JOrigins Of Psychology
A01
- Wundt – first to call himself a psychologist
- Believed all aspects of nature and human mind could be studied scientifically
- Proposed introspection – study of inner mind – led to psych as a science
- Introspection means "looking into" and refers to the process of observing and
examining your own conscious thoughts or emotion
- Study broke up conscious awareness into basic structures of thoughts, images,
sensations
- Steps
1. Stimulus exposure – presented with controlled stimuli (visual images,
acoustic)
2. Internal examination – description of inner process experiencing
3. Analysis – compare ppts responses to same stimuli
- Watson criticised introspection
- Says it focuses on private mental processes and produces subjective data –
diJicult to establish general principles
- For a metid to be scientific it needs to be objective, systemic, and replicable
S – introspection is still useful in scientific psychology
P - paved the way and is still useful in psychology.
E – Csikszentmihalyi and Hunter used introspective methods as a way of making
‘happiness a measurable phenomenon’
Gave participants beepers that went oJ during random times throughout the day,
requiring them to write down their thoughts and feels in that moment.
Found that the ppts were unhappy rather than happy.
However, when focused on challenging tasks, they were happier.
E - using introspective methods can still be utilised to obtain in-depth, qualitative data.
L - introspection can be used to explore specific target groups in relation to emotion.
Although the data is subjective to each participant, researchers are able to convert this
data and draw comparisons between target groups, in turn producing objective and
generalisable data to a specific target population.
L – subjective and unreliable
, P - Wundt’s introspective approach is that it relies entirely on ‘non-observable’
responses.
E - Wundt’s participants could report their conscious experiences (e.g. memory,
perception) but they were considered as unobservable constructions.
Thus, Wundt's approach failed due to the lack of reliability of his methods.
E - data produced was merely subjective perceptions, which were not reproducible by
other researchers.
L - despite introspection paving the way for psychology to be recognised as as science,
it did not follow the ‘experimental research’ rules, and in turn not being able to
generalise or apply principles to all humans.
Whereas, other early behaviourist psychologists, like Pavlov and Watson, were
achieving reliably reproducible and generalisable results about human learning.
L – not accurate
P - through the use of introspection there is little knowledge of the causes and
processes of human behaviour and attitudes.
E - Nisbett and Wilson found this issue in a study of implicit attitudes and stereotypes.
For instance, a person may be implicitly racist, which influences the way they react to
members of a diJerent ethnic group.
E - This suggests that because these attitudes operate outside conscious awareness,
individuals are unable to accurately access or explain them through introspection or
self-report methods.
L – Therefore, this challenges the value of introspection as a scientific method, as it
cannot reliably uncover the underlying causes of behaviour, limiting its usefulness in
psychological research.
A01
- Wundt – first to call himself a psychologist
- Believed all aspects of nature and human mind could be studied scientifically
- Proposed introspection – study of inner mind – led to psych as a science
- Introspection means "looking into" and refers to the process of observing and
examining your own conscious thoughts or emotion
- Study broke up conscious awareness into basic structures of thoughts, images,
sensations
- Steps
1. Stimulus exposure – presented with controlled stimuli (visual images,
acoustic)
2. Internal examination – description of inner process experiencing
3. Analysis – compare ppts responses to same stimuli
- Watson criticised introspection
- Says it focuses on private mental processes and produces subjective data –
diJicult to establish general principles
- For a metid to be scientific it needs to be objective, systemic, and replicable
S – introspection is still useful in scientific psychology
P - paved the way and is still useful in psychology.
E – Csikszentmihalyi and Hunter used introspective methods as a way of making
‘happiness a measurable phenomenon’
Gave participants beepers that went oJ during random times throughout the day,
requiring them to write down their thoughts and feels in that moment.
Found that the ppts were unhappy rather than happy.
However, when focused on challenging tasks, they were happier.
E - using introspective methods can still be utilised to obtain in-depth, qualitative data.
L - introspection can be used to explore specific target groups in relation to emotion.
Although the data is subjective to each participant, researchers are able to convert this
data and draw comparisons between target groups, in turn producing objective and
generalisable data to a specific target population.
L – subjective and unreliable
, P - Wundt’s introspective approach is that it relies entirely on ‘non-observable’
responses.
E - Wundt’s participants could report their conscious experiences (e.g. memory,
perception) but they were considered as unobservable constructions.
Thus, Wundt's approach failed due to the lack of reliability of his methods.
E - data produced was merely subjective perceptions, which were not reproducible by
other researchers.
L - despite introspection paving the way for psychology to be recognised as as science,
it did not follow the ‘experimental research’ rules, and in turn not being able to
generalise or apply principles to all humans.
Whereas, other early behaviourist psychologists, like Pavlov and Watson, were
achieving reliably reproducible and generalisable results about human learning.
L – not accurate
P - through the use of introspection there is little knowledge of the causes and
processes of human behaviour and attitudes.
E - Nisbett and Wilson found this issue in a study of implicit attitudes and stereotypes.
For instance, a person may be implicitly racist, which influences the way they react to
members of a diJerent ethnic group.
E - This suggests that because these attitudes operate outside conscious awareness,
individuals are unable to accurately access or explain them through introspection or
self-report methods.
L – Therefore, this challenges the value of introspection as a scientific method, as it
cannot reliably uncover the underlying causes of behaviour, limiting its usefulness in
psychological research.
