Psychology: Evolution of a Science

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A LOT WAS HAPPENING IN 1860. In the United Province of Canada, the cornerstone of the Canadian Parliament buildings was laid in Ottawa, and the Cariboo gold rush was about to begin in British Columbia. In the United States Abraham Lincoln had just been elected president and a woman named Anne Kellogg had just given birth to a child who would one day grow up to invent the cornflake. But none of this mattered very much to William James, a bright, taciturn, 18-year-old who had no idea what to do with his life. He loved to paint and draw, but worried that he was not talented enough to become a serious artist. He had enjoyed studying biology in school but doubted that a naturalist’s salary would ever allow him to get married and have a family of his own. So, like many young people who are faced with difficult decisions about their futures, William abandoned his dreams and chose to do something in which he had little interest but of which his family heartily approved. Alas, within a few months of arriving at Harvard Medical School, his lack of interest in medicine blossomed into a troubling lack of enthusiasm, and so with a bit of encouragement from the faculty, he put his medical studies on hold to join a biological expedition to the Amazon. The adventure failed to focus his wandering mind (although he learned a great deal about leeches), and when he returned to medical school, both his physical and mental health began to deteriorate. It was clear to everyone that William James was not the sort of person who should be put in charge of a scalpel and a bag of drugs.

Had James become an artist, a biologist, or a physician, we would probably remember nothing about him today. Fortunately for us, he was a deeply confused young man who could speak five languages, and when he became so depressed that he was once again forced to leave medical school, he decided to travel around Europe, where at least he knew how to talk to people. He spent much of his time in what is now Germany, which at that time was a leading centre for scientific enquiry, especially in the field of physiology. As he talked and listened, he learned about a new science called psychology (from a combination of the Greek psyche [soul] and logos [to study]). He saw that this developing field, in which physiology, medicine, and philosophy merged, was taking a modern, scientific approach to age-old questions about human nature. Such questions had become painfully familiar to him during his personal search for meaning, but only poets and philosophers had ever before offered answers to them (Bjork, 1983; Simon, 1998). Excited about the new discipline, James returned to America and quickly finished his medical degree. But he never practised medicine and never intended to do so. Rather, he became a professor at Harvard University and devoted the rest of his life to psychology. His landmark book, The Principles of Psychology, is still widely read and remains one of the most influential books ever written on the subject (James, 1890).

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A LOT HAS HAPPENED SINCE THEN. Abraham Lincoln has become the subject of an Oscar award-winning film, the gold rush has been replaced in the West by the oil sands development, and the Kellogg Company sells about $9 billion worth of cornflakes every year. If William James (1842–1910) were alive today, he would be amazed by all of these things. But he would probably be even more amazed by the intellectual advances that have taken place in the science that he helped create.

Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behaviour. The mind refers to the private inner experience of perceptions, thoughts, memories, and feelings, an ever-flowing stream of consciousness. Behaviour refers to observable actions of human beings and nonhuman animals, the things that we do in the world, by ourselves or with others. As you will see in the chapters to come, psychology is an attempt to use scientific methods to address fundamental questions about mind and behaviour that have puzzled people for millennia. The answers to these questions would have astonished William James. Let us take a look at three key examples:

For thousands of years, philosophers tried to understand how the objective, physical world of the body was related to the subjective, psychological world of the mind. Today, psychologists know that all of our subjective experiences arise from the electrical and chemical activities of our brains. As you will see throughout this book, some of the most exciting developments in psychological research focus on how our perceptions, thoughts, memories, and feelings are related to activity in the brain. Psychologists and neuroscientists are using new technologies to explore this relationship in ways that would have seemed like science fiction only 20 years ago.

For example, the technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allows scientists to scan a brain to determine which parts are active when a person reads a word, sees a face, learns a new skill, or remembers a personal experience. In one study, the brains of both professional and novice pianists were scanned as they made complex finger movements, like those involved in piano playing. The results showed that professional pianists have less activity than novices in the parts of the brain that guide these finger movements (Krings et al., 2000). This suggests that extensive practice at the piano changes the brains of professional pianists and that the regions controlling finger movements operate more efficiently for them than they do for novices. You will learn more about this in the Memory and Learning chapters and see in the coming chapters how studies using fMRI and related techniques are transforming many different areas of psychology.

