1- the origins of psychology, Wundt and introspection

What did Wundt do that can be considered the beginning of modern psychology?

He opened the first psychological laboratory.

Where was the first psychological laboratory that Wundt developed based?

Leipzig, Germany

What was Wundt’s nickname?

The father of psychology

Why can Wundt be considered the father of psychology?

He moved psychology away from its philosophical roots towards controlled research.

What type of experience did Wundt concentrate on?

Conscious

What type of approach did Wundt take to study conscious thought meaning that he broke down conscious thoughts into separate elements?

Reductionist

What did Wundt develop to test human experience and what was this based on?

Structuralism, introspection

What is structuralism?

The analysis of the basic elements that constitute the mind

What is introspection defined as?

The systematic analysis of own conscious experience of a stimulus (a process of looking inwards at one’s own thoughts).

What did people have to do during Wundt’s experiments using introspection?

Focus on an everyday object and reflect on sensations, feelings and images

How did people report on their conscious thoughts?

Systematically in terms of its component parts e.g. sensations and emotional reaction.

What was a specific example of a stimulus that Wundt used to test introspection?

Metronome

Before Wundt, the study of human behaviour had relied upon philosophical debates such as those of which philosopher?

Descartes

Wundt made the first steps towards the scientific study of human behaviour. What three things did he emphasise?

Objective measurement, control and replication.

Wundt later recognised that higher mental processes were difficult to study using his procedures. Why can this be considered a strength?

He encouraged others to look for more appropriate methods and techniques, paving the way for approaches such as scanning.

In particular, Wundt’s work contributed towards the development of further psychological perspectives. Which one particularly developed in response to Wundt’s work?

Behaviourism

Introspection is still used today in areas such as what?

Therapy and studying emotional states

The study of mental processes has been further developed by which approach?

The cognitive approach

State at least two advantages of taking a scientific approach.

More factual, techniques are empirical and replicable, scientific knowledge is self-corrective meaning that it can be refined or abandoned

A limitation is that Wundt was overly reliant on introspection but why is this considered a weakness?

Introspection, by its nature, is subjective and lacks scientific rigour

What is a term for the limitation that refers to the inconsistency in results that Wundt obtained?

Low reliability

Provide at least one disadvantage of taking a scientific approach.

Creates artificial situations which therefore test artificial behaviours, only that which can be observed can be truly objective, not all behaviours can be investigated using scientific methods.