Best of the Century

What do you think are the 5 most important development and why?

Anything can happen within a century. This is true for everything, including psychology. Many discoveries have been made over then 19th Century regarding the field of psychology. The five discoveries that I think are the most important are

1. The discovery that human intelligence develops in stages as we grow older made by Jean Piaget.

2. Discovery of the possibility that nearly everyone has the potential to follow authority to the point of committing murder made by Stanley Milgram.

3. Discovery of how unreliable eyewitness testimony is, and how easily false memories can be implanted in both children and adults made by Elizabeth F. Loftus.

4. Discovery that unconditional punishment has serious and persistent debilitating emotional effects and can lead to depression.

5. The discovery of the “humanistic” approach to therapy, emphasizing the therapist’s genuineness and openness and unconditional positive regard for the client made by Carl Rogers.

I think that the discovery made by Piaget is important because it shows us a clear reason why children see things differently from adults. I think this discovery can help adults understand children more and find a way to interact better with children. I think it can also help us understand why children disagree with adults, it’s not because they want to go against their elders but it is because they do not fully understand the whole point of the situation.

The second discovery made by Milgram that everyone as the potential to follow authority to the point of committing murder is important because I think it can help us understand why the holocaust and many other killings happened in history. In my opinion, not every soldiers involved in the holocaust fully thought it was right to kill people just because of their race, but because it was an order, they felt that it was their responsibility to follow them. This discovery also leads us to many different question of why people have this potential when following authority and not when doing it by themselves. Is it because they do not feel it is their fault because they are just taking orders? Is it because they do it due to fear of the consequences if they do not do it?

I think the discovery made by Elizabeth F. Loftus is important because it can be used to improve the court system. The discovery states that false memory can be easily implanted in both children and adult. This can be both beneficial and harmful at the same time because if a false memory was to be implanted on an eyewitness, the ruling of the court would change drastically according to the eyewitness’s testimony. And because of this, a convict might be released while the victim or other innocent people are punished for what they did not do.

The fourth discovery that I think is very important is the discovery that unconditional punishment can cause depression in the future of a person’s life. This discovery may not provide us a cure to depression or how to prevent it but then we can use it to protect children of younger generation from the effects of depression. This discovery clearly shows that justice, encouragement, and confidence are very important parts of a person’s childhood and lacking one of these may lead to future depression.

This last discovery that I think is very important is the discovery of the humanistic approach to therapy. In my opinion, if this discovery wasn’t made, many more people will be need of psychological help and therapies may not be effective as they are in present days because this approach gives the patient the feelings that they are loved and cared for. I think this feeling can greatly help improve a person’s psychological condition because a lot of these problems come from the inner feelings. These feelings are usually the feeling of being neglected, left out, or uncared for. So by making the patients feel loved and cared for, it would be easier to help them sort out their problems.

There are many other discoveries that were made during the 19th Century that improve psychology, but in my opinion, these five discoveries were the most important ones.


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