Origins of Psychology

• Wundts Role in Development of Psychology:

  • 'father of psychology' -> moved psychology away from philosophical roots
  • opened first psychology lab in Leipzig, Germany 1879
  • promoted the use of introspection as a way of studying mental processes
• Introspection:

  • systematic analysis of own conscious experience of a stimulus
  • an experience was analysed in terms of its component parts -> structuralism e.g. sensations, emotional reaction
  • his work paved the way for later controlled research + the study of mental processes e.g. by cognitive psychologists
• Strengths:

  • one of the first to use scientific method to study the structure of sensation + perception
  • used controlled environment to establish general theories about mental processes
  • Wundt's identification of higher mental processes (learning, language, emotions, etc.) that couldn't be studied in a strictly controlled manner
  • focus of mental processes through introspection can be seen as a forerunner of the cognitive approach
• Limitations:

  • subjectivity of Wundt's methods in contrast to the objectivity of the scientific process + difficulty modern psychologists have trying to objectively study unobservable manner
  • introspective methods were not reliably reproduced/ Wundt's difficulty with replication due to subjectivity
  • validity of introspection is weak -> many aspects of out minds are outside of our conscious awareness so cant be scientifically studied (inferences) -> therefore, they are unfalsafiable