origins of psychology

• approach 


  an approach is a way of explaining behaviour
• Wundt


  the first person to call himself a psychologist

  moved psychology away from its philosophical rots to controlled research

  believed the human mind could be studied scientifically through experimental methods
• structuralism 


  Wundt aimed to study the structure of the human mind by breaking down behaviours into basic elements = know as structuralism
• introspection

  from Latin ='looking into'

  the process by which a person gains knowledge about their own emotional or mental state
• Wundt & introspection 


  he claimed that mental processes such as memory and perception could be observed systematically through introspection
• Wundt & science 


  much of his work would be considered to be scientific (same stimulus used each time, same standardised instructions used...)

  -p's asked to describe the inner processes they were experiencing - making it possible to compare different p's reports - so can establish theories = leading to the emergence of psychology as a science
• research using introspection

  Griffiths (1994) - aimed to investigate the thought process of people who gambled regularly vs those that didn't

  -proposed the thought process of gamblers would be more irrational

  -used process of introspection

  p's asked to 'think aloud' while playing a fruit machine by saying everything that went through their mind by talking continuously and told not to justify their thoughts

  =as expected gamblers did have more irrational thoughts
• evaluation of methods - using self reports 


  we have little knowledge of the causes and processes underlying our behaviour - means that introspective reports may not be accurate = invalid

  people are unaware of their own hidden attitude's and stereotypical thinking = self reports wouldn't give accurate information

  P's could lie due to social desirability bias

  = method may lack internal validity
• evaluation of methods - inconsistent 


  the experimental results from Wundt have not been reliably replicated by other researchers = method lacks reliability
• evaluation of methods - unfalsifiable

  he is studying unobservable mental processes = theories are unfalsifiable - theories produced from using introspection cannot be proven to be false because its difficult to test the ideas scientifically - because its impossible to know what someones thinking
• strength

  his work paved the way for later controlled research and was very influential in the emergence of psychology as a science