1b Disciples and Schools of Psychology

Week: 29/04

Learning Objectives

When Wundt established an experimental psychology laboratory in Leipzig, he stressed that psychology should focus on fundamental science and is not an applied science. Later, many different subdisciplines of psychology emerged. Importantly, psychology at the same time evolved from being solely theoretical to also encompassing applied science.

We’ll also talk about how psychology developed in the US, including different areas and how psychology became also a applied subject. Finally, we explore the history of various schools or paradigms of psychology. Of particular significance is the rise of behaviorism and its subsequent replacement by the cognitive paradigm.

Required Reading
  • Hyland (2024)
    • Chapter 3: Applied psychology, prejudice and intellectual snobbery.
    • Chapter 4: The rise of behaviourism and its replacement by the cognitive paradigm

Tutorial Meeting

Question 1

What are the major differences between America and European Psychology when the academic disciples started to emerge at the end of the 19th century?

Question 2

The method of introspection was already critiqued very early by different researchers (and you have discussed it also already in the previous meeting).

What ar are the arguments in the book against introspection. Mention findings that support a critical view on introspection?

What is you personal opinion: Is introspection as psychological method? Even if you do not belief in introspection as valid method, what could be the potential benefits of introspection?

Question 3

Why did Skinner reject theoretical terms? What were the advantages and disadvantages of doing so?

Question 4

Compare and contrast methodological behaviourism, radical behaviourism and neobehaviourism.

Question 5

Why did cognitive psychology arise? In what ways is it different from behaviourism?

Question 6

Many textbooks state that cognitive psychology introduced a “computer metaphor of the mind” to psychology. Although the Hyland book is not talking about that explicitly, you should be able to explain this notion.

This metaphor changed the ways psychologists think and work drastically. This change has been called the “cognitive revolution”. Why? Explain in this context what you associate with the term revolution.

Discussion 1

The assumption that there is no “dividing line” between animals and humans is an assumption that is shared by all the different versions of behaviourism. It is a defining feature of behaviourisms.

What do you think about that? What is your opinion? What do you think about Noam Chomsky argument?

Do we need to do research with humans at all? Can’t we explain every Human behaviour by studies on animals behavior? Wouldn’t animal research be cheaper and, importantly, ethically more less problematic?

Discussion 2

Role of Women in Psychology: How did the often overlooked contributions of women shape the early field of psychology? Provide specific examples of female pioneers in psychology and analyze how their recognition (or lack thereof) affected the progression of psychological research.

Discuss the impact of gender biases on the development of psychology as a scientific discipline.s

Study Checklist

  • Predecessors of Psychology (see lecture 1)
    • Early Brain Science: Franz Gall, Pierre Broca, Phineas Gage
    • Ophthalmology: Herman von Helmholtz and Franz C. Donders
    • Method of subtraction
  • Psychometrics in Europe (see lecture 1)
    • Francis Galton
    • Alfred Binet
  • American psychology
    • William James
  • Applied psychology
    • Hugo Münsterberg
    • Lightner Witmer
  • Difference to American and European psychology
    • pure science vs applied psychology
    • structuralism vs functionalism
  • Introspection
    • failures of introspection
  • Edward Thorndike as a precursors to behaviourism
  • Behaviorism
    • Skinner’s view of theorizing: Explanatory fictions
    • Skinner’s contributions to psychology
  • Neobehaviourism
    • Hull’s quantitative theory of animal behaviour
    • Tolman’s purposive behaviourism
  • Cognitive paradigm, cognitive psychology
    • Noam Chomsky’s critique of Skinner
    • differences to behaviorism
    • information processing & computers as a model/metaphor
    • Control systems