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Seven Perspectives of Psychology – Terms Checklist

Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic

The psychodynamic approach was promoted by Sigmund Freud, who believed that many of our impulses are driven by sex. Freud, who was medically trained in neurology, developed a theory of personality that made the assumption that human motivation was propelled by conflicts between instinctual, mostly unconscious, psychological forces. He called these intrapsychic elements the id, ego and superego.

This psychodynamic theory caught on like wild fire and due to its explanatory power for human behavior, became very popular over the following century. Freud’s therapeutic method, called psychoanalysis, was developed to identify the underlying conflicts between intrapsychic structures and resolve them by bringing them to consciousness. Insight therapy was one term used to describe Freud’s treatment approach. Freud also contributed the first developmental theory of human personality. It suggests that human development progresses through psychosexual stages. Each stage is characterized by specific behavioral and psychodynamic developments and challenges.

Although Freud thought of himself as a scientist, and he was indeed very thorough in recording his methods and outcomes, he did not practice scientific methods. Psychoanalytic theory was developed through case study analysis, a qualitative, not scientific, method.

There are a lot of jokes about Freud and his now mostly outdated theories. But have you ever thought that something about who you are today comes from your experiences as a child? Say, you blame your smoking habit on an oral fixation that stems from being weaned from breastfeeding too early as a baby. Well, that also comes from Freud’s theories, and it was an idea that revolutionized how we see ourselves.

Psychologists in this school of thought believe that unconscious drives and experiences from early childhood are at the root of your behaviors and that conflict arises when societal restrictions are placed on these urges.

Other psychodynamic theories arose, like those of Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, Margaret Mahler, and famous developmentalists like Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson, but all made the same basic assumption: There is a dynamic mind, conscious and unconscious, that influences the behavior of humans. Elements of the unconscious psyche interact to produce motives for behavior and thought processes.

Describe how the following concepts are linked to your thoughts, feelings and behaviors in your life event:

· The Unconscious – Id, Ego, Superego

· Stages of Psychosexual development – Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, Genital

Oedipus complex, Electra complex, identification, fixation

· Dreams – manifest and latent content

· Defense Mechanisms – repression, regression, displacement, denial, sublimation, projection. rationalization, reaction formation

· Inferiority complex

· Collective unconscious

Behavioral

In an attempt to bring scientific method to bear on the understanding of human behavior, John B. Watson, using ideas he had gleaned from the likes of Ivan Pavlov and others, decided to declare that psychology should only concern itself with observable behavior. A science of behavior was built on only observable behavior. Assumptions about underlying psychological causes of behavior were not admitted. The unconscious was declared fictitious and its study, a waste of time. Serious psychology would focus on observable, controllable, behavior. The behavioral perspective gained great momentum in the 20th century because it was a powerful tool in training, education, and industry. Critics claimed that behaviorism was dehumanizing. John B. Watson and others conducted a thorough explication of Classical Conditioning and B. F. Skinner, responding somewhat to the critics of behaviorism’s dehumanization, explained and expertly defended the processes of Operant Conditioning.

Behavioral psychologists believe that external environmental stimuli influence your behavior and that you can be trained to act a certain way. Behaviorists like B.F. Skinner don’t believe in free will. They believe that you learn through a system of reinforcement and punishment in your environment. The behavioral approach is really effective when you don’t care what someone thinks, as long as you get the desired behavior. The influence of these theories affects us every day and throughout our lives, impacting everything from why we follow the rules of the road when driving to how advertising companies build campaigns to get us to buy their products.

Describe how the following behavioral concepts/terms are relevant to your life event

Modules 18 – 20

· Classical conditioning (always involves a reflex)

· unconditioned stimulus

· unconditioned response

· neutral stimulus

· conditioned stimulus

· conditioned response

· Generalization,

· Discrimination,

· Extinction

· Spontaneous recovery

· Operant conditioning

· Thorndike’s Law of Effect

· Reinforcers

· positive

· negative

· primary

· secondary

· Reinforcement schedules

· Fixed ratio

· variable ratio

· fixed interval

· variable interval

· Punishers

· positive

· negative

· unintended effects of punishment

· Generalization,

· Discrimination,

· Extinction

· Spontaneous recovery

· Latent learning

· Intrinsic/Extrinsic motivation

· Observational learning/modeling

Cognitive

In contrast to behaviorists, cognitive psychologists believe that your behavior is determined by your expectations and emotions. Cognitive psychologist Jean Piaget would argue that you remember things based on what you already know. You also solve problems based on your memory of past experiences.

So, with this approach, we turn away from people as machines without free will and delve back into thoughts and feelings. How you act is based upon internal processes, and there is much more emphasis upon individuals. From a cognitive perspective, your expectations of an upcoming party will affect how you feel and act while you’re there and will color your memory of the night after you return home.

The cognitive perspective developed explanations for human behavior that suggest that human behavior is at times thoughtful and can be controlled by thought processes. Indeed, the cognitive perspective suggests that much of human behavior is mediated by thought processes like memory and attention, belief systems, attitudes and language. Cognitivists believe that humans bring significant conscious processes into the mix and that much of human behavior is mediated by conscious processes. Belief systems, value systems, thought processes, reason and intelligence have a significant impact on why we do the things we do and act the way we act. The cognitive perspective suggests that much of human behavior is significantly influenced by cognitive processes and is thus amenable to our thoughtful control.

Describe how the following concepts are linked to your thoughts, beliefs, feelings and behaviors in your life event:

Modules 21 – 23

Memory processes –

· encoding

· storage

· retrieval

· recall vs. recognition

· context effects

· mood congruent memory

Stage Model of memory

· sensory memories (iconic, echoic, haptic)

· short-term memory

· long-term memory

Automatic processing vs. Effortful Processing

Rehearsal

Memory Effects

· Spacing Effect

· Next-in-Line Effect

· Serial Position Effect

Types of Encoding

· Semantic

· Visual

· Auditory

Memory Strategies (Mnemonics)

· Chunking

· Hierarchies

Stress & Flashbulb memories

Implicit memories (memory for events)

Explicit memories (memory for actions)

Forgetting

· encoding failure

· memory decay

· retrieval failure

· retroactive interference

· proactive interference

· Misinformation Effect

· Source amnesia

Module 24 – Thinking

concept

prototype

algorithm

heuristic

confirmation bias

fixation

representativeness heuristic

availability heuristic

belief perseverance

intuition – benefits and limitations

framing effect

Modules 26 & 27 – Intelligence

emotional intelligence

Savant syndrome

Binet & Simon – mental age

Intelligence test

Aptitude test

Achievement test