How has psychology as a science developed? - ExamTests 1

Questions

Question 1

What features of mechanicism resound in Bacon's view of science? Can political and moral problems be solved through science?

Question 2

What do the terms monism and dualism mean?

Answerindication

Question 1

Characteristics of the mechanism that resound in Bacon's view of science are that everything can be traced back to matter and atoms, and the use of mechanistic explanations. Knowledge could be acquired through observations made by the method of induction. The results should be presented in an organized manner, after which certain patterns or laws become visible. These patterns can be of practical use and help in understanding how the world works. By understanding how the world works, what the causes of certain phenomena are, political and moral problems could be solved.

Question 2

Monism is a philosophical position that holds that there is only one of something. There are different types of monistic visions. Many philosophers and scientists are materialists and their view is that matter is the only substance in existence. That is an example of a monistic point of view called realism. Another example is idealism, as followed by Plato, who believed that the world of ideas or the mind is more real than the physical world we think we perceive. Dualism is a philosophical view that holds that there are two different forms of substances in the universe. The first is matter, as studied in physics, biology, and chemistry. The second is the basis of the human mind. Examples of dualism can be seen in Descartes' view that defines the substance of mind as thinking, and the causality that Wundt describes that would drive thought and creativity.

Who were Descartes and Hobbes? - ExamTests 2

Questions

Question 1

What is cartesian doubt and ´the doubt experiment´?

Questions 2

According to Descartes, how can true knowledge be acquired?

Question 3

How does Descartes define the human soul and what did that mean for psychology?

Question 4

Which view of Descartes was responsible for the fact that for a long time consciousness was the main object of research in psychology?

Question 5

What is freedom and free will according to Hobbes?

Question 6

To what extent does individualism play a role in the views of Descartes and Hobbes?

Question 7

How does the mechanistic influence show in the thinking of Descartes and Hobbes?

Question 8

What does Descartes consider to be the criterion of real truth?

Question 9

Explain the difference between Descartes' rationalist philosophy/psychology and Locke's empiricist psychology. Also explain the connection with the nature-nurture debate.

Answerindication

Question 1

In Descartes' philosophy, the cartesian doubt is a way of seeking certainty by systematically doubting everything. It is also known as the 'doubt experiment'. If you reject all knowledge that can be doubted, there remains only knowledge that is necessarily true. Every doubt brings with it a certainty, namely the awareness of doubting, which means that you know that you are thinking, which in turn means that you know that you exist. In other words, what you are thinking is not true in most cases, but the fact that you are thinking, is.

Question 2

Descartes is a rationalist and true knowledge can, according to him, only be acquired by using our ratio. He reasons on the basis of axioms and identifies two groups of unquestionable knowledge: 1) innate unquestionable knowledge and 2) reasoned unquestionable knowledge (theorems reasoned from axioms by deduction).

Question 3

Descartes was a dualist and according to him there were two substances in the universe. The first substance is matter, which is characterized by spatial expansion. The second substance is the human soul, which is characterized by thought. The human soul is the only entity on Earth that consists of this and humans are said to possess it from birth. He believed that only things made of matter and with spatial expansion could be analyzed by science. According to him, if you can't dissect something, and can't quantify and analyze its parts, you can't study it scientifically.

Question 4

Descartes was a dualist and claimed that the soul consists of a separate substance that cannot be scientifically examined. As a result, for a long time psychology was only concerned with cognition (consciousness and thinking). Other aspects such as emotions and behavior were not seen as part of psychology because they were thought to belong to the body.

Question 5

Hobbes regarded man entirely as a machine. All psychic phenomena could be reduced to physical phenomena and have a preceding cause. In that sense, a machine cannot have free will. According to Hobbes, man is free when his actions (a chain of cause-effect relationships) are not blocked by anything. Human freedom would then refer to the unrestricted circulation of blood in the body that allows the body to act based on the decisions a person makes, which in turn are based on that person's appetites and aversions.

Question 6

Descartes considers each person as an individual, because he is autonomous in his thinking. In addition, man himself is responsible for acquiring knowledge if he wants to. Hobbes sees a very high degree of individualism in people. This is apparent from his vision of the state of nature, in which people only think of themselves and are in constant conflict with each other. That individualism could be curbed by means of a social contract that must be supervised by an absolute monarch.