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Scientists sometimes say that form follows function; that is, if we want to understand how something works (e.g., an engine or a thermometer), we need to know what it is working for (e.g., powering vehicles or measuring temperature). As William James often noted, “Thinking is for doing,” and the function of the mind is to help us do those things that sophisticated animals have to do in order to prosper, such as acquire food, shelter, and mates. Psychological processes are said to be adaptive, which means that they promote the welfare and reproduction of organisms that engage in those processes. Perception allows us to recognize our families, see predators before they see us, and avoid stumbling into oncoming traffic. Language allows us to organize our thoughts and communicate them to others, which enables us to form social groups and cooperate. Memory allows us to avoid solving the same problems over again every time we encounter them and to keep in mind what we are doing and why. Emotions allow us to react quickly to events that have life or death significance, and they enable us to form strong social bonds. The list goes on and on.

Given the adaptiveness of psychological processes, it is not surprising that people with deficiencies in these processes often have a pretty tough time. The neurologist Antonio Damasio (1994) described the case of Elliot, a middle-aged husband and father with a good job, whose life was forever changed when surgeons discovered a tumour in the middle of his brain. The surgeons were able to remove the tumour and save his life, and for a while Elliot seemed just fine. But then odd things began to happen. At first, Elliot seemed more likely than usual to make bad decisions (when he could make decisions at all), and as time went on, his bad decisions became truly dreadful ones. He could not prioritize tasks at work because he could not decide what to do first, and when he did, he got it wrong. Eventually he was fired, so he pursued a series of risky business ventures—all of which failed—and he lost his life’s savings. His wife divorced him, he married again, and his second wife divorced him too.

So what ruined Elliot’s life? The neurologists who tested Elliot were unable to detect any decrease in his cognitive functioning. His intelligence was intact, and his ability to speak, think, and solve logical problems was every bit as sharp as it ever was. But as they probed further, they made a startling discovery: Elliot was no longer able to experience emotions. For example, Elliot did not experience any regret or anger when his boss gave him the pink slip and showed him the door, he did not experience anxiety when he poured his entire bank account into a foolish business venture, and he did not experience any sorrow when his wives packed up and left him. Most of us have wished from time to time that we could be as stoic and unflappable as that; after all, who needs anxiety, sorrow, regret, and anger? The answer is that we all do.

The mind is an amazing machine that can do a great many things quickly. We can drive a car while talking to a passenger while recognizing the street address while remembering the name of the song that just came on the radio. But like all machines, the mind often trades accuracy for speed and versatility. This can produce “bugs” in the system, causing occasional malfunctions in our otherwise efficient mental processing. One of the most fascinating aspects of psychology is that we are all prone to a variety of errors and illusions. Indeed, if thoughts, feelings, and actions were error free, then human behaviour would be orderly, predictable, and dull, which it clearly is not. Rather, it is endlessly surprising, and its surprises often derive from our ability to do precisely the wrong thing at the wrong time.

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Consider a few examples from diaries of people who took part in a study concerning mental errors in everyday life (Reason & Mycielska, 1982, pp. 70–73):

If these lapses seem amusing, it is because, in fact, they are. But they are also potentially important as clues to human nature. For example, notice that the person who bought a stamp said, “Thank you,” to the machine and not, “How do I find the subway?” In other words, the person did not just do any wrong thing; rather, he did something that would have been perfectly correct in a real social interaction. As each of these examples suggests, people often operate on “autopilot,” or behave automatically, relying on well-learned habits that they execute without really thinking. When we are not actively focused on what we are saying or doing, these habits may be triggered inappropriately. William James (1890) thought that the influence of habit could help explain the seemingly bizarre actions of “absent-minded” people: “Very absent-minded persons,” he wrote in The Principles of Psychology, “on going into their bedroom to dress for dinner have been known to take off one garment after another and finally get into bed” (p. 115).

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James understood that the mind’s mistakes are as instructive as they are intriguing, and modern psychology has found it quite useful to study them. Things that are whole and unbroken hum along nicely and do their jobs while leaving no clue about how they do them. Cars gliding down the expressway might as well be magic carpets as long as they are working properly because we have no idea what kind of magic is moving them along. It is only when automobiles break down that we learn about their engines, water pumps, and other fine pieces and processes that normally work together to produce the ride. Breakdowns and errors are not just about destruction and failure, they are pathways to knowledge. (See The Real World box above for an example common to us all: procrastination.) In the same way, understanding lapses, errors, mistakes, and the occasionally puzzling nature of human behaviour provides a vantage point for understanding the normal operation of mental life and behaviour. The story of Elliot, whose behaviour broke down after he had brain surgery, is an example that highlights the role that emotions play in guiding normal judgment and behaviour.

Psychology is exciting because it addresses fundamental questions about human experience and behaviour, and the three questions we have just considered are merely the tip of the iceberg. Think of this book as a guide to exploring the rest of the iceberg. But before we don our parkas and grab our pick axes, we need to understand how the iceberg got here in the first place. To understand psychology in the twenty-first century, we need to become familiar with the psychology of the past.