What we would like you to do is to find a topic from what we have covered in this week's readings that you are interested in and search the internet for material on that topic. You might, for example, find people who are doing research on the topic, you might find web pages that discuss the topic, you might find youtube clips that demonstrates something related to the topic, etc. What you find and use is pretty much up to you at this point. But use at least 3 sources (only one video please and make sure it adds to the topic).
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Let us know if you have any questions.
--Dr. M
In reading this chapter I think the single most interesting thing that I learned was in regards to Francis Sumner. He was an American psychologist and the first African-American psychologist to receive his PhD. I found it cool that he was able to obtain a PhD in a time of inequality. Upon looking further into the background of “African-American first” I found that he was not the first to receive a PhD in America. The first to receive a PhD in America was Patrick Francis Healy in the 1960’s. He was also the first African-American Jesuit Priest. Healy was the president of Georgetown University and expanded the university after the American Civil War. In think it is amazing that he was the president of a still well-known and large university and at the time would have had very little rights. When I did some more research I found that despite him knowing of his ancestors he keeps that hidden and was thought to be an Irish-American. When I was thinking about the ability to hide who he was from people who would surly hold it against him I thought about the ability to do that today. Could any of us hide something from our families past? The answer is pretty clear that it’s a no; with the internet today to keep anything hidden would be next to a miracle. As for Sumner he never hide his past he was what he was and keep that open to the people around him, so his story is much more amazing. Sumner earned his PhD at Clark University in the 20’s; he went on to found the psychology department at Howard University and was the head of that department until he passed away in 1954.
Francis Sumner had a large impact on psychology with the invention of Black Psychology. This is an area of psychology that I had never heard of before. The field can be defined as the study of behavioral and mental processes of African-Americans as it pertains to identity, struggles, other issues associated to race. This is a major aid to society and at the time was large because of the struggles that any minority was facing in regards to rights and slavery.
So now we are in the 21st century and people for the most part hold equal rights. How does all this historical information pan out to today? Well people like Francis Sumner wanted Americans to truly embrace these equality’s but did we? In America today we see people still impoverished and an overwhelming majority tends to be that of minority races. We no longer have segregated schools but at the same time we still do. We see a community that poverty has taken grip and the ability of a family to get out has been harshly hindered. Schools that tend score lower on test and hold less money also hold populations of minority races that are larger than others. In criminal justice standards it is said that although whites and African-Americans use marijuana about the same rates, African-Americans are 3.73 time more likely to be arrested for possession then whites. So although men like Sumners and Healy broke major barriers to obtain PhDs and do amazing things for their race and the standards in America, what has changed now? Did we ever truly embrace the ideas that they fought for at one time or did we change some papers and laws but keep the social view point similar?
http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/08/23/50-years-after-the-march-american-racial-inequality-persists/
This article talked about the racial separation that still exists today and points out some numbers that made me extremely surprised.
http://www.culturaltourismdc.org/things-do-see/patrick-francis-healy-hall-georgetown-university-african-american-heritage-trail
This article talked about Patrick Healy and provided insight on the first African-American to receive a PhD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_psychology
This Wiki article provided some insight into Black Psychology and opened my eyes to a new field that Sumner started back in the 1920’s.
1a) State what your topic is.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
After reading this chapter, I found William James to be the most interesting. What really caught my attention about him was his theory of emotion. It was easy to relate to and a topic that I would like to look into further. I also thought it was fascinating that he was known as the “first new psychologist.” He brought a completely different outlook to the meaning of psychology by using experimental research. When other psychologists were asked to rate other psychologists, James was ranked first and this is why he was considered to be the “first new psychologist.” This was another reason why I was drawn to his work because he was obviously admired by his peers and fellow psychologists. At one point, he was elected to become president of the APA. I find that it is pretty amazing to be that well liked by others that they would consider him worthy enough of taking on that role. It may seem like a simple role, but back then I am sure it was a huge accomplishment especially at a time when new discoveries were happening and newer psychologists were coming forward.
2)James grew up in a wealthy family in America. He was given exceptional opportunities some of which were being able to attend schools all over the world. He started school in New York city, but later went on to go to schools in England, France and Germany. Not only did he attend school, but he had his own private tutor to help him through school. He became fluent in five different languages. Later he went on to attend Harvard to pursue a career in medicine as a physician. Around this time, his family's wealth had begun to decline, so this increased his will to succeed. After finishing he degree from Harvard, he became very ill and was unable to practice medicine. But, while at Harvard, he was introduced to the new psychology which sparked a huge interest with him. Since he was not practicing medicine, he started to focus solely on psychology. At the age of thirty, he was asked to come to Harvard and teach in the psychology department. He excepted and was a teacher their for thirty-five years. While he was a teacher, he developed and published the first psychology textbook called “Principles of Psychology.”
James had many theories. One of his theories was pragmatism. Pragmatism was that “truth can not be proven.” James believed that instead of truth, we center our attention on the usefulness of the topic. Another one of Jame's theories was emotion. I personally loved this theory. It was interesting and was one of the main reasons why I chose him for my topical blog. In his emotion theory, he was studying the physiology of the human body. He noticed that there were certain triggers when human felt a specific emotion. James believed that we experience a specific reaction before we experience the emotion itself. An example of this is you start crying before you feel sad, or you experience an adrenaline rush before you reach the drop of a roller-coaster, then once you drop down you feel excited.
Those are just two of his theories, but I feel that his emotional theory is the most interesting and informative. It makes you think about how you react to certain situations. I feel that emotions could be studied further and that using the information we have about how emotions work, we could help people who are scared of certain situations such as being afraid of heights. If you are afraid of heights, your heart may pound repeatedly before you feel the fear of being up so high. If we could continue this theory/study may be there is a way we could better help those over come their fears.
3)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James
This article provided information relevant to the topic because it helped me to better understand the career that Jame's had.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/jamesbio.htm
This article talked about Jame's studies/theories. It was informative about his early life as well.
http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/phil/philo/phils/wjames.html
This article was useful in providing insight into the schooling that William James received. It also gave background information about him and talked about some of his work he contributed to Harvard.
J.P.
What we would like you to do is to find a topic from this week's chapter that you were interested in and search the internet for material on that topic.
Please be sure to use at least 3 quality resources. If you use videos, please limit it to one video.
Once you have completed your search and explorations we would like you to:
1a) State what your topic is.
The topic that I chose to expand on is James Baldwin and Consciousness.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
This relates to the chapter because during the spread of psychology and the education of the field of psychology, James Baldwin did some research on the topic of consciousness that is related to psychology. Even though he had the basis down that there are natural things that we do that do not go noticed, I think that there is more information that can be found about the topic like the brain activity when doing these natural actions.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in it because I feel that there is more to expand on with consciousness, brain activity is something that was not discussed. Even though I felt this was a really interesting topic in the chapter I also did not feel like I fully understood all of the attributes of consciousness, so I would like to expand on them making me fully understand what James Baldwin meant by all the attributes.
2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using the information you have about the topic.
The first article I read showed how imitations and repetition relate to consciousness. Both of them are natural habits that we all have, or some that we can form. For instance, when wanting to have a baby learn to do a something task, parents might often do something and have the baby imitate them. After this has happened they will try to get the baby to do this thing on its own by using repetition and imitation until it becomes a natural habit and they begin to do tasks like this all the time. We all have certain tasks we do without to have to even know we are thinking about the task, a lot of them comes in our daily lives. At first we all had to imitate someone so we could do the task right, then with practice and repetition we are able to perform the task without knowing we are even thinking about doing so. Another example that I can relate to the imitation and repetition is my job. I work at Hyvee’s Italian Express and on my first day I was asked to imitate the person training me in. It was hard for me at first, but without seeing how all the tasks were done and what are the correct way to spread the sauce and knead the dough, without the training and using imitation while training all of these tasks would have been harder to learn. After I learned all of the tasks I was still not perfect at pizza making, I worked for three weeks then with all the repetition of creating pizzas I became a professional pizza maker and now I can do the task without having to think of what I am doing.
The second article gave me an insight of how the brain activity is used while doing actions that involve consciousness. There was insight of the electric activity of the brain, but the way the book related the brain activity to the tasks at hand made the topic make sense. Even though some tasks come so natural that it may seem like the brain is not being used, it is still being used but it is used to the task that it is not being used as much. To put it into perspective take driving a car for instance, after years of driving and coming across a lot of scenarios it starts to become a natural task that people just do to get to where they want to go without thinking of what they actually are doing. Even though they feel this way, if they go out for a night of drinks would they be capable of operating a vehicle? The answer is obviously no, but why if the task has become so natural that it seems like they do not think about it? It is because they are actually thinking about it even though it does not occur to them, then when the brain and their sight is altered the task is not a safe task to complete. The same thing would occur when there is scenarios that they come across doing a natural task that are not in the normal, it throws the brain off which causes them to panic because it is out of the natural but the brain is still being used at all times, just more when out of the ordinary happens.
The third article that I read was about the attributes, but in this section they were named differently; subjectively, change, continually, intentionality and selective. The explanation of these in more detail made the whole topic make more sense to me, but at the same time tie it into how I use all of these in a daily basis. Basically the brain is constantly active, even when you think it is not it still is whether it is decided what to change to think about next or just something so natural it does not feel like it is in thought. Even when changing thoughts there is something that fills in the gap between the two different thoughts if there is a rest period, which can be simple tasks or anything but the main point is the brain is constantly in thought. When learning something it is not bought into thought as the same as the person that taught it to you, everyone has different views and takes in information differently which gives them the freedom of how to use and view the information that they accumulate through time. For example when reading Little Red Robbin Hood, one person might intake the story to not trust others, another person might intake that story as to be careful when doing tasks. There are many other ways people can see this story, but what intentionality states is that people are going to make their own assumptions of stories and information that they gather. Also, we do not have control what we choose to have consciousness for, simple distractions are going to find more interest even when we want to be obtaining information in lectures in order to do well on exams. We are all always thinking and changing what we are thinking about, but we choose how to make sense of the information we receive and even when we want to receive other information other things that are more of an interest to us is always going to get in the way.
3) At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Baldwin/Baldwin_1894.html
I liked this link because of how it showed that consciousness can be so natural that we do not even recognize we do things. Things like imitating someone come so natural that we do it without realizing that is what we are doing.
http://natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/ic13/brain.htm
I chose this article because it explains the brain activity during consciousness. It was one of the questions I had when reading this topic in the chapter and I wondered what brain activity goes on when natural movements or actions occur.
http://www.smccd.edu/accounts/larson/psyc390/Docs/Characteristics%20of%20Consc%20Ch%202.pdf
I chose this book because it explains all of the attributes, even though they are worded differently in this book, but it explains them into more detail than the textbook. I wanted this part of consciousness to be explained because I did not fully understand what each different attribute was for consciousness due to them only having one to two sentences in the text book.
Courtney Wiese
Chapter 6
Topical Blog
Spiritualism in the United States
The topic I chose for my topical blog was spiritualism. I chose this topic because I didn’t know Spiritualism was so big in the 19th and 20th century. I always just assumed it was a “weird” movement that the majority of people didn’t believe in. I learned that that was not the case, it actually gained a lot of popularity in the United States! This relates to the chapter because Williams James was actually very interested in Spiritualism. In fact, he even did an extended study on a well-known medium at the time!
One of the sections the chapter discussed was the rise of Spiritualism in the United States. Spiritualism is the religion that believes the spirits of the dead can communicate with the living. They also believe that the soul continues to exist after death. The soul can also grow and improve after death. They believe in God, which they often refer to as “Infinite Intelligence”. In order to communicate with the souls, this religion used mediums. Often, mediums communicated through séances. The souls evolve in the afterlife, and the spirits can also help the world learn more about moral and ethical issues.
Spiritualism originated in New York in 1840. This area of New York was also home to the rise of many other religions, including Mormonism, and the Second Great Awakening. This religion reached its popularity between 1840 and 1920. Another reason Spiritualism developed in this area was because many people in this area already believed that people could communicate with Gods and angels.
It is said that this religion originated as a result of strange noises coming from the home of the Fox’s in Hydesville, New York. The family kept hearing strange knocking sounds in the house. They brought their neighbors over, and no one could figure out where the knocking noises came from. Even stranger, is that these strange knocking noises seemed to be intelligent. The family would ask questions, and the knocking noise would respond. Through the knocks the family believed that the knocks actually came from a spirit of a peddler, who was murdered by the former owner of the Fox’s home. The neighbors were astounded! They started asking the “peddler” personal questions, and supposedly they received fairly correct answers. Not long after one of the daughters of the home traveled to her sister’s home in another city, and there they heard the knocking noises, too. Many different groups came into the Fox home to try and disprove or figure out what the knocking noises were. They were stumped. They then sat with the Fox daughters, and realized they had their own powers, of what we now call ESP. Reportedly, the Fox family dug around their house the next year and found pieces of human bone and teeth. Thus, the movement into spiritualism began.
The first group Spiritualist group was formed in New York in 1851, known as the New York Circle. Shortly after this, preaching about spiritualism began circulating. Women who supported causes such as the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage also tended to like spiritualism the most. It is also important to note that many of the converts to the religion were very educated. Some examples of the most notable converts are William Lloyd Garrison, Horace Greenley, and Chief Justice Williams. Horace Greenley was a very important figure in the Spiritualist movement, and was the owner of the New York Tribune. He became interested in the movement because his son had died and he was hoping he could communicate with him. He visited with the Fox girls and heard the knocks, and believed them to be true. He began producing public demonstrations at a theater in New York City. Even Abraham Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd, looked into spiritualism after the death of her son, in a hope to connect with him.
Soon simple communication with spirits was changed to physical communication. This included the use of mediums, moving articles around the room, playing musical instruments by the spirits, and “spirit writing”, séances and levitating. Another example was found in Keokuk, Iowa in 1854, where two mediums reportedly spoke in tongues of different languages, as though their body was overtaken by the spirits. Séances became much more common place throughout New England during this time period, as the Fox sisters make it more culturally acceptable.
Although Spiritualism was at its height in the 19th century, it was also prominent in the 20th century as well. The National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC) was founded in 1893, which was the first national organization for Spiritualist. This organization remained strong until after the 1920s, when some mediums began to believe in reincarnation, which fragmented the group. Spiritualism began to decline after this point a bit, as parapsychology began to rise, and the use of experimentation and laboratory work hurt the claims of Spiritualism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualism
http://www.parapsychologyinfo.com/Spiritualism/SpiritualismUnitedStates.htm
http://spiritualismandbeyond.com/history.html
I forgot to comment on why I chose my sources!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualism - I chose this website because I wanted basic information on Spiritualism in the United States.
http://www.parapsychologyinfo.com/Spiritualism/SpiritualismUnitedStates.htm This website - I used this website because I liked how it explained the birth of Spiritualism in the United States.
http://spiritualismandbeyond.com/history.html I used this website because it looked more in-depth into the people how influenced this movement.
The most interesting thing in this chapter was the movement and religion of spiritualism. I became fascinated with this concept after reading about William James and his research into the phenomena. Being an open minded individual, I began to wonder if this type of communication between the living and the dead would even be possible. I have heard stories about paranormal things happening to individuals so I thought it would be interesting to read and research on. Research shows that this movement of spiritualism became most prominent in the 1840s up until the 1920s. Spiritualism was said to have more than eight million followers in the United States and Europe. Spiritualists believed that consciousness survived death and that those who died could be contacted by mediums, who could convey messages from the dead to the living. Most mediums did prove to be frauds but William James was interested enough in the phenomena to create a society for psychical research. Spiritualism was practiced by a lot of women who often times were fighting for women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery. Spiritualists believe that even after death that the soul can learn and improve as if we are still amongst the living.
Spiritualism started out, as some note; in March 31, 1848 when allegedly these fox sisters claimed that they could communicate with spirits that were not amongst the living. They said that rapping noises were made audible to the onlooker. Eventually they did admit that this was in fact a hoax but most people made good earnings off this type of work. Many mediums depended on drawing the attention of others in order to engage the open minded into the beyond. The most famous scenario of spiritualism is when Mary Todd Lincoln consulted a spiritualist in hopes of communicating with their dying son. In all reality spiritualism was a way for those who lost someone to be able to cope with the lost in a natural way. Cora Scott was also a notable spiritualist in which it was believed that she had spirits that would communicate through her. Many of these individuals were looking for a way to deal with the Civil War at hand and the many amounts of casualties that were taking place at the time. Spiritualism was the calling of these tough times. Even Fredrick Douglas, ex salve, was a skeptic and believer in spiritualism
Other popular mediums of the time included William Moses and Emma Britten. Moses filled 24 notebooks with automatic writings that were said to include conditions of the spirit world. Moses was also thought to be able to channel a spirit known as the Imperator. This spirit was described as a leader of forty-nine other spirits. He conveyed information to Moses about the spirit world and how information is passed along to people. In sessions, he was allegedly levitated several times, and was able to levitate a large table just by touching it. He was also said to be able to write without even touching his pen. Emma Britten was highly known for her work with spiritualist circle and for her trance lectures which became popular. Many spiritualists didn’t favor evolution by itself as it suggested that species have changed and adapted over time. Some spiritualists thought that if humans didn’t come from god than there must be a type of spiritual evolution. Many spiritualists rejected the notion that there was no god because he was thought to be the “infinite intelligence.” Spiritualism taught that after death spirits progressed to spiritual states in new spheres of existence. This new spheres of existence were said to progress faster than evolution here on earth. Spiritualism can be interpreted in different ways but I think it solely rests on the openness of the individual and how much they are willing to believe that isn’t directly in front of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualism
I found this link very useful in getting some background information on spiritualism. This website digs into the deep roots of spiritualism and how individuals contributed to this movement and religion. To get a general definition of spiritualism and its concepts, this was a great source.
http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/spiritualism.html
I used this site for more detailed information on spiritualism and its concepts. This site also has a great amount of individuals that contributed to spiritualism and its prominent history that I didn’t cover in detail.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/560501/spiritualism
This site provides a great introduction into spiritualism as well as the beliefs and practices associated with the religion. This site was useful in finding practitioners of the movement and individuals that supported other movements during the rise of spiritualism.
1a) State what your topic is.
William James
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Well in this chapter we discover that he is Americans first 'new psychologist and that he contributed many things to the field. He created the book Principles of Psychology, which is one of the most famous books for our field. He did a lot to move the field forward and make progress in America.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I'm interested in it because I had not heard of him much before this chapter. I'm also interested because his wife seemed to help him a lot as well, and in this time period women we still looked down upon and always seen as inferior to men. I would like to learn more about their relationship and how she contributed to him findings and progress in the field.
2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using the information you have about the topic.
Well James was born in New York and was brought up in an upper class and well off family. James's father seemed to have a lot of importance in James's career and life choices and research choices as well. At first James had a dream to pursue a career as an artist, however his dad felt that art was a great hobby but that is wasn't meant to be an actual career. Although his dad did not make James not got into art he did have some influence. James did decide that he not longer wanted to pursue art and felt he was not good enough, so he decided to pursue a degree in chemistry at Havard y. He really didn't know if that was what he wanted to do. If he were in college at the present time he would have started out as an "undecided" major most likely, because he didn't know what he should do. He started out in chemistry, then went to comparative anatomy, then he became interested in physiology and researched psychology as well. He became an expert on a wide variety of subjects because he was interested in them an also wasn't sure about what he should do with his life.
He also traveled a lot in his life time. His father really enjoyed traveling and felt that his children should know multiple languages and be well-rounded. So James was tutored by people in foreign countries as well as America. when he got older he also went to Brazil with Louis Agazzi to study tropical life forms. Then he went back to Germany to receive help for pains he was having and that's when he decided to look more into his mental health and the field of psychology. During this time he was suffering from severe depression. He was looking into Hermann von Helmholtz and that was how he became interested in the psychology field. He did however end up finishing his medical degree from Havard University.
He started to come out of his depression when he was offered a teaching position at Harvard and having a wife and family seemed to help his mental health as well. Since he was feeling much more confident and healthier, he then wrote his series of books on psychology. with the help of his wife. He did create one of the first experimental labs of psychology, but after awhile he lost motivation to do lab research, and decided to focus more on observation instead.
James dealt with many hardships in his life including the death of one of his five children. This caused him and his wife to look into spirituality more.
Overall James had an interesting life and made many psychological contributions. He was a great believer in functionalism, so he believed that one's environment has a huge impact on one's behavior. He also had many students who made contributions to psychology as well, such as: Mary Whiton Calkins, Edward Thorndike, G. Stanley Hall, and John Dewey. It also says that when famous psychologists such as Freud and Carl Jung came to America the first person they wanted to meet was James. So James was obviously very important to the field of psychology as a whole not just to American psychology.
http://www.biography.com/people/william-james-9352726
This site talked a lot about the books that james had written and went into depth about that.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/jamesbio.htm
this site went into his important contributions to his respective fields. So things like functionalism in psychology. It also gave information on whos wors he read in psychology.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/american/genius/william_bio.html
This site provided a lot of detail about James's early life and family life in general. It also went into more detail about his depression and his spiritual journey.
Chapter 6 briefly discusses the James-Lang theory of emotion, but does not include other theories of emotion, leaving the topic short of my expectations. I wanted to read more into how we respond to events, so I took a dive into the interwebs (or more intelligently called the Internet) to find out more. Without further adieu, I present you with the theories of emotion.
To start off, let me introduce Mr. William James and Mr. Carl Lange. These two bright chaps both developed a theory of emotion independently of each other around the same time. In the spirit of "Sharing is caring," they were given co-ownership of said theory, deemed the James-Lange Theory of Emotion. Creativity in naming theories was not a strong point at this time. Nevertheless, these two gents concluded that experiencing an external stimulus leads to a physiological reaction. How you interpret this reaction becomes your emotional reaction. Traditionally, everyone likes to use the example of our reactions to a big old grizzly bear to describe their theories. James and Lange said we see the bear (external stimulus) and begin to tremble as our heart races (physiological reaction). Because your body is freaking out, you think, "I am afraid." Personally, I'd probably be thinking something more along the lines of "Uh oh, it's a bear, I should get out of here!" or more simply, "RUN!"
Two fellas named Walter Cannon and Philip Bard weren't buying into this theory, however. Cannon and Bard probably had nightmares about bears chasing them, so they chose to study something more cuddly: cats. In another stroke of unoriginality, their theory became known as the Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion. They argued that the same bodily reactions can be attributed to many different emotions. Heart racing and sweaty palms could mean nervousness, fear, excitement, anger, or even happiness about cuddling with a cute kitten. Because the same physiological reactions can mean different emotions, they concluded that we experience a stimulus, triggering both bodily and emotional reactions simultaneously, yet independently of one another.
Another interesting theory, with a more creative name, the Opponent-Process Theory, developed by Richard Solomon and John Corbit. This differs greatly from other theories, stating that we experience emotions in relation to emotional opposites. Opposite emotions, for example, can be fear and relief, pleasure and pain, depression and elation, etc. This is why before bungee jumping we may experience a high level of fear, and then afterward we feel relieved: the two have balanced each other out. It is also used to describe drug addiction. Drugs give a sense of pleasure for awhile, but when they wear off there is pain. To reduce this pain requires more drugs, creating a cycle of wanting to experience only the pleasure and get rid of the pain, which requires continuous consumption of the drugs.
Another theory I found to be interesting was the Lazarus Theory, mainly because the name reminds me of the man who died in the Bible and was brought back to life by Jesus. It was developed by Richard Lazarus, who proposed that after we experience the stimulus, we quickly analyze the situation and then react physiologically and emotionally. He used the following example: You are walking down a dark alley late at night and you hear foot steps. You think it may be a mugger and then start to tremble as your heart races and you fear for your safety.
I think all of the theories have some merit to them and all seem to have their place in certain situations. I can recall times where the Lazarus theory seemed to be correct, but also times when my eyes could detect I was in danger and my body immediately reacted before I could begin to even think about how I felt. Thus, I think it would be more fitting that all these distinguished men got together and said, "You know what, maybe we are all right at times and all wrong at times, depending on the situation." After all, "Sharing is caring."
http://psychology.about.com/od/jindex/g/jameslange.htm
This site explains the James-Lang theory and the evidence and process behind its creation.
http://webspace.ship.edu/tosato/emotion.htm
This explains the Cannon-Bard theory and Opponent Process theory in response to the James-Lang theory.
http://webspace.ship.edu/tosato/emotion.htm
This site provides some more information on the James-Lange and Cannon-Bard theories as well as the Lazarus theory.
1a) State what your topic is.
- G. Stanley Hall.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
- Because G. Stanley Hall was a pioneering figure in the development of early American psychology.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
- Because G. Stanley Hall was the founder and first president of the American Psychological Association, and created the first American Psychiatric journal. He was influential in the development of child psychology, and although he did not experiment; he was extremely important to psychologies growth in America.
2) Granville Stanley Hall was born February 1, 1844 to a religious family with a strong puritan background. Hall grew up with a high promise of doing big things. He received much of his education at home, and the school nearby. When he was fifteen he began to teach at the local school house. Although Hall wanted to travel the world, and emerse himself in different cultures his mother was adamant that he seek a higher education in seminary. Reluctantly Hall sought, and succeeded in seminary school, and eventually went on to be a pastor at a local church. However, this was not the academia lifestyle that he had looked forward to. So, Hall followed his dream and went to Europe, where he sat in on classes, and got his doctoral degree. He obtained his PH.D in the United States under William James; and became the first PH.D in Psychology in the United States. Because of this status he began to teach at Johns Hopkins, and later Clark University. After a few years he decided to go abroad, and worked in Wundt's laboratory, but did not like what Wundt was doing; so he came back to the states. Hall did not like the lab setting and chose to think psychological problems through logically. However, he did create a journal for others to submit there findings, and recognized the importance of the formal lab setting.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/G._Stanley_Hall
This gave a good over view of Halls life.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/hall.htm
This provided a much more in-depth understanding of Hall
http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/hall-g-stanley.pdf
This gave some information about Hall's life, but a lot of information about his work.
Topical Blog: William James
“Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.”
-William James
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”
-William James
William James was born into a very wealthy family. His father was interested in theology and philosophy. His father also provided his children with rich education by taking them to Europe frequently, having them attend the best possible schools, and immersing them into culture and art; because of this James went on to become one of the most important figures in psychology and his brother Henry James became one of the most acclaimed American novelists.
James was not always interested in psychology, early in school he expressed an interest in becoming a painter, but his father wanted him to study science or philosophy. It was only after persisting to his father did he permit his son to formally study painting. He then went on to study painting with an artist by the name of William Morris Hunt for more than a year. But it was a short dream; James abandoned painting and enrolled at Harvard to study chemistry.
After switching to Harvard Medical School, due to the family money beginning to run out, James became very unhappy in the life of medicine. James spent the next two years in France and Germany while suffering from health problems and severe depression. It was during this time that he found Hermann von Helmholtz. James studied under Helmholtz and became increasingly interested in psychology.
A Theory James developed was one he developed and proposed independently with another physiologist by the name of Carl Lange. This theory was known as the James-Lange Theory of Emotion. This theory of emotion proposes that an event triggers a physiological reaction, which we then interpret. According to the theory, emotions are caused by our interpretations of these physiological reactions. For example, I am trembling and then I become afraid. Our emotions are a result of physiological reactions and not the other way around.
This holds a lot of weight in the area of psychology, even though it has received criticism by modern day researchers. It is used when studying of anxiety disorders, panic disorders, and specific types of phobias. For example a person may receive a physiological reaction when in a public place. It is used in cognitive behavioral theory the James-Lange Theory of Emotion is used to help diminish and ultimitaly extinguish the association between the negative emotional state such as anxiety and the public place.
“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”
-William James
“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”
-William James
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/jamesbio.htm
I picked this link because I have used it a lot in the past. I like it because not only does it give information about why this person is particularly famous but it also tells us about their personal life, which I love hearing about.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/william_james.html
I love this site I use it all the time. I love looking at and reading the quotes from people and when I found that William James was on here I had to look through it and find a quote from him to use on my blog post this week.
http://video.about.com/psychology/Profile-of-William-James.htm
I picked this link because I like to watch videos. I feel like that is the way I learn the best. I retain information really well this way. Also this video had a lot of good information and points.
1a) State what your topic is.
Matthew Vassar
Vassar College
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
During the nineteenth century women were discouraged from furthering their education. When they were admitted into schools, they were admitted to programs that “suited” them such as teaching. Matthew Vassar created the first college for women, Vassar College. Vassar believed that women had the same intellectual as men so they should have the same right as men as well.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I’m interested in this because I believe that his piece of history helped me as a woman as well. Maybe if in the nineteenth century Vassar never came up with this idea, teaching would still be our only option. Teaching is an excellent program, however, what about all of the women who are not interested in teaching? Maybe this was the start to women being able to choose their own majors today.
2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using the information you have about the topic.
Lydia Booth believed in educating children and mothers being able to help educate their own children. She was the niece of Matthew Vassar. In 1837 Booth opened Poughkeepsie Female Seminary where she taught geometry, algebra, and other subjects as well. After Poughkeepsie Female Seminary continued to grow, Vassar purchased a new building for his niece. Booth called this new site Cottage Hill Seminary. Apparently Booth was the first person to bring the idea of a women’s college to her uncle. She wondered how a mother could educate her children if she wasn’t educated herself. Vassar was very inspired by his niece’s drive and dedication to teaching women and trying to help them gain education.
I feel as though Vassar had to be a great man in order for him to consider his niece’s opinion even though the idea was looked down upon during the nineteenth century. I find him to have been a brave individual not caring about what others would think of him by supporting women’s education. Booth died before Vassar did, and It’s been said that Vassar did not give credit to his niece for encouraging him to open the women’s college right away, so I would like to learn more about that and find out why that is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Vassar
http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/matthew-vassar/lydia-booth.html
http://www.hvmag.com/core/pagetools.php?pageid=8205&url=/Hudson-Valley-Magazine/February-2011/The-Pride-and-Joy-of-Po-rsquokeepsie-A-Vassar-College-History/&mode=print
1a) State what your topic is. b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter. c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
The topic that I chose to discuss is Francis Sumner. Francis Sumner relates to Chapter 6 because a good portion of this chapter talks about education for women and minorities in the latter half of the 19th century. Francis Sumner was an African American man who received his degree in psychology during a time when it was difficult for women and minorities to get advanced education. I am interested in Francis Sumner because he was the first African American to receive his PhD in psychology. I think this is interesting because this was a difficult time in history for a man of color, or for women to gain any advanced education.
2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using the information you have about the topic.
Francis Sumner is known for being the “Father or Black Psychology” because he was the first African American man to receive his PhD in psychology. Sumner received his undergraduate degree in English and went on to get his graduate degree. Before he could get into his doctoral program he was shipped off into World War I. After returning home Sumner was accepted into the PhD program at Lincoln University in 1920. He then became a professor where he taught racial bias and educational social justice.
Sumner was interested in a more social aspect of psychology and wanted to study racial bias. Although he wrote several noteworthy journal articles many of his writings weren’t accepted due to his race. Even though Sumner was discriminated against, this didn’t stop him from creating the department of psychology at Howard University. One of Sumner’s students, Kenneth Clark, studied research on prejudice, discrimination, and segregation which ended up being huge contributor of the well-known 1954 Supreme Court Case, Brown vs. The Board of Education.
Francis Sumner put a lot of work into trying to separate psychology and philosophy at Howard University in order to create a separate department for psychology interested students and faculty. He made a great contribution to the field of psychology and by taking it more step further by being the first African American receive higher education.
