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HUM122Fundamentals of Psychology
Lecture 2Handouts

Research Methods in Psychology

_____________________________________________________________________________
What is research?

Research means “Collecting information about a particular subject or investigating”.

It‟s not just a trip to the library to pick up a stack of books or pick the first five hits from a
computer search. It is the hunt for truth.

Research is about answering questions

Our mind asks questions and to answer this we research to satisfy ourselves.
Where do these questions come from?
a. Personal experiences e-g Newton‟s experience
b. Curiosity to know something e.g. Galileo‟s observational astronomy
c. Studying previous research e.g. Sound generation

Psychological research

Psychological research refers to research conducted by psychologists who employ a wide range
of methods toinvestigate and analyze the experiences and behavior of individuals or groups.

Research methods in psychology

a. Descriptive research: Simply gathers information and gives detailed description

b. Experimental research &Co relational research: Investigates specific variables
(attributes)

1. Descriptive research:

Descriptive research methods aim to depict by describing the data and characteristics of
the phenomenon being studied. The data description is factual, accurate, and systematic
but the research cannot describe what caused a situation.
The description is used for frequencies, averages, and other statistical calculations.
The goal is to portray what already exists in a group.
For examplean opinion poll to find which political candidate people plans to vote for in
an upcoming election.

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Four types of descriptive research:

There are four types of descriptive research methods in psychology:

a. Naturalistic observation:
It is a research method in which the subject is observed in its natural habitat
without any manipulation by the observer.
During naturalistic observation, researchers take great care to avoid interfering
with the behavior they are observing.
This method provides a great opportunity to study behavior in "real settings" and
to see behavior occur in its most natural state.

Advantages:
1. Realistic view of how behavior occurs
2. Observer effect
Disadvantages:
1. Observer bias
2. Each naturalistic setting is unique

b. Laboratory observation:

It is a research tool that includes observing the individual in a laboratory setting,

and closely monitoring their reaction or behavior, which is not as effective as
observing them in their natural environment.This method provides more “control”
than that of a naturalistic observation but limits reality.

Advantages:
The researcher has some degree of control i-e manageable
Disadvantages:
1. Artificial setting may result in artificial behavior
2. Biased and not conclusive as to cause and effect
3. Observer has the option of being non-participant and the study itself may
be structured

c. Case studies:

Case studies are in-depth investigations of a single person, group, event or

community.The information is gathered by interacting with the information
source through observation, conversation, or psychological testing to describe
behavior.
Case studiesinvolve simply observing what happens to, or reconstructing “the
case history” of a single participant or group of individuals.
 Advantages:
1. Amount of detail it provides
2. The only way to get certain kind of information
3. Study things that are rare
Disadvantages:
1. Observer bias
2. Don't know if the cases studied generalize to larger population
3. May not be representative of condition, event; subject to misinterpretation
by experimenter

d. Surveys and interview:

 Interview:

The interview is a purposeful conversation. During one-to-one conversations, the

interviewer collects detailed personal information from individuals using oral
questions.
1. Usually face to face
2. Can use different types of questions, from highly structured (surveys) to
unstructured, participant-led (e.g. therapy sessions)
3. Most are semi-structured, i.e. some questions are prepared in advance, but
these are flexible and can be adapted to follow areas of interest
 Survey:

A survey is a research tool that uses interviews and/or questionnaires to gather

information about the attitudes, beliefs, experiences, or behaviors of a large group.
A survey may focus on factual information about individuals, or it might aim to
collect the “opinions” of the survey takers.
In this method, the research extracts a sample (representative/small group) out of a
population to survey because too large a population cannot be studied.
1. Population of the study refers toan entire group of interest to the
researcher from which they aim to generalize findings or conclusions. It is
a group from which a sample is chosen for the study.

2. Sample of the study refers to the portion of the population selected for
study and from which generalizations are made about the entire
population.

