Origins Of Psychology Flashcards
What is wundt credited for?
credited for emerging psychology as a distinct area of study, a subject in its own right rather than being part of philosophy
When did the emergence of psychology as a distinct area of study occur?
the time when Wilhelm Wundt opened the Institute for Experimental Psychology at the University of Leipzig in Germany in 1879 (was the first experimental laboratory dedicated to Psychology)
What was wundt the first person to do?
call himself a psychologist, studying only those aspects of behaviour that could be strictly controlled under experimental conditions
What did wundt develop introspection as?
as a a method to scientifically study conscious mental states.
what does introspection involve?
participants analysing their own conscious experiences, such as thoughts and sensations, and breaking these down into their component parts to determine their structure
What does the method introspection require?
training participants to perform self-observation of the data in an objective way and often involved standardised conditions, such as presenting all participants with the same stimulus (e.g. a ticking metronome).
What was the ultimate goal of introspection?
The ultimate goal of introspection was to develop generalisable laws about how people think and feel
What did Wundt’s work mark?
-the separation of modern scientific psychology from its broader philosophical roots
-He adopted many features of science that are used in psychology today.
what features of science did wundt adopt?
-Replicability
-Controlled Environments
-Objectivity
What did W use standardised procedures to do and what does this mean?
enable his methods to be easily replicated- means research can be repeated in the same way on multiple occasions in order to check the reliability of findings.
what was the approach replicability adopted by?
behaviourist psychologist such as B. F. skinner who investigated operant conditioning by using his skinner box apparatus multiple times to observe if different rats would consistently press a lever to obtain food.
Why did wundt pioneer the use of strictly controlled laboratory settings in psychology?
in order to minimise the impact of extraneous variables on participants’ thoughts
why controlled environments used extensively in?
the cognitive approach where participants are typically given the same stimuli to assess their performance on tasks to enable inferences to be made about internal thought processes.
What did wundt attempt to move the study of conscious awareness from and to and what did this involve?
away from a subjective, philosophical basis to a more objective, unbiased basis, which in his case involved training participants to use introspection.
What is the use of unbiased methods of analysis favoured by? 1
the biological approach in Psychology-
