Origins

• 17th - 19th century: psychology begins as experimental philosophy
• 1879: Wundt opens the first experimental lab and studies structuralism and introspection
• 1900's: Freud establishes the psychodynamic approach
• 1913: J.B Watson and others reject introspection and establish behaviourism
• 1950's: Rogers and Maslow establish the humanistic approach and the importance of free will
• 1960's: Cognitive psychology is established comparing the mind to computer
• 1960's : Bandura proposes Social learning theory (behaviourism + cognitive)
• 1980's - : Advances in technology lead to the study of the biological approach
• 21st century : Cognitive neuroscience emerges (cognitive + biological)
• Structuralism: Breaking down the human mind into basic elements like thoughts, images, sensations
• Wundt: Father of Psychology, opened first experimental lab in Germany in the 1870's, studied structuralism and introspection, used standardised procedure, performed metronome test
• Standardised procedure: The methods used in a study are kept the exact same for each participant or the study is invalid
• Introspection : the systematic analysis of ones own conscious experience of a stimulus
• Metronome experiment: Each participants had to listen to a metronome and answer questions on it. The results were self report data meaning that people could lie so the study was dismissed. Used standardised procedure.
• wundt strengths:

  scientific - standardised procedure, use of lab

  contributor - wrote first psychological journal
• wundt weaknesses:

  subjective - self report data
• origins strength:

  scientific - uses controlled scientific methods , established scientific discipline
• origins weaknesses:

  subjective - many approaches contain subjective data used to back them up

  paradigm - not everyone in the subject fully agrees what they are studying