Which school of psychology emphasizes how behavior and mental abilities help people adapt to their environments?

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	Psychology, Seventh Edition Douglas A. Bernstein, University of South Florida and University of Southampton Louis A. Penner, University of South Florida Alison Clarke-Stewart, University of California, Irvine Edward J. Roy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
	Chapter Outline Chapter 1: Introducing Psychology The World of Psychology: An Overview Psychology is the science that seeks to understand behavior and mental processes, and to apply that understanding in the service of human welfare. Subfields of Psychology NOTE: You may want to introduce each subfield with a question, controversy, or research topic that is prominent in that subfield. Biologicalor physiological psychologists use high-tech scanning devices and other methods to study how biological processes in the brain and other organs affect, and are affected by, behavior and mental processes. They study the processes that allow you to maintain blood pressure, move, speak, cope with stress, fight disease, and perform many other vital functions. Developmental psychologists describe changes in behavior and mental processes and try to understand the causes of these changes and their effects throughout the life span. They study things such as the development of memory and other mental abilities as well as parenting, evaluating day care, and preserving mental capacity in elderly people. Cognitive psychologists (sometimes called experimental) study mental processes including sensation, perception, learning, memory, thinking, consciousness, intelligence, and creativity. Research by psychologists with interest in engineering psychology, or human factors, has been applied to the layout of instruments in the cockpit, computer keyboards, nuclear power plant controls, and even on-screen VCR programming systems that are logical, easy to use, and less likely to cause errors. EXAMPLE: The work of cognitive psychologists is used extensively in education, aiding teachers in diagnosing learning disabilities or other roadblocks to learning by evaluating how students solve problems. Personality psychologists focus on how people are similar and different. They use tests and interviews to create profiles. Recently, within the focus of positive psychology, personality psychologists have attempted to identify the characteristics of people who maintain optimism even in the face of stress or tragedy. Clinical,counseling, community, andhealth psychologists.Clinical and counseling psychologists conduct research on the causes of behavior disorders and try to help troubled people overcome these disorders. Community psychologists create systems to ensure that psychological services reach those who need help but tend not to seek it. They try to prevent psychological disorders by trying to reduce the stressors of life that so often lead to disorder. Health psychologists study the effects of behavior on health, and the effects that illness has on peoples behaviors and emotions. EXAMPLE: A community psychologist would be interested in developing programs to help mothers who have received little parent training interact more appropriately with their infants and children. Educational psychologists conduct research and develop theories about teaching and learning. The results are applied to try to help students learn more efficiently and improve teacher training. School psychologists traditionally specialize in IQ testing, diagnosing learning disabilities and other academic problems, and setting up programs to improve students achievement and satisfaction in school. Today, they are also involved in early detection of students mental health problems and crisis intervention. Social psychologists focus on how we think about, relate to, influence, and are influenced by other people. Prejudice and persuasion are just two areas social psychologists study. Industrial-Organizational (I/O) psychologists try to improve the efficiency, productivity, and satisfaction of workers and the organizations that employ them. EXAMPLE: An industrial-organizational psychologist might help a company develop policies for selecting appropriate personnel or evaluating and improving supervisors leadership skills. NOTE: Research by social and I/O psychologists helps identify some of the principles governing human relations and is used every day to help groups of people resolve conflicts, make decisions, and work together more productively. Quantitative psychologists develop and use statistical tools to analyze vast amounts of data collected by their colleagues in many other subfields. These tools help to evaluate the reliability and validity of psychological tests, to trace the relationships between childhood experiences and adult behaviors, and even to estimate the relative contributions of heredity and environment in determining intelligence. Other subfields Sports psychologists help athletes reduce excessive anxiety, focus attention, and employ other techniques that will allow them to perform at their best. Forensic psychologists deal with issues of psychology and the law, including jury selection and evaluating defendants mental competencies to stand trial. Environmental psychologists study the effects of environmental characteristics on peoples behavior and mental processes. Linkages within Psychology and Beyond Because psychologys subfields overlap, psychologists are often linked by their study of a common topic or a common issue. NOTE: Most psychologists fit into several subfields and interact with psychologists from other subfields. Psychologists often draw on and contribute to the knowledge developed in other subfields, even if they do not conduct research that crosses subfields. Psychology is linked to and interacts with many other academic disciplines because of common interests that cross disciplinary boundaries. Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary research effort that examines the structure and function of the nervous system in animals and humans at levels ranging from the individual cell to overt behavior. Psychology uses theories and research from other disciplines. Likewise, psychological theories and research are used in other disciplines, such as law, engineering, medicine, etc. Research: The Foundation of Psychology: Psychology relies on empiricism, seeing knowledge coming through experience and observation. Psychologists use scientific methods to test the validity of their theories and reach informed conclusions. Scientific research is the foundation of psychological knowledge. EXAMPLE: Morris and Peng (1994) predicted that Americans (because of their emphasis on self-esteem, personal achievement, and other individual traits and goals) would explain other peoples behavior as caused by personal characteristics such as laziness or bravery. They predicted that people from China would see behaviors caused by social pressure, lack of money, or other situational factors. When given two newspaper stories about actual murders, American students were more likely to attribute the murders to the murderers personality; Chinese students to the situation in which the murderer found himself. A Brief History of Psychology Philosophers: Early interest in behavior and the mind was dominated by philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates. They believed that some knowledge was innate, but debated the source of human knowledge, the nature of mind and soul, the relationship of mind to body, and the possibility of scientifically studying these matters. In the 17th Century, British philosophers John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume argued that human knowledge should be understood through empiricismbasing understanding only on what you can directly sense. Empiricists argued that people are born as a tabula rasaa blank slate, lacking innate knowledge, but on which experiences of life write to give knowledge through direct sensation. Wundt and the Structuralism of Titchener. Gustav Fechner studied mental processes by observing peoples reactions to changes in sensory stimuli. He developed psychophysics, the complex but predictable relationships between changes in the physical characteristics of stimuli and changes in peoples psychological experience of them. Wilhelm Wundt founded the first psychology research laboratory in Leipzig, Germany in 1879. He attempted to use empirical research methods to study conscious experience. Wundt used the technique of introspection (inward perception)highly trained participants tried to describe each aspect of their conscious sensory experiences. Wundt concluded that quality and intensity are the two essential elements of any sensation and that feelings can be described in terms of pleasure-displeasure, tension-relaxation, and excitement-depression. Under Wundt, psychology became the science of mental processes rather than the philosophy of mental processes. Edward Titchener also used introspection. He added clarity as an element of sensation. Although associated with Wundt, structuralism is the name given solely to Titcheners approach because of his efforts to define the structure of consciousness. NOTE: (In text) Wundt measured how quickly participants could respond to a light by releasing a button they had been holding down. He then determined how much longer the response took when participants held down one button with each hand and had to decide, based on the color of the light, which one to release. He reasoned that the additional time revealed how long it took to perceive the color and decide which hand to move. Hermann Ebbinghaus concentrated on the capacities, limitations, and other characteristics of mental processes such as learning and memory. Ebbinghaus served as the participant in his memory experiments. Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang K�hler, Gestalt psychologists from Germany, saw consciousness as a totality, arguing that it can best be understood by observing it as a total experience, not as a cluster of elements. EXAMPLE: (In text) Movies are in fact long strips of film containing thousands of still photographs. Describing those photographs would not capture a persons experience of watching a movie. Freud and Psychoanalysis: In Vienna, Austria, Sigmund Freud believed that all behavior is motivated by psychological processes, especially unconscious conflicts within the mind. His work and ideas became the basis for psychoanalysis, including a theory of personality, mental disorder, and treatment methods. Freuds ideas were and still are controversial, but they had a huge impact on the thinking of many psychologists around the world. James and Functionalism: William James founded the first U.S. psychology lab at Harvard University. James was influenced by Charles Darwins theory of evolution. Jamess approach, functionalism, emphasized understanding how consciousness functions to help people adapt to their environments. The focus was on the ongoing stream of consciousnessthe ever-changing pattern of images, sensations, memories, and other mental events. This approach also encouraged psychologists to measure individual differences in mental processes. G. Stanley Hall founded the first psychology research lab in the U.S. in 1883 at Johns Hopkins University. James Mark Baldwin (researcher in child development) founded the first Canadian lab at the University of Toronto. NOTE: James saw structuralism as dead. He noted that trying to understand consciousness by studying its components is like trying to understand a house by looking at individual bricks. Watson and Behaviorism: Because of Darwins influence, psychologists began to study animals as well as humans. John B. Watson, an America psychologist, criticized making inferences about mental behavior by observing external behavior. Watsons approach, behaviorism, studied actual observations of overt behavior and its response to various stimuli. Watson believed that consciousness existed, but that it would always be private and unobservable by scientific methods and therefore should be ignored. Watson believed that learning is the most important determinant of behavior, allowing organisms the ability to adapt to their environments. In the 1950s, behaviorism was expounded further by B. F. Skinners functional analysis of behavior, which focused on how rewards and punishments shape, maintain, and change behaviors through operant conditioning. Behaviorism was dominant from the 1920s through the 1960s. EXAMPLE: (In text) Skinners functional analysis of behavior could help explain that childrens tantrums are sometimes inadvertently rewarded by the attention they attract and that addiction to gambling can result from the occasional and unpredictable rewards. Psychology Today: Computers provided a new way to think about mental activityas information processingand enabled more accurate measurement of mental activity. Today psychologists are attempting to study mental processes with precision and scientific objectivity. Unity and Diversity in Psychology Psychologists today are unified by their commitment to empiricism and scientific research, and their interests in behavior and mental processes. They are also diverse in terms of subfields and approaches. Women and people of color made important contributions to psychology. Currently in the U.S., women hold 47.4% of psychology Ph.D.s, while earning 66.7% of the new doctorates and 72.6% of the new masters degrees awarded each year. In addition, 17% of new doctoral degrees in psychology are being earned by members of ethnic minorities. Approaches to Psychology: Each approach to psychology provides a different set of assumptions, questions, and methods for understanding behavior and mental processes. Most psychologists are eclectic, combining the features of several approaches. The biological approach assumes that biological factors (e.g., hormones, genes, activity of the central nervous systemespecially the brain) affect behavior and mental events. EXAMPLE: Psychologists in the Navy and elsewhere are working on systems that could warn air traffic controllers and radar/sonar operators that they are failing to attend to important information, by monitoring their brain waves. NOTE: Students may be intimidated with biologys role in psychology. You might allay such concerns by selling biology with interesting examples. Some examples can be located in the supplements throughout this manual. The evolutionary approach emphasizes how behavior and mental phenomena emerge as generation-to-generation adaptations help organisms survive in their environments. Darwins 1859 Origin of Species described evolution as a process of natural selection: those members of a species whose unique features were best adapted to their environment were the ones most likely to survive, passing on their genetic codes to the next generation. Darwin believed that natural selection operates at the level of individuals, but most contemporary evolutionists believe it operates at the level of genes. Many of the genes we possess today are the result of natural selection. In psychology, the evolutionary approach assumes that the behavior of animals and humans today is the result of evolution through natural selection. NOTE: Ethologists study how animals develop behaviors best suited to their particular environments. They focus on how natural selection gives adaptive inherited behavior patterns that are species-specific, unique to a given species. In animals, species-specific behaviors often appear as relatively rigid rituals called fixed action patterns, which are not altered much by learning and that tend to be triggered by specific cues called sign stimuli. Psychologists