Wilhelm Wuundt And B. Skinner's Differences: The Birth Of Psychology

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The birth of psychology was in December of 1879, at Germanys University of Leipzig (Myers, 2014, p.2). In 1960, Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener defines psychology as “the science of mental health” (Myers, 2014, p.4). However, two provocative American psychologists, John Watson and B.F Skinner, redefined psychology in 1920. They redefined psychology as “the scientific study of observable behavior” (Myers, 2014, p.4). The problem arose when psychologists realized people could not observe feeling or thought so they needed to come up with a new definition for psychology. We define psychology today as “the science of behavior and mental processes” (Myers, 2014, p.4). Psychology includes many subfields such as human development, social behavior, …show more content…

It comes from high prejudice among frustrated people. To boost self-esteem people often denigrate others, people live on someone’s misfortune to make themselves feel better. It is an important theory to understand, for example, before World War II Jewish people were the scapegoat for many people including Adolf Hitler. They blamed the Jews for all their problems so they could blame someone else other than …show more content…

Classical Conditioning was a phenomenon that a man named Ivan Pavlov explored in the twentieth-century. His work laid the foundation for many other psychologists such as John Watson. Pavlov’s idea came when he seized on an incidental observation. He noticed putting food in a dogs mouth caused salvation. However, the dog not only salivated to the food it began to also salivate to mere sight of the food, or the food dish. He began experimenting; first he slid the food presented the food by sliding the food bowl and blowing meat powder into the dogs mouth at the same exact moment. They paired it with a neutral stimuli event the dog could see but did not associate it with food (Myers, 2014, p.256). Food in the mouth automatically, unconditionally triggers the salivary reflex. Pavlov called drooling the unconditioned response and the food the unconditioned stimulus. Salvation in response to a tone is learned, it is conditioned upon the dogs associating the tone with the food it is called conditioned response (Myers, 2014, p.256). The stimulus that used to be neutral is the conditioned stimulus. I found it interesting and relating to everyday life because my dog often does the same. We keep his food in the garage so opening the garage door would be the conditioned stimulus. As soon as the garage door opens my dog begins to salivate which is the conditioned response. Whereas,

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