Advantages:
1. Private information
2. Amount of data from large group of people

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 Disadvantages:
1. Representative sample out of a population
2. Courtesy bias
3. Misremember things
4. Distort truth

2. Experimental research:

An experiment is a study of cause and effect, differing from non-experimental methods in

that it involves the deliberate manipulation of one variable while attempting to keep all
other variables constant.
What is a variable?
A variable is something that can be changed, such as a characteristic or value. Variables
are commonly utilized in psychology experiments to ascertain if changes to one factor
result in changes to another.

Types of variables in experimental method:

1. Independent variable: It is the input variable that is controlled and manipulated by

the experimenter to cause change in dependent variable.
2. Dependent variable: It is the output variable that is measured by the experimenter.
It tells about the effect produced by independent variable on it.
Experimental group:
In an experiment, there is a group of participants that is exposed to the independent
variable or treatment to find the output variable.
For-example
We want to investigate which method is more successful at teaching children to read. The
teaching method is the independent variable. The children's reading ability depends on
the teaching method used that is the dependent variable.
Advantages:
1. Experiments are the only means by which cause and effect can be
established.
2. It allows for precise control of variables.
3. Experiments can be replicated
Disadvantages:
1. Experimenter effect
2. Artificiality
3. Known response from the participant

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 3. Correlational research:

A Research tool that finds a relationship between two variables that are to be studied. It
indicates how one variable may predict another.
It finds the “strength of relationship” between two variables.
For-example:
Self-esteemvs Loneliness
Are you lonely because you have a low self-esteem?
OR
Do you have low self-esteem because you are alone?
Three types of correlational research methods
There are three types of correlational research methods in psychology:
a. Positive correlation:
In this correlation the amount of one variable increases and the other decreases.
For-example:
More studying hours causea Grade Point Average (GPA)
Less studying hours causes lower Grade Point Average (GPA)
b. Negative correlation:
In this correlation the amount of one variable increases and the other decreases.
For-example:
More playing hourscauseslower grade Point Average (GPA)
Less playing hourscauses a grade Point Average (GPA)
c. No correlation:
This correlation indicates no relationship between the two variables.
For-example:
Size of the video game player does not affect Grade Point Average (GPA)
Advantages:
1. Calculating the strength of a relationship.
2. Useful as a pointer for further, more detailed research i-e “Predictor”
Disadvantages:
1. Cannot assume cause and effect, strong correlation between variables may be
misleading.
2. Lack of correlation may not mean there is no relationship, it could be non-linear.

History of Psychology
The approaches that psychologists have used to assess the issues that interest them have changed
dramatically over the history of psychology. Perhaps most importantly, the field has moved
steadily from speculation about behavior toward a more objective and scientific approach as the
technology available to study human behavior has improved (Benjamin & Baker, 2004).

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Different approaches of Psychology

School of Important
Description
Psychology Contributors

Uses the method of introspection to identify the basic Wilhelm Wundt,

Structuralism
elements or “structures” of psychological experience Edward B. Titchener

Attempts to understand why animals and humans have

Functionalism developed the particular psychological aspects that they William James
currently possess

Focuses on the role of our unconscious thoughts, feelings, Sigmund Freud, Carl
Psychodynamic and memories and our early childhood experiences in Jung, Alfred Adler,
determining behavior Erik Erickson

Based on the premise that it is not possible to objectively

John B. Watson, B.
Behaviorism study the mind, and therefore that psychologists should limit
F. Skinner
their attention to the study of behavior itself

Hermann
The study of mental processes, including perception, Ebbinghaus, Sir
Cognitive
thinking, memory, and judgments Frederic Bartlett,
Jean Piaget

The study of how the social situations and the cultures in Fritz Heider, Leon
Social-cultural which people find themselves influence thinking and Festinger, Stanley
behavior Schachter

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History of Psychology

Date Psychologist(s) Description

428 to 347 Greek philosopher who argued for the role of nature in
Plato
BCE psychological development.

384 to 432 Greek philosopher who argued for the role of nurture in
Aristotle
BCE psychological development.

