Origins of Psychology (Approaches)

Question 1

The four goals of psychology

Answer 1

-description- tells us “what” has 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

Question 2

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

Answer 2

-1873, published the first book on psychology. ‘Principles of Physiological Psychology’ to establish the subject as an independent branch of science.
-1879, opened the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany- the Institute of Experimental Psychology
-the lab was designated to the scientific study of psychological enquiry under controlled conditions.
the focus was on trying to understand psychological processes of perception and sensations, rather than biological processes

Question 3

Structuralism

Answer 3

a theory of consciousness that seeks to analyse the elements of mental experiences, such as sensations, mental images and feelings, and how these elements combine to form more complex experiences

Question 4

Reductionism

Answer 4

the idea that anything can be reduced to simple cause and effect processes. Wundt aimed to break down the structure of human experiences into measurable parts.

Question 5

Introspection

Answer 5

involves internally analysing your own thoughts and feelings. It was used by Wundt to study sensation and perception.
-Using controlled methods, such as introspection, to break down consciousness to its basic elements without sacrificing any of the properties of the whole

Question 6

Titchener

Answer 6

Was Wundt’s student and further developed structuralism.
-Titchener proposed 3 elementary states of consciousness: sensations (sight, sound etc), images (components of thoughts), and affections (components of emotions)

Question 7

Evaluation of Wundt: difficulty studying unobservable matter

Answer 7

-Introspection 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 (varied greatly from person to person), so it became very difficult to establish general principles. This means that introspective experimental results are not reliably reproduced by other researchers.

Question 8

Arguments for psychology being a science

Answer 8

Allport 1947 said psychology has the same aims as a science- to predict, understand and control

Behaviourist, cognitive and biological approaches all use scientific procedures to investigate theories. Theses are usually controlled and unbiased

Question 9

Arguments against psychology being a science

Answer 9

Other approaches in psychology use non-objective, unreliable methods, such as interviews and case studies, which are subject to bias

It is very hard to get a representative sample of the population for a study so findings can’t be reliably generalised

Experiments can be open to extraneous variables, such as demand characteristics, which can be hard to control