Please read chapter 6. After reading chapter 6, please respond to the following questions:
What were two things from the chapter that you found interesting? Why were they interesting to you? Which two things did you find the least interesting? Why? What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology? Finally indicate two topics or concepts that you would like me to cover in more depth in class.
Include a list of the terms and concepts you used in your post. (example - Terms: positive reinforcer, extinction, reinforcer, discriminative stimulus...)
Let me know if you have any questions,
--Dr. M
The two things I found most interesting in the chapter were the works of James and Hall. I found these two to be interesting because they accomplished so much, but in very different ways. James was not so much interested in the research aspect of psychology and instead enjoyed the thought provoking questions and thinking aspects of psychology rather than taking these things to the laboratory. Hall on the other hand wanted to research to find his answers which he did from the help of a few universities at the time. I especially enjoyed Hall’s insights on developmental psychology because it has always been an interest of mine. I found it neat that they were in communication with one another, but had their own views of how to go about psychology, and things that were in relation to it; for instance James was more interested in philosophy and spiritualism and Hall was intrigued by the scientific advancement of psychology.
Two things I did not find interesting were the brief overviews of the ‘lesser important’ people at the end of the chapter. I understand that at this time a majority of contributions made to psychology were important in the advancement of the science and thought processing of what psychology actually was, but I feel that the last few people were somewhat just thrown in at the end of the chapter rather to add some page-length rather than actually focus on their accomplishments.
I think what will be most useful in the understanding of psychology from this chapter are the ways upon which James and Hall approached psychology. They both used different methods of supporting their beliefs and their published works. James contributed new ideas to how we view consciousness, emotion, and habit. He helped to create new theories to try and explain why we have certain emotional reactions to the best of his ability and what was available at the time. Hall wanted to expand the knowledge aspect of psychology and did so through his Presidency at Clark University.
At this point I do not feel that there is anything specific I would like to go over in class. I’ll post again if something comes to mind later on.
James, Hall, spritualism, consciousness, emotion, habit, philosophy
The two topics I found interesting in this chapter were the topics of periodic function and Spiritualism. I found the topic of periodic function to be quite funny. Periodic function is the argument that women were intellectually incapacitated every month during their menstruation. This idea also influenced the idea of variability hypothesis about women. The Variability hypothesis was that men had a greater degree of variability than women on a number of traits, including intelligence. This help to state that the brightest men were still going to be smarter and more intelligent the brightest women. This just created the idea that women were not suited for higher education, especially graduate programs.
The second topic I found interesting was spiritualism. Spiritualism is the belief that consciousness survived death and that those who died could be contacted by mediums. This is interesting to me because I am very doubtful about this kind of thing. I just don’t know what to really think or believe about it. William James, who was fascinated with spiritualism, even became doubtful of spiritualism. This reason being that he figured the dead would talk about something a little more interesting then the information that they were providing to the mediums. James thought they would want answers about things, rather than provide information about random things.
I feel that the most important thing that I got from this chapter was the idea of how psychology changed so much. This came through the talk about how women got involved into psychology and how their findings and research became huge contributions to psychology. Also the increase of minorities into teaching and working with psychology aspects, really was a major point to take away from this chapter. All these people have helped to create psychology into what it is today, if society never let these people into the involvement of psychology. Psychology could possibly not be what it is today.
Two concepts or topic I’d like a little more information about would be the James-Lauge theory of emotion and self-psychology.
Terms: Spiritualism, periodic function, variability hypothesis, James-Lauge theory of emotion, self-psychology
hahaha. I did not catch the part in the chapter about Periodic function. I had never even heard of it. I also find it funny that they thought that every month women were intellectually incapacitated incapacitated when they menstruated. Using the Variability hypothesis works well there. The Variability hypothesis said that man had a greater degree of variability than women on traits like intelligence.
The first thing I found interesting was the concept of spiritualism, that one of the psychologists, James, was very interested in. The theory behind spiritualism was that consciousness survives death and that we could contact those who have died through mediums. It became very popular after the civil war when the death toll was very high and people were trying to find ways to cope with their lost loved ones. Obviously many people were skeptical of this, as it is sort of a pseudoscience, but James spent a lot of time trying to prove that there was substantial evidence for it’s existence.
I also thought haeckle’s theory about recapitulation very interesting. It proposed that the stages of our development from cell to new born child is sort-of an evolutionary time-line, and that seeing as though the human fetus resembles a fish at one point, we probably had aquatic ancestors.
In this chapter I thought one of the most important things was James’ research and theories on consciousness. He theorized that our consciousness is just a continuous stream of thoughts and after writing a book about psychology, and particulary consciousness, he stated that consciousness is personal, constantly changing, sensibly continuous, selective, and active. And that we never quite have the EXACT same thought that we had before because everything is fleeting.
One thing I found less interesting was learning about the history of black’s and women in psychology, mostly because I’ve heard a lot of this stuff before because it was the same for most educational ventures for these groups of people in the past, and it just wasn’t very useful in me understanding psychology. The second was probably pragmatism because it was just kindof random, or else I didn’t understand it very well. pragmatism is the idealization that the truth value of an idea was a consequence of it’s functional value and usefulness.
Two things I would like to learn more about would be james-lange theory of emotion, and the paired-associate learning.
The first thing that I found interesting in this chapter was reading about the education for women and minorities following the Civil War time. Of course, even way back when women were meant to stay in and cook, clean, and nurture the children while men were hunter/gatherers, but once universities were available, it's weird to think that more men were accepted than hardly any women at all because men were suppose to be more intelligent than women, which accounts for the variability hypothesis. Many thought of women as having the concept of a "Women's sphere" which is a set of ideas based on the idea that women were suppose to take on the role of only wife and mother. It's ridiculous that one professor thought that women should stop being educated after puberty because the learning could affect their reproductive organs,or even be bad for their health. Apparently, there was even a funny belief that during the month of menstruation, women were unable to function or be intellectual known as the periodic function, and I find this really funny to think that people actually believed that back in the day. Even though the difference between men and women were stressed a lot back in the day, I do believe that men are better at some skills (Math and science) and women do know more about nurturing and have a better sense of instincts to read emotions, but of course those are beliefs of our time, and maybe someday those beliefs will seems silly and change in the future. As for minorities, it was almost the same belief as for women (besides the menstruation theory) but worse and there was a lot of prejudice towards African-Americans. Although prejudice is still somewhat a small issue even today, it's pretty awesome to see the diversity in colleges, even at UNI, and I came from a small town with a population of 1000 people and had never met an African American until I was 18 years old, my freshman year of college. That really opened up my eyes to something new.
Another interesting topic in this chapter was the section about Stanley Hall and his interest in child studies. I thought it was quite interesting that he thought children who grew up in the country were more intelligent than children from the city. I grew up on a farm, and learning from my parents, knew how important land and livestock was in the market. My one friend was from town (not really a city at all) but when we were in middle school, she didn't even know what a combine was and I laughed at her. I guess I shouldn't have because of course she didn't know any better, but it's funny to think how different environment can affect knowledge. Hall also came up with "active learning" believing that children should solve problems and do activities to grow more intelligent. It's also interesting that he wrote the first book that studied adolescents. Hall's theory of recapitulation states that there's an embryonic stage and it develops throughout evolution to different stages. Like for instance he thought we could have originated from fish ancestry because our fetus looks like a fish. Then as we grow older we evolve into a human. This theory was obviously false but it has helped other scientists and psychologists discover the real process of development.
It seems like Hall helped out a lot with psychology and development throughout history, creating the APA, to discovering more on genetic psychology.
Two things I found least interesting was on Methodology and James results from his book. Introspection on studying mental life is important, but I just didn't find it as interesting as other sections in this chapter. I guess learning enough about the brain and body in the previous chapters have interested me enough and as James mentions consciousness, habit, and emotion, I'm just somewhat uninterested.
It's interesting to see how the history of psychology has changed drastically, from having no laboratories to experiment in, to having tons of universities that now are available for these studies.
Terms: variability hypothesis, women's sphere, periodic function, recapitulation, Introspection
I thought the topic of women in psychology was interesting. Mary Whiton Calkins made substantial contributions to the field of psychology during a time when women were not seen as equals in the psychological community. She invented paired-associate learning. This examined how associations could be made stronger through different factors like frequency, recency, vividness, and primacy. For example, she might pair the color blue with the number 5, then 4 times with the number 16. When subjects were shown the color blue they were asked what number they associated with it: 5 or 16. Through all her research, Calkins believed that the frequency variable was the one that created strongest associations.
