| Who is the father of psychology? | Wilhelm Wundt |
| What was Wilhelm Wundt's best known approach? | Structuralism: breaking down behaviours into basic elemetns. This developed introspection which was a way of styding human mental processes |
| What did John Locke propose? | Empiricism, the idea that all experiences can be obtrained through sense, they don't inherit knowledge or instinct - relate to behaviourist approach |
| What does introspection mean ? | Systematic analysis/experimentation of our own conscious experience and awareness. |
| How were introspections completed? | Wundt was trained to record conscious thought. They were recorded under strcitly controlled conditions and they used standarised procedures |
| What did introspection lead to ? | Controlled reasrch and the study of mental process, like the cognitive approach |
| What is is critisicm of introspection ? | It is a subjective tehcnique and the personal observations are hard to be make generlisations. It should be able to be observerd and measured, instead of a 'private' mental process. |
| What was created in 1879 ? | Wundt's process of introspection, experimental branch within philosophy |
| What was created in 1900? | Psychodynamic - Freud established approach, importance of the unconcious mind on behaviour |
| What developed in 1913? | The behaviourist appraoch, all behaviour is learnt and should be interested in observable behaviours |
| What was developed in 1950? | Humanistic approach - Rejected views from behaviourist and psychodyanmic, highlight importance of free will |
| What was developed in 1960? | Cognitive approach - studying mental processes, make inferences about how the mind works based on labatory experiments |
| What was developed in 1980? | Biological approach - advancement in techology, brain scans to increase understanding of human brain |
| What was developed in 2000? | Cognitive neuroscience - brings together biological and cognitive approach, biological structures influence mental states |
| What are the 4 elements of the scientific method? | 1. Objective
2. Systematic/controlled
3. Replicable
4. Hypothesis testing |
| A strength of Wundt's research? | -Aspects would still be classed as scientific today
-Eg: all introspections were recorded in a controlled lab environement - no extraneous variables
-Standarised procedures, all ppts recieved the same set of instructions and tested with the same stimulus.
-Wundt's reaserch can be seen as the forerunner to the later scientific approaches in psych which emerged in the behvourist approach |
| A weakness of Wundt's research | -Some aspects would be considered unscientific by today's standards
-Relied on ppts self-reporting their private mental thoughts, this is subjective and influence by personal persepctive. As well as this, they may have hide what they actually were thinking
-Ppts may not have the same thoughts are everyone else they were testing, establishing would not have been possible
-Suggest that some of Wundt's early efforts to study the mind were naive and would not meet the criteria of scientific enquiry |
| A weakness of psychology as a science? | -not all approaches are objective methods
-Eg: the humanistic approach is anti-scientiic and does not attemtp to formulate general laws of behaviour. Concerned with documenting unique, subjective experience
-The psychodynamic approach makes use of the case study method, open to bais and no attempt made to gather a representative sample
-Many claim that a scientific study of human thought and experience may not always be desirable or possible |
| A strength of modern psychology? | -Claims to be scientific
-Psychology has the same aims as natural sciences - to desibe, understand, predict and control behaviour
-Eg: the learning, cognitive and biological approach all reoly on the use of scientific methods, like lab experiments that investigate theories in an unbiased way
-Suggest that throughout the 20th century, psychology has gne on to firmly establish itself as a scientific discipline, based on early foundations laid by Wundt |
