There is a combination of variables that play a major role in psychology. It is an amalgamation of mental characteristics within a person, emotions, thought processes, and many other things. Psychology is defined as the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, which leads us to ask the questions: how and when did this study begin? It is important for us to study and understand the history of psychology because it has vastly changed throughout the years—it has shaped us into the psychologists we are today.
According to the course text Exploring Psychology, the study of psychology originated in 1879 at The University of Leipzig. There, Wilhelm Wundt founded the first lab for the experimentation of psychology; Wundt, with the help
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Whereas, structuralism focuses directly on the mind. Consciousness is the state of awareness we experience around us and within us, and it is important to think about in psychology because it is a large aspect of the study. Throughout history, as psychology proceeded to develop, two scientists in the 1920s formed a new theory about the study.
Psychology was redefined as the scientific study of observable behavior by John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner according to our textbook. As it says in Exploring Psychology, “you cannot observe a sensation, a feeling, or a thought, but you can observe and record people’s behavior as they respond to different situations” (Myers). This theory was widely accepted by others; therefore, these behaviorists—someone who studies external behavior rather than the conscious mind—were two major forces in the study well into the 1960s. Although these behaviorists were the first, they were not the only important
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Cognitive psychology is the study of mind and mental function and this includes: attention, perception, memory, conceptual development, language, and decision making. This type of psychology has been useful in helping us learn to cure and maintain illnesses, such as depression. Altogether, each of the instances in history have led us to indefinitely and currently define psychology as the science of behavior and mental processes. With behavior being anything an organism does and mental processes being the internal experiences we develop through behavior—thoughts, beliefs, feelings,