 1827. Darwin admitted, My time
was wasted, as far as the academic studies were concerned. However, Darwin
found that his friendship with John S. Henslow, professor of botany, made life in
Cambridge extremely worthwhile. Through long talks with Henslow, Darwins
knowledge of the natural world increased. Henslow encouraged Darwin in his
studies of natural history. In 1831, Henslow recommended that Darwin be
chosen for the position of naturalist on the ship, the HMS Beagle.
Figure 3.9 depicts Charles Darwins theory of evolution (and devolution) of man
in a satirical manner.
Darwins theory of evolution is based on key facts and inferences drawn from
them, which biologist Ernst Mayr summarised as follows (Farmer & Cook, 2013):
(a) Every species is fertile enough that if all offspring survived to reproduce,
the population would grow (fact);
(b) Despite periodic fluctuations, populations remain roughly the same size
(fact);
(c) Resources such as food are limited and are relatively stable over time (fact).
(d) A struggle for survival ensues (inference);
(e) Individuals in a population vary significantly from one another (fact);
(f) Much of this variation is inheritable (fact);
(g) Individuals less suited to the environment are less likely to survive and less
likely to reproduce; individuals more suited to the environment are more
likely to survive and more likely to reproduce and leave their inheritable
Darwin placed humans on a continuum with other animals, making the causes of
their thought and behaviour natural phenomena, not supernatural ones. He
promoted the concept of inheritance of physical, mental and behavioural
features. He generated interest measuring variability and individual differences
in human behaviour. The concept of selection of morphological features by
natural selection is reflected in Skinners behaviourism, which emphasises the
selection of behaviours through environmental consequences.
The essential features of this theory are three straightforward notions as follows:
(a) Differences: Individual differences in many traits;
(b) Heredity: The individual differences were to some extent inherited; and
(c) Selection: The individually different heritable traits could contribute to
differential success in the struggle for life. If the most successful types in
this struggle for life differ from the average, if superior survivors had more
or less of certain traits, then a species could change, that is, evolve under
the pressure of natural selection.
On the voyage, Darwin read Lyells Principles of Geology which suggested that
the fossils found in rocks were actually evidence of animals that had lived many
thousands or millions of years ago. The breakthrough in his ideas came in the
Galapagos Islands, 500 miles west of South America.
The animals (or plants) best suited to their environment are more likely to
survive and reproduce, passing on the characteristics which helped them survive
to their offspring. Gradually, the species change over time.
It made it seem possible that even people might just have evolved quite
possibly from apes and destroyed the prevailing orthodoxy on how the world
was created. Darwin was vehemently attacked. However, his ideas soon gained
currency and have become the new orthodox.
Darwinian Evolution tells us that evolution must have existed before humans
evolved or existed. Thus, there was a time before humans existed when the
human mind did not exist.
(c) Offspring: Organisms produce more offspring than can survive (fitness);
(e) Natural selection: Those organisms with the most beneficial traits are more
likely to survive and reproduce.
Copyright Open University Malaysia (OUM)
TOPIC 3 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND AND THE 59
PSYCHOLOGY OF ADAPTATION
(c) His theory of evolution played a significant role in the development of the
schools of functionalism and behaviourism; and
ACTIVITY 3.1
SELF-CHECK 3.2
James was also an artist, with the artists eye for shading and detail, and one of
the English languages truly great prose stylists. In The Principles, these
characteristics combined to yield some of the richest descriptions of human
experience, human behaviour and human nature ever to appear in a work of
non-fiction.
More important than any of these characteristics for the claim of James text to
uniqueness and for its extraordinary and continuing influence was the
exceptionally innovative way in which the subject matter of psychology was
approached. The more traditional topics (for example, the functions of the
nervous system, sensation, the perception of time, space, objects, reality,
imagination, conception, reasoning, memory, association, attention, emotions
and will) were rarely dealt with in a traditional manner; and a whole series of
non-traditional topics (for example, habit, the stream of thought, consciousness
of self, discrimination and comparison, the production of movement, instinct,
and hypnotism) were introduced in ways that forever changed the discipline.
Not surprisingly, The Principles can still be read in its entirety with great profit.
Of all James contributions, however, there are three of which he has been
especially famous for in the history of psychology: his analysis of the stream of
thought, his characterisation of the self and his theory of emotion. Each of these
will be briefly described; but it should be kept in mind that, with James, there is
no substitute for reading the original.
James analysis of the stream of thought was first published in an article on the
mind, entitled On some omissions of introspective psychology. As it appeared in
the edited form in The Principles, it consisted of a number of components. Three
of these, all of which flowed directly from James' recognition that psychology
had traditionally attributed to thought, a characteristic, true only of the objects of
thought (viz., analysability into discrete elements).
The first of these components was an attack on the idea that sensations
constituted the fundamental elements of consciousness. Sensation, James argued,
was an abstraction from not a fact of experience. No one, he wrote, ever had a
simple sensation by itself. Consciousness, from our natal day, is of a teeming
multiplicity of objects and relations, and what we call simple sensations are
results of discriminative attention, pushed often to a very high degree.
In addressing the I-self, James turned first to the feeling of self-identity, the
experience that I am the same self that I was yesterday, pointing out that the
sense of our own personal identity...is exactly like any one of our other
perceptions of sameness among phenomena. He then proceeded to review the
classical (spiritualist, associationist and transcendentalist) theories of personal
identity and concluded with an extremely important discussion of the
phenomena and implications of multiple personality. In the last especially, we
see James in his element, struggling with the nature of the most complex
manifestations of the self.
Finally, James' chapter on emotions, revised from an 1884 paper, presented his
famous theory of emotion. The chapter began with a clear recognition of the close
relationship between action and the expressive and physiological concomitants
of emotion Objects of rage, love, fear, etc., he wrote, not only prompt a man to
outward deeds, but provoke characteristic alterations in his attitude and visage,
and affect his breathing, circulation and other organic functions in specific
ways. Here James also made it clear that emotion could be as easily triggered by
memory or imagination as by direct perception of an emotion producing event.
As he phrased it, One may get angrier in thinking over one's insult than at the
moment of receiving it.
In what was to become known as the James-Lange theory of emotion, James then
went on to argue that emotion consists of our experience of these bodily changes.
As he put it, My theory...is that the bodily changes follow directly the
perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they
occur which is the emotion...we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we
strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike or tremble because
we are sorry, angry or fearful as the case may be.
Although James may have been a bit too strong in equating emotion with
experience of bodily change (and in other sections of the chapter made claims in
relation to the neural basis of emotion that have not been supported), his
description of the nature of emotion anticipated much of what is commonly held
by modern theorists to be characteristic of emotion: the presence of an external or
internal precipitating event, physiological change, expressive movement and a
characteristic affective experience.
James concern with emotion, motivation and the nature of the self, the social self
and self-esteem, not only laid the groundwork for dynamic psychology, but for a
dynamic psychology that recognised the importance of social factors in
personality. James deep and abiding concern with exceptional mental states
helped legitimise an emerging, indigenous American psychotherapy and paved
the way for the eventual acceptance of psychoanalysis within psychology.
SELF-CHECK 3.3
He studied for a year under G. Stanley Hall and went on to earn a PhD in 1884
from the School of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University. He served at the
University of Michigan between 1884 and 1888 and then again, between 1889 and
1894. He devoted a great deal of time to the study of Absolute Idealism by
Dewey did not identify himself as a pragmatist per se, but instead he referred to
his philosophy as instrumentalism. He is considered one of the three major
figures in American pragmatism, along with Charles Sanders Peirce, who
invented the term and William James, who popularised it. Dewey worked from
strongly Hegelian influences, unlike James, whose intellectual lineage was
primarily British, drawing particularly on empiricist and utilitarian ideas.
Neither was Dewey so pluralist or relativist as James. He stated that value was a
function not of whim or purely of social construction, but a quality situated in
events (nature itself is wistful and pathetic, turbulent and passionate;
experience and nature).
John Deweys philosophical view throughout his career was that the theory of
inquiry was how species survived in their environment. Dewey believed in
Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, adopting the naturalistic approach
of Darwin. He thought that a living organism interacting with the environment
responds by developing an understanding of how to adapt to that situation and
excels.
One of Deweys most outstanding essays was the Reflex Arc Concept in
Psychology in 1869. In this paper, he treated the stimulus separate from the
response. This would be later known as social behaviourism. The reflex arc
combines the sensory stimulus, central connection and the motor response as
working together as one. He claimed that a person had to experience a set of
circumstances and the reflex arc works simultaneously. A person focuses on
something, and then decides what to do and then acts on the decision. Dewey
argued that how we acted in the environment is how we learn.
Dewey put to use some of his ideas of learning in the Dewey School at the
University of Chicago. The scientifically tested curriculum was centred on the
student. Dewey wanted the students to learn from hands-on experience. He
designed the school to make a balance between philosophy and natural science.
Today, we call this approach pragmatism. Dewey believed that education was a
lifelong process and that philosophy was everyday life. He believed that
psychology was the basis for learning and the way to obtain a good education. In
the Dewey School, the teachers were to present real-life problems to the children
and then guide the students to solve the problem by providing them with hands-
on activity to learn the solution. The child's decision was to be based on the
experience the child had in school (McNergney & McNergney, 1998).
The History of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools website gives some
of the curriculum that Dewey had for his students. The childs home
environment should be centred in the school. Cooking and sewing was to be
taught at school and be a routine. Reading, writing and maths were to be taught
in the daily course of these routines. Building, cooking and sewing had these
schooling components in it and these activities also represented everyday life for
the students. The students had to measure things and be able to read to do these
things. For an example, if a student was not able to read, it was here they would
teach to achieve the ability to read. The child would experience school as being in
a community. This would help the child learn how to share and communicate
with others. Problems would be presented to the child and by trial and error, the
child would be able to solve the problem. The teachers responsibility was to be
aware of where each child was intellectually and provide appropriate problems
for the child to solve. Dewey wrote a book about his findings from the Dewey
School called School and Society.
Dewey encountered a lot of questions on how well the children learned and if the
teacher had any control over the students. He gave lectures overseas in China,
Japan and the Soviet Union on his schooling system. This way of teaching is still
being used today. Deweys theory of a schooling system opened the door for
hands-on learning though trial and error.
SELF-CHECK 3.4
There are non-Freudian thinkers such as Carl Jung, Horney and Fromm who
believed Freud was incorrect to believe that personality is shaped almost
entirely by childhood events.
John Deweys philosophical view throughout his career was that the theory
of inquiry was how species survived in their environment. Dewey believed
in Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, adopting the naturalistic
Freud proposed a number of ideas that were highly controversial, but also
attracted a number of followers. Many of these thinkers agreed with Freud's
concept of the unconscious mind and the importance of early childhood.
Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man and selection in relation to sex. Vol. 1.
London, England: John Murray.
Darwin, C. (1988). On the origin of species, 1859. Washington Square, NY: New
York University.
Desmond, A. J., & Moore, J. R. (1991). Darwin. New York, NY: Warner.
Ellis, A., Abrams, M., & Abrams, L. (2008). Personality theories: Critical
perspectives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Farmer, G. T., & Cook, J. (2013). Climate change science: A modern synthesis:
Volume 1 - The physical climate. New York, NY: Springer.
X INTRODUCTION
Functionalism in the philosophy of the mind is the doctrine that what makes
something a mental state of a particular type does not depend on its internal
constitution but rather on the way it functions or the role it plays in the system of
which it is a part. This doctrine is rooted in Aristotles conception of the soul, and
has antecedents in Hobbess conception of the mind as a calculating machine.
but it has become fully articulated (and popularly endorsed) only in the last third
of the 20th century. Though the term functionalism is used to designate a
variety of positions in a variety of other disciplines including psychology,
sociology, economics and architecture, this entry focuses exclusively on
functionalism as a philosophical thesis about the nature of mental states.
more and more words. Dozens of items could be added, as any young parent
who undertakes to keep a baby diary would find.
