The origins of psychology

Question 1

What was Wundts lab work?

Answer 1

• dedicated the first lab entirely to psychological enquiry in Germany
• marked the beginning of scientific psychology
• aim was to analyse the nature of human conciousness and study the mind under controlled conditions
• pioneered introspection

Question 2

What is introspection?

Answer 2

first experimental attempt to study the mind by breaking the conscious awareness into basic structures of thoughts, images and sensations

Question 3

What were wundts procedures

Answer 3

• Wundt and his co workers recorded their experience with stimuli and divided them into thoughts, images and sensations
• for example, watching a metronome and reporting their thoughts, images and sensations
• this is called structuralism

Question 4

What is structuralism?

Answer 4

isolating the structure of consciousness

Question 5

Evaluate introspection

Answer 5

s = well controlled and scientific, standardised and in a lab. All instructions were standardised and all participants received information in the same way.
L = relied on subjective data of self reporting mental processes. Some may have hidden their thoughts. Therefore it is difficult to establish meaningful laws of behaviour
- doesn’t meet the criteria for scientific criteria

Question 6

How has psychology emerged as a science

Answer 6

• 1900 = behaviourists rejected intospection and proposed that psychology should be measured objectively
• 1950 = cognitive, likening the mind to a computer. Tested predictions of memory and attention using experiments. This means that the study of the mind was highly scientific
• 1980 = biological approach, use of biology to understand psychology. This occured due to advances in technology and sophisticated scanning techniques such as FMRI and EEG scannings.

Question 7

Evaluate psych as a science

Answer 7

S = scientific, most approaches rely on objective data such as the biological and behaviourist approach

L = the humanistic and psychodynamic approach reject scientific approaches, showing that some approaches may disagree with science. Psychodynamic approach uses case studys which are not generalisable. They are also all studying humans as the main subjects therefore in research there may be demand characteristics

L = Kuhn . There is no paradigm so there is much internal disagreement at its core