The core ideas of Maslow and Rogers — the founders of humanistic psychology
Humanistic psychology rejected determinism — humans have free will and an innate drive toward growth
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: Physiological → Safety → Love/Belonging → Esteem → Self-Actualization (peak). Each level must be met before the next. Self-actualization: reaching full human potential. Rogers' person-centered theory: unconditional positive regard is essential for healthy development. Conditions of worth: if love is conditional, people develop distorted self-concepts. Congruence: alignment between real self and ideal self. Fully functioning person: open to experience, lives existentially, trusts their organism.
Maslow
5-tier hierarchy — deficiency needs then growth needs
SAME — Schema, Attention, Memory encoding, Executive function
Four core constructs of cognitive psychology — the mind as information processor
Cognitive psychology replaced behaviorism by studying the mental processes between stimulus and response
Schemas: mental frameworks that organize knowledge and guide perception — can cause biases. Attention: selective, divided, or sustained — spotlight model. Working memory (Baddeley): phonological loop + visuospatial sketchpad + central executive + episodic buffer — 7±2 chunks. Cognitive biases: availability heuristic (how easily examples come to mind), representativeness heuristic, anchoring. Beck's cognitive triad of depression: negative view of self, world, and future.
Schema
Mental framework — speeds processing but causes bias
Working memory
Baddeley's 4-component model — 7±2 chunks capacity
SAFE — Sexual selection, Adaptation, Fitness, Evolutionary pressures
The evolutionary framework for explaining psychological traits and behaviors
Evolutionary psychology asks: what adaptive problem did this behavior solve for our ancestors?
Natural selection: traits that increase reproductive fitness are passed on. Sexual selection: mate preferences and competition for mates. Kin selection: helping relatives propagates shared genes — altruism explained. Inclusive fitness (Hamilton): organisms act to maximize genes in the population, not just personal reproduction. Evolutionary explanations for: fear of spiders and snakes, jealousy, status-seeking, parent-offspring conflict, gender differences in mate preferences (Buss). Criticism: just-so stories — hard to test, ignores culture.
Kin selection
Help relatives — you share their genes, altruism explained
Sexual selection
Mate preferences shaped by evolutionary pressures (Buss)
Criticism
Just-so stories — adaptationist explanations are hard to falsify
Visualize the devil, you, and an angel — Id, Ego, Superego
Id: unconscious, pleasure principle, wants it NOW. Superego: moral conscience, idealistic. Ego: rational mediator, reality principle — navigates between id and superego.
Behaviorism: only observable behavior matters — Skinner, Watson, Pavlov
Behaviorism
Psychology as the science of observable behavior — not mental states
Watson and Skinner rejected internal mental states as unscientific. Only observable, measurable behavior counts. Led to behavior modification therapy. Largely replaced by cognitive psychology in the 1970s.
Bandura: Social Learning Theory — people learn by OBSERVING others. Bobo doll experiment.
Social Learning Theory
Albert Bandura — we learn by watching, not just doing
Bandura's Bobo doll study: children who watched adults hit an inflatable doll imitated the aggression. Key concepts: observational learning, modeling, vicarious reinforcement. Self-efficacy: belief in your own ability to succeed — predicts motivation and performance. Bridges behaviorism and cognitive psychology.
The 'third force' — optimistic, person-centered, growth-focused
Reaction against psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Carl Rogers: people need unconditional positive regard (acceptance without conditions) to grow. Person-centered therapy. Maslow: hierarchy of needs, self-actualization. Key assumption: humans are inherently good and capable of growth.
Gestalt psychology: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Figure-ground, proximity, similarity.
Gestalt Psychology
How we perceive whole patterns rather than individual parts
German school: the brain organizes sensory input into coherent wholes. Figure-ground: perceive one element as foreground against a background. Proximity: nearby objects grouped together. Similarity: similar objects grouped together. Closure: fill in gaps to perceive complete shapes. Continuity: prefer smooth, continuous patterns.
Attachment theory: Bowlby — early bonds with caregivers shape all future relationships
Bowlby's Attachment Theory
The evolutionary basis of the parent-child bond
John Bowlby: attachment is an evolutionary adaptation — infants who stayed close to caregivers survived. Internal working model: mental representation of relationships formed in infancy shapes adult relationships. Secure base: caregiver provides safety for exploration. Disruption: maternal deprivation can cause lasting harm.
