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Where did the origin of psychology as a discipline occur?
Germany from the work of Wilhelm Wundt → first person to call himself a psychologist, believing that all aspects of nature could be studied scientifically including the human mind
What did Wundt do in 1879?
Established the first psychology laboratory
Where did Wundt work?
Leipzig University + had a room dedicated to conducting psychological experiments
What is introspection?
Systematic analysis of one’s own conscious experience, thought processes, feelings, emotions + sensations
Reporting your present experience
Involved training people to analyse + report in detail their inner thoughts + break it down into separate parts
What was Wundt’s method of introspection?
Presented his colleagues with carefully controlled stimuli - visual images or auditory tones
Asked to provide a description of the inner processes they were experiencing → report what they had experienced + their analysis of that experience
What allowed procedures to be repeated / replicated every time?
All introspections were recorded under strictly controlled conditions
Using the same stimulus every single time e.g ticking metronome
Same standardised instructions were issued to all participants
Explain Watson’s problem with introspection
The scientific status + value of introspection was being questioned by many psychologists especially John Watson
He criticised it for not being objective as it varied from person to person → difficult to establish the general principles
He proposed a truly scientific psychology should restrict itself to being empirical by studying phenomena that can be observed → how behaviourist approach started
Explain the scientific approach of psychology
Psychology today is considered to be a scientific discipline + so uses a variety of methodologies, many of which are empirical + scientific
Legacy of biological + physiological origins means many psychologists apply scientific method to their work + use empirical methods to test their hypotheses
*but this isn’t the case for all psychology + some psychologists aren’t focused as much on the scientific aspects with their work as they argue there will always be an element of subjectivity
What is the empirical method?
Empirical evidence is directly observable + gathered through the senses → can be verified by measurements + doesn’t go beyond the boundaries of what can be observed
Explain what objectivity is
If a piece of research is objective
it is free from bias
based on observable phenomena
isn’t influenced by personal opinion, prejudice or emotion
is empirical
is available to other scientists to check + verify
What is replicability?
The extent to which a study can be repeated so that the reliability of results can be judged
What is falsifiability?
When it’s possible to prove a statement, hypothesis or theory wrong → only possible if a study is replicable + hypothesis is operationalised and testable
Explain theory construction + hypothesis testing
In order to make scientific progress, it must be possible to test + falsify a theory
Theory needs to be rigid + hypothesis must be clear / operationalised → if you create a testable theory + fully operationalise your variables/hypotheses then theory can be tested + falsified
What is a paradigm?
Distinct set of concepts / thought patterns within a specific domain → each psychological approach has its own paradigm
When does a paradigm shift happen?
When a theory is falsified + new paradigm is created that is based on the newly discovered information
Write a PEEL paragraph - Wundt’s method wasn’t scientific
A limitation of Wundt's research is that his method was not scientific.
Many psychologists (particularly behaviourists) criticised Wundt's use of introspection because it is a non-empirical, subjective method (it relied primarily on non-observable' responses)
Although participants could report on their conscious experiences, the processes themselves (e.g. memory, perception) were considered to be unobservable → Wundt's approach ultimately failed because of the lack of reliability of his methods
This is a limitation because, as he did not use scientific methods, Wundt's research cannot be properly replicated + the Introspection 'experimental results were not reliably reproduced by other researchers in other laboratories
In contrast, the early behaviourists such as Pavlov and Thondike were already achieving reliable results and discovering findings that could be easily generalised to all human beings.
Write a PEEL paragraph - some aspects would be considered scientific
A strength of using the Wundt's methods is that some of the aspects would still be considered scientific today
For instance, he recorded the introspection within a controlled lab + standardised his procedures so that all participants received the same information and were tested in the same way
This is a strength as for this reason Wundt's research can be considered a forerunner to the later scientific approaches in psychology that were to come.
However many psychologists believe that it’s not valid to use purely empirical methods because subjective experiences + perception are part of being a human + so are worth studying
Write a PEEL paragraph - low ecological validity
A limitation of using the scientific method is that it has low ecological validity.
Many psychologists (particularly those favouring the humanistic approach) believe that concentrating purely on objective and controlled methods does not reveal a great deal about how people behave in natural settings particularly as much of the subject matter of psychology is unobservable (e.g. the mind) → therefore cannot be measured in an empirically way.
Most psychologists tend to accept Nisbett and Wilson's (1977) claim that we have very little knowledge of the causes of, and processes underlying, our behaviour and attitudes → they found, for example, that participants were remarkably unaware of factors that had been influential in their choice of a consumer item.
This is a limitation because, although such research is likely to produce reliable data, it is unlikely to be valid and, as psychologists aim to investigate realistic human behaviour, it is arguably pointless to adopt a purely scientific approach
Many psychologists agree that the most effective approach is to use a range of different methods (lab experiments, case studies, observations etc.) to investigate one aim/hypothesis so that they gather reliable and valid data to test a theory → called triangulation.
Write a PEEL paragraph - still used as a useful method by modern psychologists
A strength of introspection is that it is still being used as a useful method by modern psychologists.
For example, Hunter et al. (2003) used introspective methods as a way of making 'happiness' a measurable phenomenon → they gave a group of teenagers beepers that went off during random times throughout the day, surprising participants and requiring them to write down their thoughts and feelings in the moment before the beep. Most of the entries indicated that the teens were unhappy rather than happy, but Csikszentmihalyi and Hunter also found that when their energies were focused on a challenging task, they tended to be more upbeat
This is a strength because such research demonstrates how introspection is a useful tool and can be used with scientific methods to provide a greater understanding of human behaviour. The fact that introspection is still being used in contemporary psychology demonstrates the long-lasting influence that Wundt has had on the discipline of psychology.
