Approaches: Lesson 1 - Origins Of Pyschology

Question 1

Who was Wundt?

Answer 1

• first person to call himself a psychologist
• ‘Father of Psychology’ because he paved the way for the acceptance of psychology as a distinct science, and experimental psychology as the preferred method of studying human behaviour
• He set up the first psychology laboratory in Liepzig, Germany in the 1870s
• Wundt originally only studied those aspects of behaviour that could be strictly controlled under experimental conditions
• This included the study of reaction time (how long it takes people to respond to a stimuli)
• Wundt’s work paved the way for later controlled research and the study of mental processes e.g. by cognitive psychologists

Question 2

What did Wundt do?

Answer 2

• Wundt’s aim was to study the structure of the human mind and he believed that the best way to do this was to analyse a person’s experiences in terms of their component parts, such as sensation and emotional reactions
• Because of this his approach was referred to as structuralism and the technique he used as introspection
• Although Wundt originally believed that all aspects of human experience could be investigated experimentally, he eventually came to realise that higher mental processes, such as learning, language and emotions could not be studied in this strict controlled manner
• These topics could instead be described as general trends in behaviour among groups of people
• He referred to this as Volklerpsychologie (cultural psychology)

Question 3

What is introspection?

Answer 3

• Introspection is the process by which a person gains knowledge about his or her own mental processes and emotional states
• Wundt claimed that with sufficient training an individual’s conscious mental processes, such as memory and perception, could be objectively and systematically reported as they occurred
• For example, Wundt would ask people to focus on an everyday object (such as a metronome) and encourage them to look inwards and reflect on the sensations, feelings and the images that came to mind
• This information could then be used to gain insight into the mental processes involved in perception