Full transcript
0:12I'd like to welcome people to
0:14introduction to psychology my name is
0:17dr. Paul bloom and I'm the professor for
0:19this course if you haven't yet picked up
0:22a syllabus from the front of the class
0:24please raise your hair we out are we had
0:27a syllabi oh please
0:30raise your hand and when the Teaching
0:32Fellows will bring it to you if you
0:33don't yet have a syllabus the
0:40syllabus is also available on this
0:42website this website will become
0:45important to you should you choose to
0:47take this class it will include the
0:50syllabus which will occasionally be
0:53revised well in advance also
0:57all of the class material will be on
0:59this site including copies of the slides
1:01on presenting including these slides
1:04right now practice
1:06exams and any details on the written
1:10assignments so you'll need to use this
1:12website regularly to
1:14keep in touch with the course today will
1:17be a short class what I just want to do
1:19today is orient you tell you what this
1:23course is about I know this is shopping
1:25period and I want to give you a good
1:26sense of what you'd be in for if you
1:29took this course I want to go over the
1:31style of the classes the evaluation the
1:33readings and so on and then give some
1:36examples of some of the specific topics
1:38that we'll be covering but
1:42before I get started I have to point out
1:44something a little bit unusual about
1:45this class we are being filmed this
1:49course is one of seven courses chosen to
1:52begin the Yale University open
1:54educational resources video lecture
1:56project and
1:58what this means is that when the year is
2:01over these
2:02videos will be available on the internet
2:05free for anybody who wants to see them
2:07and ideally will be accessed by people
2:09across many different countries some who
2:13would not normally have access to a
2:15university education I
2:17see this as a good and honorable use of
2:20Yale's resources and of course it's also
2:22part of Yale's plan for domination so
2:27because of this a Yale University
2:29production team from the center media
2:32initiatives is going to be taping all
2:34the class lectures and they're up there
2:35the
2:37idea is that this should be as
2:39unobtrusive as possible and the
2:42classroom experience should essentially
2:44be the same as if they're not there so
2:46it's their intention to tape the
2:49lectures to tape me and sometimes the
2:52slides but not tape your faces or voices
2:55so we're not having you sign release
2:57forms two
2:59things one thing is personally I have to
3:01remind myself not to use profanity
3:04because children may be watching so I'll
3:06try not to do that um there's also
3:08another complexity if you are in the
3:10front row or the second row or the third
3:13row it is possible that some part of
3:16your head your back or even your face
3:18might end up on film if you are in the
3:22witness protection program or you're
3:24some sort of fugitive you probably don't
3:27want to sit in the front row I'll give
3:30them if people want to unapprove so if
3:31we kind of slide back that's that's fine
3:33as I'm talking okay
3:36we're ready so
3:39I like to um welcome people to this
3:43course introduction to psychology my
3:45name is dr. Paul bloom and professor of
3:47this course and what this is going to be
3:51is a comprehensive introduction to the
3:55study of the human mind so
3:57we're going to cover a very very wide
4:00range of topics including
4:02brains children language sex memory and
4:04badness disgust racism and love and many
4:08others we're going to talk about things
4:10like the proper explanation for
4:12differences between men and women the
4:15question of whether animals can learn
4:17language the puzzle of what Gross's has
4:20held the problem of why some of us eat
4:23too much and what we could do to stop
4:25the question of why people go crazy in
4:28groups research
4:30into whether you could trust your
4:31childhood memories research
4:34into why some of us get depressed and
4:36others don't
4:37the style of this is there'll be two
4:40lectures a week as well
4:44as course readings now to do well in the
4:47course you have to attend both the
4:50lectures and do the readings there will
4:52be some overlap in some cases the
4:55lectures will be quite linked to the
4:56readings but there will be some parts of
4:59the readings that will not find your way
5:01into lectures and some lecture some