1588 to
Thomas Hobbes English philosopher.
1679 CE

1596 to
René Descartes French philosopher.
1650

1632 to
John Locke English philosopher.
1704

1712 to
Jean-Jacques Rousseau French philosopher.
1778

German experimental psychologist who developed the

1801 to idea of the “just noticeable difference” (JND), which is
Gustav Fechner
1887 considered to be the first empirical psychological
measurement.

1809 to Charles Darwin British naturalist whose theory of natural selection

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Date Psychologist(s) Description

1882 influenced the functionalist school and the field of

evolutionary psychology.

German psychologists who opened one of the first

1832 to
Wilhelm Wundt psychology laboratories and helped develop the field of
1920
structuralism.

American psychologists who opened one of the first

1842 to
William James psychology laboratories and helped develop the field of
1910
functionalism.

1849 to Russian psychologist whose experiments on learning led

Ivan Pavlov
1936 to the principles of classical conditioning.

German psychologist who studied the ability of people to

1850 to
Hermann Ebbinghaus remember lists of nonsense syllables under different
1909
conditions.

1856 to Austrian psychologist who founded the field of

Sigmund Freud
1939 psychodynamic psychology.

1867 to Edward Bradford American psychologist who contributed to the field of

1927 Titchener structuralism.

1878 to American psychologistwho contributed to the field of

John B. Watson
1958 behaviorism.

1886 to British psychologist who studied the cognitive and social

Sir Frederic Bartlett
1969 processes of remembering.

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Date Psychologist(s) Description

1896 to Swiss psychologist who developed an important theory

Jean Piaget
1980 of cognitive development in children.

1904 to American psychologist who contributed to the school of

B. F. Skinner
1990 behaviorism.

1926 to British cognitive psychologist who was apioneer in the

Donald Broadbent
1993 study of attention.

American psychologists contributed to the cognitive

school of psychology by studying learning, memory, and
20th and Linda Bartoshuk; Daniel
judgment. An important contribution is the advancement
21st Kahneman; Elizabeth
of the field of neuroscience. Daniel Kahneman won the
centuries Loftus; Geroge Miller.
Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on psychological
decision making.

Canadian psychologist known for her contributions to

1850 Dorothea Dix mental health and opened one of the first mental
hospitals in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Canadian psychologists who wrote early psychology

William Lyall; James
1880 texts and created first Canadian psychology lab at the
Baldwin
University of Toronto.

James Olds; Brenda

Canadian psychologists who contributed to neurological
Milner; Wilder Penfield;
1950 psychology and opened the Montreal Neurological
Donald Hebb; Endel
Telving
Institute.

1960 Albert Bandura Canadian psychologist who developed „social learning

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 Date Psychologist(s) Description

theory‟ with his Bobo doll studies illustrating the impact

that observation and interaction has on learning.

Canadian psychologist who contributed significantly in

1970 Hans Selye
the area of psychology of stress.

Although psychology has changed dramatically over its history, the most important questions
that psychologists address have remained constant. Some of these questions were discuss below:

 Nature versus nurture. Are genes or environment most influential in determining the behavior
of individuals and in accounting for differences among people? Most scientists now agree that
both genes and environment play crucial roles in most human behaviors, and yet we still have
much to learn about how nature (our biological makeup) and nurture (the experiences that we
have during our lives) work together (Harris, 1998; Pinker, 2002). The proportion of the
observed differences of characteristics among people (e.g., in terms of their height, intelligence,
or optimism) that is due to genetics is known as the heritability of the characteristic, and we
will make much use of this term in the chapters to come. We will see, for example, that the
heritability of intelligence is very high (about .85 out of 1.0) and that the heritability of
extraversion is about .50. But we will also see that nature and nurture interact in complex ways,
making the question “Is it nature or is it nurture?” very difficult to answer.
 Free will versus determinism. This question concerns the extent to which people have control
over their actions. Are we the products of our environment, guided by forces out of our control,
or are we able to choose the behaviors we engage in? Most of us like to believe in free will, that
we can do what we want—for instance, that we could get up right now and go fishing. Our legal
system is premised on the concept of free will; we punish criminals because we believe that they
have a choice over their behaviors and freely choose to disobey the law. But as we will discuss
later in the research focus in this section, recent research has suggested that we may have less
control over our behavior than we think we do (Wegner, 2002).
 Accuracy versus inaccuracy. To what extent are humans‟ good information processors?
Although it appears that people are good enough to make sense of the world around them and to
make decent decisions (Fiske, 2003), they are far from perfect. Human judgment is sometimes
compromised by inaccuracies in our thinking styles and by our motivations and emotions. For
instance, our judgment may be affected by our desires to gain material wealth and to see
ourselves positively and by emotional responses to the events that happen to us. Many studies
have explored decision-making in crises such as natural disasters, human error, or criminal

