Unit 1

Psychology – The study of the mind, body, and behavior.

Socrates – Believed that the mind and body were separate. He thought that knowledge was innate and that learning was a process of inner reflection to discover the knowledge within us.

Aristotle – Thought that knowledge was gained through experience, with the mind and soul being connected. Seen as Monism.

Rene Descartes – Introduced the idea of Dualism, the concept that the mind and soul were separate.

Francis Bacon – Worked with John Locke and believed that humans are shaped by experience. He was also a founder of the concept of Empiricism.

John Locke – Believed humans were shaped by experience, creating the term “Tabula Rasa”, meaning the mind is a blank slate at birth. He also helped develop Empiricism.

Empiricism – The idea that knowledge originates in experience and that science should rely on observation and experimentation.

Wilhelm Wundt – A structuralist who believed the mind and its structure could be studied and mental processes analyzed. Conducted the first lab experiments in Leipzig, Germany in December 1879. He helped establish psychology as a science rooted in research, showing mental processes can be measured.

G. Stanley Hall – A student of Wundt, started the first psychology lab at Johns Hopkins University in 1883. He was the first president of the APA.

Edward Bradford Titchener – A student of Wilhelm Wundt, introduced Structuralism. Believed we needed to go beyond the observable and gathered data using introspection.

Structuralism – Aimed to discover the structural elements of the mind, using introspection to gather data.

William James – Developed Functionalism, which looked at the functions of the mind. He also developed the first psychological textbook.

Charles Darwin – Inspired Evolutionary Psychology by applying natural selection to concepts of the mind. His theory argued that all species, including humans, evolved through random inheritable changes.

Functionalism – Focused on why people behave a certain way and the reasons/motivations behind behavior.

Mary Whiton Calkins – First female president of the APA, a student of William James. She was refused her PhD at Harvard because it was male-only at the time.

Margaret Floy Washburn – Second female APA president, and the first female to receive a PhD in psychology, earned at Cornell University.