Origins of Psychology

• What did Wilhelm Wundt do?


  - in 1879 he opened first psychology lab

  - first to study structure of the human mind, by breaking down behaviours into basic elements known as structuralism

  - first to study the mind in carefully controlled scientific environment (lab)
• What did Wundt believe?


  - believed behaviour should be studied in scientific way
• What is introspection?


  - investigated internal events by observing conscious thoughts/feelings
• What was Wundt's aim?


  - to analyse the nature of human consciousness

  - this was the first systematic analysis of a persons mind
• What was Wundt's methodology?


  - controlled and scientific

  - experiences were analysed in terms of their component parts

  - components included sensations and emotional reactions

  - people trained to analyse data to make sure it was objective

  - people presented with standardised sensory experiences and asked to record their experiences (eg a metronome)

  - looked at thought in the present
• Weaknesses of introspection - Watson


  - Watson criticised scientific status the data produced was subjective

  - participants were recalling their own conscious thoughts, so results varied from person to person

  - Wundt agreed it wasn't as scientific as he intended, but paved the way for other methods
• Weaknesses of introspection - Unobservable and immeasurable


  - conscious thoughts are mental processes that cannot be observed and measured

  - a true scientific psychology should focus on behaviours that can be observed and measured
• 1900's early behaviourists rejected introspection


  - argued it is subjective

  - argued psychology should only study things that can be measured and observed
• 1930's behaviourist scientific approach dominated


  - Skinner brought scientific research and rigour

  - focus on learning lab studies
• 1950s cognitive approach


  - studied mental processes scientifically

  - likened the mind to a computer

  - used experiments and inferences
• 1980s biological approach


  - technological advances

  - genetic research

  - scanning techniques (EEG and fMRI)