Wundt

• Wundt used structuralism, a reductionist apprach that breaks down

  the human experience into separate parts and isolates the structure of consciousness.
• Wundt used introspection in his studies which is the systematic analysis of your present conscious experience of a stimulus.
• Wundt's research was not empirical as emotions and feelings cannot be measured and are subjective. It was also unreliable as results varied hugely from participant to participant and general rules could not be established.
• Wundt's use of standardisation and replication helped psychology to emerge as a science. His work fed into later developments like the behaviourist approach which helped to establish cause and effect relationships and create general laws about human behaviour.
• Emergence of Psychology as a science AO3:

  Strengths of a scientific approach:

  • Scientific concepts are more credible and objective so people trust them more.
  • Replication means that mistakes can be spotted and corrected.
• Emergence of Psychology as a science AO3:

  Weaknesses of a scientific approach:

  • Scientific concepts often lack ecological validity.
  • It is difficult to study all aspects of psychology scientifically.
• Emergence of psychology as a science AO1:

  • Behaviourists felt studying unobservable emotions was unscientific so they extended Wundt's work by only looking at observable behavioural responses to stimuli. E.g. Watson and Skinner. They isolated the cause and effect relationship of stimulus = response.
  • Following this, cognitive psychology became popular as people rejected the reductionist stimulus=response. They wanted to see how internal mental processes could be studied scientifically. This structural, objective approach is scientific, yet not empirical as IMPs have to be inferred.
• Emergence of psychology as a science AO1:

  • Following the behaviourist and cognitive approaches, the biological approach has been aided in its scientific credibility by advances in technology; although evolutionary and genetic theories have been around for a long time they have become especially empirical with advances in modern technology, giving psychologists the means to observe live activity in the brain using sophisticated scanning techniques as part of lab experiments, such as fMRI and EEG. Very recently there are also controlled and objective ways to search for specific candidate genes.