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Physiological psychology
Conditioning and learning
Vocational psychology
Industrial psychology
Business psychology,
Animal psychology
Historical Development
Official founding.
Behaviorism.
Gestalt psychology.
Freud and psychoanalysis.
Cognitive science.
Psychopharmacology.
Current Trends and Research
The study of the way people think and behave is called psychology. The field of psychology has a number of subdisciplines devoted to the study of the different levels and contexts of human thought and behavior. Social psychology, for example, deals with human thought and action in a social context, while physiological psychology is concerned with thought and behavior at the level of neurology. Another division of psychology—comparative psychology—compares the thought and behavior of humans with that of other species. Abnormal psychology studies atypical thought and action.
Psychology is an interdisciplinary science. Social psychology, for example, involves both sociology and anthropology. Abnormal psychology has much in common with psychiatry, while physiological psychology builds on the techniques and methods of neurology and physiology.
Inasmuch as psychology overlaps so many other disciplines, its methods are as varied as the problems that it attempts to investigate. In general the methods range from simple observation to rigorous experimentation. The use of observation is appropriate in early phases of investigation when the basic issues and parameters of a problem are not well known. Experimentation is often the last stage of investigation when the variables involved are well enough known to permit quantification and measurement.
Naturalistic methods are often used in child psychology. To determine the frequency with which boys and girls engage in aggressive play during a session in nursery school, for example, two different observational methods might be used. In one, called time sampling, the children are observed on a regular basis for a fixed time interval. In another method, episode sampling, the children are observed when engaged in a particular activity, such as block play.
Questionnaires are frequently used in psychology. They question subjects about their beliefs, attitudes, childhood experiences, and food and clothing preferences. In order to obtain accurate results, questions must be stated clearly. They must also be varied in order that the subject will not lose interest and begin responding in a routine way, without trying to understand and answer each question. Because subjects tend to respond according to what they believe is socially acceptable instead of telling what they actually believe or do, questionnaires must also be adjusted to compensate for this tendency.
Testing is perhaps the most widely used method within psychology. Individual and group tests are used to assess intelligence, aptitude, achievement, interests, and personality. Intelligence tests consist of items that have been pretested on large groups of subjects at different age levels, referred to as the norm group. Responses of the norm group are used to scale the test items according to difficulty. An item passed by 75 percent of the 7-year-old norm group, for example, might be placed at the 7-year level.
Once the items of a test have been scaled, the test can be used to assess intelligence individually or in groups. In some intelligence tests items are scaled by age, and each item answered correctly adds two months to the score. The Stanford-Binet intelligence scale is an example of this kind of test. A child’s intelligence quotient (IQ) is derived from the child’s test score in years and months, also called mental age (MA), and the child’s chronological age (CA). The formula used to determine IQ is MA/CA × 100 = IQ. In other tests, such as the Wechsler intelligence scales, the score is recorded in points rather than in months. A subject of average ability receives a score of 100. (See also intelligence tests.)
Tests that are more limited in scope than intelligence tests include achievement, aptitude, interest, and personality tests. Achievement tests are designed to measure the level of a subject’s achievement in a particular discipline. Interest inventories assess the breadth and depth of the subject’s interests. Personality tests are usually designed to give a picture of the subject’s major personality traits and orientations. They are divided into projective personality tests and objective personality tests. In objective tests, subjects can control what they choose to reveal about themselves, whereas in projective tests, the subjects are unable to control what is revealed. Responses to projective tests must be interpreted to be fully understood, and the ability to make such an interpretation takes training and experience.
The ideal method of study in science is experimentation. In an experiment the investigator has control over one or more independent variables and designs the study to determine the effect of the independent variables upon a dependent variable. Critical to an experiment are another set of factors called control variables. These are held constant so that they will not influence the effect of the independent variables upon the dependent variable.
