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Overview on psychology

Today, psychology is largely defined as "the study of behavior and mental processes". Philosophical interest in the mind and behavior dates back to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, China and India.

Psychology as a self-conscious field of experimental study began in 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory dedicated exclusively to psychological research in Leipzig. Wundt was also the first person to refer to himself as a psychologist and wrote the first textbook on psychology: Principles of Physiological Psychology. Other important early contributors to the field include Hermann Ebbinghaus (a pioneer in the study of memory), William James (the American father of pragmatism), and Ivan Pavlov (who developed the procedures associated with classical conditioning).

Soon after the development of experimental psychology, various kinds of applied psychology appeared. G. Stanley Hall brought scientific pedagogy to the United States from Germany in the early 1880s. John Dewey's educational theory of the 1890s was another example. Also in the 1890s, Hugo Münsterberg began writing about the application of psychology to industry, law, and other fields. Lightner Witmer established the first psychological clinic in the 1890s. James McKeen Cattell adapted Francis Galton's anthropometric methods to generate the first program of mental testing in the 1890s. In Vienna, meanwhile, Sigmund Freud developed an independent approach to the study of the mind called psychoanalysis, which has been widely influential.

The 20th century saw a reaction to Edward Titchener's critique of Wundt's empiricism. This contributed to the formulation of behaviorism by John B. Watson, which was popularized by B. F. Skinner. Behaviorism proposed limiting psychological study to that of overt behavior, because that could be quantified and easily measured. Behaviorists considered knowledge of the "mind" too metaphysical to achieve scientifically. The final decades of the 20th century saw the decline of behaviorism and the rise of cognitive science, an interdisciplinary approach to studying the human mind. Cognitive science again considers the "mind" as a subject for investigation, using the tools of evolutionary psychology, linguistics, computer science, philosophy, behaviorism, and neurobiology. This form of investigation has proposed that a wide understanding of the human mind is possible, and that such an understanding may be applied to other research domains, such as artificial intelligence.

Early psychological thought

Further information: Philosophy of mind

Many cultures throughout history have speculated on the nature of the mind, soul, spirit, etc. For instance, in Ancient Egypt, the Edwin Smith Papyrus contains an early description of the brain, and some speculations on its functions (though in a medical/surgical context). Though other medical documents of ancient times were full of incantations and applications meant to turn away disease-causing demons and other superstition, the Edwin Smith Papyrus gives remedies to almost 50 conditions and only 1 contains incantations to ward off evil. It has been praised as being similar to what is today considered common knowledge, but must be recognized as having originated in a very different context.

Ancient Greek philosophers, from Thales (fl. 550 bc) through even to the Roman period, developed an elaborate theory of what they termed the psuchẽ (from which the first half of "psychology" is derived), as well as other "psychological" terms – nous, thumos, logistikon, etc.[1] The most influential of these are the accounts of Plato (especially in the Republic),[2] Pythagoras and of Aristotle (esp. Peri Psyches, better known under its Latin title, De Anima).[3] Hellenistic philosophers (viz., the Stoics and Epicurians) diverged from the Classical Greek tradition in several important ways, especially in their concern with questions of the physiological basis of the mind.[4] The Roman physician Galen addressed these issues most elaborately and influentially of all. The Greek tradition influenced some Christian and Islamic thought on the topic.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Manual of Discipline (from the Dead Sea Scrolls, ca. 21 BC–61 AD) notes the division of human nature into two temperaments.

In Asia, China had a long history of administering tests of ability as part of its education system. In the 6th century AD, Lin Xie carried out an early experiment, in which he asked people to draw a square with one hand and at the same time draw a circle with the other (ostensibly to test people's vulnerability to distraction). Some have claimed that this is the first psychology experiment, and, therefore, the beginnings of psychology as an experimental science.

India, too, had an elaborate theory of "the self" in its Vedanta philosophical writings.[5]

Medieval Muslim physicians also developed practices to treat patients suffering from a variety of "diseases of the mind".[6]

Ahmed ibn Sahl al-Balkhi (850–934) was among the first, in this tradition, to discuss disorders related to both the body and the mind, arguing that "if the nafs [psyche] gets sick, the body may also find no joy in life and may eventually develop a physical illness."[7] Al-Balkhi recognized that the body and the soul can be healthy or sick, or "balanced or imbalanced." He wrote that imbalance of the body can result in fever, headaches and other bodily illnesses, while imbalance of the soul can result in anger, anxiety, sadness and other nafs-related symptoms. He recognized two types of what we now call depression: one caused by known reasons such as loss or failure, which can be treated psychologically; and the other caused by unknown reasons possibly caused by physiological reasons, which can be treated through physical medicine.[7]

In the 1010s, the scientist, Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) began to carry out experiments in areas related to body and the nafs. In his Book of Optics, for example, he examined visual perception and what we now call sensation, including variations in sensitivity, sensation of touch, perception of colors, perception of darkness, the psychological explanation of the moon illusion, and binocular vision.[8][9] Al-Biruni also employed such experimental methods in examining reaction time.[10]

Avicenna, similarly, did early work in the treatment of nafs-related illnesses, and developed a system for associating changes in the pulse rate with inner feelings. Avicenna also described phenomena we now recognize as neuropsychiatric conditions, including hallucination, insomnia, mania, nightmare, melancholia, dementia, epilepsy, paralysis, stroke, vertigo and tremor.[11]

Other medieval thinkers who discussed issues related to psychology included:

• Ibn Sirin, who wrote a book on dreams and dream interpretation;[12]

• Al-Kindi (Alkindus), who developed forms of music therapy[citation needed]

• Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari, who developed al-‘ilaj al-nafs (sometimes translated as "psychotherapy"),[13]

• Al-Farabi (Alpharabius), who discussed subjects related to social psychology and consciousness studies;[14]

• Ali ibn Abbas al-Majusi (Haly Abbas), described neuroanatomy and neurophysiology;[14]

• Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis), described neurosurgery;[15]

• Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, who described reaction time;[16]

• Ibn Tufail, who anticipated the tabula rasa argument and nature versus nurture debate.[17]

Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) described disorders similar to meningitis, intracranial thrombophlebitis, and mediastinal germ cell tumors; Averroes attributed photoreceptor properties to the retina; and Maimonides described rabies and belladonna intoxication.[15]

Witelo is considered a precursor of perception psychology. His Perspectiva contains much material in psychology, outlining views that are close to modern notions on the association of ideas and on the subconscious.

Beginnings of Western psychology

Many of the Ancients' writings would have been lost had it not been for the efforts of the Christian, Jewish and Persian translators in the House of Wisdom, the House of Knowledge, and other such institutions, whose glosses and commentaries were later translated into Latin in the 12th century. However, it is not clear how these sources first came to be used during the Renaissance, and their influence on what would later emerge as the discipline of psychology is a topic of scholarly debate.[18]

Etymology and early usage of word

The first use of the term "psychology" is often attributed to the German scholastic philosopher Rudolf Göckel (1547–1628, often known under the Latin form Rudolph Goclenius), who published the Psychologia hoc est de hominis perfectione, anima, ortu in Marburg in 1590. However, the term seems to have been used more than six decades earlier by the Croatian humanist Marko Marulić (1450–1524) in the title of his Latin treatise, Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae. Although the treatise itself has not been preserved, its title appears in a list of Marulic's works compiled by his younger contemporary, Franjo Bozicevic-Natalis in his "Vita Marci Maruli Spalatensis" (Krstić, 1964). This, of course, may well not have been the very first usage, but it is the earliest documented use at present.

The term did not come into popular usage until the German idealist philosopher, Christian Wolff (1679–1754) used it in his Psychologia empirica and Psychologia rationalis (1732–1734). This distinction between empirical and rational psychology was picked up in Denis Diderot's (1713–1780) Encyclopédie (1751–1784) and was popularized in France by Maine de Biran (1766–1824). In England, the term "psychology" overtook "mental philosophy" in the middle of the 19th century, especially in the work of William Hamilton (1788–1856) (see Danziger, 1997, chap. 3).

Enlightenment psychological thought

Early psychology was regarded as the study of the soul (in the Christian sense of the term).[19] The modern philosophical form of psychology was heavily influenced by the works of René Descartes (1596–1650), and the debates that he generated, of which the most relevant were the objections to his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), published with the text. Also important to the later development of psychology were his Passions of the Soul (1649) and Treatise on Man (completed in 1632 but, along with the rest of The World, withheld from publication after Descartes heard of the Catholic Church's condemnation of Galileo; it was eventually published posthumously, in 1664).

Although not educated as a physician, Descartes did extensive anatomical studies of bulls' hearts and was considered important enough that William Harvey responded to him. Descartes was one of the first to endorse Harvey's model of the circulation of the blood, but disagreed with his metaphysical framework to explain it. Descartes dissected animals and human cadavers and as a result was familiar with the research on the flow of blood leading to the conclusion that the body is a complex device that is capable of moving without the soul, thus contradicting the "Doctrine of the Soul". The emergence of psychology as a medical discipline was given a major boost by Thomas Willis, not only in his reference to psychology (the "Doctrine of the Soul") in terms of brain function, but through his detailed 1672 anatomical work, and his treatise "De Anima Brutorum" ("Two Discourses on the Souls of Brutes"). However, Willis acknowledged the influence of Descartes's rival, Pierre Gassendi, as an inspiration for his work.

The philosophers of the British Empiricist and Associationist schools had a profound impact on the later course of experimental psychology. John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), George Berkeley's Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), and David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740) were particularly influential, as were David Hartley's Observations on Man (1749) and John Stuart Mill's A System of Logic. (1843). Also notable was the work of some Continental Rationalist philosophers, especially Baruch Spinoza's (1632–1677) On the Improvement of the Understanding (1662) and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's (1646–1716) New Essays on Human Understanding (completed 1705, published 1765). Rauch, Frederick A. (1806–1841) Psychology, or a view of the human soul, including anthropology (1840).

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard also influenced the humanistic, existential, and modern psychological schools with his works The Concept of Anxiety (1844) and The Sickness Unto Death (1849).