5:03entire lectures that will not connect at
5:05all to the readings so to pursue this
5:09course properly you have to do both what
5:12this means is that if you miss a class
5:14you need to get notes and so you should
5:17get them from a friend or from the
5:18person sitting next to you the slides
5:21are going to be made available online so
5:24one of the things you don't have to do
5:26is you don't have to write this down you
5:28take notes any way you choose but if you
5:31don't get anything on there it'll be
5:32available online I'm going to post it in
5:34a format which will be black and white
5:36and easy to print out so you don't have
5:39to worry about this but again attending
5:42to the slide is not a substitute for
5:43attending class there's
5:47a textbook Peter
5:49Gray's psychology fifth edition and
5:51there's also a collection of short
5:54readings the Norton reader edited by
5:57Gary Marcus it's an excellent textbook
5:59it's an excellent collection and you
6:01should get them both they're available
6:03at labyrinth bookstore on York Street or
6:06you could get them online I should note
6:09that last time I taught the course I
6:11used the Marcus reader and when
6:13Professor Marvin Chun taught his course
6:15last semester he used Peter Gray's fifth
6:18edition textbook so there may be a lot
6:20of used copies floating around you
6:22should feel free to try to get one of
6:24those the
6:25evaluation goes like this there is a
6:28midterm and there's a final the final
6:30will not be held in an exam period
6:32because I'd like to take long vacations
6:35it will be held the last day of class
6:37the exams will mean will be multiple
6:40choice and short answer fill in the
6:42blank that sort of thing prior to the
6:44exams I will post previous exams online
6:47so you have a feeling for how these
6:49exams work and so on there will also be
6:52review sessions starting
6:54at the beginning of the third week of
6:56class that is not next week but the week
6:58after on Monday each Monday I'm going to
7:01put up a brief question or set of
7:03questions which you have to answer and
7:05your answers need to be sent to your
7:08Teaching Fellow and you'll be given a
7:09Teaching Fellow assigned one by Friday
7:13this is not meant to be difficult it's
7:16not meant to be more than 5-10 minutes
7:18of work but the point of the question
7:2015-20
7:21minutes of work but the point of the
7:24question is to motivate people to keep
7:26up with the material and do the readings
7:28these questions will be marked pass/fail
7:30I expect most everybody to pass all of
7:33the questions but it's just to keep you
7:35on track and keep you going there's a
7:38book review a short book review to be
7:41written towards near to enter the class
7:43I'll give details about that later on in
7:45the semester and there's also an
7:46experimental participation requirement
7:48and next week I'll hand out a piece of
7:51paper describing the requirement the
7:53point at a requirement is to give you
7:54all experience actually seeing what
7:57psychological research is about as well
7:59as to give us hundreds of subjects to do
8:01our experiments on the
8:05issue sometimes comes up as to how to do
8:07well in the course here's
8:11how to do well attend
8:13all the classes keep up with the
8:15readings ideally keep up with the
8:17readings before you come to class and
8:19one
8:21thing I would strongly suggest is to
8:23form some sort of study groups either
8:25formally or informally have people you
8:27could talk to when the exam prior to the
8:30exams are she's patting somebody next to
8:32her I hope you know him
8:36and and
8:39and and in fact what I want to do not
8:41this class because it's shopping period
8:43I don't know who's coming next class or
8:44what but I'll set up a few minutes prior
8:46at the beginning class for people just
8:48to introduce themselves to the person
8:49next to them so they have some sort of
8:52resource in the class now
8:56this is a large class and if you don't
9:00do anything about it it can be very
9:02anonymous and some of you may choose to
9:04pursue it that way and it's totally fine
9:07but what I would suggest you do is
9:09establish some contact with us either
9:12with me or with any of the Teaching
9:15Fellows and I'll introduce the Teaching
9:16Fellows sometime next week you could
9:19talk to us at the beginning or the end
9:21of class unless your special
9:23circumstances I always try to come at
9:25least ten minutes early and I try and