Question 7

Descartes relied on man's ability to understand and explain nature. Complex matters could only be understood by observing them closely. He also considered the human body to be a machine, made up of matter, that would operate on mechanistic principles. However, he did not consider the human soul to be a machine or composed of matter. Hobbes, on the other hand, did. Hobbes did not believe in the existence of a soul and regarded higher psychological functions as material processes with material causes. Hobbes was mainly interested in applying mechanicism to society, and less to the individual as Descartes did.

Question 8

According to Descartes, the first statement that can be considered true is "I think, therefore I am". Other truths he discovers all have one thing in common with this statement, which is that they appear clearly and distinctly in the mind. Descartes then takes this quality as a measure of the real truth, which is that any statement that is clear and distinctive to the mind is true.

Question 9

Descartes believed that by using your mind you could arrive at unquestionable knowledge. This real knowledge would consist partly of innate knowledge and partly of deductively reasoned knowledge. This puts him on the nature side of the nature-nurture debate. Locke did not believe in innate knowledge. He believed knowledge came from experience. He believed in generally accepted principles and logical laws. He is therefore on the nurture side of the nature-nurture debate.

What is empiricism? - ExamTests 3

MC-Questions

Question 1

Mechanicism, Enlightenment thinking and positivism have a lot in common. Which of the following characteristics is certainly not reflected in these views of science:

1. An emphasis on feeling
2. An anti-metaphysical attitude
3. A preference for quantitative analyses
4. A preference for empirical data

Open Questions

Question 1

How did Locke view the human brain at birth?

Question 2

How does Locke's rejection of innate qualities fit into the political ideas of the bourgeoisie?

Question 3

What is Locke´s ´An Essay Concerning Human Understanding´ about?

Question 4

What is the empiricist's view of the mind-body problem? How do Locke, Berkeley and Hume differ on this point?

Question 5

State why Smith's views were particularly well received by the emerging middle class.

Question 6

Compare the characteristics of the Enlightenment with those of mechanicism

Question 7

What is meant by the term 'homo economicus' and what is its connection with utilitarianism?

Question 8

What is association psychology and how is it related to liberalism?

Question 9

What are the primary and secondary laws of association?

Question 10

Describe the place that the pleasure-pain principle occupies in liberalism and discuss the influence of (the view of man) Hobbes and association psychology.

Question 11

Describe the individualistic and the mechanistic characteristics of liberalism.

Question 12

Compare the characteristics of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Work out the following points:
- acquiring knowledge
- view of the human
- man´s relationship with nature
- organism versus machine
- the way in which science is conducted
- society: one whole or a sum of individuals
- attention to the future versus the past
- connection with - isms. Think of mechanicism, empiricism, idealism, holism, materialism, cultural relativism, positivism and vitalism.

Answerindication MC-Questions

Question 1

A. an emphasis on feeling

Answerindications Open Questions

Question 1

Locke thought of the human brain as a tabula rasa, a blank piece of paper with no writing on it. This is the idea that people are born without knowledge, skill and personality. They would depend entirely on perception and experience to form the mind.

Question 2

In the eighteenth century a struggle took place between the bourgeoisie, which derived its position from its own merits, and the nobility, who derived its position from its innate 'class'. The bourgeoisie naturally preferred to be able to demonstrate on 'scientific' grounds that all people were born 'blank' at birth, and that education made someone who he was. After all, in this way one could not justify why one class would have certain privileges and another class would not. The bourgeoisie also argued that if the mind at birth was a blank slate, then everyone had equal opportunities and there was no need to care for the poor.

Question 3

´An Essay Concerning Human Understanding´ is about the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. It describes the concept of tabula rasa and how human knowledge can be acquired. This essay became an important source for empiricism in modern philosophy, and has also been a major influence on many Enlightenment thinkers, such as Hume and Berkeley.

Question 4

All association psychologists are empiricists. Empiricism is an epistemological point of view that assumes that knowledge can only be obtained by relying on your senses. At birth there is said to be tabula rasa. Only then do we learn how things work in the world. Although Locke, Berkeley, and Hume are all empiricists and believe in the blank slate at birth, they have widely divergent views of what the human mind is.