I also found spiritualism to be interesting. William James was very interested in this topic also. Spiritualism stated that people could be contacted by mediums after their death because their consciousness survived after death. Spiritualists also believed that mediums could be used to tell the future. This movement came around after the Civil War when people were interested in contacting family members who had died during the war. It also became more popular after the invention of the telegraph and the widening of communication. I found this interesting because it shows how other things in the environment (Civil War and new technology) can really affect the way people think.
I didn’t find the topic of James’ methodologies to be very interesting. He believed in introspection which is just careful self-observation that that examines and reflects on the different states of consciousness. I also didn’t find the topic of faculty psychology to be very interesting. I didn’t find it interesting because I didn’t really understand it. The book made it seem like it was a psychological movement but I wasn’t really sure.
I think the thing from this chapter that was most important in understanding the history of psychology was just how psychology changed during the 19th century. America made advances in psychology with its first psychologist William James. Women made advances although at that time people believed that they were at a disadvantage due to a couple of handicaps called periodic function, women weren’t as intelligent during their time of the month, and the variability hypothesis, which was the idea that women had a lower degree of intelligence due to evolution.
Terms: Mary Whiton Calkins, paired associate learning, spiritualism, William James, introspection, faculty psychology, periodic function, and the variability hypothesis
I found the story of Mary Whiton Calkins interesting. She was a woman very interesting in psychology and had backing by the famous William James. Despite setbacks due to sexism against women, she managed to become a very accomplished researcher and developed 2 important theories: paired-associate learning and self psychology. Her research in paired-associate learning showed how factors like frequency, recency, vividness, and primacy influenced how we remembered and associated things together. She also invented the concept of self psychology. This stated that although psychology was the study of mental life, the central fact of psychology must be that all consciousness contains an element of the self.
I also found Hall and his pioneering of genetic and developmental psychology interesting. Hall studied children at John Hopkins and found interesting results in terms of intelligence. He found that those raised in the city were much less intelligent than those raised in the country. His argument is that the natural curiosity of children is beneficial to children and helps them learn, as opposed to the memorization and rigid discipline of the classroom.
I didn't find the beginning of psychology in America to be very interesting. Before the Civil war, psychology in America was taught as mental or moral philosophy, set into 3 categories, cognitive, affective, and behavioral. Thomas Upham's Elements of Intellectual Philosophy was considered the first textbook of psychology. Psychology really wasn't called psychology until after the Civil War in America, and then it was not strong due to little educational opportunities for women and minorities.
I also didn't find the other 2 women very interesting. Christine Ladd-Franklin and Margret Washburn both had a difficult time due to poor educational opportunities, but I feel neither contributed as much to psychology as Calkins. Ladd-Franklin was a skilled Mathematician and developed an evolutionary theory for color vision and Washburn was best known for her work in comparative psychology.
I think learning about James's Principles will help me learn about the history of psychology the best. It is considered one of the greatest books in psychology. He came up with the theory of the stream of consciousness, that consciousness was constantly changing, continuous, selective, and active, and it served individuals by allowing them to adapt quickly to new environments. He argued that emotions were identified with bodily reactions.
I would like to learn more about Hall and Principles.
Terms: Calkins, James, paired-associate learning, self psychology, Hall, genetic psychology, developmental psychology, Elements of Intellectual Philosophy, Principles.
The first thing that I found interesting in chapter 6 was Willam James' ideas of consciousness. He broke the idea down and based it on its simplest and basic elements. He argued with ideas before him and said that consciousness was not a set of interconnected units. He called consciousness the stream of thought. He also noted that consciousness is personal, constantly changing, sensibly continuous, selective, and active. I found this interesting because he doesn't break it down as he says he does not believe consciousness is, but rather just puts it into separate functions that make it all work. I found his examples in the book interesting in how he described the separate elements of consciousness.
The second thing that I found interesting was Mary Whiton Calkins and how women played roles in psychology. Thus far all we have learned and been accustomed to is male psychologists. Calkins challenged the old customs and became a psychologist. She invented paired-associate learning, which was a procedure in which pairs of stimuli are presented; after a study time, stimuli are presented and the associated response must be given. I find this interesting because when I was in another class of Dynamics of Human Development we watched a video of kids what were tested like this. I find it really interesting because it almost trains our mind to automatically think of the associate even if it has nothing do with what you are asked about on the main subject or question. It shows the quickness in the mind and how fast we can associate things when we are under certain stimuli.
One thing I did not find interesting in this chapter was the section about Stanley Hall. Although he did raise the popularity of psychology in America and founded laboratories and journals, I did not find his section as interesting as the others in the book.
The other part of the chapter that I did not find interesting was that of James Mark Baldwin. Baldwin dealt with reaction time, but most of the section was blabbing on and lost my interest.
I think that the section on Calkins was the most important to the history of psychology because it introduces the first woman we have covered in the history of psychology thus far. It shows that towards the end of the 19th century, women were becoming bigger roles in science. I think it is important to know this because firsts of anything are usually distinctly important to anything.
I would like to learn more about developmental psychology and some more of the ways we are tested on how we develop through time from being young and then growing older.
terms: William James, consciousness, personal, constantly changing, sensibly continuous, selective, and active, Mary Whiton Calkins, paired-associate learning, Stanley Hall, James Mark Baldwin
I enjoyed reading about William James. He was “America’s first psychologist.” He wrote the first psychology book “The Principles of Psychology.” I thought it was really funny that the real textbook they nick named “the James” and they made him write a shorter one and they called it “the Jimmy”. I enjoyed reading about his life. He went to Harvard and studied medicine, but instead became a psychologist. He said the first psychology class he ever attended he was the teacher. That’s kind of funny. This is kind of the time period they were starting to see the difference between psychology and physiology.
This lead me to something I didn’t like that much because I didn’t understand it. He went to Harvard to study medicine, when he was done, he read this journal about free will. This got him thinking and lead him to the pragmatic approach. This is essentially the concept of free will. “the truth value of the idea was a consequence of its functional value or usefulness” What does that mean?? Maybe it is because they worded it funny but I really didn’t understand that part.
I found the story of Mary Whiton Calkins interesting. She tried to go to college at Harvard. They wouldn’t let her because she was a woman. She attended classes there but they made it clear she was only a “guest” there. She was finally admitted into a class there in 1890 with four males. The males dropped out within a few days of starting the class. William James was one of the guys in the class. She ended up doing her thesis at Harvard. She then did this procedure using paired Associate learning. She did a study where she showed colors then numbers and had people try to recall the number when shown the color. This mimicked the Ebbinghaus memory research. She was the first woman elected president of the American psychological association. Interestingly she was also the first woman elected president of the American Philosophical Association.
I did not find the first part of the chapter very interesting. The sections about the first textbook, woman and minorities and the modern university I felt were background knowledge. They were appreciable, but not all that interesting.
I felt the most important part in this chapter to be able to better understand the history of psychology is the things about William James.
Some things I would like to hear about in class would be pragmatic approach because I did not understand that concept very well. I would also like to hear more William James and “the Principals” and the theory of emotion stuff.
The first topic that I found interesting from this chapter was the concept of introspection. William James came up with this term, which means “careful self-observation, an examination and reflection on the states of consciousness that characterize one’s mental life,”(pg. 179). He believes that we must rely on introspection in order to understand our mental life. We must rely on memory for introspection because someone else could not confirm one person’s introspection, and it is not possible to experience some mental process and be introspecting it at the same exact time. In order to engage in the process, one must carefully reflect upon themselves in order to understand the mind and how it works. The reason I found this topic to be interesting is because I have heard about it before but not in this great of detail. It can differ so much from person to person because everyone has different memories and experiences. It is an interesting thought because no one is able to “see” into our minds like we can. We must rely upon ourselves for introspection.
The second topic I found to be interesting is the term spiritualism. Spiritualism is a belief in the afterlife and the ability to communicate with those who have died. The way that the dead could be reached was through mediums. These mediums were also supposedly able to predict the future as well as know details of people’s lives through telepathic methods. Technological advances made during this time like the wireless telegraph were influences on this belief. They believed that if living people could communicate through an invisible process (wireless telegraph), then because there was life after death they could communicate from the living to the dead as well. Even though this concept seems to be a little over the edge, I find these sorts of things interesting and that people actually believe in things like this so strongly. Sometimes after the crazy things you hear you never know what sorts of things are possible. I usually don’t believe in these sorts of things but just hearing about them is what interests me.
