Reason why? I decided to talk about James Rowland Angell is because I got interested in the way he talks about psychology and the way he thinks about it

This week I decided to talk about the Psychologist and University President James Rowland Angell.

James Rowland Angell was born on May 8,1869 and he died in March 4,1949. James rebuilt and reorganized the Yale University in the 1920s and 30s. When World War 1 was happening he helped in the intelligence testing the US Army. Later on he wrote a book called “Psychology: An introduction study of structure and functions of Human Consciousness”. He was interested in studying the Functionalism in the world. He believed that first, functionalism studies mental operations, not mental elements. Second, functionalism views consciousness in terms of its utility, mediating between an organism’s needs and the pressures of its environment. And third, functionalism regards mind and body as an inseparable unit.

Reason why? I decided to talk about James Rowland Angell is because I got interested in the way he talks about psychology and the way he thinks about it. Compared to other philosophers and psychologists I have studied before he thinks that Mind and body can’t be separated because functionalism is the learn of mental and  intellectual operations and their relationship with behavior. The complete relationship of the body and the environment and the minds function. Just like I mentioned it on my previous post, I have always thought that the mind and body have a really strong connection when talking about psychology. And James Rowland makes a better and detailed point on how functionalism work with it.

Reference:

Angell, J. R. (1907). The province of functional psychology Available: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Angell/functional.htm

2ND POST

The Philosopher that I chose for this unit is Hermann Helmholtz (1821-1894). As a child he attended Potsdam Gymnasium where his father worked as the schools headmaster. At Potsdam Gymnasium he learned about Kant’s philosophy and Fichte’s nature philosophy, which showed the importance of philosophical thinking over the collection and analysis of empirical data. Later down the line in his career his contributions had helped cancel the nature philosophy theory. He originally wanted to study Physics after graduations from Potsdam, but he chose to go to medical school and work as an army doctor since it was free to men in Prussia if they completed a medical degree. He chose medical school only because his family didn’t have the financial means to help him study what he originally wanted. Going to work as an army doctor with free education required him to pledge to five years of working there.

When Helmholtz was working in Berlin at the medical institute, he studied under Johannes Muller where he really didn’t agree with Muller’s views about vitalism. Some students had created the Berlin Physical Society because they rebelled against his views. This society was formed to provide explanations for biological things. Him and other students created a document that had each of their views along with their signatures and drops of their blood.  After he graduated he went back to work in Potsdam at an army post. He did research there because the job didn’t require a lot of duties. The research he did gained attention to him and he gained an early release from his army commitment.

He did create a pamphlet that discussed basically known as the First Law of Thermodynamics today. Although, Helmholtz didn’t get famous off of his original discovery of energy conservation but he ended up famous because he measured the speed of nerve impulses and he developed the ophthalmoscope, which helped see living  human eyes up close. Soon after that he published a handbook which explained his interests and findings in depth. One major thing he contributed to physiology  of vision is his color perception theory. He believed that the reason people could see color was because of the activity between 3 different kinds of visual receptors and the cones in your eye.

Kardas, E. P. (2014). History of psychology: The making of a science. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning

3rd POST:

This week I found a journal detailing a study conducted on juvenile offenders and methods to help reduce recidivism.  Most would agree that juvenile offenders often grow up to be adult criminals. The study took 107 adolescents in South Korea that were labeled as at risk after receiving counseling. About half of the children were current offenders and the other half were not. Researchers were able to measure the explicit and implicit cognitions related to violence to assess a root cause for their behavior. If successfully proven, we could possibly have insight on how to change these cognitive responses early on, thus reducing their likelihood of violence. This type of intervention is the goal of these researchers.

Explicit cognition is explained as the deliberate mental processes. This is basically our conscious thoughts and can be measured by self-report questionnaires like “Is violence natural”. Implicit cognition is the knowledge structure and attitudes. The difference here is that it does not involve articulated thought. This type of cognition is measured using association tasks.

Researchers were able to decide that implicit and explicit cognition related to aggression would have to be measured separately. The results indicated that both offenders and non-offenders shared similar explicit cognitive attitudes. Implicit attitudes were higher for offenders in regards to their acceptance of violence. Of course, the study does state that these results may be hindered by social desirability. Regardless, the research concluded that implicit attitudes towards violence do play a major role in juvenile violence but can be modified by explicit interventions.

This research was pretty interesting to me. I chose it because it ties into the behaviorism aspects that I have researched this week. I have always been curious about juvenile offenders and how their minds work. To me, the research makes sense, violent tendencies are known to be passed down to our children based on how we raise them. If they grow up thinking that certain behaviors are acceptable then of course they are going to act on it. I think that finding a way to counsel these children and give them new perspectives could reduce their chances of a life of crime.

References

Jeon, B., Lee, M., & Lee, J. (2019). Evaluative conditioning-induced implicit attitude change in violent juvenile offenders: A randomized controlled trial. Psychology of Violence, 9(1), 28-38. doi:10.1037/vio0000213

4th POST

Article from a Ebook named “Psychology: The Hope of Science”. My major is psychology, therefore everything about psychology interests me. And even though psychology has a lot of meanings, and it has too much information I decided to read this article about the concept of Stress, and Motivation. It is said that what causes stress is a Cataclysmic Events. Cataclysmic Events are environmental threats produced by such catastrophics as floods, earthquakes and wars. In my opinion, what causes more stress are personal problems, such as drama, divorce, breakups, economic situations, unemployment, etc.. and even though I knew this already, I never thought that the stress can result into two types of categories which is the psychological, and the physiological. It all depends on the mind and the body that each person has. And we chose how. I have noticed and I have read that a lot of stress can be solved with the concept of motivation. The concept of motivation we can give to each person. In this book, I was able to learn that motivation comes as the result of emotional excitement for something. Psychology to me is not only the study of behavior like the meaning says. It is also knowing how to work with each individuals mind. Is knowing how to talk to each person. and getting into helping them find their  motivation to reduce the anxiety or the stress everybody has every single day. Fortunately, I have a lot of friends that are always looking for my advice when they have problems. And how I start helping them is by me putting myself in their shoes. that is how I start getting the situation, analyzing what is best, what is the right thing to do and what is the wrong thing to do. I try to give always my best advice. Even when it is hard to do it. Sometimes I even tell people to do something that I don’t know if I would do it. Not sure if any of you have been in that situation before, but I had many many times. I think that is the perfect example on the theory that mind and body are connected as well. In my opinion, it is just exciting seeing how everything is connected at the end with the term psychology.

Reference:

Kimble, Gregory A (1996), “Psychology: The Hope of a Science”

Website:

http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/ebookviewer/ebook/bmxlYmtfXzE0MTFfX0FO0?sid=38f41274-5659-4a22-b5bf-32d6a97efd0b@sessionmgr4006&vid=3&format=EB&ppid=pp_12