Fundamentals of Psychology

Michael Eysenck

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317568575
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Aimed at those new to the subject, Fundamentals of Psychology is a clear and reader-friendly textbook that will help students explore and understand the essentials of psychology. This text offers a balanced and accurate representation of the discipline through a highly accessible synoptic approach, which seamlessly brings together all the various related topics.

Fundamentals of Psychology combines an authoritative tone, a huge range of psychological material and an informal, analogy-rich style. The text expertly blends admirably up-to-date empirical research and real-life examples and applications, and is both readable and factually dense. The book introduces all the main approaches to psychology, including social, developmental, cognitive, biological, individual differences, and abnormal psychology, as well as psychological research methods. However, it also includes directions for more detailed and advanced study for the interested student.

Fundamentals of Psychology incorporates many helpful textbook features which will aid students and reinforce learning, such as:

• Key-term definitions
• Extremely clear end-of-chapter summaries
• Annotated further reading sections
• Evaluations of significant research findings
• Numerous illustrations presented in attractive full color.

This textbook is also accompanied by a comprehensive program of resources for both students and instructors, which is available free to qualifying adopters. The resources include a web-based Student Learning Program, as well as chapter-by-chapter lecture slides and an interactive chapter-by-chapter multiple-choice question test bank.

Combining exceptional content, abundant pedagogical features, and a lively full-color design, Fundamentals of Psychology is an essential resource for anyone new to the subject and more particularly those beginning undergraduate courses. The book will also be ideal for students studying psychology within education, nursing and other healthcare professions.

Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315736945-1

Contents

• What is Psychology?
• Is Psychology a Science?
• Psychology Around the World
• How Useful is Psychology?

What is Psychology?

What is psychology? As is clear from media coverage, psychology is amazingly wide-ranging. Here are just a few examples. Some psychologists are involved in treating mental disorders and use many techniques not dreamt of by Sigmund Freud. There are also forensic psychologists such as Cracker (Eddie Fitzgerald) of UK television fame who engage in offender profiling and tracking down criminals. Other psychologists study the human brain using scanners, with their research producing the brightly colored pictures of patterns of activation in the brain found in magazines. Still other psychologists (known as health psychologists) are hard at work trying to persuade us to adopt healthier lifestyles with less smoking and drinking and more physical exercise.

What is the common element to the varied activities of psychologists? Probably the most frequent definition of psychology is that it is the scientific study of behavior. However, this definition is too limited, because most psychologists are trying to understand why people behave in certain ways. To achieve that understanding, we must consider internal processes and motives. Thus, we arrive at the following definition:

Psychology is a science in which behavioral and other evidence (including individuals’ reports of their thoughts and feelings) is used to understand the internal processes leading people (and members of other species) to behave as they do.

As you read this book, you may be bewildered (hopefully not too bewildered!) by the numerous approaches psychologists have adopted in their attempts to understand human behavior. These approaches exist because our behavior is jointly determined by several factors including the following:

• The specific stimuli presented to us
• Our recent experiences (e.g., being stuck in a traffic jam)
• Our genetic endowment
• Our physiological system
• Our cognitive system (our perceptions, thoughts, and memories)
• The social environment
• The cultural environment
• Our previous life experiences (including those of childhood)
• Our personal characteristics (including intelligence, personality, and mental health)

The notion that there are various levels of explanation can be illustrated by taking a concrete example. Suppose one man attacks another man very aggressively by punching him repeatedly on the head and body. How can we understand this behavior? It may depend in part on the genes the man has inherited from his parents. It may also depend on the attacker’s childhood experiences, for example, the presence of violence within the family. It may also depend on a recent stressful experience such as being caught in heavy traffic. The attacker’s clinical history may also be relevant—he may have a history of psychopathic or antisocial behavior. His behavior may depend on his thoughts and feelings (e.g., he may have misinterpreted the other person’s behavior as threatening). His behavior may depend on social factors. For example, the man behaving aggressively may believe the other man has insulted members of his family. His behavior may depend on the physiological state of the man behaving aggressively—his internal bodily state may be highly aroused and agitated. Finally, the attacker’s behavior may depend on cultural factors, in that expressing aggression by punching is regarded as more acceptable (or less unacceptable) in some cultures than in others.

The crucial point of the above example is that there is no single “correct” interpretation of the aggressive man’s behavior. Indeed, it is probable that several of the factors discussed above contributed to his behavior, and the same is true of the great majority of the behavior we observe in everyday life. Thus, the scope of psychology needs to be very broad if we are to understand human behavior.

Some of the main approaches within psychology are as follows: biological psychology; cognitive psychology; individual differences; developmental psychology; and social psychology. Below we consider how each approach developed, and why that approach is important. Note that these approaches are all related to each other. For example, personality is discussed within the individual differences approach. However, individual differences in personality depend in part on genetic factors (biological approach), on cognitive processes (cognitive approach), on childhood experiences (developmental approach), and on interactional processes (social psychology). Thus, the various approaches are not as separate as might be assumed.