Something like this, as far as we can make out from the record, was the early
history of psychology. In the time of the ancient Greek philosophers such classes
were recognised as perceiving objects by the senses, remembering, imagining
things never seen, choosing between alternative possible actions and carrying out
ones chosen plan. Knowing and willing seemed to be the most inclusive classes
possible above the physiological level of digesting, sensing and moving. This
classification was obviously an answer to the What question. Aristotle made an
important start toward answering the question how we remember and other
philosophers gave some very inexpert answers to the question how we perceive
objects. The Why question received a very general answer from the hedonists,
who asserted that all human activity is dominated by a desire for pleasure. On
the whole, the psychology that came down from the Greeks consisted of a set of
broad classes of results accomplished by the human mind.
In the US, where psychology of the armchair variety was a very active academic
subject as early as 1830, long before the advent of experimental psychology, a
favourite expression was the workings of the mind to indicate the subject
matter. It was evidently a functional psychology that these mental
philosophers were attempting to develop. They used whatever results they
could glean from the contemporary physiologists and psychiatrists but were after
all rather abstract.
At the beginning of the present century when our schools were taking shape,
much doubt was expressed regarding the validity of the introspective
method and the behaviourists for discarding it altogether though they would
admit privately that introspective reports like the one just given were wholly
Jonathan Edwards (1754) had offered a strong logical argument against free
will: Nothing ever comes to pass without a cause. The will is always
determined by the strongest motive. Several of his successors, as Henry
Tappan (1841), sought to rescue free will: We appeal directly to
consciousness; and as a result, we find that..... there is nothing intervening
between the will and its act of choice. What we miss here is a report of
certain occasions when the subject said, I was conscious of choosing A
rather than B as a perfectly uncaused, unmotivated act.
The method of impression has been used in many different ways. It got its
name in experiments on the feelings, likes and dislikes and aesthetic
judgments. You show a person a colour and ask whether he likes it, whether
it makes a pleasant or unpleasant impression. You show him two colours and
ask which makes the pleasanter impression. You show him two pictures and
ask which seems to him the more beautiful, or you ask the same question
regarding two faces. You cannot call his judgments on such matters either
correct or incorrect, though you may be able to trace the effects of prejudice.
But you do assume that he reports his actual feelings or impressions. To that
extent the method of impression calls for a simple form of introspection.
But is this form of introspection really any different from our ordinary
objective observation of external facts? Those psychologists who always
insist on objective methods dislike the method of impression as if it were
tainted with subjectivism.
He finds her very accurate and puts her on the job. He then places his
unknown specimens in her hands and depends on her to report which show
the blue tinge and which do not. First he tested the girl; now with the girl's
help he tests his specimens. But the girls task is the same, and her attitude
throughout is that of the objective observer. The chemist used her
observations first for testing her psychologically, and then for testing the
water chemically. At first, he used known specimens to find out something
regarding an unknown person; later he used the known person to find out
something regarding unknown specimens. The data was the same, but they
were used first for a psychological purpose and later for a chemical purpose.
The manner in which trains of imagery and consideration follow each other
through our thinking, the restless flight of one idea before the next, the
transitions our minds make between things wide as the poles asunder ... all this
magical, imponderable streaming has excited the admiration of all whose
attention happened to be caught by its omnipresent mystery. Furthermore, it has
challenged the race of philosophers to banish something of the mystery by
formulating the process in simpler terms.
If conscious experience was set apart as the field for a science of psychology to
explore and reduce to order, the project was similar to that of chemistry.
Discover the elements of conscious experience and their modes of combination.
So it seemed to Wundt anyway, though contrary to James view, the main
requirement was to bring out clearly the fluid, streaming and personal nature of
consciousness. It was Wundt, not James, who mapped out the field of structural
psychology, which however he called simply psychology. All our experiences
perceptions of external objects, memories, motions, purposes are complex and
call for scientific analysis.
Copyright Open University Malaysia (OUM)
TOPIC 4 FROM CONSCIOUSNESS TO BEHAVIOUR W 81
Every sensation or feeling, besides its mere existence, has a function as referring
to some kind of an object, knowing it and also choosing or rejecting it. Moreover,
every possible feeling produces a movement, or sometimes an inhibition of
movement. Conscious processes are thus tied in with the environment on both
sensory and motor sides (James, 1890). Like James, the early Chicago
functionalists accepted the definition of psychology as the science of
consciousness and held that conscious processes should be studied not only as
existential facts but also as playing their parts in the life of the individual and his
adaptation to the environment.
European Works
Functionalists
Edouard Early in his career he adopted a point of view which he first called
Claparede biological and later functional. The functional conception, he said,
(1873 to 1940) considers psychical phenomena primarily from the point of view
of their function in life. This comes to the same thing as asking
ones self: what is their use? Their function is to meet a persons
needs and interests.
He set up an animal laboratory in his department of the university.
He founded at Geneva the now world-famous J. J. Rousseau
Institute for the study of the child and for the development of
progressive methods of teaching.
For the study of thought processes he adopted a method which he
called reflexion or thinking aloud.
He became the secretary of the International Congresses of
Psychology.
David Katz He was a professor in other universities in Germany, US and
(1884 to 1953) Sweden.
He attacked the psychological problems of hunger and appetite.
His works are phenomenology of colour sensation (1911, 1930) and
of touch sensation.
He stands as the promoter of phenomenological psychology. He
reported that one thing is smooth and hard, another thing soft and
bulky and uses quite a variety of such descriptive adjectives.
His work on colour constancy was particularly important and
has been followed up by other investigators in many laboratories.
Edgar Rubin He was a professor at the University of Copenhagen.
(1886 to 1951) His special contribution was the famous study of figure and
ground (1915, 1921). It was quickly taken up by the Gestalt school
and made a part of their system.
environment. The primary fact for this school was conscious experience; the
secondary fact was the function of consciousness. This approach can therefore be
called secondary functionalism. By contrast, primary functionalism starts with
results accomplished and asks by what process they are accomplished. It may
appeal to conscious experience for evidence on the process, but its interest in
conscious experience is secondary to its interest in functions.
concludes that while Parsons theory allows for change, it is an orderly process of
change (Parsons, 1961), a moving equilibrium. Therefore, referring to Parsons
theory of society as static is inaccurate. It is true that it does place emphasis on
equilibrium and the maintenance or quick return to social order, but this is a
product of the time in which Parsons was writing (post-World War II, and the
start of the cold war). Society was in upheaval and fear abounded. At the time
social order was crucial, and this is reflected in Parsons tendency to promote
equilibrium and social order rather than social change.
However Merton does explicitly state that functional analysis does not seek to
explain why the action happened in the first instance, but why it continues or is
reproduced. He says that latent functions go far towards explaining the
continuance of the pattern (as cited in Elster, 1990). Therefore, it can be argued
that functionalism does not explain the original cause of a phenomenon with
reference to its effect, and is therefore, not teleological. Another criticism
describes the ontological argument that society cannot have needs as a human
being does, and even if society does have needs they need not be met. Anthony
Giddens argues that functionalist explanations may all be rewritten as historical
accounts of individual human actions and consequences.
Marxism which was revived soon after the emergence of conflict theory,
criticised professional sociology (functionalism and conflict theory alike) for
being partisan to advanced welfare capitalism (Holmwood, 2005). Gouldner (as
cited in Holmwood, 2005) thought that Parsons theory specifically was an
expression of the dominant interests of welfare capitalism, that it justified
institutions with reference to the function they fulfil for society. It may be that
Parsons work implied or articulated that certain institutions were necessary to
fulfil the functional prerequisites of society, but whether or not this is the case,
Merton explicitly states that institutions are not indispensable and that there are
functional alternatives. That he does not identify any alternatives to the current
institutions does reflect a conservative bias, which as has been stated before is a
product of the specific time that he was writing in.
(c) Harvey Carr at Chicago and Robert S. Woodworth at Columbia were the
early representatives of a developed functionalism. Carr was in a somewhat
more analytic tradition and Woodworths dynamic psychology resembled
the more molar approach of James and Dewey.
(d) Functionalism as a movement arose partially as a force opposing the
structural psychology of Wundt and Titchener. It emphasised learning,
mental testing and other applied fields, which made functionalism
appealing to the pragmatic American temperament.
(e) Although functionalism became a less self-conscious position as the need to
oppose structuralism disappeared, its eclectic tendencies continued to suit
many psychologists.
(f) Functionalism, thus, continued to go its unpretentious way during the
heyday of behaviourism. Today the ascent of interest in evolutionary
theory and the burgeoning growth in ethnology, sociobiology, molecular
biology and cognitive theory, all of them consistent with a functional
approach, have given a tremendous boost to a generally functional
psychology.
(g) Functionalism, especially as represented in the psychologies of Carr and
Woodworth, relied heavily on experimentation; was more concerned with
functional interrelationships of variables than with theoretical
superstructures; accepted both introspective and behavioural data; stressed
adaptive behaviour and purposive, motivated activity within either an S-R
(Carr) or an S-O-R (Woodworth) framework; and was always
systematically eclectic while taking a tough-minded approach to
experimental problems.
(h) Functionalists have made and will continue to make an important
contribution to the advance of psychology as a science.
SELF-CHECK 4.1
ACTIVITY 4.1
As soon as you finish reading section 4.1, prepare a list depicting the
basic tenets of functionalism as advocated by European functionalists.
Darwin drew upon a wealth of observations on animals for his examples. One of
his most famous examples is the way people curl their lips in sneering. He held
that to be a remnant of the baring of the canine teeth in rage by carnivorous
animals. Another example of a behavioural remnant in another species is the
tendency for dogs to turn in a circle several times before lying down. This was
said to be a behaviour held over from the dogs ancestors, to whom it was useful
as a precautionary measure to frighten away snakes and the like and to flatten
out a bed in grass or weeds.
George John Romanes has been mentioned as one of Darwins personal friends
who later used animal behaviour in the defence of evolutionary theory. Romanes
culled all kinds of literature for stories, scientific or popular, on animal
behaviour. People in many walks of life sent him their most remarkable
anecdotes about animal intelligence. After he had accumulated a great mass of
material, he wrote the first book on comparative psychology, Animal intelligence
(Romanes, 1886). Romanes method of gathering data is now called the anecdotal
method. In spite of the fact that he had adopted explicit rules for using stories,
Romanes was unable to avoid using some inadequately controlled observations
since he had no way of checking on the original sources.
Morgan relied upon habit, rather than upon intelligence, as a major explanatory
factor. Trial-and-error learning was stressed. He assumed that human and
subhuman learning processes were continuous. Thorndikes laboratory
experimentation was closely related to Morgans work in both content and
outlook. Watson was also stimulated in his animal research by heading Morgans
report.
All the three men tried to explain learning in term of a few simple principles
which apply to humans as well as to animals. Others, like the Gestaltists, have
been more like Romanes in tending to see insight, which is characteristic of much
human learning in non-human animals.
Lloyd Morgans canon has been attacked by various psychologists. The critics
claim that in many cases the more complex of two alternative interpretations is
the better one. However, this does not invalidate Morgans canon or the principle
of parsimony; these rules apply only to cases in which all the alternative
explanations are about equally consistent with the available data. Naturally, if
there is a flow in the simple explanation, it is not acceptable. Then there is no
issue at all but it is incumbent upon the proponent of the more complex account
to show why that account must be accepted over the simpler one. If that cannot
be done, the simpler account is preferable. In all of this, however, we must
recognise that it may not be simple to show which of the alternative accounts is
simpler!
Loeb was reacting against the anthropomorphic tendency which Romanes was
thought to represent. Despite the fact that Loeb used tropistic factors to account
for a great deal of the behaviour of higher forms, he did not try to deal with
human problems.
By the time of Loebs pronouncements, the study of animal behaviour within the
biological sciences was becoming widespread. The biologists Thomas Beer,
Albrecht Bethe, and Jacob J. von Uexkull supported Loebs call for the elimination
of psychological terms and the substitution of objective ones. Another biologist,
H.S. Jennings obtained evidence for the modifiability of behaviour in the
protozoan paramecium and he opposed Loebs mechanistic interpretations of
animal behaviour. Hans Driesch also opposed Loeb and maintained a vitalistic
position. He maintained that living organisms differ qualitatively from non-living
matter and are not reducible to physicochemical reactions.
