2024年4月15日发(作者：限制别人网速)

Text A Discovering Psychology

Script:

What makes us similar to other people and yet so uniquely different? Why do

we think, feel, and behave as we do? Are we molded more by heredity or shaped

by experience? How can the same brain that gives us the capacity for creativity,

rationality, and love also become the crucible for mental illness?

Psychology is formally defined as the scientific study of the behavior of

individuals and of their mental processes. Psychologists then try to use their

research to predict and in some cases control behavior. Ideally, out of their basic

research will come solutions for the practical problems that plague individuals and

society.

Whatever type of behavior psychologists look at, whether it’s laughing,

crying, making war, or making love, or anything else, they try to make sense of it

by relating the observed behavior to certain aspects of the individual involved and

the situation in which the behavior occurred. For example, my genetic makeup,

personality traits, attitudes, and mental state are some of the personal factors

involved in my behavior. They’re known as dispositional factors. They’re internal,

characteristics and potentials inside me, while external things such as sensory

stimulation, rewards, or the actions of other people are known as situational

factors. They come from the outside, from the environment in which my behavior

takes place.

Modern psychology began in 1879 when Wilhelm Wundt founded the first

experimental psychology laboratory in Germany. Wundt trained many young

researchers who carried on the tradition of measuring reactions to experimental

tasks such as reaction times to sensory stimuli, attention, judgment, and word

associations. The first American psychological laboratory like Wundt’s was

founded at the Johns Hopkins University in 1883 by G. Stanley Hall. Hall, the first

president of the American Psychological Association, introduced Sigmund Freud

to the American public by translating Freud’s General Introduction to

Psychoanalysis（心理分析引论）. But 1890 may stand as the most significant date in

psychology’s youth. That’s when William James published what many consider

to be the most important psychological text of all time, Principles of Psychology

（心理学原理）. James was a professor of psychology at Harvard University, where

he also studied medicine and taught physiology. James was interested in all the

ways in which people interact with and adapt to their environment, and so he

found a place in psychology for human consciousness, emotions, the self, personal

values, and religion. But the Wundtian psychologists like G. Stanley Hall rejected

James’s ideas as unscientific and soft. They argued that psychology should be

patterned after the model of the physical sciences, so they focused their study on

topics like sensation and perception--on psychophysics, measuring mental

reactions to physical stimuli. Later they added investigations of how animals

acquire conditioned responses and how humans memorize new information.

These differences among psychologists in what should be studied and how one

should go about it are still with us a century later.

Text B Liespotting