Approaches in Psychology - Origins of Psychology

Question 1

What was psychology known as previously?

Answer 1

experimental philosophy

Question 2

What is Cartesian dualism?

Answer 2

Early influences included Rene Descartes, and his concept of Cartesian dualism, which simply means that the mind and body are separate entities, the brain is not the same as the mind.

Question 3

What is empiricism?

Answer 3

The work of John Locke and his concept of empiricism, the belief that all knowledge is derived from sensory experience and can be studied using the scientific method also had an influence on the emergence of psychology as a science.

Question 4

Who was Wilhelm Wundt?

Answer 4

In 1873, Wilhelm Wundt published the first book on psychology ‘Principles of Physiological Psychology’ and in 1879 opened the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany. He is often considered to be ‘the father of psychology’.

His approach to psychology was to study the structure of the human mind, by breaking down behaviours into their basic elements, hence his approach became known as structuralism.

Question 5

What is introspection?

Answer 5

Wundt used introspection to investigate the human mind. Introspection comes from Latin and means ‘looking into’. Basically, participants were asked to reflect on their own cognitive processes and describe them.

Wundt established psychology as a science by using the scientific method - his ideas would lead to multiple different psychological perspectives.

Question 6

How does introspection work?

Answer 6

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.

In contrast, the early behaviourists such as Pavlov and Thorndike were achieving reliably reproducible results and discovering explanatory principles that could be easily generalised to all human beings.

Question 7

What are the long-term impacts of introspection?

Answer 7

Introspection may not seem particularly scientific, but it is still used today to gain access to cognitive processes. For example, Griffiths (1994) used introspection to study the cognitive processes of fruit machine gamblers. He asked them to ‘think aloud’ whilst playing a fruit machine into a microphone on their lapel. Csikzentmilyi and Hunter (2003) used introspection to study happiness in their work in the area of positive psychology.

Question 8

What is the scientific method?

Answer 8

Wundt’s new ‘scientific’ approach to psychology was based on two major assumptions.

1. All behaviour is seen as being caused (determined).
2. If behaviour is determined, then it should be possible to predict how human beings would behave in different conditions (predictability).

This technique used to explore these assumptions became known as the scientific method.

Question 9

What are the four goals of psychology?

Answer 9

1. Description - tells us “what” occurred
2. Explanation - tells us “why” a behaviour or a mental process occurred
3. Prediciton - identifies conditions under which a future behaviour or mental process is likely to occur
4. Change - applies psychological knowledge to prevent unwanted behaviour and to bring about desired change

Question 10

What are the strengths of the scientific approach to psychology?

Answer 10

• Knowledge acquired using scientific methods are more than just the passive acceptance of facts.
• Causes of behaviour can be established through the use of methods that are empirical and replicable.
• Scientific knowledge is self-corrective meaning that it can be refined or abandoned.

Question 11

What are the weaknesses of the scientific approach to psychology?

Answer 11

• Scientific psychologists create contrived situations that create artificial behaviours.
• Much of the subject matter of psychology is unobservable, therefore cannot be measured with any degree of accuracy.
• Not all psychologists share the view that the human behaviour can be explored through scientific methods.

Question 12

Why are there different approaches in psychology?

Answer 12

• Each approach looks at human behaviour from a different perspective. They all contribute to our understanding in different ways.
• For example, the biological approach shows us how genetic factors might contribute to some mental disorders, whereas the learning approach helps us to understand how we learn behaviours through experience.
• No approach is right and the others wrong but some are more useful than others depending on what we try to explain.

Question 13

Explain assumptions in the different approaches in psychology.

Answer 13

All approaches are based on assumptions, these are suppositions that something is a fact, for example the biological approach is based on the assumption that biological factors such as the level of serotonin in the synapses influence our behaviour.

The first step when studying an approach is to look at what are its main assumptions. There may be several different theories within an approach, but they all share these common assumptions.

Question 14

What is a paradigm?

Answer 14

an idea

Question 15

What is a paradigm shift?