Transition to contemporary psychology

Also influential on the emerging discipline of psychology were debates surrounding the efficacy of Mesmerism (a precursor to hypnosis) and the value of phrenology. The former was developed in the 1770s by Austrian physician Anton Mesmer (1734–1815) who claimed to use the power of gravity, and later of "animal magnetism", to cure various physical and mental ills. As Mesmer and his treatment became increasingly fashionable in both Vienna and Paris, it also began to come under the scrutiny of suspicious officials. In 1784, an investigation was commissioned in Paris by King Louis XVI which included American ambassador Benjamin Franklin, chemist Antoine Lavoisier and physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (later the popularizer of the guillotine). They concluded that Mesmer's method was useless. Abbé Faria, an Indo-Portuguese priest, revived public attention in animal magnetism. Unlike Mesmer, Faria claimed that the effect was 'generated from within the mind’ by the power of expectancy and cooperation of the patient. Although disputed, the "magnetic" tradition continued among Mesmer's students and others, resurfacing in England in the 19th century in the work of the physician John Elliotson (1791–1868), and the surgeons James Esdaile (1808–1859), and James Braid (1795–1860) (who reconceptualized it as property of the subject's mind rather than a "power" of the Mesmerist's, and relabeled it "hypnotism"). Mesmerism also continued to have a strong social (if not medical) following in England through the 19th century (see Winter, 1998). Faria's approach was significantly extended by the clinical and theoretical work of Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault and Hippolyte Bernheim of the Nancy School. Faria's theoretical position, and the subsequent experiences of those in the Nancy School made significant contributions to the later autosuggestion techniques of Émile Coué. It was adopted for the treatment of hysteria by the director of Paris's Salpêtrière Hospital, Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893).

Phrenology began as "organology", a theory of brain structure developed by the German physician, Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828). Gall argued that the brain is divided into a large number of functional "organs", each responsible for particular human mental abilities and dispositions – hope, love, spirituality, greed, language, the abilities to detect the size, form, and color of objects, etc. He argued that the larger each of these organs are, the greater the power of the corresponding mental trait. Further, he argued that one could detect the sizes of the organs in a given individual by feeling the surface of that person's skull. Gall's ultra-localizationist position with respect to the brain was soon attacked, most notably by French anatomist Pierre Flourens (1794–1867), who conducted ablation studies (on chickens) which purported to demonstrate little or no cerebral localization of function. Although Gall had been a serious (if misguided) researcher, his theory was taken by his assistant, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776–1832), and developed into the profitable, popular enterprise of phrenology, which soon spawned, especially in Britain, a thriving industry of independent practitioners. In the hands of Scottish religious leader George Combe (1788–1858) (whose book The Constitution of Man was one of the best-sellers of the century), phrenology became strongly associated with political reform movements and egalitarian principles (see, e.g., Shapin, 1975; but also see van Wyhe, 2004). Phrenology soon spread to America as well, where itinerant practical phrenologists assessed the mental well-being of willing customers (see Sokal, 2001).

Emergence of German experimental psychology

Until the middle of the 19th century, psychology was widely regarded as a branch of philosophy. For instance, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) declared in his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786) that psychology cannot be made into a "proper" science because its phenomena cannot be rendered in mathematical form, among other reasons. However, Kant proposed what looks to modern eyes very much like an empirical psychology in his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798).

Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841) took issue with Kant's conclusion and attempted to develop a mathematical basis for a scientific psychology. Although he was unable to empirically realize the terms of his psychological theory, his efforts did lead scientists such as Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795–1878) and Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887) to attempt to measure the mathematical relationships between the physical magnitudes of external stimuli and the psychological intensities of the resulting sensations. Fechner (1860) is the originator of the term psychophysics.

Meanwhile, individual differences in reaction time had become a critical issue in the field of astronomy, under the name of the "personal equation". Early researches by Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (1784–1846) in Königsberg and Adolf Hirsch led to the development of a highly precise chronoscope by Mathias Hipp that, in turn, was based on a design by Charles Wheatstone for a device that measured the speed of artillery shells (Edgell & Symes, 1906). Other timing instruments were borrowed from physiology (e.g., the kymograph) and adapted for use by the Utrecht ophthalmologist Franciscus Donders (1818–1899) and his student Johan Jacob de Jaager in measuring the duration of simple mental decisions.

The 19th century was also the period in which physiology, including neurophysiology, professionalized and saw some of its most significant discoveries. Among its leaders were Charles Bell (1774–1843) and François Magendie (1783–1855) who independently discovered the distinction between sensory and motor nerves in the spinal column, Johannes Müller (1801–1855) who proposed the doctrine of specific nerve energies, Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896) who studied the electrical basis of muscle contraction, Pierre Paul Broca (1824–1880) and Carl Wernicke (1848–1905) who identified areas of the brain responsible for different aspects of language, as well as Gustav Fritsch (1837–1927), Eduard Hitzig (1839–1907), and David Ferrier (1843–1924) who localized sensory and motor areas of the brain. One of the principal founders of experimental physiology, Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894), conducted studies of a wide range of topics that would later be of interest to psychologists – the speed of neural transmission, the natures of sound and color, and of our perceptions of them, etc. In the 1860s, while he held a position in Heidelberg, Helmholtz engaged as an assistant a young M.D. named Wilhelm Wundt. Wundt employed the equipment of the physiology laboratory – chronoscope, kymograph, and various peripheral devices – to address more complicated psychological questions than had, until then, been investigated experimentally. In particular he was interested in the nature of apperception – the point at which a perception occupies the central focus of conscious awareness.

In 1874 Wundt took up a professorship in Zürich, where he published his landmark textbook, Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie (Principles of Physiological Psychology, 1874). Moving to a more prestigious professorship in Leipzig in 1875, Wundt founded a laboratory specifically dedicated to original research in experimental psychology in 1879, the first laboratory of its kind in the world. In 1883, he launched a journal in which to publish the results of his, and his students', research, Philosophische Studien (Philosophical Studies) (For more on Wundt, see, e.g., Bringmann & Tweney, 1980; Rieber & Robinson, 2001). Wundt attracted a large number of students not only from Germany, but also from abroad. Among his most influential American students were G. Stanley Hall (who had already obtained a PhD from Harvard under the supervision of William James), James McKeen Cattell (who was Wundt's first assistant), and Frank Angell. The most influential British student was Edward Bradford Titchener (who later became professor at Cornell).

Experimental psychology laboratories were soon also established at Berlin by Carl Stumpf (1848–1936) and at Göttingen by Georg Elias Müller (1850–1934). Another major German experimental psychologist of the era, though he did not direct his own research institute, was Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909).

Experimentation was not the only approach to psychology in the German-speaking world at this time. Starting in the 1890s, employing the case study technique, the Viennese physician Sigmund Freud developed and applied the methods of hypnosis, free association, and dream interpretation to reveal putatively unconscious beliefs and desires that he argued were the underlying causes of his patients' "hysteria." He dubbed this approach psychoanalysis. Freudian psychoanalysis is particularly notable for the emphasis it places on the course of an individual's sexual development in pathogenesis. Psychoanalytic concepts have had a strong and lasting influence on Western culture, particularly on the arts. Although its scientific contribution is still a matter of debate, both Freudian and Jungian psychology revealed the existence of compartmentalized thinking, in which some behavior and thoughts are hidden from consciousness – yet operative as part of the complete personality. Hidden agendas, a bad conscience, or a sense of guilt, are examples of the existence of mental processes in which the individual is not conscious, through choice or lack of understanding, of some aspects of their personality and subsequent behavior.

Psychoanalysis examines mental processes which affect the ego. An understanding of these theoretically allows the individual greater choice and consciousness with a healing effect in neurosis and occasionally in psychosis, both of which Richard von Krafft-Ebing defined as "diseases of the personality". Carl G. Jung was an associate of Freud's who later broke with him over Freud's emphasis on sexuality. Working with concepts of the unconscious first noted during the 1800s (by John Stuart Mill, Krafft-Ebing, Pierre Janet, Théodore Flournoy and others), Jung defined four mental functions which relate to and define the ego, the conscious self. Sensation (which tell consciousness that something is there), feelings (which consist of value judgments, and motivate our reaction to what we have sensed), intellect (an analytic function that compares this event to all known events and gives it a class and category, allowing us to understand a situation within a historical process, personal or public), and intuition (a mental function with access to deep behavioral patterns, intuition can suggest unexpected solutions or predict unforeseen consequences, "as if seeing around corners" as Jung put it). Jung insisted on an empirical psychology in which theories must be based on facts and not on the psychologist's projections or expectations.

Early American psychology

Around 1875 the Harvard physiology instructor (as he then was), William James, opened a small experimental psychology demonstration laboratory for use with his courses. The laboratory was never used, in those days, for original research, and so controversy remains as to whether it is to be regarded as the "first" experimental psychology laboratory or not. In 1878, James gave a series of lectures at Johns Hopkins University entitled "The Senses and the Brain and their Relation to Thought" in which he argued, contra Thomas Henry Huxley, that consciousness is not epiphenomenal, but must have an evolutionary function, or it would not have been naturally selected in humans. The same year James was contracted by Henry Holt to write a textbook on the "new" experimental psychology. If he had written it quickly, it would have been the first English-language textbook on the topic. It was twelve years, however, before his two-volume Principles of Psychology would be published. In the meantime textbooks were published by George Trumbull Ladd of Yale (1887) and James Mark Baldwin then of Lake Forest College (1889).

In 1879 Charles Sanders Peirce was hired as a philosophy instructor at Johns Hopkins University. Although better known for his astronomical and philosophical work, Peirce also conducted what are perhaps the first American psychology experiments, on the subject of color vision, published in 1877 in the American Journal of Science (see Cadwallader, 1974). Peirce and his student Joseph Jastrow published "On Small Differences in Sensation" in the Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, in 1884. In 1882, Peirce was joined at Johns Hopkins by G. Stanley Hall, who opened the first American research laboratory devoted to experimental psychology in 1883. Peirce was forced out of his position by scandal and Hall was awarded the only professorship in philosophy at Johns Hopkins. In 1887 Hall founded the American Journal of Psychology, which published work primarily emanating from his own laboratory. In 1888 Hall left his Johns Hopkins professorship for the presidency of the newly founded Clark University, where he remained for the rest of his career.

Soon, experimental psychology laboratories were opened at the University of Pennsylvania (in 1887, by James McKeen Cattell), Indiana University (1888, William Lowe Bryan), the University of Wisconsin (1888, Joseph Jastrow), Clark University (1889, Edmund Sanford), the McLean Asylum (1889, William Noyes), and the University of Nebraska (1889, Harry Kirke Wolfe). However, it was Princeton University's Eno Hall, built in 1924, that became the first university building in the United States to be devoted entirely to experimental psychology when it became the home of the university's Department of Psychology.[20]

In 1890, William James' Principles of Psychology finally appeared, and rapidly became the most influential textbook in the history of American psychology. It laid many of the foundations for the sorts of questions that American psychologists would focus on for years to come. The book's chapters on consciousness, emotion, and habit were particularly agenda-setting.

