For this task, imagine that you have been asked to give a guest lecture to first

Question

For this task, imagine that you have been asked to give a guest lecture to first year undergraduate students on the topic of the historical study of psychology. Draw on what Simonton (2002) referred to as issues that plagued the understanding of history he identified these critical issues as; genius versus zeitgeist as casual agents, internal versus external influences, persistent versus historicist narratives, idiographic versus nomothetic interpretations, quality versus quantity in phenomena, and deterministic versus stochastic descriptions.

For your lecture, explain your understanding of the historical study of science, and of psychology in general. Be sure to address the following points:

• Why study the history of psychology at all?

• Name the six issues identified by Simonton that are important to the understanding of history. Explain each one clearly and succinctly, using one sentence, or even a few words that make these concepts understandable

• Choose two of these three issues: genius versus zeitgeist as causal agents, quality versus quantity in phenomena, and idiographic versus nomothetic interpretations, Explain the two issues you chose in more depth. For each of these issues explain the meaning of the terms, the impact on the study of psychology each has. Include examples of individuals, concepts, or ideas, to enhance your presentation.

Explanation / Answer

1. It is essential to study the history of psychology because the trajectory contains the establishment of subsequent belief systems. It was only because the contemporary thinkers kept refuting each others foundational work that psychology began to widen its horizons and think beyond a certain domain of thought. Throughout research in fact, it is important to study the current perspectives and then bring about the limitations in order to challenge them, thereby creating new perspectives and outlooks within a discipline. This is exactly what happened within the fied of psychology. The various schools of thought are a result of the ongoing challenging & refuting of each other's ideas.

2. He believed that creativity is an important aspect to generate noveel solutions to new and untimely arriving everyday problems. Some of the important issues to be understood within creativity are that it must be understood trough Darwin's perspective, through an acquired expertise, through talent and its development, psychopathology or from ecological perspective whereby many factors create an interplay to establish creativity (developmental, environmental, personal, social, etc). Each explains it a unique manner beginning from an evolutionary perspective of biology playing a significant role, to honing the skills and thereby creating talent and finally a multiple perspective model whereby many factors together create an interplay to determine the creativity within an individual.

Quality vs quantity argues which would provide a more substantial evidence for research. Each bases its arguments for it, but have their own set of limitations as well. For instance, in case of quantittaive research although empirical and statistcal evidence supports the hypothesis, essential information in the forms of subjective data is lost, reducing the enrichment of its data. Similarly more subjectivity in case of the former leads to a lot of enrichment, but poor ebjectivity in terms of enabling comparison.

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