3) At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/psychologists/sumner-prosser.aspx
This site was very useful. I chose this website because I wanted to know more about Sumner and his contributions.
http://legacy.earlham.edu/~knigher/Contributions.htm
I chose this site because it gave a list of Francis Sumner’s contributions and the different things he did through out his life.
http://legacy.earlham.edu/~knigher/Professional%20Biography.htm
I chose this site because the information I found supported other information that I read in the textbook. Therefore, I felt as though it was reliable information.
In this chapter I found the idea of spiritualism a whole lot more fascinating when I read more about it than I did when I had just looked over it when I had to read the chapter as a whole. Since it is around that time of Halloween, I thought this would be a great topic to research for this week’s topical blog. The topic of spiritualism relates to the chapter because William James had an eye for this kind of thing and had a great interest for the idea of spiritualism and mediums. I am interested in the subject of spiritualism just because the whole idea of Halloween and being a fanatic of the holiday runs in my family; we love scary movies and have our own haunted house so I’d say I like the idea of spiritualism and I am interested in it just because I have loved the thought of something weird and spooky going on.
We all know from reading the chapter that spiritualism is idea of the body living on after death and those who have fallen could be contacted by mediums. The modern spiritualist movement is what it is usually called became something on March 31st of 1848. There is one event in particular that struck the start of the spiritualist movement; this event goes by the Hydesville events, March 31, 1848. I read up on many of times during the gathering of the information for this topical blog post; I came across the same information about what happened on those nights in Hydesville, New York.
During this event the Fox family had moved to a small town in New York and begun living in a home that was supposedly haunted by spirits, these spirits caused many people to move out because they were terrified of the noises they had heard. The two young girls of this family had begun to hear footsteps and knocking noises inside of the house from a spirit. To make a long story short, the whole family started to hear noises coming from all over the house and started to ask the spirit questions hoping that it would answer. All in all they had found out that a man had been murdered in the house and buried downstairs in the cellar. All of this information was uncovered by the children and family asking questions to the spirit.
The idea of spiritualism had a great impact on those who have lost loved ones during the civil war and wanted to connect with their dead loved ones. This idea never lost its strength and grew to new heights and the idea moved to the university level and even the church had to get involved with it, many people became interested in the largely spread topic. The idea with spiritualism being stated in the church also brings out the idea that spiritualism is a religion that believes that life lives after death and some psychic abilities, which we have learned about in our book and I have read numerous webpages about.
http://www.fst.org/spirit4.htm
This website had a great amount of information on the event that happened in New York back in 1848 that sparked the spiritualist movement. It kind of gave me the goose bumps.
http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/spiritualism.html
This website kind of got a little wordy but had great information that helped me understand the ideas that were used in the universities and also in the churches.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-iUUyfgqxU
This lady believes that healing energy can come through the hands of psychics, and she talks a little about what happens when they are in practice of “spiritualism”. She has heard stories but she doesn’t say that she has had any experiences herself, so I’m not sure if I believe her story, but this is a short video that has some good quick information.
The topic that I decided to further research from this week’s reading of chapter 6 is pragmatism. Pragmatism seems like a very interesting topic to me because it deals with how people think based on the ideas of philosophy. This topic is mentioned in the reading because William James was a believer in the pragmatic way of thinking. I found William James to be very interesting as well because of his ideas. I also found it interesting that he did not want to be known as a psychologist. I think that learning more about the ideas behind pragmatism will help me learn more about the way that William James thought and why he did not believe he was a psychologist. I also think that pragmatism is an interesting way to look at philosophy.
The idea of pragmatism began in the United States around the year 1870. The idea was brought forth by a couple of gentlemen, the first one being William James, who we read all about in chapter 6. William James was also working with Charles Sanders Peirce, Chauncey Wright, John Dewey, and Georges Herbert Mead. Peirce was credited with coining the term “pragmatism” but James was the first one to use it in one of his writings. Many other people followed the ideas laid out by these men, especially the ideas of William James.
Pragmatism is defined as a “reasonable and logical way of doing things or of thinking about problems that is based on dealing with specific situations instead of on ideas and theories.” To me, this definition seemed a little difficult for me to wrap my head around, so I looked up a simpler one. In the simplest terms, the idea of pragmatism can be summarized by saying “whatever works, is likely true.” People that believe in the pragmatic way of thinking believe that the world is always changing, therefore truth is always changing. Because of this, no one person can claim to possess any final or ultimate truth. William James wrote two well-known books on pragmatism and his thoughts on the subject. John Dewey also wrote two books on it. Dewey also implemented the ideas of pragmatism into children and education.
James, Peirce, Wright, Dewey, and Mead all relied on the idea that thought is a tool for prediction, action and problem-solving. They also all agreed that pragmatism rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. All of these ideas further support the fact that there is no absolute truth, and that everything changes, even thought. There are some other sciences that also follow these basic ideas and support the same thought processes. These fields of philosophy include epistemology, metaphysics, the philosophy of science and the philosophy of language. I did a different topical blog on epistemology, so I thought it was interesting that I chose similar topical blog posts twice in a row.
Pragmatism is still a kind of a popular idea. It gained interest a couple years ago with W.V.O. Quine and Wilfrid Sellars. In the 1960’s these two gentlemen used pragmatism to criticize logical positivism. Pragmatism also shows up in many other aspects of science today like in social sciences, public administration, feminism, and urbanism. I find this idea to be interesting and am curious to see how long it will stick around for in the future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism
I found this website very helpful while researching the topic of pragmatism. This website went in depth on the topic and gave me a lot of good information to write this blog post on. This website gave a lot of information on the history of pragmatism and also a lot of information on the people that developed and furthered the ideas behind pragmatism. It also included a lot of information on the different aspects of science and life that pragmatism is used in. I used a lot of information from this website in my topical blog post.
http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Younkins/Deweys_Pragmatism_and_the_Decline_of_Education.shtml
This website went in depth on the way that John Dewey used the ideas behind pragmatism in education. It gave me a lot of information about John Dewey and everything that he did with this subject. I found this website to be pretty helpful and I used some of the information in it in my blog post.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/pragmati/
Like the first website I used, this website also gave me a lot of historical information about pragmatism. It also provided information on the people that stood behind this philosophical idea and what they all did in the subject field. I found it to be pretty helpful, and it helped me be sure of what I read in the first website to use in my blog post.
http://atheism.about.com/od/philosophyschoolssystems/p/pragmatism.htm
This last website I used to really break down the ideas of pragmatism. This website helped me to simplify what pragmatism really was, and it really helped me to understand it in the simplest form. I used a couple things from this website in my blog post, including some information on the people, like William James and John Dewey, that really supported this philosophical idea.
In this week’s chapter, I was very interested in the topic of consciousness. I have read some philosophy books before and consciousness is a very important thing to the discipline of philosophy. As psychology is in essence a scientific empirical approach to philosophy, consciousness should still be a topic of great interest.
This week I looked a lot more into what consciousness exactly is, or rather what it is thought to be. There are many different conflicting thoughts on what consciousness is. The biggest separation of these theories is whether or not it can be thought of in physical terms. Philosophers continually jump back to Descartes’ famous tagline “I think, therefore I am”. The topic of debate around this line is the order of operations. Are you conscious because you can produce thought, or can you produce thought because you are conscious? The physical view of consciousness is primarily the Westernized approach and can be thought of in many different ways. Property dualists claim that consciousness is non-physical, but emerges from physical systems (the brain) at a certain point of complexity. The reductionists say that consciousness is nothing more than a function of the brain. The biological identity theory says that all of consciousness is the result of the accumulation of sensory messages from the nervous system and the endocrine system. This is potentially the most physical of an explanation you can get for the consciousness.
The theory finds correlations with temporal lobe structures and phenomena such as déjà vu, out of body experiences, hallucinations, and depersonalization. They have found that many of these phenomena can be triggered through electronic stimulation. This means that there is a purely physical explanation for metaphysical experiences, which many people attribute to a consciousness, a higher power, or a soul (generally correlating with said higher power). This approach can get pretty confusing, but it is incredibly interesting. I would recommend following the link to learn more about this approach. The Eastern way of thinking is responsible for the other branch of thought on the consciousness, which is that it is a metaphysical construct. The western way of thinking says that information is only reliable if it is obtained from a third-person perspective. The eastern view says the exact opposite to be true. They claim the only way to gain reliable insight on the conscious is through phenomenology. Phenomenology is the study of the structures of experience or consciousness. Eastern cultures, (Hinduism, Buddhism, etc) believe that the only way to gain insight into certain mental processes is through introspection. I believe a biological explanation makes more sense, but much like the nature/nurture debate, the two approaches could work together.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/
I used this link to explore more in-depth the distinct field within philosophy
http://cogprints.org/6453/1/How_to_define_consciousness.pdf
This essay gave me a clear understanding of various views of what consciousness is as well as how one should go about thinking of it.
http://www.williamjames.com/Theory/BIOLOGY.htm
This essay explains in depth the biological identity theory, which interested me because they give a purely physical explanation of something most people consider to be metaphysical.
1a) State what your topic is.
My topic is Francis Sumner, one of the first black Psychologists.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
This chapter talked a lot about how Psychology has changed over the years. One way it has changed is the acceptance of black people being able to achieve more when it comes to their studies.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in Francis Sumner because I think the way that Psychology has changed is fascinating. I think it is ridiculous that just because of the color of his skin, he was not able to do as much as he wanted to do with his life.
2. Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner.
Francis Sumner was born in Arkansas in 1895. Sumner’s Parents had a huge role in his Education. After elementary school, his parents decided to educate him themselves. His father would give him intense reading and writing assignments. His parents would also work extra hard so they would have money to buy him textbooks. He did not have a high school education but was able to pass an entrance exam that got him into Lincoln University.
Sumner graduated from Lincoln with honors and then moved on to Clark University and got a bachelor’s degree in English. After graduating from Clark, he went back to Lincoln as a graduate student and was mentored by G. Stanley Hall. Hall had made some remarks that did seem degrading towards black people, but he and Sumner ended up having a relationship of mutual respect. Sumner got denied from Illinois and American University and that is when he turned to ask Hall for help. Sumner got his M.A. in 1917 and received his PhD degree in Psychology in 1920. He was the first Black person to receive a degree in Psychology.
Throughout Sumner’s career, he made many contributions to Psychology. One of his students was Kenneth Clark. Clark’s psychological research on prejudice, discrimination, and segregation in the developing child was used in the Brown vs. Board of Education case in 1954. Sumner also did research on numerous topics including research including equality between blacks and whites. Sumner also created an award that went to a Psychology student with the most outstanding essay on a particular topic. The biggest contribution I think Sumner made was that established an independent department of Psychology at Howard University. Today, Sumner is considered the “Father of Black Psychology.”
3) At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/psychologists/sumner-prosser.aspx
I chose this source because it was helpful on giving me information about Francis Sumner’s past and where he went to school.
http://legacy.earlham.edu/~knigher/Contributions.htm
I chose this source because it told me great information about the contributions that Sumner made to Psychology. It also shows how much he changed Psychology for African Americans.
http://legacy.earlham.edu/~knigher/personal%20biography.htm
I used this source because it gave me information on Sumner’s schooling, from elementary to doctorate school.
What we would like you to do is to find a topic from this week's chapter that you were interested in and search the internet for material on that topic.
Please be sure to use at least 3 quality resources. If you use videos, please limit it to one video.
Once you have completed your search and explorations we would like you to:
1a) State what your topic is.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
My topic is Mary Whiton Calkins. This relates to the chapter because she was one of the first women to study and teach the field of psychology. This was a significant contribution to the field of psychology for women and she eventually became president of the APA. I am interested in her because she made it possible for more women to study psychology and because at the time, obtaining a degree and working in the field like she did was not easy.
2) Mary Whiton Calkins was born in 1863 and spent her childhood in the United States with her four siblings and parents. Calkins was intelligent and in 1882, she attended Smith College. Smith college was one of the few places women could obtain degrees as it was a college specifically for women. At Smith, Calkins studied philosophy and became interested in labor unions and women’s suffrage. After college she traveled with her family, but returned to teach Greek at Wellesley College. While at Wellesley, Calkins was asked to learn about psychology and implement a psychology program at Wellesley. In order to learn about the field, she took a year off from work and studied at Harvard. She returned to Wellesley and taught psychology, and eventually worked with Hugo Munsterberg. Calkins returned to Wellesley and taught psychology until she turned the department over to Eleanor Gamble in 1929. Calkins wrote extensively about both psychology and philosophy and was president of the APA for a term.
One of the most interesting things about Calkins is that she was denied a degree from Harvard both while alive and after her death. Calkins looked into several colleges to do her doctorate work at. She originally intended to do her research at Harvard Annex, under a man by the name of Josiah Royce, because at the time Harvard did not allow women in the college. With the support of Royce and William James, as well as a letter of support from her father, she was able to convince Charles Eliot, the president of Harvard at the time, to allow her to attend classes. James and Royce were strong supporters of this movement and she attended lectures taught by those two professors. Calkins did all the work required of a graduate student, but when her program was completed, she was denied an official degree. In 1902, she was offered a Ph.D. by Radcliffe but denied it. After her death, several psychologists petitioned Harvard to grant Calkins a degree posthumously, but were denied based on the fact that women were not allowed to attend Harvard at the time she attended.
3) http://legacy.earlham.edu/~harriem/personal.htm I chose this website because it gave lots of information about Calkins’ personal life, which the other websites I looked at did not. It also talked about her work with Munsterberg and her time at Harvard.
http://www.apa.org/about/governance/president/bio-mary-whiton-calkins.aspx This website is the APA website, which is relevant because Calkins was president of the APA. It had reliable information about her term as well as Calkins’ professional career.
http://www.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/CALKINS.html This website had a .edu ending which says that it is probably reliable information. This gave more information about Calkins’ professional career as well as her time at Harvard.
1a) State what your topic is: My topic is Mary Calkins and how she was screwed out of a Harvard PhD.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter:
The topic of Mary Calkins not receiving a PhD from Harvard relates to this chapter because it shows how tough it was for women to get an education and when they did, they still were not treated equally.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it:
I am interested in this because it’s another step in the direction for women’s and minorities’ rights in America. In Mary Calkin’s case, she disproves much of the beliefs that women were incapable of higher education and the reaction of most men that they were threatened by her success.
2) I find it ironic when I go to the Harvard University website and find that their president is a woman. It makes it tougher to understand the stance they take when it comes to refusing to grant a PhD to Mary Whiton Calkins. I decided to research this decision to see what actually happened and where this issue stands today. Our text states that William James, among others, appealed to Harvard to grant her a PhD even going as far as to say she was superior to all the other candidates. Harvard refused, eventually offering her a Radcliffe College PhD, a college she never attended. This time she refused. Harvard never changed its mind.
I thought that somewhere along the line this would have been made right. I was apparently wrong. I went to the Harvard website, typed in “Mary Calkins” in the site search engine, and nothing came up. She is not listed anywhere on that site. Even though she refused the offer of a PhD from Radcliffe College she is discussed on the Radcliffe website. Her story is mentioned in a lecture by Helen Horowitz entitled “Lecture on the History of Women at Harvard” in honor of Harvard’s 375th anniversary.
I found the original letter that was sent to Harvard on Mary Calkin’s behalf by William James, Hugo Munsterberg, and four other men. This letter was written in 1894. In 1902, she was offered the Radcliffe PhD. In 1927, a petition signed by thirteen prominent alumni was presented to Harvard requesting that Mary Calkins receive her PhD. Once again, Harvard refused. In 2002, Karyn Boatright, a psychologist and her students at Kalamazoo College petitioned Harvard to grant the degree. They designed a website to help with the cause, a website that no longer exists. I contacted Ms. Boatwright and she gave me an update on this effort. It is still ongoing and she sent me a paper she wrote in 2010. I have a copy of it that I can show to the class if anyone is interested in it.
3)
This is the letter that was written to Harvard on Mary Calkin’s behalf by William James and others requesting a PhD be granted to her:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1527-2001.1993.tb00102.x/pdf
This is the Radcliffe College website and the text of a lecture that addresses the Mary Calkin’s PhD situation:
https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/news/in-news/remarks-its-complicated-375-years-women-harvard
This website talks about Mary Calkin’s life and work and also has a section on the efforts to grant her a PhD from Harvard:
http://www.feministvoices.com/mary-whiton-calkins/
1a) State what your topic is.
My topic for this assignment is William James.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
William James is discussed throughout Chapter 6. The first place that he comes up is the section that talks about modern psychology. William James is known as America’s first “new” psychologist and in this chapter all of his ideas were discussed under this section.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
William James is a very interesting man because he is more contemporary so I think that I am interested in learning more because I am able to better understand what he is talking about. Also it’s interesting to compare James to older famous individuals and what their differences or similarities are with psychology.
2) William James was more contemporary as he is known as America’s first “new” psychologist. His ideas of introspection, consciousness, emotion, and habit are what I remember learning about in previous courses but I don’t remember a whole lot about them. So this is another reason I wanted to research William James so I could refresh my memory. Introspection is self-observation and a reflection on the states of consciousness that characterizes a person’s mental health. A person’s introspections rely on memory. James discussed consciousness and he wanted to identify individual elements of consciousness and how they could form to the mind. He came up with some basic attributes of consciousness which include; it is personal, it is constantly changing, it is sensibly continuous, it is selective, and it is active. James wanted to also see what the function of consciousness was so he believed that it serves the function of selection which means it enables us to choose one action over another. The next idea discussed was habit but I couldn’t find very much information about this topic. He believed that habits have innate tendency’s which are also known as instincts, but some of these are due to education which could be known as acts of reason. The last idea that I wanted to look at of William James’s is his idea of emotion. James believed that we respond to a situation and then experience an emotion. His thesis of emotion is that perception of an emotion arousing event happens then occurs the subjective experience of emotion followed by the bodily reaction. He has the idea that our heart starts pounding before we even experience a fearful event. When researching I really didn’t find that much information about his idea on emotion as I would have liked but I did find out more information as well as things were made clear for me that I didn’t understand before researching.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/jamesbio.htm
This website provided information about William James and his history.
http://www.psych.utah.edu/gordon/Classes/Psy4905Docs/PsychHistory/Cards/James.html
This website was mostly discussing James and functionalism.
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/wundtjames.html
This website was very helpful with discussing his different ideas of habit and emotion.
B.H.
I decided to do my topic on education for women and minorities. This topic relates to the chapter because back in the 19th century educational opportunities for women were limited and they were even worse for minorities. Women were considered to be inferior to men and minorities were sweep up by the slavery era which meant a widespread belief among whites that blacks were inferior. This classification of women and minorities interests me because nowadays women and minorities are being treated equal and are competing for the same jobs men are going for.
Women were only considered to be a wife and a mother. Around the world, women dominate the universities and professions to a certain extent that leading institutions are running a campaign to recruit more white males. In Royal Veterinary School over 3 quarters of the students are female, women overall, not just in veterinary school are taking over men in education. Figures from professions that were traditionally male based reveal the workplace gender revolution. In law, women account for 60 percent of the jobs, in medical school they account for 56 percent. White males are now under represented because while they make up for 45 percent of the population they only account for 20 percent of college’s intake. Brochures and other materials have been redesigned with photos and quotes from white male students to persuade and target boys to visit schools and college roadshows. They have also been targeting groups of minorities of both genders who together represent 10 percent of the population but only 6 percent of students attending college.
To create more of a lucrative balance, somebody needs to address what it is about our education system that is allowing females to our perform males. With the continuation of this trend, this will soon spark a fundamental sociological change around the world. A woman striving in education has also sparked issues; boys are now struggling in school for some reason. Experiments have been untaken to see if having female or men professors nowadays benefits a certain gender or is irrelevant. They also have researched structures of schooling and are swaying away from outdoor, physical curriculums to modular exams and routine coursework and quizzes. The growth of opportunity for high education back in the 19th century was not equally available to all Americans. Now there are no barriers to any specific group or minority and nothing is stopping people from becoming educated. Equality has taken over and everyone is given an opportunity in today’s world.
http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2011/01/cover-men.aspx
This website was relevant because it provided me with information on how men are possibly becoming the minority when it comes to education today.
http://www.aao.org/yo/newsletter/200806/article04.cfm
This website showed the demographic differences in regards to women from the past to present.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Feducation%2Funiversityeducation%2F9484597%2FWhite-males-now-classed-as-a-minority-group-at-university.html&ei=ZQlWUvxJiqarAZKmgJAL&usg=AFQjCNFZGAr-gipiJhdfeOExfhEn4pFlIg
This website provided information on how women are taking over me in professions and education relating to different places around the world.
1a) Spiritualism and parapsychology
1b) I started with looking up with spiritualism and as I was researching I would find another word to look up and that’s how I found my sources. Writing and research are much easier when finding new sources comes easy and naturally.
1c) In all honesty I think all this stuff is false, but because there is such a large body of information on it I figured it would be easy to write about. And though I think that parapsychology and the like are crap, it is fun to theorize about it.
Spiritualism is a religion based on the belief that humans can connect with the dead, mainly for seeking knowledge about the afterlife, seeking guidance, and predicting the future. Spiritualism is not linked to one prophet, but rely on spirits with whom they connect with in order to form their religion. Being able to connect with the dead has been apart of almost every religion in some facet. Some religions, like voodoo, have specialists that communicate with the dead called mediums. Mediums abilities vary throughout religions and individuals. For simplicity mediums will be referred to mediums familiar to spiritualism versus voodoo or occult practices. Spiritualism caught fire in the middle of the 19th century and is still practiced today. It spread worldwide but was most prominent in the US and UK, both in practice and criticism. Séances, a spiritualism ritual, were conducted to mediums to establish communication to the dead; most were hired by someone to contact someone specifically. During this ritual almost anything could be interpreted as abnormal such as a static object like a chair moving without an external force acting upon it. Also mediums would claim to be able to hear, see, feel, or some how experience a spirit and convey its message. Some techniques took this a step further with automatic writing, a precursor to the Ouija board. Thankfully science and major skeptics put forth effort to put an end to this ridiculousness.
At the turn of the century, many famous mediums were being accused, exposed, turned in, arrested, and imprisoned for fraud. Of course there were skeptics since the origins of spiritualism, but as science was becoming more popular and concrete it began to weed out pseudo-sciences like parapsychology. Spiritualism injected itself into the world of science when it began to make connections with the dead via the telegraph and other technological advancements. It also caught the curiosity of major scientific and influential members of science and society: First Lady Mary Lincoln, Robert Owen, William Crookes, Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Dickens, and psychology’s own William James. But because Spiritualism was taking off during the 19th century, it was entangled with other 19th century issues. Probably the century’s most popular debate would be evolution. Spiritualism claims that spirits move through planes or spheres as they become more refined (sounds a lot like evolution huh?). Had spiritualism developed prior to the theory of evolution it may not have this idea that spirits can “evolve”; some factions of spiritualism support reincarnation over planes and spheres.
The practice of spiritualism for the most part is dead excluding half drunk high schoolers going to a local park with a Ouija board. But out of the hype and decline of spiritualism at the turn of the century came the paranormal sciences, specifically parapsychology. Parapsychology is the study of unexplainable and theoretical psychological happenings. It was grounded in the study of extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis by early psychologists, most notably Joseph B. Rhine. Rhine did not create the term parapsychology, but he did expand and solidify it, which also separated it from psychology. It studies some phenomenon found in spiritualism like clairvoyance, trance states and apparition communication, but it encompasses so much more like precognition, telekinesis, and reincarnation. Parapsychology was academically studied in universities for nearly a century. It managed to survive because the field established parapsychology journals and fought criticism with a how-are-you-going-to-disprove-it attitude. It peaked in the 1960s and 70s because of the large occult movements happening throughout the nation. It died shortly thereafter as an academic study. Now the field is reduced to studying near-death experiences and déjà vu feelings. One typical study is remote viewing in which a participant is asked to describe an object that is hidden. Another popular study is having participants think of random outcomes on a coin toss, die roll, or random number generator and seeing if their prediction comes to their fruition. Though parapsychology is in its dying days save for ghost hunters, it is the closest, most modern “scientific” study of what spiritualists were putting their faith into.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology
This source was extensive on parapsychology’s past, present, and future. It described the early origins in academic settings and how it evolved to its most popular era of the 60s and 70s. It also had examples of staple experiments from every time period.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualism
This source told the story of Spiritualism’s rise and fall. It showed spiritualism’s origins and how it became popular through the Civil War. Many family members of men who fought in the war wanted to contact their dead relatives. It also explained how spiritualism was influenced by other contemporary issues like evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediumship
I used this source to gain more insight on what mediums did. It explained what kind of rituals they performed as well as their parlor tricks used to appear legitimate.
1) After reading this chapter, the person and topic that I found the most interesting was William James. He was known for being the first to teach Psychology. One quote that I found very interesting that James said was, “the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.” William James came from a family that was driven by a great father. His father was very focused in each of his children’s life. He wanted to see and do everything he could do to have all of his children to succeed in education. William James first went to school at Harvard Medical School, but later withdrew because he realized that he didn’t like science. A couple of years later, James slipped into a depression. During his depression this is when the realm of psychology came creeping into his life, and never would leave. He taught at Harvard Medical School and in the midst of that he developed one of the first psychology experimental labs.
2) William James was a great founder in the world of psychology. While teaching he had soon to be famous psychologists such as Mary Whiton Calkins, Edward Thorndike, G. Stanly Hall, and John Dewey. James also put so much faith in Mary Whiton Calkins during a time that women were not allowed to receive an education and if they did it was wrong.
James came forth with the idea of Pragmatism. This is a theory that the certainty of an idea can never really be proven. However, the idea that is created is put on spotlight of how useful it is. Another theory that he came to play with was that of Functionalism. This is putting so much attention on a large event, then putting that impact to the outside world on behavior.
Probably the most influential theory that James came up with was the James- Lange Theory of Emotion. Not only did James introduce this theory but so did Carl Lange, thus coming up with the name of the James- Lange Theory of Emotion. The thing with emotions is that can be hard to understand. However, this theory does explain a lot. It states we are interfaced with an event, that event then leads to a psychological reaction, and then we have to take what is going on and interpret the event. Our feelings are put forth by the psychological reactions. We still see this today and how our feelings are. Whatever we are feeling is initially caused by an event.
3)
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/jamesbio.htm
This site was a great synapsis of William James life and his ideas. It is a simple take on something so complex.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/james-o/
This site goes into every in depth detail of James’ life and his ideas. If you were wanting to know a lot more, this is a great place to start!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev4wVo0i5kM
This video gives a brief description of what the James-Lange Theory of Emotion is. It is nice to listen to a video instead of reading article or site all the time.
1a) My topic for this post is about spiritualism and how its influence has affected people over the years. I would also like to see what its influence has been in recent years.
1b) The topic relates to this week’s chapter because William James was interested in it. We read how he was deeply influenced by this type of thinking later in his life.
1c) The reason why I am interested in it has to do with my fascination with the spiritual realm. I also would like to see what inspired James to turn to this form of philosophy/religion for his inspiration.
2) People have always had a keen interest in the possibility of another world. We have seen throughout history how every culture has had its own methods of promoting an alternative reality. Included in this type of thinking has been the thought that once someone dies there are still ways that they influence the present world. Much effort and speculation has been put forth to communicate with the deceased. This dates back centuries and even shows up in the Christian Bible.
Modern Spiritualism as a defined religion from my research has roots to a work published in 1847 titled The Principles of Nature. Soon after its publication, many came forward with claims of having contact with the dead. It was interesting to me that the height of the modern spiritualism was around 1870, about the same time James was fully enthralled with the subject. Spiritualism has roots in many different religions and beliefs. At the time when it was becoming a very popular topic, it called into question religion and science. It tried to find empirical evidence to back the idea that communication with the dead and the thought of an afterlife could be explained through scientific data. I believe this is why James turned to this form of thinking to try to unite the ideas that he had grown up with (Christianity) with ideas he learned while pursuing higher education (Evolution and philosophical ideas).
I looked into James’ involvement with the spiritualism movement to see what his ideas on the subject were, and how they influenced his thought. From reading several articles, he did attend many séances and sessions with mediums but it seems to be from the standpoint that he was trying to observe through scientific study on whether the phenomena was an actual reality. He was quoted as saying that the idea of the medium practice was a “loathsome occupation”. It seems that James was willing to participate in the Spiritualism movement to some extent. However, those who studied James’ life claim that these actions did not put him in the category of actually believing in the Spiritualism movement. They look at it in light of a hopeful researcher who died with the hopes that someday people would discover true empirical evidence that pointed to the existence of a spiritual realm.
From the research I did on James’ actual involvement with the Spiritualist movement, it was hard to say that he was actually involved with the religious part of the movement itself. His interest in the subject seems to have manifested itself more in the form of researching the subject from a psychological perspective. James’ was a leading figure in bringing true scientific study to the area of spiritualism. He sought to discover whether the ideas that surround the belief in a spirit realm could be proven through the scientific method. His position as a researcher for the psychological field as well as his deep interest in the subject of another realm seemed to give him an ideal position to interact with those involved in the Spiritualism movement in ways that others wouldn’t have been able to. He seemed to blur the lines between the scientific community and those who practiced spiritualism in a way that made them open to letting him study it from a scientific standpoint.
http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/spiritualism.html
This article really helped in defining the Modern Spiritualism movement. It also helped me to gain an idea of the thoughts promoted by Spiritualists.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2006/apr/06/william-james-and-the-spiritualists/?pagination=false
I found this article while looking for information on William James involvement with the Spiritualism movement. It gave insight into the true level of involvement he had in the Spiritualism ideas.
http://books.google.com/books?id=bZsKAIrzW4EC&pg=PA259&lpg=PA259&dq=william+james+spiritualism&source=bl&ots=9z-urywuTf&sig=19aVvBit1mi1D2NMl92pOKMABCM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=lhZWUqLKGJTpqAHh2ICABA&ved=0CFoQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=william%20james%20spiritualism&f=false
This article gave an in depth look at James’ true fillings toward Spiritualism. While he participated in certain aspects it, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that he died firmly believing it.
1a) State what your topic is.
William James and Spiritualism
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
In this chapter it discusses how psychology was taught in America. William James became known as America’s first modern psychologist. Also William James wrote what is known as the most important book in all of psychology’s’ history. William James did a lot to progress the field of psychology.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
In this chapter it discusses a majority of William James’s background. However I am always interested in reading more about individual’s backgrounds. Also I am interested in why James felt so strongly about spiritualism. I think there will be great sources for these particular topics.
William James is known as one of the leading thinkers in the later 19th century. He was an American philosopher and psychologist who was trained by a physician. James is considered America’s first modern psychologist.
William James was born on January 11, 1842, at New York City. James was born into a very intelligent family. James and his family were educated in both Europe and the United States. James was interested in reading about a wide range of writers throughout his childhood. However he showed more interest in culture and art. James enjoyed painting and wanted to become a painter. His father was not fond on this idea. His father was known was very liberal and pushed James to study science and philosophy. James went against his father’s wishes and decided to attend William Morris Hunt for a degree in art. However after a year attending William Morris Hunt for art, James decided to leave. His interests changed and he was more interested in science.
James decided to transfer to Harvard to study chemistry. While attending Harvard University, James’s two siblings enlisted to serve the American Civil War. This was not an option for James before he had health issues. During his childhood he suffered from a range of physical illness. This affected his eyes, back, stomach, and skin. He was also known as being tone deaf. After a few years studying chemistry, James decided to study medicine. His family started to struggle with money and he knew he needed to support them. James studied medicine at Harvard Medical School off and on for several of years. During this time James suffered from an illness that turned into a major depression. He decided to spend time in France and Germany dealing with his depression. Finally James completed his medical degree in 1869.
