PSY 4500-Week 1 - Assignment: Prepare a Lecture on the Historical Study of Psychology

PREPARE A LECTURE ON THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY 3

History of Psychology

Torri Sims

Northcentral University

PSY-4500 Capstone in Psychology

Tori: Welcome to the course! You have covered many theories in history and the history of psychology. Here’s how this could have been better:

1. Focus on the assignment instructions. When we prepare assignment instructions, we do so in a way that guides students to the most important theories, research, or controversies in the field. When you do not cover these, you do not give us evidence that you have the necessary competencies to be academically and professionally successful. In this assignment, you were asked to give one-line descriptions of 6 dichotomies in the study of history. And those dichotomies were listed in the assignment instructions. You did cover several dichotomies, (I highlighted those in green) but some of these were based on your own choice rather than the ones you were asked to consider. In particular, you did not address the genius vs zeitgeist issue, one of the most important recurring topics in this course.

2. Edit the paper. Be sure to reread the paper before submitting. Your writing had some grammar errors. Rather than correcting each one, I simply highlight them in yellow so you can be aware of them. Grammarly, a tool available for download in the Academic Success Center at no cost to you, will catch most grammar and spelling errors.

Grade: 88% Covered most of the required topics showing adequate understanding.

There is great importance in studying the history of psychology for anyone venturing into the field. First, one is able to obtain a perspective of how ideas have evolved over the years. Foe the current available information, there has been many years of research which have led to many ideas being discarded along the way. Gaining this perspective helps a person to understand why it is not appropriate to take certain approaches in psychology. The history of psychology helps in gaining a deeper understanding of the field. This is achieved by helping an individual in realizing the broader ideas that underlie the current issues in psychology. There are many fashions in the field of psychology which ate ideas valued for their social relevance. Understanding history helps to distinguish between the fads and fashions.

The current state of psychology has taken many years of research and many mistakes being made along the way. By studying history, a person can be able to know unproductive intellectual avenues and hence avoid repeating mistakes of the past. There are ideas from the past which were disqualified due to insufficient knowledge and technology. A study on the history of psychology helps some of the valuable old information to be utilized again in the present day. Being aware of the discipline’s past can also help a student to be a better professional in the field. It also helps a student to be aware of the myths of the discipline and hence avoid them from having an impact in their decision making process during their practice in the professional field.

Dean Simonton’s work provides a scientific way of assessing the validity of generalizations about the history of psychology using quantitative analysis. According to Simonton, there are six crucial issues that entail a historical analysis. Objectivistic versus subjectivistic brings to light whether a given viewpoint is emerged as a result of empirical facts or the knowledge presented is heresy, based on people’s beliefs. Quantitative versus qualitative determines whether the data is gathered using statistical and mathematical operations and the study is carried out in scientifically controlled contexts or is it based on case studies, observations, personal experiences and interviews about beliefs among others. Elementaristic versus holistic determines whether the theoretical position emphasizes on the basic structures of a phenomena or whether it discusses the functioning of a system as a whole.

Impersonal versus personal determines whether a theory gives a generalized universal perspective on a phenomenon or it gives the ideological view of the world based on the experiential reality of the participants. Static versus dynamic determines whether a phenomenon, behavior or mental process is relatively stable, unchangeable or whether the perspective highlights the subtle changes which take place in the behavior, personality and cognition of an individual over time. Exogenist versus endogenist determines whether a theory aims at analyzing the causality outside the individual’s body i.e. to determine whether their behavior is caused by others in the environment or the cause of the behavior is as a result of generic and biological factors found within the individual.

Quality versus quantity is a debate to determine what type of data will provide substantial evidence for a research. Different types of data will require different types of data of substantiate the results. There are researches that require qualitative data while others require quantitative data. Interchanging the type of data in the research will not yield the required outcome. In the quantitative research, empirical and statistical evidence is required to support the hypothesis. The information obtained from this type of data is not rich as a lot of subjective data is lost along the way. The numbers are obtained but the reasons behind the numbers cannot be obtained from the research. In the case of a qualitative research, the data obtained is enriched as descriptions are provided in the data provided. However, the objectivity of data is lost and it does not lead to easy comparison.

History can be referred to as ideographic as it is filled with many particulars, tied with specifics. Science is nomothetic as it is dedicated to abstractions and generalizations. Psychology is mostly filled with nomothetic as it aims to search for general laws of cognition, emotion and behavior. However, the history of psychology is filled with ideographic as it is filled with a narration and interpretation of past events. The ideographic approach suggests that each individual possesses a unique psychological structure. This means that certain traits or a combination of traits may be exhibited by only one person and this makes it difficult to carry out comparisons. This approach relies on case study research as it nestles within the study of individual differences. The nomothetic approach looks at the similarities between individuals, it aims to understand what makes us human. It studies traits which have the same psychological effects for everyone and individual differences are accounted for as variations for each trait that is measured. Nomothetic researchers’ belief that all humans share a series of traits and they aim to discover the basis of the common traits. An approach to achieve this is considering the biological and environmental determinants and contributors of a personality.