9:27I'm willing to stay late to talk to
9:28people you could come by during my
9:31office hours which are on a syllabus and
9:33you can send me email and set up an
9:34appointment I'm very willing to talk to
9:37students about intellectual ideas about
9:39course problems and so on and if you see
9:42me at some point just on campus you can
9:44introduce yourself and I'd like to meet
9:46people from this class so
9:49again I Lana stress you have the option
9:52of staying anonymous in this class but
9:54you also have the option of seeking out
9:55and making some sort of contact with us
9:57okay
9:59that's
10:01the formal stuff of the course what's
10:03this course about unlike
10:06a lot of other courses some people come
10:09to intro psychology with some unusual
10:11motivations um maybe you're crazy and
10:15hope to become less crazy maybe
10:20you want to learn how to study better
10:21improve your sex life interpret your
10:24dreams and win friends and influence
10:26people those
10:29are not necessarily bad reasons to take
10:31this course and with the exception of
10:34the sex part this course might actually
10:37help you out with some of these things
10:38the study of scientific psychology has a
10:42lot of insights of real world relevance
10:44to real problems that we face in our
10:46everyday lives and I'm going to try and
10:49when these issues come I'm going to try
10:50to stress them and and make you try to
10:52think about the extent to which the
10:54laboratory research I'll be talking
10:56about can affect your everyday life how
10:58you study how you interact with people
11:00how you might try to persuade somebody
11:02of something else what sort of therapy
11:05works best for you but the general goals
11:09of this course are
11:11actually I think even more interesting
11:14than that what
11:17I want to do is provide a
11:18state-of-the-art introduction to the
11:20most important topic that there is us
11:24how the human mind works how we think
11:27what makes us what we are and we'll be
11:30approaching this from a range of
11:32directions so traditionally psychology
11:34is often broken up into the following
11:36into five sub areas neuroscience which
11:40is the study of the of the mind by
11:42looking at the brain developmental
11:46which is the area which I focus mostly
11:48on which is trying to learn about how
11:50people develop and grow and learn
11:52cognitive
11:54which is the one term of the five that
11:57might be unfamiliar to some of you but
11:59it refers to a sort of computational
12:00approach to studying the mind often
12:03viewing the mind on analogy with a
12:06computer and looking at how people do
12:08things like understand language
12:09recognize objects play games and so on
12:13there is social which
12:16is the study of how people act in groups
12:18how people act with other people and
12:20there is clinical which is maybe the
12:23aspect of psychology that people think
12:25of immediately when they hear psychology
12:27which is a study of mental health and
12:28mental illness and we'll be covering all
12:31of those areas we'll also be covering a
12:33set of related areas I am convinced that
12:36you cannot study the mind solely by
12:40looking at the discipline of psychology
12:41do this one a psychology spills over the
12:44issues of how the mind has evolved
12:47economics
12:48and game theory are now an essential
12:51tools for understanding human thought
12:54and human behavior there's issues
12:55connecting to philosophy computer
12:57science anthropology literature theology
13:00and many many other domains so this
13:03course will be wide-ranging in that
13:06sense at this point I've been speaking
13:09in generalities so I want to close this
13:12introductory class by giving five
13:15examples of the sorts of topics we'll be
13:17covering and I'll start the topic that
13:20we'll be covering next week on Monday
13:22the brain from this is a brain in fact
13:28it's a specific person's brain and
13:30what's
13:32interesting about the brain is that
13:34little white mark there it's
13:37her brain its Terri Schiavo's brain you
13:41recognize her more from pictures like
13:43that and what a cakes like this where
13:46somebody is is in a coma is without
13:51consciousness as a result of damage to
13:53the brain is a stark illustration of the
13:56physical nature of mental life the
13:59physical basis for everything that we
14:01normally hold dear like free will
14:03consciousness morality
