Reading Activity Week #15 (Due Tuesday)

I chose chapter 15 because it links psychology’s past with the present. I think this is a good chapter to reflect on what has been discussed in previous chapter and how things have allowed psychology to grow into what it is today.

One topic I found interesting in this chapter was the discussion about how the American Psychological Association (APA) has expanded over the years. The APA originated in G. Stanley Hall’s study in 1892. It showed steady expansion with the initial 31 charter members rising to around 125 by the turn of the century and about 375 members by the end of World War I. After the creation of the associate member status in 1925, the growth curve of the APA increased even more. After World War II, the membership total was approximately 5,000 and it has continued to climb ever since. The APA membership total reach 70,000 by 1990 and now in the twenty-first century the membership total is approaching 100,000. I find the continued expansion of the APA interesting because it puts into perspective the growth of psychology. Psychology has gone from being overshadowed by philosophy to its own credible field.

Another topic I found interesting in this chapter was how overtime has become more diverse. From a historical standpoint, psychology has been a field dominated by white males – however that trend has been changed within the last thirty years. For the majority of psychology’s history women and minority groups have been on the outside looking in. However, this has been more of an issue for minorities than women. Blacks and other minorities didn’t see significant gains in psychology until the years following World War II, but a void still remains. An example from the text points out that in 1991, only 14 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, 11 percent of master’s degrees, and 9 percent of doctoral degrees were granted to minority students. This highlights the fact that somewhat of an issue still remains in regards to minorities in psychology. However, now days the number of undergraduate women in psychology outnumber the men two to one and about 60% of doctorates are awarded to women. This highlights the gains made to strive for equal opportunity in the field of psychology.

The third topic I found interesting in this chapter was the discussion about the future of psychology. Considering the growth and increasing specializations during the last half of the twentieth century it can be debated whether or not the field of psychology is unified. The text asks if there currently is a field of psychology or are there multiple psychologies? For example, it’s easy for someone to say they study psychology, but psychology has become so broad that’s it’s difficult to determine what that means. Therefore, it might be most reasonable to assume psychology is not a single discipline but a collection of them. Sigmund Koch argued for years that the term “psychology” should be replaced with the label of “psychological studies” – this would apply to all areas rather than labeling everything “psychology”. Although history has bonded each sub-discipline of psychology together; it might make more sense now days or in the future to start thinking about psychology in its plural form.

The section I found least interesting was about Kenneth B. and Mamie Phipps Clark. I realize the significance of what they accomplished, especially being part of the minority. However, their story seemed out of place in this chapter. I think it would have made more sense to include this section in earlier chapters discussing minorities – not during the reflection of minorities in psychology. With that said, the Clark’s contributions to psychology and the issue with minorities being overlooked in the field are still relevant today.

I think the most important thing to help better understand the history of psychology is realizing the role history played. You can’t be fully aware of what’s going on now without some knowledge of what has happened in the past. This is especially true in psychology. Psychology is a field that has made itself what it is today by improving and expanding previous research and theories.

This chapter relates to other chapters by acting as a reflection of the important aspect of all previous chapters. It virtually reflects on important factors in earlier chapters and discusses how those contributions have shaped psychology today. Something I would like to learn more about is the future of psychology and where the field is headed. Now that I have learned what has gone into creating the field; I’m intrigued to learn where it is going. While reading this chapter I could help but think of the endless possibilities for psychology. It is a limitless field of study.

I chose to read chapter 15, because I thought it would be nice to see how the book wraps up and brings past psychology into modern day psychology. I found the chapter to be quite intriguing. One of the first parts that I read and enjoyed was the section about the future of psychology. The section was entitled “The Future: Psychology or Psychologies”. The truth is that psychology isn’t what it once was. It is much broader and covers issues all across the board. The different branches of psychology can be very similar to each other, or they can be quite different. For example, even in a single branch of psychology there are many different theories that are sometimes opposing. The book argues that psychology is no longer a single discipline, but it is a collection of disciplines. The variety of jobs that psychology graduates get varies a great deal. For example, someone receiving a PhD in social psychology would experience a completely different workplace than someone receiving a PhD in Clinical Psychology and working in a mental hospital. Someone graduating with a degree in forensic psychology could spend a majority of their time in courtrooms around the country, while someone in School Psychology could spend their time as a counselor in a high school. In short, I think this is an awesome concept. Psychology graduates are everywhere!

The next part of the chapter that I found very interesting was the section about Women in Psychology’s history. One of my favorite people to learn about during my studies in psychology was Dorthea Dix. I think that she was a very influential person who helped open up more opportunities for women in psychology. Looking around my psychology classrooms, I could probably say that there is a fair amount of more women in my classes than men (even though UNI has more females, I still had the same feeling at Iowa State University as well). For me, seeing so many women in my psychology classes is WITNESSING the changes that have occurred in psychology over the years. I think that if I had gone to college 100 years ago, I would not have hardly any women in my classes. Influential women in psychology such as Mary Calkins, Margaret Washburn, and Christine Ladd-Franklin have also helped women take a big step and enter the world of psychology.

