Peter Barnum
Toastmasters CC#7: Pioneers of the Mind

The human mind.  We all have one.  And we like to think that we have some 
intuition of our and other people’s minds.  The study of psychology tries 
to formalize and quantify this intuition.  Psychology sometimes gets a 
bad rap, although I think that’s for a couple of bad reasons.  The first 
is that laypeople often use a false understanding of psychology as 
proof.  You never hear someone say that two plus two equals ten because 
math says so, although you do sometimes hear someone say the reason 
they’re afraid of snakes is that their teacher in grade school was mean, 
because psychology says so.  

The other is that popular culture mostly talks about the very early 
psychologists, a hundred years ago.  Sigmund Freud, a scientist at the 
dawn of psychology, said that all neurosis are caused by childhood sexual 
abuse, therefore psychology is ridiculous.  Yes, and Isaac Newton said 
that atoms are indivisible, which means that physics is ridiculous.  
Since it’s beginning, there has been a lot of good science and valuable 
practices discovered by psychologist.  Three of the most interesting 
psychologist are…

Three favorites

B.F. Skinner.  Talk about operant conditioning.  Tell about the psych 
professor who grew to like one side of the room. Reward or punishment for 
doing or not doing an action.  Fixed ratio, fixed interval, variable 
ratio, variable interval.

Stanley Milgram. Talk about the compliance experiment.  Heart condition, 
learning experiment, 450 volt shocks, asked to stop after 150, stoped 
responding after 300.  65% gave the fatal level shocks three times, given 
list of word pairs with four possible answers apiece, “randomly” selected 
as teacher or student.  Expirimenters gave four responses when asked to 
stop 
1.	Please continue.
2.	The experiment requires that you continue.
3.	It is absolutely essential that you continue.
4.	You have no other choice, you must go on.

Carl Rogers.  Born in OP, professor at my undergrad UR.  humanist 
approach. the actualizing tendency.  It can be defined as the built-in 
motivation present in every life-form to develop its potentials to the 
fullest extent possible.  We’re not just talking about survival:  Rogers 
believes that all creatures strive to make the very best of their 
existence.  If they fail to do so, it is not for a lack of desire.
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/rogers.html
organismic valuing.
positive regard
1. Openness to experience
2.  Existential living
3. Organismic trusting
4. Experiential freedom
5. Creativity
Genuinely interested

In summary, there has been a lot of fascinating work done in sociology, 
behaviorism, and psychotherapy, by people such as … By studying the 
theories and practices of psychology, we improve both ourselves and our 
environments.