Other students of animal behaviour included Sir John Lubbock, who studied
ants, wasps and bees as well as the Frenchmen J. Henri Fabre and Auguste Forel,
who also studied insects. Albrecht Bethe published a mechanistic interpretation
of the social lives of ants and bees. Certainly animal psychology was by this time
a growing concern, although much of the study was not being done by
psychologists. The pressure of these researches was pushing objective
psychology to the fore some time before behaviouristic psychology was founded
as a school in America.
Watson, who studied under Loeb at the University of Chicago, was thoroughly
exposed to this objective tradition within biology. Angell, who was Watson's
primary adviser, discouraged him from doing a dissertation with Loeb because
he did not regard Loeb as safe. Angells fears proved to be well-founded, when
Watson left functionalism to found behaviourism. Watson was further exposed
to biology at Johns Hopkins when, despite the fact that he went there as a full
professor, he attended the courses of H. S. Jennings.
W. S. Small at Clark devised the first rat maze in 1900, the same year that Yerkes
began his animal investigations. The albino rat was so well suited to being
studied in the maze that it became the most outstanding laboratory animal in
psychology, and the rat in-the-maze has continued to be a standard situation for
the study of learning. Since the 1930s, the rat has shown that it is equally well
adapted to life in the Skinner box (or as Skinner prefers to call it, the operant
chamber). Growth of the study of animals was so rapid between 1900 and 1911
that the Journal of Animal Behaviour was founded then. Watson adopted Smalls
use of the maze with rats, although he criticised Small's experimental methods.
SELF-CHECK 4.2
James took empiricism a step further to become the founder of what is known as
radical empiricism. Radical empiricism finds connections between experiences in
experience itself. James believed that in certain experiences one can know,
believe and remember other experiences. He considered connections such as
these to be intellectual or conceptual connections. Non-intellectual connections,
or extra-mental connections, are the connections which have a cause and effect
relationship. Connections of this sort have the tendency for one experience to
follow another, such as smoke after fire and pain after intense heat on the skin.
James believed that to be radical, empiricism must neither admit into its
constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from
them any element that is directly experienced. He described radical empiricism
as a loose universe, where experiences lean on nothing but other finite
experiences, but the whole of them, if such a whole exists, leans on nothing.
James factual statement is that our experience is not just a stream of data; it is a
complex process that is full of meaning. We see objects in terms of what they
mean to us and we see causal connections between phenomena. Experience is
double-barrelled: it has both content (sense data) and a reference. Empiricists
unjustly try to reduce experience to bare sensations, according to James. Such a
thick description of conscious experience was already part of William James
monumental Principles of Psychology in 1890, more than a decade before he first
wrote about radical empiricism.
Conclusion
James concluded that experience is full of connections and that these connections
are part of what is actually experienced.
Just so, I maintain, does a given undivided portion of experience, taken in one
context of associates, play the part of a knower, of a state of mind, of
`consciousness; while in a different context the same undivided bit of experience
plays the part of a thing known, of an objective `content. In a word, in one group
it figures as a thought, in another group as a thing. And, since it can figure in
both groups simultaneously we have every right to speak of it as subjective and
objective, both at once (James, 1912).
The conclusion that our worldview does not need trans-empirical support is also
important in discussions about the adequacy of naturalistic descriptions of
meaning and intentionality, which James attempts to provide, in contrast to
phenomenological approaches or some forms of reductionism that claim that
meaning is an illusion.
James believed that the only reality in the universe is pure experience. He
believed that experiences are carved out of pure experience. James proposed that
there is only one primal material in the whole world, and if we call that material
pure experience, then knowing can be explained as a relation into which
portions of pure experience may enter. In such relations, one experience knows
another.
SELF-CHECK 4.3
Answer the following questions by filling in the blanks.
(a) A very genuine psychological interest is apt to awaken in anyone
who has the opportunity of watching the development of a
__________.
(b) __________ is simply the general method of experimental science
applied to the performances of an individual.
(c) The elements of conscious experience, in Wundt's analysis, were
of two main classes: the sensations which seem to come to us from
outside and the __________ which seem to belong to ourselves.
Functionalism has been a loose and informal system and its encompassing
character made it the best representative of mainstream American
psychology.
Psychology that attempts to give an accurate and systematic answer to the
question, What do men do? and then go on to the questions, How do they
do it? and Why do they do it? is called functional psychology.
Evolutionary theory was tremendously important both in the development of
psychology as a science and as a specific background factor determining the
Darwin, C. (1872). The expression of the emotions in man and animals. London,
England: John Murray.
James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York, NY: H. Holt and
Company.
James, W. (1912). Essays in radical empiricism. New York, NY: Longman, Green
and Company.
Merton, R. K. (1957). Social theory and social structure. Glencoe, Scotland: Free
Press.
Tappan, H. P. (1841). The doctrine of the will: Applied to moral agency and
responsibility. New York, NY: Wiley and Putnam.
X INTRODUCTION
Psychology as the behaviourist views it is a purely objective experimental branch
of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behaviour.
Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of
its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to
interpretation in terms of consciousness. The behaviourist, in his efforts to get a
unitary scheme of animal response, recognises no dividing line between man and
brute. The behaviour of man, with all of its refinement and complexity, forms
only a part of the behaviourist's total scheme of investigation.
(b) Thorndike;
(d) Guthrie;
(f) Skinner.
The goal is to predict and control publicly observable behaviour. Given the
stimulus, the task of the psychologist was to predict the response, and
given the response, the task was to determine the stimulus that had
produced it.
(ii) Pavlov did famous experiments with dogs, ringing a bell and then
feeding them (unconditioned stimulus or UCS). Dog then salivated to
food (unconditioned response or UCR). After a while, he could ring
the bell (conditioned stimulus or CS) and their mouths would salivate
(conditioned response or CR).
By the early 1930s, psychologists began to see at least three problems with
the validity of classical behaviourism, even when classical behaviourism
was accompanied by the collateral positions described above.
First, publicly observable stimuli and responses were not always only
correlated with each other in the way that classical behaviourism required.
SELF-CHECK 5.1
Explain in your own words, Psychology as the behaviourist views
it.
ACTIVITY 5.1
Find out various definitions of behaviourism.
(b) To emphasise overt behaviour and the objective was to predict and control
human behaviour which was believed to result from conditioned learning.
Watson has contributed to the field and has many achievements in many
different ways as follows:
(a) Definition
Psychology is to be the science of behaviour, not of consciousness.
(b) Scope
It is to cover both human and animal behaviour, the simpler animal
behaviour being indeed more fundamental than the more complex
behaviour of men (therefore, many of the experiments done involved
animals).
(c) Method
It is to rely on objective data, introspection being discarded. In other words, to
conclude something in psychology, it has to be backed up by hard evidence.
(d) Concepts
It is to avoid mentalistic concepts such as sensation, perception and
emotion as well as employ only behaviour concepts such as stimulus and
response learning.
(e) Application
A scientific basis is to be provided for the practical control of behaviour,
and this means, as shown in some unquoted passages, a scientific basis for
dealing with behaviour problems as they appear in a guidance or
psychiatric clinic.
(f) Philosophy
The old mind-body problem and the rival theories of interaction and
parallelism disappear with the disappearance of mind. There is no mystery
in the relation of body and behaviour. Psychologists have introduced
unnecessary mystery by replacing the mind or soul by the inaccessible
brain. Behaviourism must not make a fetish of the brain but must keep its
eyes fixed on the peripheral organs, the sense organs, muscles and glands.
Only objectively observable facts are admissible.
behaviourists had little to contribute, for the excellent reason that objective
methods had been a major concern of psychology since it began to be
experimental. The psycho-physical methods, the memory methods and the
conditioned response methods were already in use before the behaviourists came
along. Certainly, they made contributions to the methods, but not revolutionary
ones, because no revolution was necessary and also because there is no
fundamental antagonism between objective and introspective methods.
The first book is devoted mostly to animal psychology, the other two mostly to
the behaviour of human children and adults. The major tenets of behaviourism
can be found in each of these books but perhaps best in Psychology of 1919.
From his strong emphasis on motor behaviour you might have expected
him to embark on an analysis of complex movements into the action of
separate muscles; but, though he does include this in his Psychology of
1919 some account of the striped and smooth muscles, and of the glands, he
makes no effort to analyse complex movements into muscular elements,
believing no doubt that such analysis is the job of the physiologist and not
of the psychologist. In explaining what he means by response he starts with
the knee jerk and other reflexes but advances to acts such as taking food,
unlocking a door, writing a letter and even building a house. Evidently he
is thinking of a response not as composed of muscular elements but as
accomplishing certain results in the environment.
In the same way his examples of a stimulus start with rays of light thrown
into the eyes, sound entering the ears, etc., and go on to objects in the
environment and to total situations. His real interest is not in the analysis of
behaviour into elementary muscular (and glandular) responses to
elementary stimuli, but, quite on the contrary, in what the individual will
do in a given situation. For example, the stimulus is a stick of candy
dangled in front of a baby and the response (at a certain age) is a reaching
out and grasping the candy and putting it into the mouth. Or, the stimulus
is a baseball thrown by the pitcher and the response is a fly to the outfield.
In strictness we should speak in such cases not of stimulus and response
but of objective situation and objective results produced by the individual's
response. It is in that sense that Watson should be understood when he says
that the goal of behaviour psychology is the ascertaining of such data and
laws that, given the stimulus, psychology can predict what the response
will be; or, given the response, it can specify the nature of the effective
stimulus (Watson, 1919).
invisible to us. We wish to find out what his visual response will be to
light of a certain wavelength and to make things simple for him we use the
vulgar expression, Tell me what you see. He replies that he sees blue.
This verbal response is a perfectly objective phenomenon. We need not
assume that he has any conscious sensation but only accept the fact that he
makes the verbal response.
If we make the blue stimulus fainter till he says that he no longer sees blue,
we learn as much about his power of colour discrimination by simply
accepting his verbal response as by assuming any conscious sensations in
him which we cannot observe.
That chemist who employed the young girl to make colour tests could have
been a behaviourist; in which case he would have said, I do not care
whether she sees blue or not, if only she says blue at the right time and not
otherwise. I do not admit, he might continue, that there is any such thing
as seeing, apart from some motor response, any more than I admit that my
thermometer feels the temperature which it registers. All I admit, in either
case, is a movement which tallies with the stimulus.
Well and good but sometimes the chemist examines his test tubes himself
and reports blue or not blue, and he probably would admit if cross-
examined that he reported what he saw. For him to deny or doubt that the
other observers reports are like his own in this respect, or, in general, for
the behaviourists to deny that the human subject, at least, is actually seeing
or hearing when he so reports, seems pedantic to say the least. The
behaviourist certainly admits that he himself can see and hear, for does he
not insist that only what he can see and hear shall be accepted as scientific
data?
Thorndike had the best of the argument later; Watson came to rely mostly
on the conditioned response. He had at first adopted the Pavlov and
Bekhterev techniques only as convenient objective methods in certain
problems. In 1919 he utilised the conditioned response concept for
explaining acquired fears (for example, Little Albert Experiment), and we
have seen how he developed a conditioned fear in a child. By 1924 he had
come to suspect that the conditioned response might afford the key to all
habit formation a suggestion first made, apparently, by Smith and Guthrie
in a book with decided behaviouristic leanings. But neither these writers
nor Watson himself recognised the basic importance of Pavlov's law of
reinforcement, which we have seen to be practically identical with the law
of effect. Watson's theory of learning, therefore, belongs with the older
associationism.
What Watson said between 1924 and 1925 was that behaviourism is a truly
natural science which takes as its prospective field all human behaviour, to
be studied by experimental methods, with the object of controlling mans
behaviour scientifically. This natural-science approach is causing
philosophy to disappear and become a history of science and is preparing
the way for an experimental ethics to replace the old authoritative and
speculative ethics based on religion. This will gradually do away with
psychoanalysis and develop in its place a scientific control of child
development which will prevent the neuroses instead of leaving them to be
treated in adult life.
