History and Approaches
The AP Psych exam covers a wide range of topics in human development and thinking. We happen to be pro-both.
Have you ever thought about the origin of these concepts? Did a caveman think about his mindset when he traced his hand with earth pigment on a cave wall? Did he sweat mortgage payments, stress about hair loss, and have a complex about the size of his spear? Who was the first person to worry about worrying?
The history and approaches section of AP Psych tries to explain just that. We won't go all the way back to the beginning of humanity, nor will we have time to address every minor thinker in the field, but this section does include handy-dandy biographies of the first people on record to address development ant thinking. They won't be quite as sensationalized as the biographies on E! True Hollywood Story, but last time we checked, P!nk wasn't on the Psych exam.
The development of psychology as a study didn't proceed along a straight path. Many characters helped shape its course, and each school of thought has its own promoters and detractors.
Study Break
"No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand. Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing." – Anton Chekhov
Origin of Psychology
Remember Narcissus? He's the dude from Greek mythology who basically starved to death because he refused to stop staring at his mirrored reflection in the water. Note to self: don't do that. That applies to you, too, dude making finger guns at yourself in the Starbucks window.
People have long been fascinated by…well, people. We're an egotistical species that seems to constantly need ego boosting. Outside approval. Aesthetic flattery. Gold stars and good grades.
A related question might be, "Why are we obsessed with trashy reality TV shows?" Does seeing losers lose somehow make us feel empowered or better about ourselves? Maybe, maybe not. How does a rotating cycle of possibly horrible people keep us spellbound on primetime? Somehow, a few million people become hypnotized every week.
From the earliest recorded history of people-kind (that's a technical term), scientists have observed that people see themselves differently than other creatures do. The ability to think (self-reflect), or consider how we feel and relate to others, is unique to humans. Does a lion feel sad for the zebra she's about to kill? Not likely.
Early philosophers such as Aristotle and Socrates thought creatively about how people reason, interact, sleep, dream, and emote. How did humanity go from listening to the intellectual pursuits of old Greek guys to watching bachelor after bachelor try to "reason," interact, sleep, dream, and emote? Someone decided to study human behavior…and someone else decided to invent television. Okay, that's beside the point. Basically, scholars went on to study human thought and feelings. This is the story of modern-day psychology.
Psychology is all Wilhelm Wundt's fault. It may not have been entirely his idea, but Wilhelm Wundt is generally considered the founder of the discipline. Wundt was a strong believer in studying human behavior and mental processes separately from biological processes. Dreams and reflections happen inside the bed; whizzing happens (hopefully) outside the bed.
Wundt was certain he could use the scientific method to create experiments that would explain psychological phenomena in humans. One of his experiments involved asking people to measure how long it took them to see and hear a bell ringing. No, it wasn't Pavlov's dog—that comes later.
In 1879, Wundt opened the world's first psychological research laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany. He was also the first person to define psychology as the study of consciousness and conscious behavior, and his work had a lasting effect on the way we study psychology today.