A topic that I found to be less interesting from the chapter was recapitulation. Recapitulation was Stanley Hall’s theory, which is similar to an idea in biology, that the development of the individual mirrors the evolution of that individual’s species. Hall took the theory into psychological terms and said that the psychological development of an individual reflected evolutionary history. An example the book gives is that high levels of recklessness and impulsiveness found in adolescence reflected a time in evolutionary history when humans were less civilized than they were in more modern times. This theory ended up dying off but was influential in the process of understanding development across the life span. The reason I found this to be less interesting is because it doesn’t really say too much. All it really says is that the way we act is because of something that happened in the past. How does that even make sense really? I guess that is why the theory died away.
Another topic that I thought was less interesting was James’s Lange’s Theory of emotion. In this theory, James Lange stated that strong emotions were the physiological reaction that followed the perception of some emotion-eliciting event. I understand that this theory is quite important to us because it describes how we react and how we express our emotions but I have heard so much about it already and am familiar with it, which makes it less interesting to me.
The topic that I think is the most important from the chapter for understanding history is self-psychology. This was Mary Calkins’s theoretical approach that all consciousness is ultimately self-consciousness. All consciousness consists of an element of the self. I found this concept to be very important. When we are learning about history, it is in our mind that this information stays. We select the things that we want to learn and remember.
Two topics I would like to go over in more detail in class are pragmatism and paired-associate learning. Pragmatism is judging the value of ideas by their usefulness in helping someone adapt to the environment. William James and many other philosophers believed in this. Paired-associate learning is a learning procedure in which pairs of stimuli are presented then after a study time, stimuli are presented and the associated response is given. Mary Calkins invented this. I somewhat understand these topics, but would like to learn more about them.
Terms used: Introspection, Spiritualism, recapitulation, James Lange theory of emotion, pragmatism, paired-associate learning, self-psychology, William James, Stanley Hall, Mary Calkins.
The two topics that I found most interesting were the works of James and Hall. William James was one of the most important contributors to the field of psychology but did not want to be called a psychologist. The part of his work that I found most interesting was his chapter in The Principles of Psychology about consciousness. He made it clear in his book that he opposed the analytic approach to understanding consciousness by reducing it to its basic elements. He believed that the consciousness is both active and constantly changing. He also believed that the consciousness is personal and includes his idea that thoughts don’t exist independently of the person having them. He also believed that the consciousness is selective and selects some sensory information for closer attention.
G. Stanley Hall was also very important to the development of psychology. He is best known for his efforts in professionalizing psychology and founded both the first psychology lab in America and for writing America’s first academic journal. He spent time studying the working consciousness and human behavior. Hall also pioneered the child study movement and is responsible for identifying adolescence as a distinct stage of development.
One topic that I found uninteresting was the reoccurring theme about how schooling did not come as easily for women and minorities. I understand that this is why a majority of all psychology studies were conducted by men but I don’t understand why the textbook needs to keep bringing it up. To me, it is common knowledge in today’s society that women and minorities were treated unfairly and didn’t get the same opportunity as white males.
Another topic that I found uninteresting was the works of the less known ‘pioneers’ of the field of psychology. Yes, I know that these people were important but is one page in the text really going to help us understand why they did what they did and how they came across it.
A topic that I would like you to cover more in depth would be Hall’s work with children and his philosophy on education.
Terms: William James, consciousness, G. Stanley Hall, adolescence
One thing that was interesting to me was the section about education in women and minorities. There was a concept of a ‘womens sphere’ which is an integrated set of concepts that centered on the idea of women as wife and mother. Many supported an idea called the periodic function. This is the idea that too much mental activity after puberty slows development of reproductive organs!
There were a few women who made it into college classes as unofficial guests and actually did all the work the men did, which I think was great that they were able to actually get into the classes at all. Mary Whilton Calkins developed a course in laboratory psychology at Wellsley. She did all she needed to earn a PhD but Harvard refused to give her the certificate. She did thesis work on paired-association learning by having people study a color with a number in it and see how well they remembered it. She tested a number of things like vividness, primacy, Recency and frequency. She believed in self-psychology which stated that central fact of psychology should be that all consciousness contains and element of self.
Christin Ladd-Franklin was very outspoken about men dominating psychology and not allowing women to be apart of groups. Margret Floy Washburn studied under Cattell and was E.B. Titchners 1st phd student and the first woman to earn a doctorate.
Another interesting thing for me was learning bout William James. He was america’s first psychologist although in later life he claimed to be a philosopher. James created American psychology’s most famous textbook,which ended up being two volumes long. He defined psychology as “the science of mental life, both of its phenomena and conditions.”
He wrote three things about methology. The first, Introspection is careful self observation and examination and reflection on the states of consciousness that characterize one’s mental life. He recognized that this was open to bias and memory. The second is brass instrument psychology which was his name for lab work, which was not something he was fond of. The last is the comparative method: learning about mental processes by comparing normal human processes to nonhuman and criminals and mentally ill.
One thing that was important in understanding the history of psychology was faculty psychology. It was the idea that the mind is an independent existence composed of innate powers. Thomas Reid and Thomas Brown were big believers in it. Faculties have two broad categories which are intellectual and active. Intellectual includes memory reasoning and judgement and active includes emotions and will.
One thing that was uninteresting to me was reading about the first textbook. It was written by Thomas Upham and called Elements of Mental Psychology. This was the first Intro to Psychology book. It was divided into three sections, which were intellect, sensibilities and will. It was part of the modern university, which came into play because after the civil war it became very importrant to have higher education, which spurred the creation of graduate school. This was uninteresting because it just wasn’t a super interesting part to learn about textbooks.
What I would like to go over in class is pragmatism. I didn’t quite understand what it was and how it applied to psychology.
Just realized my computer deleted a section of my blog. here it is:
James was against reducing consciousness to its basic elements because he felt like it was a mixture of personal, selective, active and was constantly changing. He disappointed many in his later years by studying and believing in a medium's ability to talk to the dead.
The other interesting thing was G Stanley Hall, he created APA and founded journals like the Journal of Genetic Psychology and American Journal of Psychology. He was also a big part of the child study movement and developmental psychology. He is also credited with introducing psychoanalysis and Freud to America.
One part in chapter six that I was interested in was William James’ theories. One of James’ theories was the theory of emotion. Basically he said that when there is a stimulus it evokes a certain response and therefor we have a subjective bodily reaction. This sounds a lot like parasympathetic nervous system. This system controls the body and controls the bodies’ involuntary responses to a stimulus. This relates to James’ theory in that The nerves respond before the brain processes the correct action. For example I think of someone jumping out from around the corner trying to scare me and I fall to the floor. My brain hopefully doesn’t tell me to do this, it is just my bodies’ fearful response. Also he is saying that if he can locate the response actions to emotions and recreate them in a controlled situation, he then can create that emotion. So I put it as if he can tell what nerves to be “happy” we will then be and feel “happy”.
The second thing I found interesting, was the topic of consciousness. The topic that was so interesting was his sketches. One of his thoughts in his sketches, all consciousness involves self-consciousness so the thought cannot exist without prior understanding/experience. The second is that no two streams of consciousness are the same. For example, If you say something once you are experiencing it in a way where the environment and other factors act upon your meaning, so each time would be different and then your prior understanding could be altered. The third is that consciousness is a constant stream of thoughts. Only sleep can break a thought. But breaking thought still means you are having streams just a different kind.
Two things I was not so fascinated in was, the Learning about the women and minorities. Because they did not have the opportunity to have the same research makes their advantages a lot less. Which means the quality of their work was not the best. This was important in that it was one of the first movements towards equal rights in women studying and going to universities. Overtime, the playing field of psychology became more equal but for now was only for middle class white men. The second one Was the idea of Faculties. Being the basis of stating the brain is more independent then given credit for by the empiricists was just a brief discussion. I wished it had gone more into the two sections of the Faculties.