James once again changes his mind and wants to pursue a career in philosophy and psychology. In 1872 James was offered a position as an instructor at Harvard University. James accepted the offer and was an instructor for the next 35 years. He served as a professor of philosophy and psychology. James famously commented “the first lecture of psychology I ever heard being the first one I gave”. James also became involved with a Metaphysical club which was known as a discussion group. Also during this time James was the founder of the first experimental psychology laboratory. During this time he published what is known as the most important book of psychology, “The Principles of Psychology”. Later James publishes a book known as “Psychology: The Briefer Course”. William James retired in 1907.
William James is best known for pragmatism, functionalism, James-Lange Theory of emotion.
William James also strongly believed in spiritualism. Individuals saw him as being very “open-minded”. He quickly became interested in spiritualism and studied it closely. Spiritualism at one time was associated with associationism. Associationism is known has having each experience lead to another, which creates a chain of events. However, James disagreed with associationism and saw it as being “too simple”. He believed this couldn’t be done without a soul tying everything together. Spiritualism is defined as, “mental events being attributed to the soul”. It suggests that ideas cause behaviors, meaning they are connected. “James believed that each person has a soul, which exists in a spiritual universe, and leads a person to perform the behaviors they do in the physical world”. He decided to combine the two views and create his own way of thinking.
William James is known as one of the leading thinkers in the later 19th century. He was an American philosopher and psychologist who was trained by a physician. James is considered America’s first modern psychologist.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/jamesbio.htm
I chose this website because it provided information at William James’s illness and best known theories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James
I chose this website because it provided information about associationism and spiritualism
http://www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/william-james.html
I chose this website because it provided information on William James’s childhood and education
During the 19th century, it was very hard for women to gain very much recognition. It was believed that women were inferior in intelligence to men, and that education would actually further retard them. We now know that this is absolutely ridiculous, but back then this was the common belief. For this blog, I am going to discuss Christine Ladd-Franklin and how she overcame the adversity with which she was faced her entire life.
Christine Ladd-Franklin was born on December 1st, 1847 in Windsor, Connecticut. She was the oldest of three children, including Henry and Jan Augusta (named after her mother, Augusta). Ladd-Franklin, from a very early age, attended women’s rights rallies with her two advocate family members; her mother, and her aunt Juliet. Unfortunately, her mother died when Ladd-Franklin was twelve due to pneumonia. After that, she moved away to live with her father’s family. There, she attended school at the Wesleyan Academy for two years and graduated valedictorian of her class. Her coursework consisted of the same coursework as the boys who were preparing for Harvard.
Ladd-Franklin wanted to go on to higher education, but she also had doubts about it. She had a heart-to-heart with her grandmother, and decided that school was the best option for her, since she felt that her looks were too commonplace to get her a husband. Her aunt, Juliet, paid for her schooling and she ended up going to Vassar. Her diaries show that she was very excited about this decision, but she still had reservations about what laid in store for her.
She attended Vassar for one year, but then withdrew to teach, travel, and study other languages, but others suspicion that the main reason was because she was having financial issues. After her time off, she continued her education at many different universities. She also taught math and science during this time.
Ladd-Franklin enjoyed studying mathematics and logic, and wrote her dissertation for graduate school on these subjects, titled The Algebra of Logic. Even though she completed her course requirements for her Ph.D. in 1882, she was denied this degree because of her sex. She was 78 years old when she was finally awarded her Ph.D.!
Ladd-Franklin did end up marrying (hence the hyphen) a mathematician, which was a blessing and also a curse. Married women were not allowed to hold faculty positions at that time, but she continued to teach logic and mathematics. During her time teaching, she lectured on logic and psychology at John Hopkins for about five years. She also developed her own theories on color vision, and published a book titled Color and Color Theories. She spent the majority of this book correcting beliefs of who got credit for which discoveries. She was trying to set the record straight.
Unfortunately, Christine Ladd-Franklin died of pneumonia (like her mother) on March 5th, 1930. As you can see from her life, she had many accomplishments which she had to work extra hard towards because of the stigma women had in the professional and academic worlds.
http://www2.webster.edu/~woolflm/christineladd.html
I used this article because it does a great job of reviewing all of Ladd-Franklin’s accomplishments in chronological order.
http://www.feministvoices.com/christine-ladd-franklin/
This article placed a little more emphasis on her involvement in advocating women’s rights.
http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/ladd.htm
This article was used to get a general understanding of Christine Ladd-Franklin before starting my blog.
Habits
I choose to do more research about this topic because it is what stood out most to me while I was reading. Everyone I know has some kind of habit they engage in- whether it be starting their day with a cup of coffee or brushing their teeth before bed. Some people start up new habits especially around the beginning of the New Year but by the next month, they are back to their old ways. I know so many people that will start to eat healthier and work out and then within a week they grow exhausted. I think habits are very intriguing to study because a person’s habits can show a lot about their character. I am interested in learning where research has taken this topic of habits. This relates to the chapter in the section about William James. He thought that habits had an adaptive function since they occurred more or less automatically and enabled the consciousness to focus attention on more important factors for survival. He gives some advice on forming good habits by the following: making a pledge public about the habit that was going to be changed or developed, people should not allow for any lapses to occur, and third he urged his readers to arrange their lives to increase the opportunities to act on the new habit.
In the last decade, our understanding of neurology of habit formation has been transformed. This less known revolution has helped aid our concept of the way patterns work within our lives, societies, and organizations. This has been brought on by studies as simple as biting nails or eating a cookie every day around the same time. There are two kinds of habits: positive and negative habits. These are based on effects that the habits have on us including the biological consequence that the habit evokes. A negative habit is a behavior that is repeated mechanically and automatically. It drains our energy, has harmful repercussions on our body and/ or emotions and tends to go against what we actually want for ourselves.
Think of it, do most smokers really want their lunges and other aspects to their body to be negatively effected? Not usually, it is more the case that they are addicted and the act of smoking is a negative habit that they formed. Characteristically, bad habits have immediate positive benefits. These benefits are short-lived and have negative consequences. The difficult part is that the same part of our mind that automatically replays, feel bad, smoke, feel good is not part of us that can evaluate the continue usefulness of the habit.
So how do are we supposed to fix our negative habits? Habits can be broken down into three components: cue (trigger to certain routine), routine (behavior), and reward (why the habit exists). The reward is most important to look at because it is why the habit is continuing and it is what we are actually craving. For example, one of the stories I read was about this man that would get a cookie from the cafeteria every day around 3 or 3:30 and chat with his co-workers. His wife had pointed out that he had gained some weight from this. He went onto try changing his habit by instead of getting a cookie at that time, he got a candy bar, and then the next time he just went up to the cafeteria and talked with his friends and the craving for the cookie was no longer there. He realized that he actually was just craving socialization- so now around 3 he will just get up and talk to a co-worker for ten minutes and his craving is fulfilled. A similar quick habit change happened for this girl that had a horrible habit of biting her nails, it turns out that she actually found out that she was actually craving a physical simulation and as soon as she figured that out, she quickly replaced her nail biting habit with a different routine that produced the same reward.
Overall, the golden rule of habit change says that the most effective way to shift habit is to diagnose and retain the old cue and reward, and then just try to change the routine itself. This can be done through various tactics. Some tactics that were discussed included: habit-reversal therapy and being aware/ having consciousness- or wakefulness, awareness, presence, and eyes wide open. One famous gestalt psychologist, Fritz Perls proclaimed, “Awareness cures”. Habit reversal therapy has been used to treat verbal and physical tics, depression, smoking, gambling, and other behavioral problems. Also being able to stop and ask oneself is this what I wish to choose this moment? helps strengthen and exercise our choosing and awareness muscles.
http://psychologyofeating.com/simple-psychology-habits/
I picked this article because it talks about the types of habits; positive and negative and the consequences that come from the negative habits. They also go onto explain how awareness can aid in helping change habits.
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/07/17/the-golden-rule-of-habit-change/
I liked this website because it included information on the neurology of habit and mentioned examples of habit being built into 3 components and discussed habit reversal therapy and how it helps behavioral problems.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/03/05/the-power-of-habit/
I liked this website because it gave this man’s personal story on changing his habit of eating a cookie everyday around the same time and also talked about how habit was broken down to 3 components and how the reward is the most important component to focus on because that is what drives the habit to occur.
1a. For chapter six I decided to dig deeper on the psychologist William James and more specifically his theory of emotion. Emotion is a really interesting thing because of how our brains translate different emotions because of different situations and also how our body and brain perceives that information of pain or fear and such.
1b. This topic relates to chapter six because it talks about a lot of the theories that William James invented and the specific areas in which his theories covered, for example emotion. William James was a very well recognized and a credited source in the history of Psychology. William James and his theory of emotion relates to this chapter because this chapter builds on important psychologists and their attributes to the psychology world. His theories hold true still today and I feel like we have talked about him in a lot of my psychology classes throughout my years in school.
1c. I’m personally interested in William James and his theory of emotion because every human has emotions and I find it interesting that different situations control the outcome of different emotions without any physical effort from a person; it’s instantaneous. Once again, it has a lot to do with different functions and reactions within the brain, which I love learning about so much!
2. William James was known as the “first new psychologist,” this was because when other psychologists were asked to rank each other, William was ranked to be the number one or the first. He was loved by many, and many scholars/psychologists looked up to him in a way because of how knowledgeable he was. He was also noted for researching in a different way compared to the recent methods. He was known for doing more experimental research which wasn’t too common in his time. I feel like he brought more knowledge about this kind of research to the table and it allowed other psychologists to branch off of this idea and to expand their thinking methods. William James saw himself more as a philosopher more so than a psychologist, which I found to be very interesting. James came up with a number of theories, but the one that interested me the most was his theory on emotion. He came up this theory while he was teaching at Harvard. He would study the human body and soon began to notice that there were certain triggers that would trigger a specific emotion in the human body. William was a firm believer that humans experience the specific trigger or reaction before we even experience the actual emotional outcome. A great example is when a person’s heart is racing, and they are shaking because they are in the dark, even when nothing is taking place in the darkness. Darkness sets the human up for the bodily reaction of their heart racing, setting up the brain to feel the emotion of fear because we fear that there is something in the darkness. James said that there was a sequence of events that took place in regards to emotion. His theory was also shared with Carl Lange. James’ sequence was just like the modern thinking of emotion, expect for he reversed it completely. The modern conception of emotion is, perception of some bodily reaction (e.g. an airplane), leads to a subjective experience of the emotion (e.g. fear, anxiety), that then leads to the bodily reaction (e.g. heart racing, anxiety attacks, shacking). So, he believed that the bodily reaction (heart racing, shaking) happens first, before we even feel the actual emotion (fear, anxiety, sadness).
3. Sources
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/
I liked this website because it was very informational about general aspects of William James. It told me how he got to become who he was and his life events that led up to everything. This website was good in just learning about general knowledge about William James. There was also a lot of information about his other findings which was quiet interesting to read.
http://www.litkicks.com/JamesEmotion#.UlYmLL4o4dU
I really liked this source because there was a lot of examples of the emotion theory and specific situations that describe his theory in a deeper manner. It gave me a better understanding on how he thought about emotion.
http://psychology.about.com/od/jindex/g/jameslange.htm
This source was good at giving the typical example of the bear and how our emotion of fear and racing hearts have a correlation and how the racing of the heart occurs first even before the initial fear kicks in. It gave factual information about the theory itself as well.
A.S
1a) State what your topic is.
G. Stanley Hall
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
This topic relates because Hall was one of the first proponents and main promoters of the new field of psychology. He was the first APA president and studied many different fields in psychology.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I was most interested in Hall for his fascination with evolution and genetic psychology because I find where we come from and who we are at a cellular level can tell us more about ourselves and what we are capable of.
2) Granville Stanley Hall was born February 1, 1844 and died April 24, 1924. He is considered a pioneer for his work in America as a psychologist and educator. Hall’s interests were focused on childhood development and evolutionary theory. Hall was the first president of the American Psychological Association and the first president of Clark University. Hall studied all over the world and worked with men like Wundt but Hall made his biggest impact at John Hopkins and Clark University. He was heavily influenced by Ernst Haeckel's recapitulation theory, which suggested that embryonic stages of an organism bear a resemblance to the stages of development of the organism's evolutionary ancestors. Today we know this is mostly discounted but maybe his greatest contribution was to the development and growth of psychology, especially in America. By the year 1898, Hall had supervised 30 out of the 54 Ph.D. degrees that had been awarded in the United States. In 1909 Hall organized a conference for 175 people, among the attending psychologists were Sigmund Freud (who made his first and only trip to America) and Carl Jung. Hall ran the conference as well as arranged the order of lectures and handled the social arrangements. The meeting of the minds later became known as The Clark Conference, the conference brought together many people from the field and out of respect for Hall many showed up to share and discuss their theories and ideas. Hall was one of the most respected and loved American psychologists and gave much to the field.
3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Stanley_Hall
This site was helpful in giving a brief but detailed description of Hall and his life. The site touches briefly on each of the subjects Hall studied and gives a look into his beliefs and theories.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesal/p/g-stanley-hall.htm
This site was helpful in giving background on Hall and his contributions to the field of psychology. This article also spoke about the many people who studied with and under Hall who went on to make contributions to psychology as well.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/hall.htm
This site described The Clark Conference and gave a little insight into what was discussed at the meeting.
posted for A.H.
1) State what your topic is.
After reading about Mary Calkins I was intrigued. I was happy to read that despite being refused a degree from Harvard, she was elected President of the American Psychological Association. I wanted to read a little more about this miraculous woman who overcame great obstacles during her career.
2) At the age of 19, Mary Calkins began attending Smith College. After taking a year off from the death of her sister, Maud, Calkins returned to Smith where she earned her Bachelor’s in Classics and Philosophy in 1885. While abroad during a family trip to Europe, Calkins was called to spend several months in Greece studying the classics. Like many other women in Calkins’ time, she was not allowed to be married and teach. When she returned home from Greece, her father had set up an interview for her with Wellesley College for women. Calkins taught Greek for several years before being offered a teaching position in the newly found science of psychology. However, the position required her to study psychology for one year. Her father and the president of the college wrote several letters to Harvard asking for her admittance. Their persistence paid off and Calkins was allowed to attend seminars as a guest. While there, Calkins studied the effects of paired-associations on memory. She would show participants a “series of paired colors and [numbers]” then tested the remembrance of those pairs. Titchener later published her work under his name and claimed he developed the concept. Calkins also worked with Hugo Munsterberg, who would later inform the president of Harvard of her work and perseverance. In 1895, Calkins requested she receive her degree in psychology from Harvard. They refused. Seven years later, Radcliffe College for Women (Harvard’s Equivalent at the time) offered Calkins and three other women degrees. This time it was Calkins who refused. She wanted a degree from the college where she had earned it. In 1903, Calkins was ranked twelfth of the “fiftieth most eminent psychologists in the United States” and was elected the first female president of the American Psychological Association in 1905. During her career as a psychologist, Calkins printed four books and over a hundred papers covering topics within psychology and philosophy. Calkins was also elected president of the American Philosophical Association in 1918. Three years after retiring from Wellesley College, Calkins died from cancer. She was awarded honorary degrees from Columbia University and Smith College. To this day Harvard still refuses to award Calkins with her degree.
3) http://www.apa.org/about/governance/president/bio-mary-whiton-calkins.aspx
This website was very informational about Mary Calkins’ life and accomplishments. I thought it had a lot of in-depth information for a short article.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_marycalkins.htm
This article gave a great time line of Calkins’ accomplishments in psychology. It was helpful in learning some new information that other articles did not have.
http://www.feministvoices.com/mary-whiton-calkins/
This site was a great biography of Calkins. I found it very helpful in learning more information about Calkins.
1a) State what your topic is.
Spiritualism
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
William James turned away from psychology and began to study philosophy. One of his many fascinations was spiritualism.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I would like to learn more about spiritualism, because for one I find it relatable and I find myself not necessarily religious and just kind of wondering where I tie in with all of it, and two William James’ perspective on it. He supported spiritualism but could not fully rationalize it.
Spiritualists believed that consciousness survived death and that those who die could be contacted. To me that’s just wild but in other cultures and religions it is encouraged and found to be normal. Religion and spirituality have always interested me so I don’t usually pass up the chance to learn more about it.
2) Take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it
Spiritualism, in religion, is a movement based on the belief that departed souls can interact with the living. Spiritualists sought to make contact with the dead, usually through the assistance of a medium, a person believed to have the ability to contact spirits directly. Some mediums worked while in a trancelike state, and some claimed to be the catalyst for various paranormal physical phenomena through which the spirits announced their presence.
Modern spiritualism traces its beginnings to a series of apparently supernatural events at a farmhouse in Hydesville, N.Y., in 1848. The owner and his family, as well as the previous occupants of the house, had been disturbed by unexplained raps at night. After a severe disturbance, the owner’s youngest daughter, Kate Fox, was said to have successfully challenged the supposed spirit to repeat in raps the number of times she flipped her fingers. Once communication had apparently been established, a code was agreed upon by which the raps given could answer questions, and the spirit was said to have identified himself as a man who had been murdered in the house. In the end though the sisters came forward and admitted faking the whole ordeal. From situations like these came a new form of psychology. Methods, and research, were conducted in order to debunk or prove whether there were any spirits present.
After reading more and learning about the subject of spiritualism I found it completely uninteresting. It is not exactly what I thought it was and found it rather dull. At least I can say now exactly what I think about spiritualism.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualism
This is by far the best link of the three, I found myself struggling to find anything better or comparable. This website explains the beliefs behind spiritualism, its origins, evolution, and how it compares to other religions of the world.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/spiritualism/history/history.shtml
I also liked this link because It explains where spiritualism’ traces lie. It talks about the story of the sisters who faked being mediums in the 1800’s. It’s an entertaining story.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/education/columbia-program-merges-therapy-and-spirituality.html?_r=0
This article I found interesting because it talks about merging spirituality and clinical psychology. There was not much information for me to use in my blog, I just found it an interesting read.
posted for A.H.
1) State what your topic is.
After reading about Mary Calkins I was intrigued. I was happy to read that despite being refused a degree from Harvard, she was elected President of the American Psychological Association. I wanted to read a little more about this miraculous woman who overcame great obstacles during her career.
2) At the age of 19, Mary Calkins began attending Smith College. After taking a year off from the death of her sister, Maud, Calkins returned to Smith where she earned her Bachelor’s in Classics and Philosophy in 1885. While abroad during a family trip to Europe, Calkins was called to spend several months in Greece studying the classics. Like many other women in Calkins’ time, she was not allowed to be married and teach. When she returned home from Greece, her father had set up an interview for her with Wellesley College for women. Calkins taught Greek for several years before being offered a teaching position in the newly found science of psychology. However, the position required her to study psychology for one year. Her father and the president of the college wrote several letters to Harvard asking for her admittance. Their persistence paid off and Calkins was allowed to attend seminars as a guest. While there, Calkins studied the effects of paired-associations on memory. She would show participants a “series of paired colors and [numbers]” then tested the remembrance of those pairs. Titchener later published her work under his name and claimed he developed the concept. Calkins also worked with Hugo Munsterberg, who would later inform the president of Harvard of her work and perseverance. In 1895, Calkins requested she receive her degree in psychology from Harvard. They refused. Seven years later, Radcliffe College for Women (Harvard’s Equivalent at the time) offered Calkins and three other women degrees. This time it was Calkins who refused. She wanted a degree from the college where she had earned it. In 1903, Calkins was ranked twelfth of the “fiftieth most eminent psychologists in the United States” and was elected the first female president of the American Psychological Association in 1905. During her career as a psychologist, Calkins printed four books and over a hundred papers covering topics within psychology and philosophy. Calkins was also elected president of the American Philosophical Association in 1918. Three years after retiring from Wellesley College, Calkins died from cancer. She was awarded honorary degrees from Columbia University and Smith College. To this day Harvard still refuses to award Calkins with her degree.
3) http://www.apa.org/about/governance/president/bio-mary-whiton-calkins.aspx
This website was very informational about Mary Calkins’ life and accomplishments. I thought it had a lot of in-depth information for a short article.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_marycalkins.htm
This article gave a great time line of Calkins’ accomplishments in psychology. It was helpful in learning some new information that other articles did not have.
http://www.feministvoices.com/mary-whiton-calkins/
This site was a great biography of Calkins. I found it very helpful in learning more information about Calkins.
1a) State what your topic is.
Pierre Janet
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Chapter 6 discusses psychology coming to America during the 19th Century. Before, psychology was taught more as philosophy and moral reasoning, but after the Civil war, there was an expansion of education. Graduate programs in the US began to grow and the schools were based off German graduate programs. During this time, philosopher became psychologists and William James was the first. Pierre Janet could be considered one of psychology's pioneers because of his work involving neurological science. Janet's research on dissociation was groundbreaking at the time.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I came across Janet while searching for psychologists in the 1900s and his neurological research interested me. Without much technology at this time, he was able to discover different traits of this condition called dissociation. Dissociation is the separation of some mental processes from a person's conscious mind or normal everyday personality. My interest with the mind is another reason I gained interests in Janet.
2) Take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it
Janet was born into a cultured, middle class family in Paris, France. He loved natural science and philosophy ran in his family. At 22 he was appoint Professor of Philosophy at the Lycee in Le Havre where he launched his research on the subconscious. When he started his experiments, he experimented a woman and called her "Lucie". Lucie would usually be calm, but then suddenly become agitated, start crying and look terrified. Janet described her different personalities as three different people. This theory of his was thought that the women were suffering from hysteria, but Janet concluded she was suffering from dissociation. Janet believed that traumatic events and stress could cause dissociation in anyone with that predisposition. The subconscious is disturbed while the other parts in the mind try and display normality. During the time, his work was discredited because Freud believed the term "subconscious" was too vague, but has been used more during the hypnosis in the next century.
http://www.jrhaule.net/PJ+dsn.html
This article explained one of Janet's studies of dissociation. Hypnosis and transference was his methods of research.
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Janet/murchison.htm
This website explained Janet's life and his accomplishments. It talked about his education and theories and research.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/300324/Pierre-Janet
This website was about Janet's education and other academics
1a) Faculty Psychology
1b) The universities at this time were developing. Faculty psychology dominated the psychology books on how to about the mind and what it meant. Faculty psychology is based on mental and intellectual thinking. And for this brief period of time, it was the way people thought about psychology.
1c) Faculty psychology was the first way individuals were taught about the mind as it related to psychology. This is important because it was the starting basis for where we are in today’s psychology. It allowed us to branch out and form different sections of psychology. Now in today’s colleges we have specific classes set aside for the history of psychology, the biology of psychology, the mathematical side of psychology, and even physiological side of psychology.
2) Faculty psychology was not heavily regarded with information. Thomas Reid was a cofounder of faculty psychology along with Thomas Brown. Focusing more on association versus empiricism, Brown and Reid came up with the idea of the mind and common sense. These men believed that individuals had an understanding of reality. The mind was made up of ‘faculties’ that worked together. The two Scottish men claimed the two specific faculties were known as active and intellectual. And from here, they were branched into even more narrow categories such as; memory, reasoning, emotions, free will, and judgment. Based on the belief that man knew reality, common ideas were also recognized by man. Reid based his ideas on Descartes’s theory of ideas and went in the opposite direction. The mind was looked as a separate thing from the body, not two integrated beings. From here he spoke of the ‘mental discipline’. In this way, we are able to focus more on our education through our intellect ability and in turn become a smarter individual. In turn, we are able to form a better memory of the teachings and material as we go on. The main challenger of faculty psychology was William James. Because it seemed the studies being produced against faculty psychology produced results, sometimes questioned, but sometimes not, faculty psychology began to fall out of the psychology realm. Instead of teaching it, Thorndike’s connectionism was taught. However, even though faculty psychology fell as to being less reliable within psychology, parts of it are still referenced in today’s work.
I chose this website because it spoke of Scottish Realism based on faculty psychology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Common_Sense_Realism
I chose this website because it gave background about Thomas Reid and his other works.
http://www.academia.edu/538515/Thomas_Reids_Theory_of_Perception
I chose this website because it gave me background information about faculty psychology.
http://www.eds-resources.com/facultytheory.htm
1a) State what your topic is.
My topic is William James.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
This relates to the chapter because William James was an American Pioneer which is the title of the chapter and because developed the James-Lange theory of emotion and he used introspection to focus on the topic Consciousness.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in William James because he studied consciousness and habit and emotions and how emotions can play a role in our perception.
William James studied at Harvard Medical School in 1869, after he graduated he became in a depressive mood and didn’t get a job until Harvard afford him a teaching job. He taught for 35 years and within that 35 years he founded one of the first psychology laboraties in the United States. James studied pragmatism and Consciousness and emotion and act of habits.
Stream of Consciousness: The stream is sequence of states or waves like fields of knowledge of feeling and desire. These fluctuate during consciousness. The forms of consciousness is determined by our past experiences and education. Concrete fields are complex, they contain sensations of our bodies and the objects around us that connect to our memories of past experiences. Our memories of the past will first give an initial perception of what is going on within your surroundings but then change after rethinking on what is going on.
William James also had some philosophical beliefs, one of them was called Pragmatism. He used this to find the theory of truth. In reality for James truths must agree with 3 dimensions, 1 matters of fact, 2 relations of ideas and 2 the entire set of other truths. The third one means that finding different truths of an aspect and finding which one is more relevant. As long as the idea of truth is pragmatically analyzed James views knowledge as a justified true belief.
James believed that we are stereotyped creatures that copies the previous past selves. James thought that teachers should ingrain pupils assorted habits that should be useful throughout life and make the pupil more successful from their habits.
James made a theory of emotion as well. James theory was called the James-Lange Theory because Carl Lange helped James with the physiological reactions, they claimed that emotions occur as a result of a person’s physiological reactions to an event. An example would be noradrenaline when someone thinks someone is following them in a dark ally. Your blood starts pumping a you start to get anxious because your blood starts pumping out of control then all of a sudden you realize it was your friend then your blood pumps slower and you start to calm down and feel relieved.
3) At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/jamesbio.htm
I used this cite because it dealt with this psychological works.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/james-o/#SH3a
I used this cite because it was more about his philosophical works and meanings.
http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/james.html
I used this cite because it seemed pretty legit and it has a lot of his work on this cite, anywhere from full versions of his books to his essays to just the key concepts he developed or worked on.
1a) Spiritualism
1b) William James talked about spiritualism and how he tested it.
1c) In my family there has been encounters with the spiritual world, and I believe in it whole heartedly, but I want to also hear everything about the topic.
2) Spiritualism is considered a belief system, the basis of this belief system is that we form a relationship with God, not one that is fed to us through religion or our parents, but rather that we make our own friendship with God. The person also has to know that we cannot put ourselves or God above each other, rather they have to be on the same level. That is saying we cannot blame God for something we do wrong, we have to know that our actions have their own consequences and we have to accept our actions for what they are. One of the most interesting thing about spiritualism is that there is a belief of personality retention. That means once we die we will still be the same dead as we were alive, we will know who we are and others will know what and who we are. Another belief of spiritualism is that the human kind is naturally good, not evil, so there is no sin or repentance, like what the Christian belief system is based on. Rather we can only be held accountable for what we do.
Spiritualism came around in the late 1850s in the midst of the scientific and technological movements in the Victorian age, but spiritualism didn’t take too much of a back seat to the other two. The start of spiritualism is somewhat of a mystery, some say it started in New York when two girls communicated with a man in the house they were going to be moving into, but what isn’t a mystery is the core belief of spiritualism, that is speaking to the dead. The Victorian age was the vehicle for the spiritualist movement in the world, one of the interesting things about spiritualism in the beginning is how it really brought women to the forefront, and they were thought to be more spiritual than men were in the time, so they were thought to be better mediums to talk to the dead. One of the most famous mediums ever was a women, her name was Florence Cook, she mastered her craft and was said to have been lifted by some spirits while she was talking to a spirit. It would have been really cool to see that happen in real life.
The problem with the spiritualism is that it could easily be faked in the time when it first came about. People could learn a trade or a skill in tapping into the subconscious of the clients. One of the biggest examples of this is the Ouija board, it taps the subconscious of the people doing it and they want to see what they want to hear or see. That was the trick of most mediums, to really just trick the people they were helping. That has been the biggest problem about spiritualism over time, like James did he would test the theory of mediums and if they were actually who they said they were. It can be very easy to debunk if you know what to look for, but with that being said, I do believe that some people have a special ability to see and speak to the dead.
http://www.cassadaga.org/whatitis.htm
This website was great with telling me the basic belief system of spiritualism.
http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/religion/spirit.html
This was a great website showing the start of the movement and who was thought to be a better spiritualist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3TlEQBAKM0
This was a good video to show the opposing side of spiritualism and how people view it as a hoax.
1a) This week I did my topic on William James.
1b) A good majority of this weeks chapter concerned James and his work. It discussed his influence on American Psychology, theories he held, texts he published and much more regarded all he contributed to the development of the field.
1c) He seemed like such an influential figure in the history of psychology. I found some of his theories such as that with emotion very interesting and his views concerning things like religion. He seemed to do so much from bringing new psychology to America to creating APA and the American Journal of Psychology.
2)
William James is considered one of America’s most insightful philosophers and psychologists of all time. He was a great pragmatist, one of the founders of functional psychology and creator of the perspective known as radical empiricism. He was the first educator who offered psychology courses in the United States and his work influenced people from Emile Durkheim to Edmund Husserl.
The Godson of Ralph Waldo Emerson, James was born in New York City in 1842 and was one of five children. He came from a wealth family with his father inheriting a large amount of money allowing them to move frequently between America and Europe. He had been on thirteen European journeys throughout his life. Growing up James had a passion for art and drawing and had dreams of becoming a painter one day. He however gave up this career within a year and often struggled to commit to one career path.
During the Civil War, after Lincoln called for volunteers, James went through a short-term enlistment. After just three months he enrolled in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard. Here he studied both chemistry and physiology upon entering into their school of medicine. The following year he was on his way to a scientific expedition to Brazil but his bad health forced him to return home. However he left once more to study physiology and medicine in Germany while trying to recover from his poor health as well. James returned once more to Harvard where he passed his medical exams and in 1869 finally received his degree. Indecisive James though had no intention of practicing medicine and was very lost with life. His health was still decreasing and his neurological symptoms became poorer. This, combined with his insecurity in life led him to consider suicide. Throughout his life he went through a variety of health problems such as eye and back pain to digestive problems and depression.
In the year of 1872 he began teaching physiology at Harvard. The following year he became an instructor of anatomy as well and by the mid eighteen hundreds he was teaching psychology too. Six years later James met a schoolteacher, Alice Gibbens. The two had five children just like his own family, shared a good marriage and lived in Cambridge. They named their first two children Henry and William. The same year he married Gibbens he wrote a psychology textbook.
When James started to dive back into philosophy he started to resent psychology. He however published his Principles of Psychology in 1890 which took him twelve years to write. It is considered his twelve-hundred page masterwork which became extremely successful even though James himself was not satisfied with it. The text was a mix of physiology, psychology and philosophy, and created ideas such as “the stream of thought,” and impressions baby’s have of the world. He wrote his first philosophical book in 1897, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. The book which combined his lectures regarding Pragmatism are argued to be American philosophy’s most influential text.
James gave a lecture at Berkeley which aided the launch of pragmatism as a nationwide movement. He was though extremely overworked at the University and his health was deteriorating even further. While once more trying to recover his health he began looking into religious experience. James left Harvard in 1907. The next year was tough with James suffering from fatigue. He spent the rest of his life writing essays and lectures which were later published. Some of his most significant contributions were made in the last ten years of his life. William James died on August 26, 1910.