Structuralism (Wundt) vs Functionalism (James): what the mind IS vs what it DOES
Early Schools of Psychology
The first two systematic approaches to psychology
Structuralism (Wundt, Titchener): analyze the basic elements of conscious experience through introspection — what is the structure of the mind? Functionalism (William James): how does the mind function to help organisms adapt? What do mental processes DO? Functionalism led to behaviorism, applied psychology, and educational psychology.
Q: Compare Freud's psychoanalytic theory with modern psychodynamic approaches.
A: Freud's original theory: unconscious drives (primarily sexual — libido and aggressive instincts) motivate behavior. Personality structures: Id (pleasure principle, unconscious), Ego (reality principle, conscious/preconscious), Superego (moral conscience). Psychosexual stages: Oral, Anal, Phallic (Oedipus/Electra complex), Latency, Genital — fixation at any stage causes adult problems. Defense mechanisms: repression, projection, rationalization, displacement, reaction formation, sublimation. Modern psychodynamic approaches: emphasize attachment, interpersonal relationships, object relations, and self-psychology over sexuality and drives. Shorter-term (IPT, brief psychodynamic therapy). More empirically supported. Both share: importance of unconscious processes, early experience, and therapeutic relationship.
Q: Explain classical and operant conditioning and how they differ.
A: Classical conditioning (Pavlov): learning through association — a neutral stimulus (CS) becomes associated with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) that naturally produces a response (UCR). After pairing: CS alone produces conditioned response (CR). Key phenomena: acquisition, extinction (CS without UCS), spontaneous recovery, generalization (similar stimuli elicit CR), discrimination. Applications: phobias (Little Albert), taste aversion, advertising. Operant conditioning (Skinner): learning through consequences. Reinforcement (positive — add something desirable; negative — remove something aversive) increases behavior. Punishment (positive — add aversive; negative — remove desirable) decreases behavior. Schedules: variable ratio (most resistant to extinction — gambling), fixed interval (scalloped pattern), variable interval (slow steady responding). Key distinction: classical = reflexive, involuntary; operant = voluntary, goal-directed.
Q: What is Bandura's social learning theory and what are its key contributions?
A: Bandura's social learning theory (1977): learning occurs through observation of others, not just direct reinforcement — observational learning or modeling. Bobo doll experiment: children who watched aggressive model were more aggressive — learning without direct reinforcement or punishment. Four processes required for observational learning: Attention (notice the model), Retention (remember the behavior), Reproduction (physically capable of performing it), Motivation (incentive to perform it). Self-efficacy: belief in one's own ability to succeed in specific situations — predicts effort, persistence, and ultimate performance. High self-efficacy → approach challenges, persist, lower anxiety. Sources of self-efficacy: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, physiological states. Bridges behaviorism (external behavior) and cognitive psychology (mental processes).
Q: Compare the major perspectives in psychology: behavioral, cognitive, biological, psychodynamic, humanistic.
A: Behavioral (Watson, Skinner): only observable behavior is valid subject matter — focus on conditioning and environmental determinism. Explains phobias, habits, learning. Ignores internal mental processes. Cognitive (Beck, Bandura): mental processes (thoughts, schemas, attention, memory) mediate between stimulus and response. Explains thought disorders, distorted thinking in depression. Biological (neuroscience): brain structures, neurotransmitters, genetics, hormones underlie all behavior. Explains disorders as brain dysfunctions. Psychodynamic (Freud, modern): unconscious processes, early attachment, interpersonal patterns shape behavior. Explains personality disorders, attachment. Humanistic (Rogers, Maslow): free will, growth potential, subjective experience. Emphasizes therapeutic relationship. Modern psychology is integrative — the biopsychosocial model combines all perspectives.
Q: What are the major memory systems and how does information move between them?
A: Sensory memory: brief, modality-specific (iconic for vision — 0.5 sec; echoic for hearing — 3-4 sec). Most information decays; attended information enters working memory. Working memory (Baddeley): phonological loop (verbal), visuospatial sketchpad (visual/spatial), central executive (coordinates), episodic buffer (integrates). Capacity: 7±2 chunks; duration without rehearsal: 20 seconds. Elaborate encoding transfers to long-term memory. Long-term memory: explicit (declarative) — semantic (facts) and episodic (personal events) — requires hippocampus. Implicit (non-declarative) — procedural (skills), priming, conditioning — hippocampus not required. Encoding: levels of processing — deeper semantic processing produces better retention than shallow phonological. Retrieval: encoding specificity principle — cues at retrieval should match encoding context.