Foundations in Psychology

Psychology was a brave step forward in scientific history. For this paper I will be discussing the foundations of psychology and just a few of the schools of thought associated with psychology. Most people would just assume that psychologists all think the same way because they are all studying brain, but there are many different beliefs about the way the brain works the way it does and why people feel the way they do.

Biology and philosophy were the norm many years ago but there were people who were not content with just that, so they set out to expand upon them and found psychology. Pulling away from the pace I am sure wan not the easiest thing to do and not the easiest thing to have accepted. The foundations of psychology can be found in bother biology and philosophy. In early biology scientists would use people who had head trauma to see if there was a correlation between the brain and physical responses. Scientists would also intentionally give animals lesions to see which parts of their brains where associated with emotional responses. According to Hernandez (2008), "Psychology is used to understand behavior, thoughts, and feelings while philosophy relates to understanding what people experience, not the emotion behind it" (para. 4). Wanting to know what we do is great but also wanting to know why we do it is brilliant.

Psychology has many different schools of thought. For this paper I will be discussing four of them: structuralism, functionalism, behaviorism, and cognitive psychology. The first school of thought created was structuralism. Edward Titchener founded this school in the early 20th century. Titchener wanted to develop a table of levels of consciousness much like a table of elements in biology. Titchener believed that the only appropriate method of understanding psychology was experimentation. Structuralism is meant to describe the contents of the mind.

The second school of thought created is functionalism. One of the creators of functionalism was William James in the early 20th century. Functionalists believe that "consciousness exists because it serves a purpose" (Kowalski & Western, 2005, p. 9). To further examine this belief James would need to find sources to use. He chose to use the study of children, animals, and even the mentally ill. Although this process would be difficult to ensure accuracy because, it relies on the participant to be honest and be able to communicate properly. Functionalism is meant to explain the concepts of the mind.

The third school of thought was behaviorism. One of the founders of behaviorism was John B. Watson in the 1950s. The basis of behaviorism is all behavior is conditioned. Two types of conditioning that behaviorism uses are classical conditioning an operant conditioning. Classical conditioning occurs when a natural stimulus occurs and is followed with a neutral stimulus. When used alone the neutral stimulus did not create a negative