Chapter Overview

Psychology is defined as the science of behavior and mental processes. Psychology is considered to be a science because psychologists acquire knowledge through systematic observation. The four main goals of psychology are to describe, predict, understand, and influence behavior and mental processes.

The influential early psychologists and their areas of interest include Wilhelm Wundt, Edward Titchener and

J. Henry Alston (structuralism), Max Wertheimer (Gestalt psychology), William James (functionalism), Hermann Ebbinghaus and Mary Whiton Calkins (human memory), Alfred Binet (measurement of intelligence), Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson and Margaret Floy Washburn (behaviorism), and Sigmund Freud (psychoanalysis). Humanistic psychologists believe that humans determine their own fates through the decisions they make.

Although some contemporary behaviorists continue to rule out the study of mental processes, other behaviorists, like Bandura, stress the importance of cognition. Contemporary psychoanalysts continue to emphasize unconscious conflicts, but suggest that motives other than sex and aggression are important.

A contemporary approach, the neuroscience perspective, studies the relationship between the nervous system, heredity, hormones, and behavior. A contemporary perspective that emphasizes culture, gender, and ethnic factors is the sociocultural perspective.

Modern psychologists work in basic or applied fields. Psychologists who work in basic areas conduct basic research, whereas applied psychologists put psychological knowledge to work helping people in a variety of settings.

Psychologists use three major scientific methods: (1) descriptive methods, which help to describe behavior and which include the use of surveys, naturalistic observation, and clinical methods; (2) correlational studies, which help to predict behavior by studying the relationship between variables; and (3) formal experiments, which study the cause-and-effect relationships between variables and help psychologists to understand and influence behavior.

Formal experiments usually involve an experimental group, which receives the independent variable, and a control group. Differences in the dependent variable between the groups are believed to be caused by the independent variable.

Psychologists adhere to ethical principles of research, which protects the rights of human participants by avoiding coercion, uninformed participation, and unnecessary deception, by offering subjects the results of the studies in which they participate, and by ensuring confidentiality. In conducting research with animals, psychologists are guided by the principles of necessity, health, and humane treatment.