Wilhelm Wundt and Introspection:
● Wilhelm Wundt was known as the ‘father of psychology’
● He wanted to document and describe the human consciousness
● Wundt and his colleagues documented their own conscious thoughts, in order to break them
down into constituent parts to explain behavior
○ Isolating the structure of consciousness like this is called structuralism
● It was the first ‘scientific’ investigation → standardized instructions, strictly controlled
conditions, repetition of investigations…
● Introspection is the systematic investigation of one’s conscious thoughts
○ Wundt used introspection to investigate the human mind
■ Participants were asked to reflect on their own cognitive processes and
describe them
○ Wundt established psychology as a science by using the scientific method - his ideas
would lead to multiple different psychological perspectives
● Introspection relies primarily on non-observable responses, and although participants can
report conscious experiences, they are unable to comment on unconscious factors relating to
their behavior
○ This produced data that was subjective, so it became very difficult to establish
general principles
■ Introspective experimental results are not reliably reproduced by other
researchers
● Introspection may not seem particularly scientific, but it is still used today to gain access to
cognitive processes
○ Griffiths (1994) used introspection to study the cognitive processes of fruit machine
gamblers
■ He asked them to ‘think aloud’ whilst playing a fruit machine into a
microphone on their lapel and found that gamblers used more irrational
verbalisations
● Evaluation of Introspection:
○ - Introspection does not explain how the mind works
○ - It relies on people describing their own thoughts and feelings
○ - Subjective data makes it hard to establish general principles
○ - Watson → focuses on ‘private mental processes’ - scientific psychology should
restrict itself to only studying phenomena that can be observed and measured
1
,The Emergence of Psychology as a Science:
● When Wundt opened the world’s first experimental laboratory at the university of Leipzig in
1879, it marked a turning point → psychology’s emergence as a separate and distinct
scientific discipline
○ In doing so, he separated psychology from philosophy and biology and became the
first person to be called a psychologist
● At the beginning of the 20th century, introspection was starting to be questioned
● Wundt’s founding of experimental psychology kicked psychology into a scientific world
○ The classic movement in psychology t o adopt these strategies were the behaviorists,
who were renowned for their reliance on controlled laboratory experiment and
rejection of any unseen or subconscious forces as causes of behavior
● Behaviourist John B. Watson (1913) and later, Skinner (1953), brought language and methods
of the natural science into psychology
○ It involved learning and the use of carefully controlled lab experiments
● With the introduction of the digital computer in the 1960s, psychologists began to wonder
whether our brain worked like computers too
○ On the basis of lab tests, the cognitive approach scientifically links behavior to
cognitive processes
○ Albert Bandura’s social learning theory bridged the gap between behaviorism and
cognition
● From the 1980s, the biological approach also emphasized using science to investigate the
physiological processes in the brain
● From the 21st century onwards, cognitive neuroscience has emerged to help us further
investigate the intricacies of the human brain
● Evaluation of the Scientific Approach:
○ + Knowledge acquired using scientific methods are more than just the passive
acceptance of facts
○ + Cause of behavior can be established through the use of methods that are
empirical and replicable
○ + Scientific knowledge is self-corrective, meaning that it can be refined or abandoned
○ - Scientific psychologists create contrived situations that create artificial behaviors
○ - Not all psychologists share the view that the human behavior can be explored
through scientific methods
○ - How can we investigate an emotion or a thought scientifically?
○ Can we ever know everything about the brain?
2
,Approaches:
The Behaviourist Approach:
● 3 approaches that conflict with behaviorism: biological approach, cognitive approach and
social learning theory
● Assumptions:
○ Behaviourism is concerned with observable behavior
○ Psychology is a science
○ When born, our mind is a blank slate - Tabula Rasa (the biological approach conflicts
with this assumption → no genetic influence on behavior)
○ There is little difference between the learning in animals and that in humans
○ Behaviour is the result of stimulus → response
○ All behaviour is learnt from the environment (classical or operant conditioning)
● Key psychologists:
○ Pavlov (1849 - 1936)
■ Classical conditioning
■ Research has allowed help in behavioural therapies
○ Watson (1878 - 1958)
■ Established behaviourism
■ Believed that psychology should primarily be observable scientific behaviour
■ Little Albert Study
○ Skinner (1904 - 1990)
■ Believed that the best way to understand behaviour is to look at the causes
of an action and its consequences
■ Introduced the idea of reinforcement
● Classical Conditioning → learning by association
○ Ivan Pavlov’s Dog experiment:
■ He saw how the dog salivated when food was present but did not when he
heard a bell
■ Therefore, whenever the dog was provided with food, Pavlov rang a bell
■ Eventually, the dog salivated whenever the bell was rung, even when there
was no food present
● Dog food - unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
● Salivation - unconditioned response (UCR)
● Bell - neutral stimulus (NS)
● NS + UCS = UCR
● NS → conditioned stimulus (CS)
● Salivation from bell - conditioned response (CR)
○ Watson and Rayner’s Little Albert experiment (1920):
■ A boy known as Little Albert was presented with a white rat to which he did
not react (NS)
■ They found that a hammer hitting a steel bar behind him upsets him (UCS)
■ They paired the two stimuli with Little Albert producing an upset reaction
after hearing the noise
3
, ■ The rat was then presented on its own, and he was upset without the noise
■ Albert also responded with anxiety to a rabbit, a fur coat and some cotton
wool
● Operant Conditioning → learning by consequence
○ B.F. Skinner’s Box experiment (1948):
■ A hungry rat would be placed in the box.
■ Inside the box was a lever which, when pressed, would deliver a pellet of
food
■ When the rat pressed the lever, a food pellet was dropped onto the tray. The
rat soon learned that pressing the lever would result in food (a reward)
■ Skinner observed that, as a consequence of its actions (receiving the pellet),
the rat continued to display this newly learned behaviour
○ Four ways operant conditioning can occur: positive reinforcement, negative
reinforcement, positive punishment, or negative punishment
■ Positive → applies stimulus
■ Negative → removes stimulus
■ Reinforcement →increases the chance of behaviour reoccurrence
■ Punishment → decreases the chance of behaviour reoccurrence
● Strengths of the Behaviourist Approach:
○ By focusing on the measurement of observable behaviour within highly controlled
lab settings, behaviourism made psychology much more scientific and credible
○ It emphasised the importance of objectivity and replicability in research processes
○ We also can judge cause and effect relationships by using the experimental method
○ The conditioning principles have been applied to a broad range of real-world
behaviours and problems.
■ For example, due to our understanding of how phobias can be learned
through classical conditioning, we have developed successful therapies such
as Systematic Desensitisation to treat phobias
● Weaknesses of the Behaviourist Approach:
○ From a behaviourist perspective, animals (including humans) are seen as passive and
machine-like responders to the environment, with little or no conscious insight into
their behaviour, so criticism of the behavioural approach is that it is very, very
simplistic
■ It implies that we have no control over our behaviour and that our thought
processes are not important
○ Other approaches in psychology such as social learning theory and the cognitive
approach have emphasised the importance of mental events during learning
■ These processes, which mediate between stimulus and response, suggest
that people play much more active roles in their learning
■ This means that the learning theory may apply less to human than animal
behaviour
4
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller parimahe. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $33.04. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
