Wundt

• Psychology as a distinct discipline is relatively new; it only came into existence around 150 years ago
• psychology was subsumed within philosophy; philosophy assumes that becoming a clear and unbiased thinker is the route to understanding universal reason
• Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) aka the 'father' of experimental psychology was the first person to usher in psychology as an academic discipline
• In 1875 Wundt established the first laboratory dedicated to experimental psychology at Leipzig University
• Wundt’s approach became known as structuralism: Breaking down mental processes into their most basic components
• Wundt developed a technique, known as introspection, the literal definition of which is looking into'. He broke down the structure of the mind into 2 components: sensation and perception.
• He focused on the need for an objective study into the mind which was pursued through the use of the systematic technique of introspection
• Introspection is a set of standardised experiments with controlled conditions which raised psychology’s credibility as a science
• Wundt recognised the fact that there was a subjective nature to his methods of introspection which undermined the objectivity of his work
• Due to the subjective nature of introspection this lead to a lack of replicability and falsifiability at the heart of Wundts methodology
• Behaviourists used much of Wundts approach to build their rigorously scientific methods of investigation as they embraced his need for empirical investigation
• Wundt layer the foundation for Behaviourists and their work was fundamental in psychology becoming a science
• Cognitive psychologist were inspired by Wundts idea to study mental processes
• Outline Wundts method of Introspection (3)

  To make his studies objective, Wundt trained his participants in how to undertake introspection, eg: reflect consciously on their own experience. Then exposed them to a standardised scenario in which they were all given the same instructions and responded to the same sensory event (metronome) . Then conducted a systematic analysis of components parts of their experiences by breaking their responses down into elements like sensations, emotions and thoughts. Reported these by writing down their analysis during the process