Lesson 1: Concept Review

While structuralism focused on understanding the conscious experience, functionalism focused on how mental activities helped an organism adapt to its environment. Wilhelm Wundt, a structuralist theorist, believed that our cognitive experience was best understood by breaking that experience into its component parts using introspection. William James was a functionalist: Functionalism focused on how mental activities served as adaptive responses to an organism’s environment. Like Wundt, James also relied on introspection; however, James’s research approach also incorporated more objective measures.   Additional information can be found in the textbook section titled 1.3 History of Psychology Links to an external site..  

B. F. Skinner created the Skinner box, which is an operant conditioning chamber that isolates the subject from the external environment and has a behavior indicator (e.g., a lever or a button). When the animal (i.e., the subject) pushes the button or lever, the box is able to deliver a positive reinforcement of the behavior (e.g., food) or a punishment (e.g., a noise) or a token conditioner (e.g., a light) that is correlated with either the positive reinforcement or punishment.  Additional information can be found in the textbook section titled 1.3 History of Psychology Links to an external site..  

Stanley Milgram’s and others’ studies that involved deception and potential emotional harm to study participants catalyzed the development of ethical guidelines for conducting psychological research. The ethical guidelines discourage the use of deception with research subjects, unless it can be argued that the deception will not cause harm. The guidelines also require obtaining the informed consent of participants.  Additional information can be found in the textbook section titled 1.4 Contemporary Psychology Links to an external site..

Pavlov studied a form of learning behavior called a conditioned reflex: An animal or human produced a reflex (unconscious) response to a stimulus and, over time, was conditioned to produce the response to a different stimulus that the experimenter associated with the original stimulus. The reflex Pavlov worked with was salivating in response to the presence of food. The salivation reflex could be elicited using a second stimulus, such as a specific sound, that was presented in association with the initial food stimulus several times. Once the response to the second stimulus was learned, the food stimulus could be omitted.  Additional information can be found in the textbook section titled 1.3 History of Psychology Links to an external site..

A child who is afraid of snakes without ever having been bitten or seen someone bitten by a snake, might be displaying an instinctive fear that evolved over time in the human population. In early human history, humans who were unafraid of snakes probably were fatally bitten more often, so humans that were afraid of snakes survived long enough to pass along their genetic predispositions.  Additional information can be found in the textbook section titled 1.4 Contemporary Psychology Links to an external site..

Behaviorists emphasize objectivity and focus on external behavior. The early work of humanistic psychologists focused on the individual human as a whole—as a conscious and self-aware being.  Additional information can be found in the textbook section titled 1.3 History of Psychology Links to an external site..  

According to Sigmund Freud, all actions are driven by the unconscious, while behaviorists believe human behavior is entirely determined by a combination of genetics and environment.  Additional information can be found in the textbook section titled 1.3 History of Psychology Links to an external site..  

The dimensions of conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extroversion are used to account for personality variation because they have been demonstrated to be relatively stable over the lifespan, and they are influenced by genetics.  Additional information can be found in the textbook section titled 1.4 Contemporary Psychology Links to an external site..