Origins of Psychology

• Introspection was the first systematic experimental attempt to study the mind by breaking up conscious awareness into basic structures of thoughts, images and sensations
• Psychology is the scientific study of the mind, behaviour and experience
• Science is a means of acquiring knowledge though systematic and objective investigation; the aim is to discover general laws
• Locke proposed the concept of empiricism which refers to the idea that all knowledge is derived from sensory experience and can be studied using the scientific method
• Wundt opened the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany
• Wundt used introspection ('looking into') where participants are asked to reflect on their own cognitive processes and describe them; Wundt established psychology as a science by using scientific method
• Introspection is the systemic analysis of own conscious experience of a stimulus, relies on non-observable responses and produces subjective data
• Behaviourist, Watson, rejected introspection as unobservable as we can only measure behaviour we can see
• Griffiths (1994) used introspection to study cognitive processes of fruit machine gamblers, asking them to 'think aloud' whilst playing a fruit machine into a microphone on their lapel
• Goals in psychology:

  1. Description- tell is 'what' occurred
  2. Explanation- tell us 'why' a behaviour/ mental process occurred
  3. Prediction- identifies conditions under which a future behaviour/ mental process is likely to occur
  4. Change- applies psychological knowledge to prevent unwanted behaviour and to bring about desired change
• S- Scientific (Origins):

  Wundt's methods were systematic and well-controlled. All introspections recorded in controlled environment of laboratories, ensuring EVs were not a factor. Procedures and instructions were standardised so all participants receive same information and tested in the same way. Wundt's research was important to later scientific approaches in psychology like the behaviourist approach.
• W- Subjective data (Origins):

  Wundt's research is considered unscientific today as he relied on participants self-reporting their mental processes. Participants may have hidden some of their thoughts, this makes it difficult to establish 'laws of behaviour' from this data. General laws are useful to predict future behaviour (one aim of science). Suggests some of Wundt's early efforts to study the mind were flawed and would not meet the criteria of scientific enquiry
• S- Modern Psychology (Origins):

  Psychology has the same aims as natural sciences- to describe, understand, predict and control behaviour. Learning approaches, cognitive approach and biological approach rely on scientific methods like lab studies to investigate in controlled and unbiased conditions. Psychology has established itself as a scientific discipline
• W- Subjective Data (Origins):

  Not all approaches use scientific methods like the humanistic approach focusing on individual and subjective experiences. The psychodynamic approach uses case studies- no representative samples. Researching humans usually results in demand characteristics. Therefore, scientific approaches to study human thought/ experience may not always be desirable