That is doing pretty well for the Times Magazine. The Tribune wrote:
Perhaps this is the most important book ever written. One stands for an
instant blinded with a great hope. The reference must be to Watsons
strong faith in the environment and to that guarantee to make something
great of any child whose environment from birth up he was allowed to
control. It was only a hope on Watsons part, for if anyone had secured him
the full control of a child's environment he would not have known how to
proceed, except by way of research. Neither he nor anyone yet possesses
the requisite scientific knowledge. But at any rate that may have been the
hope that blinded the reviewer.
It was not so much Watsons actual scientific achievements, nor even his
system of concepts and methods, that made him a standard-bearer in the
forward march of psychology. It was, rather, his boldness, tough
mindedness, scorn of tradition and mystery along with an optimistic faith in
the capacity of science to take charge of human affairs. Behaviourism meant
to many young men and women of the time a new orientation and a new
hope when the old guides had become hopelessly discredited in their eyes.
SELF-CHECK 5.2
Computer Science
Behaviour as used in computer science is an anthropomorphic construct that
assigns life to the activities carried out by a computer, computer application or
computer code in response to stimuli, such as user input. Also, a behaviour is a
reusable block of computer code or script that, when applied to an object,
especially a graphical one, causes it to respond to user input in meaningful
patterns or to operate independently. Also, behaviour is a value that changes
over time (one of the key concepts in functional reactive programming). The term
can also be applied to some degree to functions in mathematics, referring to the
anatomy of curves.
SELF-CHECK 5.3
ACTIVITY 5.2
The following link would lead you to few important articles about
psychology. Read and try to understand the concept of psychology as a
whole.
(a) http:/ /www.bbc.co.uk/science/ human body/min
d/articles/psychology/what_is_psychology.shtml
(b) http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/
Behaviourism Environmentalism
Classical conditioning (Pavlov) Operant conditioning (Skinner)
Emotions and sensation Stimulus-Response (S-R)
Cannon, W. B. (1929). Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear and rage: An account
of recent researches into the function of emotional excitement. New York,
NY: D. Appleton and Co.
Landis, C. (1924). Studies of emotional reactions: II. Baltimore, MD: Williams &
Wilkins.
X INTRODUCTION
The dramatic increase in the applications of psychology over the last 20 years has
brought about a greater interdependence between psychology and the larger
society. With this has come a greater awareness by psychologists of their social
responsibilities.
On the intellectual front, there has been a shift away from a strict behaviouristic
viewpoint toward a more cognitive psychology which includes models of central
processes and recognition of consciousness. However, behaviouristic psychology
still plays a critical role in the overall picture and will ensure that cognitive
psychology does not stray too far from the path of operationism. At the same
time that consciousness is returning to psychology, even more fundamental work
in neurophysiology and neuro-psychology is being done with instrumentation of
ever-increasing sophistication. Computer simulation of processes ranging from
the behaviour of single neurons to the behaviour of societies will come into much
greater favour over the next few years. The intellectual future of psychology, as
well as its social future, looks very exciting from our present perspective.
That there are different levels or degrees of intelligence has always been
recognised and the lay men have always classified people into idiots, bright and
dull, into very dull and very bright, into geniuses but it is only recently that
attempts have been made to measure intelligence and to convert vague
qualitative differences of intelligence into precise quantitative distinctions. To say
that a person is very bright is not as helpful and reliable as to say that he is
among the top ten percent of his group. Qualitative judgments are not as
scientific as exact quantitative judgments. Figure 6.1 shows the intelligence
testing to assess the effectiveness of an individuals mental processes.
The earliest attempt of testing mental ability and activity was made by the
German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt. He devised mental tests to gauge an
individual's performance in sensory and motor activity. Cattell studied under
him, and on returning to Columbia University in America, devised tests for
measuring strength of grip, reaction time to sound and speed of naming colours
and memory span for letters. This work was followed by Hugo Munsterberg who
devised and applied tests at Harvard University and Joseph Jastrow doing the
same at Wisconsin University.
But all of them assumed that mental ability can be measured through sensory
and motor activities, and the more sensitive an individual is the more intelligent
he will be. The father of intelligence testing is a Frenchman, Alfred Binet. Binet
disagreed with those who sought to measure general ability by testing speed of
reaction, rote memory, sensory acuity or muscular movements. Intelligence can
be estimated, according to Binet, only by tests of higher faculties like reasoning,
comprehension, judgment, adaptability, persistence and self-criticism.
SELF-CHECK 6.1
These individual tests are very expensive. They take a lot of time; each
individual is given about an hour. It obviously limits the number of
individuals who can be tested by a single examiner. Because of the need of
bringing out the best in the individual test, the examiner must be specially
trained. He must have memorised thoroughly every detail of the test and
must have a thorough knowledge of how to score the numerous responses
made by a child in a test situation.
Lastly, these tests involve use of language and pre-suppose that individuals
being tested are able to speak, read and understand the language of the test.
This means that children who are retarded in language development will be
handicapped in the test. Similarly children brought up in homes where
some foreign language is being used or foreign students cannot easily take
these tests. No test has eliminated these objections and though the Binet-
Simon scale and its Stanford revision are not free from these drawbacks,
they continue to be the best that is available so far.
Shortly after the publication of the Stanford revision of the Binet scale in
1916, the US entered World War 1. Military authorities were at once faced
by the problem of classifying hundreds and thousands of recruits into
ordinary soldiers and commissioned and non-commissioned officers. The
American Psychological Association placed their services at the disposal of
the State and a committee of experts was appointed under the president
ship of Professor Yerkes of Yale University to draw up a test that could be
taken by a large number of people simultaneously. In framing the new
group tests, the committee took pains to reach innate ability, keeping the
test as far as possible free from the effects of education or training. Two
tests resulted, the Army Alpha test for literates and the Army Beta tests for
illiterates or those with little knowledge of English.
More than a million and a half recruits took the Alpha and several
thousand took the Beta test. The tests were very helpful in separating
satisfactory from unsatisfactory soldiers. The experience with these tests
demonstrated the practicality and the value of group intelligence testing
and opened the way for dozens of tests of this design. They also yielded
valuable information to the psychologists about intelligence and its testing.
Shortly after the war many new tests were devised and began to be used on
a large scale in schools, industry and business.
After the First World War several group tests were devised primarily for
the selection of people for jobs in business and industry. Among the best-
known intelligence tests for general adults is the Otis Self-Administering
Test of Mental Ability (Otis S. A.). In this test, the role of the examiner is
reduced to a minimum since all necessary directions are printed on the test
booklet. The examiner has only to see that the test is conducted under
proper conditions and to give the signal for starting and ending the test.
A number of tests have been devised for new entrants to colleges and
universities and the best known are those devised by the American Council
on Education and the Scholastic Aptitude Test of the College Entrance
Examination Board. They are most widely used in America.
In World War II, the army authorities took full advantage of the
psychological research in intelligence testing and brought out a revised
scale known as Army General Classification Test (AGCT). This was given to
several million recruits to the army. It was in four different forms which
could be exchanged with one another, each form required about an hour to
give.
Besides this, there were longer forms of the test which sought to find out
scores on tests of:
(i) Verbal ability;
(ii) Spatial comprehension;
(iii) Arithmetic computation; and
(iv) Arithmetic reasoning (the Navy developed a similar test NGCT).
It is obvious that group tests take less time and are more convenient to
administer when we have to deal with a very large number of people. But
they are not as easy to manage as it appears. Conditions are very difficult to
control and there is a chance of people copying from each other and feeling
panicky or nervous about it. Besides these tests are group-centred rather
than individual centred and their purpose is to select suitable individuals
for certain objectives of the group. The main concern therefore is about the
welfare and progress of the group, those who promote this are selected and
those who hinder this are rejected. The concern is not for the individuals
selected for special training or for promotion as officers but for the needs of
the larger group, the army and the nation at war.
those tests are designed for pre-school children and some will baffle even
college students.
Other intelligence tests also exist. One is the Slosson Intelligence Test
Revised (SIT-R), also called the Short Intelligence Test. The revised
version was issued in 1991. This test can be used from infancy through age
27, and contains items similar to the Wechsler scales. One advantage is that
the test does not have to be administered by a trained test giver. The
disadvantage is that there are statistical and interpretive limitations on the
data that comes out of the testing process.
Other criticisms are more fundamental. It is said that intelligence tests fail to
reach native inborn ability because a childs performance and the resulting IQ is
greatly affected by his home environment and socio-economic factors. This is
true and therefore many comparisons between individuals or groups are invalid
because they do not take into account differences of background and experiences.
But, on the other hand, when children from a common or similar social
background such as those living in the same small town are tested, test scores of
children offer a fair measure of the children's relative abilities.
Thorndike and Thurstone deny that there is any such thing as general ability or
general versatility of adjustment, and if that is so, what validity can the test of
intelligence have. Instead of one general ability, there are many special abilities,
but as has already been pointed out even with many special abilities attempts are
being made to correlate and combine their scores and obtain a collective picture
of them by averaging scores on the separate ability tests.
Other critics rightly point out that intelligence tests leave out many important
aspects of personality like interests, motives, attitudes or social adaptability. But
these tests do not claim that they measure any such aspects of personality and
other tests have been devised to measure them.
It is also objected that tests measure intelligence only through language spoken
or printed. Children from better homes are likely to score higher than those from
poor ones. This is true but home conditions do not modify results to any serious
degree. No doubt environment may discourage or stimulate intellectual activity,
but tests can be slightly modified to suit different kinds of environment.
Intelligence tests are not adequately standardised and do not predict with
absolute certainty success in school or industry. They are not a perfect measure of
intelligence and in several areas of work intelligence does not make for success.
One typist may be more intelligent than another, but may not be a good typist.
There are other things like skills, attitudes and interests which also contribute to
success. Happily, tests are being devised for them also, and there is a growing
feeling that intelligence tests must be supplemented by other tests to predict later
success with certainty.
Intelligence tests will also reveal to parents whether their children are doing their
best in studies and making the best use of their opportunities. Many children are
very intelligent but do not work hard or are not put to hard work. They develop
bad habits of indifference. Many children are too slow and cannot keep pace with
the programme of study in the school, and thus lose all interest in their work. If
we have accurate knowledge and understanding of the intellectual capacity of
every child we could plan his or her education better. We will not only eliminate
failure but also the unhappiness which accompanies it. With the help of
intelligence tests, the teacher can also check his work and methods of teaching. If
the class is intelligent and its IQ is satisfactory, but their examination scores are
low, this means that there is something wrong with the methods of teaching.
The chief value of determining the IQ is that we can classify him or her into a
group to which he or she really belongs and then provide for his or her
educational needs. If his or her IQ is low he or she may have to be placed in a
group of feeble-minded students and taught in a separate class to acquire
intelligent behaviour. Those children whose IQ are above normal have to be
taught on a higher level and placed in special classes according to their capacity.
Parents can be given vocational guidance so that they can prepare their children
for the professions for which they are suitable.
SELF-CHECK 6.2
ACTIVITY 6.1
Given the communication problems in autism, find out why there might
be difficulty in interpreting IQ findings. You can visit the following link:
http://labspace.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=364910
As shown in Figure 6.2, the psychological state of mind changes with time.
Consider this: most of us see our optometrist once per year, our dentist twice per
year, our internist once per year. I can imagine a day in the not too distant future
when people will make appointments for annual psychological checkups. At
these checkups they will address such matters as their stress level and their
psychological well-being, auditing their work or family life balance, their
relationships, how they are managing children and/or ageing parents and health
basics like diet, nutrition, sleep and exercise. Less than five per cent of the
population would have doctoral degrees. Hence, we are the educated elite of our
time. Our chosen field, psychology, is applicable to every aspect of human life.
As former APA President Patrick De Leon has said, if we take care of society's
most pressing needs, society will take care of us. The future of psychology is as
bright as we dare.
Cherry (n.d.) came up with some of the top practical uses for psychology in
everyday life:
Another study found that repeated test-taking may be a better memory aid
than studying (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). Students who were tested
repeatedly were able to recall 61 per cent of the material while those in the
study group recalled only 40 per cent. How can you apply these findings to
your own life? When trying to learn new information, self-test frequently in
order to cement what you have learned into your memory.
