Invitation to Psychology

36 Chapter 1 What Is Psychology?

The Science of Psychology

• Psychology is the discipline concerned with behavior and mental
processes and how they are affected by an organism’s external
and internal environment. Psychology’s methods and reliance
on empirical evidence distinguish it from pseudoscience and
“psychobabble.”

• Psychological findings often contradict prevailing beliefs, but a
finding does not have to be surprising or counterintuitive to be
scientifically important.

• Psychology’s forerunners made some valid observations and had
some useful insights, but without rigorous empirical methods,
they also made serious errors in the description and explanation
of behavior, as in the case of phrenology.

• The official founder of scientific psychology was Wilhelm Wundt,
who established the first psychological laboratory in 1879, in
Leipzig, Germany. Wundt emphasized the analysis of experience
into basic elements, through trained introspection.

• A competing approach, functionalism, which was inspired in
part by the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, emphasized
the functions of behavior. One of its leading proponents was
William James.

• Psychology as a method of psychotherapy has roots in Sigmund
Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, which emphasizes uncon-
scious causes of mental and emotional problems.

• Four points of view predominate today in psychological science.
The biological perspective emphasizes bodily events associated

with actions, thoughts, and feelings, as well as genetic contribu-

tions to behavior. Within this perspective, a popular specialty,

evolutionary psychology, emphasizes the purposes and functions

of behavior, as functionalism did.

•   The learning perspective emphasizes how the environment and a

person’s history affect behavior; within this perspective, behav-

iorists reject mentalistic explanations and social–cognitive learn-

ing theorists combine elements of behaviorism with the study of

thoughts, values, and intentions.

•   The cognitive perspective emphasizes mental processes in per-

ception, problem solving, belief formation, and other human

activities.

•   The sociocultural perspective explores how social contexts and

cultural rules affect an individual’s beliefs and behavior.

•   Each approach has made important contributions to psychol-

ogy, but many psychologists draw on more than one school of

thought.

What Psychologists Do

•   Psychologists do research and teach in colleges and universi-

ties, provide mental health services (psychological practice), and

conduct research and apply findings in a wide variety of nonaca-

demic settings.

•   Applied psychology is concerned with the practical uses of

psychological knowledge. Basic psychology is concerned with

knowledge for its own sake.

Summary

listen to the Audio File at mypsychlab

always, always look for the control group. If
an experiment does not have a control group,
then, as they say in New York, “fuhged-
daboutit.” Lack of a control group is a fre-
quent problem in “research” promoting a
new herbal supplement, treatment, or self-
improvement program. As you will learn in
Chapter 7, people are motivated to justify any
program or treatment in which they have in-
vested time, money, or effort. Further, thanks
to the placebo effect, people’s expectations
of success are often what helps them, not
the treatment itself. This is why testimoni-
als don’t provide a full or accurate picture
of a medication’s or treatment’s benefits or
harms.

be cautious about correlations. We said this

before, but we’ll say it again: With correla-

tional findings, you usually cannot be sure

what’s causing what. A study reported that

teenagers who listened to music five or more

hours a day were eight times more likely to be

depressed than those who didn’t listen that

much (Primack et al., 2011). Does listening

to music make you depressed? Or do de-

pressed teenagers tend to tune out and listen

to music because they don’t have the mental

energy to do much else? “At this point, it is

not clear whether depressed people begin to

listen to more music to escape, or whether lis-

tening to large amounts of music can lead to

depression, or both,” said the lead researcher.

Unfortunately, bad statistics, repeated

again and again, can infiltrate popular

culture, spread like a virus on the Internet,

and become difficult to eradicate. The

information in this chapter will get you

started on telling the difference between

numbers that are useful and those that

mislead or deceive. For entertaining books

on this topic, we recommend Damned Lies

and Statistics by Joel Best (2012) and

Naked Statistics: Stripping the dread from

the data by Charles Wheelan (2013). In

future chapters, we will give you additional

information to help you think critically

and scientifically about popular claims and

findings that make the news.