The next section was “Trends in Contemporary Psychology”. The five trends mentioned were “The accelerated study of the relationship between the brain and behavior; The vigorous return of evolutionary thinking; Significant changes in research due to computers; increased professionalization of psychological practitioners; increased fragmentation of psychology. One of my favorite sections within this section was about the use of computers in psychology. Today, we can conduct research with much more easy and participants are much easily accessed through email. The internet has done SO much for the world in general, but also a great deal for the field of psychology. I think it would be interesting to see a field of psychology to emerge focusing on “psychology of the internet”, or something along those lines. I’ve always been quite interested in “online relationships” and I think that those studies are pretty intriguing.

I think that this chapter was very beneficial and I’m glad I chose to read it. Many people throughout history have made many great contributions to psychology and have made it into what it is today: a very diverse field, that some may argue is no longer one field anymore. Like I stated in the beginning of this post, psychology graduates are EVERYWHERE. While finishing this chapter, I had some personal thoughts: I’m extremely glad that I chose psychology as my undergraduate major. I think that the experiences that I’ve had with professors and the content that I learned throughout my course will be very beneficial to me in the future. Psychology has the power to open people’s minds, and help one to better understand the complex relationship between nature and nurture. I think that anyone who has decided to study psychology has made a beneficial choice in their life. Regardless of where we all end up, we will all have a better understanding of social interaction, human behavior, and the human being in general. I believe that for me personally, that psychology will help me a great deal in the legal profession.

For this assignment I decided to do the blog post on Chapter 15 because it is really a summary of the entire book and everything that we have learned so far.
The first thing that I found interesting was how different the SEP was after Titchner was gone. They immediately started letting women into the organization after he left. This is a great example of the phenomenon where everyone in a group goes a long with the loudest member eventhough none of them may agree.
The second thing that I found interesting about this chapter was the Clark "doll studies". I have always been interested in this study and how it really was one of the first ones to show how prejudice can effect people in this country.
The final thing I found interesting about this chapter was the thought that psychology is not one single discipline but instead a collection of many. I bleieve that this is why many people don't get into any specific part of psychology until grad school and why graduate school is needed in many careers of psychology.
One thing that I didn't enjoy about this chapter was how brief it was. I was kind of surprised as a summary of this entire book that it was only about 5 pages long.
What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think understanding that psychology is not only one discipline is really helpful in understanding the history of psychology because then you may finally understand why all of these different stories are coming in about the start of cognitive psychology or clinical psychology and how all of them can be different.
This chapter is about the ultimate summary of the entire book. It mentions how things have changed since all of the things that we learned in the book. It tells us how the history we have learned has changed psychology in the modern day.
I am more interested in learning about all the different subcategories of the APA and specifically about the psychology of religion because I believe it would be almost a conversion of international psychology and psychology of religion.
I wondered how people think of psychology in today's world think of psychology. I know a lot of people think of Freud and his couch when I say that I'm a psychology major but I wondered if many people actually know how much psychology really entails.