(i) Be Healthier
Psychology can also be a useful tool for improving your overall health.
From ways to encourage exercise and better nutrition to new treatments for
depression, the field of health psychology offers a wealth of beneficial
strategies that can help you to be healthier and happier. Here are some
examples that you can apply directly to your own life:
(i) Studies have shown that both sunlight and artificial light can reduce
the symptoms of seasonal affective disorders; and
(ii) Research has demonstrated that exercise can be an effective treatment
for depression as well as other mental disorders.
SELF-CHECK 6.3
Sir Francis Galton is a key figure in modern intelligence testing. The first
workable intelligence test was developed by French psychologist Alfred
Binet.
Intelligence is not something we can see, hear or taste. We can only see the
results of intelligence.
When lay people think of psychology, they often think of helping people
suffering from emotional illness (like anxiety or depression), marital and
family problems (domestic violence or unmanageable children) or substance
abuse. While psychology certainly deals with these problems, few realise how
broadly applicable psychology is to everyday life.
1. What are the different kinds of intelligence tests? Give examples and
describe briefly.
2. What are the limitations and values of intelligence tests?
3. Briefly describe the Wechsler-Bellevue tests of intelligence. What peculiar
advantages do they have over other tests?
1. How does psychology help people get rid of their day-to-day problems?
2. Write down five best ways to apply psychology in your everyday life.
Chan, J. C. K., McDermott, K. B., & Roediger, H. L., III. (2006). Retrieval-induced
facilitation: Initially nontested material can benefit from prior testing of
related material. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 135(4), 553571.
Cherry, K. (n. d.). 10 ways psychology can help you live a better life. Retrieved
from http://psychology.about.com/od/psychology101/tp/applying-
psychology.htm
X INTRODUCTION
In psychology and education, learning is commonly defined as a process that
brings together cognitive, emotional and environmental influences and
experiences for acquiring, enhancing or making changes in ones knowledge,
skills, values and world views. In this topic, we are going to describe all the
theories of learning including analysis of behaviour and theory of thinking in
detail.
Learning theories have two chief values. One is in providing us with vocabulary
and a conceptual framework for interpreting the examples of learning that we
observe. The other is in suggesting where to look for solutions to practical
problems. The theories do not give us solutions, but they do direct our attention
to those variables that are crucial in finding solutions.
The central idea behind behaviourism is that only observable behaviours are
worthy of research since other abstractions such as a person's mood or thoughts
are too subjective. This belief was dominant in psychological research in the US
for a good 50 years.
the dogs were fed. If the bell was sounded in close association with their
meal, the dogs learned to associate the sound of the bell with food. After a
while, at the mere sound of the bell, they responded by drooling.
The four orientations to learning are summed up (after Merriam & Caffarella,
1991) in Table 7.1.
As can we see from the schematic presentation in Table 7.1, these approaches
involve contrasting ideas as to the purpose and process of learning and education
and the role that educators may take.
B. F. Skinner
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 to August 18, 1990) was an American
psychologist, author, inventor, social philosopher and poet (B.F. Skinner, n.d.).
He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from
1958 until his retirement in 1974. Skinner invented the operant conditioning
chamber, innovated his own philosophy of science called radical
behaviourism, and founded his own school of experimental research
psychology the experimental analysis of behaviour. His analysis of human
behaviour concluded in his work Verbal Behaviour, which has recently seen
enormous increase in interest experimentally and in applied settings.
He soon became disappointed with his literary skills and concluded that he had
little world experience and no strong personal perspective from which to write.
Skinner received a PhD from Harvard in 1931, and remained there as a
researcher until 1936. He then taught at the University of Minnesota at
Minneapolis and later at Indiana University, where he was chair of the
psychology department from 1946 to 1947, before returning to Harvard as a
tenured professor in 1948. He remained at Harvard for the rest of his career. In
1936, Skinner married Yvonne Blue. The couple had two daughters, Julie (m.
Vargas) and Deborah (m. Buzan). He died of leukemia on August 18, 1990, and
was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts (refer to
Figure 7.3).
Each response would result in the marking needle moving vertically along
the paper in one tick. This makes it possible for the rate of response to be
calculated by finding the slope of the graph at a given point. For example, a
regular rate of response would cause the needle to move vertically at a
regular rate, resulting in a straight diagonal line rising towards the right.
An accelerating or decelerating rate of response would lead to a curve. The
cumulative recorder provided a powerful analytical tool for studying
schedules of reinforcement.
For example, the System80 would project five semi-related pictures onto its
visual display. It would then prompt the student with a recorded audio
question. Example: Find the ball that is inside the box. Each picture
would vary slightly showing the ball on top of the box, below the box, to
the right of the box and to the left of the box. Only one picture would
represent the ball correctly inside the box. As the student depressed the
proper button corresponding with the ball inside the box, he or she
would be granted immediate feedback by advancing promptly to the next
question.
The next question would also refer to spatial relationships, and ask find
the ball on top of the box using the same five pictures. The sequential
spatial relationships broke the task of learning space relations into very
small steps. Finally, if the student failed to depress the key corresponding
with the correct answer, she would be asked the question again and again
thereby forcing the user to hear the directions repetitively. The sequence of
tasks start at a simple level before ranging to the complex. For example, a
ball inside versus outside of a box would be presented as a more simple
spatial question before educating the student on the more abstract
directional space of right versus left or north versus south.
The project centred on dividing the nose cone of a missile into three
compartments, and encasing a pigeon in each. Each compartment used a
lens to project an image of what was in front of the missile onto a screen.
The pigeons would peck toward the object, thereby directing the missile.
Skinner complained our problem was no one would take us seriously.
The point is perhaps best explained in terms of human psychology (that is,
few people would trust a pigeon to guide a missile no matter how reliable it
proved).
The position can be stated as follows: what is felt or self observed is not some
non-physical world of consciousness, mind or mental life but the observers own
body. This does not mean, as he shall show later, that introspection is a kind of
psychological research, nor does it mean (and this is the heart of the argument)
that what is felt or introspectively observed are the causes of the behaviour. An
organism behaves as it does because of its current structure, but most of this is
out of the reach of introspection. At the moment we must be content, as the
methodological behaviourist insists, with a persons genetic and environment
histories. What are introspectively observed are certain collateral products of
those histories.
In this way, we repair the major damage processed by mentalism. When what a
person does is attributed to what is going on inside him, investigation is brought
to an end. For twenty five hundred years people have been preoccupied with
feelings and mental life, but only recently has any interest been shown in a more
precise analysis of the role of the environment. Ignorance of that role leads in the
first place to mental fictions, and it has been perpetuated by the explanatory
practices to which they gave rise.
Skinner also sought to understand the application of his theory in the broadest
behavioural sense. This methodological stance is a reaction and predates the
current level of advancement, in which mental structures can be observed in
operation via technologies such as functional MRI.
Skinner suggests that any age-appropriate skill can be taught using the following
five principles to remedy the above mentioned problems:
(a) Give the learner immediate feedback;
(b) Break down the task into small steps;
(c) Repeat the directions as many times as possible;
(d) Work from the simplest to the most complex tasks; and
(e) Give positive reinforcement.
Walden Two, like Thoreaus Walden, champions a lifestyle that does not support
war or foster competition and social strife. It encourages a lifestyle of minimal
consumption, rich social relationships, personal happiness, satisfying work and
leisure. In Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner suggests that a technology of
behaviour could help make a better society. We would, however, have to accept
that an autonomous agent is not the driving force of our actions. Skinner offers
alternatives to punishment and challenges his readers to use science and modern
technology to construct a better society.
SELF-CHECK 7.1
7.2 THINKING
During most of our waking hours, and even when we are asleep and dreaming, we
are thinking; it is hard not to think. As you read these words you are thinking and
even if you stop thinking about what you are reading and your thoughts wander
off to something else perhaps to what you are going to do tomorrow you will
still be thinking. What do we do when we think? Loosely speaking, we might say
that we mentally, or cognitively, process information. More formally, we might say
that thinking consists of the cognitive rearrangement or manipulation of both
information from the environment and the symbols stored in long-term memory.
A symbol represents, or stands for, some event or item in the world; as we will see,
images and language symbols are used in much of our thinking.
The general definition of thinking given above encloses many different varieties
of thought. For instance, some thinking is highly private and may use symbols
with very personal meanings. This kind of thinking is called autistic thinking;
dreams are an example of autistic thinking. Other thinking is aimed at solving
problems or creating something new; this is called directed thinking. It is also the
type of thought we value so much in the great human thinkers. The definition of
thinking given above also covers the thinking that we believe animals engage in
when they solve certain kinds of problems.
7.2.1 Concepts
Concepts are an important class of language symbols used in thinking. A concept
is a symbolic construction representing some common and general feature or
features of objects or events. Some natural or basic concepts are easily acquired
and appear in thinking early in life. Other concepts are acquired by
discrimination learning, by seeing examples of a concept in different contexts and
by definition. A concept is a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas or
people. There are varieties of chairs but their common features define the concept
of a chair as shown in Figure 7.6.
(a) Algorithms
Algorithms are sets of rules which, if followed correctly, guarantee a
solution to a problem. It is a methodical, logical rule or procedure that
guarantees solving a particular problem. Algorithms exhaust all
possibilities before arriving at a solution. It takes a long time. Computers
use algorithms.
SPLOYOCHYG
(b) Heuristics
Heuristics make it easy for us to use simple principles to arrive at solutions
to problems.
SPLOYOCHYG
PS SP YL OC HY O CL OH G Y
Try putting Y at the end of the first algorithm and see if the word starts to
make sense. Heuristics are strategies or approaches to a problem that are
usually based on past experience, likely to lead to a solution, but do not
guarantee success. One common heuristic is breaking a larger problem
down into smaller sub problems which when solved, will lead to the
solution of the overall, larger problem. The solution to a problem depends,
to a large degree, on choosing good heuristic rules to follow which can
predispose us to select appropriate or inappropriate heuristics. The
hindering effects of habit on problem solving are discussed at some length.
Functional fixedness is an example of the hindering effects of habit on
problem solving.
SELF-CHECK 7.2
1. What is the nature of learning? Discuss problem solving and
several processes involved in it.
2. Write short notes on the following:
(a) Concepts; and
(b) Decision making.
It is encouraging to know that the fact we are either bodies filled with millions of
facts interpreting ideas from many domains (top-down) or bodies that have
learned through experience (bottom-up) is not relevant. It is the fact that we have
to re-examine ourselves that is significant. It is all the way through this process
that we gain an admiration and enhance understanding of ourselves.
Isomorphism
This is the doctrine that there is a correspondence between psychological or
conscious experience and the underlying brain experience. It involved a theory
that dealt with the underlying brain mechanisms involved with perceived
gestalts. The cerebral cortex was depicted as a dynamic system, in which the
elements active at a given time interact. Perception is like a map.
SELF-CHECK 7.3
ACTIVITY 7.1
The following link will lead you to an article. Read it carefully and try
to analyse artificial intelligence in psychology.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=7417
Mach, E., & Williams, C. M. (Ed.). (1897). Contributions to the analysis of the
sensations. Chicago, IL: Open Court.
X INTRODUCTION
The 1950s marked the end of the dominance of behaviourism and the rise of an
alternative cognitive and information processing paradigm. Behaviourism was
professionalising itself out of existence. Hundreds of articles were being written
on problems of the interest to no one outside the field. Harlow (1953) wrote that
the importance of the psychological problems studied during the last 15 years
had decreased as a negatively accelerated function approaching an asymptote of
complete indifference. Serious criticism of behaviourisms basic assumptions was
launched during this period.
The basic point of the critiques was the structured nature of behaviour and the
contribution of the organism that produces it. In the following section, we will
focus on humanistic psychology, explaining the concept of Cartesian linguistics
and some issues related to the erosion of foundations.
The term third force refers to the third force in psychology of which the other
two are as shown in Figure 8.1.