14:06and emotions and that's what will begin
14:08the course we're talking about how a
14:10physical thing can give rise to mental
14:13life we'll
14:16talk a lot about children this
14:19is actually a specific child it's a my
14:22son Zachary a younger son dressed
14:25up as Superman spider-man but it is
14:28Halloween no it's not Halloween
14:31now it's more to say about that
14:34I study
14:36trial development for a living and I'm
14:39interested in several questions so one
14:41question is just a question of
14:43development everybody in this room can
14:46speak and understand English everybody
14:48in this room has some understanding of
14:51how the world works how physical things
14:52behave everybody in this room has some
14:55understanding of other people and how
14:57people behave and the
15:00question that that preoccupies
15:02developmental psychologist is how do we
15:04come to have this knowledge and in
15:06particular how much of it is hardwired
15:10built-in innate and how much of it is a
15:13product of culture of language
15:16of schooling and developmental
15:18psychologists use many ingenious methods
15:21to try to pull these apart and try to
15:24figure out what what asked what's what's
15:26what are the basic components of human
15:29nature there's
15:31also the question of continuity to
15:35what extent is Zachary at that age going
15:40to be that
15:42way forever to what extent is your fate
15:44sealed to what extent could if I were to
15:48me when you were five years old I could
15:51describe the way you are now the
15:55poet William Wordsworth wrote the
16:00child is father to the man and what this
16:03means is that you can see within every
16:06child the adult he or she will become we
16:11will look and ask the question whether
16:13this is true is it true for your
16:15personality is it true for your interest
16:17is it true for your intelligence another
16:21question having to do with development
16:24is what
16:26makes us the way we are we're different
16:29in a lot of ways the people in this room
16:32differ according to their tastes and
16:35food they differ according to their IQs
16:37whether they're aggressive or shy
16:39whether they're attracted to males
16:42females both or neither whether
16:45whether they good at music whether
16:47they're politically liberal or
16:50conservative why
16:51are we different what's the explanation
16:54for why we're different and again this
16:57could be translated in terms of a
16:59question of genes and environment to
17:01what extent are things the result of the
17:03genes we possess to what extent are our
17:07individual nature as a result of how we
17:09were raised and to what extent are they
17:11best explained in terms of an
17:13interaction one common theory for
17:16instance is that we are shaped by our
17:18parents um this was best summarized most
17:22famously by the British poet Philip
17:24Larkin who
17:26wrote they
17:28mess you up your
17:31mum and dad they may not mean to but
17:34they do they
17:36fill you with the faults they had and
17:38add some extra just for you is
17:42he right it's very controversial you
17:45it's been a series of a huge controversy
17:48in a popular culture to the extent to
17:50which parents matter and this is an
17:53issue which will preoccupy us for much
17:55of the course a different
17:58question what makes somebody attractive
18:01and this can be asked at all sorts of
18:04levels but a simple level is what makes
18:07for a pretty face so
18:09these are according to ratings very
18:12attractive faces they are not the faces
18:16of real people what's on the screen are
18:18computer-generated faces of a Caucasian
18:21male and a Caucasian female who don't
18:23exist in the real world but
18:27through using this sort of computer
18:30generation and then asking people what
18:32they think of this face what they think
18:34of a face scientists have come to some
18:36sense as to what really makes a face
18:37attractive both within cultures and
18:40across cultures and that's something
18:43which we're going to devote some time to
18:44when we talk about social behavior and
18:47in particular when we talk about sex not
18:51all attractiveness not all beauty of
18:53course is linked to sex so
18:57so pandas for instance like this panda
19:00are notoriously cute and I don't I don't
19:04have anything to say about it really
19:06it's just a cute picture morality
19:12it is extremely central to our lives and
19:17a deep question which we will struggle
