2.1 - Lesson 1 - Origins of
psychology
Should psychology be classed as a science?
What is psychology?
• Psychology is the scienti c study of the human mind and its functions, especially
those functions a ecting behaviour in a given context
The scienti c method
• The scienti c method refers to the use of investigative methods that are
objective, systematic and replicable
Psychology as a science
• Psychology has for goals; description, explanation, prediction and change
The beginning
• In the 17th to 19th century psychology started taking form as a branch of
philosophy
• At that time psychology would’ve been de ned as experimental philosophy
Wilhelm Wundt and introspection
• In 1879 he opened the rst experimental psychology lab in Germany
• This caused psychology to be classed as a scienti c discipline in it’s own right
• He did the rst experiment which was called introspection
• His goal in this was to attempt developing theories about mental processes,
such as language and perception
• In Wundt’s experiment he categorised the observations into three categories;
thoughts, images and sensations
• Introspection - Showing various stimuli to subjects then recording the
observations made by the subjects.
Evaluation of Wundt’s work
• A strength of Wundt’s work is that some of his methods were systematic and
well controlled
• Everything was recorded in the controlled environment of his lab to avoid
extraneous variables
• The issue with his work is that nowadays it would not be considered scienti c as
the data he collected was subjective as Wundt relied on people to tell him what
they were thinking relying upon people’s compete honesty
fi fi ff fi fi fi fi fi
psychology
Should psychology be classed as a science?
What is psychology?
• Psychology is the scienti c study of the human mind and its functions, especially
those functions a ecting behaviour in a given context
The scienti c method
• The scienti c method refers to the use of investigative methods that are
objective, systematic and replicable
Psychology as a science
• Psychology has for goals; description, explanation, prediction and change
The beginning
• In the 17th to 19th century psychology started taking form as a branch of
philosophy
• At that time psychology would’ve been de ned as experimental philosophy
Wilhelm Wundt and introspection
• In 1879 he opened the rst experimental psychology lab in Germany
• This caused psychology to be classed as a scienti c discipline in it’s own right
• He did the rst experiment which was called introspection
• His goal in this was to attempt developing theories about mental processes,
such as language and perception
• In Wundt’s experiment he categorised the observations into three categories;
thoughts, images and sensations
• Introspection - Showing various stimuli to subjects then recording the
observations made by the subjects.
Evaluation of Wundt’s work
• A strength of Wundt’s work is that some of his methods were systematic and
well controlled
• Everything was recorded in the controlled environment of his lab to avoid
extraneous variables
• The issue with his work is that nowadays it would not be considered scienti c as
the data he collected was subjective as Wundt relied on people to tell him what
they were thinking relying upon people’s compete honesty
fi fi ff fi fi fi fi fi
