Psychology

However, this meaning was contested, notably by John B. Watson, who in 1913 asserted the methodological behaviorist view of psychology as a purely objective experimental branch of natural science, the theoretical goal of which "is the prediction and control of behavior.

An ancient text known as The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine identifies the brain as the nexus of wisdom and sensation, includes theories of personality based on yin–yang balance, and analyzes mental disorder in terms of physiological and social disequilibria.

Wundt focused on breaking down mental processes into the most basic components, motivated in part by an analogy to recent advances in chemistry, and its successful investigation of the elements and structure of materials.

As described by one physician, "Despite the importance of analysis, spiritual guidance and the active cooperation of the patient represent the best way to overcome individual mental problems and to subordinate them to the requirements of the Volk and the Gemeinschaft."

[61]: 5–9  After the Chinese Communist Party gained control of the country, the Stalinist Soviet Union became the major influence, with Marxism–Leninism the leading social doctrine and Pavlovian conditioning the approved means of behavior change.

Leta Stetter Hollingworth wanted to prove this hypothesis and Edward L. Thorndike's theory, that women have lesser psychological and physical traits than men and were simply mediocre, incorrect.

In addition to the contributions made by Leta Stetter Hollingworth and Anna Freud, Mary Whiton Calkins invented the paired associates technique of studying memory and developed self-psychology.

Critics inside and outside the field have argued that mainstream psychology has become increasingly dominated by a "cult of empiricism", which limits the scope of research because investigators restrict themselves to methods derived from the physical sciences.

[95] Modern behavioral neuroscience could be said to originate in the 1870s, when in France Paul Broca traced production of speech to the left frontal gyrus, thereby also demonstrating hemispheric lateralization of brain function.

Behaviorial neuroscientists use animal models, often relying on rats, to study the neural, genetic, and cellular mechanisms that underlie behaviors involved in learning, memory, and fear responses.

[100] Carl von Linnaeus's four-fold classification of humans classifies Europeans as intelligent and severe, Americans as contented and free, Asians as ritualistic, and Africans as lazy and capricious.

Ivan Pavlov—known best for inducing dogs to salivate in the presence of a stimulus previously linked with food—became a leading figure in the Soviet Union and inspired followers to use his methods on humans.

[31]: 218–27  Watson's famous Little Albert experiment in 1920 was at first thought to demonstrate that repeated use of upsetting loud noises could instill phobias (aversions to other stimuli) in an infant human,[15][103] although such a conclusion was likely an exaggeration.

English neuroscientist Charles Sherrington and Canadian psychologist Donald O. Hebb used experimental methods to link psychological phenomena to the structure and function of the brain.

Popper argued that psychoanalysis was not falsifiable (no claim it made could be proven wrong) and therefore inherently not a scientific discipline,[128] whereas Eysenck advanced the view that psychoanalytic tenets had been contradicted by experimental data.

Some founders of the humanistic school of thought were American psychologists Abraham Maslow, who formulated a hierarchy of human needs, and Carl Rogers, who created and developed client-centered therapy.

[142] He created a variation of existential psychotherapy called logotherapy, a type of existentialist analysis that focuses on a will to meaning (in one's life), as opposed to Adler's Nietzschean doctrine of will to power or Freud's will to pleasure.

[168] Humans seem to exhibit a more complex set of motivations—though theoretically these could be explained as resulting from desires for belonging, positive self-image, self-consistency, truth, love, and control.

[174] Some credit Charles Darwin with conducting the first systematic study within the rubric of developmental psychology, having published in 1877 a short paper detailing the development of innate forms of communication based on his observations of his infant son.

[202] The work performed by clinical psychologists tends to be influenced by various therapeutic approaches, all of which involve a formal relationship between professional and client (usually an individual, couple, family, or small group).

With the advent of more robust research findings regarding psychotherapy, there is evidence that most of the major therapies have equal effectiveness, with the key common element being a strong therapeutic alliance.

[42][222] Today, U.S. Army psychologists perform psychological screening, clinical psychotherapy, suicide prevention, and treatment for post-traumatic stress, as well as provide prevention-related services, for example, smoking cessation.

Qualitative research involving first-hand observation can help describe events as they occur, with the goal of capturing the richness of everyday behavior and with the hope of discovering and understanding phenomena that might have been missed if only more cursory examinations are made.

Sometimes hermeneutic and critical aims can give rise to quantitative research, as in Erich Fromm's application of psychological and sociological theories, in his book Escape from Freedom, to understanding why many ordinary Germans supported Hitler.

[279][280][281] Similarly, Fanelli (2010)[282] found that 91.5% of psychiatry/psychology studies confirmed the effects they were looking for, and concluded that the odds of this happening (a positive result) was around five times higher than in fields such as space science or geosciences.

[308] In 2010, Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan reported a bias in conducting psychology studies with participants from "WEIRD" ("Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic") societies.

Moreover, their analysis showed that several studies did not fully disclose the origin of their samples; the authors offered a set of recommendations to editors and reviewers to reduce WEIRD bias.

[316] Practices such as "facilitated communication for infantile autism"; memory-recovery techniques including body work; and other therapies, such as rebirthing and reparenting, may be dubious or even dangerous, despite their popularity.

[325] The field of psychology also identifies certain categories of people that require additional or special protection due to particular vulnerabilities, unequal power dynamics, or diminished capacity for informed consent.

This list often includes, but is not limited to, children, incarcerated individuals, pregnant women, human fetuses and neonates, institutionalized persons, those with physical or mental disabilities, and the educationally or economically disadvantaged.

James McKeen Cattell , the first psychologist in the United States
Wilhelm Wundt (seated), a German psychologist, with colleagues in his psychological laboratory, the first of its kind, c. 1880
One of the dogs used in Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov 's experiment with a surgically implanted cannula to measure saliva , preserved in the Pavlov Museum in Ryazan , Russia
False-color representations of cerebral fiber pathways affected, per Van Horn et al. [V] : 3
Skinner's teaching machine , a mechanical invention to automate the task of programmed instruction
The film of the Little Albert experiment
Baddeley's model of working memory
The Müller–Lyer illusion . Psychologists make inferences about mental processes from shared phenomena such as optical illusions.
Front row: Sigmund Freud , G. Stanley Hall, Carl Jung ]. Back row: Abraham A. Brill , Ernest Jones , Sándor Ferenczi at Clark University in 1909.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943 posited that humans have a hierarchy of needs, and it makes sense to fulfill the basic needs first before higher-order needs can be met. [ 131 ]
Developmental psychologists engage a child with a book and then make observations based on how the child interacts with the object.
Francis Galton , a pioneer of the experimental psychology field
An item from a cognitive abilities test used in educational psychology
Flowchart of the four phases, enrollment, intervention allocation, follow-up, and data analysis, of a parallel randomized trial of two groups modified from the CONSORT 2010 Statement [ 255 ]
The experimenter (E) orders the teacher (T), the subject of the experiment, to give what the latter believes are painful electric shocks to a learner (L), who is actually an actor and confederate . The subject believes that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual electric shocks, though in reality there were no such punishments. Being separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level etc. [ 256 ]
An EEG recording setup
Artificial neural network with two layers, an interconnected group of nodes, akin to the vast network of neurons in the human brain
A rat undergoing a Morris water navigation test used in behavioral neuroscience to study the role of the hippocampus in spatial learning and memory
Phineas P. Gage survived an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain's left frontal lobe, but the injury altered his personality and behavior. [ 269 ]