Wundt and introspection and psychology as a science

Who is Wilhem Wundt?

* father of psychology
* he separated psychology from philosophy - he wanted to structure the mind in a more structured and specific way
* he opened the first institute for experimental psychology in Leipzig in 1879

What is introspection?

* technique that Wundt favoured as a way of uncovering what people were thinking and feeling
* analysing your own internal thoughts, feelings and sensations after they were presented with certain stimuli

How does introspection work?

1. participants are trained to systematically report their own experience
2. participants focus on a stimulus
3. and focus on one mental process
4. participants produce report as trained
5. Wundt can now compare reports to generate theories

What experimental conditions did he want in his research?

* replicable
* standardised
* controlled
* reductionist
* generalisable

what does replicable mean?

the procedure can be repeated accurately to make scientists confident in the results

what does standardised mean?

the same thing is done/said to each participant

what does controlled mean?

other variables are removed or kept constant so that they don’t affect results

what does reductionist mean?

breaking down human experience into more easily measurable parts

what does generalisable mean?

the results can be applied not just to people in the study

Wundts was a pioneering and influential approach which is a major positive, why?

allowed us to find out how things are related - relationship to be investigated in psychology

explain how Wundts approach was pioneering and influential

taking a scientific reductionist approach to the study of human thoughts and behaviour

what are problems with introspection?

* self-report responses are difficult to validate
* people subjectively reporting on their individual experiences
* could be affected by social desirability bias
* self-reports can’t be confirmed or corroborated and they may not be valid

what did Wundt influence?

led to the subjects emergence as a science

but is still regarded as controversial…

what are the criteria’s of a science?

* objectivity
* control
* replicability
* falsifiability
* generalisability

what is objectivity?

scientific observations should be recorded without bias

what is a falsifiability?

theories should generate predictions which can be tested and proved either wrong or right

what are arguments for psychology as a science?

* it should have the same aims as any other science
* the majority of major approaches within psychology use scientific procedure s to investigate theories - they aim to do this in a controlled and unbiased way

what are the arguments against psychology as a science?

* other approaches are less scientific - don’t use objective methods to study behaviour which are often unreliable and self report and case study methods which can be biased and subjective
* difficult to get a truly representative samples the findings can’t be easily generalised
* there are extraneous variables such as demand characteristics and very difficult to control