Wundt AO3

Question 1

Strength 1 - Wundt moving psychology away from its philosophical roots

Answer 1

P: can be praised for moving psychology away from its philosophical roots
E:used controlled environments with standardised procedure to study emotions, feelings and sensations
E:such as using the same stimulus every time and giving the ppts the same standardised instructions
L:increased the ability to replicate the pieces if research and increased psychology’s status and it’s emergence as a science

Question 2

Weakness 1- not reliable

Answer 2

P- research replicable but not reliable
E- because introspection focuses on a ppt’s subjective experience and therefore findings varied greatly from person to person making it difficult to establish consistent general principles of human behavior
E- behaviourist psychologists such as watson believed psychology should only study behaviour that could be observed and measured scientifically
L: behaviourist approach was born which used more empirical + objective methods therefore increasing the scientific status of psychology as a subject

Question 3

Weakness 2 - unscientific

Answer 3

P: some aspects of Wundt’s research could be considered unscientific today
E: he relied on ppts self reporting their mental processes. Such data is subjective, and varied greatly person to person
E: makes it difficult to establish general principles of human behaviour and predict future outcomes- which is an aim of science
L: some of wundt’s early efforts to study the mind were flawed and would not meet the criteria of scientific enquiry.