One of those who felt the impact of James' Principles was John Dewey, then professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan. With his junior colleagues, James Hayden Tufts (who founded the psychology laboratory at Michigan) and George Herbert Mead, and his student James Rowland Angell, this group began to reformulate psychology, focusing more strongly on the social environment and on the activity of mind and behavior than the psychophysics-inspired physiological psychology of Wundt and his followers had heretofore. Tufts left Michigan for another junior position at the newly founded University of Chicago in 1892. A year later, the senior philosopher at Chicago resigned, and Tufts recommended to Chicago president William Rainey Harper that Dewey be offered the position. After initial reluctance, Dewey was hired in 1894. Dewey soon filled out the department with his Michigan companions Mead and Angell. These four formed the core of the Chicago School of psychology.

In 1892, G. Stanley Hall invited 30-some psychologists and philosophers to a meeting at Clark with the purpose of founding a new American Psychological Association (APA). (On the history of the APA, see Evans, Staudt Sexton, & Cadwallader, 1992.) The first annual meeting of the APA was held later that year, hosted by George Stuart Fullerton at the University of Pennsylvania. Almost immediately tension arose between the experimentally and philosophically inclined members of the APA. Edward Bradford Titchener and Lightner Witmer launched an attempt to either establish a separate "Section" for philosophical presentations, or to eject the philosophers altogether. After nearly a decade of debate a Western Philosophical Association was founded and held its first meeting in 1901 at the University of Nebraska. The following year (1902), an American Philosophical Association held its first meeting at Columbia University. These ultimately became the Central and Eastern Divisions of the modern American Philosophical Association.

In 1894, a number of psychologists, unhappy with the parochial editorial policies of the American Journal of Psychology approached Hall about appointing an editorial board and opening the journal out to more psychologists not within Hall's immediate circle. Hall refused, so James McKeen Cattell (then of Columbia) and James Mark Baldwin (then of Princeton) co-founded a new journal, Psychological Review, which rapidly grew to become a major outlet for American psychological researchers.

Beginning in 1895, James Mark Baldwin and Edward Bradford Titchener (Cornell) entered into an increasingly acrimonious dispute over the correct interpretation of some anomalous reaction time findings that had come from the Wundt laboratory (originally reported by Ludwig Lange and James McKeen Cattell). In 1896, James Rowland Angell and Addison W. Moore (Chicago) published a series of experiments in Psychological Review appearing to show that Baldwin was the more correct of the two. However, they interpreted their findings in light of John Dewey's new approach to psychology, which rejected the traditional stimulus-response understanding of the reflex arc in favor of a "circular" account in which what serves as "stimulus" and what as "response" depends on how one views the situation. The full position was laid out in Dewey's landmark article "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" which also appeared in Psychological Review in 1896.

Titchener responded in Philosophical Review (1898, 1899) by distinguishing his austere "structural" approach to psychology from what he termed the Chicago group's more applied "functional" approach, and thus began the first major theoretical rift in American psychology between Structuralism and Functionalism. The group at Columbia, led by James McKeen Cattell, Edward L. Thorndike, and Robert S. Woodworth, was often regarded as a second (after Chicago) "school" of American Functionalism (see, e.g., Heidbredder, 1933), although they never used that term themselves, because their research focused on the applied areas of mental testing, learning, and education. Dewey was elected president of the APA in 1899, while Titchener dropped his membership in the association. (In 1904, Titchener formed his own group, eventually known as the Society of Experimental Psychologists.) Jastrow promoted the functionalist approach in his APA presidential address of 1900, and Angell adopted Titchener's label explicitly in his influential textbook of 1904 and his APA presidential address of 1906. In reality, Structuralism was, more or less, confined to Titchener and his students. (It was Titichener's former student E. G. Boring, writing the most influential History of Experimental Psychology (1929/1950) textbook of the 20th century, who launched the common idea that the structuralism/functionalism debate was the primary fault line in American psychology at the turn of the 20th century.] Functionalism, broadly speaking, with its more practical emphasis on action and application, better suited the American cultural "style" and, perhaps more important, was more popular among university trustees and private funding agencies.

Early French psychology

In no small measure because of the conservatism of the reign of Louis Napoléon (president, 1848–1852; emperor as "Napoléon III", 1852–1870), academic philosophy in France through the middle part of the 19th century was controlled by members of the eclectic and spiritualist schools, led by figures such as Victor Cousin (1792–1867), Théodore Jouffroy (1796–1842), and Paul Janet (1823–1899). These were traditional metaphysical schools, opposed to regarding psychology as a natural science. With the ouster of Napoléon III after the débacle of the Franco-Prussian war, new paths, both political and intellectual, became possible. From the 1870 forward, a steadily increasing interest in positivist, materialist, evolutionary, and deterministic approaches to psychology developed, influenced by, among others, the work of Hyppolyte Taine (1828–1893) (e.g., De L'Intelligence, 1870) and Théodule Ribot (1839–1916) (e.g., La Psychologie Anglaise Contemporaine, 1870).

In 1876, Ribot founded Revue Philosophique (the same year as Mind was founded in Britain), which for the next generation would be virtually the only French outlet for the "new" psychology (Plas, 1997). Although not a working experimentalist himself, Ribot's many books were to have profound influence on the next generation of psychologists. These included especially his L'Hérédité Psychologique (1873) and La Psychologie Allemande Contemporaine (1879). In the 1880s, Ribot's interests turned to psychopathology, writing books on disorders of memory (1881), will (1883), and personality (1885), and where he attempted to bring to these topics the insights of general psychology. Although in 1881 he lost a Sorbonne professorship in the History of Psychological Doctrines to traditionalist Jules Soury (1842–1915), from 1885 to 1889 he taught experimental psychology at the Sorbonne. In 1889 he was awarded a chair at the Collège de France in Experimental and Comparative Psychology, which he held until 1896 (Nicolas, 2002).

France's primary psychological strength lay in the field of psychopathology. The chief neurologist at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893), had been using the recently revivied and renamed (see above) practice of hypnoisis to "experimentally" produce hysterical symptoms in some of his patients. Two of his students, Alfred Binet (1857–1911) and Pierre Janet (1859–1947), adopted and expanded this practice in their own work.

In 1889, Binet and his colleague Henri Beaunis (1830–1921) co-founded, at the Sorbonne, the first experimental psychology laboratory in France. Just five years later, in 1894, Beaunis, Binet, and a third colleague, Victor Henri (1872–1940), co-founded the first French journal dedicated to experimental psychology, L'Année Psychologique. In the first years of the 20th century, Binet was requested by the French government to develop a method for the newly founded universal public education system to identify students who would require extra assistance to master the standardized curriculum. In response, with his collaborator Théodore Simon (1873–1961), he developed the Binet-Simon Intelligence Test, first published in 1905 (revised in 1908 and 1911). Although the test was used to effect in France, it would find its greatest success (and controversy) in the United States, where it was translated in by Henry H. Goddard (1866–1957), the director of the Training School for the Feebleminded in Vineland, New Jersey, and his assistant, Elizabeth Kite (a translation of the 1905 edition appeared in the Vineland Bulletin in 1908, but much better known was Kite's 1916 translation of the 1908 edition, which appeared in book form). The translated test was used by Goddard to advance his eugenics agenda with respect to those he deemed congenitally feeble-minded, especially immigrants from non-Western European countries. Binet's test was revised by Stanford professor Lewis M. Terman (1877–1956) into the Stanford-Binet IQ test in 1916. With Binet's death in 1911, the Sorbonne laboratory and L'Année Psychologique fell to Henri Piéron (1881–1964). Piéron's orientation was more physiological that Binet's had been.

Pierre Janet became the leading psychiatrist in France, being appointed to the Salpêtrière (1890–1894), the Sorbonne (1895–1920), and the Collège de France (1902–1936). In 1904, he co-founded the Journale de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique with fellow Sorbonne professor Georges Dumas (1866–1946), a student and faithful follower of Ribot. Whereas Janet's teacher, Charcot, had focused on the neurologial bases of hysteria, Janet was concerned to develop a scientific approach to psychopathology as a mental disorder. His theory that mental pathology results from conflict between unconscious and conscious parts of the mind, and that unconscious mental contents may emerge as symptoms with symbolic meanings led to a public priority dispute with Sigmund Freud.

Paul Broca (1824–1880) who was a French surgeon, supported the work of the German physiologist, Johannes Müller (1801–1858) whose work created the evolution of biology. What Broca did was, in 1861, he performed an autopsy on the brain of a man who had a stroke a few years ago prior to his death. The man lost his ability to speak after his stroke. The part of the brain was the cereberal cortex on the left side of the brain. Broca then said that that was the region that affected the ability to speak. [Heth, C. Donald;Carlson,Neil R, Psychology the science of behaviour, Canadian fourth edition, 2010]

Early British psychology

Although the British had the first scholarly journal dedicated to the topic of psychology – Mind, founded in 1876 by Alexander Bain and edited by George Croom Robertson – it was quite a long while before experimental psychology developed there to challenge the strong tradition of "mental philosophy." The experimental reports that appeared in Mind in the first two decades of its existence were almost entirely authored by Americans, especially G. Stanley Hall and his students (notably Henry Herbert Donaldson) and James McKeen Cattell.

Francis Galton's (1822–1911) anthropometric laboratory opened in 1884. There people were tested on a wide variety of physical (e.g., strength of blow) and perceptual (e.g., visual acuity) attributes. In 1886 Galton was visited by James McKeen Cattell who would later adapt Galton's techniques in developing his own mental testing research program in the United States. Galton was not primarily a psychologist, however. The data he accumulated in the anthropometric laboratory primarily went toward supporting his case for eugenics. To help interpret the mounds of data he accumulated, Galton developed a number of important statistical techniques, including the precursors to the scatterplot and the product-moment correlation coefficient (later perfected by Karl Pearson, 1857–1936).

Soon after, Charles Spearman (1863–1945) developed the correlation-based statistical procedure of factor analysis in the process of building a case for his two-factor theory of intelligence, published in 1901. Spearman believed that people have an inborn level of general intelligence or g which can be crystallized into a specific skill in any of a number of narrow content area (s, or specific intelligence).