A component of most psychological methods is statistics. Through the use of statistics the experimenter is able to test for the extent to which results of an experiment could have occurred by chance. Statistics provide both a method of designing experiments and a means of assuring that quantitative results are statistically significant—that is, not likely to have occurred by chance in one of 100 or 1,000 cases.
is concerned with the neurological and physiological events that underlie human thought and action. Some physiological psychologists are concerned with mapping the functions of various parts of the brain. Others study both the transmission of electrical information in the brain and the neurotransmitters that facilitate or inhibit such transmissions. Physiological psychologists study the effects of drugs on human behavior.
are concerned with how experience modifies thought and behavior. Initially devoted to the investigation of principles of learning among all species, the field now includes specific types of learning for different species. Other areas of interest in the field include maladaptive learning, such as learned helplessness, and learning in traditional settings such as in the classroom and on the job.
applies to the study of thinking, concept formation, and problem solving. Work in this field has been much influenced and aided by the use of computers. Computers are used to present problems and tasks to subjects and to model the thinking and problem-solving processes. The impact of computers on cognitive psychology is also evident in the theories used to describe human thought. For example, such terms as short-term memory and long-term memory parallel the two types of memory that are available on computers.
looks into all facets of human social interaction. Among the problems studied by social psychologists are such matters as the development of friendship, the nature of romantic attachment, and the relative effectiveness of cooperation and competition on achievement. In recent years social psychology has included the study of attribution. Attribution theory recognizes that psychological perceptions of events do not always correspond to objective realities.
is the study of maladaptive behaviors. Such behaviors range from the simple habit disorders (thumb sucking, nail biting), to the addictions (alcohol, gambling and so on) to the most severe mental disturbances—the psychoses. Abnormal psychology investigates the causes and dynamics of mental and behavioral disorders and tests the effectiveness of various treatments. There are many different theories of abnormality and treatment. These approaches include the psychoanalytic, neo-Freudian, Gestalt, cognitive behavior therapy, humanistic psychology, and transactional analysis.
is the study of how specific personality traits contribute to success in different vocations. In one approach the characteristics of people already working in a specific vocation are studied. If a personality pattern emerges, tests can then be constructed to measure the traits and interests of people in the field. Other individuals who exhibit the same traits and interests can be counseled to consider the field as a possible vocational choice. Vocational psychologists also look for traits and aptitudes that contribute to success in a vocation.
concerns the physical and psychological conditions of the workplace and how these factors contribute to an efficient work environment. Industrial psychologists are also concerned about the design of manufactured products. Some industrial psychologists, for example, are involved in the design of such items as dashboards, which are used in airplanes and automobiles. Their aim is to apply a knowledge of human capabilities and limitations to the design of instrumentation that is to be used by humans.
a relatively recent branch of psychology, is the study of the effectiveness of interpersonal relations in the workplace. Some business psychologists set up training workshops to improve executives’ management skills. They also evaluate prospective job applicants and evaluate individuals being considered for promotion. They employ the full range of psychological tests as well as interview procedures. Instruments are often designed for specific types of evaluations.
encompasses many different fields of psychology that employ experimental procedures. Traditionally it has been regarded as the study of the basic sensory mechanisms: vision, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. The classical problems of experimental psychology are determining reaction times and reaction thresholds (the amount of stimulation needed to produce a response for any given sense) as well as developing psychological scales for physical stimuli, called psychophysics. Hot and cold, for example, are psychological scalings of temperature stimuli for which such physical measures as degrees fahrenheit provide only physical units. Much experimental psychology today is closely tied with physiological psychology.
includes several different disciplines. One is comparative psychology, which explores animal behavior in comparison to human behavior. Comparative psychologists, for example, might present different species with comparable tasks, to see how their performances differ. Animal psychologists also study animals to gain insight into human behavior. For example, the effects of drugs and tobacco on animals are observed to determine the effects these substances have on humans.
is concerned with the growth and development of individuals. Once concerned primarily with the growth and development of children, the field has expanded to include the growth and development of individuals throughout their lives. Developmental psychologists explore changes associated with mental, social, and emotional development. They also look at the evolution of friendships and parent-child relationships. How children learn both in and outside school is another focus of developmental research.
has undergone rapid growth in recent years and is now the largest subdiscipline within psychology. Clinical psychologists work in hospitals, in clinics, and in private practice. Their main concerns are the diagnoses and treatment of learning and emotional problems. Many conduct psychological research along with their applied work.
Since ancient times philosophers have speculated about the origins of human thought and behavior. On the one side were those philosophers who argued that human thought and action are innate and preformed. Plato argued that ideals are inborn inasmuch as they represent perfection and can hardly be derived from an individual’s imperfect experience. On the other side, philosophers such as John Locke argued that there is no thought or action that does not have its origin in experience.
