Developmental psychology.pdf

Psychology in Our Times 17
Person
Architect
Financier
Firefighter
Mover
Hoofer
Typist
Perspective
"The style is typical."
"Heating must be expensive."
"Are the exits sufficient?"
"What ample stairways!"
"The roof will leak soon."
"I'd prefer more lighting."
forty different specialties, as determined by the divisions of the American Psychological
Association, the major organization for psychologists in this country. Since 1920
this association has grown in membership sixty-five times faster than the general population
(Fishman & Neigher, 1982).
Confronted with this spectrum of topics in a rapidly growing field, you perhaps
have been impressed with the task of mastering them. On this basis you may wish to
review the methods and study aids in this book, indicated in the prologue, and to make
use of the glossary, in the back of the book.
Figure 1.9
Perspectives on a Building. Each of
these people might view a building in
a special way.
Models of Psychology
As seen in the efforts of Wundt and James, a new science often develops competing
theories and positions. Investigators use various ways of approaching the field, and at
some point certain ideas tend to take a dominant position. Wundt's approach was extremely
influential for a few decades, and then it disappeared rapidly from the scene.
When a certain perspective becomes dominant in this field, it is often called
a model or system of psychology, for it guides research and theory. A model in many
respects defines the field of inquiry for certain scientists, identifying the problems to
be studied and the methods for research. Science, on this basis, does not necessarily
progress by the mere accumulation of facts but rather through changes in perspective
brought about by new models. A particular set of ideas can attract a large, enduring
group of adherents if it is sufficiently open-ended to indicate all sorts of problems for
the scientists to pursue (Kuhn, 1962).
Psychology was developing in this way in the early decades of the twentieth
century, and even today there are distinctly different perspectives, just as there are
different systems in politics, economics, education, and religion. No one perspective
can include all the facts, and each of us, in tutored or untutored ways, has his or her
own favored view of humanity. We now turn to the most dominant views in psychology,
which typically have arisen under the influence of one or a few individuals (Figure
1.9).
Model of Behaviorism One such system of psychology arose as a protest against
the study of consciousness as developed by Wundt. In simplest terms, the main point
of behaviorism is that overt behavior is the only suitable topic for psychology.
Psychologists must concern themselves exclusively with objectively observable
phenomena; the study of consciousness is inappropriate because of its subjectivity.
As the leader of this protest movement early in this century, John B. Watson
was a colorful, active personality, able to promote the new outlook in diverse ways—
through research, a textbook, and the lecture platform. He argued that physicists study
phenomena that any trained physicist can observe, not just privately but in common
with others of this training, and biologists study what other biologists can observe.
Watson urged psychologists to look outward, like natural scientists, rather than "inside