The Origins Of Psychology Flashcards
What were Wundt’s contributions to psychology?
😊-he was one of the first to argue that human thinking should be studied scientifically, which separated psychology from philosophy.
😔-introspection was too hard to repeat, as people’s reports on their experiences were too subjective.
Who was described as the ‘founding father of psychology’?
WUNDT - he set up the first ever Psychology lab in Germany in 1875 and aimed to systematically study mental processes such as attention and perception. He did this using INTROSPECTION which involves analysing how the mind works by asking people to think carefully about how they do mental tasks (eg focussing on one noise in a noisy room). Wundt was trying to break mental processes into its component parts the find its structure (STRUCTUALISM). Wundt tried to do this I’m a very controlled and systematic manner. For example, he would put his investigators under hundreds of trials before he would use any of the data. This way, he could measure mental processes in a scientific way.
Who argued that psychology should test its theories using experiments on observable/measurable behaviour only?
JOHN WATSON - conducted experiments in which fear would be measured by observational behaviours such as how many times the child cries/moves away etc.
What are the key features of a science?
CONTROL - to discover cause and effect relationships so that we can predict events. This has led to an emphasis on the use of experimental methods (eg manipulate IV, measure DV under controlled conditions).
OBJECTIVE - knowledge and theories should be based on observable information, not on opinion, belief or emotion. Expectation should not influence what a psychologist records.
REPLICABLE - should be verifiable by other psychologists repeating the procedures.
EMPIRICISM - knowledge is gained by developing theories and testing them by direct observation and data gathering.
How do you falsify a theory?
By disproving it.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the origins of psychology?
😊-Wundt’s methods were scientific. For example introspections were recorded in controlled environments. Procedures were also standardised, so that all participants were tested in the same way. This provided a forerunner for the later scientific approaches.
-research into modern psychology can claim to be scientific. Psychology has the same aim as natural sciences: to observe, understand, predict and control our environment. The learning approaches, biological and cognitive approaches all rely on the use of scientific methods (e.g. Lab studies to investigate theories in a controlled and unbiased way).
😔-some aspects of psychology is not scientific. Wundt relied on participants self reporting their private mental processes. This is subjective and participants may have revealed information they didn’t want to. Establishing general laws (in accordance with being established as a science) would not be possible because people’s thoughts would not be the same every time.
-not all approaches use objective methods. Some approaches argue that a scientific study of human thought and experience is not desirable or possible with differences between the subject matter of psychology and natural sciences. Humanistic psychology does not attempt to create general laws, concerned only with documenting unique and subjective experience. Psychodynamic approaches use case studies with no attempt to gather a representative sample.
