Psychology is the study of human behavior and
cognition.
There are behavioral scientists who study
animal behavior and neural processes, and psychology is famous for utilizing
experiments with other animals to draw conclusions about human behavior; but when we speak of psychology, we typically
mean the science of how people behave and how they think. All subfields of psychology in some way
involve human behavior and cognition.
I.
Psychoanalytical School
Sigmund Freud was a late 19th and
early 20th century Viennese physician who took an interest in the
causes of human behavior. He drew
conclusions from question and answer sessions through which he sought to guide
patients with an expressed need for psychological treatment back toward good
mental health. Freud’s most intriguing
insights pertained to the structure of the personality, unseen forces that
shape human behavior, and particular difficulties (complexes) that every person
has in working through relationships with parents.
A.
Structure of the Personality
1.
Id
Freud theorized that much of human behavior is
driven by the fundamental biological impulses to satisfy hunger, thirst, and
sexual desire. He called the facet of
the personality involved with satisfying these impulses the id. Since these biological desires are powerful,
without a mediating force people very well might pursue their biological
impulses to harmful extremes.
2. Ego
The mediating force of the human personality
is the ego. The ego contains
one’s sense of self out and about in the world:
the impulse to be materially successful, to gain the recognition of
others, and to attain a sense of stable satisfaction with one’s place in
life. The ego recognizes the need to
satisfy the demands of the id, but that ego seeks to direct the impulses of the
id in ways that avoid the condemnation or even the disapproval of family,
friends, and members of society writ large.
3.
Super Ego
The superego of the human personality
contains one’s moral sensibility, one’s conscience. One’s moral and ethical codes are modeled by
parents or guardians. Thus, whether one
is altruistic and empathetic, or mean-spirited and given to antisocial
behavior, is powerfully influenced by the moral standards of one’s parents,
then by the interplay of biology and heredity with one’s experiences in life.
The most effectively functioning person has an
ego with a strong but not arrogant sense of self and great managerial skill in
balancing the very different demands of the id and superego. In fulfilling these responsibilities, the ego
must also balance information stored at the conscious, unconscious, and
subconscious levels of awareness.
Levels of Awareness
1.
Conscious
At the conscious level of awareness,
people recognize their patterns of behavior in the past and present, understand
how their behavior is perceived by others, and have a strong sense of the
reasons why they act as they do.
Conscious behavior is easily monitored and, depending on the person, may
be corrected as necessary.
2.
Unconscious
At the unconscious level of awareness,
a person is storing retrievable information that nevertheless is enough below
the surface of consciousness to necessitate personal effort or outside guidance
in the retrieval. The ego has difficulty
managing the behavior of a person who functions largely in a state of
unconscious activity and lacks clear comprehension of that activity: Without breakthroughs in personal
understanding or the intervention of a counselor, id, ego, and superego may
fall significantly out of sync.
3.
Subconscious
At the subconscious level of awareness,
a person is storing information far below the surface of consciousness,
necessitating the intervention of an outside counselor to help the individual
uncover recondite experiences and notions. Subconscious behavior is not easily
monitored and requires great effort on the part of the person and help from a
professional in bringing hidden, often painful and aversive experiences to the
surface so as to correct behavior as necessary. Subconscious behavior is disruptive to the
balance of id, ego, and superego and cannot be managed by the ego until brought
to the surface of consciousness.
Among the many constituents of the
subconscious that will in time have to come to the surface, for processing at
the conscious level of experience if the person is to be psychologically
healthy, are the Oedipal Complex and the Electra Complex.
C. Male
and Female Complexes
1.
Oedipal Complex
The Oedipal Complex is Freud’s
conclusion from his many sessions with patients that the adolescent boy harbors
ill-feeling for his father, perceived as a rival for his mother’s
affections. Freud maintained that every
boy goes through a stage during which he experiences sexual attraction to his
mother. In order for him to develop a
healthy psyche, he must emerge from this stage with resolution
of his feelings for his mother and a return to
the socially acceptable parent-child sort of affection; and he must convert ill-will into respectful
and positive feelings toward his father, who then can become his model for how
to negotiate the challenges of the world.
