Wund and origins

• Wundt

  • 1879 opened the first lab dedicated to scientific psychological studies
  • Aimed to try analyse the nature of human consciousness
  • Method became known as introspection
• Wundts research

  Wundt and his colleague would record experiences of various stimuli and report thoughts, images and sensations
• Structuralism


  Isolating the structure of consciousness
• Science

  Acquiring knowledge through systematic and objective investigation with the aim to discover general laws
• Emergence of psychology as a science

  1. In the 1900s behaviorists such as John B watson questioned introspection
  2. 1950s digital revolution made cognitive psychologists to think about the mind more like a computer
  3. 1980s with more research and tools created the biological approach
• Evaluation -Wundt - Strength

  • His methods were systematic and well controlled
  • Accounted for extraneous variables due to lab experiment
  • Experiments were standardised
• Evaluation - Weakness - Subjective data

  His research would be considered unscientific today:

  • Relied on ppts self reporting
• Evaluation - Origin of psychology - strength

  Modetn psycology can claim to be scientific due to methods used
• Evaluation - Origins of psychology - Weakness

  Not all approaches use scientific methods due to:

  • Demand characteristics
  • Humanistic approach rejecting scientific approach