Wundts approach

• • in 1879 Wundt opened first lab for psychology in Germany
  • this marked the emergence of psychology as a discipline
  • Wundt aimed to analyse nature of human consciousness
  • breaking up conscious awareness into basic structures: introspection, his pioneering methods
  • theories of mental processes such as language and perception
  • him and his co-workers recorded experience with various stimuli such as objects or sounds and measured time using metronome
  • he divided the observations into thoughts, images and sensations
  • structuralism: isolating the structure of consciousness into component parts
• • Wundts approach was scientific to an extent
  • he used standardised procedures and instructions as all ups received information in the same way and order
  • did it in controlled environment with well-controlled methodology
  • considered a forerunner to scientific psychology, e.g. the behaviourist approach
  • the ability to replicate his study is high
• • his methodology would be considered unscientific today
  • he used self-reporting to find out about mental processes which is very subjective and could lead to different personal perspectives
  • pps may have hidden thoughts or been unable to express them
  • he had to make inferences
  • meant he couldn't establish meaningful laws of behaviour which is useful for predictions and is a feature of science
  • he had flawed and failed criteria of scientific enquiry