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 action, such as in the cases of the Tylenol poisoning, the Maple Leaf meats listeriosis outbreak,
the SARS epidemic, or the Lac-Mégantic train derailment, etc.

 Conscious versus unconscious processing. To what extent are we conscious of our actions and
the causes of them, and to what extent are our behaviors caused by influences that we are not
aware of? Many of the major theories of psychology, ranging from the Freudian psychodynamic
theories to contemporary work in cognitive psychology, argue that much of our behavior is
determined by variables that we are not aware of.
 Differences versus similarities. To what extent are we all similar, and to what extent are we
different? For instance, are there basic psychological and personality differences between men
and women, or are men and women by and large similar? And what about people from different
ethnicities and cultures? Are people around the world generally the same, or are they influenced
by their backgrounds and environments in different ways? Personality, social, and cross-cultural
psychologists attempt to answer these classic questions.

1. Early Psychologists

The earliest psychologists that we know about are the Greek philosophers Plato (428-347 BC)
and Aristotle (384-322 BC). These philosophers asked many of the same questions that today‟s
psychologists ask; for instance, they questioned the distinction between nature and nurture and
the existence of free will. In terms of the former, Plato argued on the nature side, believing that
certain kinds of knowledge are innate or inborn, whereas Aristotle was more on the nurture side,
believing that each child is born as an “empty slate” (in Latin, a tabula rasa) and that knowledge
is primarily acquired through learning and experience.

European philosophers continued to ask these fundamental questions during the Renaissance. For
instance, the French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) also considered the issue of free
will, arguing in its favour and believing that the mind controls the body through the pineal gland
in the brain (an idea that made some sense at the time but was later proved incorrect). Descartes
also believed in the existence of innate natural abilities. A scientist as well as a philosopher,
Descartes dissected animals and was among the first to understand that the nerves controlled the
muscles. He also addressed the relationship between mind (the mental aspects of life) and body
(the physical aspects of life). Descartes believed in the principle of dualism: that the mind is
fundamentally different from the mechanical body. Other European philosophers, including
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-
1778), also weighed in on these issues. The fundamental problem that these philosophers faced
was that they had few methods for settling their claims. Most philosophers didn‟t conduct any
research on these questions, in part because they didn‟t yet know how to do it, and in part
because they weren‟t sure it was even possible to objectively study human experience. But
dramatic changes came during the 1800s with the help of the first two research psychologists: the

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German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), who developed a psychology laboratory in
Leipzig, Germany, and the American psychologist William James (1842-1910), who founded a
psychology laboratory at Harvard University.

