Wundt And Introspection Flashcards
Who developed psychology and is seen as the father of psychology
Wilhelmina Wundt
Where was the first psychology laboratory
Leipzig germany
Where did psychology stem from
Philosophy
What was the alb designed to
Help the scientific study of psychology and allow controlled conditions and facilitate replication
What is introspection
Introspection is the first systematic and experimental method at breaking down concise awareness into basic structures of thougths images and sensations
What did Wundt use introspection to study
Psychological processes of perception and structuralism
How does introspection work
Introspection was recorded in controlled contritions with the same stimuli, same reaction times, and same instruction and focus on present experiences
- participants were asked to say everything going through their head when doing an activity or thinking about a object without hesiaitaring it doesn’t matter if their ideas aren’t clear they also don’t need to justify their ideas
How did introspection make psychology more scientific
As introspection was very reliable and replication was possible.
however Wundt foudn introspection to not be a very good way to study mental processes which sparked ideas
What did Wundt want to document
- Wundt wanted to document and desribe the structures of human conciousness
- he did this by getting his workers to record their thougths and break them down into constituent parts
- wanted psychology to be studied like a science and go away from psychological roots
What did Watson argue about introspection
Not scientific as introspection is subjective so it varies from person to person therefore general laws cannot be established
- he argued if psychology wanted to be scientific it should limit itself to phenomena which is observable and can be measured
Who rjouhtn scientific language and methods to socyjogky
Watson and skinner
Led to behaviourist approach -> heavy use of lab experiments
- cognitive approach
- biological approach
What are some strengths of introspection and emergence of psycholgoists as a science (new methods)
+ introspection allowed us to develop other and more scientific methods and approaches to science such as the cognitive approach and behaviourist approach. This is a strength as it has helped psychology become established as a science and without introspection there would be no psychology
What is another strength of introspection (reductionist)
A strength if introspections nd psychology as emergence science is that Wundt believe int he dies of reductionism and tried to break down complex parts of human consciousness into basic elements which are measurable such as images perception and sensations from the whole conciousness
Weakness (Watson)
A weakness of the introspection is that Watson argued that introspection was not a very scientific method of studying the human consciousness as it is very subjective as it varies from one person to another this meant that general rules couldn’t not be developed -> not very objective or reliable as we cannot know what someone si thinking
- person could be lying or not be able to compute their thoughts
- nisbett and Wilson surface not the deep
Nisbett and Wilson’s rheum that introspections tells us nothing about the underlying processes and causes of our behaviours and and attitudes
- e.g some of us are racism hwiever we don’t know why (why we behave stereotypically)
Due to this introspection only touches the surface of our thougths and doesn’t explain why and how we have these thoughts
