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1900 BCE
Greeks
The Greeks were great thinkers, warriors, writers, actors, athletes, artists, architects and politicians. They lived in mainland Greece and the Greek islands, but also in colonies scattered around the Mediterranean Sea. 2500 YEARS AGO -
1300 BCE
The Renaissance
The Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political and economic “rebirth” following the Middle Ages. Some of the greatest thinkers, authors, statesmen, scientists and artists in human history thrived during this era. Michelangelo -
Attacking Dualism
Rene Descartes reckoned to be the "cleverest" man in history. He formulated the mind-body problem in terms of dual substances, which led to insuperable problems. -
Evolutionary
The history of evolution began with Charles Darwin, who said that humans have social instincts that evolved by natural selection. his work inspired later psychologists such as William James and Sigmund Freud but for most of the 20th century psychologists focused more on behaviorism and proximate explanations for human behavior. like sociology before it, evolutionary psychology has been embroiled in controversy, but evolutionary psychologists see their field as gaining increased acceptance. -
Inheritable Traits
Sir Francis Galton an English mathematician and scientist brought up the theory that genius or eminence was an inherited trait. He ignored the fact that it could have been the environment to which children were exposed to that made them "geniuses". Galton would directly test the characteristics and abilities of groups of people at a time to evaluate them. These tests were actually the primitive ancestors of modern personality and intelligence tests. Later, his theory was discarded. -
Functionalism
William James first brought functionalism to life when he finished his book "The Principles of Psychology" and taught it on to others in his psychology class in Harvard University. William James was a Functionalist, and what functionalists attempt to do is to study and understand the function, rather than the structure, of consciousness. James believed that thinking, feeling, learning, and remembering, all served one purpose that being survival. -
Structuralism
First, known way someone ever established modern psychology as a formal field of study was when Wilhelm Wundt started his Laboratory of Psychology in 1879. Wundt's main interest was structuralism, which is the study of the simplest definable components of the adult mind in hopes of finding how such components fit together in such complex forms. Wundt developed a method called introspection to collect information on the mind, and tried to map out its basic structures. -
Biological
Biological psychology is known today as behavioral neuroscience. Psychologists study how the brain, nervous, hormones and genetics influence our behavior. They have found that genetic factors influence our behavior. Also discovering a link between chemicals in the human brain and human behavior. -
Psychoanalytical
Sigmund Freud was a physician who came up with psychoanalytic psychology in 1940. Sigmund believed that there was more to the mind than just its conscious side. He was interested in the unconscious. He believed that it was there that we had our most primitive biological urges that are in conflict with the requirements of society and morality, and he thought that that too was responsible for all the medically explainable physical symptoms that troubled patients of clueless doctors. -
Behavioral
B. F. Skinner introduced the concept of reinforcement, which is a response to a behavior that increases the likelihood the behavior will be repeated. -
Cognitive
Cognitivists, such as Jean Piaget, Noam Chomsky, and Leon Festinger, focus on how humans process, store, and use information and how the information influences our thinking,language,creativity, and problem solving. They believe that behavior is more than a simple response to a stimulus. Cognitivists favor that behavior is influenced by a variety of mental processes. -
Humanistic
Humanists such as Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Rollo May described human nature as evolving and self-directed.It does not view humans as being controlled by events in the environment or by unconscious forces. instead those factors serve as a background to our own internal growth.The humanistic approach emphasized how each person is unique and has a self-concept. -
Social-Cultural
Socio-cultural psychology involves studying the influence of cultural and ethnic similarities and differences on behavior and social functioning. Socio-cultural psychologists consider how our knowledge and ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving are dependent on the culture to which we belong. They study attitudes,values,beliefs, social norms, and norms of various racial and ethnic groups. They also study the impact and integration of the millions of immigrants who come to the U.S. each year.