Tolmans basic principles were that learning generally involved the acquisition of
knowledge about the world; in particular about relationships between, and
among stimuli and their consequences. His knowledge led to expectancies when
the animal was put in teasing situations. He argued that learning involved the
creation of what he called a cognitive map that organised the relations among
stimuli and consequences based on interconnections between groups of stimuli.
Moreover, he rigorously tested these ideas using the same species and maze-
learning paradigms that were a major focus of the prominent S-R theorists.
In a series of studies, Tolman showed that rats were capable of solving maze
problems by taking novel detours or shortcuts. They exhibited a capacity for
latent learning, in which they acquired problem solutions in the absence of
reinforcement. Collectively, in each of these studies, rats showed they were
capable of learned behaviours that were not previously reinforced and therefore
could not be mediated.
The following are the major theorists considered to have prepared the ground for
Humanistic psychology.
(a) Abraham Maslow: He emphasised a hierarchy of needs and motivation;
(b) Rollo May: The existential psychology of Rollo May acknowledged human
choice and the tragic aspects of human existence; and
(c) Carl Rogers: The person-centred or client-centred therapy of Carl Rogers
centred on the clients capacity for self-direction and understanding of his
or her own development.
meaning, life and case history studied, and a variety of studies using qualitative
data and/or reconceptualised quasi-experimental designs.
Charlotte Buhler (1933) was one of the first to criticise the psychoanalytic concept
of homeostasis as the end goal of human striving, claiming that homeostasis was
only a goal in illness. She emphasised the creative processes by which humans
attempt to bring values into existence, whether those values are artistic,
technological, social or spiritual. Indeed, human creativity may have an
underlying chaotic process that selectively amplifies small fluctuations and
moulds them into coherent mental states experienced as thought (Rossi, 1989). By
focusing on the human being's potentials for growth, humanistic psychologists
have constructed a model of the healthy personality that diverges from
psychoanalysis' medical model of the person (Krippner, 2001).
ACTIVITY 8.1
Write a short note on Karl Lashleys alternative conception of a
nervous system as active.
Man versus brute is one of the main topics covered in Cartesian linguistics.
Certain mechanical factors of language function, such as response to stimuli, are
evident in both humans and animals; however, Chomsky cites from several 17th
century Cartesian experiments which show that the creative aspect of language is
specific only to human beings. This is, in essence, the Cartesian theory of
language production.
After setting out Skinners notions of verbal behaviour, verbal operant, tact
etc., Chomsky commented that in each case, if their terms were taken in their
literal meaning, the description covers almost no aspect of verbal behaviour, and
if we take them metaphorically, the description offers no improvement over
various traditional formulations.
SELF-CHECK 8.1
Skinner in 1953 wrote that behaviours cannot be accounted for while staying
wholly inside (an animal); eventually we must turn to forces operating upon the
organism from without. Unless there is a weak spot in our causal chain so that
the second (neurological) link is not lawfully determined by the first
(environmental stimuli), or the third (behaviour) by the second, the first and
third links must be lawfully related. He wrote, Valid information about the
second link may throw light on this relationship but can in no way alter it. It is
external variables of which behaviour is a function.
Skinner was not keen on supporting neuroscience. Neuroscience, for him was more
or less just identifying organismic physical processes that underlie animal or
environment interactions. Therein, it rides evidential or epistemic piggyback on
radical behaviourisms prior description of those interactions. The organism, he
says, is not empty, and it cannot adequately be treated simply as a black box
(Skinner, 1976). Something is done today which affects the behaviour of the
organism tomorrow. Neuroscience describes inside-the-box mechanisms that
permit todays reinforcing stimulus to affect tomorrows behaviour. The neural box
is not empty, but it is unable, except in cases of malfunction or breakdown, to
disengage the animal from past patterns of behaviour that have been reinforced. It
cannot exercise independent or non-environmentally countervailing authority over
behaviour.
A second reason for rejecting behaviourism is that some features of mentality and
some elements in the inner processing of persons have characteristic qualia or
presentationally immediate or phenomenal qualities. To be in pain, for example, is
not merely to produce appropriate pain behaviour under the right environmental
circumstances, but it is to experience the pain (as something dull or sharp). A
purely behaviourist creature, a zombie, as it were, may engage in pain
behaviour, including beneath the skin pain responses, yet completely lack
whatever is qualitatively distinctive of and proper to pain (its painfulness)
(Graham, 1998; Graham & Horgan, 2000).
The third reason for rejecting behaviourism is connected with Noam Chomsky.
Chomsky has been one of behaviourisms most successful and damaging critics.
In a review of Skinners book on verbal behaviour, Chomsky (1959) charged that
behaviourist models of language learning cannot explain various facts about
language acquisition, such as the rapid acquisition of language by young
children, which is sometimes referred to as the phenomenon of lexical
explosion.
Paul Meehl (1978) noted more than three decades ago that theory in psychology
seems to disappear not under the force of decisive refutation but rather because
researchers lose interest in their theoretical orientations. One implication of
Meehl's thesis is that a once popular Ism, not having been decisively refuted,
may restore some of its former prominence if it mutates or transforms itself so as
to incorporate responses to criticisms. What may this mean for behaviourism? It
may mean that some version of the doctrine might re-emerge.
SELF-CHECK 8.2
ACTIVITY 8.2
The following link would lead you to an article on the topic On the Non-
Existence of Cartesian Linguistics. Read it carefully and try to
elaborate your knowledge on Cartesian linguistics.
http://people.ku.edu/~percival/CartesianLinguistics.pdf
1. Who were the critics of behaviourism from within? What was their
contention?
2. What was Chomsky's critique of Skinner's verbal behaviour analysis?
3. What is the "third force" in psychology and how does it challenge
behaviourism?
Bhler, C. (1933). The child and its activity with practical material. British Journal
of Educational Psychology, 3(1), 27-41.
Goff, L. M., & Roediger, H. L. (1998). Imagination inflation for action events:
Repeated imaginings lead to illusory recollections. Memory & Cognition,
26(1), 20-33.
Graham, G., & Horgan, T. (2000). Mary Mary, quite contrary. Philosophical
Studies, 99(1), 59-87.
Graham, G., & Valentine, E. (2004). Identifying the mind: Selected papers of U. T.
Place. Oxford, England: Oxford University.
Graham, G., Horgan, T., & Tienson, J. (2009). Phenomenology, intentionality, and
the unity of mind. In A. Beckermann, & B. McLaughlin (eds.), Oxford
handbook of philosophy of mind (pp. 512-537). Oxford, England: Oxford
University.
Krippner, S. (2001). Chaos theory and humanistic psychology: The third revolution
and the third force. Retrieved from
http://sourceress.tripod.com/storage/asklepia/Krippner/ChaosTheory.html
Meehl, P. E. (1978). Theoretical risks and tabular asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald,
and the slow progress of soft psychology. Journal of Consulting and
Clinical Psychology, 46(4), 806834.
Poppen, P., Wandersman, A., & Wandersman, L. (1976). What are humanism and
behaviorism and what can they say to each other. Humanism and
behaviorism: Dialogue and growth, 3-30.
Rychlak, J. F. (1977). The psychology of rigorous humanism. New York, NY: Wiley.
Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. New York, NY: Macmillan.
X INTRODUCTION
The revolution in psychology is the name for an intellectual movement in the
1950s that began what are known collectively as the cognitive sciences. It began
in the modern context of greater interdisciplinary communication and research.
The relevant areas of interchange were the combination of psychology,
anthropology and linguistics with approaches developed within the then-nascent
fields of artificial intelligence, computer science and neuroscience. A key idea in
cognitive psychology was that by studying and developing successful functions
in artificial intelligence and computer science, it becomes possible to make
testable inferences about human mental processes. This has been called the
reverse-engineering approach.
Response to Behaviourism
The cognitive revolution in psychology took form as cognitive psychology, an
approach in large part a response to behaviourism, the predominant school in
scientific psychology at the time. This school was heavily influenced by Ivan
Pavlov and E. L. Thorndike, and its most notable practitioners were John B.
Watson and B. F. Skinner. They proposed that psychology could only become an
objective science were it based on observable behaviour in test subjects. They
argued that because mental events are not publicly observable, behaviourist
psychologists should avoid description of mental processes or the mind in their
theories. Cognitive psychologists argued in response that experimental
investigation of mental states do allow scientists to produce theories that more
reliably predict outcomes.
This account of the cognitive revolution was challenged by Jerome Bruner who
characterised it as: ...an all-out effort to establish meaning as the central concept
of psychology []. It was not a revolution against behaviourism with the aim of
transforming behaviourism into a better way of pursuing psychology by adding
a little mentalism to it. [] Its aim was to discover and to describe formally the
meanings that human beings created out of their encounters with the world, and
then to propose hypotheses about what meaning-making processes were
implicated (Bruner, 1990).
According to Alison Assiter (1984), four ideas are common to the various forms
of structuralism. They are:
(a) A structure determines the position of each element of a whole;
(b) Every system has a structure;
(c) Structural laws deal with co-existence rather than change; and
(d) Structures are the real things that lie beneath the surface or the
appearance of meaning.
In the 1970s, structuralism was criticised for its rigidity and historicism. Despite
this, many of structuralisms proponents, such as Jacques Lacan, continue to
assert an influence on continental philosophy and many of the fundamental
assumptions of some of structuralism's critics (who have been associated with
post-structuralism) are a continuation of structuralism.
Structuralism rejected the concept of human freedom and choice and focused
instead on the way that human behaviour is determined by various structures.
The most important initial work on this score was Claude Lvi-Strausss 1949
volume Elementary Structures of Kinship. Lvi-Strauss had known Jakobson
during their time together in New York during WWII and was influenced by
both Jakobson's structuralism as well as the American anthropological tradition.
By the early 1960s, structuralism as a movement was coming into its own and
some believed that it offered a single unified approach to human life that would
embrace all disciplines. Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida focused on how
structuralism could be applied to literature.
Blending Freud and De Saussure, the French (post) structuralist Jacques Lacan
applied structuralism to psychoanalysis and, in a different way, Jean Piaget
applied structuralism to the study of psychology. But Jean Piaget, who would
better define himself as a constructivist, considers structuralism as a method
and not a doctrine because for him there exists no structure without a
construction, abstract or genetic.
In much the same way, the American historian of science, Thomas Kuhn (1962)
addressed the structural formations of science in his seminal work The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions its title alone evincing a stringent structuralist
approach. Though less concerned with episteme, Kuhn nonetheless remarked
at how coteries of scientists operated under and applied a standard praxis of
normal science, deviating from a standard paradigm only in instances of
irreconcilable anomalies that question a significant body of their work.
The term has slightly different meanings in French and English. In US, for
instance, Derrida is considered the paradigm of post-structuralism while in
France he is labelled a structuralist. Finally, some authors wrote in several
different styles. Barthes, for instance, wrote some books which are clearly
structuralist and others which clearly are not.
Other key notions in structural linguistics include paradigm, syntagm and value
(though these notions were not fully developed in Saussures thought). A
structural paradigm is a class of linguistic units (lexemes, morphemes or even
constructions) that are possible in a certain position in a given linguistic
environment (such as a given sentence), which is called the syntagm. The
different functional role of each of these members of the paradigm is called
value (valeur in French).
Saussures Course influenced many linguists between WWI and WWII. In the
US, for instance, Leonard Bloomfield developed his own version of structural
linguistics, as did Louis Hjelmslev in Denmark and Alf Sommer in Norway.
The clearest and most important example of structuralism in the Prague school
lies in phonemics. Rather than simply compiling a list of which sounds occur in a
language, the Prague school sought to examine how they were related. They
determined that the inventory of sounds in a language could be analysed in
terms of a series of contrasts. Thus, in English, the sounds /p/ and /b/ represent
distinct phonemes because there are cases (minimal pairs) where the contrast
between the two is the only difference between two distinct words (for example.
pat and bat). Analysing sounds in terms of contrastive features also opens
up comparative scope. It makes clear, for instance, that the difficulty Japanese
speakers have differentiating /r/ and /l/ in English is because these sounds are
not contrastive in Japanese. While this approach is now standard in linguistics, it
was revolutionary at the time. Phonology would become the paradigmatic basis
for structuralism in a number of different fields.