• Locke (1632-1704) assumes a dualism between body and mind. The mental ideas are of a spiritual substance, while the sensations still have a material character. However, he does not explain how the transition between the physical and the psychic takes place (or how a sensation in the body leads to a simple idea in the human mind).

• Berkeley (1685-1753) argues that there is no ground to believe that anything exists outside the human mind. The only thing one can be sure of is that the mind exists. This position is called immaterialism. He regards matter as a figment of the mind. For him there is no body-mind problem.

• Hume (1711-1776) rejects the whole concept of substance, dualism and monism. The only thing we could be sure of is that we receive impressions, experiencing the phenomenon of 'reality' and the phenomenon of 'idea'. His mind-body view is called psychophysical parallelism: the existence of a predetermined harmony between the succession of material phenomena in the world and the subsequent mental phenomena in the mind. He does not explain this harmony further.

Question 5

Adam Smith is considered one of the founders of classical liberalism. Liberalism is an individualistic view of society that believes that the government should not interfere in the life of the individual. The role of the state should be as small as possible, in order to give room to spiritual and economic freedom. If the individual man is given the space to pursue his own interests, he will do so in such a rational way that he will generate maximum production for himself and for society as a whole. The emerging middle class of entrepreneurs found this a very appealing idea, because in a liberal society they would be given complete freedom to pursue their entrepreneurship. In a liberal society, one would no longer be hampered by a totalitarian monarch, being of non-aristocratic origin, or a jumble of economic rules.

Question 6

Between the height of mechanicism (17th century) and the height of the Enlightenment (18th century) is more than a century. The Enlightenment is clearly related to mechanicism and even flows from it, but there are also differences. First, let's discuss the similarities:

• Everything is traceable to matter and atoms.

• The use of mechanistic explanations, causal explanations, natural laws, analysis and mathematization.

• An emphasis on useful and practical knowledge.

The differences mainly concern characteristics in which the Enlightenment goes beyond mechanicism of the 17th century:

• Rationalism as seen by Descartes (true knowledge can only be obtained from thought) is strongly opposed in the Enlightenment. Only what one can perceive with the senses is important. The thinkers of the Enlightenment adhere to an empirical epistemology. There is also a strong aversion to superstition, the supernatural and religion.

• The Enlightenment is characterized by an enormously positive belief in progress and the associated positive educational ideals. The Enlightenment thinkers believe in the malleability of man and the world. This led to the fact that for the first time in history, humans began to interfere with the 'manufacturability' of children, or education.

• Rationalism takes on a different meaning in the Enlightenment, namely that of a general confidence in the use of reason to arrive at knowledge.

Question 7

The homo economicus makes considerations and calculations. It is a term used by both Hobbes and Smith. They use this view of man to illustrate, explain and defend their vision of society. Hobbes sees humans as wolves. A livable society would only come into existence if everyone gave up some of their natural rights. This should be laid down in a social contract. Smith sees people as economic beings and is in favor of the free market. On the basis of this view of man, a liberalist ethic develops: utilitarianism. This ethic judges the moral worth of an action based on its contribution to the common good (the well-being and happiness of all people). In this way utilitarianism legitimizes homo economicus.

Question 8

The ideas of Locke, Berkeley and Hume led to the first version of association psychology. They saw society as a sum of individuals. All individuals act in it on the basis of their own interest and have the right to do so. There are no hereditary differences between people that could be used to justify a hierarchical organization of society. This forms the basis of the political system of liberalism. A society could mechanistically regulate itself through power distribution.

Question 9

The principles of association show how simple ideas can be merged into complex ideas. A distinction is made between primary and secondary laws of association. The three primary laws of association are contrast, similarity, and proximity (in time and place). These laws describe when an association occurs, but not how strong that association is. That's what the secondary laws of association are about. These are recency (an association is stronger if it is recent), frequency (an association is stronger if it is based on a situation that occurs frequently), and intensity (an association is stronger if the ideas involved make a stronger impression).