2. Structuralism: Introspection and the Awareness of Subjective Experience

Wundt‟s research in his laboratory in Leipzig focused on the nature of consciousness itself.
Wundt and his students believed that it was possible to analyze the basic elements of the mind
and to classify our conscious experiences scientifically. Wundt began the field known
as structuralism, a school of psychology whose goal was to identify the basic elements or
structures of psychological experience. Its goal was to create a periodic table of the elements of
sensations, similar to the periodic table of elements that had recently been created in chemistry.
Structuralists used the method of introspection to attempt to create a map of the elements of
consciousness. Introspection involves asking research participants to describe exactly what
they experience as they work on mental tasks, such as viewing colors, reading a page in a book,
or performing a math problem. A participant who is reading a book might report, for instance,
that he saw some black and colored straight and curved marks on a white background. In other
studies the structuralists used newly invented reaction time instruments to systematically assess
not only what the participants were thinking but how long it took them to do so. Wundt
discovered that it took people longer to report what sound they had just heard than to simply
respond that they had heard the sound. These studies marked the first time researchers realized
that there is a difference between the sensation of a stimulus and the perception of that stimulus,
and the idea of using reaction times to study mental events has now become a mainstay of
cognitive psychology.

Perhaps the best known of the structuralists was Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927).
Titchener was a student of Wundt‟s who came to the United States in the late 1800s and founded
a laboratory at Cornell University. In his research using introspection, Titchener and his students
claimed to have identified more than 40,000 sensations, including those relating to vision,
hearing, and taste. An important aspect of the structuralist approach was that it was rigorous and
scientific. The research marked the beginning of psychology as a science, because it
demonstrated that mental events could be quantified. But the structuralists also discovered the
limitations of introspection. Even highly trained research participants were often unable to report
on their subjective experiences. When the participants were asked to do simple math problems,
they could easily do them, but they could not easily answer how they did them. Thus the
structuralists were the first to realize the importance of unconscious processes—that many
important aspects of human psychology occur outside our conscious awareness, and that
psychologists cannot expect research participants to be able to accurately report on all of their
experiences.

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 3. Functionalism and Evolutionary Psychology

In contrast to Wundt, who attempted to understand the nature of consciousness, William James
and the other members of the school of functionalism aimed to understand why animals and
humans have developed the particular psychological aspects that they currently possess (Hunt,
1993). For James, one‟s thinking was relevant only to one‟s behavior. As he put it in his
psychology textbook, “My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing” (James,
1890). James and the other members of the functionalist school were influenced by Charles
Darwin‟s (1809-1882) theory of natural selection, which proposed that the physical
characteristics of animals and humans evolved because they were useful, or functional. The
functionalists believed that Darwin‟s theory applied to psychological characteristics too. Just as
some animals have developed strong muscles to allow them to run fast, the human brain, so
functionalists thought, must have adapted to serve a particular function in human experience.

Although functionalism no longer exists as a school of psychology, its basic principles have been
absorbed into psychology and continue to influence it in many ways. The work of the
functionalists has developed into the field of evolutionary psychology, a branch of psychology
that applies the Darwinian theory of natural selection to human and animal behavior (Dennett,
1995; Tooby&Cosmides, 1992). Evolutionary psychology accepts the functionalists‟ basic
assumption, namely that many human psychological systems, including memory, emotion, and
personality, serve key adaptive functions. Evolutionary psychologists use evolutionary theory to
understand many different behaviors, including romantic attraction, stereotypes and prejudice,
and even the causes of many psychological disorders. A key component of the ideas of
evolutionary psychology is fitness. Fitness refers to the extent to which having a given
characteristic helps the individual organism survive and reproduce at a higher rate than do
other members of the species who do not have the characteristic. Fitter organisms pass on their
genes more successfully to later generations, making the characteristics that produce fitness more
likely to become part of the organism‟s nature than characteristics that do not produce fitness.
For example, it has been argued that the emotion of jealousy has survived over time in men
because men who experience jealousy are more fit than men who do not. According to this idea,
the experience of jealousy leads men to be more likely to protect their mates and guard against
rivals, which increases their reproductive success (Buss, 2000). Despite its importance in
psychological theorizing, evolutionary psychology also has some limitations. One problem is
that many of its predictions are extremely difficult to test. Unlike the fossils that are used to learn
about the physical evolution of species, we cannot know which psychological characteristics our
ancestors possessed or did not possess; we can only make guesses about this. Because it is
difficult to directly test evolutionary theories, it is always possible that the explanations we apply
are made up after the fact to account for observed data (Gould & Lewontin, 1979). Nevertheless,
the evolutionary approach is important to psychology because it provides logical explanations for
why we have many psychological characteristics.