Laboratory psychology of the kind practiced in Germany and the United States was slow in coming to Britain. Although the philosopher James Ward (1843–1925) urged Cambridge University to establish a psychophysics laboratory from the mid-1870s forward, it was not until the 1891 that they put so much as £50 toward some basic apparatus (Bartlett, 1937). A laboratory was established through the assistance of the physiology department in 1897 and a lectureship in psychology was established which first went to W. H. R. Rivers (1864–1922). Soon Rivers was joined by C. S. Myers (1873–1946) and William McDougall (1871–1938). This group showed as much interest in anthropology as psychology, going with Alfred Cort Haddon (1855–1940) on the famed Torres Straits expedition of 1898.

In 1901 the Psychological Society was established (which renamed itself the British Psychological Society in 1906), and in 1904 Ward and Rivers co-founded the British Journal of Psychology.

Second generation German psychology

Würzburg School

In 1896, one of Wundt's former Leipzig laboratory assistants, Oswald Külpe (1862–1915), founded a new laboratory in Würzburg. Külpe soon surrounded himself with a number of younger psychologists, most notably Narziß Ach (1871–1946), Karl Bühler (1879–1963), Ernst Dürr (1878–1913), Karl Marbe (1869–1953), and Henry Jackson Watt (1879–1925). Collectively, they developed a new approach to psychological experimentation that flew in the face of many of Wundt's restrictions. Wundt had drawn a distinction between the old philosophical style of self-observation (Selbstbeobachtung) in which one introspected for extended durations on higher thought processes and inner-perception (innere Wahrnehmung) in which one could be immediately aware of a momentary sensation, feeling, or image (Vorstellung). The former was declared to be impossible by Wundt, who argued that higher thought could not be studied experimentally through extended introspection, but only humanistically through Völkerpsychologie (folk psychology). Only the latter was a proper subject for experimentation.

The Würzburgers, by contrast, designed experiments in which the experimental subject was presented with a complex stimulus (e.g., a Nietzschean aphorism or a logical problem) and after processing it for a time (e.g., interpreting the aphorism or solving the problem), retrospectively reported to the experimenter all that had passed through his consciousness during the interval. In the process, the Würzburgers claimed to have discovered a number of new elements of consciousness (over and above Wundt's sensations, feelings, and images) including Bewußtseinslagen (conscious sets), Bewußtheiten (awarenesses), and Gedanken (thoughts). In the English-language literature, these are often collectively termed "imageless thoughts", and the debate between Wundt and the Würzburgers as the "imageless thought controversy."

Wundt referred to the Würzburgers' studies as "sham" experiments and criticized them vigorously. Wundt's most significant English student, Edward Bradford Titchener, then working at Cornell, intervened in the dispute, claiming to have conducted extended introspective studies in which he was able to resolve the Würzburgers imageless thoughts into sensations, feelings, and images. He thus, paradoxically, used a method of which Wundt did not approve in order to affirm Wundt's view of the situation.[21]

The imageless thought debate is often said to have been instrumental in undermining the legitimacy of all introspective methods in experimental psychology and, ultimately, in bringing about the behaviorist revolution in American psychology. It was not without its own delayed legacy, however. Herbert Simon (1981) cites the work of one Würzburg psychologist in particular, Otto Selz (1881–1943), for having inspired him to develop his famous problem-solving computer algorithms (e.g., Logic Theorist and General Problem Solver) and his "thinking out loud" method for protocol analysis. In addition, Karl Popper studied psychology under Bühler and Selz, and appears to have brought some of their influence, unattributed, to his philosophy of science.[22]

Gestalt psychology

Whereas the Würzburgers debated with Wundt mainly on matters of method, another German movement, centered in Berlin, took issue with the widespread assumption that the aim of psychology should be to break consciousness down into putative basic elements. Instead, they argued that the psychological "whole" has priority and that the "parts" are defined by the structure of the whole, rather than vice versa. Thus, the school was named Gestalt, a German term meaning approximately "form" or "configuration." It was led by Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967), and Kurt Koffka (1886–1941). Wertheimer had been a student of Austrian philosopher, Christian von Ehrenfels (1859–1932), who claimed that in addition to the sensory elements of a perceived object, there is an extra element which, though in some sense derived from the organization of the standard sensory elements, is also to be regarded as being an element in its own right. He called this extra element Gestalt-qualität or "form-quality." For instance, when one hears a melody, one hears the notes plus something in addition to them which binds them together into a tune – the Gestalt-qualität. It is the presence of this Gestalt-qualität which, according to Von Ehrenfels, allows a tune to be transposed to a new key, using completely different notes, but still retain its identity. Wertheimer took the more radical line that "what is given me by the melody does not arise ... as a secondary process from the sum of the pieces as such. Instead, what takes place in each single part already depends upon what the whole is", (1925/1938). In other words, one hears the melody first and only then may perceptually divide it up into notes. Similarly in vision, one sees the form of the circle first – it is given "im-mediately" (i.e. its apprehension is not mediated by a process of part-summation). Only after this primary apprehension might one notice that it is made up of lines or dots or stars.

Gestalt-Theorie was officially initiated in 1912 in an article by Wertheimer on the phi-phenomenon; a perceptual illusion in which two stationary but alternately flashing lights appear to be a single light moving from one location to another. Contrary to popular opinion, his primary target was not behaviorism, as it was not yet a force in psychology. The aim of his criticism was, rather, the atomistic psychologies of Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894), Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), and other European psychologists of the time.

The two men who served as Wertheimer's subjects in the phi experiment were Köhler and Koffka. Köhler was an expert in physical acoustics, having studied under physicist Max Planck (1858–1947), but had taken his degree in psychology under Carl Stumpf (1848–1936). Koffka was also a student of Stumpf's, having studied movement phenomena and psychological aspects of rhythm. In 1917 Köhler (1917/1925) published the results of four years of research on learning in chimpanzees. Köhler showed, contrary to the claims of most other learning theorists, that animals can learn by "sudden insight" into the "structure" of a problem, over and above the associative and incremental manner of learning that Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) and Edward Lee Thorndike (1874–1949) had demonstrated with dogs and cats, respectively.

The terms "structure" and "organization" were focal for the Gestalt psychologists. Stimuli were said to have a certain structure, to be organized in a certain way, and that it is to this structural organization, rather than to individual sensory elements, that the organism responds. When an animal is conditioned, it does not simply respond to the absolute properties of a stimulus, but to its properties relative to its surroundings. To use a favorite example of Köhler's, if conditioned to respond in a certain way to the lighter of two gray cards, the animal generalizes the relation between the two stimuli rather than the absolute properties of the conditioned stimulus: it will respond to the lighter of two cards in subsequent trials even if the darker card in the test trial is of the same intensity as the lighter one in the original training trials.

In 1921 Koffka published a Gestalt-oriented text on developmental psychology, Growth of the Mind. With the help of American psychologist Robert Ogden, Koffka introduced the Gestalt point of view to an American audience in 1922 by way of a paper in Psychological Bulletin. It contains criticisms of then-current explanations of a number of problems of perception, and the alternatives offered by the Gestalt school. Koffka moved to the United States in 1924, eventually settling at Smith College in 1927. In 1935 Koffka published his Principles of Gestalt Psychology. This textbook laid out the Gestalt vision of the scientific enterprise as a whole. Science, he said, is not the simple accumulation of facts. What makes research scientific is the incorporation of facts into a theoretical structure. The goal of the Gestaltists was to integrate the facts of inanimate nature, life, and mind into a single scientific structure. This meant that science would have swallow not only what Koffka called the quantitative facts of physical science but the facts of two other "scientific categories": questions of order and questions of Sinn, a German word which has been variously translated as significance, value, and meaning. Without incorporating the meaning of experience and behavior, Koffka believed that science would doom itself to trivialities in its investigation of human beings.

Having survived the onslaught of the Nazis up to the mid-1930s,[23] all the core members of the Gestalt movement were forced out of Germany to the United States by 1935.[24] Köhler published another book, Dynamics in Psychology, in 1940 but thereafter the Gestalt movement suffered a series of setbacks. Koffka died in 1941 and Wertheimer in 1943. Wertheimer's long-awaited book on mathematical problem-solving, Productive Thinking was published posthumously in 1945 but Köhler was now left to guide the movement without his two long-time colleagues.[25]

Emergence of behaviorism in America

Main article: Behaviorism

As a result of the conjunction of a number of events in the early 20th century, behaviorism gradually emerged as the dominant school in American psychology. First among these was the increasing skepticism with which many viewed the concept of consciousness: although still considered to be the essential element separating psychology from physiology, its subjective nature and the unreliable introspective method it seemed to require, troubled many. William James' 1904 Journal of Philosophy... article "Does Consciousness Exist?", laid out the worries explicitly.

Second was the gradual rise of a rigorous animal psychology. In addition to Edward Lee Thorndike's work with cats in puzzle boxes in 1898, the start of research in which rats learn to navigate mazes was begun by Willard Small (1900, 1901 in American Journal of Psychology). Robert M. Yerkes's 1905 Journal of Philosophy... article "Animal Psychology and the Criteria of the Psychic" raised the general question of when one is entitled to attribute consciousness to an organism. The following few years saw the emergence of John Broadus Watson (1878–1959) as a major player, publishing his dissertation on the relation between neurological development and learning in the white rat (1907, Psychological Review Monograph Supplement; Carr & Watson, 1908, J. Comparative Neurology & Psychology). Another important rat study was published by Henry H. Donaldson (1908, J. Comparative Neurology & Psychology). The year 1909 saw the first English-language account of Ivan Pavlov's studies of conditioning in dogs (Yerkes & Morgulis, 1909, Psychological Bulletin).

A third factor was the rise of Watson to a position of significant power within the psychological community. In 1908, Watson was offered a junior position at Johns Hopkins by James Mark Baldwin. In addition to heading the Johns Hopkins department, Baldwin was the editor of the influential journals, Psychological Review and Psychological Bulletin. Only months after Watson's arrival, Baldwin was forced to resign his professorship due to scandal. Watson was suddenly made head of the department and editor of Baldwin's journals. He resolved to use these powerful tools to revolutionize psychology in the image of his own research. In 1913 he published in Psychological Review the article that is often called the "manifesto" of the behaviorist movement, "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It." There he argued that psychology "is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science", "introspection forms no essential part of its methods..." and "The behaviorist... recognizes no dividing line between man and brute". The following year, 1914, his first textbook, Behavior went to press. Although behaviorism took some time to be accepted as a comprehensive approach (see Samelson, 1981), (in no small part because of the intervention of World War I), by the 1920s Watson's revolution was well underway. The central tenet of early behaviorism was that psychology should be a science of behavior, not of the mind, and rejected internal mental states such as beliefs, desires, or goals. Watson himself, however, was forced out of Johns Hopkins by scandal in 1920. Although he continued to publish during the 1920s, he eventually moved on to a career in advertising (see Coon, 1994).