Biological Psychology

It is difficult to imagine the enormous impact that The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (1809–1882) had on the way people think about themselves. Before its publication in 1859, most people assumed that human beings were radically different from (and far superior to) all other species. The notion that human beings had evolved from other species indicated that this view of the importance of the human species needed reassessment. However, not surprisingly, many people found it very difficult to accept that human beings should be regarded simply as members of the animal kingdom. Indeed, the millions of people who believe in intelligent design (i.e., humans were created by an intelligent designer) still do not accept Darwin’s approach.

Darwin was a biologist rather than a psychologist. However, his views on evolution had several major implications for psychology. First, psychologists began to realize that it was worth considering human behavior from the biological perspective. Second, Darwin emphasized the importance of heredity, and the notion that offspring tend to resemble their parents. This suggested to psychologists that the role of heredity in influencing human behavior should be explored. Third, Darwin focused on variations among the members of a species with evolution favoring some members rather than others (i.e., survival of the fittest). This led to an interest in the role of heredity in explaining individual differences in intelligence and personality.

Why is this approach to psychology of importance? First, everyone (apart from identical or monozygotic twins) has their own unique set of genes, and genes influence our intelligence, personality, and behavior. Second, our motivational systems (e.g., hunger; sex) developed originally as a result of the biological imperative to survive and to pass on our genes to successive generations. Third, the processes studied by biological psychologists are involved in nearly all human behavior.

A cartoon about evolution, circa 1871. Charles Darwin is rebuked for slighting a gorilla by claiming man may be descended from apes

Cognitive Psychology

The study of human cognition with its focus on thinking and other mental processes originated with Plato and Aristotle. It remained the dominant area within psychology for 2000 years. However, it was relatively ignored during the first half of the twentieth century. The reason was that psychology (especially in the United States) was dominated by behaviorism, an approach with an emphasis on observable behavior rather than internal processes. According to the behaviorists, it is more scientific and “objective” to measure human behavior than it is to rely on people’s possibly entirely mistaken reports of their internal thoughts and feelings, and so these reports should be ignored. The absurdity of carrying this approach to its logical conclusion is captured in the following joke. Two behaviorists are talking to each other after having had sex. One says to the other, “Your behavior tells me that you enjoyed that. Did I enjoy it?”

In the mid-1950s, the cognitive revolution began. Several major cognitive psychologists (e.g., Donald Broadbent, Jerome Bruner, George Miller, Herb Simon) started to explore human cognition in detail. They focused on the internal processes and structures involved in cognition, including perception, attention, learning, memory, language, thinking, and reasoning. They (and other cognitive psychologists) were interested in observable responses mainly to the extent that they provide information about these underlying processes and structures.

Plato and Aristotle, shown here in a painting by Raphael, were the originators of study concerning human cognitive processes

For many years, cognitive psychologists focused mainly on the cognitive processes exhibited by volunteer participants taking part in artificial experiments under laboratory conditions. In recent years, cognitive psychologists have become interested in the role played by cognitive processes in accounting for people’s behavior in the real world. However, we must be careful not to exaggerate the changes within cognitive psychology. After all, people use the same cognitive system whether performing a task in the laboratory or coping with everyday life.

Let’s consider an example of the approach taken by cognitive psychologists. Patients with social phobia (excessive fear of social situations) interpret their own social behavior as much more inadequate than it appears to other people (Rapee & Lim, 1992). Cognitive psychologists regard social phobics’ misinterpretation of their own behavior as shedding important light on the internal processes maintaining their disorder. More specifically, this misinterpretation helps to explain why social phobics shun most social occasions and experience considerable distress in demanding social situations.

Key Term

Behaviorism

an American school of psychology with an emphasis on measuring and predicting observable behavior.

Why is the cognitive approach to psychology so important? First, the understanding of human cognition developed by cognitive psychologists has had a great impact on social, developmental, and abnormal psychology. For example, we can only understand the behavior of children or of patients with mental disorders by taking account of the ways in which they perceive and interpret themselves and the world around them. Second, the insights obtained by cognitive psychologists have had real-life application in the design of computer and other systems in order to make them relatively easy to use. Third, cognitive psychology has had very beneficial effects on the treatment of depression and the anxiety disorders. More specifically, cognitive therapy uses insights from cognitive psychologists to change the maladaptive cognitive processes and structures of depressed and anxious patients.

Sir Francis Galton, 1822–1911

Individual Differences

The systematic study of individual differences started with the work of Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911), a cousin of Charles Darwin. The publication of Galton’s book Hereditary Genius in 1869 was a landmark in the study of individual differences. Researchers on individual differences have focused mainly on intelligence and personality, although obviously people differ from each other in almost limitless ways. One of the key issues is to try to understand the factors responsible for individual differences in intelligence and

The experiences we have during childhood have a great impact on our adult lives

personality. As mentioned earlier, both are influenced by genetic factors, by developmental factors, by cognitive factors, and by social factors.

Why is this approach to psychology important? First, individual differences in intelligence and personality influence most forms of behavior. Second, if our educational system is to be effective, we need to take account of the particular skills and abilities possessed by individual children. Third, it is desirable in many real-life situations to use information about individuals’ intelligence and personality (e.g., in personnel selection).

Developmental Psychology

It was only when Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories became widely known in the early part of the twentieth century that serious attention was paid to developmental psychology. Thereafter, the greatest impetus to developmental psychology came from the Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget (1896–19...