Question 10

The pleasure-pain principle means that people seek happiness and avoid unhappiness. This principle has mainly become known from the theories of Hobbes, and in combination with the ideas of association psychology, it experienced a major revival in liberalist thought. Hobbes argued that homo economicus was guided by pleasure and pain. According to him, these were physiological phenomena that were reflected in the flow rate of the blood. According to the association psychologists, a physical sensation could cause an (un)pleasant idea. Then (almost) every subsequent sensation will be associated with one of these ideas. In this way one acquires knowledge about what is (un)pleasant. In increasing the pleasure and reducing the pain one allows oneself to be guided by that knowledge. The image of a person who rationally associates ideas of pleasure and pain with other ideas strongly appeals to liberalists. After all, liberal thinking presupposes that every person is essentially a homo economicus: a being who will always rationally consider what best serves his own interests. The functioning of the market also rests on the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain by all individuals in the market society.

Question 11

Individualistic characteristics:

• Every individual has equal opportunities and has to make something of his own life.

• If everyone pursues their own interests, this will ultimately have the (unintended) result that everyone benefits.

• Society is a sum of individuals.

Mechanistic characteristics:

• Market forces are a mechanistic process: a chain of cause and effect. Supply and demand are causal laws of nature.

• Society can be divided into small parts, namely individuals.

Question 12

What kind of science is or should psychology be? - ExamTests 4

MC-Questions

Question 1

In recent years, Wundt´s theories have been recognized for their relevance to a particular current psychological specialty. Which?

1. Psycholinguistics
2. Cognitive psychology
3. Intelligence testing
4. Both A and B

Question 2

Which concepts from Wundt´s psychology do we not find in association psychology?

1. Psychic causality
2. Apperception
3. Analysis of consciousness content
4. Both A and B

Open Questions

Question 1

Compare Gall's determinism with that of Hobbes.

Question 2

Kant incorporates realistic, idealistic, empirical and rationalistic ideas into his knowledge. Indicate where.

Question 3

Which concept was contested by David Hume's skepticism, but supported by Immanuel Kant's philosophy?

Question 4

What position do the association psychologists, the phrenologists and Spencer take in the nature-nurture debate?

Question 5

What was an incorrect assumption in Gall's phrenological theory?

Question 6

Phrenology can be regarded as the precursor of several later developments in psychology. Describe these developments.

Question 7

Explain why Müller's theory of the specific nerve energy has similarities with Kant's theory of knowledge. In what way do they differ?

Question 8

What did Flourens mean by 'proper functions' and 'common function'?

Question 9

In what way does Flourens' brain physiology exhibit features of cartesian dualism?

Question 10

What is Wundt's Völkerpsychologie?

Question 11

How did Helmholz's contributions to physics and neurophysiology affect psychology?

Question 12

What does Helmholz mean by unconscious inference?

Question 13

What were both Helmholz with his unconscious inference and the Akt psychologists with their Aufgabe experiment trying to convey?

Question 14

Compare the two main views that can be distinguished in German psychology. How do these emerge in Wundt's work?

Question 15

What is mental chronometry?

Question 16

Why did Ebbinghaus use meaningless syllables in his memory experiments?

Answerindication MC-Questions

Question 1

D. Both A and B

Question 2

D. Both A and B

Answerindications Open Questions

Question 1

According to Hobbes, there is no free will, because that would disrupt the chain of cause and effect. His determinism is imposed from outside. Gall looks initially at the brain and biological processes. He concludes that people are who they are because of their biological orientation. His determinism comes from within.

Question 2

- Realism: According to Kant, reality is the cause of the sensations received by the senses.

- Empiricism: According to Kant, sensory data are the basis for knowledge.

- Rationalism: these sensory data are processed by a priori schemes (space/time and categories). Without these schemes we would not be able to understand the world and they are a necessary step in the formation of knowledge.

- Idealism: the frames (space/time) and categories create two realities, namely the 'real' reality ('Ding an sich') and the reality as we experience it (reality transformed by the frames and categories).

Question 3

Causality. According to Hume, it is impossible to perceive causality. We assume causality so that we do not live in uncertainty every day of our lives, but as a philosophical certainty, Hume argues that it does not form a good basis. For Kant, causality is a form of thought. The category of causality would be used by people to classify the relationship between two events as cause and effect when the effect follows the cause, and when we understand that the cause causes the effect.

