Answers to "The History of Psychology"

  1. Rene Descartes was a philosopher who believed that the body and the mind worked together. He called this theory "mutual interaction."

  2. (1) Wilheim Wundt is the father of scientific psychology. (2) Wundt started the Structuralist school of psychology. (3) Wundt started the first psychology laboratory and the first psychology journal.

  3. As it is used in psychology, the term "introspection" means "self-examination of the mind, or conscious experience." The Structuralists used introspection to explain behavior.

  4. The 2 principles that motivated James' view of psychology were (1) pragmatic philosophy and (2) Darwin's theory of evolution. Pragmatic philosophy means that James wanted to know why things and ideas were useful to people in everyday life. Darwin's theory says that all features of life evolved because they serve a practical purpose.

  5. The basic principle of functionalist psychology is that people adapt their behavior to deal with or survive changes in the environment and/or our situations in life.

  6. Freud believed that there were 3 elements to the personality. These were the ID, the EGO, and the SUPEREGO. Freud believed that these 3 elements were always in conflict with each other. To be healthy, there needed to be a balance among the 3 elements.

  7. John B. Watson believed that behavior should be the focus of psychological research because behavior is objective rather than subjective.

  8. B.F. Skinner believed that all behavior is learned. Nothing is inborn. His theory of behaviorism is key to the Nature-Nurture debate. Nature means that we are born with certain behaviors. Nurture means that we learn our behaviors from the environment. Skinner was on the nurture side of the Nature-Nurture debate.

  9. Incubation helps us think over the problem so that we may arrive at a good solution. Incubation also helps lead us to insight, where we suddenly realize the correct solution to a problem.

  10. Cognitive psychology believes that behavior does not have to be observable to be worthy of study. Mental processes, attention, metacognition, knowledge representation are all behaviors, which though not observable, are valuable areas of psychological study. Behaviorism believes that only observable behaviors should be studied.

Posted to the Web on November 8, 2001