19:20with throughout most of course is the
19:22question of good and evil evil and good
19:24these three pictures exemplify different
19:28sorts of evil what you call
19:30institutional evil by somebody behaving
19:36cruelly or toward somebody for somebody
19:38else perhaps not due to malice but
19:40because of the situation that she's in
19:42it has a picture of Osama bin Laden a
19:45mass murderer driven by political cause
19:47and then there's this guy on the bottom
19:49anybody know who he is Ted
19:55Bundy who got that film
19:57that man no Ted Bundy exactly and that's
20:01like before
20:03we get into the technicals that's like
20:04crazy evil and and and we're going to
20:08have to come to terms with why some
20:11people are like that and again the same
20:14situation comes up is it part of your
20:17nature to be good or bad or is it
20:22largely due to the situation that you
20:24that you fall in and there's a lot of
20:27some quite spectacular experiments that
20:29try to tease that apart um if we're
20:32going to talk about evil we should also
20:34talk about good this
20:38is these are pictures of two notoriously
20:41good men Oscar
20:44Schindler and Paul Rusesabagina each
20:49who at different times in history saved
20:54the lives of many many people at great
20:56risk to themselves Schindler
20:59in the Holocaust and and and then the
21:03other guy in could I can't pronounce his
21:06name Rusesabagina
21:08in Rwanda and they both had real good
21:11movies made about them and and so what's
21:16interesting with these cases is you
21:18couldn't have predicted ahead of time
21:19that they would be heroes and one
21:23personal issue within any of us is what
21:25would we do in such situations
21:30finally throughout this course we will
21:34discuss mental illness now towards the
21:38end of the class I want to devote a full
21:40week to discussing major or disorders
21:43like depression and anxiety because it
21:45are profound social importance such
21:49disorders are reasonably common in
21:51college students many people in this
21:53room are currently suffering from a mood
21:56disorder an anxiety disorder or both and
21:59it won't ask for a show of hands but I
22:02know a lot of people in this room are on
22:04some form of medication for this
22:06disorder and we'll discuss what we'll
22:10discuss the current research in why
22:12people get these disorders and what's
22:14the best way to make them better but I
22:17also have a weakness
22:18for the less common mental disorders
22:21that I think tell us something really
22:24interesting about mental life so when we
22:27talk about memory for instance we'll
22:30talk about disorders in memory including
22:32some disorders that keep you from
22:33forming new memories as well as or
22:36disorders of amnesia where you forget
22:38the past and these are extraordinarily
22:41interesting for all sorts of reasons
22:43early
22:46in the course in fact I think next week
22:48we will discuss no later on and of
22:51course the middle of middle of the
22:52semester we will discuss the amazing
22:54case of Phineas Gage Phineas Gage was a
22:57construction worker but a hundred years
22:59ago due to an explosion a metal pipe
23:03went through his head like so
23:05miraculously
23:07he was not killed in fact his friends it
23:11went through his head when ended up a
23:13hundred feet away covered with brains
23:15and blood and Phineas
23:17Gage sat down
23:19and then on the way to the hospital they
23:21stopped by a pub have
23:24some cider he
23:27was not blind he was not deaf he was not
23:30but
23:33something else happened to him he
23:37lost his sense of right and wrong he
23:40lost his control he used to be a
23:44hard-working family man after that
23:47accent he lost all of that he couldn't
23:50hold a job he couldn't stay faithful to
23:52his wife he couldn't speak for five
23:54minutes without cursing he got into
23:57fights he got into brawls he got drunk
23:59he lost his control he ended up on a
24:02circus sideshow traveling
24:05through the country with the big steel
24:06pipe that went through his head and this
24:09is again an extraordinary example of how
24:13the brain can give rise to the mind and
24:16have things that go wrong the brain can
24:17affect you in a serious way we'll
24:21discuss case is a multiple personality
24:24disorder where people have more than one
24:26personality and also discussed a debate
24:28over what whether such cases are true or
