Short answers, pulled from the story.
Psychology is the scientific study of the mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both conscious and unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feelings, and motives. It crosses the boundaries between the natural and social sciences.
The word psychology derives from psyche, the Greek word for spirit or soul, combined with -logia, meaning study or research. The Croatian humanist Marko Marulic first used the Latin form psychiologia in a book written between 1510 and 1520. The earliest known reference in English came from Steven Blankaart in 1694 in The Physical Dictionary.
Wilhelm Wundt established the psychological laboratory that brought experimental psychology to the world at Leipzig University. He had been trained by Hermann von Helmholtz in Heidelberg. Wundt focused on breaking mental processes into their most basic components, drawing an analogy to advances in chemistry.
John B. Watson coined the term behaviorism in 1913. He asserted that psychology was a purely objective experimental branch of natural science whose theoretical goal was the prediction and control of behavior. His 1920 Little Albert experiment was first thought to show that loud noises could instill phobias in an infant.
Mamie Phipps Clark and her husband Kenneth conducted the doll tests, asking young children to choose between identical dolls differing only in race. Most children preferred the white dolls and attributed positive traits to them, establishing the negative effects of racial discrimination and segregation on black children's self-image. In 1954, this research helped decide the Brown v. Board of Education decision that ended legal segregation.
Psychological testing has ancient origins, dating back to 2200 BCE in the examinations for the Chinese civil service. Written exams began during the Han dynasty, between 202 BCE and 220 CE. The Chinese system required a stratified series of tests by 1370 and ended in 1906.
Psychology has been accused of being a soft science because some areas rely on research methods such as self-reports in surveys and questionnaires. Thomas Kuhn's 1962 critique implied that psychology was in a pre-paradigm state, lacking the overarching theory found in mature hard sciences such as chemistry and physics. Critics argued that personality, thinking, and emotion cannot be directly measured.