Introduction to Psychology (Psych 10)

Professor Keith Holyoak

Lecture 1: What is Psychology?

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Plato Aristotle
I. What is Psychology?
How did it arise?
II. Psychology: The scientific study of the causes of
thoughts, feelings and behavior
A. Uses scientific method to find causes
B. Why interest in causes?
1. Why do people do what they do (good,
bad, & weird)?
2. If we know cause, we can change behavior
—treatment, therapy
 Causes: Levels of Explanation
Genetic Mechanisms: Behavior Genetics

Neural Mechanisms: Neuroscience

Behavioral Processes: Learning, Cognitive ,
Developmental , Social 
Evolutionary Function: Comparative , Evolutionary 
• Genetic Mechanisms: (Behavior Genetics) Causes of Behavior
• Neural Mechanisms: (Neuroscience)
• Behavioral Process: (Learning, Cognitive, Developmental, Social)
• Evolutionary Function: (Comparative, Evolutionary)
Observation: I go to In-N-Out
What caused that behavior?

How long has it been since I ate

I’m a human not a termite Eating gives us energy to reproduce

Temporary Influences
Stomach Load/Hormonal Signals
Permanent Influences I want to talk with friends

I’m too old for a bottle and too young for gourmet food
I ate at InO in the past and it was good

When I ate at InO in the past my brain released dopamine

I ate at McDonald’s in the past and got ill

• Genetic Mechanisms: (Behavior Genetics) Causes of Behavior
• Neural Mechanisms: (Neuroscience)
• Behavioral Process: (Learning, Cognitive, Developmental, Social)
• Evolutionary Function: (Comparative, Evolutionary)
Observation: I go to In-N-Out
What caused that Behavior?

How long has it been since I ate

I’m a human not a termite Eating gives us energy to reproduce

Temporary Influences
Stomach Load/Hormonal Signals
Permanent Influences I want to talk with friends

I’m too old for a bottle and too young for gourmet food
I ate at InO in the past and it was good

When I ate at InO in the past my brain released dopamine

I ate at McDonald’s in the past and got ill

• Genetic Mechanisms: (Behavior Genetics) Causes of Behavior
• Neural Mechanisms: (Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience)
• Behavioral Process: (Learning , Cognitive , Developmental , Social )
• Evolutionary Function: (Comparative , Evolutionary )

Persistent Factors:
Experience changes Motivation, Temporary Factors:
Learning &
behavior, Brain responds Emotion & Brain & Glands respond
Memory
differently Mood to current state

Genes (DNA)

Heredity;
Gene expression
• Genetic Mechanisms: (Behavior Genetics) Causes of Behavior
• Neural Mechanisms: (Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience)
• Behavioral Process: (Learning , Cognitive , Developmental , Social )
• Evolutionary Function: (Comparative , Evolutionary )

Changes
Changes in
in Hormonal
Hormonal Responses,
Responses,
Brain
Brain Chemistry,
Chemistry, Loss
Loss of
of Cues,
Cues,
Genetic
Genetic Make-up
Make-up
Short-Term
Short-Term Changes
Changes in
in Behavior
Behavior

Experience a Trauma
Post-Traumatic
Post-Traumatic
Stress
Stress Disorder
Disorder
(PTSD)
(PTSD)
Long-Term
Long-Term Changes
Changes inin Behavior
Behavior
Bad
Bad Memories,
Memories, Inability
Inability to
to deal
deal
with
with new
new stress
stress

Learning/Memory
Learning/Memory Formation,
Formation,
Gene
Gene Expression
Expression What to Do Now?
Clinical 
 Methods of Psychology
• Opinion vs Fact vs Hypothesis vs Theory
Opinion: Fact: Hypothesis: Theory:
1)Nonscientific View One bit of A testable idea or 1)A set of interrelated
2)Not based on information proposal (leads to a assumptions.
observation One objective prediction about a 2)Organizes a set of facts
3)Two conflicting observation fact) giving them a common
opinions can be explanation
equally valid 3)Generates hypotheses
and predicts new facts
4)Judged by their
usefulness, generality,
parsimony
 Methods of Psychology
Observation

Correlation
 Methods of Psychology
Observation

Correlation
 Experiment
• Independent Variable
– Avoids confounds
• Dependent Variable
– objective
– reliable
– valid
• Selection of subjects / participants
– Random (representative sample)
 Theory?
• Complex activities require attention
• Attention is limited
• Divided attention compromises performance
• Psychologists have found that memory encoding is
especially compromised by multitasking
Everyone thinks they are a psychologist
—that they know the causes of their
behavior.
1) Intuitive approach (not scientific
method)
2) We do what we do according to our
own free will.
3) Dualism: mind and body separate and
independent. (We think we are our
consciousness.)

Rationalism: We do what we do based on our ability to reason.