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 4. Psychodynamic Psychology

Perhaps the school of psychology that is most familiar to the general public is the psychodynamic
approach to understanding behavior, which was championed by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
and his followers. Psychodynamic psychology is an approach to understanding human
behavior that focuses on the role of unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories. Freud
developed his theories about behavior through extensive analysis of the patients that he treated in
his private clinical practice. Freud believed that many of the problems that his patients
experienced, including anxiety, depression, and sexual dysfunction, were the result of the effects
of painful childhood experiences that they could no longer remember.

Freud‟s ideas were extended by other psychologists whom he influenced, including Carl Jung
(1875-1961), Alfred Adler (1870-1937), Karen Horney (1855-1952), and Erik Erikson (1902-
1994). These and others who follow the psychodynamic approach believe that it is possible to
help the patient if the unconscious drives can be remembered, particularly through a deep and
thorough exploration of the person‟s early sexual experiences and current sexual desires. These
explorations are revealed through talk therapy and dream analysis in a process
called psychoanalysis. The founders of the school of psychodynamics were primarily
practitioners who worked with individuals to help them understand and confront their
psychological symptoms. Although they did not conduct much research on their ideas, and
although later, more sophisticated tests of their theories have not always supported their
proposals, psychodynamics has nevertheless had substantial impact on the field of psychology,
and indeed on thinking about human behavior more generally (Moore & Fine, 1995). The
importance of the unconscious in human behavior, the idea that early childhood experiences are
critical, and the concept of therapy as a way of improving human lives are all ideas that are
derived from the psychodynamic approach and that remain central to psychology.

5. Behaviorism and the Question of Free Will

Although they differed in approach, both structuralism and functionalism were essentially studies
of the mind. The psychologists associated with the school of behaviorism, on the other hand,
were reacting in part to the difficulties psychologists encountered when they tried to use
introspection to understand behavior. Behaviorism is a school of psychology that is based on the
premise that it is not possible to objectively study the mind, and therefore that psychologists
should limit their attention to the study of behavior itself. Behaviorists believe that the human
mind is a black box into which stimuli are sent and from which responses are received. They
argue that there is no point in trying to determine what happens in the box because we can
successfully predict behavior without knowing what happens inside the mind. Furthermore,

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behaviorists believe that it is possible to develop laws of learning that can explain all behaviors.
The first behaviorist was the American psychologist John B. Watson (1878-1958). Watson was
influenced in large part by the work of the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), who
had discovered that dogs would salivate at the sound of a tone that had previously been
associated with the presentation of food. Watson and the other behaviorists began to use these
ideas to explain how events that people and other organisms experienced in their environment
(stimuli) could produce specific behaviors (responses). For instance, in Pavlov‟s research
the stimulus (either the food or, after learning, the tone) would produce the response of salivation
in the dogs.

The most famous behaviorist was Burrhus Frederick (B. F.) Skinner (1904 to 1990), who
expanded the principles of behaviorism and also brought them to the attention of the public at
large, Skinner, used the ideas of stimulus and response, along with the application of rewards
or reinforcements, to train pigeons and other animals. And he used the general principles of
behaviorism to develop theories about how best to teach children and how to create societies that
were peaceful and productive. Skinner even developed a method for studying thoughts and
feelings using the behaviorist approach (Skinner, 1957, 1972).
The behaviorists made substantial contributions to psychology by identifying the principles of
learning. Although the behaviorists were incorrect in their beliefs that it was not possible to
measure thoughts and feelings, their ideas provided new ideas that helped further our
understanding regarding the nature-nurture debate and the question of free will. The ideas of
behaviorism are fundamental to psychology and have been developed to help us better
understand the role of prior experiences in a variety of areas of psychology.