The modern resolution of this nature versus nurture controversy was provided by Immanuel Kant. He argued that the form of thought and action is provided by nature, whereas the content is provided by experience. For example, the capacity for learning and using language is innate, but the particular language spoken depends on the culture of which it is a part.
Psychology’s roots in neurology and physiology are evident in the Handbuch (1833–40) by the German physiologist Johannes Peter Müller. Müller describes a number of problems that later became topics of psychological investigation. These issues included reflex action, the electrical nature of nerve impulses, and the velocity and conduction of nerve impulses.
Perhaps the most significant scientific discoveries that contributed to the birth of psychology as a science were made by the German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–94). Working from the theory of color perception proposed by the British physicist Thomas Young, Helmholtz developed the Young-Helmholtz theory of color vision, which argues that different color qualities are produced by the actions of three different types of nerve fibers—one each for blue, green, and red. Helmholtz also contributed the resonance theory of hearing, which suggests that nerve fibers transmit electrical impulses at the same frequencies as those of perceived sounds.
While there was a great deal of scientific work in the 18th and 19th centuries that could easily be called psychological, the official founding of psychology is credited to the German physiologist and psychologist Wilhelm Wundt. In 1879 Wundt established the first psychological laboratory at the University of Leipzig. Wundt himself was more a systematizer and compiler than scientist. His handbook Fundamentals of Physiological Psychology became a model for comprehensive handbooks in psychology for years to come.
Although psychology as a science had its roots in the physiological and neurological sciences of Europe, it was quickly transplanted to the New World. William James, the brother of the American novelist Henry James, was—like Wundt—both a philosopher and psychologist. He founded a psychological laboratory at Harvard University shortly after the one founded by Wundt (some give James priority). But James is best known for his Principles of Psychology (1890), which remains a classic. In this work James gives credit to the European experimentalists but is also critical of their narrow atomistic approach to psychology. James offers a distinctively American brand of psychology—functionalism. According to James psychology is best understood as the study of the functions served by human thought and action. Human thought and action are first and foremost adaptive. Their function is to ensure survival of the individual and the species. In this view psychology is the study of adaptive thought and action.
After World War I the turning away from European psychology begun by James became more widespread in the United States. A new, distinctively American psychology, called behaviorism, was introduced by John B. Watson. Watson argued that psychology is the study of behavior and that thought is a nonscientific idea that has no place in psychology as science. Watson also argued that all behavior is learned.
Behaviorism became a major thrust of American psychology for the first half of the 20th century when such psychologists as Clark L. Hull at Yale University and B.F. Skinner at Harvard argued that human thought is an inference from behavior and that all psychology could be, or should be, concerned only with behavior. It was not until about 1960 that American psychologists returned to the definition of psychology as the investigation of human thought as well as behavior.
A major influence in turning American psychology to behaviorism came from the work of the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov discovered what he called the conditioned reflex. Pavlov observed that when he paired a neutral (conditioned) stimulus, such as a buzzer, with a natural (unconditioned) stimulus, such as food, the reflex response to the food—salivation—eventually came to be elicited by the buzzer. Pavlov called the response to the conditioned stimulus a conditioned reflex.
Pavlov’s research on the conditioned reflex became the model for a great deal of research in American psychology, which regarded learning and conditioning as the major concerns. This model was extended to all subdisciplines within psychology. Early studies in child psychology, for example, were modeled after studies of animal learning and had children learning in mazes not unlike those used in animal investigations. Although psychologists are still concerned with learning, it no longer holds the central place in psychology that it once did.
Another contribution came from a group in Europe opposed to the atomistic approach of Wundt and his school. This group of psychologists—including Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Kohler, and Max Wertheimer—contended that the atomistic approach could never lead to the understanding of major psychological phenomena. A symphony, they argued, is more than the sum of its individual notes. The form (Gestalt) of anything has qualities that are different from, and that cannot be attributed to, the sum of its parts.
To support their argument, the Gestalt psychologists focused on perception. They demonstrated that perception is organized into holistic rather than atomistic components. Perception is organized into the figure, such as a soloist playing a concerto, and the ground, the orchestral accompaniment. Visually too the perception of the observer is centered on the soloist and the conductor, who are the figures, and the orchestra, which is the ground. Gestalt psychology provides a healthy balance to the overly atomistic psychologies both in Europe and the United States.