To summarize my interests in chapter six here is disscussing james and Hall a little further.William james started out at Harvard University. In fact his teacher Louis Agassiz was anti-darwininian but eventually James became a firm believer in Darwinian. James published The principles of psychology which instantly became a best seller. His fellow students knew this manual as the “james” or the “jimmy”. James’ main studies were done on the mental life. Known as Introspection he meant self-observation and examination on the states of consciousness that was the basis of ones mental life. James did not like the studies done in a laboratory, he called this work the brass instrument psychology. The most research done was with the study of consciousness. James stated that the only way to study this was to break it down into the basic elements. The three attributes of consciousness include: it as personal, constantly changing, sensibly continuous, selective, and active. After his work he hired munsterberger to do his lab work back at Harvard.
Hall was first credited for professionalizing psychology in the uited states by fouding laboratories and journals. He began to study and demonstrate the importance of psychology to education. Hall attended Williams college. Beginning as a teacher he continued most of his research dealing with adolescents. Hall’s adolescnese concerned sexual behavior, including an entire 50-page chapter entitled “adolescent love.”
I thought the "women's sphere" was extremely interesting. To think that people (a Harved professor to be exact) thought that too much mental activity after puberty could actually harm their (womens) reproductive organs is amazing. The Womens Sphere is the ideas and concepts that women were supposed to be wives and mothers. Duringthe 19th century women were also thought to be inferior to men's intelligence. It's ridiculous that "periodic function" was the belief that women actually became dumber during their menstrual cycles. When women were finally admitted to some colleges, they were only allowed to take courses that "suited" them such as home ec, and courses that taught them how to be teachers. However there was hope- all womens colleges started popping up during the early 1900s.
Anther thing about this chapter that I thought was interesting was that William James was the first psychologist in America. He created the most famous text book, THe Principles of Psychology. James also did research on consciousness (making it a central chapter in his book), stsating that structuralism was to blame for consciousness, not the basic elements everyone else thought it to be.
I didn't find the Stanley Hall portion to be very interesting... although he did he did a lot of research in mazes and founded the APA. He was also one of ther first people to become interested in child study in psychology.
In class I hope we cover just all of the "american pioneers" a little bit. Just kind of go over all of them and break them down a lil so I can keep them straight.
terms: women's sphere, James, APA, periodic function, Principles of Psychology
William James created America's most famous psych textbook; The Principles of Psychology, he eventually made a smaller version- Psychology: The Briefer Course. James was considered an ecclectic (Deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources). He believed that careful self-reflection was essential to gain insight into the workings of the human mind. James' book included information on introspective (self obersvation, and examination and relfection on the states of consciousness that characterizes ones mental life), experimental methods, and comparative methods (learning about mental life by comparing normal human consciousness with that of...everything else). James never really wanted to be known as a psychologist and eventually started to research philosophy. He was elected APA president twice though.
Stanley Hall created the APA. Most of his work is considered "genetic psychology" which means the study of evolution and development of the human mind, including comparative, abnormal and developmental psych.
Hall went to germany to study with Wundt but was disappointed, telling James (who he had taken classes and worked with) that Wundt's experiements seemed defective. Hall also studied with Helmholtz.
When he taught at John Hopkins, he created the first true research lab of experiemental psych in America. He also founded the American Journal of Psych while he taught there.
At Clark, he made the main focus of the school graduate studies. THe lab at Clark was highly advanced and this is where Hall began to do his research on comparative psych ( rat in maze)
For developmental psych, Hall wrote the first text on adol psych. His philsohopy on education was that he favored a permissive approach (which according to our book "took for granted the child's "natural" curiousity about the world and encouraged what would be called "active learning"- giving children problems to solve or activites to complete"
Mary Whiton Calkins invented "paired associate learning". which is basically similair to Ebbinghaus' memory research. Instead of pairing nonsense words, she used colors. Although intelligent, and obviously capable of producing research and findings, Harvard would not grant her her PhD because she was a woman. Radcliffe eventually offered a phd, but she refused stating that she would earna degree from the school where she earned it or none at all.
The most interesting part of the chapter for me was a section on William James; more specifically the section on consciousness. The reason I find this interesting and important to the history of psychology is because consciousness is something that throws a monkey wrench (so to speak) in the gears. It is a phenomena that is difficult to measure, it is something that just kind of existed. Psychologists before James tended to write it off as an uncontrollable entity separate but connected to thought.
William James took this a step further. He made attempts to try and define what exactly consciousness is and what it provides for us.
It's personal*
It's constantly changing*
It's sensibly continuous*
It's selective*
It's active*
(Goodwin 2008 180-181). James also describe consciousness as the mechanism that allowed human beings to adapt to new environments quickly. While this seems to be common sense to us now, this was a huge step in psychology in the late 1800s to early 1950s.
Another thing that I found incredibly interesting about this chapter was the concept of spirituality. I actually prefer knowing that a man of science (William James) was interested in the concept. He conducted an extensive study on a medium. James' interest in more "paranormal psychological events" was not met well by his peers. Psychology was trying to become a science; it wasn't acceptable for one of the most well established psychologists to be studying these paranormal events. To me it seems like James faced a fair degree of career censorship in certain areas of his work.
I am significantly less interested in work done by G. Stanley Hall for the reason that I am not a huge fan of industrial/organizational psychology. I understand that it is important to understand the workforce and how people behave in such settings, it just is not my particular field of interest.
One of the early psychologists I would like to know more about, however is Mary Calkins and her theories. More specifically the concept of self-psychology. I think that she is more interesting to me in part because of the adversity she had to overcome when she was barred from being a student at Harvard.
Terms: William James, G. Stanley Hall, Mary Calkins, consciousness, mechanism, adaptation, spirituality, industrial/organizational psychology, self-psychology
One thing that I found interesting in Chapter 6 was the idea of the women’s sphere. This concept suggested that women were to only be a wife and a mother. Women during this time were raised to believe that their main duty in life was to raise a family. They were told not to continue their education after puberty because the amount of mental activity required would disturb their reproductive organs, ultimately robbing them of their “original duty”. I found this interesting because I had always known that women did not always have equal rights and the same opportunities as men, but I had never heard of them being discouraged to further their education because it would harm their reproductive organs. Learning about theories from the past and how absurd they sound today really shows how far things have evolved. Another thing I found interesting in this chapter was the section about Francis Sumner. During the 1900’s Psychology was not a common area of study for many colleges. Those that did offer Psychology classes, even fewer offered a degree in Psychology. I enjoyed reading about him because as an African American he was already a minority and still chose to pursue a career path that was less common. Sumner not only majored in Psychology but he also got his masters degree and returned to college to study race psychology.
One topic I did not find very interesting was about the rat mazes. I learned a lot about this topic in Biopsychology so it wasn’t new material to me. I still find it interesting that different types of mazes display different types of memory. Another thing that wasn’t very interesting to me was the section about American Psychology’s First Textbook. This is probably a good thing to be aware of I just didn’t find the material very fascinating or thoughtful to the development of Psychology.
In class I would like to go over William James preliminary sketch of consciousness. He believed consciousness was personal, constantly changing, sensibly continuous, selective, and active. I would also like the topic of habits to be covered. Habits affect many people in ways they possibly never realize. James believed habits had an adaptive functioning because they occurred more or less automatically; they enabled the consciousness to focus attention on other important problems.
The section on the new Psychology at the Millennium was a good indicator of the progress Psychology is making in the world. I believe this is an important topic because it’s still happening today. Psychology is a subject that is developing and many people are still doing research and learning more about the topic. This is important to me because it’s what I’m choosing to study and have a career in one day and I believe it affects people in more ways than they, and myself, are even aware of.
I liked the divisions of faculties in the mind that Thomas Upham first formed in the first Psychology textbook Elements of Mental Philosophy. Division one dealt with Intellect which includes sensation and perception and consciousness; concepts and abstract reasoning; association and memory and disordered intelligence (insanity and later abnormal psychology). Division 2 dealt with instincts appetites and propensities, and moral sensibilities or conscience. Division 3 includes the will which I find the most interesting which deals with will power and free will with man's moral nature.
Along with these I am interested in Renouvier's view on free will where the act of believing in free will shows that there is free will and how this allowed to William James to carry on with his research after a bout with depression. With William James I thought something interesting was William James' identification with philosophy as opposed to Psychology even though he is considered the father of American Psychology.