For this week’s topical blog, I chose to read chapter 15. I wanted to see how the book wrapped up this course, and bring everything we’ve learned thus far to a close.
The first thing that I had found interesting about this chapter is the discussion of women in psychology’s history and the struggles that they had to face, especially Eleanor Gibson. I found this topic to be more interesting because I put myself in the context of that time. If I were born 80 some odd years sooner, that would be me having to face those challenges just to be considered a knowledgeable and professional member of psychology. She was inspiring to me because she is one of the women that refused to take no for an answer, and seemed to find loopholes to be able to still conduct her research. When she wanted to work in the primate lab with Yerkes and got the response, “I have no women in my laboratory,” she refused to leave. Even if she didn’t end up working with Yerkes, she found somebody else that she was able to work with and receive her doctorate under. She continued to prove her abilities my receiving a number of grants as an unpaid “research associate” at Cornell University, because nepotism rules wouldn’t allow her to receive employment. These research grants included her famous research on the visual cliff with infants. Immediately after Cornell abolished their nepotism rules, she had received a position as a professor. A pioneering woman like her was an essential part of history’s psychology.
Another relating section of the chapter I found interesting was the African American couple who conducted the “doll studies.” I found it interesting because in all of the psychology classes I have taken, I have never heard of the doll studies. Their research consisted of asking both white and black children in the North and South a serious of questions relating the skin color. The asked the both groups of children which doll they would rather play with and which doll they believed to be bad, and had the choices of male and female colored skinned dolls and male and female a white skinned dolls. They had found that the black children tended to favor the white skinned dolls, and considered the colored skinned dolls to be bad. When they asked the children questions about relating the dolls to themselves, some of the black children thought that they looked more like the white dolls. In the same context, when the children were asked to draw pictures of themselves, they would color themselves in a lighter shade than what they really were. The main implication of this research was that the self-esteem of black children suffered greatly because of segregation, since they were constantly trying to relate themselves to the white dolls and skin and favored the lighter skinned. I would like to learn more about the Clarks’ research they had conducted other than the “doll studies” and see if the other studies are based upon race as well. This study’s findings of the children’s self esteem being effected by segregation, got me thinking of how children of criminals may feel similarly stigmatized and have self esteem that suffer, and try to relate themselves to qualities of more conventional families.
The discussion of trends in psychology was also rather interesting for me to read. It was interesting to me because it highlights the importance of psychological history, and that in order to understand each of these trends there must be some comprised knowledge of its history. The first trend is the increasing interest in studying the relationship between the brain and behavior. With neuroscience becoming a more accepted and used term, it’s foundation begins in the history of studying the basic functions of the brain. Evolutionary thinking’s return is another trend in contemporary psychology, the nature component of the nature-vs-nurture theory. Although there is still ongoing debates as to which is more prevalent, there are many studies of genetic influences on behavior and mental processes being done during more recent times. Research changes that were implemented because of more modern technology is another trend in contemporary psychology. In order to find a more accurate way to conduct research, we must learn from trial and error though past techniques and find what works best. Increased professionalization of psychological practitions and fragmentation of psychology are the last two trends of contemporary psychology. The history allows us to understand the tension between researchers and practitioners , and there is not one universal aspect of psychology but that it is instead multi-dimensional and comprised of a variety of different facets.
The last section of the chapter discussing the controversy in declaring psychology psychological studies instead was the least interesting to me. I thought this because it just kind of seemed self-explanatory to me that the field of psychology is comprised of a number of different psychological studies, but no matter what the name is, nothing is being changed. No subdivision is being eliminated or anything drastic, and having the field deemed psychology is just the foundation for all of these subdivisions to come together.
The fact that these chapter emphasizes that in order to understand what psychology is made up of now, we must understand the history of it; is what I believe is most useful to the history of psychology. It shows that the history of psychology is essential to know and understand if we want to understand more current concepts and studies. This chapter builds upon other chapters because it is the closer. It brings all of them together in some way and illustrates the importance of them in modern psychology.

I chose to read chapter 15, which is an overview of the whole book. I think this chapter was very important, because it culminates the entire process that the field of psychology has been through over the years. The chapter opens up with the indication of the mere size of psychology as a science has exploded since its beginnings.

It does this with the membership numbers of those enrolled in the APA. The APA began with 31 members in 1892 and slowly grew to 125 in about 1900. With the ability of associate members ships created growth of the association skyrocketed to about 5000 after WWII and has rose expanentially ever since. In 1990 there were about 70000 members and today there are nearly 100000 members in the organization. That is alot of professionals!!! These are not just numbers of people, but they represent the institution of a new scientific study and people's beliefs rise in that study, which is why it is interesting to me.

Another interesting topic in the chapter, was the section on the overview of women in psychology. It brings back a few names that were discussed earlier in the book like Mary Calkins, Margaret Washburn and Christine Ladd-Franklin. All of these women had to overcome the stigma that held women down during there times in order to even obtain an education. Most of them were able do gain some education, but most time graduate school was out of the question (these women being an exception). Once that was through they still had to try and get a job and most of the time professorships were not offered to them. Despite that many women were able to make contributions to the field of psychology. This chapter brings in a new name, Eleanor Gibson. She receieved The National Medal of Science in 1992 for her work in development and depth perception. (She is one of 10 psychologists to have ever earned the award). She too had troubles being respected. After, earning her degree she was unable to get a paid postion, but still did voluntary research.

The last interesting thing I would like to mention is the section of psychology's future. The section really shows exactlty how borad of a topic psychology is. Currently there are 56 divisions of psychology in the APA and more are developed all the time, which raises the question is there really one psychology. One way to think about this was illustrated by psychological theorist Sigmund Koch, says that psychology would be called psychological studies to show there are many forms. Another theorist, Bowers said the psychology should be thought of as a tree. As time goes on, psychology will branch off and develope more parts, with each scientist (bug) feeding on one leaf of a branch talking to a bug on another leaf. I really like this metapor, because it shows that psychology can be one science, with man seperate disaplines developing from it.

