AO3 - Wundt & Introspection

• Wundt developed standardised techniques which have high reliability.
• Wundt and introspection led to some useful general laws.

  • controlled lab experiments - falsifiable research
  • Makes psychology more reputable
  • This means Wundt's work has ultimately helped psychology become recognised as a credible scientific subject.
• P - One weakness of Introspection is that it can be highly subjective .
• E - Introspection introduces personal opinion and beliefs, trying to create general laws about causes of behavior in this way is very limited.
• E - The lack of numerical data also limits the statistical analysis that could take place if measures like fMRI scans were used to objectively detect changes in the brain when completing key tasks.
• L - This suggests that introspection lacks scientific rigour and is not fully open to observation. This then questions the claims that psychology is a science as it requires objectivity but introspection does not produce this.
• Another weakness of Wundts approach is that it lacks ecological validity.
• E - Introspection activities in artificial environments fail to fully represent real life experiences and so lack ecological validity. Methods designed to measure thoughts in a scientific way as the degree of control needed to make it scientific takes away the realism of the task.
• L- So the results cant be generalised to everyday experiences. This implies that by using the scientific approach we cannot fully study all of human experiences and behaviour.