Freud took the name for this complex from
Sophocles’s play, Oedipus Rex, in
which the hero Oedipus, although born to a king, because of certain circumstances
is raised by a shepherd. Later, as a
young man, he reenters the realm of his parents. A situation occurs in which Oedipus kills a
man whom he only later comes to understand was his father, in the meantime
marrying a woman who, to Oedipus’s horror, turns out to be his mother, by whom
he has four children. Although these
circumstances do not tally with the exact nature of the complex analyzed and
labeled by Freud, the great psychoanalyst used the odd three-way familial
tension in naming the condition he found to be prevalent in boys.
2.
Electra Complex
The Electra Complex is Freud’s
conclusion, similarly drawn in listening to patients, that the adolescent girl
harbors ill-feeling for her mother, perceived as a rival for her father’s
affections. Freud maintained that girls
also go through a stage during which they experience sexual attraction for the
opposite-gender parent--- their
fathers. In order for the girl to
develop a healthy psyche, she must convert her feelings for her father into the
socially acceptable parent-child sort of affection; and she must establish a loving relationship
with her mother, who then can become her model for negotiating the joys and
challenges of the world.
Freud took the name for this complex from the
character Electra, found in Greek plays such as Agamemnon , Libation Bearers , and
Eumenides from Aeschylus’s Oresteia
trilogy; and Euripides’s Electra.
Electra is horrified at her mother’s murder of the latter’s husband (and
therefore Electra’s father). Electra and
her brother Orestes seek and gain revenge for the ghastly deed in a successful
plot to kill Clytemaestra (their mother) and her lover, Aegisthus. But revenge does nothing to avert an abiding
familial catastrophe that has negative repercussions for all concerned. Again, Freud uses skewed familial
circumstances not exactly descriptive of the condition that he identifies to
give a label to the complex.
II.
Behaviorist School
During the 1940s and extending to his death in
the 1980s, the behaviorist B. F. Skinner developed a seminal approach to
psychology. Building on the work of
precursors such as J. B. Watson, Skinner described human behavior as the result
of operant conditioning. In
Skinner’s view, all of human behavior is determined by reinforcers (rewards)
and punishments acting upon the individual according to her or his unique
social environment. He denied the
existence of free will and all internal mental states that we normally perceive
as freedom, dignity, and intention. The
key concepts in this strict behaviorist view of operant conditioning as
determinative of all human behavior is given below.
A. The
Essentials of Operant Conditioning
1.
Positive Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement is the reward that a person receives after
exhibiting a given behavior.
A father may cook a special dinner for a daughter
who successfully fixes a leaky water faucet.
The daughter is much more likely, for having been the recipient of the
special dinner, to take on the leaky faucet task the next time the problem
occurs.
A mother may pay her son $20 after he does the
family laundry. The son, who had long
lobbied for such a reward, is now much more likely to do the laundry cheerfully
and with the desired results of very clean clothes than he would in the absence
of the reward.
A teacher smiles and gives a hug to a child
who has just successfully completed a double digit multiplication problem for
the first time. The child, having been
hesitant on the multiplication task, will now move on to a division task with
much more enthusiasm in the expectation of similar approbation.
The child in turn may smile and tell the
teacher that he is the best ever at explaining math. The teacher moves on to the next child or to
the next task with the same child in a mood of exhilaration.
An employer may give “Employee of the Month”
honors to an employee who never missed a day and performed all tasks at an
exceptional level of accomplishment. If
this is a reward that the employee sought, she or he will revel in the award
and maintain the behavior in expectation of a possible “Employee of the Year”
award.
All of these situations feature some behavior
that was rewarded in a timely fashion with what Skinner called positive
reinforcement: the special dinner, the
$20, the smile and hug combination, the returned smile and words of praise, the
two kinds of employee awards. Skinner
maintained that the presentation of a positive reinforcer for a desired
behavior is the single most effective means of encouraging and maintaining that
behavior.
2.
Punishment
Punishment
is the aversive consequence that one receives for exhibiting an undesirable
behavior.
If a daughter had given indication that she
could fix the faucet but fails to do so, dad frowns and says, “You are always
promising things that you cannot do.”
