Approaches: Structuralism

Question 1

What is introspection and how is it a part of structuralism

Answer 1

• Use introspection to investigate the human mind asking participants to reflect on their own cognitive processes and describe them.
• Introspection comes from the Latin and means ‘looking into’.
  -> Wundt paved the way for later controlled research and the study of mental processes e.g. cognitive psychologists.
• Wundt recognised higher mental processes were hard to study using introspection and encouraged others to look for more appropriate methods, paving the way for other approaches.
• Introspection is used today in areas such as therapy.

Question 2

(-) Explain the weakness of structuralism

Answer 2

• relies primarily on non-observable responses and although participants can report conscious experiences, they are unable to comment on unconscious factors relating to their behaviour.
• Introspection produced data that was subjective so it became hard to establish general principles.
  -> this means introspective experimental results are not reliably reproduced by other researchers.

Question 3

(+) Explain the strength of structuralism

Answer 3

• still used today to gain access to cognitive processes.

Question 4

What are the 4 goals of psychological

Answer 4

• description: tells us ‘what’ occurred.
• Explanation: tells us ‘why’ a behaviour or a mental process occurred.
• Prediction: Identifies conditions under which a future behaviour or mental process is likely to occur.
• Change: applies psychological knowledge to prevent unwanted behaviour and to bring about desired change.