Among the behaviorists who continued on, there were a number of disagreements about the best way to proceed. Neo-behaviorists such as Edward C. Tolman, Edwin Guthrie, Clark L. Hull, and B. F. Skinner debated issues such as (1) whether to reformulate the traditional psychological vocabulary in behavioral terms or discard it in favor of a wholly new scheme, (2) whether learning takes place all at once or gradually, (3) whether biological drives should be included in the new science in order to provide a "motivation" for behavior, and (4) to what degree any theoretical framework is required over and above the measured effects of reinforcement and punishment on learning. By the late 1950s, Skinner's formulation had become dominant, and it remains a part of the modern discipline under the rubric of Behavior Analysis.

Behaviorism was the ascendant experimental model for research in psychology for much of the 20th century, largely due to the creation and successful application (not least of which in advertising) of conditioning theories as scientific models of human behaviour.

What Is Stress?

Vocabulary:

homeward bound - возвращающийся домой, направляющийся на родину

eustress - положительный стресс, эвстресс

distress - физическая боль, недомогание, горе, несчастье, душевное страдание

stressor - стресс-фактор, стрессор, фактор стресса

nomadic - кочевой, кочующий

wear and tear of life - жизненные передряги

finite - ограниченный, имеющий предел

liken уподоблять (to); сравнивать; приравнивать (to, with)

draw on - черпать, заимствовать, использовать

eventually - в конечном счете, в итоге, в конце концов; со временем

vicious circle - порочный круг

It is different things to different people. To a mountaineer it is the challenge of pushing physical resources to the limit by striving to achieve a demanding goal. To the homeward bound motorist it can be heavy traffic and exhaust fumes. To the student it can be exam pressure.

Take a piece of paper and write the word stress at the top. Now write down all the words and images that come to your mind as you think about this word.

Most people respond to the word stress in negative ways. They see it as a destructive force. However, not all stress is negative. The word eustress has been coined to describe positive stress. Eustress is the type of stress you are likely to experience when you inherit a large amount of money or receive an unexpected promotion or reward. Eustress is the stress of winning and achieving.

Negative stress is distress. It is the stress of losing, failing, overworking and not coping. Distress affects people in a negative often harmful manner. We all experience distress from time to time. It is a normal, unavoidable part of living.

Stressors Cause Stress

Stress results from failure to adequately cope with stressors. Stressors could be loud noise, uncomfortable air-conditioning, debts, ringing telephones, broken relationships, unrealistic deadlines, discouragement, fear, pain and thousands of other things that impact upon us in the normal course of life.

It is impossible to avoid stressors. The only totally stress-free state is death! Stressors will always be there because we live in an imperfect and unpredictable world which is going to cause us to frequently get stressed. We experience stress as the body adjusts to the external demands placed upon it. Our body constantly seeks to maintain stability and stress is usually sensed as the body readjusts to too much pressure.

We need to assist our bodies to cope with being stressed because our natural biological stress-adjustors are not ideally suited to the demands of modern living. Our bodies are well suited to cope with the distressing events faced by our primitive ancestors. The stressors faced by humans conditioned to a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle are obviously different to the distressing lifestyle of today.

Our distant ancestors needed chemical responses that are inappropriate today. If you physically ran away from your workplace whenever things got on top of you then this would not enhance your standing in the Organisation. Conversely if you punch the boss on the nose when he/she gives you a tough time then the resulting dismissal and assault charges will generate considerably greater levels of distress. Consequently we need to develop special skills to deal with special stressors.

The Consequences of Stress

One of the pioneers of stress research, Dr. Hans Selye wrote that "...stress is essentially reflected by the rate of all the wear and tear caused by life."

His research convinced him that the body has only a finite reserve of adaptation energy to apply to the stressors of life. Selye likened this reserve to a bank account upon which we can make withdrawals from time to time but into which we cannot make deposits. It is a non-renewable reserve of energy which we draw on throughout life until eventually it is consumed and death results.

Over a long period of time the stress response begins to take a toll on the body.

A weakened immune system makes us vulnerable to infection and this is why people under stress often experience regular attacks of colds and flu.

We can do ourselves a great deal of harm by stressful thinking. We can flood our body with stress hormones and this can create a vicious circle making us more and more stressful.

What Makes Us Happy? (Что делает нас счастливыми?)

Happiness is all about everyday, normal activities, psychologists have argued, but do we intuitively understand what strategies increase happiness or not? To find out if students knew, Tkach and Lyubomirsky (2006) asked 500 undergraduates about the strategies they used to increase their happiness.

Below are the strategies students reported using, starting with the most frequently used, down to the least. Also, for each strategy Tkach and Lyubomirsky looked at the relationship between its use and students' reported levels of happiness to see if those who used a particular strategy were actually happier.

Keep in mind that this is a correlational study. That means it can only tell us that two things - like having a social life and happiness - are related, not that one definitely causes the other. That said, there are other studies which do provide evidence of causality in some categories.

1. A social life

Social affiliation (присоединение; прием, принятие в члены) - hanging around with friends, helping others - was the most frequently reported method of increasing happiness. It also had the strongest relationship with student's actual happiness. No surprises here. Experiments manipulating people's social activity have found that when increased it leads to more happiness. It's gratifying to see that the number 1, most frequently used strategy probably does work!

2. Acting happy

Direct strategies like 'acting happy' and 'smiling' were the second most popular. While there is some experimental evidence to back this one up, Tkach and Lyubomirsky are cautious. I'd be cautious as well. 'Acting happy' might be useful as a short-term strategy but I'm not so sure about its useful in the long-term.

3. Achieving long-term goals

The students were pretty keen on setting themselves long-term goals for personal achievement, and then sticking to them. This was a relatively popular strategy for increasing happiness and there are also a good few studies to back up this finding. Well done to the students!

4. Passive leisure pursuits (занятие)

Here's the first bad boy. Passive leisure, like watching TV or playing video games, while relatively popular, showed no connection with happiness. Experimental studies back this up finding few benefits for happiness from passive leisure activities. So, once again, it's time to chuck out the the idiot box and the Xbox.

5. Active leisure pursuits

No question about this one. It's very well established that active leisure pursuits like running or cycling increase happiness. What's worrying is that these pursuits come lower down the list than passive leisure pursuits.

6. Religion

This was a relatively unpopular strategy for increasing happiness, although it is reasonably well-established that religion and being happy go together. Tkach and Lyubomirsky suggest the reason for this connection could be to do with social connectedness, having a sense of purpose in life or even reduced alcohol consumption.

7. Partying and clubbing

Perhaps surprisingly amongst university students this was relatively unpopular as a happiness-enhancing activity. It's just as well since those who partied more weren't any happier, once their extraversion was taken into account.

8. Mental control

This is the second bad boy. It centres around thinking bad thoughts: both contemplating them and trying to suppress them. This category was significantly associated with being unhappy. Indeed, previous research has found that both ruminating on negative thoughts and trying to suppress negative thoughts leads to unhappiness.

A (mostly) positive message

This last category of mental control really stands out: what on earth is it doing on a list of strategies to increase happiness? Statistically it was the strongest predictor of unhappiness. This suggests that a significant minority of people have exactly the wrong idea about what strategies increase happiness.

Passive leisure pursuits is the other category that stands out. All the other categories in the top 6 have at least some connection with happiness. This one has none and yet there it is at number 4 in the list.

The positive message is that generally the strategies that people use to increase their happiness do actually work. We're relying on self-reports here, so people could well be misrepresenting what they actually do - but at least they mostly know what they're supposed to be doing.

Ways to happiness and spiritual well being

It's more important to be happy than to be right.

you can either be happy, or unhappy. Choose happy.

Live life with an open hand, an open mind, and an open heart.

Compliment three people everyday.

Watch a sunrise.

Be the first to say "Hello."

Don't waste an opportunity to tell someone you love them.

Treat everyone as you want to be treated.

Never give up on anybody; miracles happen.

Remember someone's name.

Pray not for things, but for wisdom and courage.

Be tough-minded, but tender hearted.

Be kinder than you have to be.

Don't forget that a person's greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated.

Keep your promises.

Learn to show cheerfulness even when you don't feel it.

Remember that overnight success usually takes 15 years.

Leave everything better than you found it.

Remember that winners do what losers don't want to do.

When you arrive at your job in the morning, let the first thing you say brighten everyone's day.

Don't rain on other people's parades.

Live beneath your means.

Keep some things to yourself and don't promote havoc by backstabbing people you love.

Stop Rushing Past Life: Let Go!

Alternative Happy Tips

Whatever it is, if you really want to eat it, eat it!

Never piss off anyone who has access to you when you are asleep.

Never argue with a pregnant woman.

What's So Funny? The Psychology Behind Jokes and Laughter (И что смешного? Психология шуток и смеха)

Laughter is universal. it has nothing to do with what language we speak, which culture we were raised in, or what our religious faith is. We all laugh. Psychologists have compared laughter to speaking in tongues (говорение на (незнакомых) языках; глоссолалия - нарушение артикуляции или речи у психически больных): we can't control what we laugh at, or the sounds that come out of our mouth. All we know is that we laugh, and that laughter transcends all of our differences.

Scientists have studied laughter by going out into public places and observing people in social settings, by searching for "the perfect joke" and studying its effect on the brain of its recipient, and by hooking people up to an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging - получение изображений методом ядерного магнитного резонанса) machine and studying brain activity as they listen to both real and "fake" (jokes not meant to funny) jokes. What they've discovered about laughter is a bit surprising. And it may explain why certain people make us laugh easier than others can.

Four Facts About Laughter

1. Laughter varies by age and gender. Children laugh 400 times per day, as opposed to adults, who only laugh 15 times per day. Any parent has experienced this. Kids laugh at the weirdest things. But laughter is part of their cognitive development (когнитивное развитие). Kids who tell and listen to jokes are learning about language, connections, and irony. Those who have a well-developed sense of humor have a better outlook on life and an easier time interacting with their peers.

Women laugh more than men: about 126% more, according to an article published in Psychology Today.

Men are the biggest laugh-getters, a trait that starts early in childhood. Most likely, if you think back to the class clown in elementary or middle school, it was a boy. What makes women the laughers and men the comedians? That question is still up in the air. As we learn more about the science of laughter, hopefully the answer will unfold.