One part that I found to be boring was the listing of trends in contemporary psychology. There were pretty common sense and did not provide me with much insight into psychology as a whole. Over all though I think I would have likes to see more information in this chapter and many more examples to show how psychology has grown and changes over the years.

For our blog I decided to read chapter 15. This was basically a summary over all the topics of the semester. Throughout the semester there were several topics I found to be interesting because it was a new concept to me or a refresher from previous classes. The first section I found interesting was the section on women in psychology. This was an interesting reminder because it shows how far the field of psychology has come since the beginning. At first women were not allowed to participate in the field because of several stereotypes that were cast upon them. Throughout the history women slowly worked their way back into the field and made huge headway. It just was a reminder to me how lack of knowledge can make things difficult to accept. This also made me think more about other things in the world like women and getting more rights and privileges in general not just in the field of psychology. E.B. Titchner for example kept them out of his experiments because he felt they were inadequate. It just goes to show that opening up your mind can make several advances in any field. Eleanor Gibson was the perfect example.
Another section I found interesting was the future and the listings of just some of the 56 divisions of psychology. Section 28: Psychopharmacology and substance abuse would be a very interesting section to learn and study. Considering America is the leading user of prescription drugs in the world it would benefit our nation the most from these studies. Also learning about medications and their effects is interesting in itself. It was a good section to read because many psychologists belong to many divisions of psychology but their research is always based on the main fields they are involved in. Many fields have several different areas that could affect research. For example, Behavior analysis can not only benefit studies and research but it can also help in the clinical field as well.
The last section I found interesting was minorities in psychology. Throughout our history minorities has taken the brunt of a lot of hatred and disrespect. Even in the career field it’s happened. After rereading this section which reminded me of earlier in the semester I realized throughout the books chapters this idea has slowly desinigrated. There have been several psychologies and important people in the world that have been from a minority. The book mentions Mamie Phipp Clark as on of the people who made a difference. It just shows that anyone can have a breakthrough idea no matter the color of their skin or the gender. This also discussed the court ruling that helped make these people into difference makers. The separate but equal was decided it had no place in education. This was a game changer.
The part I found least interesting was the contemporary psychology trends. This section seemed pretty self-explanatory. Also after reading most of the chapters you can come to the conclusion of those points on your own. It was a review of the book and the main ideas but it could have been replaced by another topic that had more education value. Luckily the section was way short and didn’t require a lot of attention.
The chapter builds on all of the previous chapters and discusses the main points we read. It was a good chapter to read because it not only was a good review but it was also a good reminder of how far the field of psychology has come from August(chapter 1 the history) to chapter 15(the review) and everything in between. Anything from Darwinism to minorities to research and clinical studies was discussed. It really put all the pieces together to help appreciate the timeline and history of psychology. Reading the last chapter gave me a lot of ideas and thoughts about certain things I recall from the semester. The topic on memory really makes me think and want to learn more about it. Also how certain psychologists found and studied their research. It makes me appreciate each generation in time. Even though the 1900’s are different from now they were unique and smart in their own ways. It just really hammers home how if you have a desire to learn and study anything is possible. The chapter did a good job of tying in all the main points of the book.

I liked how this section talked about the psychology since the war. And told how the most important development since then was the development of modern cognitive psychology and I thought the bit of history in this section telling about that was interesting.
One section that I found interesting was the section Bartlett on memory. This section told how Bartlett thought that the research on memory should focus “more on the attributes of the memorizer and less on the nature of the stimulus materials.” He also believed the memorizer organizes the material into wholes, which are called “schemata.” Bartlett defined this as “active organizations of past reactions, or of past experiences, which must always be supposed to be operating in any well-adapted organic response.” I found this interesting, because the text actually went on to give an example on death and dying, and it told how our experiences make a schema relating to that topic, and the schema will then influence our current or future perceptions of death and dying, and will affect our memory of these experiences, and told how people from different cultures will have a different view of death and dying, because of their different schemata. I liked how the text gave this example and explained that this is why people from different cultures have different views. I have heard of this before, but I thought this book did a better job explaining it and gave a good example.
Another topic I found interesting was the section where it talked about dichotic listening and selective filter. The dichotic listening procedure was used by Broadbent and Colin Cherry. This was a procedure where the research participants would “experience two channels of information at the same time, one set to each ear” using headphones. They showed that the participants would focus on one message, and couldn’t recall much of the second. I agree with this, because it’s like when two people are trying to talk to you at once, and a person usually only hears what one of those people is saying, and may remember certain parts or words of what the second person is saying. They summarized their findings and called it the selective filter model of attention.
Personally there was not a section in this chapter that wasn’t interesting. I enjoyed reading it.
I think one of the most useful topics in this chapter was Evaluating Cognitive Psychology. I think this is important because it can be considered a frame work. This section also talked about the criticisms that it faced, and I think that is important, because I think it is important to listen to another person’s view on topics. In the text it told that one of the criticisms was that cognitive psychologists sometimes ignore neurological reality. They “build models of mental processing that contradict what is known about how the nervous system operates.” And the book told how the “pervasiveness” of the cognitive factors could be an indication of how important these processes have been to psychology, even though people may question the importance.
This chapter continued on with the past of psychology which is what we have been talking about in the other chapters and chapter fifteen had some new information.
I would like to learn more about artificial intelligence, because I have not learned much about this in my previous classes and I think it would be an interesting research topic.
Where this chapter talked about the dichotic listening procedure it made me think about how this actually happens in our daily lives such as when two people are trying to talk to us at once. I liked that section, because I could relate it to something that I have gone through and it helped me understand what it was all about because I thought about when two people were trying to talk to me it is a selective listening. Over all I enjoyed this chapter and would like to learn more about the artificial intelligence.

