What is Pyschology
Before entering the History of Psychology class, I thought that psychology was the science of human and animal behavior, experience and mental processes. I still believe that this statement is true, but now I know that psychology is more than that. I also felt that psychology is used to help people through analyzing their behavior, this is true but it is also used to classify people. Now I can see that psychology is a social construct used to organized people, manipulate people, and to maintain the status quo. Knowledge, power and interest, all three must be explored when discussing the virtues of psychology. In our Genes, Lewontin, Rose and Kamin, discuss the legitimacy of inequality. In this chapter they discuss how the bourgeois revolution destroyed random chance of social class and allowed the ideology of natural differences to be brought forth, natural differences, referring to our genetic make-up. In other words we are all on the same playing field, and any differences that come about is because of our genes, which are inh
Also while in this class I learned that intelligence testing was at first used by Alfred Binet to identify children whose intelligence level was not at the proper point and increase the intelligence of that child. "The intelligence test was to be used as a diagnostic instrument" (Lewontin, Rose, Kamin p.84), Binet did not suggest that IQ test served to label the child, or to say that intelligence is innate or has fixed characteristics that could not be changed. The validity of IQ test in past research has been colored, social and cultural consideration and the interest of the researchers were not been taken into account when writing these test. This is the case with Sir Cyril Burt who administered test to two small groups of schoolchildren. One group of children was the son of Oxford dons while the other group was from the townspeople. Burt said that the children of the higher-class did better on the test because, intelligence was inherited. Today intelligence test are still used to classify people of race, class, and gender, and it is asserted that intelli
Some common words found in the essay are:
Cyril Burt, Rose Kamin, History Psychology, Alfred Binet, status quo, , rose kamin, Lewontin Rose, lewontin rose kamin, maintain status quo, lewontin rose, child intelligence, past research, maintain status, intelligence test, knowledge power, history psychology, natural differences,
Approximate Word count = 719
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
|