Origins Of Psychology Flashcards
Who set up the first psychology laboratory and when and where?
Wundt in the 1870s, in Germany.
What did Wundt believe?
That all aspects of the mind could be studied scientifically by breaking human experience into its basic elements.
What technique did Wundt develop?
Introspection.
What does introspection involve?
The systematic analysis of your own conscious experience of a stimulus (reporting your own mental processes as they occur.
What did Wundt train his participants to do?
How to be objective about analysing their own mental processes.
What are the four steps within introspection?
1) Focus on the stimulus.
2) Reflect on different mental processes as they focused on the stimulus.
3) Provide a systematic description of the inner processes being experienced.
4) Compare different participants’ reports in response to the same stimuli.
What type of approach did Wundt’s work follow?
An empirical approach (acquiring knowledge through direct experience).
Who developed the behaviourist approach?
Watson (1913) and later Skinner (1953).
Why was Watson critical of Wundt’s focus on ‘private’ mental processes?
He argued that a true science should focus on behaviours observable to all.
What did the behaviourist approach focus on?
Observable learned behaviour in controlled laboratory experiments.
When did the cognitive approach arise?
In the 1960s.
When did the biological approach arise?
In the 1980s.