I chose Chapter 14 because it links 3 of my favorite types of Psychology; Social, Personality, and Developmental. This chapter really explains how these three favorite categories in psychology developed and apply in everyday life.



Social Psychology- the basic point of social psychology is to examine the behavior of an individual and its influence by the social environment. One of the main modern sociology issues that is researched is the actions of group process. Kurt Lewin (discussed in chapter 9) studied group processes and relate gestalt and social psychology. One of the most famous students Leon Festinger was influenced by Lewin’s work and wanted to future Lewin’s direction. Festinger was a Jewish man that discovered a social aspect of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is when a person holds two or more thoughts that are inconsistent with each other. The discovery of cognitive dissonance was a legacy, and continues to be taught in Social Psychology.



Personality Psychology- I have always loved learning about personality, especially when I took the personality psychology course offered at UNI. Personality psychology focuses on an approach on a detailed analysis of a unique individual and how one individual differs from another. Each person has a distinct or a variety of different traits. There is not one person in the world that is the same, so this part of psychology is so interesting and the research to back it up is intriguing. Gordon Allport was the inventor of the concept of personality and how people have different traits such as shyness (and why one differs from another persons trait). Personality psychology focuses on a single individual, which is why I really like it. This type of psychology is still new and is continuing to grow.



Developmental psychology- I have a passion for working with children, so naturally Developmental psychology is my number one favorite topic. There is a long history with this type of psychology, because many researchers and psychologists focus on children and examining cognitive development. Jean Piaget is one of the most famous and well known psychologists for his biological interest in children, and infants. Piaget developed the famous concept of object permanence, when an infant would or would not search for an object after it has left their sight. Developmental psychology is interesting because it leave us wondering if our upbringing could have changed certain parts of us, today.



The one thing I found aversive in this chapter is reading about the cell assembles and the neurological process of learning. I have never really been a fan of biopsychology and this section was difficult to process or enjoy. 



The most useful part of this chapter was refreshing my memory on my top three favorite approaches to psychology. Some of the information was repeated knowledge, but still very tolerable to read. This was important in understanding the history of psychology because these three approaches build on everyday life, and people can relate.



This chapter relates to chapter 9 with Gestalt psychology and building on cognitive research experiments from previous chapters.



I would like to learn more about the biological EEG research that was discussed and the artificial intelligence vs. memory. I have never really liked those topics, however if I could understand it, maybe I would enjoy learning about it.



One idea: How early of an age can one measure traits in personality? Can babies be labeled with a specific trait or until they can speak?

The first area I was interested in was on Frederick C. Bartlett. The picture of him smoking his pipe and looking just how you would imagine someone in the early 1900s looking mainly sparked my interest. His work on memory was very important though and how he switched the way we think about memory with thinks like developing “schema” was a step forward in the psychology of memory.

The second area I was interested in was on the study of speech and communication with George A. Miller. I find it interesting that this area stemmed form trying to communicate in loud places like airplanes. Since then I really feel that this area has taken off with things like speech pathology as well. This section also dealt with memory, which seemed to be going through great reform through this time with new ideas of short-term memory and recoding.

The third section that caught my interest was on artificial intelligence. With the creation of the GPS this section shows the beginning of something that is now a major factor in our lives today. This is also the section I would like to research more into. I would like to see I there is any current research being done with artificial intelligence. I know that movies like “I Robot” and “The Matrix” have gone to the extremes of this idea, but I want to see what real world progress we have in this area.

The area I was least interested in was with Developmental Psychology. Developmental Psychologies biggest name is Jean Piaget and it’s not that I don’t think what he did isn't useful it’s just after taking a class, Developmental Psychology, I have about heard as much as I can take about his theories of the different developmental stages of children as they grow up. I do like seeing the studies that demonstrate how children grow to be able to perceive certain things like object permanence.