24:31not whether they can be taken as a real
24:33phenomena or a made-up phenomena which
24:36is there's a matter of a lot of
24:37controversy and then we'll even discuss
24:39some rarer cases like
24:43Capgras syndrome Capgras syndrome is
24:47typically is there's hundreds of cases
24:50not many hundreds of cases is typically
24:52the result of some sort of stroke and
24:54what happens to you is very specific you
24:58develop a particular delusion
25:01like it's getting dark
25:06and the
25:07delusion is that
25:11the people you love the most have
25:14been replaced they've
25:16been replaced by aliens or robots thank
25:20you
25:21bye-bye bye-bye Martians bye CIA agents
25:24by trained actors and actresses but the
25:26people but
25:31the idea is the people you care for the
25:33most you believe are gone and this
25:38could lead to tragic consequences
25:40Capgras syndrome is associated with a
25:42very high level of violence one
25:45man in Australia a couple of years ago
25:47was under the delusion that his father
25:49was replaced with a robot and cut off
25:51his head a related
25:55disorder involving the very same parts
25:58of the brain is called Qatar's syndrome
26:02and katar syndrome is you believe that
26:05you're dead you
26:07believe that you're dead you you are
26:08persuaded that you're dead you're
26:09walking around you know you're walking
26:10writing you know you that there are
26:12people around but you think that you're
26:14dead and what's striking about these is
26:17it's not these are not just sort of big
26:19screwy problems of messed up people
26:21rather they're located they're related
26:24at a pinpoint level to certain parts of
26:27your brain and we're going to talk about
26:29the best modern theories as to why these
26:31syndromes occur now the reason to be
26:36interested in them again is not because
26:38they're frequent they aren't and it's
26:41not because of some sort of gruesome
26:42morbid curiosity rather by looking at
26:46extreme cases they
26:50can help us best understand normal life
26:53often by looking at extremes it's rose
26:56into sharp contrast things we naturally
26:58take for granted the issue of
27:00psychopathy of people who either due to
27:03brain damage or because they're born
27:05that way have no moral understanding can
27:08help us cope with questions of free will
27:10and responsibility of the relationship
27:13or difference between mental illness and
27:15evil multiple personality cases force us
27:18to address the question of is a self
27:20what to what extent do are all of us
27:23composed of multiple people and to what
27:26extent are we a single unified person
27:29over time cases like cop grass are
27:32important
27:34because they tell us about how we see
27:35the world they tell us for instance that
27:38there's a difference between recognizing
27:39something in a sense that you could name
27:41it and knowing what it is and and
27:45and so by studying these abnormal cases
27:47we get some insight into regular life so
27:51that's the end of the illustration of
27:53the example topics the syllabus lists
27:56many more I'll end by telling you that
28:01there's
28:04a there's a lot of stuff that we'll be
28:06talking about that I want to talk about
28:07that I am NOT expert in and fortunately
28:11there is a community at Yale of the best
28:14scholars and teachers on the planet and
28:17so it would be a shame for me not to use
28:19them to cover some of these issues and
28:22so I'm going to have include four guest
28:25lectures the
28:27first one is dr. Marvin Chun who is
28:30teaches two introduction psychology
28:32course in the fall and is my competition
28:35and he's going to give an amazing
28:38lecture on cognitive neuroscience
28:40especially the cognitive neuroscience of
28:43faces dr.
28:47Susan Nolan Huck Simha is the world's
28:50authority on depression and in
28:52particular on sex differences in
28:54depression and she's going to talk about
28:56this towards the end of the course Kelly
28:59Brownell is
29:01going to talk it is the head of the read
29:05Center focuses on obesity eating
29:08disorders dieting and he'll talk about
29:10the psychology of food and finally I'm
29:13dr.
29:18Peter salivate Dean of Yale College is
29:21going to come to us on Valentine's Day
29:23and tell us everything he knows about
29:26the mysteries of love
29:28all
29:30of these details are in the syllabus and
29:32I'll stick around and answer questions
29:34hopefully see you next week