SELF-CHECK 9.1
Cosmic Mind's infinitely varied manifestations arise, are sustained from moment
to moment, and pass away within it. Such manifestations include all possible
objects, realms of experience, dimensions, parallel or divergent universes, multi-
verses, space and time. All of these, and any conceivable or inconceivable
others, are ideas in that Mind, which is conscious and supremely aware through
its progeny, creatures like us, of all events, in all times and places,
simultaneously.
From our individual standpoint, all experience, without exception, is wholly and
entirely mental, including everything that we incorrectly assume to be
independent matter separate and apart from us. The belief that there is a
real, material, independent world out there is a misapprehension of
experience. There is only the One, Infinite Mind, in which we, like everything
else, appear to enjoy a temporary existence as its thoughts, but in which in
essence, as mind Itself, we are birthless and deathless.
We normally fail to perceive this because of the existence of the ego, defined here
as a strongly-held complex of ideas, focused on the body and the personality,
themselves ideas, which deceives the individual into believing that he or she is
uniquely and essentially different from all other people and things.
The similarity of our individual sensations is due to the fact that a common
Cosmic Mind is projecting them through us. There is no wholly isolated thing or
event. All are interconnected at the deepest level. If there were not this
underlying mental continuum, we could never become aware of each other.
birth and death amongst its companions and as its own fate. Yet all such illusions
are dispelled once it realises its boundless essential nature, its true self, as Ocean.
Every atom, every sub-atomic particle of the table at which one writes, is a fresh
projection of mind each an incredibly tiny fraction of a second. The slowly
decaying table and the more obviously transitory environment, in which it exists,
are a continual succession of extremely rapidly-projected images. Just as one
ignores, the projector while at the cinema, accepting that the sounds and sights
on the screen truly represent external reality rather than a blended succession
of still images, so one is deceived by its continuity into believing that it remains
the same table.
Secondly, however bizarre the events of the dream may be, the dreamer, while
caught up in it, is normally quite unaware of this at the time. He or she
confidently accepts its reality as unquestionable.
These are clear signals to warn the dreamer that waking experience may be
comparably unreal, creatively imagined through and imposed upon him or her
by a powerful Cosmic Mind. In effect, we dream that the world and we as
individuals independently exist and we are forced, owing to the overwhelming
power of Cosmic Mind's constructive imagination as compared to our own, to
believe that we are experiencing reality direct, rather than indirectly.
Deceived by the outsideness of the external world, they overlook the fact
that every experience is a mental one by definition; that no experience other than
mental experience is even possible; and that what appears external to the body is
simultaneously internal to the observer's mind.
Given its basic postulate of a single, Cosmic Mind, that underlies, permeates, and
indeed is the whole of reality; mentalism is clearly consistent with every
manifestation of psi, including all forms of extra-sensory perception (ESP) and
psychokinesis (PK).
(b) Ontogenesis
The study of development loomed large in the early behaviourist research
programme. This followed from the assumption that habits are elaborated
out of innate response systems (instinct, emotions) present in the newborn
infant and develop over the life course. As Dashiell (1928) put it, life-
activities...vary by all degrees between the two poles of unorganised,
Copyright Open University Malaysia (OUM)
TOPIC 9 REVOLUTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY W 181
(f) Language
For behaviourists in the 1920s, self-stimulation and response were
intimately linked to language. For both, the self in thinking and the social
listener in communication, language responses were conceived as
substitute, symbolic stimuli and independent of the sensory attributes of
the original stimulus. In this role, they sub-served the related functions of
abstraction and generalisation. As Weiss, who pioneered this analysis,
asserted: ...many different receptor patterns representative of many
different sensory situations and relations, are connected to the same
language response and through this common path the individual may react
in a specific manner to all the objects, situations, and relations thus
concerned, even though there is very little sensory similarity between
them.
SELF-CHECK 9.2
computer system. In the latter case, an information processor is changing the form
of presentation of that text file. Information processing may more specifically be
defined in terms used by Claude E. Shannon as the conversion of latent
information into manifest information. Latent and manifest information are
defined through the terms of equivocation (remaining uncertainty, what value the
sender has actually chosen), dissipation (uncertainty of the sender about what the
receiver has actually received) and transformation (saved effort of questioning
equivocation minus dissipation).
(a) When the individual perceives, encodes, represents and stores information
from the environment in his mind or retrieves that information, he or she is
thinking. Thinking also includes responding to any constraints or
limitations on memory processes.
(b) The proper focus of study is the role of change mechanism in development.
Four critical mechanisms work together to bring about change in children's
cognitive skills: encoding, strategy construction, automatisation and
generalisation. To solve problems effectively, children must encode critical
information about a problem and then use this encoded information and
relevant prior knowledge to construct a strategy to deal with the problem.
(c) Development is driven by self-modification. Like Piagets theory of
cognitive development, the information-processing approach holds that
children play an active role in their own development. Through self-
modification, the child uses knowledge and strategies she has acquired
from earlier problem solution to modify his or her responses to a new
situation or problem. In this way, he or she builds newer and more
sophisticated responses from prior knowledge.
(d) Investigators must perform careful task analysis of the problem situations
they present to children. According to this view, not only the child's own
level of development but the nature of the task itself constraints a child's
performance. Thus, a child may possess the basic ability necessary to
perform a particular task when it is presented in a simple form, without
unnecessary complexities. However, if extra or misleading information is
added to the same task, the child may become confused and be unable to
perform it.
Some cognitive psychologists may study how internal cognitive operations can
transform symbols of the external world, others on the interplay between
genetics and environment in determining individual cognitive development and
capabilities. Still other cognitive psychologists may focus their studies on how
the mind detects, selects, recognises and verbally represents features of a
particular stimulus. Among the many specific topics investigated by cognitive
psychologists are language acquisition; visual and auditory perception;
information storage and retrieval; altered states of consciousness; cognitive
restructuring (how the mind mediates between conflicting, or dissonant,
information); and individual styles of thought and perception.
The challenges of studying human cognition are evident when one considers the
work of the mind in processing the simultaneous and sometimes conflicting
information presented in daily life, through both internal and external stimuli.
For example, an individual may feel hunger pangs, the external heat of the sun,
and sensations of bodily movement produced by walking while simultaneously
talking, listening to a companion and recalling past experiences. Although this
attention to multiple stimuli is a common phenomenon, complex cognitive
processing is clearly required to accomplish it.
In 1960, Jerome Bruner and George A. Miller established the Harvard Centre for
Cognitive Studies, which became influential in the cognitive revolution. As a
result, an increasing number of experimental psychologists abandoned
behaviourist studies of rats and mazes for research involving the higher mental
processes in human beings. This trend in psychology paralleled advances in
SELF-CHECK 9.3
Some psychologists move flexibly across these areas. A researcher might also
provide counselling services in a mental-health setting, such as a clinic or a
hospital; a university professor might teach, do research, and serve as a
consultant in legal cases. Not all psychologists do clinical work. Many do
research, teach, work in business or consult.
The professional activities of psychologists with doctorates fall into three general
categories as follows:
(vi) Education;
(vii) General hospitals;
(viii) Mental hospitals;
(ix) Industrial or organisational;
(x) Psychology;
(xi) Physiological psychology;
(xii) Research laboratories;
(xiii) Colleges and universities;
(xiv) Sensation and perception; and
(xv) Design and use of technology.
Applied psychology has direct relevance to human problems, but without basic
psychology, there would be little knowledge to apply. A psychologist doing basic
research might ask. How does peer pressure influence peoples attitudes and
behaviour? An applied psychologist might ask, How can knowledge about
peer pressure be used to reduce binge drinking by college students?
(c) Developmental psychologists study how people change and grow over
time physically, mentally and socially. In the past, their focus was mainly
on childhood, but many now study adolescence, young-adulthood, the
middle years or old age.
Some practitioners are counselling psychologists who generally help people deal
with problems of everyday life, such as test anxiety, family conflicts or low job
motivation. Others are school psychologists, who work with parents, teachers,
and students to enhance students performance and resolve emotional
difficulties. The majority, however, are clinical psychologists, who diagnose,
treat, and study mental or emotional problems. Clinical psychologists are trained
to do psychotherapy with severely disturbed people, as well as with those who
are simply troubled or unhappy or who want to learn to handle their problems
better.
In all most all states, a license to practice clinical psychology requires a doctorate.
Most clinical psychologists have a PhD, some have an EdD, and a smaller
number have a PsyD (Doctorate in Psychology, pronounced sy-deEi), a degree
that began to be awarded in the 1970s. Clinical psychologists typically do four or
five years of graduate work in psychology, plus at least a year's internship under
the direction of a practicing psychologist. Clinical programmes leading to a PhD
or EdD, are usually designed to prepare a person both as a scientist and as a
clinical practitioner. They require completion of a dissertation, a major scholarly
project (usually involving research) that contributes to knowledge in the field.
Programmes leading to a PsyD, focus on professional practice and do not usually
require a dissertation, although they typically require the student to complete a
major study, theoretical paper or literature review.
Master's degree in psychology or social work and one or two years of supervised
experience. As if this is not complicated enough, there are thousands of counsellors
who specialise in treating all kinds of problems, from sexual abuse to alcoholism;
there is, however, no uniform set of regulating standards. Just as not all
psychologists are psychotherapists, not all psychotherapists are clinical
psychologists.
(a) Psychotherapist
A person who does psychotherapy; may have anything from no degree to
an advanced professional degree; this job is unregulated.
(c) Psychoanalyst
Practices psychoanalysis; has specific training in this approach after an
advanced degree (usually, but not always holding an MD or a PhD); may
treat any kind of emotional disorder or pathology.
(d) Psychiatrist
Does work similar to that of a clinical psychologist but is likely to take a
more biological approach; has a medical degree (MD) with a specialty in
psychiatry.
(e) Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW); Marriage, Family, and Child
Counsellor (MFCC)
Typically treats common individual and family problems, but may also
deal with more serious problems such as addiction or abuse. Licensing
requirements vary, but generally has at least a post graduate degree in
psychology or social work training. Some may even have taken nothing
more than a brief certification course.
Many research psychologists and some practitioners are worried about the
increase in the number of counsellors and psychotherapists who are unschooled
in research methods and the empirical findings of psychology, and who use
invalid therapy techniques (Beutler, 2000; Dawes, 1994; Poole, Lindsay, Memon,
& Bull, 1995). Critics trace this development to the rise of freestanding
professional schools, which are unaffiliated with any university. Although some
of these schools offer a quality education, others do not.
ACTIVITY 9.1
1. If someone is a psychologist, why cannot you assume that the
person is a therapist?
2. What is the difference between a clinical psychologist and a
psychiatrist?
ACTIVITY 9.2
The following link will guide you to an exclusive website of psychology
and its practice. Try to prepare notes of few important facts related to
psychological practice.
http://www.guidetopsychology.com/psypract_menu.htm
Adair, J. G., & Vohra, N. (2003). The explosion of knowledge, references, and
citations: Psychology's unique response to a crisis. American Psychologist,
58(1), 15-23.
Benjamin Jr, L. T. (2003). Why can't psychology get a stamp? Journal of Applied
Psychoanalytic Studies, 5(4), 443-454.
Dale, L. A., & Rhea, A. W. (1977). Glossary of terms found in the literature of
psychical research and parapsychology. In Wolman, B. B., Dale, L. A.,
Schmeidler, G. R., & Ullman, M. (Eds.), Handbook of parapsychology.
Jefferson, MO: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits
on our capacity for processing information. Indiana, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.
Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New
York, NY: Viking.
Poole, D. A., Lindsay, D. S., Memon, A., & Bull, R. (1995). Psychotherapy and the
recovery of memories of childhood sexual abuse: US and British
practitioners' opinions, practices, and experiences. Journal of Consulting
and Clinical Psychology, 63(3), 426.