Question 4

- The association psychologists assume a common human nature that is driven by pleasure and pain. They see man as a blank slate in terms of knowledge and are on the nurture side of the debate.

- The phrenologists are on the nature side of the debate. By measuring the size of the organs of the brain, you could see what characteristics someone had, according to Gall. Education was meaningless to him.

- Spencer took a nuanced position. He argued that humans have an individual capacity to adapt.

Question 5

Phrenology is the doctrine that aptitude and character were determined by the growth of certain parts of the brain. Gall argued that the brain could be organized into parts, each associated with a particular personality trait. These traits were said to be innate and visible in the brain structure and skull shape. Ultimately, it turned out to be incorrect that the skull shape is an accurate representation of the shape of the underlying brain.

Question 6

Phrenology did not receive much support as a scientific theory, but Gall's ideas did influence the development of psychology as a science:

• Psychology up to that time focused mainly on man in a general sense and the human mind. Gall looked at differences between people and looked at individuals.

• Gall was the first to use a test to identify psychological characteristics.

• Phrenology had a practical purpose. Until then, psychology was primarily an academic endeavor.

• Gall emphasized the role of objectivity in observing and measuring (even though his method was incorrect).

• Phrenology was the first attempt to distinguish the roles of different parts of the brain.

Question 7

First, Müller argues that we do not perceive objects and events in the outside world directly, but that we depend on what our nerves offer us. Our nerves mediate between the objects and consciousness. We depend on their capacity. Secondly, the same stimulus that occurs to different senses results in the perception associated with those different senses: for example, a sunbeam can lead to the perception of heat (skin) as well as light (eyes). Also, it makes no difference to the perception whether a stimulus comes from within or from outside. Thus it is impossible to know about the 'real' objective reality. In Kant's philosophy there are also two realities, namely the 'real' reality ('Ding an sich') and the reality as we experience it (reality transformed by the schemes of space and time and categories). With Kant, however, these different realities are not caused by nerve energy, but by the frameworks and forms of thought.

Question 8

Based on his experiments, he did not believe that brain localizations could be directly related to psychological functions. Different parts of the brain can be related to different functions (also known as 'proper functions'). But every part of the brain requires the whole brain to function fully. Each part needs input from other parts (also known as common function).

Question 9

Flourens removed pieces of brains from his laboratory animals and looked at what effect this had on their behaviour. With his experiments he came to the following conclusions:

• The cerebrum exercises the higher consciousness functions of wanting, judging, remembering and perceiving. This is where consciousness and free will reside.

• The cerebellum coordinates movement.

• The medulla oblongata is essential for important life functions, such as breathing.

  Flourens argued that the cerebrum could not be divided into areas that would, for example, be responsible for perception or memory. This is where Descartes' dualism comes in. He thought that the consciousness, the spirit, was not material. It took up no space and could not be calculated, measured or divided.

Question 10

Wundt thought that higher mental processes such as thinking and language were not amenable to experimental investigation, even with his objective introspection. That was because these processes develop in a social process and belong to a certain culture. They can therefore only be studied on the basis of the products of that culture. Examples of products of a culture include language and justice.

Question 11

Helmholz's attempt to measure the speed of nerve impulses in human subjects helped introduce the reaction time method into psychology. In physics, he formulated the law of conservation of energy (energy is never lost, but changes from one form to another). In neurophysiology he demonstrated how the speed of a nerve impulse could be measured. These discoveries had implications for psychology and formed the basis for doing reaction time experiments and experiments where reaction time is related to the complexity of a task.

Question 12

Unconscious inference is a term introduced by Helmholtz to mean that our perception is constructed unconsciously by our organism from a wide variety of sensory perceptions. The perceptions we have are not always based on direct sensations, but are sometimes derived from unconscious inference. It is an important hypothetical process underlying perceptual phenomena, such as depth perception.