3)
1.http://www.iep.utm.edu/james-o/
This site had a ton of information! It started of with a nice summary of his life. It even had a table of contents at the beginning which was nice. It started of with his earlier life and works and then got more in depth into his theories and ideas. Overall it had a bunch of very descriptive information.
2. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/
This website also had a lot of information and table of contents which is always helpful. It was all in chronological order starting from his earlier life until his later years and work. It included a timeline which was cool. It discussed several of his theories as well along with publications he wrote and contributions he made.
3.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James
This wikipedia site was very informative. It included quite a few pictures which is always interesting. Like the other sites it started off with a brief summary before getting into his early life, career throughout his life and all he contributed to the field.
1a) Theory of Emotion
1b) William James focused a lot on the theory of emotion and his theory was created into James-Lange theory of emotion. This theory has held up and I find that to very interesting.
1c) I’m curious to find out what other theories are out there. Also finding examples of these theories and how maybe these theories of emotion have changed and how the differentiate.
2) Through my research I have come across many different theories of emotion, them being: James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, Singer-Schachter (Two Factor Theories), Lazarus Theory, and the Facial Feedback Theory. The first thing I wanted to look up was what exactly emotion is. When think of my own definition I found it hard to actually define and I kept on think of examples of different emotions and I wanted to just simply state it’s a feeling. From the research emotion is a type of state someone is in and that this state includes our thoughts, changes, how we physically expression/behavior. The theory that emotion are caused by physiological changes connecting to functions has come from William James and Carl Lange and is the James-Lange Theory. This theory states that something has to arouse us and then after we understand that we then experience that emotion. An example of this, is when you are alone and you hear noises, your body reacts first, with your heart picking up speed and your breathing might change. You then associate all these signs with being scared and feeling the emotion of fear. One of the problems that comes about with this theory is that it is hard to differentiate between different emotions we experience. The first person to be a critic of this theory was Walter Cannon in 1929. William James stated that each emotion has a certain set of bodily changes/functions that go along with each emotion. The problem that Cannon brought to attention was that a lot of different emotions have the same bodily reactions. Also through research that has been done, not all emotions have bodily reactions. Cannon came up with his own theory “Cannon-Bard Theory”. Simply this theory states that we experience the psychological stimulation and emotion at the same time. The optic thalamus is where this takes place and there is neutral organization when it comes to emotions. The two-factor theory suggest that an event or stimulus must take place first, and then you process that event and then you label that emotion. So going back to that example of being by yourself and hearing noises, you take in to account that you are by yourself and hear noises and that is why you have the emotion of fear and being scared. Also past experiences help us come to conclusion on what emotions we are feeling. Singer and Schachter wanted to test their theory against the James-Lange theory. To do this, they injected subjects with adrenaline, which would increase their blood flow and heart rate. From their study, they found out that having this in the body did not make the body feel any emotion. I think that this study is simple but also fascinating. It proves that increasing your heart-rate did not in fact make a person experience a certain emotion and went against the James-Lange Theory. Richard Lazarus came up with his own theory. In his theory he stated that a thought must come first before we feel any emotion. He believed that we must think about and process the situation first before we feel any emotion. Facial-feedback theory states that our facial expressions decide what emotions we are feeling. For example if you are frowning you are sad, and when you are smiling you are happy. The question that comes to me is how it is then possible for us to “fake smile” but not actually be happy. I don’t think that this theory is always true.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emotion/ - this website was very useful for background and different theories of emotions.
https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/emotion-13/emotion-68/theories-of-emotions-264-12799/ - this website was great for explaining what the different theories of emotion mean.
http://allpsych.com/psychology101/emotion.html - this website helped me learn what some of the different theories of emotion were and giving examples of how the theories work for a better understanding.
My topic is over education for women. I am doing this topic because it was briefly talked about in the chapter we had to read and I am interested in it because I am a woman myself and so I am interested to see how far we have come. The growth of women’s education was mainly around the 19th and the 20th century. Before that it was hard for woman to get access to higher education. Women were thought to be only useful for taking care of the family and the house. There was no purpose of a higher education for women. People really didn’t think it was necessary for women to even get a high school degree, and it was preposterous for them to even consider getting a college degree. One theory for the reason that growth in their education really started to expand was that during World War II with all the men being at war, women had to fill in the positions of men, including scientists and other higher professions. When that started to happen then the education for women started to expand and women’s colleges were founded. Woman also gained a lot more power when there was birth control invented and they could control when they wanted kids, so they could plan having children after they already got their education. The 19th century is just where progress for women’s education started, but there was fight for their education before that. There was a group called the Langham Place Group. The ladies in this group wanted to fight for a lot of women’s rights but education was their main priority because they thought education was the key to opening other doors for women. This group contributed to opening up colleges for women which was a huge step for them! There was obviously a lot of controversy when this college began and women were denied degrees and ridiculed for not being studious enough to study, or smart enough for some of the subjects. It took a lot of fight and struggle for women to make their way into the professional life. Even when there was colleges for women the only degrees they could get were for teaching and nursing, because those were the most feminine jobs. We have come a long way today. A woman can go into any profession that she desires. It still isn’t always 100% fair in the workforce because there are glass ceilings, which where woman aren’t promoted because their bosses are sexist and don’t do it because they are a woman. Because of that a lot of women have gone into entrepreneurship and become their own boss to prove to people that they can do it and they cant have anyone holding them back because of their gender.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1725191/Women-in-Science/297974/The-growth-of-womens-higher-education-in-the-19th-and-early-20th-centuries
I used this site because it had information that was new to me. I used the information about the World War II in my discussion.
http://herstoria.com/?p=535
I used the information about the Landham Place Group from this site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_education_in_the_United_States
I used information about main professions that women went into from this site.
1a) State what your topic is.
Thomas Reid
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
The chapter starts by discussing the mind and how it can be broken into faculties. Scottish philosophers, namely Thomas Reid, were the first to put this idea into words. He split the faculties into two parts, active and intellectual. This idea of faculty was heavily incorporated into the early education of psychology in the expansion of the study in America.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I was interested in him, because as a second major in philosophy when I come across someone I don’t recognize I am immediately drawn to try and see what they did for either philosophy or psychology.
Thomas Reid was an 18th century philosopher who most famously dealt with the idea of reality. Most of his work was based on the theory of skepticism, and combating it, from other philosophers, such as, John Locke and David Hume. Skepticism was the idea that people shouldn’t believe in the idea of this world truly existing because of the inconsistencies of our senses. Reid did not believe this and made many arguments and papers against this thought. One argument against skepticism involves his idea of the faculties. The faculty that he argues against skepticism is that of common sense. One such premise of an argument involves that, just because a stone may break your skin and cause pain, does not mean we associate pain with the stone. This is an argument that sensations do not always correlate with the external world and it gets much deeper and goes farther in depth. However this is an example of when these ideas of the faculties of the mind are at use in his works.
Reid broke the mind into two faculties, active, those which are based on emotions and the will, and intellectual, those which are based more on thinking, such as, reasoning and judgment. Overall he had many more divisions of faculties, of which around 45 were distinguished. This is what the book is more interested in. Faculties were heavily associated in the first psychological books of the time. These books were based heavily on the Scottish’s ideas of faculties, of which Reid was a man that broke through this idea. The Faculties of the mind are an idea that came about in the 18th century and is still relevant into the 21st century. It is not uncommon to hear about when taking psychology classes and is still a relevant topic to understand with depth that no intro course could fully explain.
https://www.deanza.edu/faculty/ramireztono/phil01/Reid%20Notes.pdf – This site gave a brief argument overview of Reid vs Skepticism.
http://www.ukessays.com/essays/philosophy/thomas-reid-in-philosophy-and-psychology-philosophy-essay.php - This site gave a in depth history of his life and much of his work.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reid/#PriSecQua – This site gave a detailed breakdown of most of his works, ideas, and contemplations in life.
1a) State what your topic is.
My topic is William James.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
It relates to the chapter because he was an American Pioneer of psychology. He was the guy who brought psychology to America, and raised awareness about the new science. He is still known today as the Father of American Psychology.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in this topic because William James made numerous contributions to the field of psychology, without having a formal education. It is interesting to me how someone without a formal education could graduate from Harvard Medical School and be as successful as James was.
William James was born in New York City, New York in 1842. He was born into a bright, rich family. His father, Henry James Sr., was a philosopher and believed education was extremely important. His brother went on to be a successful novelist. James grew up traveling to Europe on several occasions. He had a tutor that delivered him his education instead of a formal school setting. By the time William James was eighteen, he was fluent in several languages. Early on, James aspired to be an artist, but realized he was not going to go anywhere, so turned to science.
William began studying at Harvard in 1864. He took a break from school due to psychological issues. One of these issues, depression, led him to contemplate suicide. Thankfully, James recovered and got his degree from Harvard Medical School. After obtaining the degree, James decided he did not want to study medicine, so he started lecturing in physiology, and later began lecturing in psychology. William James ended up marrying Alice Gibbens. The couple had five kids, but lost a son to whooping cough when he was only two years old. This traumatic event was hard on the couple, and William eventually died at the age of 68 to heart failure.
During his lifetime, James left quite the legacy. His most prominent work was titled The Principles of Psychology. It took James twelve years to write it, and the text was 1200 pages long. James was an important figure in psychology. He is known as The Father of American Psychology, and was one of the top psychologists in America during the late 1800s and early 1900s. His research and publications are still prominent today.
http://www.biography.com/people/william-james-9352726#synopsis
This article described William’s early life, and his famous works.
http://psych.answers.com/history/psychology-fun-facts-william-james-biography
This article described why William James was important and the contributions he made during his professional life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James#Epistemology
This article added more detail to the previous articles and described a lot of his famous research findings.
1a) The topic that I’ve chosen to elaborate on from chapter 6 is the life and work of a woman pioneer that is not as well-known as Mary Calkins; Margaret Floy Washburn.
1b) How does it relate to the chapter? Both Margaret Floy Washburn and Christine Ladd-Franklin were mentioned briefly after the section about Mary Whiton Calkins in the text. Their work in pioneering psychology, as relative to the title of the chapter, was mainly in becoming the first women of the time to pursue graduate careers related to the discipline and contribute significantly to psychology with their research.
1c) Why interested? I was interested to learn more about Margaret Washburn specifically because of her title of being the first woman to earn a doctorate in psychology is something that I see as very significant in the history of the field, and something I don’t feel is mentioned at the length to which it should be. I mentioned in my post from Monday that I am interested in female accomplishments within the field of psychology because of my feminist stance, but I am also interested because I find these women and their accomplishments to be inspiring as an aspirant female doctorate student.
2) Synthesis.
Margaret Washburn was born the daughter of a Presbyterian preacher in New York in 1871. She studied privately with her father for her early education then attended public school through her middle and high school education. She went to Vassar women’s college where she studied the disciplines of chemistry and French, but she soon turned her interests toward science and philosophy by the time she had finished her undergraduate degree. Washburn was drawn to experimental psychology because it was a marriage of these interests and that it was a new and emerging science at the time that intrigued her. She was intent on studying with James Cattell at Columbia but was only permitted to sit in on his classes; he encouraged her to attend Cornell College where she would be allowed to earn a doctorate. She came to study under E. B. Titchner at Cornell in 1892 where she was his first graduate student. She wrote her thesis on tactual space perception and was awarded the first doctorate in psychology as a woman in 1894.
In her post-graduate work she returned to Cornell after teaching at Wells College for six years as a professor of philosophy and ethics. She taught at numerous colleges including the University of Cincinnati and spent the majority of her teaching career at her alma mater Vassar until she retired in 1937. Her most well-known publication would probably be “The Animal Mind” which detailed her research in animal cognition and expounded on both of her main interests of animal behavior and perception. A study that I thought was interesting of hers was one she conducted studying the effects of music with a professor of music at Vassar, this study won her an award from the Edison Phonograph Company. Washburn was also the second woman president of the APA, and the second woman named a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences. She died quietly in her home on October 29th at the age of 69.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/washburn.html
I chose this source because it included a lot of background on Margaret Washburn’s early life and her graduate work.
http://www.apa.org/about/governance/president/bio-margaret-washburn.aspx
This article was small but held a lot of information about Washburn’s career and her achievements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Floy_Washburn
I chose this source because it had good overall information on Washburn and her professional career.
1a) William James
1b) William James relates to this chapter right off the bat where he is quoted, “Psychology is the Science of Mental Life, both of its phenomena and their conditions.” He is then brought up when the chapter continues on with this view on modern psychology and states that William James is America’s first “New” psychologist. He also established the textbook The Principles of Psychology. William James contributed a lot to progress in America’s modern psychology today.
1c) I found William James interesting because he was America’s first “new” psychologist. It interested me that he did not want to be called a psychologist yet he is one of the most important psychologists of all time. He wanted to be referred to as a philosopher. I find his opinion about psychology fascinating when he states “no science, it is only the hope of science”. James is a big contributor to the modern day psychology here in the U.S.
2) Growing up William James was the oldest of five and had an interest in art and science. He studied painting but decided that that wasn’t the right fit for him. He then studied at Harvard Medical School where he was very unhappy with his life. James took time and joined Louis Agassiz’s expedition to the Amazon basin and also went to Germany to figure out what he really wanted to do with his life. He earned his medical degree four years later, yet he decided not to practice medicine. James was offered a job as an instructor at Harvard. He accepted the job and worked there for 35 years. He taught psychology and philosophy. He began to grow deeper and more interested into specific issues he spent time to establish a masterwork called, The Principles of Psychology. This book has contributed an immense amount of thought into this field and created more thought for others to explore. He helped develop functionalism in psychology and pragmatism in philosophy. He influenced many scientists with his theories, research, findings and writing in this field. James was a leader in the nineteenth century and has been labelled as the “Father of American psychology”.
3) http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/jamesbio.htm - very well established lay out and easy to follow his life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James - always love the outline wikipedia uses such an easy read
http://www.biography.com/people/william-james-9352726#synopsis - short and to the point. good website to double check right information
This week I would like to talk about Francis Sumner. He was mentioned in the text as the first African American man to receive his PhD in psychology. I am interested in some of the discrimination that Sumner might have faced during his struggle for education. Since he is known today as the “Father of Black Psychology,” I figure that he must have been a pretty important part of history.
Francis Cecil Sumner was born in 1895. During his younger life he experienced much discrimination because of his race, as did many other African Americans of the time. He was born only 30ish years after the abolition of slavery. Since his parents had been slaves themselves, they had no last name. They chose their last name to honor a man that had supported the abolition of slavery. He was not able to attend high school because of lack of opportunity wans was forced to self-teach himself any secondary education with the supervision of his parents. Sumner started college at age fifteen at Lincoln University and graduated with honors at age twenty. He then went on to attend Clark University to receive his next degree. It is here that he created relationships with G. Stanley Hall, the founder of educational psychology and the first APA president, and James P. Porter, the dean of Clark University. He received a BA in English before returning to Lincoln for a brief period. Unfortunately, Sumner was drafted into WWI for about a year. After which he returned to Clark for his final degree. Sumner received his PhD from Clark University in psychology in 1920, the first black man to do so in history.
After graduating, Sumner spent a good portion of his career focusing on racism and bias. He became a leader in the psychological community, as well as the black community. He became a leader by example, rather than by speeches and protests. In the late 1920’s he accepted a teaching position at Howard University. One of his students here was Kenneth Clark who went on to make major contributions to psychology himself. He also created an award that went to the psychology student with the best essay. However, his most important contribution to psychology was the establishment of a department of Psychology at Howard.
http://books.google.com/books?id=6-FchL0K_ioC&pg=PA344&lpg=PA344&dq=francis+sumner+psychology&source=bl&ots=2iQL566DSA&sig=A7fnUonjlzlL45KFhO71WQHLlDI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wiE2VPqyJMq1yASKvoDADQ&ved=0CCYQ6AEwATgU#v=onepage&q=francis%20sumner&f=false
I chose to use this source because there was about a page and a half of this book dedicated solely to Sumner and his life and contributions.
http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/msartistic3-1609034-francis-sumner-presentation/
Although this is a student made presentation, it contains a lot of useful information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Cecil_Sumner
This site is obviously Wikipedia, which I hesitate to use. However, many of my search results found sites in which Sumner was only briefly mentioned. Obviously this whole page was dedicated to Sumner and his career.
For my topic, I decided to study a little more about women in education. This topic relates to the chapter by getting a little more detail on what women had to go through to finally arrive into higher education. The chapter talked a lot about specific women who fought to get to the college arena with men, and I found their stories interesting. So, I decided to learn more about their struggles and even their predecessor’s and successor’s struggles.
In the 1700’s, public schools had not become a tradition quite yet. A woman in the town would house several children in her home to teach them their numbers and ABC’s while going about her daily chores. These schools were called “dame schools.” Both genders would attend these schools. Boys were taught the basic skills necessary to enter into the town schools while the girls were taught womanly duties such as knitting and sewing. After the children finished this section of education, boys were given the option to continue their education while girls were, normally, not offered this opportunity. The southern part of the country was mostly plantations which were too far apart to have schools like this. So, the parents would hire tutors for their sons. If the girls were lucky enough they could sit in on these lessons. However, most girls were taught basic arithmetic and writing to record household expenses, basic duties of housework, and basic reading to be able to read the Bible (NWHM).
By the 1800’s, secondary schools, or “academies,” began emerging. An increasing number of female students began entering into these schools. College education was still far from common for female students. Until about 1870, the final stop for most women in the education system was called a “Finishing School.” The common theme in these establishments was to teach women to be a “suitable wife.” In 1815, however, there was a push for equal education for men and women in these schools known as “The Female Seminary Movement,” and by 1860, many more schools opened up that allowed coeducational opportunities (NWHM).
Toward the end of the 19th century, college became a more attainable option for female students. State colleges began allowing women into their programs but, unfortunately, the private schools did not follow suit. As a result, many institutions arose for women in the private sector of education. Even entrance into college majors and programs was more attainable for women it does not mean that it was equal or fair. In 1918, the Commission on the Reorganization for Secondary Education suggested the two-track system. One track, mainly offered to men, guided students with college preparatory work. The second track, mainly offered to females, encouraged vocational training. Women with even the most stellar academic record were encouraged to take classes like domestic science. Using this two-track system encouraged women to enter into four types of careers: secretarial, nursing, teaching or motherhood (mcrcad).
Fortunately, it turned around in the late 20th century. In 1972, Title IX was passed making it illegal to discriminate based on gender in public schools. This included areas such as financial aid, school athletics, admission, and even the treatment of students. Further progressing women in the education system was the passing of the Women’s Educational Equity Act (WEEA) in 1974. This act encouraged schools, as well as assisted them, in recruitment for women in the areas of science, math, and athletic programs (mcrcad).
More has progressed since the 70’s of course, however there is still a long way to go. Women still hold a small percentage of higher level jobs. For example, women only hold 5% of media executive jobs (Green 2014). Women are still encouraged, possibly subconsciously, to enter into “women jobs” such as teaching, nursing, or social work. In order to make it completely fair for both women and men is for our society to work on not stereotyping the female, and the male for that matter, gender. In the video that I chose to use for this post, host Laci Green says, “I’m a feminist because I believe in gender equality… I know we’re not there yet.” We still have a lot to do, but the progress that has been made is proof that we can get there.
https://www.nwhm.org/html/exhibits/education/1700s_1.htm
I chose this website because it offered an in depth look at the history of women in education as well as history on the education system itself.
http://www.mcrcad.org/Web_Madigan.pdf
I chose this website because it helped narrow down the broad topic that is the history of women’s education, as well as provide a current look at the education system for women.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwJRFClybmk&list=UUJm5yR1KFcysl_0I3x-iReg&index=10
I chose this video by Laci Green because she provides a silly way of looking at a very serious topic. Her video centers more on feminism than the education aspect itself, but it does provide a good perspective on the history of women in America.
1a) State what your topic is.
I decided to look into Spiritualism.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
This topic relates to chapter six because William James was interested in it and helped establish a society similar to the Society of Psychical Research in America. He also worked with Mrs. Leonore Piper, who was a popular medium, and although he was dedicated to his work, he also wondered why some of the spirits or consciousness of those deceased would remark on some of the things they did, liking the moving of a photo or something else.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in Spiritualism, because I’ve always been interested in whether or not these types of things are real or fraudulent, and I find it fascinating because there is so much that is unknown about death and dying, and what happens to a person once they die, it’s really one of the last frontiers of human science we have left. It also ties nicely into religion, which has always been a favor subject of mine.
Spiritualists believe that the afterlife is a place in which spirits continue to evolve, and that spirits are more advanced than humans and are able to provide useful knowledge to us about a variety of issues. They have a set of nine core beliefs, known as principles, and some of these include: they do not die, and when they leave their bodies they continue to grow and improve; they believe in God, or Infinite Intelligence; they are responsible for their own actions; that God is in all things; and that they can talk to the spirit world. Many spiritualists have a spirit guide, or a spirit on the other side in which they contact who give them spiritual guidance. There are many ways that spiritualism can come out in what spiritualists call phenomena, including visions, raps, photography, prophecy, and clairvoyance. Mediums are very popular and are able to get and send messages to the spirit world through some sort of spiritual phenomena, although not everyone who believes in Spiritualism is a medium. Spiritualists also believe in spiritual healing, and spiritual healers work with an individual on multiple levels to release stress and help with holistic healing. Spiritualism started in 1848 with raps from a man who had been murdered in the Farmhouse that the Fox family was living in. Kate Fox asked the ghost to repeat the raps that she made back to her, and it did and they established a code in which she could decipher what happened to him. Kate’s sister, Maggie joined her in practicing sittings with spirits and this became very popular. One of the most popular things that mediums did was called table turning, in which the participants in these sittings would put their hands on the table and wait for it to move in some way. Some people considered mediums and spiritualism to be witchcraft, and it was even outlawed by the Catholic Church (some even considered it a form of necromancy), although it was allowed for scientific purposes. Spiritualism is considered a religion and was very popular from the 1840’s until around the 1920s, and many of its followers were women. Famous magicians such as Harry Houdini worked to expose most of the mediums as fraudulent, and the spiritualist movement suffered immensely because of the widespread fraud. It became slightly more popular again in the 1970s with the birth of the New Age movement. Spiritualism is still practiced today, and there are spiritualist churches throughout the US, Canada, and the UK. Today’s spiritualists have an organized movement dedicated to teaching about their truths and principles, to encourage learning about spiritualism and secular welfare, to protest against forcing people to worship God in any specific way, to encourage people to be open to new truths, and to promote spiritual healing.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/560501/spiritualism
background knowledge, exposure by Harry Houdini and magicians, New Age Movement,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualism
General knowledge, popular times, women involvement,
https://www.nsac.org/
Website that is all about the religion, and provides a lot of knowledge about spiritualism as a whole as well as very specific information.
1a) State what your topic is.
William James and Functionalism
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
William James is considered to be the father of American psychology. He is talked a lot about in the chapter because the chapter is about the study of psychology moving to the United States.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
Up until now, the book has covered psychologists from different countries. I wanted to learn more about how psychology got started here.
William James wore a few different hats. He was a philosopher and a physician, but most importantly, James is considered to be the “father of American psychology”. He wrote Principles of Psychology, which is one of the first textbooks ever written about the field. This two volume book took him twelve years to write. For the majority of his career, James studied and worked at Harvard in the fields of philosophy and psychology.
Although functionalism was not founded by James, he was a strong supporter of it. Functionalism is a study of consciousness that focuses on how the mind interprets information and adapts rather than looking at the mind from a biological standpoint. James believed there was a “stream of consciousness” that underwent changes as people went through life. This is built off of and in contrast to structuralism which says that consciousness can be broken up into stages. Although functionalism is not considered to be a stand-alone science now, it has become a part of the study of psychology as a whole.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_psychology
This gives an overview of the early studies of functionalism.
https://cognition-perception-senses.knoji.com/william-james-functionalism-theory-of-attention-and-consciousness/
This site talks about how functionalism relates to consciousness. It may not be the most reliable site, but the information I pulled from it is inline with the info on other websites I visited.
http://www.psych.utah.edu/gordon/Classes/Psy4905Docs/PsychHistory/Cards/James.html
This site compares structuralism with functionalism.
1a) Women’s Sphere
1b) This topic relates to the chapter because the chapter was talking about the changes of society and how women were wanting to learn more. It was the women’s sphere though that was holding them back at trying to gain an education, this idea, like many past ideas was something that was holding society back from change.
1c) I am interested in this because well for one I am a woman and the fight that so many women have faced just to be able to be treated as an equal has always interested me. Then upon reading the chapter and how in the chapter it described the ideas that went along with the women’s sphere I was interested to know why people would say such untrue and horrible things. Mainly the idea of if a woman tried to learn or better herself she would then lose all of her traits that made her a woman, mainly the thought that they would then become infertile.
2) Women’s sphere was something that was brought about in the 18th century. During this time there was a lot of change occurring throughout the world with the emergence of equal statuses and wealth growing around the world. It was during this time that the fear of women wanting to educate themselves and become prominent members of society became apparent. So there was this idea created that women should not abandon their roles as homemakers and caring for the children, this idea started the idea of the women’s sphere. During this time the men were said to dominate the public sphere, dealing with everything outside of the home such as working and politics. Now the women of the time would then dominate the women’s sphere, and that is that they would be home to care for private lives of their family. During this time, this combination was said to make for a perfect home. The men were set to dominate and be aggressive while doing so but a women who were to fit into society at this time were to meet certain characteristics “Her four chief characteristics were piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity” (ushistory.org). During the Victorian period though it was not just the men that embraced this idea of where women fit in society but women themselves thrived on the idea that they would fit into this role. It wasn’t until the turn of the century where the revolution began and England was taken from power and new ways of thinking along with new schools being built that women began to see things a different way, a new way of thinking was about to change everything. It was during the Constitutional Convention when women were beginning to see change and it was then that Abagail Adams told her husband before leaving to not forget about women. The problem was though that again women were sidelined and pushed out of the picture of change and rights. Women were growing tired of being ignored and pushed to the side, so women’s activists began to play a role in the government and began fighting for rights. Women began participate in the public sphere fighting for their rights and most of them were looked at as being insane because they wanted to play a new role in society. They were sent off to asslyum’s in order to correct their thinking. Other people came up with the idea that they would be involved in furthering their education it would take away from their domestic abilities; therefore they would not be able to bare children because their organs would become dysfunctional and they would not be domesticated. So women that did fight to go on to school were sent to different schools in order to learn how to be better domesticated, they would take homemakers classes and some would even be able to partake in art classes but were never treated as equal, they were stuck in the women’s sphere because men didn’t want them in the public sphere. It was the women’s sphere though that lead to the development of women’s right and activists that stood up, they fought for rights and are still fighting today for women to receive the same rights and treatment as men. The women’s sphere is still a part of today’s society, a part of society that is fighting for women still.
3) http://www.ushistory.org/us/25e.asp
I chose this site because it gave an in-depth perspective of what was going on in society when the women’s sphere was originally brought about. This site was more informative of what lead to the women’s sphere and how it expanded throughout the centuries.
http://faculty.uml.edu/sgallagher/separate_spheres.htm
I chose this site because it talked about the fight that women faced with getting rights, how women were viewed by society and the placement they received from society. This site also talked about the changes that occurred in order for women to begin standing up for themselves and how things were tough for them throughout the years.
http://library.duke.edu/exhibits/britishwriters/womeninpublicsphere.html
I chose this site because it talked more about feminism and how different women worked to get rights for themselves throughout the years.
Mary Caulkins caught my attention while reading through this chapter. She was living in a time where it was a man's world. She almost had no control over what she was going to do with her life. According to the woman's sphere, Mary was meant to be a stay-at-home mother, care for the children, and clean the home. Basically, she was suppose to do whatever the men in here life told her to do. Mary did not go for that type of life. She went to college. Although she could not technically enroll in classes, Smith College allowed her to sit in on classes. After Smith College, Mary then went to Greece with her family and studied the Classics and Philosophy. After her return to the states, she began teaching Greek at Wellesley College and later psychology. Mary had studied Psychology at Harvard, although they did refuse to give her a degree considering she was a women. Although unable to recieve a degree with Harvard, She was awarded honorary degrees from both Columbia and Smith College before she died of cancer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Whiton_Calkins
I enjoy using wikipedia because I feel it can usually give a in depth look at historic figures lives.
http://www2.webster.edu/~woolflm/marycalkins.html
This website was accurate and to the point.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_marycalkins.htm
I always enjoy a good timeline.
My topic is the creation of Universities in American in relation to the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862. This topic is very important to the chapter and more importantly to the growth of psychology in the 19th century. Psychology was rarely taught in American due to the small number of colleges and universities available. That is until the Morrill Land Grant Act passed in 1862 and opened the doors to hundreds of universities and with that brought an abundance of psychology courses further developing knowledge about psychology among Americans. I chose this topic because I never knew how colleges and universities came to be and I was so amazed that one simple passing of an act seemed to spur the majority of the colleges and universities seen today.
In the years leading up to the Morrill Land Grant Act there was a call to create more colleges, especially ones specifically designed for agriculture. The original creator of the bill wanted the act to give an equal grant to each state. This was however changed and the grants were based on the number of senators and republicans each state had represent in congress. The Morrill Land Grant Act was sponsored by Vermont Congressman Justin Morrill. The act was originally passed in 1859 until it was rejected by President Buchanan. Then in 1862 during the middle of the civil war President Abraham Lincoln signed the act back into law which this time included that institutions were to teach engineering, military tactics, and agriculture. The Land Grant Act allocated 30,000 acres of land for each senator and representative a state had. These colleges were funded by the money gained from the state selling the land. There were 76 colleges that were created from these land grants. Some states did not have enough land to meet the land grant so the state was given a scrip, this gave permission to the state to use federal lands in another state to fund their college or university. The state of Iowa was the first to agree to the terms of the Land Grant Act which eventually produced Iowa State University.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Land-Grant_Acts
This website talked about the specifics of the Land Grant Act especially the scrip.
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=33
This website talked about the size of the land grants given and how it was devised among each state.
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Morrill.html
This website explained when the bill was passed and by whom and how the money came about to create these institutions.
1a.My topic is the James-Lange theory of emotion
1b. This topic relates to the chapter because the chapter focuses upon the American pioneers in psychology and one of the major influences on American psychology was William James. I decided to look at his interesting theory of emotion.
1c. I am interested in the topic because in psychopathology we discuss a lot about how emotions work, and how we deal with our emotions can exacerbate the state of our mental health. I know in cognitive psychology they deal with how we interpret our emotions and how physiological reactions can have an effect on our emotions. I thought it would be interesting to take a broader look at the James-Lange theory of emotion.
