Origins of psychology

Question 1

What are approaches?

Answer 1

Different ways of explaining psychological phenomena

Question 2

What was psychology once known as?

Answer 2

Experimental psychology in the 19th century

Question 3

What is Wundt’s nickname in the psychology community?

Answer 3

The father of psychology

Question 4

Which research method became the preferred method of studying human behaviour because of Wundt?

Answer 4

Experimental psychology

Question 5

When and where did Wundt set up the first Psychology laboratory?

Answer 5

Psychology laboratory called the Institute of Experimental Psychology in Leipzig, Germany in the 1870s

Question 6

What did Wundt believe about how the human mind could be studied?

Answer 6

Including the human mind, could be studied scientifically, and so moved psychology from its philosophical roots to controlled, objective research.

Question 7

Wundt’s work paved the way for a more scientific approach that studies mental processes. Which one?

Answer 7

Cognitive psychologists

Question 8

What is structuralism?

Answer 8

Breaking down behaviours such as perception and sensation into their basic elements

Question 9

What is introspection?

Answer 9

A systematic analysis of our own conscious experience of a stimulus i.e. it enables us to observe our inner world

Question 10

Explain what participants would do in a study of introspection.

Answer 10

Wundt would ask people to focus on an everyday object (e.g. a metronome) and look inwards to analyse it in terms of its component parts e.g. noticing sensations and feelings and images.
Therefore, they would break down their thoughts about an object into separate elements and report it in a systematic way (in the order that the thoughts occurred).
This information would then be used to gain insight into the nature of the mental processes involved in perception, reaction time etc.

For example, in Wundt’s studies of perception, participants would be presented with carefully controlled stimuli (e.g. visual images or auditory tones). They would then be asked to provide a description of the inner processes they were experiencing as they looked at the image or listened to the tone.
This made it possible to compare different participants’ reports in response to the same stimuli, and so establish general theories about perception and other mental processes.

Question 11

How was Wundt as scientific as possible?

Answer 11

Control - same carefully controlled stimulus for each participant (e.g. metronome)
Objectivity - standardised instructions to prevent researcher bias, used a standardised procedure (every participant did the same thing via introspection), accurately measured the dependant variable as a result of the control (above)
Replicability - as a result of the above, his procedure was replicable
Theory construction - from his results (he compared the results from numerous participants), he created theories about mental (thought) processes and perception