Psychology Throughout Its History, Psychology Has Undergone Essay

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Psychology

Throughout its history, psychology has undergone a number of evolutions. As the study of mind, the discipline has necessarily been subject to change as new research revealed information about the functions of the mind and its effect upon behavior. Relatively simple conclusions drawn by those who are currently considered the founding fathers of psychology have been challenged and modified to become the various subdisciplines in psychology that we know today. Along with what can be considered the "mental" trends in psychology such as the behaviorist, psychoanalytic, the cognitive, and the evolutionary approaches, it has also been recognized that psychology has a firm basis in physiology.

In about 1913, the focus of psychology up-to-date profoundly changed as a result of work by the American psychologist John B. Watson. In an effort to bring more scientific merit to psychology, Watson advocated that the study of behavior should be used to draw conclusions regarding psychological processes. As such behaviorism focused on the assumption that behavior was the result of automatic responses to environmental stimuli (ThinkQuest, 2011). After Watson, B.F. Skinner became the leader of behaviorism. It was also Skinner who developed the view that operant conditioning was the mechanism for learning.

Psychoanalytic theory had its basis in Europe. It was developed by probably the most well-known psychologist in history, Sigmund Freud. For Freud, behavior was not at the heart of psychology, but rather the result of the inner workings of the mind. If the latter were not the focus of therapy, behavior would not be modified.

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Freud was one of the first psychologists who recognized the effect of the subconscious on human behavior. Because this idea was very far removed from what has been accepted as psychological theory to date, it was also very controversial (ThinkQuest, 2011). For behaviorists, this theory invalidated the work they did in an attempt to bring psychological study to the domain of science.

Cognitive theory is the most recent major approach to psychology. This approach arose during the 1970s. While it is, to some degree, a return to objectivity in psychology, it is not as simple as behaviorism. Indeed, it relies greatly on the function of inner mental processes to explain human behavior. At the basis of this theory is the fact that human beings internalize environmental information by means of their senses. This information is then processed mentally by means of organizing, manipulating, storing, and relating it to previously stored information.

Evolutionary theory, as the name suggests focuses on evolutionary developments in human psychology. According to the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology (2006), Charles Darwin was the first scientist to recognize that not only the physiology of humanity, but psychology has also developed in response to the challenges that historical human beings have faced. One example of this is the common human responses to emotionally charged situations such….....

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