2. This theory is very counter intuitive to many people and I found it hard to grasp at first as well. James, who borrowed his ideas for this theory from dutch physiologist Carl Lange, states that our physiological reaction to a stimulus causes us to feel the emotion. For instance, if we see a snake our heart beat may start to rise and we may sweat and become fearful. According to this theory it is the rise in heart rate, the shaking, and the sweating that causes us to have the emotion of fear. Intuition may tell us that the snake causes the fear, or that the fear causes the physiological reaction. According to James and Lange the order of causation is that we feel the physiological reaction followed by the emotional reaction, and the snake, (which may cause the physiological reaction), does not cause the emotion. In modern cognitive psychology they also espouse a similar principle. When it comes to dealing with anxiety and phobias, a treatment plan may be to recognize that your fear response is coming from a physiological reaction and by recognizing and trying to control the physiological response you can better manage the emotional response that comes from it. James also described how this response happens internally in our body. There is a discrete pathway information takes when we feel emotions. So, let’s take the example of seeing a snake and becoming afraid. When we see the snake that information goes to our sense organ (the eyes), the sense organ then relays the incoming information to the cerebral cortex. Information from the cortex then travels to the viscera (internal organs) and muscles, which causes the physiological response (shaking, increased heart rate, etc.). These impulses then travel back to the cortex which elicit the feeling of the fear. James called this last step “object simply apprehended” to “object emotionally felt”. Now, there have been some criticisms over the years to the James-Lange theory and these come in the form of two other theories on emotion. The first theory rejecting the James-Lange theory is the Cannon-Bard theory. The Cannon-Bard theory basically states that the subjective emotion and the physiological response are brought on simultaneously by the situation at hand. So in the snake example, fear is felt at the same time the heart rate increases and shaking starts. The Cannon-Bard theory also refutes that the viscera are the messenger that causes the arousal of emotions. In an experiment they showed that even when the visceral nerves are cut in rats it has no effect on the expression of the emotion at all. The other theory that goes against the James-Lange theory of emotion is the Two Factor theory of emotion. This theory states that our emotions are dependent not only on our physical arousal but how we interpret that arousal. According to this theory we look for environmental cues to help us interpret that arousal which causes the emotion we then feel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James%E2%80%93Lange_theory
This website helped to give me an overview, in greater detail than the book, on what this theory constitutes and how he came up with the theory.
https://explorable.com/james-lange-theory-of-emotion
This website helped in that it backed up the information from the first site and it also gave me an insight into the other theories that are out there concerning emotion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN-IWlFWyAg
This video, while very very cheesy, actually helped a lot in that it described the differences between the three big theories on how express emotion.
Spiritualism in the United States
I find this topic interesting because I didn’t know it had such an impact on American citizens. I thought only a select few folks practiced in communicating with the dead. To me, it was a ‘rich folks’ game that people would do at a party, something that they could make fun of and have a good time doing it. I was wrong however, it was an actual religious movement: a mixture of liberal, nonconformist values and fireside chats with dead people that had invited many prestigious minds to join in, such as, as mentioned in the chapter, William James.
What’s so interesting to me is how easily this practice works with people. I assume it works so well simply because the idea of very captivating. Death, of course, is a fairly interesting topic for many people and thus the idea of having some influence on a world outside ones’ own would captivate many. Of course there is also the coping mechanism that comes from being ‘talked to’ by one’s deceased relative. I view this as a productive form of ‘therapy’ given that it could help a person through grieving. I don’t believe that it should be generally accepted by a legitimate therapeutic source, however it could be helpful nonetheless.
Professor Richard Wiseman is a psychologist today, as well as a magician, who conducted similar séances with various groups. He proposed an experiment, that if he did the usual parlor tricks that people did in the past—such as flickering lights and floating tables—during a séance that he would hold, people wouldn’t fall for it like how people did in the past and would pass it off as a joke. However, the tricks worked just as well as they did in the past. It seemed that people were just as amused with séances and talking with the dead as they were in the past.
So while there is nothing psychologically profound about the practice, except maybe how one may be consoled by a ‘visit’ from a deceased relative or friend, it should be noted however how easily interested and fascinated people become by the event, even if it is so blatantly fake and made to deceive them.
Source of Richard Wiseman’s experiments:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/20/seances-and-science
General info on Spiritualism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualism
1a) William James
1b) This chapter is on American psychologists, and William James was one of the most prominent figures in the history of American Psychology.
1c) I had heard little of William James when studying psychology, and was surprised to learn that he did much more than aid in the development of the James-Lange theory of emotion. I was curious to see what else he did in and outside of psychology.
2) William James was born on January 11, 1842 to an affluent family. He was a major figure in both psychology and philosophy, but many of his philosophical beliefs influenced his psychological theories. He was the first to offer psychology courses in American history, and is often deemed the father of American psychology. He was often sick, including illnesses and ailments such as smallpox, eye strain, back problems, and suicidal depression. These frequently hindered a lot of his endeavors in life. He studied physiology at Harvard and graduated in 1869. He would enlist in the Civil war for three months, but had to leave early due to his illness. He also had an expedition in Brazil that he would have to leave early due to coming down with smallpox. He would eventually be hired as a professor at Harvard and teach anatomy and physiology, philosophy, and psychology. While he was there, he even created his own lab. He married Alice Howe Gibbens in 1878 and had 5 children. In 1890, he published the Principles of Psychology. This book was 1,200 pages long and included his major theories including his ideas on the stream of consciousness and the self, sensation (contact with the environment), perception (internalizing the environment), imagine (take what we have learned and create it in our mind), and belief (what is developed in imagination corresponds with reality), and emotion and will (what lead to the James-Lange theory of emotion). He also focused a lot on freedom vs. determinism, and had a lot of ideas on pragmatism, which was a mix between gentle and tough approaches. He believed that although we want empirical concrete facts for evidence, personal values and morals should also be taken into consideration. He would resign from Harvard in 1907 after 30 years of teaching. He also had major significance in the areas of pragmatism and functionalism. For pragmatism, he believed that ideas can never be proven as truth, they are still useful. As for functionalism, he disagreed with structuralism and believed the focus should be placed on the event in its entirety and how the environment affects behavior.
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James#Early_life
Information about his early life and career
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/
This website had a lot of basic information about William James, his theories and the Principles of Psychology.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/jamesbio.htm
his functionalist and pragmatic ideas, and also freedom vs. determinism.
1. What Topic are you interested in and how it relates to the chapter?
I am interested in Mary Whiton Calkins, she was one of the few women, who did not care about discrimination she received for trying to get a higher education. She still choose to push past all that, and try. This chapter is mainly focusing on its American Pioneers. This chapter talks about how psychology was in America before the arrival of the “New Psychology”. The chapter discuss how William James helped shaped psychology, how other new individuals such as Mary Whiton Calkins shaped psychology in America. Mary Whiton Calkins really stuck out to me because even though during her time, it was so frowned a pun for her to have an education. That she was able to push past her limitations. The fact she is able to speak multiple languages, French, English, German and she even goes to try and learn Greek.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
Reading through the chapter, it gave me a little insight to her life and a few things she contributed to psychology. I would like to have a better understanding of how her life was during that time. I would also like to know what other things she achieved, and finally I would like to know if she ever married and if so any children? I feel that if she had a daughter, her daughter would be so intellect and they both would really push women’s issues.
3) The first thing I looked at was to get a better understanding of her life. I feel that the book slightly touched on it but I want to know a little more in depth. I feel that she is most known for not being able to get a PhD degree from Harvard even though, she attended all the classes and lectures. Mary Whiton Calkins was born on March 30, 1863 in Hartford, Connecticut. She was the oldest of 5 children, her parents really felt that education was very important. She entered in Smith College in 1882, as a sophomore. In 1893, her sister Maude died, it really an influenced her thinking and character. After her sister died, she stayed at home to do some private studying. In 1884 she returned to Smith College and she graduated a year a later. In 1886, Mary went to Wellesley College to teach Greek, soon after she wanted to gain more knowledge. This is when she tried to go to Harvard she wanted to study under William James himself. Her father and her previous school Wellesley had to write to Harvard, giving them a petition to let her in on the lectures. Finally Harvard agreed but only that she was a ‘unofficial guest’ and that she was not allowed to register. In 1895, Calkins presented her thesis, “An experimental research on the association of ideas.” During the examination, before Professors Royce, Munsterburg, Palmer, Harris and Dr. Santayana. All her professors voted that she has satisfied all customary requirements for the degree. Yet Harvard’s records show this communication was noted but it was still not considered. She did not receive her PhD from Harvard.
Mary contributed a lot to psychology, she wrote four books, including, An Introduction to Psychology in 1901. The Persistent Problems of Philosophy in 1907, which went through five editions; and finally The Good Man and the Good in 1918. She was elected president of the American Psychological Association and the president of the American Philosophical Association in 1918. Because of all her achievements in a 1908, a list of leading psychologists in the United States was published and Mary herself was ranked twelfth. Mary was conducting research with association and she came up with paired associate technique. Another concept she came up with was ‘self-psychology’. She believed that the study for psychology should be the conscious self. She defined it as the study of conscious, functioning, experiencing selves that exist in relationship to others. The years 1909 and 1910, were really influential. Columbia University gave Mary a Doctor of Letters degree and in 1910, Smith College gave her a Doctor of Laws degree. Both schools offered her jobs, but she choose to stay home with her family, and she died on February 26, the year her autobiography came out. Overall, I find it interesting that she had this concept of self psychology. It really makes me see how over time these ideas about the conscious and unconscious in psychology is developed. I did not fully elaborate on her paired associate because it was vastly covered in the book.
4) This website gave some insight on how she became a president in the American Psychological Association, it also briefly mentions some of her other work. http://www.apa.org/about/governance/president/bio-mary-whiton-calkins.aspx
The next website I choose gave an overview of her life, her research and how it all ties together. http://faculty.webster.edu/woolflm/marycalkins.html#research
This website gave me a better understanding of Mary theory of self-psychology.
http://legacy.earlham.edu/~harriem/contributions.htm
Terminology: Mary Whiton Calkins, paired-associate research, self-psychology,
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
The topic that I have chosen is Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark. This fits in with this chapter because they are talked about in the section that talks about education for women and minorities.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
For this assignment I am going to talk about the accomplishments that both Kenneth and Mamie achieved, the doll experiments they conducted, and the role they played in civil rights and the Brown v Board of Education court case.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark both got their bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Howard University. Mamie was influenced by her work with young children and went on to write her thesis on the topic of “The Development of Consciousness of Self in Negro Pre-School Children.” Kenneth Clark partnered with her to help her extend her research. Later these two became husband and wife. The Clarks were the first African-Americans to receive their doctoral degrees in psychology for Columbia University. Kenneth was the first African-American tenured professor at City College of New York, the first African-American president of the American Psychological Association, and the first African-American appointed to the New York State Board of Regents. Mamie, with the help of Kenneth, opened up the first agency to offer psychological help to children and families in the Harlem area. This agency was called Northside Center for Child Development.
The Clark’s are by far most remembered for their doll experiments. These experiments were done by asking asking three to seven year old African-American children which doll they would prefer to play with. These dolls were exactly alike, except that their skin was a different color. More than half of the children said that they would prefer to play with the white doll. When asked which doll was the bad doll, about 60% of the children stated that the black doll was bad and that the white doll was good.
Kenneth and Mamie didn’t know it at the time, but these experiments would become very helpful in the future. Kenneth and Mamie were contacted by the Brown team and asked to testify on their behalf. The Supreme Court cited one of the papers Kenneth wrote in 1950 in their final ruling on the case. This was not the only case that Mamie and Kenneth testified as expert witnesses. Together these two were very influential in civil rights and their dolls studies opened up new areas of research within the field of developmental psychology.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/psychologists/clark.aspx --This site had a lot of good information about the accomplishments of Kenneth.
http://www.naacpldf.org/brown-at-60-the-doll-test --> I used this site because it gave a good explanation of the doll experiment and the role it played in several court cases
http://psychology.about.com/od/womeninpsychology/p/mamie-phipps-clark.htm --> This site gave me good information about Mamie and her contributions the the field of psychology
Terms: Civil rights, Mamie Phipps Clark, Kenneth Clark, Brown v. Board of Education, doll experiments, Northside Center for Child Development, developmental psychology
1) My topic is women’s rights and involvement within psychology. There was a section discussing this matter in the readings and I found it very interesting and wanted to expand my knowledge on the subject to try to answer some of the questions that came about when learning about this topic. I have always been very interested in learning about women in history because that’s more of the hidden information because it wasn’t accepted for a woman to think like that back in other eras. When learning about history I have always wondered in the back of my mind if a woman made a certain break through or discovery but it was credited to a man because people were that ignorant back then.
2) The three aspect I am going to talk about for this assignment are the female pioneers in psychology, the researcher topic of these psychologist, and trailblazer for women in this field: Mary Whiton Calkins.
3) There are a lot more females within psychology than most people would even guess. These women just have not been given as much attention and credit because narrow minded people felt that their gender limited their intellectual ability. After doing more research I was able to find many female pioneers that made a significant mark on the field of psychology. For example, Melanie Klein was the creator of play therapy which is still a huge factor in the field today. Leta Hollingworth worked with exceptional children and factors that she theorized would help nurture giftedness and was one of the first people to challenge the ridiculous view that women were less gifted and talented than men. Anna Freud was the founder of child psychoanalysis and Mary Ainsworth developed her Strange Situation assessment, both of which are still widely used today. After just a little bit of research, it was clear that females should be credited with important and long standing break through within the field of psychology.
As I was researching all of these woman I began to notice a reoccurring theme with their topic they studied. In nearly all situations, these female pioneers’ research was related to children and developmental aspects. Believe me, my research showed woman in all of the different fields of psychology and they are more than capable of holding their own within each field. It is just more common for women psychologist to focus on working with children. Some sites say its because woman’s curiosities are more aimed toward children due to some natural maternal instincts. Others stated that woman look at things from a different perspective than men and want to be able to understand how a problem arose in order to develop a method of fixing the problem or understanding how things come about and are created. The research on this matter was greatly opinionated and not very factual in giving a reason for the
Even though the topics can most of the time fall into the same categories, the findings are outstanding and game changing. None of those monumental discoveries would have been possible for those women if it had not been for Mary Whiton Calkins. Calkins was the first female to complete all of the coursework for a doctoral degree within the field of psychology. She also the first female to establish a psychology lab at a women’s college. She did work with sensations and association and other topics concerning the physiological standpoint, Calkins was also elected as the 14th president of the American Psychological Association and was the first female president of the organization. She was described as fierce and determined and would not stand for any opposition based on her sex. She was the smart and dedicated woman that was needed in order to make the break in the first glass ceiling within the field of psychology. Without Calkins, the female role within psychology would have looked extremely different.
4) URLs:
http://psychology.about.com/od/womeninpsychology/tp/important-women-in-psychology-history.htm
The website gave me the best information about female pioneers within psychology. It was also the first time I really noticed the correlation between the pioneers and the topics they studied.
http://www.feministvoices.com/mary-whiton-calkins/
The site listed above gave me the greatest insight on Mary Whition Calkins. It not only reflected on her achievements but also how she was perceived in the field and how she was able to overcome the barriers created for woman looking to expand within any of the sciences at this point in history.
http://www.apa.org/research/action/difference.aspx
My final website talked more about the research topics of the female pioneers and peoples theories involving the similarities between them.
5) Terminology Used: Melanie Klein, Leta Hollingworth, play therapy, developmental, Anna Freud, child psychoanalysis, Mary Ainsworth, Strange Situation Assessment, Mary Whition Calkins, sensations, associations, physiological standpoint,
1) My topic this week is going to be about the upcoming females in the world of psychology, but more specifically Christine Ladd-Franklin. There was a section in the reading that had information about the introduction of females in the psychology world and I wanted to do someone else that made significant contributions but weren’t as known to people like Mary Calkins and her paired-associate learning theory. I’m interested in this topic because I am a female so it intrigues me how these people started to develop their ideas from really nobody big in the science world and developed themselves to have connections with others and be able to develop their ideas on a larger scale.
2) The three aspects of Christine Ladd-Franklin I would like to talk about are what influenced her to go to college where girls weren’t allowed to study, what her main contributions to psychology were, and the obstacles she had to overcome to create a better outcome for females today.
3) Christine was born in 1847 and was born into a family who were very well developed in the political realm of society. Some of her relatives held positions in the senate, her mom was a feminist, and she had six relatives that were involved in the Constitutional Convention of the Colony of Connecticut during her time growing up. She followed in her mother’s footsteps greatly and wanted to be a feminist. Her mother died she was 12 and that pushed her to go live with her Grandma. She went on after that to develop her intelligence at Vassar College with the approval of her grandmother. She got her degree but just that one wasn’t enough for her. John Hopkins College opened up and at first it was an only male school. She was accepted to only sit in lectures taught by one professor and she didn’t care. All she wanted to do was learn and have her intelligence raised to a higher standard, even if that meant being singled out and different than the rest of the school.
Once out of school, Christine would go on to make contributions to the psychology world based on the basic ideas of other scientists and researchers. She worked with Hermann von Helmholtz and a German psychologist, G. E. Mueller, to learn about color vision. Her contribution of the theory of color vision and the stages stemmed off of the original basis of Helmholtz’s study. While doing her experiments and studies she concluded that vision has changed overtime and used Darwin’s idea of theory of evolution to explain why. We now have a color sensitivity during the day and that peripheral vision was more useful during the night so we can see movement in different directions. She’s also the one who concluded that there are 3 stages or colors in the eyes including achromatic (black and white), blue-yellow, and red-green. She believed that color blindness of the red-green variety was more common because that was evolved last whereas there is pretty much nobody who is unable to see black and white because she said that was the foundation of vision.
The road for Christine to be able to discover her ideas about vision was not easy. She had to overcome many obstacles to become a successful psychologist, mathematician, and scientist. Her first road block came when she was going to school at Vassar and then had to drop out for a year because she couldn’t financially afford it. She got people help her raise money though and was able to go back to school. She also hit another roadblock in her journey when she went to present her ideas of color vision to an experimentalist group lead by Titchener and she couldn’t because she was a female. She had to constantly fight and send letters to them stating why she should be able to give her idea to them and the public. One last roadblock she came across in her lifetime was not being able to receive her actual PhD from John Hopkins because she was female. She had enough credits to receive her PhD in math in 1882 but didn’t receive her official degree until 1926.
4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Ladd-Franklin - I chose this URL because it gave me more of a sense of what contributions she came up with and how her mother dying impacted her.
http://www.feministvoices.com/christine-ladd-franklin/ - I chose this URL because it gave me a brief overview of Christine’s life goals and gave more of a story with the conflicts she faced.
https://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/alumni/christine-ladd-franklin.html - I chose this last URL because it has a lot of information about Christine’s life as a whole. It has information about her life growing up, contributions, and her hardships.
5) Terms: Christine Ladd-Franklin, Mary Calkins, Hermann von Helmholtz, theory of color vision, Darwin, theory of evolution, G. E. Mueller, Titchener, achromatic stage, peripheral vision, paired-associate learning
This week I chose to research the topic of spiritualism. This topic was briefly mentioned in the section on William James as he became interested in this belief system towards the end of his life. I was interested in learning more about spiritualism simply because I knew little about it coming into this class. As I did my research, I came across three main themes which I would like to discuss next: the history of spiritualism, the core beliefs of spiritualists, and the key participants in this system of beliefs.
To better understand spiritualism, the first topic I looked into was its history. The role of spirits throughout human history has always been important. Different cultures have emphasized the importance of ancestor worship, the worship of deceased spirits, as those spirits could affect ones fortune in life for better or for worse. Humans have made use of oracle bones to tell fortunes in the past, and mediums were used to contact spirits long before the rise of spiritualism. Despite the denunciation of spiritualism at many times and the persecution experienced by those believing in communication with the spirits, the beliefs continued to exist in the shadows just waiting for the chance to gain popularity. Several individuals were influential in popularizing the ideas associated with spiritualism. Franz Anton Mesmer was a famous Australian healer whose ideas had spread to the United States by the 1800s; he asserted that by moving his hands in the air around someone, he could affect their state of being and heal them. Emanuel Swedenborg added credibility to the existence of spirits describing an afterlife which had three heavens, three hells, and a spot in between which was the “world of spirits.” Thus, if one could tap into this world, it could be possible to speak with the spirits of the deceased. Even after his death, Swedenborg was said to influence spiritualism as he communicated with American Andrew Jackson Davis in the 19th century just as spiritualism was gaining ground. The true anniversary of modern spiritualism is considered to be March 31st, 1848 when Margaretta and Kate Fox were said to have heard rapping in their Hydesville, NY farmhouse. Supposedly, the spirit responsible for these communications was that of a peddler who had been killed five years earlier in the farmhouse. Indeed, there were bones found beneath the house. Following this account, the girls began traveling the United States meeting with many influential individuals who were captivated by their ability to communicate with the spirit world. From there, spiritualism gained ground especially following the Civil War as many wished to contact those lost in battle. Slowly, organizations and churches were established to support the rising spiritualist population which at its height numbered at least eight million. Although not nearly as popular today as in the mid-19th century, there are still many practicing spiritualists in the United States.
After coming to understand the history of spiritualism, it is important to also understand its main teachings. First of all, spiritualism is considered a science, philosophy, and religion. It focuses on the persistence of consciousness beyond death and seeks to study the spirit world as they relate to the laws of nature which spiritualism sees as laws given by God. Therefore, although it does not follow a specific supreme being, spiritualism does indeed hold the existence of a God to be true. Spiritualists believe that this God is expressed in everything in Nature and that it is best to live according to the laws of Nature as set out by God. Thus, prophecy and healing are a product of God’s power. They believe in doing good, that we bring unhappiness to ourselves by our actions, and that every day is a new beginning. These tenets of spiritualism do not seem all that different from many religions, so what sets spiritualism apart? The key difference is that spiritualists believe in communication with the spirit world. These communications can provide insight into the role of life on earth and the life to come. This is the likely the most controversial part of spiritualism as many do not believe contact with the spirit world can be obtained by the ordinary human being.
As just discussed, spiritualism is based on the existence of consciousness beyond death based on the basis that communication with the spirit world is possible. This communication is performed by certain individuals within the church. Thus, we make our way to the next major point which investigates two of the major roles within spiritualism: medium and spiritual healer. Many people have heard of mediums, but they are often not familiar with their exact role in communicating with spirits. A medium is a person believed to be able to see, hear, or sense those in the spirit world. They then relay the messages they receive to the natural world. Spiritualists see this ability to contact spirits as a divine gift from God. Mediums are said to be extremely sensitive to the spiritual world, understanding of their being, and able to control their mind at least to some extent. Mediumship is divided into two separate categories including mental and physical mediumship. Mental mediumship includes clairvoyance (seeing spirits), clairaudience (hearing spirits), and clairsentience (sensing spirits in another way). This type of mediumship is most common and is often associated with telepathy as spirits send messages through the minds of the mediums. The second type of mediumship, physical mediumship, happens when the spirits comes to life or actually speaks through the medium. This includes tapping and levitations, the medium speaking in a different voice, or ectoplasm which is a material that apparently emanates from the medium’s body often taking the form of a human or a face. In this form of mediumship, the medium appears to be overtaken by the spirit itself. Mediums are important to communicating with the spirit world and speaking through them, however; spiritual healers play an important role in spiritualism as well. Spiritual healers work to help heal the spirit, mind, emotions, and body of a person with the help of the medical community. There are many types of healing which spiritual healers can perform including healing with and without spiritual intervention. The spirit can intervene in the form of absent healing in which a healer prays for the health of the person and through God this healing is received. A second form of healing requiring the spirit is contact healing which involves direct contact, usually with the head and shoulders, of the individual in need of healing. The healer is thus able to transfer “curative energy” to the recipient. Magnetic healing and suggestive healing do not require the spirit. Magnetic energy is said to be transferred to others during magnetic healing, more magnetic energy is said to be given by God to certain individuals who have a greater aptitude for healing. Suggestive healing is simply the speaking of affirmations which assist in healing a person. These four types of healing are the major sources of bodily and mental healing within spiritualism. Therefore, one can see that some spiritualists play a greater role in the church than others.
This investigation of spiritualism helps one better understand the topic which William James was so interested in and it is easy to see why. It is similar in some ways to other religions of the time and yet vastly different. If these claims of communication and healing are indeed true, then James saw this as a chance to study the psychology of those with and without the ability to contact the spirit world. This could be yet another illustration of the desire to assert individual differences within a species. Whatever the case, spiritualism is certainly of interest and was, at least at one time, a fascinating area of research for all including psychologists.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-fox-sisters-and-the-rap-on-spiritualism-99663697/?no-ist
I liked this website because it gave me the founding point of modern spiritualism but also the history of spiritualism prior the 19th century.
https://www.nsac.org/
This website provided great information on all three themes. It gave me information about the history of spiritualism, the core beliefs of this religion, and two of the key roles associated with spiritualism
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/spiritualism/spiritworld/spiritworld_1.shtml
From this website I was able to get another brief overview of spiritualism and then in depth information relating to the concept of mediumship
Terminology: spiritualism, William James, mediums, consciousness, Franz Anton Mesmer, Emanuel Swedenborg , the Fox sisters, ectoplasm, spiritual healing
1)In this week’s topical blog concerning chapter six, I will be focusing on education for women and minorities in the 19th century not only in psychology, but also education in general. Back then, getting a higher education if you were a woman or a minority was very difficult. You had to be a middle or upper class white male in order to receive a higher education and become successful in your career and throughout your life. This chapter discusses different topics about psychology in the 19th century and how it evolved in ways that are really important for us to learn in order to get a better understanding of psychology’s past. The topic of education for women in minorities during this time period interests me because I, myself am a woman. I am on my way to receive a higher education, and after reading about this chapter and how hard it was for women to get higher degrees it amazed me. I could not imagine being segregated from men when it comes to education today, so that’s why it surprised me and interested me.
2)There were many interesting and important topics in this chapter about psychology in the 19th century, but I will only focus on three aspects that I particularly enjoyed learning about. First, I will discuss education for women in the 19th century. Then, I will focus on education for minorities such as blacks and Hispanics during this time as well. Lastly, I will discuss a major contributor to education and psychology for women and minorities, Mamie Phipps.
3)Women’s education in the 19th century has always interested me because I am a woman, and yet I am treated equally to men in the education system today. After reading the chapter and researching this topic I found a lot of interesting things about the education of women. It starts early, for young girls. They weren’t allowed to attend the same schools as boys at a young age. In colonial America there was such a things called “dame schools.” These schools, containing a small group of kids were taught in a woman’s kitchen. It prepared them to attend town schools, which young girls could not attend. Girls were mostly educated to be domestic. They learned how to take care of the home, rather than learning basic education. It never got easier for girls as they grew up. Compared to men, women were considered intellectually inferior. A Harvard professor once said that too much mental activity for women could hurt the growth of their reproductive organs. Back in the 19th century it was pointless for women to obtain a higher degree because most believed that women should focus on the home and children rather than getting an education and having a career. You had to choose, either get married and have children, or be alone and get an education and a job. It was considered too much for women, and women should not go past a high school education. Even if they received a higher education and obtained a degree, most of the time they did not use their degrees and were stuck at home taking care of the children.
Education for minorities was just as bad as education for women in the 19th century. Blacks were only allowed to attend colleges and universities for blacks only. Everything was segregated. The making of black universities started in the south and angered southern whites because they still believed blacks were inferior to whites. Racism was still a problem in the south and that wouldn’t change in America until the 1960’s. Although blacks were able to attend college and receive a higher degree, they often had little opportunities after they graduated. Their only option was to go back to a university and teach, all the while receiving low wages and getting no benefits. So trying to get a masters or doctorate degree in psychology was not as rewarding as it should have been for minorities because they could not do what they wanted to do after they graduated.
Mamie Phipps and her husband Kenneth Clark were blacks who received both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Howard University in psychology. They were most known for their “doll study” which contributed a lot to the field of psychology. White and black children were shown dolls with different complexions. Both white and black children favored the dolls with the light complexion and thought them to be more attractive and both associated the black dolls to be “bad.” This just goes to show how much inequality there was back then for inferior races. Even black children thought their own race was worse than that of whites because everyone was conditioned to believe that whites were superior to everyone.
www.mcrcad.org/Web_Madigan.pdf.
This article that I found was very helpful to me because it explained the history of education for women. It also discussed what education was like for young girls and how they were left out of getting an education compared to young boys.
www.nea.org/assets/doc/HE/TA09PathHEDuster.pdf
This article was useful to me in researching education for minorities in the 19th century. It also explained and discussed why blacks were disliked and how black universities were formed in the south and how whites in the south were outraged by this. This helped me in understanding the history of blacks and slavery in America and why there was so much inequality at the time.
www.feministvoices.com/mamie-phipps-clark/
This website was very interesting and useful in learning about education for women and minorities. It entailed a biography of Mamie Phipps and all she has done for psychology and for women in general. She was both a woman and a minority at a time where education was not equal and she broke the barrier.
5.) Mamie Phipps, Kenneth Clark, minority, education, psychology
1) The topic I chose for this week’s topical blog is the three main theories of emotion. There are more than these three theories, but they are the most talked about. This topic relates to the chapter that we read because it briefly discussed some of the James-Lange Theory. So I am just expanding on the idea by talking about all three of the main theories of emotion. I am interested in this subject because I have previously learned about them in my high school psychology class, but I don’t remember everything about it. So I decided to relearn and refresh my memory about the theories of emotion because they are relevant to understanding how the mind works, how psychology has come a long way, and in turn how it adds to why we study history.
2) The three aspects I am going to talk about for this blog are the definition of emotion, what the three theories of emotion are, and how Charles Darwin has influenced how emotions are viewed today. These all relate to each other and shows how we learn from the past and add onto what we already know.
3) The definition of emotion can have several different characteristics depending on the context. Emotion is a complex, subjective experience accompanied by biological and behavioral changes. Emotion involves feeling, thinking, activation of the nervous system, physiological changes, and behavioral changes such as facial expressions. In terms of psychology, emotion is often defined as a complex state of feeling that results in physical and psychological changes that influence thought and behavior. Emotionality is associated with a range of psychological phenomena including temperament, personality, mood, and motivation.
The main three main theories of emotion are the James-Lange Theory, the Cannon-Bard Theory, and the Schachter-Singer Theory. The first theory, James-Lange, says that emotion is not directly caused by the perception of an event but rather by the bodily response caused by the event. This means that, in order to experience emotion, we must first experience the bodily response that corresponds to the emotion. Once we experience the bodily response we experience the emotion. The second theory, Cannon-Bard, says that the experience of an emotion does not depend on input from the body and how it is responding. Both the experience of the emotion and the bodily response occur at the same time independently of each other. The reason why Cannon and Bard came up with this theory is because they discovered that in certain animals like cats, emotion occurs even if the brain was cut off from the information about bodily responses. They also discovered that the same bodily responses accompany many different emotions.
The third theory, Schachter-Singer, says that experiencing an emotion requires both bodily response and an interpretation of the bodily response by considering the particular situation the person is in at the moment. So even though the bodily response may be the same in different situations, people might experience very different emotions depending on what the situation is.
Schachter and Singer agree with the James-Lange theory that people infer emotions when they experience physiological arousal. But they also agree with the Cannon-Bard theory that the same pattern of physiological arousal can give rise to different emotions.
Naturalist Charles Darwin was the one who proposed that emotions evolved because they were adaptive and allowed humans and animals to survive and reproduce. Feelings of love and affection lead people to seek out mates and reproduce. Feelings of fear compel people to either fight or flee the source of danger. According to the evolutionary theory of emotion, our emotions exist because they serve an adaptive role. Emotions motivate people to respond quickly to stimuli in the environment, which helps improve the chances of success and survival. Understanding the emotions of other people and animals also plays a crucial role in safety and survival. By being able to correctly interpret the emotional displays of other people and animals, you are able to respond appropriately and avoid danger.
It is interesting to see that even something as small as talking about emotions, can be traced back in history. Darwin and his evolutionary discoveries helped start an interest and studying more into how emotions work and how they interact with our bodily functions and mindset. While there have been many insights into how emotions actually work and how our body interprets and reacts to them, there still isn’t a specific theory that has been shown to be the correct one. Each theory in itself has their own strengths and weaknesses, and have been studied intensively, but not one has been able to rise above the others.