Answer 15

a change in idea

Question 16

Who established the first psychology lab?

Answer 16

Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology lab. Opened in Leipzig, Germany in 1879. The aim was to describe the nature of human consciousness (the ‘mind’) in a carefully controlled and scientific environment - a lab.

Question 17

Who pioneered the method of introspection?

Answer 17

Wundt pioneered the method of introspection. Introspection was the first systematic experimental attempt to study the mind by breaking up conscious awareness into basic structures of thoughts, images and sensations. Isolating the structure of consciousness in this way is called structuralism.

Question 18

What are the standardised procedures that Wundt used in the method of introspection?

Answer 18

The same standardised instructions were given to all participants. Procedures could be repeated (replicated). For instance, participants were given a ticking metronome and they would report their thoughts, images and sensations, which were then recorded.

Question 19

What is the significance of Wundt’s work?

Answer 19

Although Wundt’s early attempt to study the mind would be seen today as naive, his work was significant as it marked the separation of modern scientific psychology from its broader philosophical roots.

Question 20

Why did early behaviourists reject introspection?

Answer 20

In the 1900s, early behaviourists rejected introspection. John B. Watson (1913) argued that introspection was subjective, in that it varied from person to person. According to the behaviourist approach, ‘scientific’ psychology should only study phenomena that can be observed and measured.

Question 21

What approach dominated psychology in the 1930s?

Answer 21

In the 1930s, the behaviourist scientific approach dominated psychology. B.F. Skinner (1953) brought the language and rigour of the natural sciences into psychology. The behaviourists’ focus on learning, and the use of carefully controlled lab studies, would dominate psychology for the next few decades.

Question 22

What approach dominated psychology in the 1950s?

Answer 22

In the 1950s, the cognitive approach used scientific procedures to study mental processes. Following the cognitive revolution of the 1960s, the study of mental processes was seen as legitimate within psychology. Although mental processes remain ‘private’, cognitive psychologists are able to make inferences about how these work on the basis of tests conducted in a controlled environment (lab).

Question 23

What approach dominated psychology in the 1990s?

Answer 23

In the 1990s, the biological approach introduced technological advances. Biological psychologists have taken advantage of recent advances in technology, including recording brain activity, using scanning techniques such as fMRI and EEG, and advanced genetic research.

Question 24

What aspects of Wundt’s methods would be classed as scientific today?

Answer 24

For instance, he recorded the introspections within a controlled lab environment. He also standardised his procedures so that all participants received the same information and were tested in the same way. For this reason, Wundt’s research can be considered a forerunner to the later scientific approaches in psychology that were to come.

Question 25

What aspects of Wundt’s methods would be considered unscientific today?

Answer 25

Wundt relied on participants self-reporting their ‘private’ mental processes. Such data is subjective and participants may not have wanted to reveal some of the thoughts they were having.

Participants would also not have had exactly the same thoughts every time, so establishing general principles would not have been possible. General laws are useful to predict future behaviour, one of the aims of science.

Wundt’s early efforts to study the mind were naive and would not meet the criteria of scientific enquiry.

Question 26

What is a strength of psychology?

Answer 26

Research in modern psychology can claim to be scientific. Psychology has the same aims as the natural sciences - to describe, understand, predict and control behaviour.

The learning approaches, cognitive approach and biological approach all rely on the use of scientific methods - for example, lab studies to investigate theories in a controlled and unbiased way.

Throughout the 20th century and beyond, psychology has established itself as a scientific discipline.

Question 27

What is a weakness of psychology?

Answer 27

The humanistic approach is anti-scientific and does not attempt to formulate general laws of behaviour. It is concerned only with documenting unique subjective experience.

The psychodynamic approach makes use of the case study method. This is based on interview techniques which are open to bias, and no attempt is made to gather a representative sample of the population.

For this reason, many claim that a scientific approach to the study of human thought and experience is not possible, nor is it desirable, as there are important differences between the subject matter of psychology and the natural sciences.