origins

• paradigm 


  a way of thinking
• empirical methods


  knowledge is gained form direct experiences
• replicability 


  the ability to conduct research again and again and achieve consistent results
• falsifiability 


  the idea that a research hypothesis could be proved wrong
• objectivity 


  not letting personal opinions interfere with the data
• subjectivity 


  allowing personal opinions to influence us
• theory construction 


  a set of principles that intend to explain certain behaviours or events
• introspection 


  technique of systematic analysis of our conscious experiences
• systematically 


  with a clear system and ordered method
• theories


  proposed untestable explanations
• perception 


  the process of extracting meaning from what we see, hear, touch
• mental processes 


  things people can do / experience with their minds
• wundt 


  • founded first psychological laboratory (1879)

  • began structuralism

  • introduced introspection

  • used systematic and controlled methods
• paradigm shift 


  disconfirming evidence accumulates and the dominant theory is overthrown
• what was psychology originally classed as 


  branch of philosophy
• paradigm 


  a set of shared assumptions and methods within a particular discipline
• introspection 


  looking at oneself and examining personal thoughts and emotions
• strengths of wundts work 


  •wundts use of subjective methods placed human experience at the forefront of his work, making it more realistic

  •introspection as a way to study mental processes paved the way for the cognitive approach
• weaknesses of wundts work 


  •introspection is a subjective method

  •early experiments using introspection did not produce reliable results
• replicability 


  the ability to repeat the methods used in a study achieve the same findings
• weakness - lacks research support

  • introspection was subjective meaning it lacks replicability
  • there is little research evidence outside of wundts work that has been able to produce similar results
  • impossible to create general bias from this method of research
• weakness - people have little understanding of the causes of behaviour

  • Nisbet and Wilson found that participants were unaware of factors that were influential in their choice of consumer items
  • suggest we wouls not be able to study attitudes that are unknown to us
  • may impact how people react to different ethnic groups