The section that I believe is most useful for understanding psychologies history is the close up. It explains the shift from mentalism to behaviorism to cognitive psychology in the heart of the psychology field. Even though the main point of the section is to discuss whether there has ever been a revolution in psychology, understanding how psychology built upon itself, even in small ways, is helpful for understanding how psychology has gotten to where it is today.

This chapter builds off the last chapter by taking the second half of the split that happened in psychology. Chapter 13 reviewed the principles of psychology while this chapter focused on the application of those principles. Together they help us to understand the changes that were happening to psychology during this time.

I ended up choosing chapter 14. When I first began I was going to choose chapter 15 because it was shorter, but it really wasn’t all that interesting to me. Much of the chapter seemed like a repeat of previous chapters. Chapter 14 seemed to have some new material to read.
I found the studies on personality the most interesting part of the chapter. I really think that this study encompasses far more than just social psychology. Understanding this can be used in developmental, I/O psychology, even abnormal psychology. I really felt sorry for Allport when I read about how cold the others were when he attempted to his dissertation. Perhaps the reason was that their cardinal traits had huge egotistical characteristics and would not allow them to admit they were learning something new? (I made that up) I think that anyone who has had children can really see how traits make people work so very differently.
Secondly I really found the work in social psychology of Leon Festinger to be fascinating. His work on cognitive dissonance was really well done. It reminded me of my son and friends saying “would you do_____ for $100? How about $1000…” and so on. There really are levels of reward that we will experience discomfort (think Fear Factor), or moral compromise (Bernie Madoff).
I’ve always really like Piaget. I actually tried the “which is bigger” experiment on my nephews who are ages 4, 5 and 6. One time I actually measured the water and pulled the play dough from the can right in front of them. They still thought that one was more. If I were not going towards I/O psych I would definitely have chosen developmental at some level.
The part of the chapter that was my least favorite was at the beginning about memory. I do find the subject interesting, but some of the studies can make my eyes begin to glaze over. I’m not sure why but it just gets boring to me and I have a hard time focusing on the reading.
I think knowing how difficult that change was and introducing new parts of psychology gives a greater appreciation of the work. Throughout the chapter and the book references were made to various people’s contributions not being recognized until much later. There was definitely a pecking order in these groups.
This chapter kind of switched gears from the previous two chapters which focused a lot on abnormal psychology. However as each chapter progressed the main focus seemed to evolve. It seemed that earlier in the science it was more philosophical and as the science grew it became more applied. The establishment for mental illness, marketing, education were just a few ways it came to be applied in everyday life.
I would like to learn more about the psychology of personality. Personality has always been interesting to me. I think it is fascinating to see how and why people make the choices they do every day. Why must I be on the move and scheduled? My husband can mosey through, stop and chat even though he also hates to be late.

I really thought about how these people often didn’t know success right away and sometimes not during their lifetimes. What if they would have given up? Whatever happened to Piaget”s children? I have wondered throughout the semester if any of these prominent scientists’ children followed in their parents’ footsteps.

I chose to read chapter 15 because of the title and what each section like growth and diversity from women to minorities, trends in psychology, and the future covered.

The first part I liked about this chapter was about the American Psychological Association’s history. Starting in 1892 in G. Stanley Hall’s study up until the middle of the 1920s started with 31 members and grew to 125 by the 1900s. It grew even more, up to 375, by the end of WWI as well. At the end of WWII, had about 5000 members and has increased steadily since, coming up on about 70,000 by 1990. It looks like the future of APA membership is likely to expand even more. Psychology has become a popular choice of major in college with new graduate programs annually. Seeing that psychology is a popular choice for college students to major in isn’t a total shock to me because many students in my class are majoring in different parts of psychology whether it’s teaching psychology, I/O psychology, or clinical psychology. This major has a lot of different realms of study and sparks the interests of lots of students entering college.

I liked reading on women in psychology’s history because I am a woman pursuing an education/career in psychology and it’s always interesting to read about how we got to where we are now in the field. In earlier in earlier chapters we read about how some labs wouldn’t allow women and when first admitted to college they were put in domestic classes. In chapter 6 we learned about Calkins, Washburn, and Ladd-Franklin and how they weren’t granted full-time academic jobs. In the 1920s it got worse with small colleges exchanging female professors with male professors to “enhance” their prestige. I think it’s odd to see males as a more dominant role in teaching because in most of my psychology classes in college, I was taught by a woman…good to know we’ve grown out of that male to female dynamic.