A son who says that he will do a super job if
mom pays her son $20 for doing the family laundry does only half of what he
said he’d do and leaves most of the clothes damp, leaving mom to finish
up. Mom tells her son that he cannot
participate in the family card game that evening but instead will have to write
a three-page essay explaining how he will do the laundry better the next time.
A teacher frowns and says, “You never try hard
enough on assignments I give to you,” when a child makes insufficient effort to
solve a double-digit multiplication problem for the first time. The child tears up in the receipt of this reprobation
from a beloved teacher.
The child, now emotionally hurting as a result
of the teacher’s stinging words, slams her fist on the table and shouts, “You
are the most useless teacher I’ve ever had.”
An employer may reduce the hours of an
employee who failed to perform all tasks requested at an acceptable level of
accomplishment. The employee, not a
slacker by habit, feels terrible that she has disappointed her employer and
lost needed income.
All of these situations feature some behavior
that was punished in close proximity to the undesirable performance of an
activity. Skinner would have labeled as
punishment each of the negative consequences:
the frown and harsh words from dad;
missing the family card game and having to write the essay about
becoming a better launderer; the frown
and words of condemnation from the teacher; the slammed fist and insulting
words leveled at the teacher; the
reduced hours and lost pay.
3.
Negative reinforcement
Like positive reinforcement, negative
reinforcement rewards rather than punishes a given behavior.
Dad stands frowning and saying, “You are
always promising to do things that you cannot do,” as the daughter is trying to
fix the faucet, but his frown fades and his negative comments disappear when
the daughter in fact fixes the faucet.
Mom maintains a steady monologue about how her
son has never done the family laundry properly in his life and how she knows
that the current effort will result in similar failure but stills her tongue
when he surprisingly gets it right this time.
A teacher frowns and says, “You never try hard
enough on assignments I give to you,” but stops the words of condemnation
amidst a fading frown when the child solves a double-digit multiplication
problem for the first time.
The child fights through lingering emotional
pain but, relieved at the absence of insulting words, does not slam her fist on
the table and shout “You are the most
useless teacher I’ve ever had,” as she has done so many times before.”
An employer shows an employee a schedule of
reduced hours to an employee who seems to be failing on a given night to
perform all tasks requested at an acceptable level of accomplishment--- but tears up the schedule with the atypically
reduced number of hours when the employee gets busy and completes all tasks in
good form.
All of these situations feature some behavior
that was rewarded with the removal of an aversive situation in close proximity
to the adroit performance of an activity.
Skinner would have
labeled each instance of removal of an
aversive consequence as negative reinforcement : the fading of dad’s frown and the termination
of harsh words from dad when the faucet is in fact fixed; the ceasing of mom’s litany of invective
when the son does a good job with the family laundry ; the teacher no longer speaking words of
condemnation and no longer wearing a frown;
the absence of a slammed fist and insulting words leveled at the
teacher; the employer tearing up the
schedule of reduced hours.
B.
Schedules of Reinforcement
There are four fundamental schedules of
reinforcement, each built on pairing important concepts related to the
variability of the routine and whether the reinforcement is timed or delivered
according quantity of reinforced behaviors.
In terms of variability, schedules may be
either fixed or varied. A fixed schedule of reinforcement delivers the
reinforcement on a dependably regular schedule;
a variable schedule of
reinforcement delivers the reinforcement on an irregular schedule, one that is
not predictable by observers other than the designer of the experiment.
In terms of the factors of timing or
quantification, schedules may be either based on interval or ratio. Interval schedules deliver the reinforcement
after the passage of so much time; ratio
schedules deliver the reinforcement
according to the number of behaviors exhibited.
Examples of these schedules of reinforcement
are given below:
1) fixed
interval >>>>>
A fixed interval schedule of
reinforcement rewards behavior exhibited over an exact time period. For example, a father may reward his son for
doing his chore of washing the dishes every night that the family eats at home
each week by giving him his allowance every Saturday afternoon.
2) variable
interval >>>>>
A variable interval schedule of
reinforcement rewards behavior dependably over an identifiable long-term period
but not precise in the short term. For
example, a father may reward his son for doing his chore of washing the dishes
every night that the family eats at home each week by giving him his allowance
four times each month----- but not on a
set day or time.
