Learning Objectives

1. Define psychology.
2. Explain why psychology is a science, and list three limitations of all scientific theories.
3. Contrast the scientific study of psychology with a common-sense approach to understanding a phenomenon, such as facial recognition after a 50-year delay.
4. Explain Darwin’s theory of evolution and its importance in the field of psychology.
5. Compare and contrast Wundt’s structuralism and James’s functionalism.
6. Identify the key historical figures of the psychoanalytic perspective, of behaviorism, of humanistic psychology, and of the cognitive revolution.
7. Discuss the basic emphasis of the psychoanalytic, behaviorist, humanistic, cognitive, and neuroscientific perspectives in psychology.
8. Demonstrate how psychologists from the five major perspectives in psychology might give different explanations of the same event, such as depression.
9. Identify the differences in subject matter studied by the contemporary specialists in various fields of psychology.
10. Describe three benefits of studying psychology.
11. Discuss four recurring themes in psychology, and give an example of each.

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