I enjoyed reading about Eleanor Gibson. With her being granted the National Medal of Science in 1992 for her work on depth perception, she was only one of ten at the time who had won that award. She worked with people like Harvey Carr, E.G. Boring, and Kurt Koffka who we had read about in earlier chapters in her beginning years of psychology. I thought it was interesting to see that she found her love in the lab and for her professor at Princeton. It’s not every day you read about a student falling for a professor and then finding out they got married. Once she went to Yale to work with Yerkes in his primate lab, he soon dismissed her saying he didn’t have women in his laboratory. Although she was kept from employment at Cornell for being married to her professor she worked as an unpaid research associate for sixteen years. During those years she won many series of competitive research grants. Once the nepotism rule was removed from Cornell in 1966, she became a full time professor. Eleanor is just an example of what women had to go through to get to their success in their field.

There wasn’t anything I disliked about this chapter in particular.

This chapter built on other chapters because it went more in depth on women in psychology. I remember reading about women like Margaret Washburn and Mary Calkins briefly, but this chapter touches more on the background story of the difficulties they had in the psychology field. This also goes for minorities in the psychology field.

I think psychology is a continually growing field in its research topics or by who does the research. The field now allows men and women of any race into the lab to do their research and find out more things in the world of psychology we have yet to know about.

One topic I hope to learn more about is I/O Psychology because it’s the field I plan to go into. I only learned about this section of psychology last year and the more I learn, the more I want to learn. We didn’t discuss it much in class probably because it is still new to the field and more has to be researched for it to have a full set of text for a history book.

One idea I had was more of a question of how Robert Yerkes must have felt after knowing he let go a great psychologist in Eleanor Gibson from his lab. I also wonder how men in the field transitioned to having women brought into the field and if they were allowed to keep out women from their labs.

I decided to read chapter 14, and the new era of post-war psychology. There was a new wave of cognitive psychology, spearheaded by Frederick C. Bartlett. He believed that memorization shouldn’t be focused on the stimulus materials, but more on the person learning it. He saw that passive learning didn’t aide in memorization, but active. His views also translated into a concept called “schemas”, an organizational system that is passed on past reactions and experiences that create an “organic response”, which can vary between cultures as well as people.
Social psychology grew in popularity after WWII. Leon Festinger’s idea of cognitive dissonance is a popular theory within social psychology that states that cognitive and emotional discomfort will arise when people hold multiple inconsistent ideas. I guess I can see this in modern politics, many people stay on their polar side of the political spectrum. But some have problems committing, or are dissatisfied with the person they’re voting for because there is an issue that they may not fully agree with.
Piaget, a pre-war developmental psychologist, continued his work in genetic epistemology, studying the manner in which knowledge is developed for each person, and created an institute based on his work in Geneva.
I liked this overview of psychology post-war. I wish there wasn’t such a focus on cognitive psychology, and had included some biological psychology (which is relatively recent).

I chose to read chapter 14. I skimmed both of the chapters to see which one would be more interesting and chapter fourteen struck my attention a lot more. this chapter discussed social psychology and personality psychology which are the two parts of psychology that are my favorite to learn about and to study. Also Developmental psychology, which directly applies to me the most. From working at a daycare to working at LSI with troubled adolescence, developmental psych is a good insight onto how things develop and grow and that process of learing what is important and what isnt. Many things like this are important and we dont even realize it. The social psychology in this chapter can also be linked to previous chapters where they talk about the hawthorn effect. Both psychologists and sociologists have studied this and how people act differently based on who is around to see. It was also interesting learning about Gordon Allport and his three types of individual personalities; cardinal traits, centrail traits, and secondary traits. Each trait gets more intimately known the further down the list you go. I also read about Jean Piaget, however this was a review to me. I read about the tasks the children were to do and the findings that children arent good at judging volume and things like that. He basically came up with the idea of cognitive development.

I read chapter 15 as it followed the flow. It seemed most interesting and relevant at first glance. It also talked about topics that built on the previous sections. Not to mention it was less to read (te he). I also wanted to finally match the week with the chapter as the difference has been bugging my slight OCD for the past 14 weeks.

As much as this section talked about the future, it was cool to reflect on some material from the first couple chapters (not really sure which ones). Contemporary psychology was the topic that became a blast from the past in one of these final chapters of the text. The five trends, and the fact that there are five trends are what is most interesting to me. I seem to be particularly interested in sub-groups while reading this chapter. I like the idea of breaking things up and separating information. The five contemporary trends are: 1. Brainbehavior relationship 2. Evoluntionary thinking 3. Modern technology and its impact/changes/significances to sections of psychological studies. 4. MORE PROFESSIONALISM this seems like a waste of a trend as it should be obvious, but professionalism is a must. And finally, 5. Increasing breakup/sub-categorizing of psychology. I am so interested in the parts of the study and especially sub-categorizing and the simplifying of the information by having it split up to be subjected to a more independent, specific, and dense focus. I’m incredibly interested in all of the different ways to fragment, sub-categorize, or just breakup aspects of study within the all encompassing field of “psychology”

I found the doll study by Clark to be really interesting. I remember learning about it in my Social Psychology class. It was interesting not only because it looked at perceptions, but because it looked at the perceptions of children. It was sad to think that even the black children picked the white doll as the “better” one. This shows how majority and our culture could/do have negative and large effects on the perceptions of individuals-including children. It was also interesting to think about how this affects their self-esteem.