3) fixed
ratio >>>>>
A fixed ratio schedule of reinforcement
rewards each behavior right after exhibition of the behavior. For example, a father may reward his son for
doing his chore of washing the dishes each time he completes the task, for the
agreed upon amount of $5.00.
4) variable
ratio >>>>>
A variable ratio schedule of
reinforcement rewards behavior after an average number of completions. For example, a father may reward his son for
doing his chore of washing the dishes according to the number of times he
completes the task, for the agreed upon amount of $5.00 per task, but not
necessarily paid right after completion of the task.
C.
Further Comments
All of the schedules of reinforcement given
above are highly effective and result in what behaviorist psychologists call
behavior acquisition (beginning to manifest a given behavior in the
presence of reinforcement) and maintenance (continuing a behavior in the
presence of ongoing reinforcement). When
reinforcement is discontinued, the behavior of the organism (the human
or other creature exhibiting the behavior) is extinguished. Because the exact delivery of reinforcement
is not predictable with variable reinforcement on either an interval or a ratio
schedule, behavior on variable reinforcement schedules takes longer to be
extinguished: The organism continues to
manifest the behavior for a while in the absence of reinforcement, expecting
that the reward (reinforcement) will eventually be gained, but when this does
not happen the behavior comes to an end (is extinguished).
Behaviorist psychologists observe that all
creatures respond in similar ways to the schedules of reinforcement. The schedules given above are for positive
reinforcement but work similarly for negative reinforcement and for punishment. Because they tend to be convenient subjects
under laboratory conditions, behaviorist experimental psychologists frequently
use creatures other than humans to observe responses to reinforcers and
punishments; for example, they
frequently use rats as the subjects (organisms) for their experiments. With animals, primary reinforcers are
frequently used. Primary reinforcers
are those such as food, liquids, and sex---
similar to the aspects of the human being that Sigmund Freud located in
the Id.
With humans, various other kinds of rewards,
called secondary reinforcers are often used (and may be used with other
creatures, as well). Secondary
reinforcers may involve smiles, words of praise, and material rewards such
as the monetary allowance that the father gave the son for doing the dishes in
the examples give above. Behaviorist
psychologists say that all responses to secondary reinforcers can be traced
back to those biological imperatives that make the organism predisposed to
respond to primary reinforcers. They
maintain that all behavior (doing well on a job; leading a volunteer effort with great
skill; or seeking to attract a mate) is
related to the need or desire to satisfy biological imperatives.
Behaviorist psychologists say that free will
is a perception, not a reality. They
hold that all behavior is acquired and maintained as a result of the
presentation of positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, or
punishment. Of these three, experimental
psychologists have found that positive reinforcement is the most efficient for
achieving behavior acquisition in the organism, and that positive reinforcement
along with punishment is even more efficient and effective in getting the
organism to deliver the desired response under experimental conditions.
III. Humanist School
During the 1950s through the 1970s,
especially, another school of psychologists counterpoised themselves to the
behaviorists. Those of this humanist
school objected to the behaviorist contention that human beings lack free
will. They also tended to emphasize
human subjects and to see their behavior arising for different reasons than
those of other creatures. Humanist
psychologists generated theories and therapies designed to help human beings
achieve their full potential; they
believed that if people could see the specific reasons for their own behavior
(and they tended to identify those reasons in terms other than the biological
imperatives [drives]), they could exercise their free choices to live better
and more fulfilling lives.
Carl Rogers
was a humanist psychologist and psychotherapist who sought through his psychotherapeutic
technique called client-centered therapy to engage his clients (term
he preferred over “patients”) in question answer sessions capable of leading
them to discover the solution to their
own problems.
Such sessions typically affirmed and validated the client’s own
perception of her or his problem, with the goal of strengthening the person’s
self-esteem and giving her or him the confidence to find a solution to the
dilemma.
A sample of such a session includes this
exchange:
Client:
I sort of persecute myself in a sort of
way--- sort of self-condemnation all the
way through
Therapist:
So that you---
condemn yourself and don’t think much of yourself, and that’s gradually
getting worse.