I didn't find introspection too interesting in the fact that we can't study other people's self-observation due to it only occurring in each individual self. Also, James' interest in spiritualism and mediums didn't really intrigue me as we know it has nothing to do with what we know now in modern Psychology.
I would like some more insight into other earlier psychologists views on the will. Also, I would like to discuss Habits.
One thing I found interesting was the growth of the universities and how they expanded to eventually include degrees in psychology. In other history classes I had learned about the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862. This gave state an amount of land to build a university on, and the focuses of these new universities on applying the sciences. The universities were mechanical and agricultural institutions. I had never thought before about how much of a difference this would have made in education, because before this most colleges were run by the clergy, and mainly for people who wanted to become ministers. Now education did not have to be so tied to the church and researchers would have more freedom to study and publish what they wanted without being afraid of how the church would respond. People were also starting to getting even higher education around this time as graduate schools were being created. Also people who had started to accumulate wealth through their businesses were giving back and starting up new colleges and universities. All of this helped to create an opportunity for more people to get a better education in America. Women at this time were still thought to be inferior to men and it was believed that their sphere was in the home, and that learning for them would harm them physically. There was the idea of the periodic function, which stated that during a woman’s menstrual cycle she became intellectually incapacitated. There was also a belief in the variability hypothesis, which was created by Darwin. This stated that the more variability a species has the smarter it is. Men were thought to have more variability, so even though the dumbest man was dumber than the dumbest woman, the smartest man was smarter than the smartest woman. There were a few colleges starting up though strictly for women.
I also found the story of Francis Sumner to be very interesting. During the 18th and 19th centuries, blacks were thought to be intellectually inferior to whites and it was thought that they were not smart enough to go to school. After the Civil War, some African-American Universities were made under the separate but equal law. Often these were not equal at all to white universities. Professors were not paid well and were not given resources to do research. At this time there were no black universities offering psychology degrees. Sumner was home-schooled as a child and went to Clarke College and eventually received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and went to teach it. Later on he also went back for a masters and doctorate in psychology. He went on to teach at Howard University in Washington D.C. Many African-American students went there to learn underneath him.
One thing I did not find very interesting was the paired associate learning. It was invented by Mary Whiton Calkins, who was the first woman to get a degree in psychology. She taught at Wellesley College for women and decided to start up a psychology program there as it was becoming very popular. She was able to study some at Harvard and Clarke. Her thesis at Clarke was over the paired associate learning. This is where I get confused with it. I know it had to do with the pairing up of numbers and colors and seeing if people could recall them but I am not entirely sure how it worked. Through this thesis she worked with frequency, recency, vividness, and primacy.
I also was not very interested in her idea of self psychology. This theory was that all consciousness contained an element of the self. I guess I do not understand the significance of this theory. She thought that this resolved the argument that was going around in the new psychology because it combine both sides of the structuralism/functionalism debate. Both of these topics I do not understand well and would like you to go over them in class tomorrow.
Terms: Periodic function, variability hypothesis, paired-associate learning, self psychology
The two topics I found interesting in this chapter was William James and Mary Whiton Calkins. William James was said to be the first modern psychologist for America. He denied this and demanded many times to be considered only as a philosopher instead. He made contributions to psychology whether he was willing to accept the title of psychologist or not. Some of these include his theories on consciousness, emotions, and spiritualism.He theorized that the consciousness was personal, constantly changing, continuous, selective, and active. His theory on emotions was called the James-Lange theory of emotions. This helped to identify emotional responses and the bodies reactions to them. He also believed that when people are trying to create emotions without physical arousal nothing will remain. There is however some problems with this theory, such as that it requires a recognizably different pattern of arousal to be seen with each different emotion. He last thing that he was interested in was spiritualism. Which dealt with mediums and was often heavily criticized. I think this man was so interesting because of the fact he didn't want to be recognized as a psychologist but was in fact considered very influentual to its practice and development. The other individual that peaked my interest was Mary Whiton Calkins. She was famous for his theory on association and paired associate learning. She investigated multiple items such as frequency, recency, vividness, and primacy as conditions that would strengthen association. Another theory that her self-psychology theory. Which is centered on the belief that consciousness is personal. I was also interested in the other two women in this chapter, Christine Ladd-Franklin who developed a theory of color vision and Margaret Washburn who was known for her comparative psychology. I was interested in these individuals most because they are women and there seems to be so few in the early psychology field.
In this chapter I was really interested in the section on women pioneers in psychology. One of the first women to challenge the male monopoly was Mary Whiton Calkins. She created a series of experimental studies on association. She wanted to go beyond ordinary observation and examine factors experimentally. To do this she invented paired associate learning. Paired associate learning is where pairs of stimuli are presented after a study time stimuli are presented and the associated response must be given. She then became involved in self psychology. Self psychology is the theoretical approach to psychology that held all consciousness it ultimately self-consciousness. Other important women to psychology are Christine Ladd-Franklin and Margaret Flor Washburn. Christine Ladd-Franklin was interested in visual perception and new psychology. She was the most outspoken of the pioneer women about the lack of professional opportunities for women and directly challenged the men only rule. Margaret Flow Washburn was Titchener's first Ph.D student and was the first woman with a doctorate in psychology. She published in areas of perception, imagery, social consciousness, and developed a motor theory of consciousness. She did important work in comparative psychology.
In this chapter I was really interested in the section on women pioneers in psychology. One of the first women to challenge the male monopoly was Mary Whiton Calkins. She created a series of experimental studies on association. She wanted to go beyond ordinary observation and examine factors experimentally. To do this she invented paired associate learning. Paired associate learning is where pairs of stimuli are presented after a study time stimuli are presented and the associated response must be given. She then became involved in self psychology. Self psychology is the theoretical approach to psychology that held all consciousness it ultimately self-consciousness. Other important women to psychology are Christine Ladd-Franklin and Margaret Flor Washburn. Christine Ladd-Franklin was interested in visual perception and new psychology. She was the most outspoken of the pioneer women about the lack of professional opportunities for women and directly challenged the men only rule. Margaret Flow Washburn was Titchener's first Ph.D student and was the first woman with a doctorate in psychology. She published in areas of perception, imagery, social consciousness, and developed a motor theory of consciousness. She did important work in comparative psychology.
One thing that I found interesting in Chapter 6 was William James’ fascination of spiritualism. Spiritualism is the belief that the consciousness survives after death, and those who had passed away could still be contacted by mediums. It became very popular in the late 19th century; it really gained momentum after the Civil War because of the high death toll. It was easier to cope if you thought you could be connected with loved ones who had died. The technological advances also played a large role in helping increase the interest with spiritualism, “If living people could communicate over great distances via some mysterious invisible process, and if there was life after death, then why not a communication channel from the dead to the living?” Another thing that I found interesting was Protestant minister and professor, Thomas Upham and his authoring of the first American psychology textbook, Elements of Intellectual Philosophy, which is just a collection of all of his lecture notes. This was published in 1827. He had three main divisions in the textbook: the intellect/cognition, the sensibilities/emotion, and the will/action, which made up the ‘trilogy of mind.’ Each division had smaller subsections; intellect included sensation, perception, consciousness, imagination, concepts, memory, etc. Sensibilities included instincts, appetites, propensities, anger, jealousy, love, pity, etc. And will included law of the will, freedom of the will implied in man’s moral nature, and on the power of the will. This textbook continued to be used throughout campuses until the 1870s, when many dramatic changes started to take place in the psychology world. Some uninteresting things include James’ methodology section in his textbook and the section about learning about women and minorities. Because of the lack of good education for all minorities at that time I feel like their research, unfortunately, wasn’t quite as good as it could have been. Some things that I find will be helpful from this chapter are William James and his wife, Alice Howe Gibbens, and their creation of American psychology’s most famous textbook, The Principles of Psychology. The opening sentence of the textbook defines psychology as “the Science of Mental Life, both of its phenomena and their conditions.” I also think that Thomas Upham and his creation of the first American psychology textbook is important as well. I’d like to learn more about the James-Lange Theory of emotion and faculty psychology. I don’t feel like I grasped quite what faculty psychology is, I think I need to hear an explanation of it to truly understand it.
