Origins of psychology

Wilhelm Wundt and His Contributions to Psychology

• Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) - father of experimental psychology

  • Background: studied medicine, worked as a physiologist at Heidelberg and Leipzig University

• Contributions

  • Wrote first psychology textbook, "Principles of Physiological Psychology" (1873-4)

  • Set up first laboratory dedicated to experimental psychology in Germany in 1879

  • Separated psychology from philosophy and biology, becoming the first psychologist

  • Trained 116 students who then went on to specialise in psychology throughout Europe and the world to develop research into human behaviour and the mind.

• Structuralism Approach

  • Defined as using experimental methods to find basic building blocks of thought

  • Him & his colleagues recorded their own conscious thoughts and aimed to break them down into individual parts (STRUCTURALISM)

  Contributions to Psychology

  • Utilized scientific methods to study sensation and perception

  • Demonstrated the use of introspection in replicable laboratory experiments for studying mental states

Introspection in Psychology

• Definition and Origin

  • Introspection: the process of observing and examining one's conscious thoughts or emotions.

  • Conscious examination of conscious experience

  → Recorded under controlled conditions using the same stimulus

  → Participants listened to a ticking metronome and were asked their thoughts, feelings and sensations in response to it

  → Participants report their experiences to which Wundt would analyse them

Evaluation of Wundt's Work in Psychology

Strengths

• Systematic and Well-Controlled Methods(Scientific)

• All introspections were recorded in the controlled environment of the lab, ensuring that possible extraneous variables were not a factor.

• For example, when the stimulus was a light,he ensured if all factors was the same:the light kept the same colour, the same brightness and on for the same time for every person in his experiment

• Standardised procedures and instructions, so all participants received the same information and were tested in the same way.

  This suggests that Wundt's research can be considered a forerunner to later scientific approaches in psychology, such as the behaviourist approach.

Limitations

• Reliance on Subjective Data

  • Participants self-reported their mental processes.

  • Data influenced by personal perspectives, leading to subjectivity.

  • Participants may have hidden some of their thoughts.

• Challenges in Establishing Laws of Behavior

  • Difficulty in deriving meaningful and generalizable laws from subjective data.

  • Limited ability to predict future behavior, a key aim of scientific inquiry.

  • Suggests that Wundt's methods may not meet modern scientific criteria.

Conclusion

• Wundt's contributions to psychology include systematic methods and a foundation for scientific approaches.

• However, reliance on subjective data and challenges in establishing general laws highlight limitations in his research methodology.

• Decline of Introspection

  • By 1913, Watson argued against introspection in scientific psychology.

  • Behaviourism emerged as the dominant approach in psychology, sidelining introspection.