Client: That’s right.
I don’t even like to attempt things.
I feel like I am going to fail.
Therapist: You feel that you’re whipped before you start
in.
The effort of the psychotherapist in this
exchange is to acknowledge the legitimacy of the client’s own feelings, to
explore those feelings, and to find a way through them to more joyful ways of
going about life.
The interest of Abraham Maslow was to
use his own interactions with clients to build a theory that could lead the
person to higher order concerns for a more fully evolved life. In his theory of a Hierarchy of Human
Needs, Maslow theorized that people begin with the need to satisfy
physiological needs (of the sort located by Sigmund Freud in the id and
recognized as responsive to primary reinforcers by B. F. Skinner. They then seek to do everything that they can
to ensure their safety and security.
People then express a need for, and seek, human companionship in family,
friends, and mates. One step up in the
hierarchy of needs is self-esteem, whereby people seek recognition as women and
men of skill, talent, and accomplishment.
Finally, with all of these needs met, the person
arrives at the need and the goal of
“self-actualization,” the need to fulfill herself and himself in all ways,
including the spiritual, philosophical, and the cultural: The woman or man seeks to “become everything
that one is capable of becoming.”
V. Cognitive School
From the 1960s forward, cognitive
psychologists have followed path-breaking work of research scientists such as
George A. Miller in exploring how people think: the cognitive process. Cognitive psychologists focus on many aspects
of the human thought process, the most important of which I summarize here.
Cognitive psychologists are interested in the
biological processes by which people process information: how vision brings an object to the retina, neurons
in various sections of the brain process the information, then process it as
many times along as many synapses (neural pathways between and among
neurons) as necessary depending on complexity, ultimately storing the
information in those parts of the brain particularly involved in memory. In addition to their interest in information
taken in from visual stimuli, cognitive psychologists are also
interested in how information is absorbed from aural, tactile, gustatory,
and olfactory stimuli.
Psychologists of the cognitive school explore how the brain assigns
facts, figures, and concepts for categorization in the neural memory
centers and other areas of the brain for long-term representation,
seeking to understand the processes of memory, as well as forgetting.
Cognitive psychologist have found that
categorization and representation results in the brain “chunking” pieces of
information together into schemas or schemata for easier retrieval
when faced with certain tasks relevant to learning. Also involved in cognition are the processes
by which people move toward various levels of reality: traveling in their neural circuity from molecules
to letters, words, and feats of imagination whereby impossible
objects engage their creativity.
With regard to language, psycholinguists such
as Noam Chomsky have described processes by which people across many cultures show
a predisposition to acquire language according to certain hardwired
neural processes. Other psycholinguists
have presented cognitive psychologists with fact-based theories that allow for
much more environmental input into the processes of language formation.
Current interests within cognitive psychology
may be seen in work from researchers such as Davis Rumelhart, who
emphasize that cognition is not a simple matter of serial reasoning but
involves very complex parallel
processing in many areas of the
brain, along numerous synaptic connections and involving both deductive
reasoning (reasoning toward conclusions based on a priori knowledge or
assumptions) or inductive reasoning (reasoning toward conclusions based
on a steady accumulation and interpretation of information).
Cognitive psychologists have benefited greatly
from the explosion of work by neuroscientists over the last couple of decades,
including those neuropsychologists interested in the application of
their findings to matters of human behavior and thought.
VI. Neuropsychological School
Whereas cognitivist psychologists are
especially focused on thought processes, neuropsychologists are particularly
fascinated with the structures of the brain involved in the processing of
information. Refinements in technologies
such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) have enabled neuroscientists to get
ever more detailed information as to the exact centers of the brain that
process certain kinds of information and make possible the full range of human
thought and activity.
Among the information from neuroscientific
research that neuropsychologists can utilize to understand human behavior and
thought, is that related to mental function at different levels of the
brain. The brain stem leads
downward from the midbrain to the pons and medulla and on
to the spinal chord. Via synaptic
connections from these structures into the cerebellum, thalamus,
and the deeper basal ganglia, human beings are able to react emotionally
and activate movement in the arms and legs, for an array of purposes that
include the “flight or fight” response.