Terms: spiritualism, intellect, sensibilities, the will, trilogy of mind, methodology, faculty psychology
One thing I liked most in this chapter was "American Psychology's First Textbook" because it's always great to learn more about how the field you chose to love and study originated. Thomas Upham (1799-1872), who attended Bowdoin College in Maine is the one who is credited for this book. The book was published from a pile of Thomas's organized lecture notes. It was originally given the title "Elements of Intellectual Philosophy" and was changed to "Elements of Mental Philosophy" after three volumes. I really like how it was broken up into three main topics: cognition, emotions, and action. When you sit and think about Psychology, it is far more in depth today, but those three topics are what psychology pretty much is all about.
Along with being interested in learning about the first Psychology book written, it would only make sense for me to be curious and interested in learning more about who America's first Psychologist was. William James (1842-1910) was his name. He is the creator of American Psychology's most famous Textbook "The Principles of Psychology", where he defined Psychology as the Science of Mental Life. In this book he is very direct in what he believes. One of his key beliefs was that Introspective Observation (Careful self-observation) is what we, psychologists, must rely on first before anything else at all times. He referred to himself more of a Philosopher rather than a Psychologist. He didn't do what the stereotypical psychologists we read about did (establish a school, conduct a memorable experiment, things like that). In a speech he was well remembered for he stated that Psychology (at that time) had a long ways to go before it could be considered a "science" and he really did not like being referred to as a psychologist. He became well known to the point where numerous second generation psychologists listed William James as the main reason for them even becoming interested in the field of psychology. Was also nominated for numerous psychology awards for his leadership and guidance in other future psychologists that followed his foot steps.
A section that I found to be one of the least interesting was "Education for Women and Minorities" simply because it is a topic we were taught and fed a lot throughout high school. Actually this was the only section in general that I found to not be interesting in this chapter. A more appropriate word to use would be "irrelevant" rather than not interesting, because anything that I didn't know before about the beginning of psychology is actually interesting to me in it's own way. Don't get me wrong it is a very important topic to learn about and I don't really consider it to not be interesting, but I've learned about it for so many years it's just something I wouldn't expect to see or care to learn about in Psychology class. I already know about how women were considered to be inferior to men educationally (Periodic Function) back in the day and how they fought for their rights just as hard as minorities fought for theirs, even the white women. This consistent fighting lead to the creation of "women only" colleges which of course later on grew into coed collegiate education.
I think the entire section on William James is the most useful out of the chapter in helping us understand the history of psychology the most. I feel this because it is the most in depth section in the chapter, but not just that reason alone. What better topic to help with understanding the history of psychology than beginning with the man who was noted as America's FIRST psychologist? The best thing would be to start with learning about him and what he presented and reading gradually about how psychology slowly grew from his basic beliefs into it's deeper form now.
Two topics I would like to learn more information about is "Methodology" and getting more in depth to why William James didn't consider psychology a "science" early on which caused him to be so defensive about being called a "psychologist".
I thought it was interesting reading about how at first in the united states, the number of students who were eligible to attend college became greater then teachers who were qualified to teach that high and so many students ended up going over to Germany for school. Also that higher education wasn’t available to anyone except upper and middle class males. It was hard for women and minority groups to get educated. It was believed that women who pursued a higher education after reaching puberty was too much mental activity and the women could retard the development of their reproductive organs. This is probably the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. It was said that women were handicapped every month during menstruation which was referred to as the periodic function. There was also the idea of variability hypothesis which meant that men had a greater degree of variability than women on a number of things including intelligences. Eventually they were allowed to go to school but only for things that suited them like home economics. Soon they began being trained for the increasing need for teachers. As hard as it was for women it was even harder for African Americans. They thought if they were allowed to go to school the ideas of “freedom” would get inside their heads so they were barred from schools.
Another thing that was of great interest to me in this chapter was William James and his ideas of Consciousness, Habit, Emotion, and Spiritualism. With consciousness he made it clear that he opposed the analytic approach that presumed to understand consciousness by reducing it to its basic elements. He believed that trying to identify individual elements of consciousness, and then seeing how they could be constructed to form “mind,” was a meaningless exercise. He saw it as personal-all consciousness includes an element of self-consciousness, thoughts don’t exist independently of the person having them. He saw it as constantly changing-as implied by the stream metaphor, no two states of consciousness are ever quite the same, once a state has disappeared there won’t be another one identical to it. He saw it as sensibly continuous-our perception of consciousness is that it is one continuous stream of thoughts. The stream may be temporarily interrupted by sleep, but once you awake, you reenter the same stream. He saw it as selective-out of the mass of sensory information available to it, it selects some for closer attention. He also saw it as active- rather then a passive collection of elements, it is goal-directed and has a purpose. Calkin later argues that the central fact of psychology must be that all consciousness contains an element of the self-self psychology. Habits also had an adaptive function and they occurred automatically, it let the consciousness focus on other important problems. He offered some advice on forming good habits. 1st-motivational-if you don’t have the want to change it, then it won’t change. 2nd was to not allow any lapses, at least not until the new habit is rooted into your life. Lastly, good intentions are not enough, he urged readers to make opportunities to act on the new habit. His theory on emotion he admits borrowing from Carl Lange and today is called the James-Lange theory of emotion. He didn’t believe in the sequence of perception of some emotion-arousing event(bear)-subjective experience of the emotion(fear)-bodily reaction(heart pounding). James believed it to be that our hearts pound before we feel fear. He was also fascinated with spiritualism. Spiritualism believed that consciousness survived death and that those who died could be contacted by mediums. Mediums were also said to be able to predict the future and know details of people’s lives through telepathic means.
I did not find Stanley Hall’s Theory of Recapitulation which proposed that an organism;s stages of development, from cell to a fully formed individual, can be seen as a recapitulation of the evolution of the species. Such as the fact that one point in development the human fetus resembles a fish, saying that human species has aquatic ancestors. I think it’s a stupid thought because fish live under water and humans live on land.
I also didn’t agree with Margaret Washburn and her thoughts about social consciousness which is empathy and helping behavior.
Terms: periodic function, variability hypothesis, consciousness, "personal, constantly changing, sensibly continuous, selective, active", habit, forming good habits, emotion, James-Lange theory of emotion, spiritualism, recapitulation, self psychology
The book states having two eyes is important because it allows us to see more of the world, more depth and dimension in our vision. It seems obvious to me to state two eyes are better than one. As the book points out, most animals have been naturally selected to have two eyes and I know personally I cannot see very well when I only have one contract. It is because there is overlap; the eyes work together to perceptive our world.
There are differences between the two retinal images of the same world, or a binocular disparity. Objects that we see to the sides of our eye might not be picked up by the other. The book states that the combining of these the differences of these two images is a main way we are able see depth and dimensions of our 3D world. This is called stereopsis.
Other depth cues that rely on information from one( monocular) or both of our eyes(binocular) that help us order our world. Occlusion is a cue to relative depth when one object blocks the view of another object. You can clearly see that one object is in front of another object. It is a nonmetrical depth cue, so much as it only gives information about the relative ordering of the world, nothing about the exact information about the distance.
Size also gives us information about the geometry of the world. Knowing the familiar size or an idea about objects in our world normal size, gives us information about their position of the world,. We know that smaller is farther away this is a cue of texture gradient. Furthermore, according to relative height things that are farther away tend to sit higher in our field of vision. Thus things that are closer to us, like book next to me at the bottom is bigger, while the books at the end of the table smaller and perceptive to be farer away at the top of my visional field. Familiar size can also tell us about the relationship of things. We know our finger is not the size of a building but from a distance we know that we can block it from our vision.
Lastly, we take cues about depth from motion. Motion parallax is a depth cue that cannot be captured in a picture. The term motion parallax, according to the book, refers the information obtained from when you shift your eyes between two different images, things closer to you shift more. This makes sense because you are more likely to see motion in objects that are closer to you than objects that are far away.
Difference in two retina images or binocular disparity can be measured. If the object hits the same points or spots on each retina, or the same distances from the eye’s fovea than they are on corresponding retinal points. This image will be understood as one object. For example, if a pillar hits the fovea of each eye then it will be perceived as the same object. The more space between the corresponding points of objects will make the differences more apparent. This I found to be the most confusing. The stereoscope was used as the first way that scientist could see how the visual system treats binocular disparity as a depth cue as the images would pop out.
The physiological of depth cues and stereopsis I think is also interesting. The cells do not converge until the striate cortex, where neurons are binocular. Such cells have two similar receptive fields in both eyes focus on matching the two retina images. Some binocular neurons respond best to retinal images are on corresponding points, while others respond best when the disparity between the points is slight.
