Today in class, you mentioned two schools of thoughts (cognitive and behaviourist psychology) in psychology which I found particularly interesting. As I am applying for psychology in universities, I am trying to expand my knowledge and interest in psychology. Could you recommend me some resources (books, publications, videos) you find interesting in psychology?
Thanks for the question…Here is a great article from Prof George Miller at Princeton (follow the link)
Psychology could not participate in the cognitive revolution until it had freed itself from behaviorism, thus restoring cognition to scientific respectability.
I will leave you to read the whole article but a brief overview and a personal perspective from me might help. There is a story I have used in the past (which may be apocryphal) of Computer Scientists meeting Psychologists at a conference and posing the question, “…how does the human brain process information?” The computer scientists wanted the question asked so that they could redesign computer architecture to be more efficient (e.g. RAM, ROM, Hard drive etc). The question stumped the Psychologists! So they did what any experts would do and turned to the computer scientists and asked…”…how do computers process information?” After hearing about short term memory, processing units etc, the Psychologist realised they have just been given a model they could use to explain how the brain works…the “Infopro” model was born.
The most important part of the quote above is “…restoring cognition to scientific respectability.” Cognition (the internal workings of the mind) had taken an unscientific route under the influence of Freud and the Psychoanalysts. Freud’s theory that dreams were the ‘royal road to the unconscious’ was littered with pseudo-scientific methodologies. Behaviourism, under the influence of logical positivism, had restored scientific rigour to the discipline of Psychology but had refused to consider any internal/unobservable processes. With the model of computer processing we now had a framework to investigate and understand internal processes.
Thank you for the incredibly detailed and insightful response!
It was compelling to read about how behaviourism was challenged and led to a shift in the dominant paradigm of psychology, alongside the role of information processing theory in it. George Miller argued that psychology shouldn’t be studied in isolation, in which this belief seemed to be a major principle in cognitive psychology. This has given birth to interdisciplinary disciplines such as neuroscience, which utilises the scientific method.
However, my friend has once called psychology “wannabe biology”, as it employs the scientific method, which emphasises rigour, consistency and standardisation, to study human behaviour, which is erratic and unpredictable. What is your outlook on this statement?