Origins of Psychology- Psych as a Science

• what are psychology's roots closely tied to?

  biology and philosophy; subfields of physiology = study of the functions of living things, & espitemology = study of knowledge. psych is the hybrid of the two.
• when were the first psychology labs founded?

  in 1879, uni of leipzig in germany by wundt.

  • this helped to move psych into a distinct science.
• before wundt's lab, researchers studying psych were based where?

  in departments of philosophy in unis.
• what is a psychology an ally to?

  the natural sciences and humanities.
• what is structuralism?

  school of thought created by wundt.

  • sought to break down the mind's conscious experience into its most basic components/structures in order to understand how (when asssembled) play a role into mental experience.
• what approach did wundt use?

  a reductionist one. believed that all behaviours can be reduced down to simple, measurable components in order to explain behaviour.
• what is wundt sometimes called?

  the father of experimental psychology.

  • believed all aspects of human experience could be scientifically studied. to do this, research needed to be carried out in a strict & controlled way.
• what is introspection?

  1st developed by wundt.

  • involved training people to as carefully and objectively as possible to analyse the content of their own thoughts.
  • 'process of looking inward'.
  • in wundt's lab, highly trained observers were presented w/carefully controlled sensory events and then asked to describe the mental experiences of these events.
  • wundt believed that observers needed to be in a state of high attention to the stimulus and in control of the situation.
  • observations repeated several times.
• what is mean by a paradigm in science?

  a set of ideas, concepts and methods which are agreed upon and accepted by everyone within the field.