PSYCHOLOGY

Psychology Assignment Unit VII



Psychology Assignment Unit VII

American Historical influence in Psychology

There were many American psychologists, in the course of history, who contributed to the development of psychology especially towards the end of 19th century, before the Civil War. Ironically, their contributions are not realized in textbooks and researches on the psychology's history. It was them who transformed the domain of psychology, by adopting analytical inductive and empirical methods to the study of mind. The important American psychologists include Gordon Allport (1897-1967), Harry Harlow (1905 -1981), Abraham Maslow (1908 -1970), Edward Tolman (1886 - 1959), Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904 -1990), Carl Rogers (1902-1987), Edward Thorndike (1874 -1949), Edwin Ray Guthrie (1886-1959), and Karl Spencer Lashley (1890-1958).History of Research Methods in psychology

It is evident that research method's evolution has provided a wide array of choices to psychologists. There are three time spans, which are important in studying research methods evolution. First is 1904-1935; second is 1936-1968; and third is 1969-2000. Several landmarks exist in literature of research methods. Those are computational modeling, test models integration theory, and extension of work by Donald Campbell and Douglas Jackson.

The second level of research method's evolution, are analysis, measurement, and design. Measurement involves conception and attributing the entities. Design is executing and planning research for supporting references, which in some case generalize further than the sample. Analysis is interpreting the resulting data from design and measurement. The table below shows the categorizing framework within these domain intervals.

Over the years, research methods were formed in broader spheres. By the passage of time, innovations in analysis, measurement and design have diffused, from research methods developers to researchers who implement those methods.Phrenology, Mesmerism, and Hypnosis

Phrenology, a concept of Aristotle, come from Greek terms for “mind” and “knowledge,” is a study that claimed it was possible to determine character, personality traits, and criminality based on the shape of a person's head. However, the idea was first developed as a scientific idea by the German anatomist Franz Joseph Gall, the founding father of phrenology. The whole concept of phrenology has now been largely debunked.

The concept of mesmerism dates back to an 18th century Austrian physician named Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815). He established a theory of illness that involved internal magnetic forces, which he called animal magnetism, later known as mesmerism. He believed that appropriate physical and psychological health came from properly aligned magnetic forces. Mesmerism was not just a blip in psychology's history. It actually paved the way for hypnosis.

The concept of hypnosis dates prior to 15th century. During that time, people believed that any disease was God's punishment thus hypnosis came into being. Hypnosis is named after the Greek word for sleep, hypos; although, hypnosis is very different from sleep.History of Functionalism

Functionalism, as a tradition or “school,” culminated in the 1950s and 1960s. However, its origins can be found in the works of many of the classic social and political theorists. Charles de Montes may be considered such a preliminary proto-functionalist thinker. In his chief work Spirit of Laws (1748), he classified the components of political systems in terms of their physical, geographic, ...