Origins

• Wilhelm Wundt opened the first experimental lab for psychology

  1880
• This marks the point when psychology emerges as a distinct discipline
• In the early 1900s, the psychodynamic approach and the work of Sigmund Freud emerged
• This was followed by the work of behaviorists such as B.F. Skinner and John Watson, which dominated psychology for the first half of the 21st century
• In the 1950s, the humanistic approach was developed, which actively rejected the behaviorist and psychodynamic approaches
• In the second half of the 20th century, the cognitive approach and the biological approach emerged, focusing on the impact of mental and biological processes on behavior
• Wilhelm Wundt


  The first person to be known as a psychologist, who opened the first ever lab dedicated entirely to psychological inquiry
• Wilhelm Wundt's work


  • It marks the beginning of scientific psychology, as the subject was starting to split from its philosophical roots
  • His aim was to analyze the nature of human consciousness, representing the first systematic attempt to study the mind under controlled conditions
• Introspection


  The method pioneered by Wilhelm Wundt, which involved him and his co-workers recording their experiences in reaction to various stimuli
• Introspection method


  1. Participants divided their observations into three categories: thoughts, images, and sensations

  2. Stimuli were always presented in the same order, and all participants received the same instructions
• Structuralism


  The process of isolating the structure of consciousness, which became known as the aim of Wundt's work
• By the beginning of the 20th century, the value of introspection was being questioned by many, most specifically by behaviorists such as John Watson
• The problem with introspection was that it produced very subjective data, making it difficult to establish general principles of behavior
• Behaviorism


  An approach that believes a truly scientific psychology should only study things that can be observed objectively and measured, focusing only on behaviors that can be seen and studied using carefully controlled experiments
• Behaviorism went on to dominate psychology for the next 50 years or so and is still massively influential today
• In the 1950s, the digital revolution gave a new generation of psychologists a metaphor for studying the mind, leading to the development of the cognitive approach
• Cognitive psychologists started comparing the mind to a computer and testing their predictions about mental processes using experiments
• The biological approach has taken psychology to new levels scientifically, using sophisticated scanning techniques and genetic testing to investigate the link between brain and behavior
• Technological advances have helped ensure highly scientific standards are maintained in psychology