6. Gestalt psychology (Max Wertheimer Psychology)

The word "gestalt” means "form, pattern or whole." Gestalt psychologists believed that
psychology should study human experience as a "whole,” not in terms of separate elements as
the structuralists would contend. Their slogan, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts"
conveyed the idea that meaning is often lost when psychological events are broken down; only
when these pieces are analyzed together and the whole pattern is visible do we find true meaning
in our experiences. To use an example, imagine breaking apart the words you are now reading
into individual letters and scattering them as you wish across the page. Would you be able to
discern anything meaningful from them? Quite likely, you wouldn't. Only when the letters are
properly combined to form words and then structured into sentences do you grasp any true
meaning. The "whole” then becomes something different, something greater than the
accumulation of its "parts."

Gestalt psychologists, such as Max Wertheimer, did extensive work on various aspects of
cognition, including perception, problem-solving and thinking. Additionally, their insistence on
studying individuals and experiences as wholes is still preserved in psychology today. Their

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work also led to the emergence of a form of psychotherapy widely practiced by modern
psychologists.

7. Humanistic Psychology (Carl Rogers Psychology)

With the rise of each school of thought mentioned previously, the landscape of psychology was
gradually taking shape. However, not all were satisfied with the way things were progressing.
Foremost among thesedissatisfied individuals were the humanistic psychologists, such as Carl
Rogers, who were uncomfortable with the highly deterministic view of two of the major forces in
psychology - psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Determinism is the idea that our actions are
controlled by forces beyond our control. For the psychoanalysts, these forces are unconscious;
for the behaviorists, they exist in our environment. Humanistic psychologists, however, viewed
humans as free agents capable of controlling their own lives (as opposed to being controlled),
making their own choices, setting goals and working to achieve them. Humanism asserted a
positive view of human nature, stressing that humans are inherently good. A unique form
of therapy also emerged out of this school of thought, with emphasis on helping people to
achieve their full potential. This differed greatly from psychoanalysis which only
focused on reducing maladaptive behavior.

8. The Cognitive Approach and Cognitive Neuroscience

Science is always influenced by the technology that surrounds it, and psychology is no
exception. Thus it is no surprise that beginning in the 1960s, increasing numbers of psychologists
began to consider the brain and about human behavior in terms of the computer, which was
being developed and becoming publicly available at that time. The analogy between the brain
and the computer, although by no means perfect, provided part of the impetus for a new school
of psychology called cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology is a field of psychology that
studies mental processes, including perception, thinking, memory, and judgment. These actions
correspond well to the processes that computers perform. Although cognitive psychology began
in earnest in the 1960s, earlier psychologists had also taken a cognitive orientation. Some of the
important contributors to cognitive psychology include the German psychologist Hermann
Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), who studied the ability of people to remember lists of words under
different conditions, and the English psychologist Sir Frederic Bartlett (1886-1969), who studied
the cognitive and social processes of remembering. Bartlett created short stories that were in
some ways logical but also contained some very unusual and unexpected events. Bartlett
discovered that people found it very difficult to recall the stories exactly, even after being
allowed to study them repeatedly, and he hypothesized that the stories were difficult to
remember because they did not fit the participants‟ expectations about how stories should go.
The idea that our memory is influenced by what we already know was also a major idea behind
the cognitive-developmental stage model of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980). Other

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important cognitive psychologists include Donald E. Broadbent (1926-1993), Daniel Kahneman
(1934-), George Miller (1920-2012), Eleanor Rosch (1938-), and Amos Tversky (1937-1996).

In its argument that our thinking has a powerful influence on behavior, the cognitive approach
provided a distinct alternative to behaviorism. According to cognitive psychologists, ignoring the
mind itself will never be sufficient because people interpret the stimuli that they experience. For
instance, when a boy turns to a girl on a date and says, “You are so beautiful,” a behaviorist
would probably see that as a reinforcing (positive) stimulus. And yet the girl might not be so
easily fooled. She might try to understand why the boy is making this particular statement at this
particular time and wonder if he might be attempting to influence her through the comment.
Cognitive psychologists maintain that when we take into consideration how stimuli are evaluated
and interpreted, we understand behavior more deeply. Cognitive psychology remains enormously
influential today, and it has guided research in such varied fields as language, problem-solving,
memory, intelligence, education, human development, social psychology, and psychotherapy.