William James was the individual who interested me the most in this chapter. He accomplished so much in his lifetime and was actually kind of against psychology and yet he is considered to be one of the founders of psychology in America. He is most famous for his book Principles of Psychology, which was the first textbook for psychology. James did far more than simply write a textbook, he was an expert and founder in several fields. He stressed the importance of introspection (the careful self-observation, reflects the states of consciousness that characterize a person’s mental life). This type of study was not empirically based, as much of the scientific community preferred. However, it is clear that throughout his life James had a certain disdain for a totally analytic approach to psychology. He stated that our mind, and consciousness specifically, cannot be broken down into basic elements. He thought that it was absolutely ridiculous to take the human element out of it. He sarcastically referred to such strict laboratory approaches as a brass instrument psychology. I am totally behind William James in this train of thought. Yes, it is true that empirical data can help us understand a lot, however, we as people cannot be broken down into simple formulas and binary. The other notable man from this chapter was Dr. G. Stanley Hall who is most notable for being the first psychologist to spend a great deal of time studying children and adolescence. He founded the study of developmental psychology and he studied people at all stages of life, often coinciding with his own stage in life. In fact Hall is most responsible for identifying adolescence as a distinct stage of the life process. He also believed in the theory of recapitulation which states that an organisms stages of development from cell to fully formed individual can be seen as a recapitulation of the evolution of the species. Hall went one step further with this and said that it went beyond our embryonic state and into early childhood in play patterns. This theory was short lived and died out at the beginning of the 20th century. Hall was kind of a scatter-brained individual. He was all over the board with his research, even leading to some individuals saying that he contributed nothing of significance to the field of psychology. Despite these thoughts by many Hall successfully captured the attention of many by scratching the surface of so many different fields leading to later research.
Mary Whiton Calkins was the least interesting individual for me in this chapter. Honestly, I believe that she was thrown in there to say, “hey, women can do things too”. I have a tremendous amount of respect for her to work so hard against the sexist tides of her day concerning education. She persevered through much and ended up making herself a successful individual in the psychological world. However, when it comes to her major contributions, well frankly, she has none. She basically duplicated a lot of research that had already been explored by her male counterparts. She used paired-associate learning (remembering colors paired with numbers) to study memory, which had already been largely studied by Ebbinghaus. She also introduced the idea of self psychology; which had also been largely explored and introduced by William James. This theory stated that all consciousness contains some aspect of the self. The other women in the chapter made more substantial contributions. Christine Ladd-Franklin developed a theory of color vision that was based off of evolutionary theory. Margarett Floy Washburn was the first woman to earn her doctorate in psychology in 1894. These women seem to contribute more than merely duplicating others’ work.
This chapter was especially useful to studying psychology’s history because it brought it back home to the United States. Psychology, like any other field, differs in its approaches depending where it is located in the world. Many factors play into how these fields develop, such as wars, scientific breakthroughs, religious beliefs, and many others. This chapter spoke of the founders of Psychology in America and their important roles that would echo for a long time in the field of psychology. It really helped me understand why psychology in America is the way it is.
I was quite confused on what William James believed to be true when it came to emotions and physical responses. On pages 154-156 of the 2nd edition of the book it discusses his thoughts on this. He was either saying that feelings come first and result in physical reactions, or else that physical reactions happened before the feelings and we end up with a certain feeling because of what our physical response was. I was very confused, and these two views are clearly opposites. If this could be cleared up I would greatly appreciate it.
Two of the things that i found to be the most interesting in this chapter were the concept of spiritualism, and James' work on emotions. I found the idea of spiritualism to be interesting because even today we still have people who claim that they can talk to the dead, but today they are widly reguarded as fakes, during that time period though it almost seems as though they have a little bit more credibility than they do today. Spiritualists, who were people who believed that the dead lived on in spirit form, and that certain people are able to actually communicate with those spirits. I also found James' work on emotions to be very interesting. The James-Lange theory of emotion, in which Lange basically said that first you see the stimulus, your body thinks about the feeling, and then your body reacts appropriately. James said that instead of there being an order to the last two events, that they would just be at the same time.
Two things that I didn't like in this chapter were the psychologists that did work on Minorities and even though they found no major differences between minorities and white people in their studies they allowed their own personal prejudices to push them in the wrong direction and ignore the data. and i also didn't enjoy the part of this chapter where it talks about the early female psychologists not being able to get degrees from the schools they studied at because they were girls, and even though top professors, and their research all said they should be able too, they were denied. I believe that if the universities had been less prejudiced at the time a lot more could have been accomplished in the field of psychology.
I would like to learn more about freud and his theories (which i assume will arise in later chapters), as well as Calkins' Self psychology and how that worked.
terms: Self psychology, John Calkins, Spiritualism, James-Lange theory of emotion, William James
This chapter it was difficult for me to choose just two things that I found interesting, but one thing that I found that was really interesting in chapter 6 was James' theory of introspection - careful self observation, an examination and reflection on the states on consciousness that characterize one's mental life. Each persons introspection is different, no two are the same and no other person could verify another persons introspective. James thought it was important for one to take a close look at their life and was "essential to gain insight into the working of a the human mind." Another thing that I found interesting was the James-Lange theory of emotion. The original theory was that when we see something like a bear we then we become scared. James' theory was we feel fear before a stimulus kicks in. "The bodily changes that are the emotions are felt immediately upon the perception of an emotion-arousing stimulus prior to the awareness of a cognitively recognizable emotion: Our heart pounds before we feel fear." Our bodies know what is coming next in a sense. The two things that I didn't find interesting was spiritualism. In today's society I feel like we hear about spirits all the time, there are TV shows and talk shows that talk about spirits so I wasn't too excited to read about it. There really wasn't anything else that I didn't find interesting. I enjoyed this chapter actually.
I think knowing how our bodies react to certain situations helps me understand the history of psychology better because the researchers had to start somewhere. The part about emotion makes sense on why we react the way that we do.
Something I wish the book would have gone over more or covered in class was about habit. I thought it was interesting, but there wasn't enough information for me to be satisfied by reading it. Another thing that could have been covered in class were more accomplishments made by women in psychology.
Terms: James, introspection, emotion, spiritualism, James-Lange theory of emotion
The first thing I found interesting was the reading of the modern university. It gave me the idea that after the Civil War people wanted to get their heads out of the gutter and actually make something out of their lives. Kids in school knew that the only way to have a successful career was indeed to have a higher education. Not saying that today people don’t, but it seems like many working adults have found a way around that. A lot of people in today’s society can’t afford to go to college so they are forced to work in some of the most intensive labor unions. They may be making good money, but are these people actually happy at what they are doing. I just found it somewhat interesting how over a hundred years ago kids really took their education serious, whereas today we have a hard time keeping kids in school. In high school I cared about my future, but I really slacked it when it came to my grades. I never realized that those four years in high school were probably the most important because I could have had the chance to get scholarships or a chance to get into a better school. Statically when looking at the numbers from 1890 to 1910 about 425,000 students thought it was time for a career change and went to look college. When going back to 1870 only 67,000 students looked at a higher education.
I really start to get interested in William James’ studies especially his idea on emotion. I guess what interested me most by it is the James-Lange theory of emotion. The James-Lange theory of emotion told me that it showed strong emotions and were in essence the physiological reaction that followed the perception of some emotion. James argued the contemporary thinking about emotion in the sequence: perception of some emotion arousing event (a bear), subjective experience of the emotion (fear), bodily reaction (trembling, heart pounding). It was interesting reading how he argued that the bodily changes that are the emotions are felt immediately upon the perception of an emotion-arousing stimulus prior to the awareness of cognitively recognizable emotion. Also he was able to find out that we recognize different emotions because each one is associated with a unique pattern of bodily action. Finally to sum it all I liked it how he formed the idea that forcing emotions to occur by deliberately producing specific bodily reactions.
I wasn’t as interested in Ladd nor was I interested in Baldwin cases of study. It just seemed like they were really known for the books that they wrote, which I’m sure are great books, but not that interesting to read as James. I guess it seemed like the book lacked what Ladd and Baldwin were really known for and I would like to know more of them in the upcoming class.
