origins of psychology- Approaches

what happened during the 17th and 19th century in psychology

psychology was a broader branch of philosophy.

known as experimental psychology

what happened in 1897

Wilhelm Wundt open the first experimental psychology lab in Germany, and psychology emerges as a distinct discipline

What was the aim of Wundt first experiment ?

Wundt aim was to try and analyse the nature of human consciousness - thus presenting the first systematic attempt to study the mind under controlled condition i.e. introspection

What is introspection ?

the first systematic experimental attempt to study the mind by breaking up conscious awareness into basic structures of thoughts images and sensations

what is psychology

the scientific study of the mind, behaviour and experience

What was wundt main objectives

to develop theories about mental processes such as language and perception

what were the standardised procedures to wundt experiment

his co-workers recoded experiences of various stimuli they were presented with, such as different objects or sounds

they would then divide their observation into three categories

thoughts, images and sensation

i.e. given a ticking metronome and they would report their thoughts images and sensations

what is structuralism ?

this is isolating the structure of consciousness

i.e. categorising their observations into thoughts images and sensations

the stimuli the stimuli that wundt and his co-workers experienced were placed in the same order and the same instructions were issued to each participant

what is a strength of wundt study to do with his study being scientific

some of his methods were systematic and well controlled i.e scientific

all introspection was recorded in a controlled environment of a lab, ensuring that possible extraneous variables were not a factor

procedures and instructions were carefully standardised so that all Ps received the same information and were tested in the same way

this suggest that wundt research was a forerunner for to later scientific approaches in psychology such as the behaviourist approach

what is a limitation of wundt study to do with subjective data

some other aspects of Wundt's research would be considered unscientific today

Wundt relied on self reporting their mental processes. such data is subjective.

also participants may have hidden some of their thoughts.

it is difficult to establishing meaningful laws on behaviour, one of the aims of science

this suggest that some of wudt earlier efforts to the study of the mind were flawed and would not meet the criteria of a scientific inquiry

What is one strength of Wundt research on modern psychology

research in modern psychology can claim to be scientific

psychology has the same as the natural sciences i.e. to describe understand, predict and control behaviour

Learning Approaches, Cognitive Approaches and biological approach - rely on scientific methods

i.e. lab studies to investigate theories in an unbiased way

This suggest that throughout the 20th century and beyond, psychology has established its self a scientific discipline

What is one limitation of Wundt research to do with the data being subjective ?

not all approaches is psychology are regarded as scientific in nature so dont use objective methods

Humanistic approach rejects the scientific approach preferring to focus on individual experiences

the psycho-dynamic approach makes use of the case study samples which do not produce representative data

lastly human beings are active Ps in research - responding to demand characteristics

therefore a scientific approach to the study of human thought and experience may not always be considered desirable/ possible

what happened in the 1900 with behaviourist

the value of introspection was being Qs by many ATM

John B. Watson - introspection produced subjective data = hard to establish general laws

watson and skinner proposed truly scientific psychology should only study what can be observed objectively and measured

behaviourist focused on behaviours they could see and used carefully controlled experiments

The behaviourist approach = go on to dominate psychology for the next 50 yrs

1950s psychology emerging as a science - what happened

cognitive psychologist likened the mind to a computer (multi-store model)

tested their predictions about memory and attention using experiments

the cognitive approach ensured that study of the mind was once again, legitimate and highly scientific aspect of discipline

1980s biological approach

research within this area have taken advantage of the advances in technology to investigate physiological processes as they happen

FMRI,and EEG to study live brain activity.

new methods such as genetic testing has allowed us to better understand the relationship between genes and behaviour

even of the 21st century

the emergence of cognitive neuroscience as a discipline

bringing together the cognitive and biological approach

what is Cognitive neuroscience ?

this investigates how biological structures influence mental states

What is a paradigm

a set of principles. assumptions and methods that all people who work within the subject agree on

how does paradigms effect the classification of psychology as a science?

any science must have a paradigm - philosopher Tomas Kuhn

psychology is not a science because it does not have a paradigm as there is so much internal disagreement at its core