ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY

• What is introspection?

  The first systematic experimental attempt to study the mind

  Breaks up conscious awareness into basic structures of thoughts, images and sensations
• How did Wundt significantly contribute to psychology as a developing science?

  • Opened the first ever lab dedicated to psychological enquiry in 1879, Germany
  • Documented and described the nature of human consciousness as the aim
  • Became known as introspection
  • Developed a structuralist approach by recording own conscious thoughts and breaking them down into constituent parts
• Wundt's significant use of controlled methods?

  • Introspections recorded under strictly controlled conditions
  • Standardised procedures such as using the same stimulus every time when recording conscious thoughts (ticking metronome)
  • Eliminating extraneous variables/confounding
  • Standradised instructions issues to all ppts to allow replication
  • Marked the separation of modern scientific psychology from its philosophical roots
• How can introspection be used?

  • Writing down/recording and identifying one's own conscious thoughts
  • Use of a stimulus such as a ticking metronome for this
  • Thoughts should be recorded, broken down into constituent parts and analysed for meaningful inferences
• The emergence of psychology as a science: Watson and behaviourists

  • Value of introspection was questioned at the start of the 20th century
  • John B Watson suggested introspection produced subjective data
  • Varied from person to person resulting in difficulty establishing general principles
  • Proposed that scientific psychology should only focus on behaviours that can be objectively observed/measured unlike introspection and analysing private mental processes
  • Birth of behaviourism
• Birth of the scientific approach: emergence of psych as a science

  • Watson and Skinner developed the methods of natural sciences into psychology
  • Use of controlled lab experiments and objectified measures
  • Development of behaviourism led to the cognitive revolution of the 60s
  • Study of internal mental processes and inferences from lab exp
  • Biological approach later developed
• Features of psychology as a science?

  • Development of early behaviourism (John B Watson)
  • Watson and Skinner developing scientific methods of psychology through lab experiments
  • Cognitive revolution in the 1960s
  • Biological approach with the development of scanning techniques such as FMRIs EEGs
• What is psychology?

  The scientific study of human mind and its functions, affecting behaviour in a given context
• The philosophical roots of psychology?

  • Rene Descartes
  • John Locke
  • Charles Darwin
• Rene Descartes

  • Suggested the mind and body are independent from each other
  • Known as cartesian dualism
  • Mind could be an object of study in its own right
• John Locke

  • Proposed empiricism
  • Idea all experience can be obtained through the senses
  • Human beings do not inherit knowledge or instincts
• Charles Darwin

  • Theory of evolution
  • Believed all human and animal behaviour has changed over successive generations
  • Individuals with stronger/more adaptive genes survive and reproduce
  • Survival of the fittest
  • Human behaviours such as social behaviour has evolved due to their adaptive value, deeply rooted in psychology