2. Laughter is a social phenomenon. Ever notice that you laugh more when watching a funny movie with your pals than you do when you watch the same movie by yourself? Psychologists have studied this phenomenon, as well as the phenomenon known as "contagious laughter" to determine why it is that we laugh more with others. It comes down to communication. Laughter is a wordless, un-fakeable demonstration of human emotion. It binds us as maybe no other force on Earth can. Television producers of the 1950's understood this before anyone studied it---they started setting sitcoms to laugh tracks to make the home audience laugh and enjoy the show more. It's also why Leno, Letterman, and Conan tape before a live studio audience. The audience laughs, and we find ourselves laughing along with them.

3. Different types of jokes affect different parts of the brain. The part of the brain that reacts to jokes is the medial ventral (внутренний, вентральный) prefrontal (префронтальный; предлобный) cortex (кора головного мозга), which is where cognitive development, personality development, and determining correct social behavior occurs. However, different types of jokes trigger different parts of the brain as we process them. Puns (игра слов; каламбур) take one path to the prefrontal cortex, for example, while story jokes take a completely different neurological path. This explains why people who have experienced brain trauma may find one type of joke funny, but find absolutely no humor in an equally funny joke of a different genre, or why they may lose their sense of humor all together.

4. Laughter has very little to do with the joke itself. In studying laughter in social settings, scientists observed an interesting phenomenon: the joke itself was the least important factor in instigating laughter. In fact, statements like "well, hello yourself," or "yeah, that's what I thought" were more likely to get a laugh than an actual joke was. The larger the group, the more each person in the group laughed. Women tend to laugh more heartily in the presence of men they are attracted to than they do in the presence of other women or men who don't attract them. What this tells us is that while a joke can be a great icebreaker, what matters more is the interaction and relationship between people. This also explains that one guy you know who tells the dumbest (глупейший) jokes but never fails to be the life of the party.

The Great Unifier

All of the research boils down (to boil down to - сводиться к (чему-л.)) to this inescapable (неизбежный, неминуемый, неотвратимый) fact: humans are, and are designed to be, social beings. Laughter is a reflex, just like the startle (испуг; страх; вздрагивание (от неожиданного действия, страха)) reflex, gag (рвотные движения) reflex, of the reflex of automatically pulling your hand away from a hot stove. Laughter is irresistible, contagious, and binds us through its universality. It transcends (выходить за пределы) the issues and differences that divide us. In the end, we're all the same, laughing at the same dumb knock-knock joke as the next guy. Maybe that's really the reason laughter is the best medicine.

Секреты мозга: тайны памяти. (Secrets of the Brain: the Mystery of Memory).

by Tonia E. Chrapko, B.Ed.

Even though science continues to give us ever increasing insights into what memory is much of it remains a mystery. Researchers consider memory a process, and when you remember you are actually reconstructing the event from bits of information stored in various parts of the brain. But the mystery is, what initiates the reconstruction? Is it, as some suggest, directed from outside the physical body, from the energy body? That remains to be seen.

The Location of Memory. In the past, it was thought that all memory was in the brain. However, Gazzaniga (1988) reports that memory occurs throughout the nervous system. So every thought you have is “felt” throughout your entire body because the receptors for the chemicals in your brain are found on the surfaces of cells throughout your body. Thus when the chemicals are activated in the brain, the message is communicated to every part of your body that allows cells to communicate by remote travel using blood and cerebrospinal fluid [спинномозговая жидкость].

Stress Erodes Memory. Excessive stress and obesity produce an over-production of a complex set of stress hormones that damage and destroy neurons in the brain’s region critical to learning and memory. One really good way to burn off excess stress hormones is through exercise. So for those experiencing particularly high stress levels exercise is not only beneficial, it is necessary.

What are the Characteristics of Memory? Sensory – we remember things that involve our five senses. So, the more senses that get activate, the easier it will be to recall.

Intensity – when something is more intensely funny, sexual, absurd, etc. it tends to stand out in our memories.

Outstanding – things that are dull and unoriginal are more difficult to remember because there is nothing to distinguish them from all the other memories.

Emotional – when something happens that has high emotional content – positive or negative – we tend to remember it more easily.

Survival – anything we perceive as important to survival we will remember more easily. It’s not just physical survival. Survival can include emotional survival, psychological survival and financial survival.

Personal importance – we naturally remember things that interest us and that have some personal importance.

Repetition – the more often we recall information, the better we get at recalling on demand.

First and last – the brain most easily recalls things from the beginning and the ending of any session or lecture.

What are the Keys to Memory? Pay attention – often times the biggest problem is that people’s minds are not focused in the moment. Instead, they are thinking about something in the past of future.

Visualization – create a visual in your mind because the brain thinks in pictures and concepts, not paragraphs.

Association – find something to connect the information to…similar to word association. Ask, “What does this remind me of?”

Imagination – get creative when visualizing or making associations.

Why do we forget? It could be that we never stored the information properly in the first place. It could be because there was not enough emotion or personal importance connected to the information to make it stick. It could be that it was so emotionally traumatic that the mind suppressed it in order to maintain normalcy.

Why do we remember negative events? Whenever emotions are activated, especially strong emotions, the information or experience is entrenched into memory. Often times we tend to dwell on it, thereby rehearsing it and entrenching it even further. It is also easier to recall negative memories when we are in a bad mood. Why? Because we remember things in the state that we learned them so whenever you are feeling angry you will more easily recall other situations in which you were angry.

The subconscious remembers everything. If we were to compare the conscious mind with the subconscious, the conscious would measure about one foot long and the subconscious would be the length of a football field. The potential is enormous. So everything we experience can be stored. However, the conscious mind would get overloaded trying to process all the incoming bits of data on a daily basis. Instead, all the information goes into the subconscious for storage and we may never deal with it, except if the mind chooses to process it at night through dreams. Or, if we go for clinical hypnosis, through which a therapist assists in accessing information or memories the conscious mind has “forgotten” or repressed.

Загадки сновидений. (The Mysteries of Dreams).

by G. William Domhoff

It’s a universal human experience. You rest your head against the pillow at night and slowly drift off to sleep. Soon you enter a weird and wonderful - and sometimes frightening - world. It’s a world in which you might find yourself walking around school in your pajamas or chasing the school bus after you missed it. You could be flying under your own power or talking with a long-deceased relative. You’ve entered the world of dreams.

People have always dreamed, and dreamers have always wondered what their mysterious nighttime visions meant. Some philosophers in ancient times believed that dreams were important messages from the gods or visions of things to come. As the centuries rolled by, many other philosophers, as well as average people, developed their own theories about the purpose of dreams and what dreams mean. And finally, dreams became a subject of scientific inquiry.

Freud and Jung Interpret Dreams. In his 1900 book, Freud described how he asked his patients to tell him everything they could remember from their dreams. Freud believed that dreams were “the royal road to the unconscious.” He concluded, on the basis of his talks with the patients, that dreams are caused by disturbing [беспокоящий] wishes, such as sexual desires or aggressive impulses that a person represses in waking life. These unacceptable thoughts, according to Freud, are often disguised as symbolic elements in dreams. For example, fire may symbolize feelings of hostility, while water may stand for sexuality. The symbolism in dreams, Freud maintained [отстаивать], needs to be decoded, or interpreted, in order to be understood. Freud believed that symbolism is necessary in dreams, because straightforward thoughts about unacceptable desires and feelings would arouse anxiety and awaken the dreamer. Thus, Freud proposed, dreams are the guardians of sleep.

Freud’s questioning of his patients led him to believe that dreams are usually brief and that dreaming itself is rare during sleep. Furthermore, he concluded, a dream usually incorporates some minor, unresolved event from earlier in the day—a piece of “unfinished business” of some kind. But at a deeper level, Freud theorized, dreaming is a unique state of consciousness that is prompted by such urges [побуждение] as hunger, thirst, and sexuality that arise during the night.

Doubts about Freud’s explanations for dreaming led the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung to develop his own theory between 1912 and 1920. Jung rejected Freud’s idea that dreams are related to wish fulfillment. He believed that dreams can express spiritual and moral concerns as often as they express sexual or emotional preoccupations [предрассудки]. Jung’s main conclusion was that dreams express aspects of the personality that are not fully developed in waking life. For example, people who neglect their spiritual needs may experience strong religious feelings in their dreams.

In order to understand what their dreams mean, Jung suggested, dreamers need to become familiar with the kinds of symbols used in myths, fairy tales, and religious rituals. For instance, as in tales involving the “big, bad wolf,” a dangerous animal may symbolize some person or event that poses a threat to the dreamer. And, as in Christian theology, wine may represent blood or salvation. Jung claimed that people in modern Western civilization often ignore such symbolic language, and so they need help in understanding what their dreams are trying to say to them.

Although most psychiatrists disagreed with some of the ideas of Freud or Jung, many accepted the central conclusion of their theories—that dreams have symbolic meanings.

Sleep Laboratories. Between 1953 and 1957, physiologist Nathaniel Kleitman of the University of Chicago and two students discovered that sleep is characterized by four different levels of brain activity. The scientists found that during the first hour or so of sleep, the activity of the brain steadily decreases. Then it begins to increase until it reaches a high level similar to that of the waking state. The researchers named this mentally active stage of sleep Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep because of the eye movements that are one of its most noticeable characteristics. Four or five distinct periods of REM sleep occur at intervals of about 90 minutes during a typical eight-hour sleep period. Each REM period is longer than the previous one, ranging in length from about 5 to 10 minutes to half-an-hour or more. Occurring between the REM periods are intervals of lower brain activity called non-REM (NREM) sleep. Each period of NREM sleep occurs at a higher stage of brain activity than the previous one.

Do Dreams Have any Meaning? Taking the idea that dreams have meaning, but rejecting the explanations of Freud and Jung, many scientists have developed their own theories of dreams. For example, several researchers have proposed that dreams have a problem-solving function, suggesting possible solutions to emotional problems. Other researchers, however, point out that few dreams seem to provide even a hint of a solution to such problems.

The inability of investigators to develop a widely accepted theory to explain the meaning of dreams led sleep-lab researchers J. Alan Hobson and Robert W. McCarley of Harvard Medical School in Boston to suggest in 1977 that dreams have no function or purpose. The theory proposes that the brain uses stored memories and established thought patterns to try to bring some order to the random signals, thus producing dreams. Many dream researchers, however, doubt this theory, because it incorrectly implies that dreaming is strictly a product of REM sleep.