4)
Links: http://www.sparknotes.com/psychology/psych101/emotion/section1.rhtml
This link helped me understand what exactly the definition of emotion is, and a brief overview of what each theory talks about
http://webspace.ship.edu/tosato/emotion.htm
This link helped me understand more in depth each theory and what they have to offer. It also gave me examples of how each theory works
http://psychology.about.com/od/psychologytopics/a/theories-of-emotion.htm
This link helped me understand how Charles Darwin and his evolutionary theory of emotion has added to the studies and insights into each of the three theories
Terms: emotion, Charles Darwin, James-Lange Theory, Cannon-Bard Theory, Schachter-Singer Theory, bodily response, naturalist, evolved, stimuli
1) My topic for this paper is the physiology of emotion. Although that wasn't a section in the book, those exact words were written in one of the passages. My interest sparked from those words, and the James-Lange theory of emotion. It turns out that many other theories were generated, all of them equally interesting, thought provoking and complex.
2) I'd like to try to talk about all of the theories that I have come across since a lot of them build from each other; so I will be talking in depth about the James-lange theory, the two-factor theory and the cannon-bard theories of emotion.
3) The James-Lange theory of emotion was the first theory to be brought to life regarding the physiology of emotion. The theory was a multiple in which both Carl Lange and William James separately came up with the same concept on emotion. At the time, William James attempted to take a Pragmatic approach to understanding the depths of consciousness in emotion by means of introspection, or self reflection. James and Lange theorized that emotion begins at the end of a cycle of physiological stimulation. First the stimulus is introduced, next the body is reacts physiologically, then we perceive the physiological changes and recognize them as a feeling of emotion. An example of this would be feeling your heart race when you see a baseball flying at you and then realizing you are scared. This theory is widely discredited even though evidence showed that opposite emotions had different physiological responses, new evidence that some of the physiological changes that occur during the perception of emotions tend to occur during other emotions similarly. Damaged spinal cord patients gave some insight for and against this theory as well, however it was mostly negative. These studies showed that while these patients concluded experiencing emotions less intensely, they still experienced emotions. Although, some implications of this theory can be seen as accurate, for example embarrassment from tripping occurs after physical stimulation. Another implication of this theory is another tested theory, the facial feedback hypothesis, in which certain facial expressions were found to create emotion in people. This theory isn't entirely accurate either, however because it suggests that emotions are determined by the facial expression we have on. The Schachter and Singer theory of emotion, also referred to as the two-factor theory, works a bit differently based on criticism of the James-Lange theory. The perception of environmental stimulus may bring on bodily stimulation which then alerts the mind to take environmental ques that allow it to decide the emotion that would be felt. An example of this would be when you tell a questionable joke, your emotional reaction depends on the environmental reaction around you. There was a study conducted on arousal when stimulus was presented of a dangerous bridge versus an ordinary bridge on how participants might react to an attractive researcher. Another study conducted supposedly to test vitamin effects on people initiated a stimulus and a placebo to participants and monitored reactions to a questionnaire and a fake participants angry reaction to the same questionnaire. Both studies found evidence that supported their claim, when experiencing unidentified arousal, we attribute or project our emotions based on our surroundings; the participants on the high bridge were more likely to call back the reporter and rate higher attraction to her, and the participants in the vitamin study became more angry at the questionnaire than the placebo group did. This theory was useful because it did acknowledge that physiological stimulus is similar between each emotional experience. However the theory for this research did have some limitations. For the vitamin experiment for example, the sample size was far too small, the suggested initiation of arousal doesn't typically happen the way it was portrayed, mood assessments weren't made before the participants were injected, and the ethical principles of the study were compromised by injecting people with a stimulant when they were told it would be a vitamin. Finally I will be talking about the Cannon-bard theory of emotion. This theory, although not the last to be introduced, appears to be the most accurate to me. It uses a lot of biological basis and knowledge about the areas of the brain to describe where psychological arousal begins. Although this biological approach assumes a more scientific approach I still believe that the basic belief set was similar to that of the assumptions before the James-Lange theory. From the logical standpoint it suggests that emotion provoking stimuli produces the perception of emotion at the same time as physiological reactions begin to happen. Some of the experimental data said to support the theory comes from showing the cerebral cortex’s influence on emotion. Tests on animals whose cortex was removed showed extreme rage over small provocation. The response generally occurs in the presence of any provocation, whether it is intended to elicit an angry reaction or not. They call this phenomena Sham Rage.
4)
http://study.com/academy/lesson/james-lange-cannon-bard-theories-of-emotion.html
I chose this first site because the information is written by hired professionals from a legitamate website that can't afford disinformation. I got most of my information on the James-Lange Theory from here.
http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/two-factor_emotion.htm
This website is from a professional who wrote a book and included the information listed. I got most of my information about the two-factor theory from here.
http://www.slideshare.net/shaan_47/physiology-of-emotion-5651975
This website has a powerpoint from a Psychiatry Professor at Tripura Medical College. I got most of my information on cannon-bard theory from here.
James-Lange theory of emotion, pragmatic, consciousness, introspection
The topic the I have chosen to write this essay about is Edward Thorndike, and his work with comparative psychology. This is related to chapter 7, because Thorndike has a whole section written about him in this chapter and the things that he did for comparative psychology. The book even says that Thorndike's discoveries link past comparative psychologists with future ones, such as Pavlov and Watson. The reason I am interested in Thorndike, and his work with comparative psychology, is because I find his work very entertaining. Anytime I am able to relate studies to animals and actually see the physical things being done, and discoveries being made, it helps me to learn it better, because it makes more sense and gives me a visual.
The three aspects that I am going to be talking about in this essay are his research with mazes and baby chicks, his research with cats in puzzle boxes, and lastly about what kind of discoveries he made from these experiments.
The experiment that Thorndike did with baby chicks was one of the first experiments he did while he was still at Harvard. He had just recently became very interested in comparative psychology and wanted to conduct an experiment to see if animals could learn with experience. Thorndike stood textbooks up vertically, and created a maze out of them. Then he would place recently hatched chicks into the maze to see if they could find their way out. He did indeed find that the chicks with more experience were able to find their way out faster. However, he didn't do much more research with chicks than that, because he was kind of poor, and when Cattell offered him a fellowship at Colombia, he had to take the offer and move there. His research in comparative psychology was not done at Harvard though. Thorndike moved into bigger and better things that helped him make an impact in psychology, such as cats in puzzle boxes.
After Thorndike's research with the baby chicks, he moved over to cats in puzzle boxes. What he did, was build boxes that were 20 inches long by 15 inches wide by 12 inches tall. These boxes had a door attached to them that was able to open by a pulley and a string. This door would open when a button would be pushed or a lever would be pulled inside the box. Thorndike would place that cats inside these boxes, and see how long it took the cats to get out. He then would record the times in a graph, and called it a learning curve, because that is kind of what the data would show, is an S curve. At first the cats would be very agitated and wouldn't have any idea how to get out of the box. Then, by accident, the cat would step on the button that opened the door, and they would get out. Each time they went in the box from there on out, they would find the button and get out a little bit quicker and quicker, until finally it would taper off.
Thorndike had gotten similar results for both experiments. He hypothesized that the animals would be able to learn by observation, and eventually pick up on what other cats or other chicks were doing, and then would be able to get out of the maze or box faster. That isn't the results he found though. The time was no faster if the cat was just put in the box, compared to a cat that had been watching another cat in the box. So, this lead Thorndike to come up with a different type of learning, and that is called trial-and-error learning, or connectionism. This means that the cats had learned to make connections between stimuli in the boxes and successful escape responses during the experiments. So, from trial to trial, unsuccessful behaviors drop out, and the successful ones are strengthened. So, Thorndike concluded that rather than animals mainly learning from observations, they tend to learn more from trial and error, and he had graphs and data to support this.
After Thorndike was able to find out that animals were able to learn from trial and error, and due to connections they made between stimuli and successful escapes, he was able to come up with the law of effect. This obviously just doesn't apply to animals either. He was able to use animal research to help create a law that was completely relevant for humans too. This law of effect stated that any behavior that is followed by a good consequence is going to be repeated, and any behavior that is followed by a negative consequence is going to be stopped. This was a big discovery in psychology, and helped lead to many other ways that comparative psychology could be used to help us learn more about our human ways.
http://peace.saumag.edu/faculty/kardas/Courses/HP/Lectures/thorndike.html
I used this website to give me more information on the research that Thorndike did with the mazes and chicks experiment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thorndike
I used this website to give me more information on the cats in the puzzle boxes, and how exactly that experiment was conducted, and the results he got from it.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/edward-thorndike.html
I used this website to give me more information on the law of effect, and what Thorndike had discovered.
Terms: Edward Thorndike, trial and error learning, connectionism, law of effect, Watson, Pavlov, Puzzle boxes, Maze, comparative psychology, learning curve
1)Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
-The topic that I have chosen is Margaret Floy Washburn. She fits in with this topic since she is one of the few women who was a woman pioneer in psychology who struggled against a male-oriented field. Many women did not attend college, especially not the field of psychology. She, Christine Ladd-Franklin, and Mary Calkins were most notorious for being women pioneers in the new science of psychology, and did not let the male-monopoly be a hindrance to their education. I’m interested in this topic since I am a bit bias to my own gender, and appreciate her contribution that has helped influenced women to go against the gender roles and stereotypes. One has to wonder, if those infamous women did not challenge the male-monopoly, could I be in college right now majoring in psychology today if it wasn’t for them. That is what captured my attention when I read about her and made me interested in wanting to learn more about her and her accomplishments.
2)What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
-The first aspect I will cover is about her biography that has shaped her into the woman she became infamous for. The second aspect is about her accomplishments. The third aspect is about her major contribution to psychology of the motor theory and comparative psychology, mainly the study of animal behaviorism.
3)Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
-Before reading this chapter I did not know much about Margaret Washburn, but her contributions to the field and challenged the male-monopoly made me interested in wanting to study her. Washburn was born in 1871 and died in 1939. She graduated from Vassar College in 1890 and had the interest in science and philosophy so she decided to pursue the new science of experimental psychology. She then went on to graduate school at Columbia University, and faced similar problems by Calkins and Ladd-Franklin. She was welcomed though and taken seriously by Cattell, but only was allowed to attend his classes unofficially. She had potential, so she was convinced to apply to Cornell, since they accepted women as graduate students. At Cornell, she ran into Titchener, he did not allow women as his “Experimentalists.” She was embraced into studying in his laboratory. She became his first PhD student, which was quite the accomplishment. Very impressively, she was the first female to earn a doctorate in psychology in the study of visual imagery. Her study was one of few that was published in Wundt’s journal. She later on became a teacher at many institutions, but returned to her alma mater, Vassar for the rest of her career. In 1921 she remarkably became an APA president, coeditor of the American Journal of Psychology, and election to the National Academy of Sciences. After Titchener died, his Experimentalists reorganized, and she became one of just two women elected as a charter member in the new group. As a psychologist, she published in the areas of perception, imagery, social consciousness, and she developed a motor theory of consciousness. She believed that conscious thought was evident in behavior, which she is saying that all mental functions produce physical reactions. In other words, in the presence of an object, the senses create an impression of it, including vision, sight, feel etc. Different objects evoke different senses of motor readiness. When the object isn’t present, memory re-evokes those sensations. Her book Movement and Mental Imagery, introduced her theory regarding the correlation between mental processes and motor skills. She is best known for her work in comparative psychology. She summarized the field in the text, The Animal Mind, which was the standard textbook of its day. It included the results of experimental research. The main focus was on cognitive processes of perception, attention, and consciousness that are exhibited by the behaviors of multiple species. She unlike most, who studied rodents, she studied over 100 animal species. Although she was hesitant about attributing anthropomorphic meanings to animal behavior, she realized that animal consciousness could never be directly measured. She suggested that animal psyches contained mental structures similar to that of us humans, and argued that animal consciousness is not qualitatively different from human mental life. It is derived by inference from observed behavior. She rejected much of psychodynamic theory, and embraced elements of functionalism, Gestalt psychology, and behaviorism.
4)
-http://www.britannica.com/biography/Margaret-Floy-Washburn- I chose this site since I know it is a credible resource and goes into detail about her biography, which contributes to my first aspect.
-http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/washburn.html- I chose this site since it seemed like a credible resource, and contributes to all three aspects I used for this post.
- https://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Washburn/Martin_1940.html- I chose this site since it seemed like a credible resource, and contributes to mainly the second and third aspects for this post.
Terms- Mary Calkins, Christine Ladd-Franklin, Margaret Floy Washburn, Cattell, Titchener, perception, motor theory of consciousness, comparative psychology, functionalism, Gestalt, behaviorism
For this week’s blog, I have decided to do some research on William James. It fits into the chapter because there was a large part of the chapter that only talked about him. I thought he was interesting because he was one of the first psychologists to study new psychology in America. I think that his theories about emotion are particularly interesting. Though the chapter talks a lot about James’s other contributions to psychology, I had never heard much about anything other than his emotion theory, so I wanted to learn more about his other contributions to psychology. I would like to talk specifically about James’s life, his work in psychology, and his work in the other fields that he was interested in.
James did not start out life wanting to be a psychologist. First, he wanted to be an artist. He did art for less than a year before deciding that he could do something better with his life. He served in the military for a short time during the Civil War before going to school to study chemistry and physiology. He then went to medical school, but left to study physiology and medicine in Germany for a while. He eventually came back to the states to finish his medicine degree, but once he finished, he realized that he didn’t really want to practice medicine. He eventually got a job teaching physiology, which he kept for quite a while until he started teaching anatomy as well. After this, he started teaching psychology and this was really when “new” psychology began in America. He wrote Principles of Psychology during this time, which ended up being one of the most famous psychology textbooks of all time. However, it took him 12 years to finally publish the book, and by then of course he was tired of psychology and began teaching philosophy. He committed the rest of his life to philosophy, and wrote many books on the subject.
While working in psychology, James wanted the study of psychology to shift from speculation to an empirical social science. He had many theories about consciousness and the self. The five main ones were that all thought is owned by the person, thoughts are constantly happening, there is continuity between these ongoing thoughts, thoughts are not usually about consciousness, and that our consciousness chooses to focus on some things more than others. His theory basically was that our thoughts shape who we are. He also did a lot of work during his career in psychology on sensation and perception. He believed that the mind and the body were connected. It is thought that his work in this field led him to his theory on emotion, one of his most famous theories. While most people think that we perceive a stimulus, react emotionally, and then react physically, James thought that these things happened in a different order. His theory was that humans receive a stimulus, react physically, and then react emotionally based on our physical reaction. James also had some theories about making decisions. He thought that there were five types of decision making; decisions made by rationally thinking about their outcomes, making decisions based on external circumstances, decision making based on something within yourself (such as a habit), decision making based on a change in mood, and the will to believe. The will to believe means that the decision is a consequence of a choice you made.
James also had many theories when it came to philosophy. Some argue that he may have been one of the best American philosophers in religion. James argued that religion cannot be empirical, since there is no way to prove that a god exists. Many people believe in a god even though there is no evidence that one exists. However, this is also the case for other things such as believing that someone is honest even though you have no proof that they are. James argues that these unproven beliefs could be a good thing in many situations. If we didn’t believe that people are honest or trustworthy, then we wouldn’t have any relationships. James thought that there were two things that contribute to our religious experiences. One was that the significance of life comes from spirituality. The second one was that people’s purpose of life comes from union with religion. He also thought that religions had two psychological traits. The first one was that religions have an emphasis on wanting to live. The other was having a sense of belonging and love. James wrote many books about philosophy, the most famous being The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, which was about religion. This book was a collection of the many essays that he had written about philosophy and religion over the years.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/james-o/
This website had information on all of the three things discussed in my blog post.
http://www.isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k3007&pageid=icb.page19708&pageContentId=icb.pagecontent44003&view=view.do&viewParam_name=james.html
This website had some additional information about James’s work in psychology.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/#4
This website had additional information about his work in philosophy and religion.
William James, new psychology, America, emotion, art, Civil War, anatomy, physiology, chemistry, Principles of Psychology, philosophy, empirical social science, consciousness, self, thoughts, stimulus, physical reaction, emotional reaction, decision making, religion, empiricism, beliefs, sensation, perception, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
1a) my topic is William James
1b)William James relates to the chapter because he is talked about as one of the key players in the movement into new psychology. he wrote many books and had his own theory on emotion that is briefly mentioned in this chapter.
1c)I am interested in William James because in all of my classes so far I have never heard of William James. none of my other classes have even talked about him even though he had some very interesting thoughts such as his emotion theory and wrote some very important books in the field of psychology.
2/3) William James was born in New York City, New York on January 11, 1842. James was born into a family with five of which he was the oldest. his family inherited money that allowed them to live the lives of intellectuals. due to this the family moved between America and Europe multiple times. growing up james had the desire and wanted to become a painter and due to this his family moved to New Port, Rhode Island in 1860. In New Port James learned from and studied under American portraitist William Morris Hunt. James had the talent but within a year gave up this career because he said that it was not enough for him to do top notch work. In 1861 the civil war started and James committed to serve for a short term enlistment. this lasted only three short months as his health was already in a delicate state when he began to serve. after fighting in the war he enrolled at Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University. there he studied chemistry and physiology. after doing so he moved on to the medical school at Harvard in 1863. a couple years later he took a year off to join a scientific expedition but again his bad health forced him to quit. he then went to Germany to study physiology and medicine. after this he returned to America passed his exams and in 1869 got his medical degree. in 1872 he began teaching physiology at Harvard and was eventually teaching anatomy physiology and psychology. this lead to him establishing the first psychology lab in America. in 1878 he agreed to write a psychology textbook even though he was already drifting away from psychology and towards philosophy. in 1878 he began to teach philosophy at Harvard and was the founder of American Pragmatism. American pragmatism is an approach to philosophy which holds that the truth or meaning of a statement is o be measured by its practical consequences. after founding Pragmatism and becoming a assistant professor of philosophy he published an article called The Sentiment of Rationality. as he started to get more into philosophy and teach it more he began to have a negative opinion towards psychology. after becoming a full professor of philosophy in 1885 and psychology in 1889 he wrote his book Principles of Psychology in 1890. this book took James about 12 years to finish and was a great success but he was not satisfied and had still a very negative opinion towards psychology. towards the end of his career James was still widely known as a psychologist. some even went as far as to call him the father of psychology. although all of this was happening James wanted to be known as a philosopher and thought like a philosopher because of his negative attitude or opinion towards psychology.
besides his books there were other things that came out of James career that were important such as his theory about emotion. this theory was proposed by James and by Philosopher Carl Lang so it became known as the James-Lang theory of emotion. this theory suggest that emotions occur as a result of physiological reactions to events. according to this theory seeing external stimuli leads to a physiological reaction. this reaction just depends on how a person interprets the physical action they just saw via the external stimulus. for example say that you are in the woods and you see a wolf and start to shake. according to the James-Lang theory you started to shake when you saw the wolf. this is a physical reaction and in itself will tell you that you are afraid. in a quote I found James stated "My thesis on the contrary is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion."(website 3) although this theory has been proposed there are other theories out there about emotion that criticize this one such as the Cannon-Bard theory of emotion. this theory was proposed in the 1920s and instead states that physiological reactions such as crying and trembling are caused by emotions. this theory is also largely criticized by modern researchers. even though there are some situations where physiological reactions do lead to the experience of emotion.
4)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/james-o/
this site gave me all of the info about James life.
dictionary.reference.com/browse/pragmatism
Definition of American pragmatism
http://psychology.about.com/od/jindex/g/jameslange.htm
on this site I found information about the James-Lang theory of emotion.
1. Paired-associate learning interested me because it's interesting to learn about how our brains pair things together, like the things with their actual names. Obviously we learn with flash cards and our parents or teachers when we are younger, by showing us images and saying what they are. However, it's interesting how we can associate colors with numbers, like Mary Whiton Calkin's research.
2. Calkin's presentation (I) and (II)
Mental processes
Free recall and cued recall
3. Calkin did her research with numbers and colors, which is detailed in the book. She would give colors a number to go along with but some colors had more than one number. This revealed four factors in association: frequency, vividness, primacy, and recency. These factors affect our memory, however, the research revealed that frequency had the biggest impact on association. In the second website that I have listed, the finding of how important frequency is was the "one slightly significant contribution to psychology" is what Calkin said. Now, according to my first website, researchers are more interested in learning how stimulus-response links form and break, which interests me especially after watching the video that I also provided. Like I mentioned, we learn objects and the names young, so when watching that video, it was hard for me to associate any of the words with each other because they didn't relate.
Also in my first article, it talks about how during our paired associate process, there are two separate mental processes going on: the learning of the response and the bond forming.
Another discovery that followed this was the free recall and cued recall. The video shows you different words paired together, and it asks you to memorize them and say as many as you can remember. In the first half, it has you repeat them from memory, however in the second half, it shows you one of the words and asks you to repeat it back. Free recall was pretty hard for me to do, as I didn't remember any of the words. Cued was a little easier, but it was still hard because the words that were paired were hard to associate together because they were completely unrelated. This is unlike the colors and the numbers, because even though you don't think of those relating, it's easier to be shown a color with a number and remember the those two together. Even the trick game, where you show colors with different words of colors, you have a hard time saying he word rather than the color, but you soon learn to associate them once you've played the same ones multiple times.
4. http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/467/Paired-Associate-Learning.html - this website gives a little more information on paired-associate learning.
http://faculty.webster.edu/woolflm/calkins.html - this website talks more about Mary Whiton Calkin and mentions her other studies and research
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CjtP02FS2mQ - this video is an example of free and cued recall.
Paired-associate learning
Mary Whiton Calkin
Free recall
Cued recall
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic is Mary Calkins. She was talked about at the end of the chapter as being one of the most influential psychologists in America. Mary Calkins is interesting because she was one of the first women psychologists. She achieved that accomplishment when it was thought that women were inferior to men. She also accomplished it when prestigious schools wouldn’t allow women to officially attend their schools. She was also the first women president of the American Psychological Association or APA. I find it amazing that she was able to accomplish all of this and more at a time when women were looked down on.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
Three things I will talk about are her education, her theories, and her impact on psychology.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Mary Calkins was born March 30th, 1863. She was the oldest of five children. Her father was a minister who moved around a lot for his job. Her father was interested in his children’s education and after Mary finished high school her father had planned her studies so she could go to college. In 1882 she started her college career as a sophomore at Smith College. She graduated in 1884 with a major in philosophy. In 1886 her family went on a trip to Europe. They were there for sixteen months. While there Mary did some studying on her own to learn more about Europe. When the family returned home from their trip Mary’s Father had scheduled an interview for her at Wellesley College. They hired her to tutor Greek. While there a professor in the philosophy department offered her a job teaching new psychology. His only circumstance was that she would have to get trained in new psychology. She would apply for admittance into Harvard. Harvard would not admit her into their school because she was a woman. After her father and some colleagues at Wellesley College sent some letters to Harvard they granted her permission to sit in on lectures. She attended lectures by William James and Josiah Royce. While at Harvard she got to get experience one on one with William James. In 1891 Mary returned to Wellesley to teach new psychology. When she returned to teach she also established a psychology laboratory. She wanted to further her education so she returned to Harvard to complete a masters program. Once again Harvard would only let her attend the lectures and labs as a guest. In 1895 Calkins had finished everything needed to graduate with her masters. Harvard did not recognize her as a graduate however, because she was only a guest at the University.
Mary Calkins had two major interests to her. They were memory and self-psychology. She was also interested in philosophy by I will just focus on memory and self-psychology. Mary Calkins came up with the term paired-associate learning. She wanted to test and see if people could recall a number when it was paired with a color. She would show people a series of numbers that had colors paired with them. She would then show people a color and see if they could tell her the number that went with that color. She found that frequency and recency were the two biggest factors that would determine if they remembered the number or not. This research experiment was advancing the findings of Ebbinghaus. Her theory and findings are still used today in memory research. Mary Calkins was also intrigued by self-psychology. She was one of the firsts to try and study it. She came up with the definition that the self is an active acting purposefully and consciously. At that time that she came up with the idea Freud and psychoanalysis played a big part in society. Calkins thought that her self-psychology fit into the theories that Freud had. Today Calkins work on self-psychology isn’t recognized because it is outdated.
Mary Calkins had a few big contributions to psychology. Her biggest was her idea of paired-associate learning. That theory is still used today in memory research. In 1905 she was elected president of the American Psychological Association. She was the first woman to hold the positon of president. Besides her documented theories and ideas Calkins made a huge contribution to psychology by being a woman and being successful. Because Calkins never gave up and wouldn’t take no as an answer she paved the way for women psychologist to practice and to get into schools. She was a big influence on women and she fought for women’s rights. She held the belief that women were just as good as men. She believed that in a time where men were thought to be better than women. If Mary Calkins didn’t succeed and didn’t keep being persistent with her schooling psychology might look different today. Today more than half of the people in psychology are women and I think a lot of that is due to the contributions of Mary Calkins.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Whiton_Calkins this site was helpful with her education achievements and her ideas on memory and self-psychology.
http://faculty.webster.edu/woolflm/marycalkins.html this site was helpful with her education and her self-psychology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70bv79PqU6g this sight was good for her ideas on memory self-psychology and her contribution to psychology today.
Mary Calkins, paired-associate learning, William James, Josiah Royce, Ebbinghaus, self-psychology, APA, and Freud.
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
The topic I choose to look more into this week is genetic psychology, this concept fits into this chapter by not only highlighting Hall’s work in america and what New psychology looks like. It also ties into the evolution of concepts in psychology such as how the term Genetic psychology was first seen as the evolution and development of the human mind, it also covered a wide variety of psychology’s such as abnormal psychology.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
The three aspects of this topic I would like to talk about are what the difference is in genetic psychology in Hall’s definition compared to how it is studied now. Next I will look at what some important discoveries are in genetic psychology, and finally how genetic psychology influenced the idea of New Psychology.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Genetic Psychology when first studied by Hall was known more as the changing and developing of the human mind, and while some could argue this is still true today the core definition has changed somewhat, today genetic psychology is known as the genetic factors that make an impact on personality development. Which as you can see changes the core of some of what Hall originally studied. Today genetic psychology is relevant and a large topic in our culture. One study by Wallon talks about imprinting (which we talked about last chapter) the question being can your culture or social environment be passed on to you while being developed and what happens when you are taken out of the environment do you retain that information or not? Another concept talked about in genetic psychology was the “primitive” mind vs what your hereditary passes on to you. In many cases there is some research to suggest that it is a mixture of both based on studies done with children from undeveloped countries brought to european countries with unaffected learning curves. This study supporting both sides that learning is in fact not entirely genetic. This is interesting because this contributed to the idea of new psychology or some of what Hall contributed. Hall claimed that as adolescents developed their brain structure looked a lot like their ancestors. He believed also believed many of the same concepts of eugenics that I looked into last week which was included in his genetic psychology. He believed for men and women to develop properly they needed to be educated separately and that by doing this would allow their brains to develop properly according to their gender.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/genetic-psychology
I used this source as a core for my definition of what genetic psychology is today as people understand it.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/wallon/works/1956/ch3.htm
I used this source to look into what things are studied in genetic psychology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Stanley_Hall#New_discipline_of_psychology
Although I do not usually credit Wikipedia as a credible source I used it to get a timeline and connect some of his ideas of genetic psychology and how it connected to new psychology.
TB7
1) Intrinsic Motivation. William James wrote a 1400 page book about psychology. In this psychology book there is a section on habits and motivation. I chose to pick not only motivation but intrinsic motivation because I think it accurately displays James’ view on sensation and perception as well as his motivational analysis. While I did not have the opportunity to read the 1400 page book I did have the satisfaction of reading other responses of people when reading his habits section. This section is indirectly connected to William James through motivation. I am interested in this topic because I believe motivation is all around us. I think that motivation can be the biggest driving force in success. We may see people who are privileged of being in the right family have huge success. But the stories about those who were underprivileged make me believe that motivation and talent got them to their successes. In both cases privileged and underprivileged we see people who lack motivation with talent and are unsuccessful in life aspirations. I want to know about why people are motivated and why people lack motivation. Is it possible to motivate these people or are they doomed to a live of unsuccessful endeavors. While I am clearly aware of social, cultural, and biological attributes that provide assistance to success, I think motivation is the thing that we can alter and change to provide the biggest contribution to success.
2) Sensation. Credited Inspirations. Connection to Personal self-perception.
3) Sensation.
Sensation is the cognition of feedback from our sensing organs. Sensation however has a personal connection to it. Even though most people can identify the smell of a chocolate chip cookie we, all have a different sensation of it. This sensation is possible through the plasticity of neural transmission. This plasticity is only available from experienced events. As we comprehend these experiences we develop perception for it, we give it a name, a smell, add texture, and even connect emotion to it. After an amount of time has passed we learn to distinguish the perception to a certain extent. But how does this perception tie into motivation? As we look into motivation we look at why something was motivating. Let’s say you smell a cookie and you immediately start thinking about your grandma baking her famous triple chocolate chunk cookies. This thought puts you in an emotional state of happiness. This requires an emotional cognition of the perceived sensation. What we can do then is take the cognition of someone in a successful or motivationally perceived sensation and add it to what we want from motivation. In the video we hear soft instrumental music from the Friday Night Lights TV Intro theme music. This music immediately reminds me of watching the shows and I have a state of mind that is in a motivational state. I recall from watching the shows that I felt the kid’s desire and drive to be great, just hearing this music can put me in a motivating state. Even if you don’t have a music track that you can connect with someone you can put them in the locker room when you talk. Remind them of football and working towards success. This is just two of the possible ways sensation can provide assistance to motivation.
Credited Inspirations.
Michael Jordan, Steve Jobs, Tommy Hilfiger. These are names of men who are/were extremely successful. With that being said why is it important to motivation? If you have ever been to a high school practice you can make the observation that the kids do their best when the coach or someone of authority is around. But that’s extrinsic motivation. These men can help intrinsic motivation in their words. When Michael Jordan tells you how to shoot a jump shot vs. how a bartender tells you how to shoot a jump shot who would you listen to more? Jordan. This is because Jordan had huge success at the highest level of the game. When Jordan talks about success you are more inclined to listen because he has been there he has done that. It is important to have those credited inspirations for someone to follow and be motivated by what you said. But there is another aspect that provides motivation more than this.
Connection to Self-Perception
This connection is extremely important to motivation. First of all self-perception is exactly what it sounds like. It’s your personal and unique view of sensations you’ve experienced over the years. Let’s take Jordan again. Jordan tells you he grew up from the same town you did. His parents had little money like yours did. All of a sudden Jordan isn’t so much different than you. You start to think maybe I can be like him, we were in the same situation and he came out on top. This is a connection to your self-perception. Your self-perception of Michael Jordan has changed from this guy who is an amazing basketball player since he was 5 changes to wow he got kicked off the basketball team like I did in high school. Your perception has changed and now you can say, I can be like him. This is a huge motivation tool not only because of the initial impact but because of the lasting image that it provides. Anytime you think about being successful you cannot relate to Jordan being in the same situation you are in and he came out on top. You can’t say anymore that Jordan was different and you can’t make the excuse anymore that you ‘cant do it because you aren’t in the right place’ you are in the same place Jordan was and he did it.