Question 13

Unconscious inference is a term introduced by Helmholtz that means that our perception is constructed unconsciously by our organism from a wide variety of sensory perceptions (experiences). We are so familiar with some objects that we ignore direct sensory sensations. We perceive an object on the basis of an unconscious chain of experiences with that object. That is why it is possible, regardless of perspective and distance, to always see a plate as a round object. The Aufgabe experiment is an example of an experiment within Akt psychology, in which they wanted to show that thinking is more than just a chain of associations as assumed by empiricism and association psychology. The way in which a person processes a stimuli depends on the preparations for those stimuli. Thus, according to both Helmholz and the Akt psychologists, the mind is active. They saw the thought process more in terms of mutable concepts and symbols than in terms of immutable particles or images. That's why they disagreed with the association psychologists.

Question 14

There was an experimental, empiricist, positivist movement and a more philosophical and idealistic movement. Wundt's work forms a kind of bridge between these two traditions. As a result, he received criticism from both sides.

Question 15

Mental chronometry is a term from experimental psychology that refers to experiments in which one tries to infer the speed and/or nature of psychological processes from variations in reaction times measured in different tasks or task conditions.

Question 16

Ebbinghaus wanted to investigate the capacity of memory. By using meaningless syllables, he avoided associations that could facilitate the learning process. If he had used meaningful existing associations, he wouldn't be able to say anything about learning new material. Moreover, existing associations differ per person.

How did psychology develop in the 19th and 20th centuries? - ExamTests 5

MC-Questions

Question 1

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, as presented in his Origin of Species, presupposes the existence of:

1. Hereditary psychological characteristics in humans
2. A number of fixed groups of species
3. Hereditary small individual differences
4. All the above answers are correct.

Question 2

One criteria for truth that William James adopted and maintained early in his life was to accept the following as true:

1. Ideas proven useful to believe in
2. Only ideas that could not be doubted
3. Only ideas that were found to be valid through experimentation
4. Only things he had seen or experienced himself

Question 3

The idea that political systems and societies evolve and 'progress' through unbridled competition and 'the survival of the fittest' is often referred to as….

1. Sociobiology
2. Social Darwinism
3. Comparative Psychology
4. Evolutionary Psychology

Question 4

James' 'The principles of psychology' contains chapters on all of the topics below, except:

1. Emotion
2. Wants
3. Habit
4. The unconscious

Question 5

According to Gestalt psychologists, our perceptual processes tend to:

1. Organize the visual field into wholes.
2. Organize complex accumulations of stimuli into similar groups.
3. Divide the perceptual field into figure and ground.
4. All the above answers are correct.

Question 6

According to John Watson, good behaviorist psychology would:

1. Exclude subjective research methods.
2. Make predicting and controlling behavior its primary goal.
3. Not making a qualitative distinction between human and animal behavior.
4. All the above answers are correct.

Open Questions

Question 1

How did the Gestalt psychologists target the association psychologists with their organizational principles of perception?

Question 2

In what way does James oppose the views of the association psychologists?

Question 3

Justify the statement that functionalism occupies a nuanced position between extreme psychology of consciousness and extreme behavioral psychology.

Question 4

What changes in classical conditioning: the stimulus or the response? And what is the unconditioned reflex? Compare this to Marshall Hall´s 19th century definition of reflex.

Question 5

What changes in operant conditioning: the stimulus or the response? What does operant conditioning add to classical conditioning?

Question 6

What influence did the theory of evolution have on functionalism? What does function mean in this context (with regards to consciousness and psychology/society)?

Question 7

What is the connection between the idea of the conditioned reflex and the idea of evolutionary continuity?

Question 8

How does Watson's behaviorism continue the tradition of empiricism and positivism?

Question 9

What important change in method can be noted in the transition from consciousness psychology to behavioral psychology?

Question 10

How do behaviorism and functionalism differ from each other with regard to the subject of study?

Question 11

What did Watson try to demonstrate with his Little Albert experiment?

Question 12

How does James's theory of emotion differ from Watson's?

Answerindication MC-Questions

Question 1

C. Hereditary small individual differences

Question 2

A. Ideas proven useful to believe in

Question 3

B. Social Darwinism

Question 4

D. The unconscious

Question 5

D. All the above answers are correct.

Question 6

D. All the above answers are correct.

Answerindications Open Questions

Question 1

Association psychologists analyze a perception into elementary sensations. According to them, a perception begins with sensations that are then transformed into simple ideas and then combined with other ideas into a complex idea. Gestalt psychology is based on the whole. Through mental organization we see things that are not actually there in a stimulus. That is not the result of a learning experience, but of an inevitable process. For example: according to representatives of Gestalt psychology, perception starts with seeing a whole figure, and only then do you see the lines that make up the figure.