using the evolutionary approach try to understand: 1. the adaptive value of behavior, 2. the anatomical and biological mechanisms that make it possible, and 3. the environmental conditions that encourage or discourage it. The psychodynamic approach, founded by Freud, sees constant unconscious conflicts within each person as the main determinant of behavior and mental life. The conflict is primarily between the impulse to satisfy personal desires and the need to live by the rules of society. Freuds psychoanalysis has had an impact on theories of personality, psychological disorder, and treatment. It is not as influential as it once was, but modern versions can still be found in theories of personality, psychological disorders, and psychotherapy. The behavioral approach, founded by Watson, sees behavior as primarily the result of learning. A persons learning history, especially the patterns of rewards and punishments, influences behavior. People can change problematic behaviors by unlearning old habits and developing new ones. Most behaviorists today include thoughts or cognitions in their theory and thus take a cognitive-behavioral or social-cognitive approach, focusing on how learning affects the development of thoughts and beliefs and how, in turn, these learned cognitive patterns affect overt behavior. The cognitive approach emphasizes the importance of thoughts and other mental processes. It also focuses on how people take in, mentally represent, and store information; how they perceive and process that information; and how cognitive processes are related to the integrated patterns of behavior we can see. Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field attempting to discover the building blocks of cognition and how these components produce complex behaviors. The humanistic or phenomenological approach stresses that behavior is determined primarily by each persons capacity to choose how to think and act based on each individuals unique perceptions. Humanists believe that people control themselves, and that each person is essentially good, with an innate tendency to grow toward her/his highest potential. Humanists do not search for general laws but celebrate the immediate, individual experience. The humanistic approach was advocated by Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. Today the impact is limited because the concepts and predictions are too vague to be expressed and tested scientifically. Human Diversity and Psychology Because about 90% of researchers in psychology work at universities in North America and Europe, they have tended to study local college students, primarily white, middle-class males. Psychology has been criticized for assuming that people in all cultures are the same, or that findings from one group of people must apply to others. However, much as people are the same in terms of certain behavioral and mental abilities, including principles governing nerve cell activity, they also differ. Peoples experiences are shaped by sociocultural factors (e.g., gender, ethnicity, social class, and the culture in which they grow up). EXAMPLE: All newborn humans have reflexes that slowly recede over several months as their brains develop. All people recognize a smile. EXAMPLE: The role of women is very different in the United States, with an emphasis on equality, than it is in many Middle Eastern countries. Culture is the accumulation of values, rules of behavior, forms of expression, religious beliefs, occupational choices, and the like for a group of people who share a common language and environment. Culture is an organizing and stabilizing influence. It encourages or discourages particular behaviors and mental processes and also allows people to understand and anticipate the behavior of others in that culture. Individualist cultures tend to value personal rather than group goals and achievement. Competitiveness to distinguish oneself and a sense of isolation are common in these cultures. Many aspects of U.S. culture reflect an individualist culture: Self-reliant cowboy heroes, bonuses for top employees, an invitation to help yourself at a buffet table. Collectivist cultures emphasize and value group identity and cooperative effort to advance the group. Fear of rejection by the group is common. Most countries are multicultural, hosting many subcultures within their borders. Individuals who identify with their cultural heritage tend to share behaviors, values, and beliefs based on their culture of origin, and form a subculture. People often are unaware of how culture or subculture has shaped their patterns of thinking and behavior until they come in contact with people whose culture or subculture differs, promoting different patterns. Even in the U.S., subtle, culturally-influenced differences in men and womens communication patterns have been found.

Which school emphasized the role of psychological processes in helping individuals adapt to their environment?

Which school of thought was concerned with how behavior helped humans adapt to their new environment?

Which approach to psychology emphasizes how mental processes influence behavior?

What area of psychological thought focused on mental processes that helped humans animals adapt to their environments?