Instinct: We do things because “that’s how we are.”
Humans vs animals?
Challenges:
1)Behavioral and neural evidence
2)Darwin’s theory
 Philosophical roots (and routes to) Psychology 
James Mill

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Rene Descartes
John Locke
Empiricism
Experience Materialism
Tabula Modified Dualism Monism
Rasa Continuity of humans & other animals
Pineal Gland
Rationalist

Association
Physiological roots (and routes to) Psychology 
Rene Luigi Galvani
Descartes

Johannes Müller

Doctrine of Specific
Nerve Energies
 Physiological roots (and routes to) Psychology 
Rene Luigi Galvani
Descartes

Johannes Müller

Hermann von Helmholtz

Experimental
Brain Lesions
(ablation)

Pierre Flourens
Paul Broca
 Physiological roots (and routes to) Psychology 
Rene Luigi Galvani
Descartes

Johannes Müller

Hermann von Helmholtz

Pierre Flourens
Paul Broca
 First Psychologists: Hermann von Helmholtz
The German Wave

Johannes Müller

Wilhelm Wundt (1879)

Heidelberg, Germany
Structuralism: Psychology = science of immediate experience
Goal: Describe the elements of perceptual experience TIFF QuickTime™ andd
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Max Wertheimer
Gestalt
Psychology Unconscious causes
of complex actions
and personality
 The First Psychologists:
American Revolution
• wrote “Principles of Psychology”
•Functionalism: mental life and
behavior is an adaptation to
environment
•Divisions of memory
•Attention
•Emotion

William James
(1842-1910)
 The Tao of Psychology

Structures Functions
1. Wundt 1. James
2. representation 2. processes
3. brain areas 3. cognitive operations
4. hippocampus 4. memory
5. neurons 5. activation
 Examples of Introspective
Reports
• Apple
– “Cold, crisp, sweet”
• Meaning
– “I see meaning as the blue-grey tip of a kind of
scoop, which has a bit of yellow above it …,
and which is just digging into a dark mass of
what appears to be plastic material.”
-- Titchener (Wundt’s student), of Cornell Univ.
 Problems with Introspection
1) poor agreement between subjects
2) most mental operations outside awareness
3) process might change observed operations
4) inadequacies of language

• Difficulties led to more objective approaches:

 Behaviorism
 American Behaviorism

Charles Sherrington
John Locke
Empiricism

James Mill John Watson

Behaviorism: Psychology is the science of the causes of behavior
Method: Objective measurement of behavior in controlled experimental situations
Goal: Derive laws that predict behavior and test those predictions. Ivan Pavlov
Key Points:
1)Postulation of unobservable events should be limited by tying them to observable cause and
effect.
2)Determinism (from Mill): behavior follows natural laws and has specific causes. Free will does
not exist.
 Classical conditioning experiment

Association!
John Watson
3 TheoriesEdward
of Tolman
Conditioning B. F. Skinner

Bell Food Bell Food Bell Food

Salivation Salivation Salivation Salivation

1) Association formed between 1) Association formed between 1) Associations are

Bell and Salivation (S-R) Bell and Food (S-S*) unobservable &
2) Contiguity of S and R is all 2) Contiguity of S and S* is hypothetical
that is important important, but other factors 2) Never appeal to
3) Learning is the strengthening (e.g., hunger) contribute unobservable events
of the connection between 3) You learn an expectancy of S* 3) You never can know
S&R 4) Configural (Gestalt Like) cause, just correlation
4) Elemental (structuralist-like) 5) Precursor of Cognitive 4) Just describe
5) Mechanistic Behaviorism Psychology relationship between
(automatic-unconscious 6) Less extreme Tabula Rasa view environment and
Freud-like) (e.g., you know innately how to behavior.
6) Extreme Tabula Rasa view respond) 5) Radical Behaviorism
(only innate reflexes) 6) Extreme Tabula Rasa:
Walden 2.
 Cognitive Revolution (1950-60s)
•Modern linguistics
•Critique of Skinner QuickTime™ and a
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Herbert Simon

Noam Chomsky •Artificial intelligence

•Human problem solving

• •Short-term
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Donald Broadbent
George Miller
 21st Century
Integrating Mind & Brain
 21st Century Integrating Mind & Brain

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iys5wvQD72Y

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2000/monkeys-1206.html
 21st Century
Integrating Mind & Brain
21st Century Integrating Mind & Brain

Pain reduction in burn victims during bandage change in

scrub tanks
www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/magnet/
21st Century Integrating Mind & Brain

www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/magnet/
 Mind over Body?
Placebo Effect
• Placebo effect: influence of a substance or
procedure due to receiving it, even though
substance/procedure itself has no effect
• Effect is due to person’s belief
• Negative placebo (e.g., voodoo)
• How is this possible?
 How do we ever know that
someone is conscious?
• “The limits of consciousness are hard to
define satisfactorily, and we can only
infer the self-awareness of others by
their appearance and their acts.”
Plum & Posner

• Principle of revealed consciousness:

Voluntary (i.e., non-reflexive) behavior is
taken to reveal the presence of
consciousness.

08/20/20
 How do we ever know that
someone is conscious?

Recovery of
consciousness

08/20/20
Laureys, Owen & Schiff (2004) The Lancet - Neurology.
 Assessing consciousness in
brain-injury patients
• Detailed patient history (including structural MRI).
• Repeated daily observation of spontaneous and elicited
behaviour using standardized (albeit subjective)
assessments:
i. Sustained, reproducible, purposeful, or voluntary response to
visual, auditory, tactile or noxious stimuli
ii. Language comprehension or expression.
iii. Awareness of self or the environment
• If any evidence is found of i, ii or iii then the patient is
diagnosed MCS.
• If no evidence is found of i, ii and iii then the patient is
diagnosed VS.
08/20/20
Imagining consciousness

Owen et al. (2006), Science

 Communicating thoughts with rt-
fMRI

'Yes' 'No'

08/20/20
 Communicating thoughts with
fMRI

Is your father’s name Thomas? 

'Yes' 'No'

08/20/20
Monti et al. (2010) New England Journal of Medicine
 Communicating thoughts with
fMRI

Is your father’s name Alexander? 

'Yes' 'No'

08/20/20
Monti et al. (2010) New England Journal of Medicine