Foundation of Psychology

Foundation of Psychology

Lisa Hanson – Schmitz

Psychology 300

Dr. Hawkins

Psychology is an amazing field of study, and in the modern day view, there are many schools of thought. I am going to touch on four areas of study, and show how each one is individualized with its own Fundamental assumptions and ideas. Each of these areas has made a significant contribution in the study of psychology while keeping its own perspective and identity. Regardless of their diversity, these perspectives have managed to stay connected and have helped solve the many quandaries of human life. The four studies are behaviorism, psychodynamics, cognitive and evolutionary.

Behaviorism

Behaviorism was originally founded by Ivan Pavlov who introduced “Classic Conditioning” (Pavlov 1927) and Burrhuss Skinners’ “Operant Conditioning” (Skinner 1938). In behaviorism, there is modest to no consideration given to the genuine performance that is actually occurring in our human brain. Behaviorists seem to think that we should only be concerned with the “in” and “output” of our brains. However in Ivan Pavlov’s theory, the hominid brain consists of a collection of results, such as precedent practiced stimuli and an educated reply to those stimuli. While all other rationalization to comprehend the internal processes with the brain, is being ignored.

While it seems that Wilfred Sellars had a simpler explanation of what he thought a behaviorist was, “…a person may qualify as a behaviorist, loosely or attitudinally speaking, if they insist on confirming “hypotheses about psychological events in terms of behavioral criteria” (1963, p. 22). Some others may even say that “People Watchers” are casual observationist.

Cognitive

The cognitive perspective school of thought, of which is stated by Kowalskis’ and Westens’ (2009), “focuses on the mental processes, specifically the way people process, store and retrieve information” (p.29) teaches us that the cognitive point of view studies all...