Some sleep researchers claim that dreaming may be the accidental by-product of two evolutionary developments—complex brains and sleep. According to this view, the evolution of complex brains in humans gave rise to dreaming because, during sleep, there is no external world to help organize the vast amount of brain activity. Thus, dreams are the brain’s purposeless response to this mental activity. Despite this theory, most dream researchers maintain that there must be at least some meaning in dreams, because so many elements in dreams relate to waking thoughts and concerns.

In order to answer the question, “What do my dreams mean?” we may have to wait for further advances in the study of dream content and breakthroughs in the study of brain function. In the meantime, when you go to bed at the end of a long day and close your eyes, you might simply look forward to the fascinating show that your brain will be putting on for you.

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About the author: G. William Domhoff is a research professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz and the author of several books, including Finding Meaning in Dreams: A Quantitative Approach. http://www.nautis.com/node/163

Как лучше усваивать знания. (Learning Tips).

1. Your brain loves color. Use colored pens – good quality, not gel pens – or use colored paper. Color helps memory.

2. Your brain can effectively focus and concentrate for up to 25 minutes (adults). Take a 10-minute break after every 20-30 minutes of studying. Go do some chores: rake the lawn, iron a shirt, vacuum. Come back after 10 minutes and do another focused, intense session.

3. Your brain needs to be rested to learn fast and remember best. If you are tired take a 20-minute nap first otherwise you are wasting your study time.

4. Your brain is like a motor: it needs fuel. You wouldn’t put dirty fuel in your Lamborghini (if you had one) or you wouldn’t put low quality fuel in a rocket, would you? Well, your brain is a much more valuable machine than either of those so feed it properly. Junk food and imitation food and all the chemicals and preservatives weaken both your body and your mind. In fact, a recent study in England showed that your IQ is affected by your diet.

5. Your brain is like a sea of an electro-chemical activity. And both electricity and chemicals flow better in water. If you are dehydrated you just don’t focus as well. Drink enough water (colored liquids – pop, juice, coffee, etc. – are not the same). Often headaches are connected to dehydration, too.

6. Your brain loves questions. When you come up with questions in class or when reading a book, your brain automatically searches for answers, making the learning faster. A good question has more than one answer.

7. Your brain and body have their own rhythm cycles: there are times during the day when you are more alert than others. You will save time learning if you study during your peak periods.

8. Your brain and body communicate constantly. In any learning situation, sit up and lean forward to help keep your mind alert. Buy a good quality, adjustable office chair.

9. Your brain is affected by smells. Use aromatherapy to keep your brain alert. Peppermint, lemon and cinnamon are good ones to experiment with.

10. Your brain needs oxygen. Get out there and exercise.

11. Your brain needs space. Be sure that you are not trying to study in a small area.

12. Your brain needs your space to be organized. One recent study showed that kids who grow up in tidy, organized homes do better academically. Why? Because by being trained to organize the outside environment, the brain learns to organize the internal knowledge…which makes recall faster.

13. Your brain doesn’t know what you can’t do until you tell it. What are you telling it? Listen to your self-talk. Stop the negativity. Replace it with more positive, encouraging talk.

14. Your brain is like a muscle: it can be trained and strengthened, at any age. No excuses. Stop being a mental couch potato [домосед]. Professional athletes practice every day; you can practice homework everyday. If “you don’t have any”, make some up for yourself. Read ahead, review…do SOMETHING.

15. Your brain needs repetition. It is better to do short frequent reviews than one long review because what counts is how many times your brain sees something, not how long is sees it in one sitting.

16. Your brain can understand faster than you can read. Use a pencil or finger to “lead” your eyes. By doing so you help your eyes move more quickly.

17. Your brain needs movement. You might find your productivity go up if you have a standing desk. Buy one or make one by raising your desk/table on blocks. This allows you to move more easily and stay more alert.

18. Your brain seeks patterns and connections. When you are learning something, ask yourself, “What does this remind me of?” This will also help your memory because it connects the new knowledge to something you already know.

19. Your brain loves fun. We learn in direct proportion to how much fun we are having. Learning is life. Live it up! [Веселись!]

Graphology – Science or Fiction? (Графология: наука или вымысел?)

Graphology (графология, изучение почерка (учение о почерке, исследование его с точки зрения отражающихся в нем свойств и психических состояний пишущего. Тесты по графологии часто применяются при отборе персонала)) is a branch of a diverse group of sciences of «character reading». Since ancient times, man has been intrigued by human variability and uniqueness of the individual. Graphology in particular focuses on interpreting individual's character and personality traits by analyzing their handwriting. Using graphology to analyze personality and character is one thing; changing ones behavior by changing handwriting is another – this is referred to as graphotherapy.

Graphology is a now becoming a more widely accepted science. As most of you will agree that the human subconscious manifests itself one way or another, art, music etc. Graphology interprets this manifestation, using the most commonly used human subconscious-world interface, handwriting! Here is my first example, where this can be used. Long final strokes say a lot about individuals. We can use graphology to understand what one is conveying through long strokes? The long final strokes show how cautious one is. Using graphology we know that the writer is inclined to be cautious and careful. This reduces the tendency to be impulsive and minimizes risk in decision making.

Another example where we can use graphology to tap into one's subconscious (подсознательное). I am sure you have seen this somewhere, a consistent left ward slant. Do you know this person? Is this you? Using graphology, we know that writing with a leftward slant is a sign of an introvert. The writer rarely expresses feeling and makes logical unemotionally decisions. Would you have known that if it were not for graphology?

Trusting or not-trusting? Graphology differentiates one from another. Long narrow loops in y's and g's. The size of the loop (not the down stroke) reveals the amount of trust and imagination as it relates to people. Graphology tells us that the narrow loop reveals some trust, but these people are selective in who they let in their inner circle. Who does graphology tell us to be careful of? Using graphology I can tell you that the person with a hot temper is one where the t-bar crossed predominantly on the right of the stem. The more this is to the right the easier it will be to annoy this person. If this is combined with a rightward slant, they will lose temper even quicker.

So in summary graphology can be used to determine a complete personality and character profile of any individual. Besides the examples given above graphology can be also be used to determine aggressiveness, analytical thinking, attention to detail, curious, dual personality, emotionally responsive, extravagant, jealous, loyalty, perfectionist, controlling, stubborn nature among others. If the art of graphology is learned efficiently one can use it to their advantage and help them understand their friends, partners and family in-depth.

Difference Between Animals And Humans (Чем животные отличаются от людей)

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

The term Animal as described in the dictionary means a living organism other than humans which feeds and usually has sense organs and a nervous system and can move. Animals include a vast majority of species. Humans belong to Homo Sapiens and are bipedal species. This means that the humans walk around using their two rear limbs.

Animals would normally only include multi cells and complex organisms. Organisms like the bacteria will not be included in the animal kingdom. In most animals the dietary habits are very limited which means that they would either be vegetarians or non-vegetarians. The Humans on the other hand are omnivorous which means that they are able to consume both vegetarian and non-vegetarian foods.

Animals cannot talk or communicate with each other. In some species that the skills have been found these are very basic and undeveloped. Humans on the other hand are the only known species with highly developed communication skills.

Animals merely feed to survive and reproduce. They have not developed any skills that go beyond their survival needs. The Humans are known for their curiosity to understand and to try and influence and change their environment. It is this curiosity in the Humans that has lead to the development of advanced tools, technology and science. The human behavior is much different from the animals as we have set purposes in life that go beyond the survival needs of day today.

The Humans are highly social beings and live in large colonies. The Humans are the only known species that has the ability to domesticate animals and engage in agriculture. With the invention of advanced techniques and technology the Humans have been able to colonise all the continents. Through this colonization the humans have infringed on the land where these animals once survived and created a problem of existence for them.

Summary

1. Animals may cover a lot of species whereas Humans belong to Homo Sapiens.

2. Most animals walk on all four legs or crawl (ползать) whereas Humans are bipeds (двуногие).

3. Animals tend to be either herbivorous (травоядный) or carnivorous (плотоядный) and stick to their diets whereas the Humans are omnivorous (всеядный).

4. Animals are unable to communicate like Humans do.

5. Animals are endangered (находящийся под угрозой исчезновения (о виде)) due to the Human influence on their environment.

6. Whereas Animals simply survive in their environment, Humans have developed technology & science to change their environment. /

Dealing with Culture Shock (Как справиться с культурным шоком)

You have stepped off the plane into a new cultural world. Initially you may experience a sense of overwhelming fascination and awe. Everything around you is new: a different language, different dress, or a confusing transit system. Slowly you begin to adapt. You begin to notice certain cultural nuances. This process takes time.

Culture is "an integrated system of learned behavior patterns that are characteristic of the members of any given society. Culture refers to the total way of life of particular groups of people. It includes everything that a group of people thinks, says, does and makes - its systems of attitudes and feelings. Culture is learned and transmitted from generation to generation." (L. Robert Kohls. Survival Kit for Overseas Living, Maine: Intercultural Press, Inc. 1996, Page 23.)

You may have heard these words - Culture Shock (культурный шок (психологическая травма в результате столкновения с культурой, резко отличной от собственной)) - already and possibly within a negative context. Conflict in our lives, however, does not have to be negative. It can be used as a source of motivation, introspection, and change.

Culture shock is defined as a psychological disorientation that most people experience when living in a culture markedly different from one’s own. Culture shock occurs when our "...cultural clues, the signs and symbols which guide social interaction, are stripped away. ...A difficult part of this process for adults is the experience of feeling like children again, of not knowing instinctively the ‘right’ thing to do." (Piet-Pelon & Hornby, 1992, p.2).

Symptoms of culture shock include: homesickness, boredom, withdrawal, excessive sleep, compulsive eating/drinking, irritability, stereotyping host nationals, hostility towards host nationals.

Everyone experiences culture shock in different ways, at different times and to different degrees. Usually the cultural adjustment process follows a certain pattern. At first, you will be excited about going to starting a new adventure. When you first arrive, everything will appear new and exciting. However, after some time, you may start to feel homesick and question why the Swiss (or Italians or French) do things differently than we do. You may even become irritated with these differences. However, you will eventually get used to this new way of life. And before you know it, you will be getting excited about the return home to your family and friends.

People from different cultures have different values. You may find your own values questioned, just as you are questioning those of the Swiss (or Italians, Germans, French, Hungarians, etc.). For example, a visitor from India to the US observed: "Americans seem to be in a perpetual hurry. Just watch the way they walk down the street. They never allow themselves the leisure to enjoy life; there are too many things to do."

Sometimes our values and beliefs will conflict and sometimes they will converge with the cultures we visit. The better you are able to adjust to the differences, the greater the ability you will have in empathizing and communicating with those with whom you come in contact. The result will be a better understanding of your own values and the values of the people you will encounter.

