Origins of psych

• What did Wundt do?

  • Founded 1st psychology lab and considered the founder of psychology
• What is introspection?

  • a method used by Wundt
  • used to study the mind by breaking up conscious awareness into thoughts, images and sensations
• What was Wundt's objective?

  • to document and describe human consciousness (introspection)
• Controlled methods?

  • all introspections were recorded under strictly controlled conditions using the same stimulus each time
  • the same instructions were given to each participant making this study easily replicable and making it scientific
• Criticism (eval) of Wundt's methods (A03)

  • Wundt relied on participants self reporting their mental processes, making this data subjective
• Positive (eval) of Wundt's methods (A03)

  • Wundt's study done in a lab so classed as scientific as variables were controlled
• What did Watson do?

  • questioned scientific status of introspection, he argued that introspection is subjective in the case of it varied from person to person
• What was Watson's main argument?

  • said scientific psychology should only study what can be measured and observed
• Criticism (eval) of Watson's theory (A03)

  • not all approaches in psychology use objective methods to study behaviour such as the humanistic approach that only uses subjective experience