INTRODUCTION
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of the mind and how information,
for example, that concerning perception, language, reasoning and emotion, is
represented and transformed in the brain. It consists of multiple research
disciplines, including psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy,
neuroscience, learning sciences, linguistics, anthropology, sociology and
education. It spans many levels of analysis, from low-level learning and decision
mechanisms to high-level logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular
brain organisation. The term cognitive science was coined by Christopher
Longuet-Higgins in his 1973 commentary on the Lighthill report, which
concerned the then-current state of artificial intelligence research. In the
This eclectic approach has contributed new ideas and theories that will continue
to shape psychology for years to come. Eclectic means the willingness to employ
the most effective methods available in solving a problem.
(b) Neuroscience
Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology that aims to understand how
the structure and function of the brain relate to specific psychological
processes. The brain is the main subject of research in this area.
(c) Cross-cultural
This involves the scientific study of human behaviour and mental process,
including both their variability and invariance, under diverse cultural
conditions. Community violence, domestic violence and substance abuses
are all found to be (at least) partially related to this aspect.
(d) Forensic
Forensic psychology is the area concerned with the application of
psychological methods and principles to the legal arena.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, much of the cognitive science research focused on
the possibility of artificial intelligence. Researchers such as Marvin Minsky
would write computer programmes in languages such as LISP to attempt to
formally characterise the steps that human beings went through, for instance, in
making decisions and solving problems. This was done in the hope of better
understanding human thought and also in the hope of creating artificial minds.
This approach is known as symbolic AI.
Even if the technology to map out every neuron in the brain in real-time was
available, and it was known when each neuron was firing, it would still be
impossible to know how a particular firing of neurons translates into the
observed behaviour. Thus, an understanding of how these two levels relate to
each other is needed. This can be provided by a functional level account of the
process. Studying a particular phenomenon from multiple levels creates a better
understanding of the processes that occur in the brain to give rise to a particular
behaviour.
The term cognitive in cognitive science is used for any kind of mental
operation or structure that can be studied in precise terms (Lakoff & Johnson,
1999). This conceptualisation is very broad, and should not be confused with
how cognitive is used in some traditions of analytic philosophy, where
cognitive has to do only with formal rules and truth conditional semantics.
(c) Memory
Cognitive scientists study memory just as psychologists do, but tend to
focus more on how memory bears on cognitive processes and the
interrelationship between cognition and memory. One example of this
could be, what mental processes does a person go through to retrieve a
long-lost memory? Or, what differentiates the cognitive process of
recognition (seeing hints of something before remembering it, or memory in
context) and recall (retrieving a memory, as in fill-in-the-blank)?
SELF-CHECK 10.1
How strict are sciences rules of evidence? Well, let us first compare science to
law. The legal definition of evidence is (as one example) a set of observations that
appear to associate a particular person with a particular event. Typically, legal
proceedings begin with an investigation meant to collect evidence, followed by a
trial that establishes whether that evidence meets a criterion beyond a
reasonable doubt in criminal proceedings, and according to the preponderance
of evidence in civil proceedings (in the US). This, by the way, is why O. J.
Simpson was found innocent in criminal court, but found guilty in a subsequent
civil proceeding using the same evidence, he was not guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt, but he was guilty according to the preponderance of
evidence (refer to Figure 10.1).
In an embarrassing and tragic number of cases, innocent people have been placed
on death row (and sometimes executed) based on evidence that, notwithstanding
the innocence of the convict, met the beyond a reasonable doubt standard
when evaluated by a jury of 12 upstanding citizens, people whom we shall
charitably assume overlooked the colour of the defendant's skin. Relatively
recently, there have been new ways of gathering evidence like DNA testing
which have proven the innocence of a fortunate few death-row inmates while
others who might have gone unpunished have been arrested.
The point here is that legal evidence is not remotely scientific evidence. Contrary
to popular belief, science does not use sloppy evidentiary standards like beyond
a reasonable doubt, and scientific theories never become facts. This is why the
oft-heard expression proven scientific fact is never appropriate it only reflects
the scientific ignorance of the speaker. Scientific theories are always theories,
they never become the final and only explanation for a given phenomenon.
This very strict evidentiary standard is essential for science to provide its riches,
and it is no problem for people who have been properly educated. But in the
lives of people for whom evidence means he said, she said, certain problems
are inevitable.
Apart from being filtered through all possible explanations, scientific theories
have another important property they must make predictions that can be tested
and possibly falsified. In fact, and this may surprise you, scientific theories can
only be falsified, they can never be proven true once and for all. That is why they
are called theories as certain as some of them are. It is always possible they
may be replaced by better theories, ones that explain more, are simpler or that
make more accurate predictions than their forebears.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (PSM) and its
companion, the International Classifications of Diseases, Mental Disorders
Section (ICD) are significance to the practice of psychology and psychiatry and
because of what it claims are valid mental illnesses.
Putting aside for the moment the nebulous "phase of life problem," "sibling
rivalry" is now a mental illness? Yes, according to the current DSM/ICD. It is
wrong to brand as mentally ill those who (frequently) cannot accurately choose
from among "site," "cite" and "sight".
Based on Table 10.1 and extrapolating into the future using appropriate
regression methods, in 100 years, there will be more than 3600 conditions
meriting treatment as mental illnesses. To put it another way, there will be more
mental states identified as abnormal, than there are known, distinct mental states.
In short, no behaviour will be normal.
Those who created the DSM intended to standardise diagnostic criteria, so that
two clinicians similarly trained, when confronted by the same patient, would be
able to use the DSMs guidance to produce the same diagnosis. This ambitious
goal, had it been achieved, would have greatly improved the image of
psychology as a science. But, notwithstanding the DSMs gradual increase in size
and weight, this goal is as remote as ever. Even many of those charged with
responsibility for creating and editing the DSM acknowledge that it is not the
hoped-for validation of clinical psychology's standing as a science.
Tom Widger, who served as head of research for DSM-IV, says There are lots of
studies which show that clinicians diagnose most of their patients with one
particular disorder and really do not systematically assess for other disorders.
They have a bias in reference to the disorder that they are especially interested in
treating and believe that most of their patients have. Also, because of clinical
psychologys supposed status as a science, the patients do not typically object to
the diagnosis they are given. Indeed, some of them embrace the diagnosis,
however implausible, and proceed to exhibit all the symptoms the clinician
expects to see.
Many conditions have made their way into the DSM and nearly none are later
removed. Homosexuality was until recently listed as a mental illness (after
1960s), one believed to be amenable to treatment in spite of the total absence of
clinical evidence. Then a combination of research findings from fields other than
psychology and simple political pressure and social rights movement resulted in
the removal of homosexuality from psychologys official list of mental illnesses.
ACTIVITY 10.1
Is the DSM becoming more or less reasonable as time passes? Decide for
yourself as shown in Table 10.1. The table shows a list of years and the
number of conditions identified as mental illnesses in the DSM for
that year.
The latter is the branch of psychology that holds that human behaviour is
determined by unique individual cultures that can be compared with each other
only to a very limited extent. In contrast, cross-cultural psychology includes a
search for possible universals in behaviour and mental processes.
Various definitions of the field include: the scientific study of human behaviour
and its transmission, taking into account the ways in which behaviours are
shaped and influenced by social and cultural forces and the empirical study of
members of various cultural groups who have had different experiences that lead
to predictable and significant differences in behaviour. Culture may also be
defined as the shared way of life of a group of people. They also outline
various aims and goals of cross-cultural psychology including a challenge to the
limited cultural perspective that may result if one only studies cultural variables
within ones own society.
The three meanings is the notion which implies that culture has had a long
history in social thought (Jahoda, 1993). Presently the notion of culture as used in
psychology has these three meanings as follows.
(a) First, it has been used to designate some group of people who belong
together by value of some shared features. This form of making sense of
person and culture person belongs to culture simultaneously denotes
the commonality of such belonging (the descriptive or classificatory role of
the use of the term) and some usually unspecified causal system that
guarantees the relative similarity of all the persons who belong to the given
culture. This meaning prevails in cross-cultural psychology and is consistent
with the way anthropologists use the term as well as the laypersons
everyday conception of the term.
(c) In the third meaning of culture, we can say that the term belongs to
means how the person and the environment are interrelated. Of course the
meaning of belonging to here breaks down there is no specifiable
owner (or carrier) of the culture. Instead, culture becomes exemplified
through different processes by which persons interact with their worlds.
This perspective requires conceptual separation of the person and the
world a step that often becomes criticised as dualism. However,
analytically, differentiation of the parts of a whole as long as the whole is
maintained in place is not a case of constructing a dualism but
elaborating the functioning structure of the whole. To use a recurrent
example that psychologists have thought of over a century, the quality of a
whole (water) is not devalued by the fact that this whole (substance)
entails the duality of hydrogen and oxygen and its link in its chemical
composition. If chemistry as science were to be worried about dualism
inherent in any chemical substance, no science of chemistry could have
emerged from its historical basis of alchemy.
Researchers analytic strategies have two kinds of distinctions. Thus, there are
two ways of making a distinction: exclusive and inclusive separation. These
two ways are described as follows:
It should be obvious that the reason why groups (called samples from a
culture) are often contrasted in such ways is because the groups in question
include individuals who are relatively similar between themselves in the group
in terms of interesting features. Surely most (or all) university students from
Palermo have interesting features in common such as expectations as to what a
normal mid-day meal is and most (or all) of them may differ from an
analogous similarity of such shared expectations within the sample of college
undergraduates in the US. The researchers here are at crossroads on whether to
emphasise the relative similarity of the sample (consisting of individual persons)
or to focus on the inter-individual variability within each sample. Whichever
road is preferred at that junction of construction of the research perspective, it
sets up the scope of the knowledge that becomes available to them in their
subsequent data derivation.
There are three basic strategies used by social scientists to deal with differences:
Of the three strategies, cross-cultural psychology has mostly utilised the first two,
separately, or in some combination. This is fully in line with psychology at large,
where ontological questions have dominated issues of emergence of novelty.
Population is the abstract full representation of all members of the given social
unit (society, community, ethnic group culture). It is hoped that the data that
characterise the population (as taken from the sample) can characterise the
culture (population = culture A). Hence it makes sense in cross-cultural
psychology to make comparisons between populations (= cultures) A and B, of
the general kind: A is (or is not) different from B.
SELF-CHECK 10.2
The research methods used in cognitive science are in tangent with the latest
technologies in medical science for a better understanding of the workings of
the brain and its connection to psychological functioning. The methods
include brain imaging, computational modelling and neurobiological
methods.
There have been challenges to psychology as a science because of its
emergence and mergence with the field of philosophy.
Most of the controversies centre on social control and manipulation, the
perceived differences between one group of people and another and our
beliefs about human nature.
The field of cross-cultural psychology has been discussed as a novel way of
looking at patterns of research in the field of psychology. It is the scientific
study of human behaviour and mental process, including both their
variability and invariance, under diverse cultural conditions.
1. How can one think of culture in ways that avoid the notion of possession
(belonging to) in our theoretical constructions?
2. How are inter-individual and intra-individual differences treated in
psychologys theoretical structure? What are the implications of different
ways of looking at differences for making sense of culture in psychology?
3. Why is inductive generalisation from samples to populations limited in its
knowledge construction value?
Elman, J., Bates, E. A., Johnson, M. H., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Parisi, D., & Plunkett,
K. (1996). Rethinking innateness: A connectionist perspective on
development. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Kutchins, H., & Kirk, S. A. (1997). Making us crazy: DSM: The psychiatric bible
and the creation of mental disorders. New York, NY: Free Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind
and its challenge to Western thought. New York, NY: Basic.
Lewin, K. (1943). Defining the field at a given time. Psychological Review, 50(3),
292.
Pinker, S., & Bloom, P. (1990). Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral
and Brain Sciences, 13(04), 707-727.
Taleb, N. N. (2007). The black swan: The impact of the highly improbable. New
York, NY: Random House.
Triandis, H. C. (1972). The analysis of subjective culture. New York, NY: Wiley.
Valsiner, J. (2003). Culture and its transfer: Ways of creating general knowledge
through the study of cultural particulars. Retrieved from
http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=
orpc
OR
Thank you.