Question 2

James emphasized an active mind, body and action. He imagined consciousness as a stream of representations, a so-called 'stream of consciousness'. This flow is very personal and never repeatable. He emphasized the active role of the psyche. Because association psychologists only pay attention to the influence of the outside world on a person and not to the activity within that person, they cannot explain things like subjectivity and intentionality. The association psychologists regarded the psyche as a phenomenon of consciousness, the content of which would mainly consist of knowledge. They saw the psyche mainly as a passive consciousness. James responded with his emotion theory, which stated that the body is of great importance for the experience of emotions. According to him, the function of consciousness is to be able to respond flexibly and adequately to the environment.

Question 3

Functionalism emphasizes the connection between the psychic and the physical. Neither of the two is more important. It's about how they relate to each other.

Question 4

The stimulus changes, the response remains the same. Conditioning can be seen as a stimulus substitution. A change in the environment is responsible for the occurrence of the response. Conditioning involves controlling the conditions under which the behavior occurs. In Marshall Hall's definition of reflex, it was all about an unchanging, unconditioned reflex (one particular stimulus with one particular response).

Question 5

With operant conditioning, the response changes. In that case, unlike classical conditioning, you do not need an innate unconditioned response that is elicited by an unconditioned stimulus. Simply rewarding behavior already leads to repetition of behavior. This is an addition to classical conditioning, in which only the stimulus changes, but does not explain how people learn new forms of behavior.

Question 6

According to the theory of evolution, all characteristics that survive evolution have a function, and so consciousness as well. All actions that people take have the goal of survival. This is the result of a long evolutionary process. Functionalism assumes that the psychological abilities we have allow us to adapt to our environment. Human consciousness may have the function of helping humans survive in society.

Question 7

Evolutionary continuity means that there are gradual transitions in the development of species, but also in the development of organs and functions. For example, the human nervous system evolved from that of older animal species, and according to Jackson, the human cortex from lower regions of the nervous system. There are no leaps in evolution, not between man and animal, and not in the nervous system. This idea was also applied to the function or functioning of the nervous system. The reflex to the stimuli was seen as a function of the lower regions. From the evolutionary idea of ​​continuity, the higher regions of the nervous system are now also understood as a stimulus-response mechanism and in terms of operation no different from those of the lower regions. Moreover, if it turns out that reflexes can be changed (conditioned), this is seen as learning behaviour, which is pre-eminently seen as a function of higher regions. This is an additional argument for seeing the reflex, which was first seen as a mechanical lower function, as a higher psychic mechanism. This last psychological step is called reflexology and is a form of materialism (explaining the psyche from physiological principles).

Question 8

Empiricism shines through in Watson's behaviorism in his view that the environment provides behavior through the senses. He regarded the behavior as a consequence of the environmental factors. Positivism is apparent from his banishment of the unobservable. He argued that all mental terms are either meaningless or need to be operationalized.

Question 9

There is a transition from introspection to observation.

Question 10

Behaviorism studied only the behavior while functionalism studied both behavior and consciousness.

Question 11

That emotions and other psychological phenomena, such as fear, are nothing but the result of conditioning.

Question 12

In James's theory of emotion, there is still the question of feeling, a mental processing of physiological or physical factors in an environment (environment - behavior - emotion). Watson's emotion theory only deals with behavior as a result of environmental factors (environment - behavior).

What is psychoanalysis? - ExamTests 6

MC-Questions

Question 1

The latent content of a dream, according to Freud, provides information about:

1. Latency
2. The unconscious
3. The conscious
4. Ambivalence

Question 2

What is the correct order of the stages of psychosexual development?

1. Oral phase - anal phase - latency phase - genital phase - phallic phase
2. Anal phase - oral phase - genital phase - latency phase - phallic phase
3. Anal phase - oral phase - phallic phase - latency phase - genital phase
4. Oral phase - anal phase - phallic phase - latency phase - genital phase

Question 3

According to Freud, what causes neurotic anxiety?

