Wundt

• Introspection is investigating internal events by examining conscious thoughts and feelings
• Wundt's role in emergence of psychology as a science

  He is the 1st person to open a laboratory designated to the scientific study of psychological enquiry under controlled conditions facilitating accurate measurements and replication

  His focus was on trying to understand psychological processes of perception and structualism rather than the philosophical or biological processes

  He created introspection, still used today in areas such as therapy
• Wundt's role in development of psychology

  Set up 1st psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany in 1879

  Created introspection- systematic analysis of own conscious experience of a stimulus

  Promoted introspection as a way of studying mental processes

  Analysed experience in terms of component parts e.g.

  sensation, emotional reaction and thoughts

  Paved the way for later controlled research and study of mental processes e.g. cognitive psychologists
• Strengths of Wilhelm Wundt's work

  Some methods were systematic and well controlled

  All introspections were recorded in controlled environment of lab, ensuring that possible extraneous variables were not a factor

  Processes and instructions were standardised
• Weaknesses of Wundt's work

  Unscientific today

  Relied on participants self reporting their mental processes

  Subjective

  Participants could have hidden their thoughts
• Outline introspection

  introspection is a systematic analysis of one’s own conscious experience

  experiences are analysed in terms of their component parts/reference to ‘structuralism’

  these parts are elements like sensation, emotional reactions etc

  people were trained to do this analysis to make the data objective rather than subjective

  people were presented with standardised sensory events like a ticking metronome and asked to report their reactions.