Fundamental Psychological Theories - AP Psychology

According to Gestalt principles of perceptual organization, the human brain is dynamic. When we encounter sensory input such as shapes and patterns, we instantly organize them into unified wholes instead of individual clusters. This process is spontaneous and inevitable, and occurs without learning.

Locke, a staunch Empiricist, believed that we can only acquire knowledge from observation and experience; in fact, he argued that we are born without any knowledge at all. Thus, he considered the human mind at birth a tabula rasa, or "blank slate".

Albert Bandura is the creator of the social learning theory. This theory states that people can learn simply by observing others in a social context. His most famous social learning experiment was the Bobo Doll experiment.

"Tabula rasa" is Latin for "empty slate." John Locke proposed that the mind was an initially empty slate that could be filled with the empirical observations one makes about the world. This contradicts many things we now know about the brain, namely the conventions of innate capacities such as the abilities to acquire language, learn motor skills, process stimuli, etc. Locke claimed we are born with no prior knowledge.

Applied psychology includes branches of psychology that involve working directly with people. Some of the most popular branches of applied psychology are clinical psychology, counseling psychology, and school psychology.

Abraham Maslow was a humanistic psychologist who came up with a hierarchy of needs to describe basic human functioning.

Psychoanalysis, founded by Sigmund Freud, was more focused on unconscious drives and the motives of human behavior.

Freud defined the ego as the largely conscious, executive part of one's personality that mediates the id's impulses and the superego's judgement standards.

Carl Jung coined the term "collective unconscious," which is defined a shared, inherited memory that all humans possess due to our shared ancestry. The collective unconscious is used to explain the commonalities observed between different cultures throughout the world.

The sociocultural theory of psychological science is focused on how behavior and thought processes vary across cultures. One of the most famous psychologists in social-cultural research is Albert Bandura.

According to Freud, the id operates on the "pleasure principle," meaning that it controls our primeval urges, including aggression and sex. The id demands immediate gratification, and requires a well-developed superego to balance the id's selfishness.

Hans Selye was an Austrian-Canadian endocrinologist of Hungarian origin who is best known for developing the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS). GAS's three stages are, alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.

Biological perspective explains behavior by looking at genetics, structures, and biological processes. In this case, Karen's biological processes (heart beat, breathing) are examined in order to explain the behavior that results from them. A psychoanalytic perspective would, in all likelihood, look for underlying reasons, possibly from the past, that would explain Karen's manifestation of these emotions in a physical manner.

During each of these stages, lasting from months to years, Freud theorized the id sought pleasure from a distinct set of bodily sensations and accompanying psychosexual schemas.

In psychoanalytic theory, a reaction formation occurs when when the ego unconsciously reverses an anxiety-producing impulse into an acceptable one. Thus, a person who feels a "guilty impulse" may instead act out the opposite of that impulse, in an attempt to appease their guilty mind.

In psychoanalytic theory, the superego is the seat of objective internalized ideals and judgments, which provides a reference for comparison to actualized words and deeds in the exterior conscious self. People who follow the superego too closely may develop fixations or neuroses when the world (and they themselves) fail to live up to their extreme expectations.

Displacement occurs when an individual redirects socially or personally unacceptable behaviors and thoughts by shifting those behaviors and thoughts onto a more acceptable target. The redirection of energy may be to a less threatening target or merely to a more socially acceptable one.

The evolutionary perspective of psychology, largely adapted from Darwin's theories of evolution and survival of the fittest, represent psychological actions in terms of group and individual behaviors which best promote survival as a primary goal, instead of happiness, understanding or other common psychological goals. Most modern theories of behaviorism, psychobiology and cognitive behaviorism include some elements of evolutionary psychology.

Wilhelm Wundt, regarded historically as one of the founders of modern psychology, introduced his structuralist perspective in the late 1870's, as the first major psychological perspective. In direct response to this, the school of functionalism in the later 1880s was introduced by William James.

Gestalt psychology was first introduced in 1890 by Christian von Ehrenfels, though the idea of gestalt can be traced back as far as David Hume and Immanuel Kant.

Evolutionary psychology did not begin to differentiate itself from mere evolutionary biology until well into the 20th century, with most historians placing the actual date around the 1960's-1980's (Donald Symons likely being the first dedicated evolutionary psychologist in the 1970's).

Carl Rogers has defined five dimensions for the model of a fully functioning person. Arguably, one of the most difficult of these to achieve is "trust feelings." That is, an individual does not deny, avoid, or suppress their instincts or intuitions. The individual trusts that their instincts are there to benefit them or signal something important to them in some way. Although they may not always be correct, a fully functioning person knows how to reason with them in a proper way.