Group dynamics have always been interesting to me. While in Organizational psychology I noticed that there were many different phenomenons related to group work. For example, it have been shown that a group may chose to go along with the answer of a single individual who comes across as the leader. This person may just be the most vocal of the group. At any rate, they seem to control the group’s decisions. I find this idea interesting because I was able to apply it to the material in this course, specifically this section. Titchner was a part of the SEP. Apparently he had strong pull on the group decisions. Interestingly enough, women became a part of the SEP after Titchner left. This shows that, likely, the other members of the group went along with a decision that they did not agree with. I believe that this is a very interesting take on the psychology of group dynamics. I believe that it would be cool to look in more detail about what kind of people control groups or maybe how they are able to get away with the control and the effective convincing or several other members of a group.

I was least interested in learning about APA and its foundation. Every time I hear the APA mentioned my mind immediately flashes to the dreaded citations and formatting. I also think about clinical psychology class. Though I originally thought that I wanted to be a clinical psychologist, I quickly learned that I would not enjoy the copius amounts of research involved. We learned great details about the APA in that class, and it was far from appealing to me. I think part of my mind shuts off when I have to learn or read about the APA. APA started in 1892. Originally the association had only 31 members which is hard to believe when you think about how big and accredited it is today with almost 100,000 members. Though the growth of psychology is exciting, I’m still not overly enthused. I’m proud to study my own unique genre of study-psychology and I’m glad that we have expanded beyond simply a science or philosophy…but I find the details to be more exciting and interesting than the simplicity of an Association that grew with the field.

This chapter builds on the previous one as it quickly reflects on all of the history and talks some about the present and future or psychology. It once again talks about how psychology has grown from simply being a philosophy. It also talks about how all of the professionals now form an organization that helps to make the field strong. Psychology is a field that is incredibly concentrated on building off of previous findings. There is a large snowballing effect that happens in psychology research. Building on past studies and past established knowledge is most helpful to the field of psychology today. It’s nice to have this chapter seemingly tie together all previous chapters. If I would have known that this chapter would highlight all of the important points from the past. I would have read the book from the back forward. In fact, it may be interesting in future to have students read one of the last chapters of the book forward and see what they think of the information and what they think that the course will be about. It could generate a very interesting conversation.

I would very much like to learn more about race and psychology. Racial difference could have no effect on psychology, however, bias studies are interesting…it might be fun to explore a bias that may be more relevant than we think. It would be a fascinating topic. Studies could be revolved around looking at different actions and unknown biases that are displayed toward minority groups. You could even just ask people what they prefer. You could also give individuals options of choosing a reception desk with a Caucasian or another minority when they first walk in. Have both equal distance from the door and see if they seem to have a preference. They also have the Harvard IAT studies that look at racial preferences with answers that only take seconds. I am definitely more interested in this topic and I began to have ideas about it as I read about the Clark doll studies.

As I thought about racial differences and the effects that it might have on psychology, I begin to have many thoughts and ideas. How do you know that some other variables aren’t taking an effect? What if having a picture on the right hand side would lead a right hand dominant person to pick whatever object or picture is on that side if they have no prefers otherwise. I also had ideas about how one would go about forming an experiment for adults that would be similar to the doll study. I wonder if racism is an inborn trait or if it is taught. How much is nature verses nurture. What if, with adults, they pretended to interview someone for a job rather than pick a doll? May they could be asked to pick an employee based on first impression. There are so many things that could be done with racial experiments and psychology. It would be an exciting topic and I was able to form many ideas while reading about it. Clearly, the Clark study with the dolls interested me and my mind ran away with itself.

In terms of useful information, I think that the look at the future will be most useful. I really like that the material in this chapter takes as much of a forward look as a backward one. It talked about specializations in psychology. I think that all of these specializations will be incredibly useful. Individuals can have more specific focuses and perhaps people with individual and specific interests can have incredible opportunities to thrive. I wonder if it might be useful to break psychology into many subtopics…or whether it would be best left unified. I also think that it would be useful for laymen to know that there are multiple branches to psychology. The more multi-disciplinary, the better in my opinion. Koch made a statement that the word that currently decribes our study “psychology” would be more appropriately titled, “psychological studies”. I think this would be useful and more appropriate. This may even make things less confusing. It would be like organizing all of the study information for the entire field.