These lower brain and midbrain structures are the older parts of the
brain and allow human beings to engage in activity resembling the responses
found in other animals.
Structures in the upper brain give human
beings the ability to think and reason at a level that is beyond the capability
of animals, even fellow primates such as the highly intelligent chimpanzees,
with whom homo sapiens shares 97% of genes. At the level of the cerebral cortex of
the cerebrum, human beings engage in those reasoning processes that have
allowed them to build architectural marvels, advance theories in astrophysics,
create symphonies, write plays and novels exploring their own psyche, and uncover
the wonder of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
Neuropsychologists are able to use findings
from neuroscience to understand the storage of memory in such structures of the
three-pound human brain as the hippocampus and amygdala. They are able to understand how the left
brain (especially involved in matters of linear logic) communicates with
the right brain (particularly associated with creative activity and
leaps of understanding via nonlinear thought processes) communicates across the
neural structure known as the corpus callosum. And whereas the preponderance of the
evidence shows that women and men think according to highly similar processes,
neuropsychologists are able to apply information pertinent to certain gender
differences.
The corpus callosum, for example is larger in
the brains of most women by comparison to mem, potentially (assuming a
comparably greater amount of synaptic circuitry) allowing for greater
communication between parts of the brain involved in linear logic and
creativity--- and thus giving greater
flexibility and increased cognitive power for the solution of vexing questions,
response to complex human situations, and understanding of conditions involving
both intellect and emotion.
Understanding the structure of brain and the
neural synapses involved in certain patterns of human thought and particular
emotional states, neuropsychologists have brought greater understanding of an
array of conditions, such as autism, Alzheimer’s disease/ dementia,
and schizophrenia. We now know
that these conditions are the result of alterations in certain neural
structures and processes, some of which were present at birth and are genetically
determined, others the result of social and natural environmental
impact on brain formation.
Neuropsychologists are able to pass this
information related to the neural origins of psychological conditions on to psychoanalysts
(therapists following tenets of Sigmund Freud), psychotherapists
(therapists generally holding a Ph. D. in psychology and having training in
counseling patients or clients), and psychiatrists (therapists holding
an M. D. [medical degree] with an emphasis on the applications of human biology
and chemistry to psychological counseling, legally able to prescribe
pharmaceuticals [medicines] as part of treatment). They also are able to lead cognitive other
psychologists in promising directions for understanding issues in the own
subfields.
Other Subfields in the Psychology
Other subfields of psychology of which the
student should be aware art the following:
Gestalt Psychology >>>>>
This subfield concerns mental constructs,
patterns, and processes that as a unified groups (rather than as separate
parts) explain phenomena of the human experience.
Psychometric >>>>>
This subfield involves the measuring of what
people know and how intellectually
astute they are; psychometricians have given us the concept of
the I. Q. (Intelligence Quotient) and are consulted in the constructions of
various standardized tests (e. g. ACT, SAT).
Personality Psychology >>>>>
Personality psychologists apply knowledge from
the major schools of
psychology so as understand matters of
personality, such as why some people are introverts and others are extroverts.
Developmental Psychology
>>>>>
Psychologists in this field, such as the
renowned researcher and
theorist Jean Piaget, have given us a
better understanding of how people develop psychologically during major stages
of life (including birth to five years old, ages six to twelve, adolescence,
ages 20-25, and ages 26-35, 35-55, 56-65, 66-75, 76-85, and the very elderly
[those over age 85). Developmental
psychologists have been especially interested in the psychological development
of young children and adolescents.
Social Psychology
>>>>>
This subfield has much overlap with sociology
but focuses more on individual human behavior in the context of groups,
including the impact of social approbation and reprobation, and
the response of the individual person to social pressure.
Sensation and Perception Psychology
>>>>> Sensation
and perception psychologists study how people experience the world through the
five senses and perceive events around them as a result of the interplay
between human biology processes and
social and natural environment.
Psychology of Motivation and Emotion
>>>>>
This subfield draws upon the major schools of
psychology to understand what motivates people and
what leads people to experience various
emotions.
No comments:
Post a Comment