Psychology is a relatively young discipline. Recall that the first laboratory for experimental psychology was established in 1879 by common quizbowl answer Wilhelm Wundt and that the discipline grew out of parts of physiology as well as from the work of physicists who studied the perception of things such as color by scientists who didn't have the funding to carry out the sorts of experiments we now associate with physics (see Mach, Ernst). The relative youth of pyschology may have something to do with a phenomenon I've noticed: psychology seems, moreso than most other academic disciplines, to have a wide variety in intro level syllabi and textbooks. I don't think there is anything close to a standard as to what can be taught in Psych 101. Perhaps a basic introduction to the methodology and purpose of psychology as an academic discipline is shared by all 101-type classes, but an instructor can then pick and choose as to which various subdivisions can be stressed, explored in depth, given scant notice, or even skipped altogether. It might have something to do with the instructor's particular research interests, the interests of the department as a whole, and the material included in the chosen textbook. Like all the social sciences, psychology has undergone disciplinary crises. One extreme end are the behaviorists such as John Watson, Edward Thorndyke the other eponymous box guy, and B.F. Skinner, more names you ought to remember for quizbowl purposes. There is the psychoanalytic approach of Freud, his followers, and apostates. There's humanistic psychology, the one that personally I find more interesting, associated with names such as that pyramid dude Abraham Maslow and that client-centered guy Carl Rogers. There are several branches of psychology. Perhaps the most accessable subcategory of psychology is abnormal psychology. I think there are fewer questions in that area than could be because the study of mental illness overlaps with physiology, neurology, medicine, and psychiatry, which fall under the science portion of the distribution. I'm rather fond of the psychology of personality. Common answers coming from that subdiscipline include the Rorshach test, MMPI, TAT, and other personality tests. I'm still waiting for someone to write an enneagram tossup for a tournament I play in. Other common areas include Social psychology, cognitive development (think Piaget), memory, learning, the list goes on. One time I tried a question on the basic think I learned in a class on political psychology. Basic political heuristics don't go over well. My own theory is that the prevalence of questions on social scientists and their works is that they are "Benet's social science." Now, granted, I have never read or even touched Benet's, so I have not bothered to verify that hypothesis, but I'd be curious to know how well social scientists are represented in Benet's and whether or not anyone writes social science questions out of those entries. Anthony, who is not trying to be a know-it-all, but who hopes that a discussion on this topic can allow him to flex his muscles and shove a bunch of social science into the "canon" in the way that being the namesake of a tournament made a bunch of people memorize the ten most important works by Heinrich Kleist and forced writers to come up with new lead-ins for tossups on the Leyden jar as an added effect.
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