Approaches

who created the first psychology lab, when and where?

wilhelm wundt in 1879 in the university of leipzig, germany

what was wundt’s aim?

to analyse the nature of human consciousness

wundt was the first to…

have a systematic attempt to studying the mind under controlled conditions.

what was wundt’s pioneering method called?

introspection

what was one of wundt’s main objectives?

to try and develop theories about mental processes such as language and perception

the method of introspection

wundt and his co-workers recorded their experience of various stimuli they were presented with, and would divide their observations into three categories: thoughts, images and sensations.

structuralism

isolating the structure of consciousness and studying its consecutive parts

standardised procedures (wundt)

the stimuli that wundt and his coworkers experienced were always presented in the same way and the same instructions were issued to each participant.

the emergence of psychology as a science - 1900s

behaviourists.

john b watson disagreed with introspection because it produced subjective data and it was very difficult to establish general laws (which is one of the aims of science). watson proposed that scientific psychology should only study phenomena that can be observed objectively and measured.

the emergence of psychology as a science - 1950s

the cognitive approach

developed alongside the digital revolution, as computers gave psychologists a new metaphor for studying the mind. cognitive psychologists compared the mind to a computer and used experiments to test their predictions about memory and attention.

the emergence of psychology as a science - 1980s

biological approach

advances in technology allow psychologists to investigate physiological processes as they happen, through scanning techniques such as fmri and eeg. new methods such as genetic testing have also helped in better understanding the relationship between genes and behaviour.

wundt and introspection - evaluation

• scientific

  • one strength, some of his methods were systematic and well-controlled. all introspections recorded in controlled environment of the lab, ensuring that extraneous variables were not a factor. standardised procedures used which suggests wundt’s research could be considered a forerunned to later scientific approaches in psychology, and directly led to the development of the behaviourist approach.

• subjective data

  • one limitation, aspects of wundt’s research are unscientific. self reporting techniques used which is subjective, and pps may have hidden some of their thoughts. difficult to establish laws of behaviour, and general laws are one of the aims of science. not meet criteria of scientific entry today.

the emergence of psychology as a science - evaluation

• modern psychology

  • one strength, research in modern psychology can claim to be scientific. has the same aims as the natural sciences - to describe, understand, predict and control. most approaches rely on the use of the scientific method. throughout the 20th century and beyond, psychology established itself as a scientific discipline.

• subjective data

  • one limitation, not all approaches used objective mthods. humanistic approach rejects the scientific approach, focusing on individual and subjective experiences. psychodynamic approach uses case studies, which does not use representative samples.

psychology as a science - paradigm

philospher kuhn said that any science must have a paradigm, a set of principles that all people who work within that subject agree with. he argues that psychology can’t be considered a science because it has no paradigm - there is a lot of disagreement at its core.

the behaviourist approach - assumptions

the behaviourist aproach is only interested in studying behaviour that can be objectively observed and measured. it assumes that we are all born tabula rasa, and are the sum of everything that has happened to us.