9. Social-Cultural Psychology

A final school, which takes a higher level of analysis, and which has had a substantial impact on
psychology, can be broadly referred to as the social-cultural approach. The field of social-
cultural psychology is the study of how the social situations and the cultures in which people
find themselves influence thinking and behavior. Social-cultural psychologists are particularly
concerned with how people perceive themselves and others, and how people influence each
other‟s behavior. For instance, social psychologists have found that we are attracted to others
who are similar to us in terms of attitudes and interests (Byrne, 1969), that we develop our own
beliefs and attitudes by comparing our opinions to those of others (Festinger, 1954), and that we
frequently change our beliefs and behaviors to be similar to those of the people we care about—
a process known as conformity. An important aspect of social-cultural psychology are social
norms—the ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are shared by group members and
perceived by them as appropriate (Asch, 1952; Cialdini, 1993). Norms include customs,
traditions, standards, and rules, as well as the general values of the group. Many of the most
important social norms are determined by the culture in which we live, and these cultures are
studied by cross-cultural psychologists. A culture represents the common set of social norms,
including religious and family values and other moral beliefs, shared by the people who live in a
geographical region (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, & Nisbett, 1998; Markus, Kitayama, & Heiman,
1996; Matsumoto, 2001). Cultures influence every aspect of our lives, and it is not inappropriate
to say that our culture defines our lives just as much as our evolutionary experience (Mesoudi,
2009). Psychologists have found that there is a fundamental difference in social norms between
Western cultures (including those in Canada, the United States, Western Europe, Australia, and
New Zealand) and East Asian cultures (including those in China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, India,
and Southeast Asia). Norms in Western cultures are primarily oriented toward individualism,

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which is about valuing the self and one’s independence from others. Children in Western
cultures are taught to develop and to value a sense of their personal self, and to see themselves in
large part as separate from the other people around them. Children in Western cultures feel
special about themselves; they enjoy getting gold stars on their projects and the best grades in the
class. Adults in Western cultures are oriented toward promoting their own individual success,
frequently in comparison to (or even at the expense of) others. Norms in the East Asian culture,
on the other hand, are oriented toward interdependence or collectivism. In these cultures,
children are taught to focus on developing harmonious social relationships with others. The
predominant norms relate to group togetherness and connectedness, and duty and responsibility
to one‟s family and other groups. When asked to describe themselves, the members of East
Asian cultures are more likely than those from Western cultures to indicate that they are
particularly concerned about the interests of others, including their close friends and their
colleagues.

Another important cultural difference is the extent to which people in different cultures are
bound by social norms and customs, rather than being free to express their own individuality
without considering social norms (Chan, Gelfand, Triandis, &Tzeng, 1996). Cultures also differ
in terms of personal space, such as how closely individuals stand to each other when talking, as
well as the communication styles they employ. It is important to be aware of cultures and
cultural differences because people with different cultural backgrounds increasingly come into
contact with each other as a result of increased travel and immigration and the development of
the Internet and other forms of communication. In Canada, for instance, there are many different
ethnic groups, and the proportion of the population that comes from minority (non-White) groups
is increasing from year to year. The social-cultural approach to understanding behavior reminds
us again of the difficulty of making broad generalizations about human nature. Different people
experience things differently, and they experience them differently in different cultures.

References:
 Stangor, C., &Walinga, J. (2019). Introduction to psychology-1st Canadian edition
introduction to psychology-1st canadian edition. Retrieved (2019, March) from
https://opentextbc. ca/introductiontopsychology.
 https://www.scribd.com/document/420632675/Psychology-Notes

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