Origins Of Psychology Flashcards
what can the origins of psychology be traced back to?
discipline of philosophy, Descartes proposed that the mind and body are two independent entities (Cartesian dualism) and that the mind can be studied on its own separate from the body
who was the first to attempt to study the mind?
Wilhelm Wundt
what did Wundt do?
- first to attempt to study the mind under controlled conditions
- he also opened the first lab (Leipzig, Germany) dedicated to the study of psychology, where he used his technique introspection
what is introspection?
- involves participants recording their own conscious thoughts and experiences following exposure to various stimuli (e.g. metronome)
what is structuralism?
- when Wundt attempted to document and describe human consciousness by breaking it down into its constituent parts
what did Wundt do in order to be as objective as possible?
- strictly controlled conditions
- standardised instructions
why did Wundt use controlled conditions and instructions?
- to ensure that his procedure could be repeated, his attempt to make his experiments more scientific
why was introspection heavily critiqued?
- it is subjective as you are recording private mental processes that vary greatly from person to person, so its hard to establish general principles for behaviour
what did the criticisms of introspection lead to?
the rise of the behaviourist approach which believed that we could only study phenomena that can be observed and measured
why is psychology a science?
- uses controlled lab experiments
what did cognitive psychologists do?
used similar techniques to Wundt to study private mental processes , by using inferences
what is the biological approach using?
advanced scanning technology (e.g. fMRI and EEG) to study the brain by measuring brain activity
