5.1 Psychology and Life

1. Introduction

• Physiognomy

• Basic research questions and domains

  • Psychological processes
  • Psychological behavior

• Scientific methods

  • Evidence
  • Verification
  • Falsification

• Data collection methods

  • Observation
  • Self-report
  • Automated collection

• Research methods

  • Laboratory experiments
  • Correlational analysis
    • Correlation does not necessarily imply causation

2. History

• Wundt’s first psychology laboratory

• Structuralism

  • Studies human consciousness

• Functionalism

  • The reasons, meaning, and value of mental activity

• Psychoanalysis

• Behaviorism

3. Sensation

• Function
  • Helps us understand the world around us
• What it includes
  • Vision
  • Hearing
  • Touch
  • Smell
  • Taste
• Angles of analysis
  • Source of information
  • Physiological sensory organs
  • Psychological phenomena produced

4. Perception

• Perception vs. sensation

  • Sensation
    • Individual properties of things
    • Direct reflection
    • More objective
  • Perception
    • Overall properties of things
    • Indirect reflection
    • More subjective

• Four principles of Gestalt psychology

  • Proximity
  • Similarity
  • Continuity
  • Relatedness

• Characteristics

  • Wholeness
  • Selectivity
  • Comprehensibility

5. Thinking

• Purpose

  • Action
    • Expression
    • Communication
    • Application

• How to use thinking

  • Process information
    • Induction
    • Reasoning
    • Judgment

• Mental imagery

  • Sensation -> mental imagery -> thinking

  • Mental imagery is the bridge between sensation and thinking

• Imagination

  • Uses mental images in memory to process, transform, enrich, and create new images

  • Characteristics

    • Novelty
    • Vividness

  • Functions

    • Anticipating the future
    • Supplementing gaps in knowledge and experience
    • Substitution

  • How it works

    • Combination

      Combine unrelated things

    • Exaggeration

      Exaggerate the proportions, shapes, sizes, and relationships among things

    • Typification

      Deepen the typical characteristics of things to achieve the purpose of imagination

    • Association

  • Concepts

    Understanding the essence of things

    How information is organized

    • Characteristics of formation

      • Hierarchical

        Hierarchical network model

      • Determined by defining terms

      • Prototype theory

  • How to use information

    • Problem solving

      • Algorithmic methods

        Search all possible solutions to find an optimal one

        • Trial and error

          Continuously try different possibilities until a solution is found

      • Heuristic problem solving

        • Representativeness heuristic
        • Availability heuristic

      • Factors affecting problem solving

        • Knowledge representation
        • Mental set
        • Functional fixedness

    • Judgment in thinking

  • Creative thinking

    • Creativity research
      • The four Ps

• Consciousness

  • Characteristics of consciousness

    • Subjective
    • Selective
    • Continuous

  • Self-awareness

    • Personal self
    • Social self

• Language

• Learning

  • What is learning

    It must involve changes in action and thinking

• Memory

References

Psychology and Life, 19th Edition (Douban)