Another European influence on psychology came from the work of the Viennese physician Sigmund Freud. Although he began as a neurologist, Freud became interested in illnesses that had no apparent neurological or physiological basis. These illnesses, called hysterias, have no physical basis and include such symptoms as blindness, paralysis, and amnesia. Freud and his colleague Josef Breuer concluded that these illnesses are symptoms of psychological conflict and that these conflicts are essentially sexual.
This idea was not readily acceptable in Victorian times, and Breuer dissociated himself from Freud. But Freud continued his research into human thought and action. He theorized that much of human thought and action is determined by unconscious wishes and motives. In his most significant work, The Interpretation of Dreams, he states that dreams, when properly interpreted, reflect the fulfillment of a wish that is unacceptable to the conscious mind.
Among Freud’s other contributions were the notion of infantile sexuality and the description of the elaborate ego defense mechanisms with which people defend themselves against feelings and desires they find distressful or that conflict with their accepted pictures of themselves. Although he began his work in relative isolation, Freud soon acquired a following, and the influence of his work spread worldwide.
Today psychoanalysis is regarded as a theory of human behavior, a method of research, and a form of treatment for emotional disorders. Although the value of psychoanalytic treatment is often challenged, and the status of psychoanalysis as a legitimate scientific discipline remains a matter of debate, the significance of Freud’s work remains unchallenged. His contributions—together with those of Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein—have shaped the way in which people view themselves in modern society.
Although many of the major directions of psychology have remained the same over the years, there have been later developments. Perhaps the most prominent of these is the emergence of cognitive science. The rapid growth of this field marks the fact that psychology is now generally acknowledged to be the science of both behavior and of thought. A significant portion of cognitive science is interdisciplinary. For example, some workers in this field work together with investigators in computer science on matters of artificial intelligence (AI).
Another vastly expanded area is that of psychopharmacology. Since the 1960s this interdisciplinary area of investigation has not only contributed to knowledge about mental illness and addiction but also provided new drug treatments for such severe mental disturbances as depression and anxiety. Thanks to psychopharmacology, many people today can lead normal productive lives who in the past might have had to pass their mature years in institutions.
Psychology began as an experimental discipline and was eventually recognized as a scientific discipline. Since the 1950s, interests in psychology have become increasingly oriented toward application. The applied psychology trend has spread to other subdisciplines as well. For example, applied child development draws on the child development theory and research for practical applications in child rearing and education. Some psychologists in applied child development are concerned with such social issues as the effect of out-of-home care on the development of infants and young children. Other developmental psychologists are concerned with the effects of different environments on a child’s health and development.
Another development in psychology is in the use of computers. Many tests are now computerized. Subjects respond on a keyboard to questions presented on a computer screen. This approach allows for immediate scoring and processing. With computers it is also possible to compare a subject’s response pattern to that of many others. As a result, immediate and accurate diagnoses are readily available. Computers have also made psychological research more efficient and effective. With the aid of computer programs, the presentation of stimuli is more controllable than in the past. Computer programs also make it possible to deal with more and more complex variables than was true when statistical analysis was limited to calculators.
Computers in combination with television have opened a whole new field of investigation and training, called interactive television. By broadcasting a television program through a computer terminal, personnel, for example, can be taken through an elaborate training process.
Because it is an interdisciplinary science, psychology is affected by trends in other disciplines. Discoveries in biology, biochemistry, sociology, and anthropology directly affect psychological research.
Coley, Robert. Erik Erikson: The Growth of His Work (Da Capo, 1970). Elkind, David. The Hurried Child: Growing up Too Fast Too Soon (Addison, 1981). Freud, Sigmund. General Psychology Theory (Macmillan, 1963). Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams (Avon, 1965). Freud, Sigmund. The Origins of Psychoanalysis (Basic Books, 1954). Jung, C.G. The Practice of Psychotherapy, vol. 16, 2nd ed. (Princeton Univ. Press, 1985). Lawless, J.A. Mysteries of the Mind (Raintree, 1977). Miller, Alice. The Drama of the Gifted Child (Basic Books, 1983). Miller, Alice. Thou Shalt Not Be Aware (NAL, 1986). Mindess, Harvey. Makers of Psychology (Human Sciences Press, 1988). Rattle, Otto. Beyond Psychology (Dover, 1958). Winnicott, D.W. Home Is Where We Start From: Essays in Psychoanalysis (W.W. Norton, 1986). Winnicott, D.W. Playing and Reality (London, Methuen, 1982).
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