Terms: James-Lange theory,
More on William James…
William James, although ranked as the #1 Psychologist more than once by other psychologists, didn't consider himself a psychologist but as a philosopher. Being a science major, he believed that Psychology had a long way to go (during his time) before it could be considered as a science. He was elected president of the American Psychological Association twice in 1894 and 1904. In 1991 (long after he passed away) he was ranked #2 on the all time Psychologist list behind Wundt. A lot of his knowledge he would probably credit to the fact that he was home schooled early in life and didn't attend school formally until the age of ten. Putting him ahead of most of the kids in his class, he was able to fluently speak numerous languages. Before all of the science and philosophy came into the picture he had a passion in art, which he carried on throughout his entire life on the side as a hobby. His intelligence worked well for him helping him get enrolled in the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, but found out later on that he actually hated chemistry. He started off as an "anti-Darwinian" (didn't believe all species were created separately by God), but eventually became a firm Darwinian after learning more about history and what evolution represented.
In 1864, James enrolled in Harvard's Medical School for the next 5 years. The only issue that came about later on was as James was competing his medical degree he had absolutely no desire nor passion for practicing medicine. Science and everything it stood for a taught overwhelmed James to the point where he felt it was pointless for his existence. James's discovery of the philosopher Charles Renouvier was the moment his life changed for the better after suffering periodic spells of depression not knowing what he was going to amount to in life.
The ironic thing about William James and psychology is that his very first psychology class he ever attended was the class he taught. His wife alice Howe Gibbens (a teacher) helped James write his book The Principles of Psychology, which became a classic in psychology and remains a classic to this day. In this book he defined Psychology as "the science of Mental Life, both of its phenomena and their conditions". He was a firm believe that introspective observation (careful self-observation) was what we had to rely on at all times before anything else. He had a high passion for understanding the function of consciousness, and the conclusion he came to was that "consciousness served individuals by enabling them to adapt quickly to new environments, to learn new things, and to solve new problems that present themselves".
G. Stanley Hall
Hall was known for promoting the new fields of psychology and focusing more on it in the academic sense. He Professionalized psychology in the US by founding laboratories and journals, and from their created the American Psychological Association (APA) where William James was voted as president of it. Hall was highly interested in Evolution. This is what drove him to do the majority of his work in genetic psychology (study of Evolution and development of the Human mind). Hall is considered to have the first doctorate's degree in psychology amongst all psychologists. Eventhough he was highly educated with a doctorate's degree, at the age of 36 he was poor and unemployed, but with a high passion for what he did he got his first real job as a psychology professor. He became a university president and a leader of psychology in America six years after becoming a professor. His high interest in evolution drove him to put more effort into comparative psychology where he created the infamous "rat maze" study. During his final active years in the psychology field Hall introduced Psychoanalysis to America.
Mary Whiton Calkins invented "paired associate learning". which is basically similair to Ebbinghaus' memory research. Instead of pairing nonsense words, she used colors. Although intelligent, and obviously capable of producing research and findings, Harvard would not grant her her PhD because she was a woman. Radcliffe eventually offered a phd, but she refused stating that she would earna degree from the school where she earned it or none at all.
I thought James’ work with consciousness was one of the more interesting sections of this chapter. Mostly I found it interesting because it is one of those things that was so groundbreaking in his time, but today is something you would read and say “duh”. While his theories seem so obvious to us today, consciousness was not something that was researched when James was doing his work. It was something that couldn’t be measured and was therefore a topic that not many people worked on; during James’ time psychologists were largely focused on things that could actually be measured because they were struggling to be respected as a ‘real’ science. His work basically stated that consciousness was a stream of thought, and he stated that consciousness was personal, constantly changing, sensibly continuous, selective, and active. All of this was very fascinating to me.
Someone commented above on the periodic function in this chapter, which I had missed the first time through somehow so I went back and looked at it. It really is a laugh, but it is also really interesting. It basically states that once a month, when a women gets her period, she is intellectually incapacitated for a time. While this is a little funny, and may a little offensive, I mostly find it intriguing. If someone were to come up with this theory today they would be written off as a crazy sexist and they would be blacklisted in the psychology community. However, when this theory came about it was common belief that women were simply not as intellectually capable as men, and this theory probably seemed like a reasonable explanation as to why the intellectual differences existed.
I would have to say the part I found the least interesting in this chapter was the section on Stanley Hall. While he did a lot to bring psychology into the spotlight in America, I just didn’t find that the information really made me want to sit down and keep reading.
I think the section in this chapter that has the greatest effect on psychology is the education of women and minorities. This was another section I found interesting, but I think it really does belong more in this area because its impact on the field is profound. Without the effort to educate and include women and minorities, psychology would never have been able to flourish into what it is today. Besides that fact that many great psychologists are women and minorities, these people can provide a different perspective on issues that the typical psychologist in the early 1900’s simply didn’t have (that psychologist would be a middle-class white male).
Higher education in the US was still greatly limited as it became more accessible. It was mostly accessible to middle and upper class white males, meaning that women and minorities were still facing serious obstacles when it came to gaining any education really beyond high school. Women faced a number of prejudiced and judgmental beliefs about their inability to function intellectually at the same level as men. There were many ways that society furthered these beliefs, such as the idea that once a month, when a woman menstruated, she was intellectually incapacitated for a period of time. There was also the variability hypothesis, based on Darwin’s evolutionary theory, which held that individual members of a species differed, which provided the variability that is necessary for natural selection to take place. According to the variability hypothesis, men had greater variability than women in many areas, meaning that they were better suited to adapt and that the brightest man would still be more intelligent than the brightest woman. In the middle of the 19th century some opportunities began to arise for women, however. Universities began to allow women to enroll, although the areas they could study were generally limited to those ‘suitable’ for women. When women really got their chance to receive a higher education was with the creation of elite colleges that were for women only, such as Vassar, which was opened in 1865. Not long after this, women began to have a profound effect on the field of psychology, such as Calkins. While these struggles were very trying on women, minorities had it even worse, especially African-Americans. After the Civil War, people still so strongly believed that whites were intellectually superior to blacks that there even seemed to be research to back up these arguments. These prejudices of course led to a serious lack of opportunity for black Americans to receive a higher education. Similar to women, Universities began to spring up that were targeted specifically for African-American students, though their schools didn’t begin to gain popularity until later than the women’s colleges. While black students could take psychology courses, most couldn’t pursue it as their field of interest. As the education for African-Americans continued to get better, the impact of this education allowed African-Americans to have their impact on the field of psychology. One of the first African-American students to gain some prestige in psychology was Sumner. His work in ‘race psychology’ with G. Stanley Hall was done while he worked on a master’s degree, and in 1920 he became the first African-American to receive a doctorate in psychology.
Women have faced many difficulties in our country of gaining a higher education and entering into areas that had previously been dominated by men, and psychology was no different than any other field. As more women began earning higher degrees, we began to see a few that stuck out as having done some truly profound and influential work. Mary Whiton Calkins was one of the first women to publish work that gained some notoriety, and perhaps her best known contribtion was her theory on paired-associate learning. This theory looked at how people made associations, and what factors might make associations stronger, such as frequency, recency, vividness, and primacy. Her work led her to believe that the frequency variable was the strongest, though all four factors had an influence. For example, she might initially pair the color red with the number three and then pair red with the number eight 15 times. When she would ask later what number was paired with red they would say eight, because it had been repeated more frequently. Christine Ladd-Franklin was another of the early females to work in psychology who penned a well-known theory about color vision. Her theory was based on evolutionary theory, and held that color vision was a product of evolution and that, many millennia ago, there was no need to see color. Another famous female in psychology is Margret Washburn who was best known for her work in comparative psychology. She also believed that mental processes, not just visible behavior, was important and should be researched, which was a new idea at the time. Much of her work was controversial, in part because she was a woman, but also because she was pushing herself to investigate things that hadn’t been done before. One of her more controversial words was titled The Animal Mind which went against the accepted belief at the time that, while humans had both a mental and physical aspect to their being, animals did not, making humans superior to animals. Washburn stated in her book that she believed that animals did have both a mental and physical self, also stating that animals were able to learn certain things, and that they did so in similar ways to humans. These women’s works were made difficult by the challenges they faced in education, and especially in getting research done and read by people. However, they also chose to go about their work in the same way a prominent male psychologist would have; they found what interested them and formed their ideas on these topics, and then they conducted research to test their beliefs, regardless of what the popular thoughts were at the time.