Origins in Psychology

• Who is Des Cartes (1596-1650)


  • Believes the mind and body are independent from eachother.
  • This means that the mind can be studied in its own right.
• Who is John Locke? (1632-1704)


  • Proposed empiricism
  • Don’t inherit knowledge or instincts
  • Led to the behaviourist approach
• Who is Charles Darwin? (1809-1882)


  • Evolution theory (theory of evolution)
  • The strong individuals reproduce, the weaker die
• Who is Wilhelm Wundt? (1832-1920)


  • Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) was a German scientist who was the first person to be referred to as a psychologist.
  • His famous book entitled ‘Principles of Physiological Psychology’ was published in 1873.
  • Opened a Psychology lab in Germany in 1879
  • He wanted to “explore the mind”
  • Came up with idea of Introspection
• Wundts view of Psychology


  • Wundt viewed psychology as a scientific study of conscious experience
  • He believed there are two goals of psychology:
  • To identify components of consciousness
  • To identify how those components combined to result in our conscious experience
• What is Introspection?


  • Comes from Latin meaning “looking into”
  • The process by which a person gains knowledge about their own mental states
  • Participants record their internal thoughts and feelings
  • Was referred to by Wundt as ‘internal perception’
  • Introspection is a process by which someone examines their own conscious experiment as objectively as possible
  • Makes the human mind like any other aspect of nature that a scientist observes
• Wundt‘s version of Introspection


  • The version of introspection that Wundt proposed used very specific experimental conditions
  • An external stimulus was designed to produce a scientifically observable experience of the mind
  • A scientifically observable experience is one that is repeatable
• The first requirement

  • The first requirement of Wundt‘s introspection was the use of “trained” or practiced observers.
  • The observers could immediately observe and report a reaction
• The second requirement

  • The second requirement of Wundt’s introspection was the use of repeatable stimuli that always produced the same experience in the subject
  • This allowed the subject to expect the inner reaction and be fully attentive to it.
• The need for requirements


  • The aim of these experimental requirements was to eliminate “interpretation” in the reporting of internal experiences.
  • The requirement also countered the argument that theres no way to know that an individual is observing their mind or consciousness accurately, since it can’t be seen by anyone else.
• Structuralism


  • The attempt to understand the structure and characteristics of the mind as Wundt did is known as structuralism.
  • To investigate structuralism, Wundt established his psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig in 1879.
• Example experiment

  • In his laboratory, Wundt and his students conducted experiments on variables such as reaction times.
  • A student would receive a stimulus such as a light, image or sound.
  • The subject would be told to push a button in response to the stimulus, and their reaction time would be measured to one-thousandth of a second.
• The decline of structuralism


  • Despite Wundt's efforts to train individuals in the process of introspection, the process remained very subjective. There was very little agreement between individuals.
  • As a result, structuralism effectively died when Wundt’s student, Edward Titchener, died in 1927.
• What is a weakness of introspection related to the accuracy of reports?


  The report could be discoursed.
• Why might subjects forget or remember things incorrectly during introspection?


  There is always a delay between thinking a thought and writing it down.
• How can intentional discourse affect the results of introspection?


  A subject may want to pretend to have positive thoughts.
• What might a subject do when solving a problem that affects their introspective report?


  A subject could have to pretend to have solved the problem with far less intrusive thoughts.
• How might the thoughts experienced in a laboratory setting differ from those in a real-world problem-solving scenario?


  In the real world, you may not experience the same thoughts as you did when solving the problem in the lab.
• Why is writing down thoughts in a laboratory considered unusual?


  Writing down your thoughts in a laboratory is not a normal thing to do.
• What are the strengths of introspection according to Wundt's contributions to psychology?


  • Wundt encouraged the search for better methods, such as MRI's and CT scans.
  • Introspection is still used today, for example, to study thought processes of gamblers and non-gamblers at a slot machine.
• Nisbett and Wilson (1977)


  • Nisbett and Wilson (1977) found that participants were remarkably unaware of factors that had influenced their choice of a consumer item. The problem is particularly acute in the study of implicit attitudes i.e. attitudes that are unknown to us. 
  • E.g. a person may be implicitly racist, which influences the way they react to members of different ethnic groups, yet because such attitudes exist outside conscious awareness, self-reports through introspection would not uncover them.
• Reductionism


  • Reductionism is an approach that reduces a complex phenomenon such as human behaviour to the simplest explanation possible. Often, this means looking for a biological basis for behaviour.
  • The advantage of a reductionist approach is that it can give a greater understanding of something by revealing evidence for a cause of behaviour.
  • The disadvantage is that humans and their environments are so complex that the reductionist explanation falls short of giving the whole explanation of the behaviour.