Wundt

• often regarded as the father of psychology
• became the first person to be called a psychologist
• set up the first laboratory of experimental psychology in 1879
• separated psychology from philosophy by analysing the workings of the mind in a more structured way, with the emphasis being on objective measurement and control
• his approach became known as structuralism because he used experimental methods to find the basic building blocks of thought and investigate how they interacted
• wrote the first textbook of psychology

  • principles of physiological psychology, 1873-4
• used the scientific method to study the structure of sensation and perception
• showed that introspection could be used to study mental states in replicable laboratory experiments
• he believed that the experimental approach was limited in scope, and that other methods would be necessary if all aspects of human psychology were to be investigated
• the origins of psychology

  by the end of the 19th century:

  • psychology acquired a new definition: 'the science of mental life, both of its phenomena and their contributions'
  • introspection was developed to expose the mind to scientific research
  • the first experimental psychology laboratories began to appear in universities
• what is introspection


  means 'looking into' and refers to the process of observing and examining your own conscious thoughts or emotions

  • before wundt, introspection had been used by philosophers for studying how new ideas are created
  • wundt strictly controlled the environments where introspection took place so they could give the most detailed observations possible
  • wundt use of introspection inspired others to apply it to more complex mental processes, such as learning, language and emotion
• what is introspection


  • observations were biased by their training and tended to support the theories of the researchers who trained them
  • by 1913, watson was able to argue that introspection should play no part in a scientific psychology and behaviourism became the dominant approach in psychology
• introspection and the cognitive approach

  • introspection gained a new lease of life when the cognitive approach realised that it could give reliable insight into higher mental processes if controlled very carefully
  • almost all laboratory experiments conducted within the cognitive approach involve some introspection, even if it is only reporting which words you remember from a list you have learned
• strengths of introspection


  • introspection in controlled conditions allows experiments to be replicated
  • introspection provides the only method to access our conscious thoughts and feelings
• limitations of introspection


  • results of early experiments using introspection were not reliably reproducible
  • there is no way to objectively verify the accuracy of introspection
  • was not scientific