origins of psychology

• early influences included Rene Descartes and his concept of Cartesian dualism, which simply means that the mind a body are separate entities, the brain is not the same as the mind.
• Wilhelm Wundt:

  in 1873 Wundt published the first book on psychology 'Principles of Physiological Psychology' and in 1879 opened the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany. he is often considered to be the 'father' of psychology.

  his approach to psychology was to study the structure of the human mind, by breaking down behaviours into their basic elements, hence his approach became known as structuralism.
• introspection: part 1

  Wundt used introspection to investigate the human mind. introspection comes from the word Latin meaning ' looking into'. basically, participants were asked to reflect on their own cognitive processes and describe them.
• introspection: part 2

  Wundt claimed that, with sufficient training, mental processes such as memory and perception could be observed systematically has they occurred using introspection. For example, observers might be shown an object and asked to reflect upon how they perceive it. this info could then be used to gain insight into the nature of the mental processes involved in perception, reaction time etc. eg, in Wundt's studies of perception, participants would be presented with carefully controlled stimuli (eg, visual images or auditory tones).
• introspection: part 3

  they would then be asked to provide a description of the inner processes they were experiencing as they looked at the images or listened to the tone. this made it possible to compare different participants, reports in response to same stimuli, and so establish general theories about perception and other mental processes.
• what is the 'scientific method'?

  the scientific method refers to the use of investigative methods that are:

  • objective
  • systematic
  • replicable
• strengths of scientific approaches to psychology

  • knowledge acquired from methods are more than passive acceptable of facts
  • behaviour causes can be established through methods that are empirical and replicable
  • scientific knowledge is self-correcting = can be refined or abandoned
• weaknesses for scientific approach to psychology

  • psychologists can create an environment producing artificial behaviour
  • matter of psychology is unobservable = cant measure
  • not all human behaviour can be explored through scientific methods
• introspection

  • relies primarily on non-observable responses, although can report conscious experiences but unable to report the unconscious relating to their behaviour
  • produced data that was subjective (varied between people) - difficult to establish general principles -> meaning that intpv exp. results not reliably produced by other researchers
  • early behaviourists were discovering principles that could easily generalised to all human beings
• introspection still used to gain access to cognitive process eg,

  Griffiths (1994) used introspection to study cognitive processes of fruit machine gamblers

  Csikzentmilyi and Hunter (2003) used introspection to study happiness in their work in area of positive psychology
• psychology has 4 goals

  1. description - tells us ''what'' occurred
  2. explanation - tells us ''why'' a behaviour/mental processes occurred
  3. prediction - identifies conditions under which a future behaviour/mental process is likely to occur
  4. change - applies psychological knowledge to prevent unwanted behaviour and to bring out desired change
• why different approaches to psychology?

  • each approach looks at human behaviour from a different perspective = all contribute to our understanding in different ways
  • no approach is right or wrong but some are more useful than others
  • all approaches are based on assumptions
  • first step when studying an approach is to look at what are the main assumptions - may be different theories within an approach but share common assumptions
• describe wundts role in the development of psychology (6 marks)

  • known as the 'father of psychology' - moved from philosophical roots to controlled research
  • set up the first lab in leipzig, germany in 1870s
  • promoted the use of introspection as a way of studying mental processes
  • introspection - systematic analysis of one's own conscious experience of a stimulus
  • an experience was analysed in terms of its components parts eg, sensations, emotional reaction etc.
  • his work paved the way for later controlled research and the study of mental processes eg, by cognitive psychologists
• describe and evaluate wundt's role in the development of psychology (8 marks)

  • AO3 focus on contribution to psychology - his work paved the way for later more controlled research and the study of mental processes
  • lab methods inspired by wundt's early work did little to tell us about human behaviour in real situations
  • one of the major features of science is replicability - did his work have that? compare to another approach at this time
  • wundt's methods are important, give an example of where they are being used today