4) http://www.edbatista.com/2011/07/william-james-on-habit.html
This article by Ed Batista, an executive coach in change management, takes the writings of William James “Psychology: Briefer Course Chapter X” and connects them to real life examples. Here I have the opportunity to not only read passages from the book but also have the privilege to compare what I take from the writings to how someone else views them. I personally used this web source to aid in my “Self-perception” and “Sensation” Aspects. The hidden message however is that William James was used as the source for Ed’s article. This shows me that of all the modern people that could have been chosen, he picked the man that I believed has more credible significance, which helps support my Credited Inspirations aspect theory.
http://psychclassics.asu.edu/James/Principles/prin17.htm
This web source provides feedback from Chris Green on the chapter 17 of William James’ Principles of psychology. Here we can find information regarding the sensation and perceptions of individuals. From the first half of the web source pages we get an in depth look of how William James connects sensations of certain scenarios that don’t have the access to the organs that produce a cognition of the senses. For example how does a blind man see, how does a deaf person hear. He then goes into James observation of a baby and how a baby can sense things. Then moving into perception he takes what we learned about sensation and how we can ‘see’ colors or hear sounds, and throws in the concept of contrast. Comparing one sound to another or one sight to another. He discusses how we can understand what the color white is without understanding the contrast color black. Finally as we end the read he compares a perception of sensations from what we have in our past experiences. I used these articles in explaining the topic of “sensation” and “Self-Perceptions”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw9s8q26JPQ&index=8&list=PLDYkd8SUuJeT7B-OdSeL7itlziNrmRmGX
This source is a YouTube video that’s main purpose is to provide motivation. In that case Intrinsic Motivation. This video opens with successful people, Michael Jordan, 50 Cent, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and others about their struggles to success as well as the process that they followed to get to where they were. Along with this opening is soft non lyrical music. They talk about failures and how they kept focused and what they think got them to where they were. This video then follows with a motivational annalist talking about coming up from failure while providing videos of people such as Usain Bolt, breaking track and field records. About the half way point of the video the music turns from soft music to high bass and increased tempo. The annalist then discusses how to overcome fear and obstacles. Towards the end of the video the annalist talks about successful people who struggles and even were halted even after being successful by talents being taken away. The video concludes with authors and directors who tried for countless times on a movie or a book that became a best seller in the latter. The annalist then describes that these people believed in their craft and wouldn’t be stopped until they reached success. I used this video for a reference and example to people who watch it to justify my writing. Along with it I explain the importance of why it is important to provide credited inspirations when in motivation.
Terminology: Intrinsic Motivation, Extrinsic Motivation, William James,Sensation, Perception, Self Perception, Plasticity, Cognition, Neural Transmission,
1) For this assignment, I chose to do more research on the female American psychologist and philosopher, Mary Whiton Calkins. This chapter discusses the American pioneers in psychology and how they have shaped the field today, and Mary Calkins was instrumental in advocating for graduate education for females in America. I chose this topic because as a woman, I found her perseverance to receive higher education to be inspirational and a huge stepping stone for women throughout this country.
2) For this topic, I would like to discuss 3 things: Calkins background and why she wanted to pursue higher education in psychology; her major works and what she is best known for; and why she shifted from psychology to philosophy and what contributions she made to philosophy.
3) Mary Whiton Calkins was born in Connecticut in 1863, and was the oldest of five children. Mary’s father was instrumental in shaping her early education, and responsible for her wanting to attain higher education. Her family traveled to Europe for over a year and this is when Calkins learned Greek, which would eventually allow her to receive her first faculty position teaching Greek. This lead to her transition to Psychology, and eventually Philosophy.
Calkins is best known for doing all the coursework to receive a doctorate in Psychology from Harvard but being denied one because she was a woman, and for being the first female president of the American Psychological Association. She accomplished many things in her lifetime because of her dedication to psychology, which many thought was not possible for a woman to accomplish during this time. She spent her entire career at Wellesley College conducting and publishing research in psychology and philosophy. She opened the first psychology laboratory at Wellesley, and her first piece of research involved the contents of dreams. Calkins is also responsible for creating the Paired-Association Technique, which she found that numbers paired with bright colors can be recalled better than if they are paired with neutral colors. This is a major contribution to the field of experimental psychology, that is still used as a memorization technique today.
Mary also published a paper that argued that psychology is a science of the self, the creation of self-psychology. Her ideas received much attention when she first published them, however her theory hasn’t gained much support and isn’t accepted by many psychologists anymore. Calkins published 105 articles in psychology and philosophy combined, and published 4 books. So while her theory of self-psychology may not have been a major contribution, she still made many other great strides that made her very successful. Even being denied full enrollment as a student at Harvard, she still impressed her professors and even with multiple recommendations to grant her a doctoral degree, she was denied one by Harvard because she was a woman. However, this did not stop her from going on to accomplish great things for the fields of psychology and philosophy. Her perseverance to follow her passion is why I chose to focus on Mary Whiton Calkins for this assignment.
4) Sources:
http://faculty.webster.edu/woolflm/marycalkins.html
I chose this source because it had a good amount of general information on Calkins that gave me a starting point to go from when completing this assignment.
http://www.sofia.edu/about/history/transpersonal-pioneers-mary-calkins/
I used this source because it had a lot of good information on Calkin’s accomplishments and how she contributed to psychology. I used this website to better understand why Calkin’s why so influential.
http://www.feministvoices.com/mary-whiton-calkins/
I thought this was a good website because it built upon the information from the other two sources, while still providing new information not discussed in the other two. I used this source mainly to make sure the information from the other two sources was correct and see if there was any important information I missed that would be helpful.
Terminology: Mary Whiton Calkins, psychology, philosophy, self-psychology, Paired-Association Technique, experimental psychology.
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
For this week’s topical blog, I have decided to look further into one of the few first woman psychologists, Christine Ladd Franklin. This fits in with this week’s topic because we read about her in chapter six. She was one of the few women who stood up against woman’s suffrage and aspired to be the best she could be. She was and still is a role model for women as her accomplishments during this time exceeded all expectations of what women were capable of. This also related to the class as a whole, Christine Ladd Franklin changed the history of psychology when she was elected into the American Psychological Association.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
For this assignment, I would like to talk about who Christine Ladd Franklin was from a biographical standpoint. Secondly, I would like to talk about her studies and education she received which shaped her into a psychologist, and what important impacts she made on the history of psychology from today’s perspective.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Christine Ladd Franklin was born in December of 1847. She grew up having an average childhood and went on to attend college. She attended the Vassar College (women’s college) in 1866 at the age of 19 years old. While her time at Vassar College, she had the privilege of studying with a prestigious female astronomer, Maria Mitchell. Although Christine Ladd Franklin’s interests were not specifically in astronomy, Maria Mitchell stood as a role model and helped her aspire to reach her full potential. Student to professor relationships like these can prove to be very motivating. Christine Ladd Franklin finished her course work and graduated from Vassar College in two short years. She went one to attend Harvard, Washington College, and Jefferson College. She spent her years there learning more about mathematics, tutoring young girls, and even studied botany.
As we can tell from her past credentials, she loved to learn. She aspired to study at the John Hopkins University. The biggest obstacle standing in her way was her biological sex. Unfortunately, Christine Ladd Franklin lived in a time where sexism was present. It was believed back then that women had no place in a college. Despite this restriction, Christine Ladd Franklin submitted an application under the name C. Ladd. Without the full spelling of her first name, it was nearly impossible to distinguish if she was male or female. After some dispute from the college (after figuring out her true biological sex), they decided to let her study full time but with stipulations. She was not formally recognized as a student and was not treated the same as her peers.
After attending for a couple years she graduated in both mathematics and symbolic logic. She was the first American woman to do so! Due to her not technically being enrolled as a student of John Hopkins University and the fact she was a woman, she could not receive an official diploma stating so. She had earned all the credits of a PhD but was denied the paperwork. How heart breaking. You may be thinking, how does a woman proficient in mathematics and logic have anything to do with psychology?
She spent time in Germany where all her educational passions combined. She developed her own theory of color vision that offered a fresh new way of looking at things but still incorporated old theories. This theory ended up being published in journals and science magazines. Another great accomplishment by Christine Ladd Franklin was that she was one of the very first woman to be elected into the American Psychological Association in 1893 alongside Mary Whiton Calkins. She began to use her voice and speak out on feminist issues. She believed there should be more room for women to succeed. One interesting fact that I found was surfing the web was that she was included in an article called Catell’s American Men of Science. The fact that it has men in the title leaves the readers to believe it is only a place for men as the word women was left off.
Another interesting fact about Christine Ladd Franklin is that she finally received her PhD from John Hopkins University in the year 1926. She was seventy eight years old when she received her official diploma. I find this story slightly heartwarming yet disappointing. She had to wait years and years to be recognized for her accomplishments from the college she attended. Thankfully, she was not discouraged and ended up doing great things for the field of psychology.
Looking back at who Christine Ladd Franklin was and what she accomplished in her life, we can agree that she did in fact make an impact. She was one of the very first women to be a part of the American Psychological Association. By doing so, I think this gave her a voice to begin to speak out against sexism. Women are just as capable as men, we should not limit them. The next new invention or discovery may be floating around in the mind of a woman who was discriminated against and told not to go to college. Personally, I am a minimalist, I believe there are minimal differences between men and women. We are all human, we all feel the same emotions. The biggest difference is how society’s rules and stereotypes can shape us. We can fight those gender roles. And that is exactly what Christine Ladd Franklin did.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
URL 1: https://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/alumni/christine-ladd-franklin.html. This link provided me with great background information about Christine Ladd Franklin. I think it is a trustworthy source as it is from the Vassar College in which she attended.
URL 2: https://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/ladd.htm. This website provided me with great background information, specifically on her education.
URL 3: http://www.uwlax.edu/urc/JUR-online/PDF/2013/shinners.carly.DEPT.pdf This is an awesome link to a journal article written about the life and legacy of Christine Ladd Franklin. The information from this article helped me express the impact she made on the world for the sake of women.
Terminology: Christine Ladd Franklin, woman’s suffrage, American Psychological Association, theory of color vision.
Word Count: 1128
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
I chose developmental psychology. We talked about this throughout our chapter and it was something that actually really interested me. I want to work with kids eventually so I felt like learning and knowing a lot about developmental psych is a must for me to know in order to understand the kids I plan on working with in my future.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
• Definition
• Founder
• Why study?
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Development psychology is the growth that a person goes through throughout their lifetime. It might seem as if most people develop the most when their younger, but we actually continue to develop throughout life just in smaller increments. By studying developmental psych, you learn about four subcategories: Early Childhood Development, Theories of Development, Parenting and Childcare, and Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development. Developmental Psychologists tend to look to things such as biological, social, emotion, and cognitive processes. The main goal of this sort of psychology is to describe, explain, and to optimize development. When thinking about developmental psych, it is important to consider nature vs. nurture in order to understand how a person behaves the way that they do. Piaget, the father of developmental psych, began his career early. At only age 10 he asked a director of history museum to visit after hours. This began a friendship for years resulting in afternoons spent together meaning that Piaget was an expert by the time he was a teenager. Piaget was always more interested in behavioral questions that couldn’t always be answered right away. He wanted to know why things changed. Because of his way of thinking, it began his lifetime task of studying the formation of knowledge. He began working with kids in elementary schools to see how they preformed on tests. He was extremely interested in children seeing as that is the main developmental stage but he later went on to study people as life progressed as well.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/developmental-psychology.html
I used this site for a basic understanding of developmental psychology. It explained to me that a main goal is to describe, explain, and optimize development.
http://brainconnection.brainhq.com/2000/01/21/jean-piaget-father-of-developmental-psychology/
I used this site to see how developmental psych was developed. By doing so, I learned about piaget and his accomplishments as well as how he came up with his idea.
http://psychology.about.com/od/developmentalpsychology/
This site gave a really good definition of what developmental psych is. It broke it down to different subcategories as well to make it a little easier to understand.
Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Developmental Psychology, Piaget, nature vs. nurture
1) This week I wanted to explore Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark’s doll study. This chapter mentioned that the doll study played a role in the Brown v. Board of Education decision. It gave a brief description of the study, but I wanted to find out exactly what the study was over and what it wanted to show. I was interested in this topic because I thought that it was an interesting study. Race is a sensitive topic to bring up in today’s society, but I think that this study is important to realize the stereotypes we interpret as young children.
2) In this assignment I would like to talk about what the study was about. I would like to discuss the participants and methods used in this study, and the results that the Clarks found. I would then like to discuss what effects this study had on the Brown v. Board of Education decision. I would also like to talk about the critiques that the study received. Finally I would like to discuss a repetition of this study and its findings.
3) Kenneth and Mamie Clark conducted the doll study to determine if segregation in schools was corrupting the minds of children and persuading them to believe the stereotypes that they saw. Their participants were children of differing ethnicities in the age range of 6 to 9. These children were given four dolls which were all identical except for their color, which ranged from light to dark. The children were asked to show them the doll that they felt answered what the interviewer was asking them. The interviewer would ask the children things such as, “Show me the doll that looks bad,” or “Show me the smart doll.” The Clarks found that the children gave the ‘positive’ qualities to the light-skinned dolls. The ‘negative’ qualities would then go to the dark-skinned dolls. The last question the interviewer would ask would be for the child to identify the doll that he or she looked most like. This last question was the question that was answered the least, with some children crying and leaving the room.
There were mixed reactions to the doll study. In some cases, the study strengthened the idea that children were learning stereotypes and enforcing these stereotypes by going to segregated schools. Other people did not agree. These people thought that the Clarks had a bias to begin the study, and therefore the results were skewed. They also thought that the study had no control variables that would provide a baseline for the study. It has also been critiqued for being more well known for the trial it was used in.
Dr. Kenneth Clark testified in the Brown v. Board of Education trial. In his testimony he referred to the doll study. The lawyers of the trial asked the Clarks to recreate their study with a different group of children from a different city. A few years had gone by since the Clarks’ first study, however, they found similar results. These results helped lead the judge to declare the segregation of children in school to be immoral and rule it illegal.
A study in 2010 tried to recreate the doll study. This time they worked with African American and Caucasian children whose ages ranged from 4 to 5 and 9 to 10. The schools that the researcher talked to students from were all around the New York City area. This study found that both groups still put positive characteristics with the lighter-skinned children, although the African American children did not have as much bias as the Caucasian children. It also showed that there were few differences in the age groups, showing that children’s thoughts don’t change very much through their first few years of school.
4) https://explorable.com/stereotypes I chose this website because it defined the study and gave the results and measures of the study. I used this website for information on the study’s results and characteristics and also for criticisms about the study.
http://www.naacpldf.org/brown-at-60-the-doll-test I chose this website because it gave a brief overview of the doll study and how it was used in the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. I used this website for information on the doll study.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/05/13/expanded_results_methods_cnn.pdf I chose this pdf because it gave an indepth look on what the new study was about. I used this pdf to discuss what the new study found and it’s characteristics.
http://www.nps.gov/brvb/learn/historyculture/clarkdoll.htm I chose this website because it gave and overview of how the doll study was used in the Brown v. Board of Education was used and how it affected the decision. I used this website for information on Brown v. Board of Education and how Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s study worked into the trial.
5) Kenneth and Mamie Clark, doll study, Brown v. Board of Education, segregation, bias, stereotype.
1) I am interested in discussing the topic of the theory of emotions. This topic fits into what was very briefly discussed in the section about James-Lange Theory. Although it was only a small part, I want to talk a little more about the theory of emotions because it really interests me. It is a very thought-provoking subject and deals with a lot of personal experiences and examples.
2) I would like to talk about what emotions are, how they effect us, and what the three major theories of emotion are.
3) In our every day lives, we all experience a wide array of emotions. But how exactly are these emotions defined? A simple definition is hard to find, but to put it as easily as possible, emotions are a very complex psychological state that has to involve three distinct components in order to be considered an emotion. These three components are a subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioral response or expression.
The first component, the subjective experience, is what our own experience might look like to us and what our "symptoms" or behaviors might range from when emitted. When this behavior is emitted, it also elicits a physical reaction as well, either by your heart racing or palms sweating. These can have a wide range as well. The involuntary physiological response that the body emits is controlled by the autonomic nervous system, causing our body's blood flow and digestion to change. The last component of an emotion is the actual behavioral response or expression of emotion. This is evident in our body language, which is measured by our ability to accurately understand the expressions tied to our emotional intelligence.
One of the three theories that relates to emotion is the Cannon-Bard Theory, which suggests that we experience emotions at the same time as we experience physiological arousal or stimulation. It basically states that the emotion and the arousal are simultaneous. The opposing view of this is the James-Lange Theory. They both state that physiological arousal precedes the experience of emotion. The third theory of emotion is the Schachter-Singer Theory. This theory states that the physiological arousal occurs first, and then we must identify the reason for the arousal to experience and label it as an emotion.
4) http://psychology.about.com/od/psychologytopics/a/theories-of-emotion.htm
I used this site because it had a lot of information on the theories of emotion and what emotions are.
http://study.com/academy/lesson/theories-of-emotion.html
I used this site because it gave me a very good understanding of the theories of emotion in depth.
http://psychology.about.com/od/emotion/f/what-are-emotions.htm
I used this site because it had a lot of information on what emotions are and how many there are.
Terms: theory of emotion, James-Lange Theory, subjective experience, physiological response, behavioral response, emit, elicit, involuntary physiological response, emotional intelligence, Cannon-Bard Theory, Schachter-Singer Theory
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic for this week's blog is William James. James fits into this chapter because he is on of the first psychologists to work with “new psychology,” and there is a large portion of the chapter that focuses largely on him. I find him interesting because he is one of the first American psychologists to be talked about in this book and because I have never heard of him in any of my other psychology classes although he has many writings and interesting theories.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
The three aspects of James Williams that I would like to talk about are pragmatism, the James-Lange Theory of emotion and his impact in the field of psychology.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Pragmatism is an idea and belief created by William James. Pragmatism, in a way, gives “cash-value” to ideas. It says that the value of an idea is completely dependent on the person who holds the idea. This means that the truth of an idea can never necessarily be proven, this is because he believes that everybody has their own diverse experience of the world. I find this theory very interesting because it is very similar to one of my own beliefs, just worded differently. I call my belief the Theory of Subjectivity. Similarly to his idea of pragmatism I believe that ideas and experiences are completely dependent on and individual. I call it the Theory of Subjectivity because I believe there is almost nothing that can be proven as objective in our human world. This is because we all have our own perception of the world and it is just that, something we perceive. For instance how do I know that my red is the same as your red and isn't your “green.” This is called the Explanatory Gap because no matter how much I explain the color red, for instance saying it's hot, I can never make my vision of the color red appear in your head. This self-coined theory also says that it is just that, a theory. It's my perception of the world around me and how I believe the world works but that doesn't mean that's how you have to see it as well. I just found this topic very interesting because it is so similar to something I believe.
The James-Lange Theory of Emotion says that emotions are caused by our physiological reactions to specific events. For instance, we see a bear, adrenaline is released and our heart-rate increases, this then causes us to feel afraid of the bear. It is called the James-Lange Theory because William James and Carl Lange formulated this theory independently of each other. This is similar to his idea of pragmatism in the sense that they both talk about perception. What I find interesting about this theory is that I could almost argue it either way. I could argue for it because perhaps we had a physiological response to a certain event and then assimilated this with an emotion and every time we had this physiological response or one similar a person could say that they felt “sad.” It could also be argued the other way that our emotions cause our physiological responses because we do know today that our mind can alter our well-being. For instance, stress can cause the immune system to weaken or someone to break out in hives.
Thirdly is William James' impact in the field of Psychology. He had many writings in his three main disciplines, psychology, physiology and philosophy. His career also focused and went back and forth between teaching philosophy and psychology. His book and masterpiece The Principles of Psychology is what really made his psychology career take off. With early usage of introspection, or looking into one's own mind he made a big splash in America for the field of Psychology. This earned him the title, “the father of American psychology.”
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/
This website showed a time line of William James' life and broke down many of his works and beliefs to make them easy to understand. It really helped me on the section of his Theory of Emotion and talked a lot about what he wrote about in The Principles of Psychology.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/jamesbio.htm
This website also had a time line as to which I could compare to the one mentioned above. This website also gave broad overviews of his ideas and dumbed them down so I could grasp the concepts before breaking them down and analyzing them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James
I used Wikipedia as well even though it is a somewhat controversial source. The reason why I trusted it is because I had two other sources to compare this one to. This website explained his idea of pragmatism in depth and made it very easy to understand.
Terminology: William James, new psychology, pragmatism, James-Lange Theory of Emotion, explanatory gap, physiological reactions, Carl Lange, philosophy
William James was born January 11th 1842. He is seen by many as the father of American Psychology and as far as i can tell a much better person than Freud. Even today he is one of the most cited psychologists. I like the guy even though he grew up as a spoiled rich kid (which I really can’t stand many of those). He didn’t even start out as a psychologist; he first started out in the Chemistry Field. Which thank goodness he decided to switch because if this guy thought psychology research was tedious and boring, he had no business in the Chemistry. One of the things that the chapter told about was his believing in Free Will being his first act of free will. He was quoted as saying “ "I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave". I don’t really have a set out path for this particular blog post to follow so my apologies. But reading more into what he did for some research led me to one question… Why do people embark on sea voyages if they are prone to becoming sea sick, i mean first darwin, now James, i don’t understand. The guy also battled depression too in his life which
1) I chose to write my blog about William James, as he was a focus in the chapter and is also one of thee most cited psychologists to date, so obviously he did something right. I just kind of liked the guy, he chose free will for himself as his first act of free will. He experienced the world in a great way, as in he seemed to choose for himself what to believe and what not to. When psychology was new in the world he fully admitted that “psychology had a way to go before it could claim the status of a genuine science- it was “‘no science, it is only the hope of a science”’’. I also liked his sculpture metaphor on how to explain that we make our own realities. In a twisted way his contemplation of suicide made me respect the guy a little more, it showed he was human, had cracks and flaws. When history looks back at people it rarely recognises that these great men struggled with anything like Depression, Anxiety, Suicidality, Seasickness (in darwin’s case). I like how this book gives you that insight, and lets you realise that these men were infact just that, men… human… liable to error. Not “Gods of Psychology” that gave us the knowledge we use today like Prometheus giving mankind fire. They were students and psychologists like you and I.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
The aspects i’d like to focus on are a little background into James the man, his theories, and his contribution to psychology as a whole. I think that would provide a well rounded approach and assess him on different sides, as is all to often in textbooks where they forget this person was human, they had a life outside of their work, a family, struggles that they faced day to day. I think approaching it from this angle allows for a well rounded approach on one's life.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
William James was born January 11th 1842. He is seen by many as the father of American Psychology and as far as i can tell a much better person than Freud. Even today he is one of the most cited psychologists. I like the guy even though he grew up as a spoiled rich kid (which I really can’t stand many of those). He didn’t even start out as a psychologist; he first started out in the Chemistry Field. Which thank goodness he decided to switch because if this guy thought psychology research was tedious and boring, he had no business in the Chemistry field.
One of the things that the chapter told about was his believing in Free Will being his first act of free will. He was quoted as saying “ "I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave". Reading more into what he did for some research led me to one question… Why do people embark on sea voyages if they are prone to becoming sea sick, i mean first darwin, now James, i don’t understand.
William James’s home life was somewhat filled with sadness, he had a wife and five children, but sadly they lost one of their son, Herman, to whooping cough at the age of two. A parent never gets over losing a child.“If a husband dies, the wife is called a widow. If a child's parents die, the child is called an orphan. Why isn't there a word for a parent that loses a child?” The answer is because no words could possibly describe that loss.
William James took ten years to write “The Principles of Psychology”, from which was his most major work in psychology. He is also noted for the James-Lange Theory of Emotion which in a sentence states that “emotions occur as a result of physiological reactions to events”. Later he wrote “The Varieties of Religious Experience” and “A Pluralistic Universe”, which soon after writing the latter he died from heart failure.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.sodahead.com/living/if-a-husband-dies-the-wife-is-called-a-widow-if-a-childs-parents-die-the-child-is-called-an-orph/question-1857119/
I picked this sight to emphasise the loss of a child that leaves a stain on one's life that will barely fade with time, to show that this incident is probably where James’s depression stemmed from later in life, possibly leading to his suicidal ideations as a way of seeing his son again.
http://www.biography.com/people/william-james-9352726#early-life
This biography showed James's life at a glance and was easy to follow, though it was not an in depth account sometimes the overview and highlights in one's life provide a foundation for who they are,
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/jamesbio.htm
This biography went into detail about how James’s Theories came about and did a great job about summarizing them in just a few sentences, which is great for a college student like myself. It also provided links if you needed more information on a certain subject.
Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
William James, American Psychology, Free Will, James-Lange Theory of Emotion,
1.My topic is that I would like to discuss further has to do with part of Hall's theory of developmental psychology, recapitulation. This topic fits into this chapter because Hall is a major person of interest in this chapter. The reason this topic interests me is because of I have never heard of this theory before and I would like to look into more.
2. The three aspects of this topic that I would like to discuss further are; where did this theory originate, why was it abandoned in the 1930s, and what affect does it have on the psychology we know today?
3. Haeckel was a was a large supporter of the theory of evolution. So when his close friend Darwin asked for his assistance in proving said theory he eagerly complied. Haeckel proposed his theory of recapitulation, the idea that a human embryo goes through its past ancestral stages in the womb before taking the form that we are familiar with today. Haeckel even drew the fetus at each stage in the womb and what ancestor it represented, although not always naming them. While this theory is fascinating to think of, it has no basis in fact. It is widely known today that Haeckel fraudulently drew and promoted his theory of recapitulation to validate the theory of evolution. With todays technology we know that his renditions of what the fetus looks like as it grows in the womb is completely inaccurate. What may be worse than a seemingly esteemed man of science falsifying and promoting a theory he knew to be fake was how popular the idea became and how quickly it spread, soon being taught in schools across the globe. The ripple effect of this false theory is still affecting our society today. Dr.Henry Morris of the ICR believes the effect of this falsification are as far reaching as an affect the theories of Freud, which were largely based on Darwin's theory of evolution which was supported by Haeckel's false theory and how we view abortion in our society, pro-choice supporters seeing the fetus as 'not fully developed' is an echo of the idea of recapitulation because the fetus is not yet at the stage of homo sapiens rather somewhere between the fish that crawled out of the ocean or a primate. I had no idea the treachery that could be found in psychology, and it was fascinating to look into this false theory and how far reaching its affects have on us today.
4.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbmJFZSxtOM Sums up the origin of the theory of recapitulation, why it was spread so rapidly, and its affects on the psychology community and population at large.
http://www.icr.org/article/heritage-recapitulation-theory/ Gives details on how a hoax as large as this was able to deceive so many people.
http://amazingdiscoveries.org/C-deception-Ernst-Haekel_theory_multicellular_organisms
Explains why the theory is largely discredited today.
Terms/Terminology: Recapitulation, Hall, Haeckel, developmental psychology, Darwin, evolution
1) My topic this week is consciousness. How this fits into this week’s chapter is this is a concept that was discussed by William James. He created a new way of thinking about consciousness in that he felt it was more fluid and always changing rather than something jointed and able to break down into basics elements which was the main idea in Germany and Great Britain. I am interested in this topic because consciousness is something that makes me think. The idea of how individuals perceive stimuli and the differences in that thought process is very interesting. I also like it because there is no exact explanation to what it is so it allows for the imagination run free and try to explain it rather than there being one correct answer. The abstractness of the concept of consciousness has always interested me.
2) Three aspects of this topic that I want to discuss are; the idea of consciousness being structured, James’s idea on consciousness, and the view of consciousness today.
3) One of the first ideas of consciousness came out of Germany from a psychologist named Wilhelm Wundt and his theory of structuralism. This is the idea of breaking down the adult mind into basic element to study so that we can better understand the complex experiences that individuals have. Wilhelm’s assistant, Edward Titchener, took the idea of structuralism and modified a little. Titchener believed that there were three elements of the mind that made up consciousness; sensations which are elements of perception, images which are elements of ideas, and affections which are elements of emotion. By looking at these elements and understanding them better, Titchener believed that an individual would be better able to understand consciousness and the experience of an individual.
William James challenged the idea of structuralism with his own idea which is known as stream of consciousness. James did not believe that the consciousness was something that was put together by different parts and could be dissected to basic elements for better understanding. Instead James believed the consciousness to be flowing like a stream. He believed that experiences stayed within out conscious but others are much fresher than others due to the time of the experience. Although an experience may have happened a long time ago, it is still part of the same stream as a new experience. Another point to this idea is that an individual’s consciousness is always changing much like a stream. Even though someone might have a similar experience more than once, it will always be different in some way.
A new way that scientists are looking at consciousness is with the idea of integrated information. Neuroscientist Giulio Tononi theorizes that consciousness is an integration of a vast variety of information and that this experience cannot be broken down into more simple parts. What this means is that you cannot choose how you are experiencing things, it is just how the information given to you is perceived and experienced. Another concept that makes this theory different is that scientists are able to assign a number to the degree of reducibility of consciousness. What this means it how well you can break down the conscious into basic elements. This numerical value is phi. If this value is closer to zero then the more you are able to break down consciousness to its basic elements. The higher number the value is the more complex the consciousness is. One idea that this theory explains is that there is a variety of degrees of consciousness which scientists can see using brain stimulations and recording techniques.
4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism_(psychology)
This site helped me understand Wundt’s and Titchener’s idea of structuralism
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/jamesselection.html
This site helped me understand James’s theory of stream of consciousness
http://www.livescience.com/47096-theories-seek-to-explain-consciousness.html
This site helped me find a new theory on consciousness which gave me the theory of integration information
5) Terms: consciousness, William James, Wundt, Titchener, structuralism, stream of consciousness, perception, sensations, affections
The topic I chose was the Baldwin effect. This chapter builds on our knowledge from the previous chapter about Charles Darwin. It discusses what happens after Darwin, but in the United States. It shows us a path of the American Pioneers who contributed to the field of psychology. James Mark Baldwin, who the Baldwin effect is named after, is one of those American psychology pioneers. For this blog, I research James Mark Baldwin, to get to better know and understand where the Baldwin effect came from. Secondly, I researched the Baldwin effect to get a better understanding of it. Lastly, I researched was a YouTube video to help me understand further the Baldwin effect.
James Mark Baldwin was born in Columbia, South Carolina. His early intention was to study ministry, however, a professor at Princeton University greatly influenced him. This professor swayed him to study psychology. Baldwin was drawn to the empirical method to psychology. Baldwin traveled to Germany to study and teach, but found himself soon falling in love and marrying. Baldwin traveled to and worked in several places in Germany and the United States. It was in 1889, when Baldwin went to the University of Toronto where he created a laboratory of experimental psychology. During this time, Baldwin’s wife had two daughters. His daughters are what influenced his experimental research on infant development. During this period, Baldwin published his first piece of writing, Mental Development in the Child and the Race: Methods and Processes (1894). This writing had a strong impact on other popular psychologists: Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg. Baldwin greatest works were in developmental psychology and evolutionary psychology. Baldwin's most important theoretical contribution is the concept of the Baldwin effect. His evolutionary ideas contributed to the understanding how human beings have developed physically and mentally.
The Baldwin effect states that evolution of an innate trait proceeds faster in populations that are more numerous in flexible individuals than in populations that are less flexible The general approach of the Baldwin effect is to measure the rate of evolution of an innate trait. The Baldwin effect as argued by James Mark Baldwin says states that our ability and elasticity to adapt allows individuals who aren’t “up to par” to acquire higher “fitness”. Baldwin argued that learning can improve the survival of the population of such these “below par” individuals. Learning allows for genetic evolution. When coming to his conclusions, Baldwin observed that there are certain conditions that are optimal for learning adaptively. The central argument of Baldwin is that selection for the ability to acquire a fitter phenotype through learning may overlap with the genetic basis for the fitter phenotype.
