Origins of Psychology - WUNT

• Who established the first psychology lab?

  • Wundt, in Germany 1879.
  • His aim was to describe the nature of human consciousness
• How did Wundt study internal processes?

  • Using Introspection - he claimed that people could be trained to observe and report their own mental processes when they respond to a stimulus. Their responses would be compared to produced theories about how systems such as memory work
• Why did Early behaviourists in the 1900s reject introspection?

  • Watson argued that it was subjective and influenced by personal perspective.
• What dominated psychology in the 1930s?

  • Behaviourist scientific approach - Skinner brought natural sciences into psychology
• When did the cognitive approach emerge?

  • In the 1950s - due to the computer revolution, the study of mental processed was seen as legitimate within psychology
• When did social learning theory emerge?

  • In the 1970s
• What did the biological approach introduce in the 1980s?

  • Technological advances, they used fMRI and EEG scans to record brain activity
• What emerged in the 1990s?

  • Cognitive neuroscience
• Strength of Wundt:

  • Aspects are scientific - he recorded introspections within a controlled lab environment, also standardised his procedures.
  • Therefore his research can be considered a forerunner to the later scientific approaches in psychology that were to come
• Limitation of Wundt's research:

  • Aspects are subjective - relied on participants self-reporting their ‘private’ mental processes, makes it difficult to establish meaningful ‘laws of behaviour’ which is one of the aims of science. is early efforts were naïve and wouldn't meet the criteria of scientific enquiry