1) Approaches in psychology (P1)

• Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behavior in a given context
• The word 'Psychology' comes from the Greek words 'psyche' meaning 'mind' and 'logos' meaning 'study of'
• Psychology has its roots in the broader discipline of philosophy, existing in the form of experimental Philosophy, and towards the end of the 19th century, Scientific Psychology was finally born
• Wilhelm Wundt set up the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany in the 1870s, aiming to study the structure of the mind by breaking down behaviors such as perception and sensation into their basic elements (structuralism)
• Wundt promoted introspection as a way of studying mental processes, which is a systematic analysis of our own conscious experience of a stimulus
• Wundt believed that all aspects of nature, including the human mind, could be studied scientifically, paving the way for the acceptance of Psychology as a distinct science and experimental psychology as the preferred method of studying human behavior
• The scientific method in Psychology refers to the use of investigative methods that are objective, systematic, and reliable, aiming to discover general laws
• All behavior is caused (determined), and if behavior is determined, then it should be possible to predict how human beings would behave in different conditions