Origins

Question 1

What is meant by: Reductionism?

Answer 1

Reductionism is the idea that the mind can be explained in terms of its simpler parts.

Question 2

What is meant by: Introspection?

Answer 2

Introspection is when participants examine and describe their own mental processes.

Question 3

Describe the method that Wundt used to study the mind?

Answer 3

Wundt presented participants with stimuli and asked them to describe their own mental processes through introspection.

Question 4

What is a strength of Wilhelm’s Wundt’s approach to psychology?

Answer 4

A strength of Wundt’s research is that he attempted to study psychology scientifically. By conducting his studies in a laboratory, he was able to control situational variables through standardisation. In addition, Wundt carefully wrote down the methods that he used in his studies, which means that his studies were replicable.

• scientific
• controlled extraneous variables (internally valid)
• replicable

Question 5

What are two limitations of Wilhelm Wundt’s approach to psychology?

Answer 5

A limitation of Wundt’s research is that his results were not based on empirical evidence, because he couldn’t directly observe people’s mental processes, this makes his studies less scientific.

A second limitation of Wundt’s research is that he never got consistent results, so his studies lacked reliability.

• no empirical evidence
• lacked reliability

Question 6

What is reductionism?

Answer 6

Reductionism is the belief that we can understand behaviour by breaking it down into smaller parts.

Question 7

Why aren’t studies using introspection falsifiable?

Answer 7

We can’t disprove someones subjective interpretations of their own mental processes.