Psychology Notes: Personality

Psychology
- scientific study of behavuir and mental processes

• behavior - anything that you do that can be observed
• mental processes - internal experiences such as : thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions
• systematic study - systematic collection and examination of data (empirical evidence) to support or disapprove hypotheses (predictions) rather than depending on common sense

Key Players in History of Psychology:
- can be traced back 2000 years ago to early philosophers, biologists, and physiologist of ancient Greece

• Hippocrates: Greek physiologist that thought the mind or soul resided in the brain; believed that it was not composed of physical substance; called mind-body-dualism (seeing mind and body as two different things that interact)
• Plato (350BC): Greek philosopher that believed that who we are and what we know are innate (inborn)
• Aristotle: Plato's student, believed that who we are and what we know are acquired from experience
• monism - seeing mind and body as different aspects of the same thing
• John Locke: believed that knowledge comes from observations and what we know comes from experiences
• tabula rasa - blank slates
• "The mind is like a blank slate in which the environment writes upon."
• Rene Descartes: believed that what we know is innate; "I think therefore I am."

- Nature: certain elementary ideas are innate to human mind; not gained through experiences
        -"Men are born, not made."
- Nurture: anything that we know, we have learned through experiences

• Wilhelm Wundt - 1879, University of Leipzig

               - Psychology's first experiment, birth of science
               - established first psychology lab
               - introspection (look inward)

• Edward Titchener

Structuralism:
        -Wundt, Titchener, Hall (founder and first president of APA)

• uses introspection to explore the structural elements of the mind

               - break down mental processes into the most basic parts

Functionalism:
- a reaction to structuralism

• sought to explain how our mental and behavioral processes function

               - How do they enable us to adapt, survive, and flourish?
               - focused on purpose of behavior

• William James

conscious - things we are aware of
preconscious - things we are aware of if we think of them
unconscious - deep hidden reservoir that holds true "us"; all desires
id - exists entirely in the unconscious (not aware); hidden animalistic nature
ego - develops after the id; personality
superego - difference between right and wrong; our conscience, bot real but ideal; seek perfection, judges actions based on positive feelings or guilt