Approaches: Origins Of Psychology

Question 1

What year did Wilhelm Wundt open his first psychology lab in Leizig, Germany?

Answer 1

1879

Question 2

What was Wundts approach?

Answer 2

To analysis the nature of human consciousness and to study the human mind by breaking down behaviours into their basic elements, so this approach became known as structuralism.

Question 3

What was Introspection?

Answer 3

Wundt used introspection to investigate the human mind. It’s Latin for ‘looking into’
- in a controlled condition, ptps were given stimuli and were asked to reflect on their own cognitive processes and describe them (report their thoughts, images and sensations)

Question 4

What did Wundt establish?

Answer 4

Psychology as a science, by using the scientific method - his ideas would lead to multiple different psychological perspectives.

Question 5

What is the scientific method?

Answer 5

Based on 2 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 being would behave in different conditions (predictability)

Question 6

What are the 3 investigative methods?

Answer 6

1. Objective
2. Systematic
3. Replicable

Question 7

What’s some strengths to psychology as a science?

Answer 7

+ 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
+ most modern psychology is now scientific

Question 8

What’s some weaknesses to psychology as a science?

Answer 8

• create contrived situations that create artificial behaviours (demand characteristics)
• much of psychology is unobservable, therefore hard to be measured with any degree of accuracy
• not all psychologists share the view that human behaviour can be explored through scientific methods.

Question 9

What are some weaknesses to introspection?

Answer 9

• relies on non-observable responses and although ptps can report conscious experiments, they are unable to comment on unconscious factors relating on their behaviour
• produced subjective data (varied greatly from ptp to ptp), so became very difficult to establish general principles. Means that introspective experimental results are not reliably reproduced by other researchers

Question 10

What’s some benefits of introspection?

Answer 10

May not seem entirely scientific, but it is still used today to gain access to cognitive processes
—> e.g. Griffith’s used introspection to study the cognitive processes of fruit machine gamblers (asking them to ‘think out loud’ whilst playing)