I then watched a YouTube video on the Baldwin effect. Richard Dawkins answers the question “How does learned behavior evolve into inherited instinct?” Dawkins begins by saying that this question is quite difficult to understand, but we can attempt to understand it by using the Baldwin effect. Dawkins gives an example of Black birds and Thrushes. He states that the Black bird, if given a snail, would not know how to smash open the shell and eat the snail inside. However, the Trush does know how to do so. Dawkins then goes into the Baldwin effect. He states that perhaps one close ancestor of the Trush had a need to open up the shell of a snail to obtain food, so being the intelligent ancestor, learned to smash the shell. It then passed down its new knowledge down to its cousins, kids, partners, and friends. As the generations went on and on, and the smarter Thrushes taught its children to do the same, they survived. They survived due to the increased food intake. This trait then became inherited and is favorable by natural selection. Skills all start out as learned skills and then become inherited traits. This example can be applied to many different species, behaviors, and traits. Thus, this is how Baldwin answered the question and further increased my knowledge of the Baldwin effect by applying it to real life examples.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/James_Mark_Baldwin - I chose this website because it came from a source that had references, external links, and credits. It seems very legitimate in its findings. I used the most information from this website to gain a better understanding of where Baldwin came from and how he got his ideas.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3423563/ - I chose this website because it is a journal article written on research. I used this website to expand the knowledge I learned about in the chapter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdqg-jn_tBk – I chose this video because it applies that Baldwin effect directly to life. I used the information he talked about in the video to learn more about how the Baldwin effect can be applied.
Terms and Terminology: Baldwin effect, American Pioneers, James Mark Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the Race: Methods and Processes, Richard Dawkins
1) For my topic I decided to do the James-Lange theory of emotion. This fits into the chapter because William James is discussed fairly in depth and this is one of his accomplishments and contributions to psychology. I am interested in this theory because emotion has always fascinated me as well as cognitions related to emotion and the order the two occur and all the information behind it as well.
2) Three aspects I want to talk about for this assignment are what the James-Lange theory of emotion is, the facial-feedback hypothesis, and the criticisms of this theory.
3) The James-Lange theory of emotion was created by William James and Carl Lange, two psychologists. Although both worked together to create this theory, their ideas were slightly different. James focused mostly on the cognition process, how cognition was necessary to identify an emotion. Lange tried to make this more testable and allow it to be applied in real life. Even though they both differed on ideas slightly, both agreed that a bodily reaction was important in it's involvement with emotion. Originally, the theory before this one was that emotions are felt prior to a physiological sensation. This suggested that the feeling of fear would come before the physical reaction to it such as sweating or heart racing. James and Lange thought that this order should be reversed such that the body reaction comes before the emotion. This means that first the heart would start to race and then the person would feel fear. James and Lange proposed that once you felt the bodily reaction your mind then interpreted into an emotional category. If you felt your heart racing you would cognitively deduce that you are scared. They also said that before this bodily reaction would occur there would be some event. Such as, in the situation of being scared, you would see something scary or something would jump out at you. The situation would cause the physiological reaction which you would interpret and put into a category of emotion. James and Lange also brought in the aspect of common sense to this theory, saying it was true although it went against common sense. Although it seemed to be common sense that if you saw a monster you would be scared and your heart would race so you would run away, James and Lange said it was different. If we believe we are in a situation that would arouse fear, we often feel that way. They thought that we would realize we are afraid because of a physical reaction and then run. Another aspect related to this theory was the facial-feedback hypothesis. This hypothesis is the idea that facial expressions can have an impact on emotions. This would be something James and Lange would think because they believed a bodily reaction preceded the emotion. Therefore, if a person was sad but kept smiling over and over their body would react and perceive themselves as happier. They believed that these expressions could influence emotions greatly. They also found that this could be used through body movement, tone of voice, and so on. James and Lange felt that this could actually be used to people's advantages. If the person wanted to feel happier they would simply need to make facial expressions exhibiting happiness. This could also help if they were in a situation they did not necessarily like. If the person smiled throughout the experience they actually seemed to have a better time than if they had not done so. Although these theories do seem to make some sense, there is some criticism of the theory of emotion. Many psychologists, especially Cannon and Bard who challenged the James-Lange theory, proposed that emotions came before the body's response. So instead of what James and Lange said, they stated that fear would occur and then the body would response by the heart racing. Other studies found that physiological responses were not enough to cause an emotion. These studies tested this using adrenaline and found that just having adrenaline being added was not enough to make someone have an emotional response. It was also shown that not all emotions coincided with a physical response, so their theory could not be correct for all emotions. A problem with the facial feedback hypothesis also arouse because it was very hard to test. The problem with this was that most of the research done after this theory was proposed was correlational rather than experimental. Another problem was the self-perception mechanism. Often times people can cause themselves to feel a certain emotion based on something physiologically. If they think what they are feeling physiologically corresponds with a certain emotion then they just say that they felt that way or actually make themselves feel that way. Although this may be similar to what James and Lange said, it was not actually what the facial feedback hypothesis stated. Although there are flaws in these theories, as with most theories from the past, they were very influential at the time and started the ground work for theories of emotion we see now. Even though James and Lange may have made some errors in their work, it did significantly contribute to psychology and helped in great ways as well.
4) https://explorable.com/james-lange-theory-of-emotion - This website was used to discuss what the James-Lange Theory of emotion was and also helped show some of the criticisms and discuss Canon and Bard and their challenges of the theory.
http://www.psychologynoteshq.com/jameslangetheoryofemotion/ - This website also added to the criticisms of the theories as well as showed how common sense different from the James-Lange theory.
https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/emotion-13/theories-of-emotion-410/the-facial-feedback-hypothesis-508-16765/ - This website gave more information on the facial feedback hypothesis and what it meant.
5) James-Lange theory of emotion, William James, Carl Lange, Canon, Bard, self-perception mechanism, facial feedback hypothesis
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic is Kenneth and Mamie Clark as well as the racial barriers that their research exposed.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
For this week’s assignment I plan on discussing the significance of Kenneth and Mamie’s doll study, how their findings influenced a landmark court case (Brown v. Board of Education), and the relevancy of the findings in modern times.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Kenneth and Mamie Clark were two extremely successful individuals. Kenneth was the first African American man to graduate with a degree in psychology, his wife followed shortly behind as the first African American woman and the second African American overall after her husband (it was doubly impressive that Mamie was able to achieve this position as she was a woman AND a minority; two risk factors for not achieving much during this time period due to restricted access to resources). During a time of racial unrest these two individuals were able to persevere and better themselves by achieving higher education and earning their doctorates. It is no surprise then that these two individuals wanted to research racial topics. These two had many successes in their research, but one stood out with highly influential results. The study that I am referring to, in everyday terminology, is the “doll test.” For this experiment, Kenneth and Mamie asked young, African American girls between the ages of 3 and 7 a series of questions about dolls. These dolls were similar in everything but skin tone. The scientists asked these young ladies to identify the races of all of the dolls and to pick the one that they liked the most out of the lineup (Link 3). The Clarks discovered that these girls typically chose the Caucasian doll. Kenneth and Mamie made the argument that there were psychological repercussions due to the effects of segregation, one extremely troubling factor was that of lowered self-esteem. This was especially evident in the American public school system where minorities and Caucasians were separated.
During this time period the notion of “separate but equal” was popular. This statement essentially meant that minorities and Caucasians could learn the same material, but in separate environments. This statement was flawed and many people saw this law as unjust and harmful to minority students. Eventually, enough controversy over these three words led to the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown v. The Board of Education. This case involved Oliver Brown, a parent of an African American student who thought that his child was being denied an equal education to his or her white peers across the state. This was a serious accusation, because if the Supreme Court ruled that Brown was correct, the Topeka School District would be found to have violated the fourteenth amendment (Link 1). The specific part of the amendment that Topeka was found to have violated was the Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme Court interpreted the clause to mean that every child—regardless of skin tone—had an equal right to education (Link 1). The Supreme Court took many items into account when making their decision, one of which involved psychological research. Kenneth and Mamie’s research on how segregation caused a drastic decrease in self-esteem when compared to Caucasian children, had a great influence on the Supreme Court’s final decision. The thought process of the court was that, if a child had low self-esteem, he or she would not be successful in life; this viewpoint and the research submitted by the Clarks helped to eliminate segregation of schools based on race.
While researching this topic I was reminded of a popular culture item that I had read a few months ago. The article involved a prominent toy that has been around for a half century or so. The pop culture item that I am referencing is Barbie. I was interested in learning if there were any more recent “doll studies” where African American girls self-esteem was not destroyed because they liked a doll that did not match their exterior form. One article I found involved the Barbie corporation releasing ethnic versions (different hair styles, eye colors, etc.) of their generic blonde hair and blue-eyed doll that is the stereotypical Caucasian individual. I agree with the author of this article who stated that although “Barbie seems to have made a lot of improvements to its classic toy…[and is] proud that Barbie's making moves in the right direction” there is still room for improvement with body standards (Link 2). I wonder if the “doll study” should be repeated after the more racially diverse dolls have been out for a while. I would hope that the results would be much different than in the past.
Link 1: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_brown.html
I used this link to learn more about the Brown v. Board of Education landmark Supreme Court decision.
Link 2: http://www.refinery29.com/2015/06/89358/barbie-fashionista
I used this link to bring in a modern example of easing racial tensions.
Link 3: http://www.naacpldf.org/brown-at-60-the-doll-test
I used this link for detailed information on the Clarks’ “doll test” research.
Terms: Kenneth Clark, Mamie Clark, minorities, gender roles, doll test, race, segregation, self-esteem, education, Brown v. Board of Education, diversity
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic is the variability hypothesis. It was discussed in the chapter in relationship to women in the field of psychology. I was originally interested because I did not understand what it was. After reading more about it, I still interested in it because the variability hypothesis can be used to explain society's view of women in the past and present.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
What the variability hypothesis is.
How the variability hypothesis developed from the theory of evolution.
The relationship between society and the variability hypothesis.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
The variability hypothesis is the theory that males are more likely to vary in physical and mental traits than females. Several scientist interpreted the variability hypothesis in different ways. The most general view of the variability hypothesis is that more males have abnormal traits. These could be positive or negative abnormalities. For example, when discussing intelligence, the variability hypothesis suggests that more men are geniuses and more men are mentally impaired than women. The flaws with this theory include environment factors were not considered and evidence was not provided. It should be noted that some research was completed, but the results were never consistent between any studies.
The variability theory was developed from the theory of evolution. The idea of natural selection, the passing of useful traits from one generation to the next, the adapting of traits to become useful is the idea behind the variability theory. In past human societies, it is argued that males required more courage, intellect, and energy for their contributing duties than women. According to natural selection, these useful traits would be strengthened and passed down to future generations. Women's duties in these societies required more passive traits, which is why the variability theory suggests that women's traits are more average than men's.
Discussion of the variability theory often focuses on intelligence and the idea that women are average and men are above average. Although the variability theory states that both positive and negative extremes are more likely in males, people tend to neglect the negative extremes. Some interpret the variability theory as males are more likely to be intelligent than women. This can clearly pose a problem for society. The most obvious problem is that women are offended by the implication than men are more intelligent than women. Women argue that perhaps they are less intelligent because they have less opportunity for experience and education. Again, the variability hypothesis does not consider environmental factors. It is possible that society has not allowed women to be as intelligent as men. However, a contrasting view should be considered. The variability hypothesis supports societies view of men being superior to women. Perhaps, the variability hypothesis was created to fit society.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N23/veldman.html
This was useful in its relation to feminism and variability hypothesis.
http://gem.greenwood.com/wse/wsePrint.jsp?id=id670
This was useful in its explanation of what the variability hypothesis is.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173639?seq=4#page_scan_tab_contents
This was very useful in its explanation of what the variability hypothesis is and how it developed.
Terms
Variability hypothesis
Theory of evolution
1)Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
The topic I have am going to talk about is Margaret Floy Washburn and her contributions to psychology. She fits into the chapter because she is the first woman to receive a doctorate in psychology and this chapter talked about how women and minorities beat the odds and were starting to be let into graduate schools at this point in history. I am interested in Washburn because she was briefly mentioned in the chapter and I wanted to know what her specific contributions to psychology were.
2)What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
I will be speaking about Washburn’s academic career, what her focus in psychology was and what her book, The Animal Mind, was about.
3)Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Margaret Floy Washburn started her education at the age of sixteen. She went to college at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. After she graduated from Vassar, she wanted to go to college at Columbia University but since they didn’t let women into the college, she was permitted to observe classes. She ended up attending the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornel where she got her graduate degree and also got her PhD, making her the first woman to earn a doctorate in the field of psychology. While working towards her degrees, she studied under experimental psychologist E.B. Titchener (founder of structuralism) and she was in charge of all of the experiments and research while she was there. After she had earned her doctorate, she went on to teach at Wells College for women, Sage College for women, University of Cincinnati, and Vassar. She was also the president for the American Psychological Association, active in the National Research Council, and was elected to be in the National Academy of Sciences.
Washburn made many other contributions to psychology other than being the first woman to earn a doctorate in psychology. She was interested in behaviorism and she believed that conscious thought would show through our behaviors. This is important because she combined two aspects of psychology when she made this theory. She combined Wilhelm Wundt and Titchener’s structuralism views and combined them with behaviorism views. She called this her Motor theory of consciousness, where our thoughts produce motor movements. Washburn was also very active in comparative psychology. She studied topics like color vision in animals, individual differences, aesthetic preferences for color and sound, and even memory. Perhaps her biggest contribution was her book about animal behavior, The Animal Mind.
The Animal Mind was a book that Washburn wrote on her arguments that, “Animals mental states should be studied alongside their behavior.” This book held outlines on her experiments on animals, consciousness and behavior. Most experimental psychologists had only did experiments with rats at this time but Washburn had done all of this research on one hundred different animals and compared the data between these animals. She also believed that studying these animals would help us understand humans even more. A direct quote from her about this was for her argument as to why we should study animals, her answer was, “We are obliged to acknowledge we are obliged to acknowledge that all psychic interpretation of animal behavior must be on the analogy of human experience. We do not know the meaning of such terms as perception, pleasure, fear, anger, visual stimulation, etc., except as these processes form a part of the contents of our own minds. Whether we will or no, we must be anthropomorphic in the notions we form of what takes place in the mind of an animal.” This means that she took an anthropomorphic stance in her experiments and knew that we could apply a lot of the theories to humans.
In conclusion, Margaret Floy Washburn, not only blazed a trail for women in the psychology field, but she also did a lot for experimental and comparative psychology. She was the first woman to receive a doctorate in psychology, the president of the APA, the second woman to be elected into the National Academy of sciences, a teacher for many colleges, and she did a lot of research for comparative psychology and really jumpstarted behavioral research on different species of animals. I find her to be very interesting and I don’t think the history book does her justice. She did so much more than they spoke about in the book, and I think this adds to my understanding of the history of psychology because I realize how important some of the lesser known “Greats” are to our history.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/margaret-floy-washburn.html I used this sight to get a better understanding of Washburn’s academic career. This gave me more insight to how young she was when she went to school and who she studied under and what her career looked like after she was through her education.
http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/648/Margaret-Floy-Washburn.html I used this sight to get a better understanding of what aspects of psychology Washburn was involved in. There was also some information about her career and schooling in this article too.
http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.uni.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=e56ae9c9-4810-4ea3-b26b-c13354f34a16@sessionmgr113&vid=8&hid=126
I used this source to get a better understanding of her book, The Animal Mind. There was a lot of direct quotes from her about how animals compare to humans and how she thought consciousness worked.
5) Terms: Margaret Floy Washburn, comparative psychology, The Animal Mind, experimental psychology, motor theory of consciousness, E.B. Titchener, Structuralism, behaviorism, anthropomorphic.
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
This chapter introduced women and minorities into psychology but it seem that their contributions were just glided over so I decide to look up more women and minorities in psychology and what they have done to contribute to the field. I’m interested in this topic because I’m woman and a minority and I’m just interested to see what role we have in why psychology is the way it is today.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
I want to know interesting discoveries that were found by women and minorities, what role they are playing now and what else they had to overcome that may not have been mentioned in the chapter.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
In all forms of history that we see women and minorities tend to be underrepresented. But not only are they underrepresented when it comes to the contributions that they have made when it comes to psychology, they are also underrepresented in the research studies. There is relatively a small amount of research that has been devoted to the understanding of ethnic minority population.
African American don’t begin to come on the scene until around the 1920s when Francis C. Sumner became the first African American to receive a PhD in psychology. Around the same time we see that the first journal was published by African American J. Henry Alston. Women begin showing up quickly after when we see Inez B. Prosser receive her doctorate award in psychology and Turner becoming the first to receive her PhD.
African American psychology began with an emphasis in the use of research to support social change and empower their black community. Ethnic psychology has been involved in institutionalizing policies, programs, practices, and social issues. For example would be of the intelligence testing placement policies, the concern it that the IQ test found that a large percentage of African Americans were performing in the retarded range which required them to be placed in special education classes. It was prohibited in California for a Black child to ne paced in a special Ed class based on the IQ test because of the concern of it validity on African Americans.
Just like African Americans and other minority groups women are underrepresented when it comes to historical contributions and studies of women. But psychology has many brilliant women who have contributed to the field. Women like Sandra Bem who is known for her gender schema theory, developing the Bem Sex Role Inventory, a measure that tests how well people fit into traditional gender roles. Or Leta Hollingworth who challenged the views that women were less gifted and talented than men. Women like Anna Freud who did a lot more than settle with be the daughter of Sigmund Freud. She contributed to child psychoanalysis and ego psychology.
Women have played a big role in psychology. They are discovering theories and are adding or challenging existing ones. Their inclusion in the history books is starting to get better though, we are now seeing more and more women being included and a part of history.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/special/5631504.aspx
I picked this website because it had a lot of great article that was able to give a look at not only African Americans but also other minority groups like Native Americans and Asians.
http://psychology.about.com/od/womeninpsychology/tp/important-women-in-psychology-history.htm
I included this article as a source because it was a simple straight to the point article about important women in psychology and their contributions.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2009/july-august-09/the-history-of-women-in-psychology.html
This article was picked because it briefly gave me the history of women in psychology which was useful because it added to what I already knew form the chapter that we read.
Terms: women, minorities, Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, child psychoanalysis, ego psychology, Leta Hollingworth, Bem Sex Role Inventory, Sandra Bem, Turner, Francis C. Sumner, Inez B. Pros, J. Henry Alston, intelligence testing
1) The topic I chose to write about was a person, Mary Whiton Calkins. It fits into the chapter because the chapter discusses a lot about her. She was a very important icon in the chapter as well. I’m interested in her because she made a lot of contributions to psychology with her theories and ideas.
2) The first aspect I’ll discuss is the about Calkins background. Secondly I’d like to talk about the issue of women in education during the late 1800’s. The third factor I’d like to talk about is the paired-associate technique.
3). Mary was born in Connecticut in 1863. She grew up with a family that was close and lots of siblings. She began her college education at Smith. Her father was a minister. Women’s education wasn’t as important for women at the time so her father took care of steering the direction of her education. Eventually she became a tutor at Wellesley College and was asked to teach Psychology due to her background with philosophy. This is where the problem of women in education really showed up. In order for Calkins to teach, she needed to take courses in psychology. This was difficult for her due to the fact that she was a women. When she tried for Harvard, she wasn’t let in. Her father was able to get a petition started to get her into the lectures there. The President of Wellesley College was also able to aid in her getting to attend the lectures. Eventually Harvard approved the petition. After one year at Harvard and her private lessons, Calkins was now an instructor at Wellesley College for psychology. Caulkins was accomplishing a lot in the psychology field. She returned to Harvard to learn from Munsterberg in the laboratory, of course she had troubles with the university in order to get in, but her second petition was signed again. During the time she was learning under Munsterberg, she created the paired-associate technique. Munsterberg tried helping Calkins receive the Ph.D she deserved, but the university discarded it.
4) This site touched on a lot of topics about Calkins. It talked briefly about her early life, her life at Wellesley College, the time she spent at Harvard, and more things about her.
http://faculty.webster.edu/woolflm/marycalkins.html
The topic that I have chose to write about is Mary Calkins. Calkins fits into chapter 6, because she is one of the pioneers that helped get psychology to where it is today. The reason that I am interested in Calkins is because of her work with memory with the use of paired associate learning.
The three aspects I am going to talk about in this essay are the significance of Mary Calkins, her work with paired associate learning, and her work with memory.
To begin, Mary Calkins was a philosopher and psychologist. Calkins spent a lot of her time working with memory, and with self. One thing about self, was that she discovered that it was indefinable. Each person is unique in their own way. Calkins wrote a couple books on the subject. One of them was titled The Persistent Problems of Philosophy, and the other was The Good Man and the Good. In one of these books she wrote that "I am I, and you are you." Meaning that there is no way to describe self, and everyone's conscious thoughts are different. Along with being a psychologist and philosopher, Calkins was also a professor. She started as an associate professor, then professor, then research professor until she retired. While a professor, she got elected to be the president of the American Psychological Association. This was a big deal, because that made Calkins the very first woman to ever get elected president of the APA. This was a time when men were basically the only ones that were considered to be smart, and women weren't suppose to go to school, because they should stay home and do womanly duties. Calkins led the way for women everywhere, giving them hope that they could study and become successful in psychology.
One of the things that Calkins spent a lot of time with is Paired associate learning. She developed this form of learning in 1894. It involves pairing two items, usually which are words. The participant would be shown a stimulus, and told to respond with a certain word. The reason that this is important, and that Calkins spent a lot of time with it, is because it is one of the way we learn today, and is associated with a form of learning that works. Seeing a stimulus, and knowing a word for it, helps us to understand what the stimulus is. This makes the participants engage in two separate mental processes. The first is the learning of the response, and the second is the bond between the two words. This bond is then learned and sticks with the participant, just like one that is learning a language.
The last thing that will be talked about in this essay is Calkins work with memory. The thing that Calkins discovered about memory was that frequency developed it the most. This means that the more time a subject was exposed to a stimuli, the more likely they were to remember. Calkins would also test things like recency and vividness with the subjects, and see if that influenced their memory, and it did to an extent, but the more they were exposed to it the better it stuck in their memory. This is a big discovery, because it can help many people that are trying to learn something to understand that it takes a lot of repetition, and is not something that can just be instantly learned.
Terms: Mary Calkins, paired associate learning, memory, frequency, vividness, recency.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/marywhitoncalkins.html
This website helped me provide info on Calkins discoveries with memory.
http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/467/Paired-Associate-Learning.html
This website helped me learn more about paired associate learning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Whiton_Calkins
This website helped me learn about Calkins credentials, and what impact she has had on psychology.
FUNCTIONALISM
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the section we have covered so far, and why you are interested in it.
I decided to research functionalism for this week’s topical blog post. I became interested when I learned that functionalism has been linked to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. It was argued that the function of the brain should be studied rather than the structure. The psychological research of structuralism and the structure of the brain morphed in to the psychological research of functionalism and the function of the brain.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
I want to discuss how functionalism was founded, the main criticisms of functionalism, and the key researchers who are associated with functionalism. As I mentioned in the opening few lines of this assignment, the domain of functionalism is distinct from the domain of structuralism. Research using functionalism methods is conducted by analyzing decision-making processes, cognitions, and perceptions (Link 2). Functionalists seek to identify the way in which people adapt to their environment. They strive to solve the question of what motivates people to behave the way they do. For example, functionalists would agree with the way schools are constructed; they prepare children and young adults for their future endeavors. Functionalists understand that interdependence is needed in society for it to function properly. It is evolutionary advantageous for humans to assist fellow humans to succeed. A functionalist would ask questions related to the purpose of education in society, the purpose of workers in a corporation or the purpose of social services in a culture. Education has the purpose of producing future workers who fulfill the needs of a functioning society. Workers produce products for society (whether it be through marketing, economics, experimentation, etc.). Social services have the purpose of encouraging and supporting society so it can flourish.
There are a few criticisms I found discussing the issue of functionalism. One of these arguments involves the failure of functionalism to focus on the individual. The domain of functionalism, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, involves societal implications rather than individual implications; individuals only matter because they are part of a large society (Link 1). Due to this lack of focus on individuals, functionalists fail to cater to individual needs; they seek the solution that benefits as many individual—a majority of society—that they can. Another criticism is that functionalism is that it is impossible to measure accurately (Link 2).
One of the most well-known functionalists was William James, who studied under Wilhelm Wundt but had very different view from his mentor. James’s mentor used structuralism approaches rather than functionalism. One of James’s most important contributions to the field of functionalism (other than having a large part in founding it, of course) was his idea that the mind had a “stream of consciousness” (Link 2). In other words, James postulated that the mind acted in response to the “streams” it received. The way in which I interpret this is to associate “streams” with “stimuli.” In other words the mind is activated to determine the most efficient path to discover a solution to an issue; the mind exists to process and solve problems. James believed that physical exertions or events triggered physiological (i.e. emotional responses), such as the act of running producing the emotional response of fear (Link 4). John Dewey was another prominent functionalist. He acted in the same manner as William James in that he took the base elements of functionalism and tweaked them into behaviorism. Dewey took the concept of the “streams of consciousness,” or stimuli, and morphed them into a value system rather than a reactionary system (Link 3). The response, or behavior, was more important than the stream of thoughts. Structuralism was the first major foundation point for the three domains that I mentioned. Structuralism then branched out to functionalism, which led to behaviorism.
Terms: Darwin, evolution, structuralism, functionalism, behaviorism, cognitions, perceptions, adaptation, purpose, criticisms of functionalism, individual versus society, James, Wundt, Dewey stream of consciousness, stimuli, emotional responses
Link 1: https://www.boundless.com/sociology/textbooks/boundless-sociology-textbook/sociology-1/theoretical-perspectives-in-sociology-24/the-functionalist-perspective-155-3284/
I used this link to list a couple criticisms of functionalist thoughts. I found two or three that seemed relevant.
Link 2: http://www.actforlibraries.org/functionalism-psychology-william-james/
I used this link to define functionalism and give some general examples of how William James contributed to the domain.
Link 3: http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/265/Functionalism.html
I used this link to go further in-depth to how prominent functionalists contributed to the domain. It contains information about William James and John Dewey.
Link 4: https://books.google.com/books?id=6jLTCQAAQBAJ&pg=PT54&lpg=PT54&dq=james+disagreed+with+wundt+created+functionalism&source=bl&ots=NKmlTAhNC8&sig=enrAkGsOoEUCw4CvvlyPukCb6lk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAmoVChMIodmDzbrDyAIVRaGACh1oeQWG#v=onepage&q=james%20disagreed%20with%20wundt%20created%20functionalism&f=false
I used this link for additional background on William James, who was essentially the founder of functionalism. The text described how he created a theory of emotion that was based in functionalist roots.
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
This week I would like to research more into the Moral Treatment act. This is an act that took place in the 19th century and had a large effect in getting the ball rolling for better treatment of the mentally ill. This fits well into our chapter this week because the chapter revolves around better treatment of the mentally ill. The chapter also allows us to see the different conditions they lived in throughout the years.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
First I would like to talk about where the mentally ill lived before this act, what the act specifically did, and the implications this act has on us today.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
As my additional research stated many saw the Moral treatment act as a “cornerstone” to health care. The act took place in many different countries, including England, Scotland, Italy, and the United States. The act focused on the treatment and care of the mentally ill. In the 1800’s the sad reality was the mentally ill were mistreated in more than one way. Citizens treated the mentally ill as if they were not worthy of rights that other people in society had. Asylum’s at the time were overcrowded and hostile environments. In some ways their treatment ties into our chapter that focused on eugenics as well, people would sterilize the mentally ill to stop their genes from being passed on to future members of society. Not only would they perform sterilizations but also other forms of treatment that seemed inhumane at best. There were many theories at the time of how to treat mentally ill specifically schizophrenics, in some instances they would induce comas from the amount of drugs they would pump into their systems. Drugs were not the only form of treatment at the time, in fact this was probably the best treatment available, they would perform lobotomies (removing whole sections of their brain) in attempt to “cure them. Blood letting was also an accepted form of treatment at the time, along with restraints. What did the Moral Treatment act do to solve any of this? According to our textbook the act allowed patients to no longer live in restraints, and further the Science Museum writes that they believed through this act that patients recovered better when they were treated like human (children) not like animals. The act inspired many to get rid of the idea of an asylum and move to an environment more like the real world, revolving around real communication and household activities. While doing research on this act I found it disturbing that today there are few treatment centers left just for the mentally ill, in my research there was some opposition to the approach that in order for the mentally ill to get better they should be treated as children. Though I do agree, treating adults as children is not morally sound. I can’t help but wondering if there were still facilities today that were more like houses and not prisons would people with mental illness have better grounds for healing? I also can’t help but wondering why we as a society have not learned that even the treatment with drugs does not always heal mental illness and that the environment they are in can have huge healing effects.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/techniques/moraltreatment.aspx
I choose this website because it gives good information on what the moral treatment act is. It contributed to my post in allowing me to explain what this act did and the implications it had on the future of health care.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-03-24/entertainment/0203230067_1_insanity-defense-illness-mclean-hospital/3
I choose this article because it helped me see how the mentally ill were treated prior to the Moral Treatment act, though the text book touched on this some in the beginning I wanted to get an outside view of what the lives of the mentally ill were really like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_treatment
I choose this because it gave an overview of what the moral treatment act was, along with the conditions for the mentally ill, before, after, and during the time of the act. I used this to include the implications it has on our mental health today.
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
This week I would like to talk about Eleanor Gibson and her virtual cliff apparatus. Gibson fits into the chapter because she was yet another who believed that research could be applied. I was interested in Gibson’s research because like most other research in the textbook it started with research done on rats. I found not just that they carried their research over to humans interesting but also the subject itself they were studying. Eleanor Gibson was interested in perception. This research came about from an external source, the interest started from the military and parachute jumpers which also ties into our chapter about how external sources can influence what is happening and takes place in psychology.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
For this assignment I would like to talk about who Eleanor Gibson was. I would then like to talk about what the experiment was in their research. Finally I would like to dive into what the “Virtual Cliff” was and the implications it has for today.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Eleanor Gibson was interested from the start in experimental psychology, in fact her first degree focused on that area. She would later go to Yale and earn a master's degree in the field. Though she was able to accomplish both, being a woman at the time was not easy. The field of psychology was still seen as more of place for men rather than women, but this was never something that Gibson let stand in her way. Though she had many times where people told her she was not welcome because she was a women she turned her sights on the end purpose and worked at Cornell without pay for a large amount of time.
While studying at Cornell University she paired with Richard Walk to begin research on perception. Walk and Gibson used rats, chicks, and other varieties of animals to conduct their research on. From their research they were able to discover that some if not most infant organisms were able to tell perception from a very young age. After doing any experiments with animals they were eventually done with infants as well.
The actual experiment was done on 36 different children each had their mothers with them to provide incentive for the child to crawl to something. The experiment was done on a glass surface, half of the surface with a checkered pattern underneath the other completely clear glass. There were a variety of results across the different species and infants that were tested, but in the end it was concluded that species learn from the time they can move to be afraid of heights.
There were many things that interested Gibson and Walker and they learned many things from doing their experimen. Many wonder how human children go from being uncoordinated and being accident prone to learning and their accidents slowly decrease and they gain coordination. They found through these experiments that children aren’t born with the knowledge of perception, but they do learn as they learn to move. They found that as infants (even infant goats) learn to walk/ move and crawl, they also learn that there are consequences when falling off or from places. They fall thus learning that if they do so pain will occur and they try and avoid the same thing from happening again.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/07-08/gibson.aspx
I used the American Psychological Association's page for information on how Eleanor Gibson got started in her career. I was also able to use this source for background information on what struggles Gibson faced because of her gender during that time period (This was one of my questions earlier in the week on my Monday Assignment).
http://study.com/academy/lesson/visual-cliff-experiment-lesson-quiz.html
I was able to use this source to see what the actual form of the experiment that Walker and Gibson did on infants.
https://stcmpsy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/gibson-and-walk-original-text.pdf
This article helped me see what the driving forces were behind some of the research and some of what was discovered after the research was completed. The article also held what the implications were for the future and how parents understand how their children learn.