1. When the demands of the id, ego and superego are too much.
2. When the demands of the id are too much.
3. When the demands of the ego are too much.
4. When the demands of the superego are too much.

Open Questions

Question 1

What is a psychic conflict?

Question 2

In what way is latent content transformed into manifest content according to Freud's dreamwork theory?

Question 3

What is the Oedipus complex and how does it affect the progression through the stages of psychosexual development?

Question 4

What are the functions of the id, ego and superego?

Question 5

Name and explain three defense mechanisms.

Question 6

What role does repression play in the inability to falsify psychoanalysis?

Question 7

What influence has psychoanalysis had on psychology as a science?

Answerindication MC-Questions

Question 1

B. The unconscious

Question 2

D. Oral phase - anal phase - phallic phase - latency phase - genital phase

Question 3

B. When the demands of the id are too much.

Answerindications Open Questions

Question 1

In psychoanalysis, the psychic conflict refers to the situation that exists when two opposing tendencies oppose each other in the mind of a person. Freud introduced this term because he saw that, on the one hand, patients wanted to be treated, but on the other, they seemed to resist the treatment process once it got close to the cause of their symptoms. So part of the patient's psyche wanted to be healed, but another part resisted that healing. Freud attributed this ambiguity to an internal psychological conflict.

Question 2

Dreamwork is the unconscious coding that converts the latent content into the manifest content. There are three ways this happens:

• Displacement. In this process, an emotionally charged content has been moved to a neutral one, which symbolizes the latent content in a 'safe' way.

• Condensation. Condensation combines multiple ideas or images into one. In this way, a single aspect of the manifest content can relate to several aspects of the latent content.

• Representation. More abstract ideas in the latent content are translated into concrete sensations in the manifest content.

Question 3

In sexual development, the child will experience a conflict that Freud called the Oedipus complex. Around the age of five, the child develops an instinctive erotic bond, determined by sexuality, for the parent of the opposite sex and sees the other parent as a competitor. The inability to possess the parent of the opposite sex for exclusive sensual pleasure and the social forces aimed at the suppression of sexual satisfaction would cause the child's development to pass into the latency stage. During the latency phase, the child would develop a positive identification with the same-sex parent who acts as a socially accepted role model.

Question 4

According to Freud, the psyche consists of three parts:

• ID. The id is the part we are born with. It is unconscious and governed by the pleasure principle. The id seeks satisfaction and tries to avoid pain. The libido, a sexually based energy, drives the id to fulfill its impulses and desires.

• Ego. The ego is the part of the rational psyche, but draws its energy from the id. Through perception and awareness the ego is in contact with the outside world. It is driven by a reality principle and its job is to help meet the demands of the id without harming the individual.

• Superego. The superego develops from the ego. It arises through education and serves as a kind of internal moral compass.

Question 5

Examples of good answers are:
- Displacement. An impulse is aimed at a 'safer' substitute for the original target.

- Projection. The ego attributes its own negative qualities to someone else.

- Repression. Memories of an event that cause fear are placed in the unconscious.

- Denial. The ego is made to believe that a certain event never happened.

- Rationalization. This does not deny a certain event, but evaluates it in a more positive way.

- Identification. The demands placed on the ego (which give rise to fear) are internalized as a (moral) demand of the ego itself.

Questuin 6

Psychoanalysis is not falsifiable, among other things, because of the processes of resistance and transference. For example, a therapist may conclude that the patient is resisting. Whether or not the patient accepts the conclusion, the therapist may still conclude resistance. The patient's reaction cannot in any way prove that the psychoanalysis is wrong. With regard to transference, even if two or more therapists come to different conclusions, that cannot be taken as evidence that the psychoanalysis is wrong. Proponents of psychoanalysis may argue that the difference between the conclusions is due to transference (where the patient gives one therapist different transference than another), which influences the outcome of the therapy.

Question 7

This influence can be summarized as follows:
- The idea that mental disorders can be the result of psychological causes.

- The importance of childhood experiences.

- More attention to the role of sexuality.

- The emergence of the field of clinical psychology.

- The existence of defense mechanisms against forms of fear.