Origins of psychology

• what is introspection?

  • a systematic analysis of one’s own conscious experience
  • breaking it down into elements such as sensations and feelings
• how does introspection work?

  People were presented with standardised sensory events like a ticking metronome and asked to report their reactions
• give weaknesses of introspection

  • produces subjective data
  • has limited falsifiability
  • reports may be distorted
  • reports can't be replicated
• Who is Wundt known as?

  the father of psychology
• where did Wundt set up the first psychology lab?

  Leipzig, Germany, in 1879
• what roots did Wundt help psychology move to?

  from philosophical roots to a scientific discipline
• what was wundt's first book called?

  principles of physiological psychology
• what is structuralism?

  analysing components of the mind
• who did wundt pave the way for?

  • encouraged the development of more advanced techniques e.g brain scanning and cognitive psychology, furthering the study of mental processes
  • approaches of psychology
• what happened in 1879?

  • Wundt opened the first experimental psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany
  • and introduced the introspective method
• what happened in the 1900s?

  • freud developed psychodynamic theory and psychoanalysis with its emphasis on unconscious motives and drives
  • 1913 - watson and skinner proposed behaviourism, they argued that only behaviour which can be directly observed and measured is scientific, they argued that behaviour is learned from the environment
• what happened in the 1950s?

  • rogers and maslow developed humanistic psychology
  • they emphasise the importance of freewill and a holistic approch to study the individual
  • they focus on the positive aspects of individual experience and personal growth
• what happened in the 1960s?

  • cognitive psychology is suggested, using computer models and information processing to explain behaviour
  • mental processes are a focus
  • inferences can be drawn by examining cognitive functions in lab experiments
• what happened in the 1980s?

  • biological approach is made possible by technological advances e.g brain scans such as MRI
  • brain-scanning techniques allow researchers to look 'inside' the brain to track activity or study structural detail
• what happened in the 2000s and onwards?

  • cognitive neuroscience emerges to combine biology and cognition
  • brain scanning can help to identify brain damage/ illness and to localise specific functions e.g memory linked to specific brain regions/ structures