origins of psychology

Question 1

what are approaches in psychology

Answer 1

ways in which psychologists have tried to explain and investigate human behaviour

Question 2

what are the different approaches in psychology

Answer 2

behaviourist approach (role of the environment)
cognitive approach (what we are thinking, our internal, mental processes)
social learning theory
psychodynamic approach (role of unconcious forces)
humanistic approach (free will, self, growth)
biological approach (role of internal factors such as genetics)

Question 3

who was wilhelm wundt

Answer 3

he was considered to be the father of psychology. he moved the study of the mind from philosophy to controlled research. he published one of the first books on psychology, helping to establish the subject as an independant branch of science

Question 4

what did wilhelm wundt do

Answer 4

he established the first psychology lab in liepzig, germany in 1879 with the aim to describe the nature of human conciousness

Question 5

what is introspection

Answer 5

etymology - “looking into”
conscious examination of conscious experience. self observation of your own thoughts. this was the first systematic attempt to study the mind and mental processes

Question 6

what does introspection involve

Answer 6

1) participants were presented with a stimulus such as the sound of a metronome or the turning on of a light
2) participants would inspect their own thoughts and report back their own emotions, sensations and thoughts that resulted from the stimulus
3) draw conclusions to compare all the responses of the participants to see what is similar and different about them in order to draw conclusions

Question 7

how were the experiments conducted

Answer 7

carefully conducted in a highly controlled and systematic way to ensure each sensory stimulus was presented in the same way each time. for example, the light bulb was kept the same colour with the same brightness and kept on for the same length of time

Question 8

what is standardisation

Answer 8

procedures used in research are kept the same. this enabled wundt to carefully compare responses from his participants for similarites and differences. this ensured the reliabilty and validity of the results making them more accurate. this controlled research paved the way for psychology to be more scientific

Question 9

what is structuralism

Answer 9

All conscious awareness could be broken down into basic structures of thoughts, images and sensations

Question 10

positives of introspection

Answer 10

• all introspections were recorded within a controlled lab envt
• standardised procedures meant all participants recieved the same info and were tested in the same way
• provided starting point for psychology
• laid foundation for next generation to develop an objective study of the mind and behaviour and apply their own theories to the treatment of mental disorders

Question 11

negatives of introspection

Answer 11

• participants were self reporting their own private mental processes which is subjective
• participants may not have wanted to reveal some of the thoughts they were having
• some aspects of our mind are outside of our conscious awareness so it was not possible for participants to report on those aspects
• participants may not have had the same thoughts every time so establishing general principles would have not been possible (these are usually useful so prediction of future behaviour becomes possible)

Question 12

what do the behaviourists say about introspection

Answer 12

John B Watson argued that introspection was subjective and that it varied from person to person. a “scientific” psychology should only study phenomena that can be observed and measured. For Watson this meant behaviour not mental processes

Question 13

what did the behaviourist approach lead to

Answer 13

Watson and Skinner brought the language and rigour of the natural sciences into psychology. the behaviourist focus on learning and the use of carefully controlled lab studies would dominate psychology for decades

Question 14

what does the cognitive approach investigate

Answer 14

it investigate “private” mental processes via lab tests

Question 14

negatives of psychology as a science

Answer 14

• humanistic approach is anti-scientific and does not attempt to formulate general laws of behaviour. its only concerned with documenting unique subjective experience
• psychodynamic approach makes use of the case study method. this is based on interview techniques which are open to bias and no attempt has been to gather a representative sample of the population
• many claim that a scientific approach to the study of human thought and experience is not possible, nor is it desirable.

Question 15

what does the biological approach study

Answer 15

it studies activity in the brain using scanning techniques in controlled conditions

Question 16

positives of psychology as a science

Answer 16

• psychology has the same aims as the natural sciences (to describe, understand and predict and control behaviour.
• the learning approaches, the cognitive approach and the biological approach rely on the use of scientific methods such as lab studies to investiagte theories in a controlled and unbiased way