Cards (10)

  • Introspection
    a psychological method that involves observing one's own conscious thoughts, feelings, and mental processes to gain insight into the mind
  • Structuralism
    a psychological theory that attempts to understand the structure of the mind by analysing its basic components- to find the building blocks of thought.
  • 1879
    Wundt opened the first lab in Germany
  • Wundt
    First psychologist. Began to move psychology away from it philosophy roots
  • Wundts aim
    Try to analyse the nature of human consciousness.
  • The controls of introspection
    • Same stimuli each time to allow for a standardised procedure
    • Same instruction to each participant
    • Participants in the same experimental environment
  • What do the control variables do?
    They allowed for a more accurate comparison between each participant. Aim was to draw conclusions about our mental processes from the participants collective response.
  • Describe what is meant by introspection
    • Focuses on present experiences
    • An individuals conscious experience would be systematically analysed
    • The individual would focus on an object, whilst listening to a stimulus e.g metronome and look inwards noticing sensations, feelings and images
    • Analysis is broken up into components of thoughts, images and sensations
  • Strengths of introspection
    • Emotional regulation (help individuals process feelings)
    • Self awareness
    • Systematic and well controlled
  • Weakness of introspection
    • Bias (self evaluation)
    • Misinterpretations of emotions, thoughts etc
    • Unscientific as it's bias
    • reductionist ( only focused on certain parts of the brain and not all of it)