Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Voyage of the Beagle--saw (and collected) many closely
related species
Read Malthus's essay on the principle of population
Found mechanism for evolution
1. natural variability of speciesThis concept substitutes variation for essentialism in species. There is a continuum between different categories rather than a well defined break. One cannot really give a completely reliable answer to when one category ends and another begins.
2. those variants better adapted to environment more likely to live to procreate.
3. Variations in parent tend to be represented in offspring
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)--
Evolutionary associationism
survival of the fittest
Social Darwinism
Charles Lyell (1797-1875)--
Uniformitarianism rather than
Catastrophism: geological formations required many millennia
to develop.
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)--independently
proposed evolutionary mechanism
Thomas Huxley (1825-1895)--major publicizer of evolution, epiphenomenologist
Early Animal Psychology
George Romanes (1848-1894) anecdotal
stories of animal intelligence, a comparative psychology
C. Lloyd Morgan (1852-1936) Morgan’s canon, limit
interpretations of behavior to as simple mental processes as is compatible
with the data.
Jacques Loeb (1859-1924) tropisms--movements have
elementary physico-chemical explanations
Willard Small (1870-1943) maze learning of laboratory
rat
Ivan Sechenov (1829-1905) Thoughts are reflexes
of the brain. Inhibitory and excitatory reflexive action
Francis Galton (1822-1911)
Promulgated Darwin's individual differences idea.
Human physical & mental traits are distributed normally
Hereditary Genius-prominent people have prominent
relatives
Made many contributions in such domains as: Mental
imagery, free association tests, questionnaires, twin studies, correlation,
regression, anthropometry, cross-cultural measures, cross species measures,
nature and nurture, intelligence testing, eugenics meteorology, weather
maps,
William James (1842-1910)
Criticized Wundt and German "brass instrument" psychology
Free will and mechanistic determinism--which is true?
Each has its own uses.
This idea led to pragmatism. Accept or believe
that which is useful
mind is purposive and shows itself when there is an obstacle
to overcome.
Flow and continuity of consciousness, always changes
Definitions of self--empirical self, self as knower (subjective
self), self esteem
Effortful acts can become habits,
James-Lange theory of emotion
Early functionalists
Hugo Munsterberg (1863-1916)--applied
psychology, forensic psychology, human factors, clinical, industrial (individual
differences)
Mary Calkins (1863-1930) first woman president
of APA, studied with Munsterberg, paired associates learning, self psychology
(self, object, and relation between them.
G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924)-- 1878 (first psych
PhD in America), Founder of APA 1892, started child, adolescence and geriatric
psychologies
J. McK. Cattell (1860-1944) Experimenter (psychophysics,
mental tests) and editor. Became "dean" of American Psychology
John Dewey (1859-1952)
emphasized process and change
interdependence and interrelationship of things
anthropological-biological orientation, one has a transaction
with one’s environment
The reflex arc concept
Scientific study of education
progressive education--practical and involving, not rote
founded laboratory school at Chicago, and trained teachers
in Teacher’s College at Columbia
James Angell (1869-1949)
Formally defended functionalism as an approach to psychology,
how and why rather than what
Mental operations not mental elements (Darwin based act
psychology)
Was interested in the utility and results of consciousness,
rather than its structure or process
E. L. Thorndike (1874-1949)
attacked formal discipline (faculty psychology)
practical education
word counts and children’s dictionary
puzzle box in animal study, studied baby chickens, cats
and dogs
Trial and error learning
law of effect (positive (successful outcomes stamp in
responses)
law of exercise (practice makes perfect)
transfer of training (identical elements)
R. S. Woodworth (1869-1962)
General experimental psychologist
Worked with Thorndike
Importance of Motivation in behavior (S-O-R, not S-R
is the important sequence)
mechanism becomes a drive
eclectic psychologist
Classical textbook in experimental psychology
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
Excellent experimenter (chronic preparations in alert
healthy animals)
won Nobel Prize in 1904 for physiology (of digestion)
Conditioning was discovered serendipitously due to irregularities
of reflexes (psychic reflexes)
mental should be reduced to measurable physiological
quantities
Concept of conditional response extremely influential--believed
they were due to nervous system activity
Concepts of conditioning studied by Pavlov
Conditioned and unconditioned stimulus, conditioned and
unconditioned response
Basic conditioning paradigm
John B. Watson (1878-1958)
Founded Behaviorism--a strong environmentalist
extremely influential in setting the pattern for American
Psychology
Conditioned and unconditioned reflexes can account for
all of behavior
Consciousness plays no greater role in psychology than
physics
Studied maze-learning in rats and conditioned emotion
in children.
Believed parents should not "spoil" children by holding
and comforting them