origins of psychology

• Approaches can be seen as different ways of explaining psychological phenomena. Each approach looks at human behaviour from a different perspective. They all contribute to our understanding in different ways.
• Wundt was the first to call himself a psychologist (‘father of Psychology).He believed that all aspects of nature, including the human mind can be scientifically, so psychology moved from its philosophical roots to controlled, objective research.

  His approach paved the way for the acceptance of Psychology as a distinct science, and experimental psychology as the preferred method of studying human behaviour.
• Wundt set up the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany in the 1870s.
• Wundt’s aim was to study the structure of the mind by breaking down behaviours such as perception and sensation into their basic elements (structuralism).
• He promoted introspection as a way of studying these mental processes. Introspection is a systematic analysis of our own conscious experience of a stimulus.
• Wundt would ask people to focus on an everyday object (e.g. a metronome) and look inwards to analyse it in terms of its component parts e.g. noticing sensations and feelings and images.
• introspection is looking at oneself and examining personal thoughts and emotions.
• strengths of introspection

  • Controlled methods – all the introspections were recorded under strictly controlled conditions using the same stimulus every time. The same standardised instructions were issued to participants to make it as objective as possible.
• strengths of introspection

  • The above allowed procedures to be repeated (replicated) every single time.
• strength of introspection

  • Structuralism was the first major school of thought in psychology + influenced the development of experimental psychology in the US.  Titchener (a mentee of Wundt) established a lab at Cornell University + developed the first doctoral program in psychology.
• weakness in introspection

  • We have very little knowledge of the causes and processes underlying our behaviour and attitudes.
• weakness in introspection

  • Data was subjective in that it varied from person to person, so it was difficult to establish general principles. Introspective results were not reliably reproducible by other researchers in other laboratories.
• weakness of introspection

  • Too concerned with internal behaviour, which is not directly observable + cannot be accurately measured.
• Empiricism is the belief that all knowledge is derived from sensory experience (observation and experience alone). It's generally characterised by the use of the scientific method in Psychology.
• This new scientific approach was based on two assumptions:

  ◦All behaviour is caused (determined)

  ◦If behaviour is determined, then it should be possible to predict how human beings would behave in different conditions.

  The technique used to explore these assumptions became known as the scientific method.
• key words

  • objective
  • false ability
  • validity
  • systematic
  • reliable
• strengths of psychology

  • The reliance on objective and systematic methods of observations means that knowledge acquired using the scientific method is more than just the passive acceptance of facts.
• strengths of psychology

  • Because scientific methods rely on a belief in determinism, cause and effect can be established using methods that are empirical and replicable.
• strengths of psychology

  • If scientific theories no longer fit the facts, they can be refined or abandoned meaning that scientific knowledge is self-corrective.
• weakness of psychology

  • The reliance on objectivity and control can create contrived situations that tell us little about how people act in more natural environments.
• Weakness of psychology

  • Much of what we want to study in Psychology is unobservable and so it can’t be measured with any degree of accuracy. Psychology is the most inferential of the sciences as there is a far bigger gap between the actual data obtained in the research and the theories put forward to explain this.
• Weakness of psychology

  • Not all psychologists share the view that all human behaviour can be explored by the use of scientific methods (e.g. humanists). If human behaviour is not subject to the laws implied by scientific methods, then predictions become impossible and these methods are inappropriate.
• Control Factors in introspection

  • light blub
  • time
  • brightness
• High internal validity: One strength of using a scientific method in psychology is that it gives the research high internal validity.

  This is because the high levels of control in scientific research allow the researchers to manipulate the IV to see the effect it has on the DV.

  This allows the researcher to establish cause and effect and conclude that the IV is what was affecting the DV.
• Strength

  Reliability: A positive of both Wundt’s work and the scientific method is that both use controlled and standardised procedures.
• limitations

  • Low ecological validity: A weakness with scientific methods is that they lack ecological validity.  This is because, in order to make a concept measurable, it needs to be operationalised.  By doing this it can mean the variable no longer resembles the way we behave in our everyday lives. 
  • This is an issue as it means that any conclusions are limited in the extent to which they can be generalised beyond the experimental setting.
• Much of psychology is unobservable: The focus of the scientific method is on only measuring that which can be explicitly observed. To get a full understanding of behaviour, mixed methods using both qualitative and quantitative data are necessary.