Color Psychology (Психология цвета)

By David Johnson

Why are people more relaxed in green rooms? Why do weightlifters do their best in blue gyms?

Colors often have different meanings in various cultures. And even in Western societies, the meanings of various colors have changed over the years. But today in the U.S., researchers have generally found the following to be accurate.

Black Black is the color of authority and power. It is popular in fashion because it makes people appear thinner. It is also stylish and timeless. Black also implies submission. Priests wear black to signify submission to God. Some fashion experts say a woman wearing black implies submission to men. Black outfits can also be overpowering, or make the wearer seem aloof [надменный] or evil. Villains, such as Dracula, often wear black.

White Brides wear white to symbolize innocence and purity. White reflects light and is considered a summer color. White is popular in decorating and in fashion because it is light, neutral, and goes with everything. However, white shows dirt and is therefore more difficult to keep clean than other colors. Doctors and nurses wear white to imply sterility.

Red The most emotionally intense color, red stimulates a faster heartbeat and breathing. It is also the color of love. Red clothing gets noticed and makes the wearer appear heavier. Since it is an extreme color, red clothing might not help people in negotiations or confrontations. Red cars are popular targets for thieves. In decorating, red is usually used as an accent. Decorators say that red furniture should be perfect since it will attract attention.

The most romantic color, pink, is more tranquilizing. Sports teams sometimes paint the locker rooms used by opposing teams bright pink so their opponents will lose energy.

Blue The color of the sky and the ocean, blue is one of the most popular colors. It causes the opposite reaction as red. Peaceful, tranquil blue causes the body to produce calming chemicals, so it is often used in bedrooms. Blue can also be cold and depressing. Fashion consultants recommend wearing blue to job interviews because it symbolizes loyalty. People are more productive in blue rooms. Studies show weightlifters are able to handle heavier weights in blue gyms.

Green Currently the most popular decorating color, green symbolizes nature. It is the easiest color on the eye and can improve vision. It is a calming, refreshing color. People waiting to appear on TV sit in "green rooms" to relax. Hospitals often use green because it relaxes patients. Brides in the Middle Ages wore green to symbolize fertility. Dark green is masculine, conservative, and implies wealth. However, seamstresses [швея] often refuse to use green thread on the eve of a fashion show for fear it will bring bad luck.

Yellow Cheerful sunny yellow is an attention getter. While it is considered an optimistic color, people lose their tempers more often in yellow rooms, and babies will cry more. It is the most difficult color for the eye to take in, so it can be overpowering if overused. Yellow enhances concentration, hence its use for legal pads [блокнот размером 8,5 на 14 дюймов с отрывными страницами из жёлтой линованной бумаги, без обложки, популярен в США.]. It also speeds metabolism.

Purple The color of royalty, purple connotes luxury, wealth, and sophistication. It is also feminine and romantic. However, because it is rare in nature, purple can appear artificial.

Brown Solid, reliable brown is the color of earth and is abundant in nature. Light brown implies genuineness while dark brown is similar to wood or leather. Brown can also be sad and wistful [тоскующий]. Men are more apt to say brown is one of their favorite colors.

Food for Thought

While blue is one of the most popular colors it is one of the least appetizing. Blue food is rare in nature. Food researchers say that when humans searched for food, they learned to avoid toxic or spoiled objects, which were often blue, black, or purple. When food dyed blue is served to study subjects, they lose appetite.

Green, brown, and red are the most popular food colors. Red is often used in restaurant decorating schemes because it is an appetite stimulant.

________________________________________

Источник:

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/colors1.html

Character Comes by Learning (Характер формируется в процессе обучения).

“The worst of all deceptions is self-deception.” (Plato)

Who am I? I have a name, and that’s how people know me. But how am I known? Am I funny, serious, friendly, or angry? Do I have lots of friends…or none at all?

Our personality traits [(character) trait — черта (характера)] make up our character. And our character was shaped by those influences that had close contact with our life. For some that may be mother and father, for others, they may not even know their parents. School, friends, music, and media also have great influence on how we choose to live our life.

A good character comes from good influences, and bad ones are just the opposite. While none of us could ever choose where and what living circumstances we were born into, we must all, at some point, take responsibility for who we are. Putting the past aside, forgetting about blame, now we must choose what course and influences will direct our life.

A very wise man once said: “Do not be misled; bad company corrupts good character” (Paul the Apostle). Who do you keep company with? Who do you spend lots of time with? Is it your friends…music…TV? Stop now for a moment and ask yourself this question: what messages are you getting from these sources about life?

Think carefully about what kind of person you want to be in 5 years…in 10 years? What do you need to do now to start being that kind of person? Think about these things!

Family Life: Plan For Your Future

The influences we receive while young dramatically shape our character. They affect the very core of our being. While none of us can choose to be born into a great, loving and secure family, we all must learn to live and adapt to life as it is given to us. Much of your future will be decided by the choices you make in life. Career, marriage and family are all important decisions that you will face one day. Practice making good decisions early in life. Consequences follow our choices. Poor choices lead to bad consequences, some of which may affect your entire life. One day you may choose to have a family of your own. Who will raise your children and give them their sense of values? Will you be able to give your children a stable home where they can live in love and security with a mother and father?

Consider these facts in how you choose to live your life: Living together before marriage is becoming increasingly common in America. But research has shown that the chances for divorce are almost twice as high for couples living together before marriage, as those who don’t.

Children of divorced parents are statistically more likely to show behavior problems, emotional difficulties, and lower academic performance.

What kind of home do you want to provide for your future family? Will it be better or worse than your own? Do you want a lasting marriage and children who can grow up in a stable home? What kinds of influences help move you toward this goal? This is important…read on.

Wisdom From The Past

Below are quotes from various people. Think about some of the things they are saying.

“The great use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast [outlast – 1) продолжаться дольше, чем (что-л.) 2) пережить (что-л.)] it.” (William James)

“He that never changes his opinions, never corrects his mistakes, will never be wiser than he is today.“ (Tyron Edwards)

“The only man who never makes a mistake is the one who never does anything.” (Theodore Roosevelt)

Источник: http://www.teenhelpusa.com/help/characbuild/characbuild.htm

Body Language (Язык тела)

Body language (язык тела (невербальные средства коммуникации, включающие жесты, позы и др. невербальные знаки)) is a broad term for forms of communication using body movements or gestures instead of, or in addition to, sounds, verbal language, or other forms of communication. It forms part of the category of paralanguage, which describes all forms of human communication that are not verbal language.

Paralanguage (параязык (передача информации за счет определенной манеры говорить (напр., при помощи темпа речи, тембра и громкости голоса, тона, его модуляции и др., а также за счет таких невербальных средств, как жесты, мимика и т. п.))), including body language, has been extensively studied in social psychology. In everyday speech and popular psychology, the term is most often applied to body language that is considered involuntary, even though the distinction between voluntary and involuntary body language is often controversial. For example, a smile may be produced either consciously or unconsciously.

Voluntary body language refers to movement, gestures and poses intentionally made by a person (i.e., conscious smiling, hand movements and imitation). It can apply to many types of soundless communication. Generally, movement made with full or partial intention and an understanding of what it communicates can be considered voluntary.

Involuntary body language quite often takes the form of facial expression, and has therefore been suggested as a means to identify the emotions of a person with whom one is communicating.

The relation of body language to animal communication has often been discussed. Human paralanguage may represent a continuation of forms of communication that our non-linguistic ancestors already used, or it may be that it has been changed by co-existing with language. Body language is a product of both genetic and environmental influences. Blind children will smile and laugh even though they have never seen a smile. Iraneus Eibl-Eibesfeldt claimed that a number of basic elements of body language were universal across cultures and must therefore be fixed action patterns under instinctive control.

Some forms of human body language show continuities with communicative gestures of other apes, though often with changes in meaning. More refined gestures, which vary between cultures (for example the gestures to indicate «yes» and «no»), must be learned or modified through learning, usually by unconscious observation of the environment.

Body language is important in one-on-one communications, and may be even more important in group communications. In group situations, often only one person at a time is speaking, while non-verbal communication is coming from each individual in the group. The larger the group, the more impact body language may have.

Тема 5. Социальное давление и восприятие.

1. Вам предстоит прочитать текст о влиянии социального давления на восприятие индивида. Выучите ключевые слова из текста.

Ключевые слова (Key words)

1. imagine воображать, представлять

2. script писать сценарий

3. arrive прибывать

4. participate принимать участие

5. judgment= judgement суждение

6. unanimously единогласно

7. majority большинство

8. opinion мнение

9. trust доверие

10. pressure давление

11. affect влиять

12. perception восприятие

13. assume предполагать

14. insist настаивать

15. conclude делать вывод

2. Прочитайте и переведите текст, используя словарь.

Social Pressure and Perception

Imagine yourself in the following situation: you sign up for a psychology experiment, and on a specified date you and seven others whom you think are also subjects arrive and are seated at a table in a small room. You don't know it at the time, but the others are actually associates of the experimenter, and their behaviour has been carefully scripted. You're the only real subject.

The experimenter arrives and tells you that the study in which you are about to participate concerns people's visual judgments. She places two cards before you. The card on the left contains one vertical line. The card on the right displays three lines of different length.

The experimenter asks all of you, one at a time, to choose which of the three lines on the right card matches the length of the line on the left card. The task is repeated several times with different cards. The other "subjects" unanimously choose the wrong line. It is clear to you that they are wrong, but they have all given the same answer.

What would you do? Would you go along with the majority opinion, or would you trust your own eyes?

In 1951, the social psychologist Asch used this experiment to examine how the pressure from other people could affect one's perceptions. In total, about one third of the subjects who were placed in this situation agree with the majority.

Some of the subjects indicated after the experiment that they assumed the rest of the people were correct and that their own perceptions were wrong. Others knew they were correct but didn't want to be different from the rest of the group. Some even insisted they saw the line lengths as the majority did.

Asch concluded that it is difficult to maintain that you see something when no one else does. Pressure from other people can make you see almost anything.

3. Ответьте на вопросы, основываясь на содержании прочитанного текста.

• Who developed the experiment described in the text? When was it developed?

• What does the experimenter tell the real subject about the aim of the experiment?

• How many cards does the experimenter places in front of you? What do the cards contain?

• What does the experimenter ask you to do?

• How many times is the task repeated?

• What did some of the subjects of the experiment assume when the associates of the experiment gave the wrong answers?

• Why did some of the subjects of the experiment give the wrong answer even if they knew they were correct?