C1: Introspection

Wilhelm Wundt (his name is important because he is considered the father of psychology) founded the first formal psychology laboratory, in Leipzig, Germany, in 1879. There are not a lot of dates that are important to remember in this course, but 1879 is one of them because that is considered the start of modern psychology.

A physician and physiologist, Wundt conducted experiments intended to identify the basic nature of human consciousness and experience. His main focus of research was on the senses of vision, touch, and the passage of time; other topics studied in his laboratory included attention, emotion, and memory.

The approach associated with Wundt, structuralism, seeks to describe the basic building blocks or "structure" of consciousness. The main technique used by Wundt and his colleagues was introspection or "inner sense." In this method, trained subjects are given a stimulus. They then are asked to describe the sensations that made up their conscious experience of that stimulus.

**To try this on your own… Look at an object in the room.

• What is your experience of this object?

• How would you describe the sensations of each of the parts of the object?

• How would you describe the object's colors? 

• How would you describe the object's shape? (For example: Just saying an apple is round would not enough, how else would you describe it?)

In Wundt's laboratory, you might have been asked to reflect on your experience of this stimulus for several minutes or even several hours! As you can imagine, this is harder than it seems. If we were in a live class and you were asked to talk for 10 minute about what an apple looks like or tastes like it would be difficult to come up with new ways to describe your experience! But if you think about it, we all experience the world in a variety of DIFFERENT ways.