Lesson 1 The Origins Of Psychology Wundt Flashcards
Wilhelmina Wundt - Introspection - Psychology emerging as a science
• Wundt was the first person to call himself a, “psychologist” and he is known as the, “father of psychology” whereby his ideas stem from philosophical roots
• In 1879, Wundt opened the first experimental psychological laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, which helped to shape Psychology as a science. The laboratory was designated to the aid the scientific study of psychological inquiry using controlled conditions that could facilitate replication of results.
• Wundt devised, “Introspection” as a way of studying internal mental events. Introspection means: “The first systematic and experimental attempt to study the mind/mental processes by breaking down conscious awareness into basic structures of reflections, thoughts, images and sensations.”
• Wundt wanted to focus on the psychological processes of perception and structuralism. Structuralism in psychology is a theory of consciousness developed by Wundt. It involves the use of introspection, self-reports of sensations, views, feelings, emotions, etc.
• He wanted to document and describe the structure of human consciousness (introspection) and this involved him and his workers recording their own conscious thoughts and breaking them down into their constituent parts e.g. sensations, emotions, reactions etc.
• Wundt wanted to investigate psychology in much the same way as the traditional sciences e.g. Biology, Physics and Chemistry, as he believed Psychology should emerge as a science
• Wundt used scientific methods to investigate introspection, and this paved the way for Psychology to be seen as a science and helped develop cognitive psychology
• Introspection was recorded under strictly controlled conditions in a laboratory using the same stimuli, the same reaction times and the same instructions given to participants, and they had to focus on present experiences
• Introspection involves the person saying everything that is going through their mind whilst they are doing an activity or thinking about a topic/object. They must keep talking even if their ideas are not clear. They must not hesitate; they can use fragmented sentences, and they do not have to justify their thoughts
• This made the research into introspection highly reliable so that replication would be possible (the experiment could be repeated to gain the same results, this is a key feature of science)
• This process marked Psychology as very separate from its early philosophical roots
• Wundt recognised later on that mental processes were difficult to study using introspection, and this encouraged a search for alternative methods/approaches such as brain scanning.
Disadvantages of Introspection and the emergence of Psychology as a science
1) Watson (1913) criticised Wundt’s idea of introspection and whether psychology was emerging as a science. Introspection produces subjective data which varies from one individual to the next, and therefore introspection is not objective or very reliable. (-)
2) Introspection has been criticised because it is not very scientific or accurate. Wilson claims that psychologists have little knowledge about some behaviour and attitudes that might exist outside of conscious awareness (e.g. racism). Introspection would not be able to uncover and help us understand these thought processes (-)
3) Introspection can be criticised because it fails to explain HOW the mind works and the processes involved in thinking about a particular topic/doing an activity. Psychologists cannot see how thoughts are generated and introspection cannot be properly observed (so might not be very scientific) (-)
Advantages of Introspection and the emergence of Psychology as a science
4) Introspection has the advantage that it has helped to develop other approaches in psychology (such as behaviourism via Watson and the cognitive approach by Beck). Introspection is a very useful phenomenon used in psychology that has formed the basis of other approaches/models (+)
5) Introspection has the advantage of being extremely scientific. It shares the same qualities as the scientific subjects of Chemistry, Biology and Physics, for instance all of these subjects make predictions about form hypotheses. There is a high level of control of variables as all of these subjects including Psychology study behaviour in a laboratory setting (+)
6) Introspection has the advantage of being able to establish what causes behaviour. If we know what causes behaviour to occur, then we can predict future behaviour which is useful in Psychology. An example might be that is we know that high levels of dopamine can cause OCD, we can try to ensure that dopamine levels are regulated and kept low to prevent OCD. (+)
7) Introspection has the advantage that it is still used today in areas of therapy that study emotional states. For instance introspection can be used in cognitive therapy in order to try to get patients to alter their negative thinking and turn them into positive thoughts. Therefore introspection can still be applied to contemporary therapy used in modern society (+)
8) Wundt supports and advocates the idea of reductionism. He believed consciousness could be broken down (or reduced) to its basic elements without sacrificing any of the properties of the whole. He studied internal mental processes by deconstructing them down into measurable units such as perception, senses and experiences. (+)
