Origins of Psychology: An Introduction to Approaches



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Origins of Psychology: An Introduction to Approaches

Wundt and Introspection

Wundt’s Lab


Guidelines from the mark scheme (4 marks)

•Focus on being objective • Reflection on sensations, feelings and images

• Wundt would ask people to focus on an everyday object and look inwards noticing sensations and feelings and images

• Breaking thoughts about an object down into separate elements

• Systematic reporting of an experience of object

• Specific examples eg use of metronome


Wilhelm Wundt (1879) opens the first psychological lab!

  • The objective he set himself was to document and describe the nature of human consciousness

  • This method became known to be introspection

  • This involved Wundt and his co-workers recording their own conscious thoughts, with the aim of breaking

these down into their constituent parts

  • Isolating the structure of consciousness this way is called structuralism

Controlled Methods

  • Some methods used were seen to be naïve, but nevertheless would still be viewed as ‘scientific’ today

  • All introspections were recorded under strictly controlled conditions using the same stimulus every time

(e.g. a ticking metronome)

  • Standardised instructions given to all PPs – allows for replicability

  • Made psychology more scientific, moving away from its philosophical roots…




The Emergence of Psychology as a Science

Watson and the Early Behaviourists

  • By the beginning of the 20th Century many were questioning the scientific status and value of introspection

  • J. B. Watson’s main issue with introspection was that it produced data that was subjective i.e. it varied greatly from person to person, so it became very difficult to establish general principles

  • He was also highly critical of introspection’s focus on ‘private’ mental processes and proposed that a truly scientific psychology should restrict itself only to studying phenomena that could be observed and measured

  • Thus, the behaviourist approach was born, and with it the emergence of psychology as a science



Scientific Approach

  • Watson (1913) and later Skinner (1953) brought the language, rigour and methods of the natural sciences into psychology

  • The behaviourist focus involved in learning, alongside the use of carefully controlled lab experiments would go on to dominate the discipline for the next 5 decades

  • Many modern psychologists continue to rely on experimental methods as part of their research and practices

  • However, the scope of this research has broadened considerably since the behaviourists first studied learning in the lab

  • Following the cognitive revolution of the 1960s, the study of mental processes is now seen as a legitimate and highly scientific area within psychology

  • Although mental processes remain ‘private’, cognitive psychologists are able to make inferences about how these work on the basis of lab tests

  • The biological approach also makes use of experimental data – researchers within this area have taken advantage of recent advances in technology to investigate physiological processes as they happen e.g. live activity to see what is actually happening in the brain using fMRI and EEG scanning techniques


The Timeline of Psychology…



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