Origins of Psychology | Wilhelm Wundt & Introspection | AQA Psychology | A-level

wilhelm vondt this man has been credited with being the father of psychology and was ranked first in one survey as being the most important psychologist of all time ahead of the famed william james and sigmund freud in this video we're going to find out why welcome back to purity mind we're beginning a series exploring the different approaches in psychology in this video we will focus on the origins of psychology will helm on introspection and the emergence of psychology as a science now i'm about to give a brief introduction and context to this topic for those

who are new to psychology but if you'd like to just jump straight into the details of this video the timestamps are in the description below this topic explores what is known as approaches in psychology by approaches we just mean some of the main perspectives or categories by which psychologists have tried to explain behavior so we're going to explore the behaviourist approach the work of ivan pavlov may ring a bell here the cognitive approach with its focus on what we are thinking our internal mental processes and how we can study our thoughts social learning theory with

bandura's emphasis on the influence of observational learning the psychodynamic approach with the weird world of freud and his focus on the role of unconscious forces the humanistic approach with their focus on free will the self and growth the biological approach with their focus on how everything psychological is first biological each of these approaches explains human behavior from a different perspective in other words they tend to emphasize particular ideas and explanations that are different from one another so for example behaviourists put the focus on the role of the environment on human behavior whereas the biological approach

puts the emphasis on the role of internal biological factors such as genetics and neurotransmitter levels having an understanding of these main approaches gives you a good foundation for exploring a range of other topics in psychology and how psychologists go about investigating human behavior but before we dive into each of the approaches we need to explore in this video the origins of psychology and specifically the work of wilhelm want and how psychology emerged as the scientific discipline that it is today whenever you mention to someone that you study psychology you sometimes get some interesting reactions for

example sometimes people say i wish i had the chance to study that when i was at school or more commonly the moment you mention you study psychology people take one step back get all nervous and worried and say something like you're probably analyzing me right now aren't you in fact do you know what i'm thinking right now well let's look at someone who tried to answer that very question wilhelmvund wilhelm vons has been credited with being the father of psychology why well at the time when vun was around in the 1800s the field of the

mind had mainly been the focus of philosophers such as renee descartes what van did was to move the study of the mind into the scientific realm vun's background was in physiology a branch of biology that focuses on the function of different parts of the body he tried to study the mind in much the same way that biology and chemistry conducted their research using the scientific method in other words he tried to separate psychology from philosophy and even from biology into its own category to do this von set up the first ever laboratory into experimental psychology

designed to study the human mind this was set up in leipzig in germany in 1879 to try to study the mind specifically conscious experience one used a technique called introspection introspection is conscious examination of conscious experience basically a form of self-observation of your own thoughts importantly introspection was carried out in the present moment not a reflection on what happened in the past so how would it work well firstly participants will be presented with a stimulus for example the sound of a metronome or the turning on of a light then secondly the participants would inspect their

own thoughts the word introspection means looking into and then they would report back their own emotions sensations and thoughts that resulted from the sound of the metronome or the turning on of the light thirdly conclusions von would then compare all the responses from the participants to see what was similar and different about them in order to draw conclusions about the mind fund carefully conducted the research in a highly controlled and systematic way to ensure that each sensory stimulus was presented in the same way each time to every participant for example in one experiment von's participants

were asked to report on their sensations when shown a light vuln ensured that this light was kept the same colour the same brightness and on for the same length of time for each participant by keeping these things the same or we might say standardized it enabled vunt to carefully compare the responses from his participants for any similarities and differences wanted to make sure to be able to repeat their experiments using the same conditions each time this would then enable them to check the reliability of the results they found in essence what volt was trying to

do was move the study of the mind away from the speculation of philosophers and move it into the scientific methods now avant's method of introspection does have its limitations asking participants to self-report what is going on in their mind through self-observation is highly subjective there is no way of independently verifying that what they said was going on in their thoughts was actually going on in fact in our next video on the behaviorist approach which i'll link up here we will see that a famous behaviorist by the name of b.f skinner argued that von's introspection wasn't

truly scientific because he wasn't studying observable behavior and if you cannot observe the behavior then you can't be objective but more on that in the next video however positively what vuln did was to provide the starting point for the future of psychology and hence why von is known as the father of psychology in fact von trained 186 graduate students throughout his academic career 116 of them specializing in psychology these students went on to other countries in europe and around the world to develop research into human behavior and the mind as one author put it the

foundations were laid for the next generation of psychologists at the turn of the century to develop a truly objective study of mind and behavior and to apply their own new theories to the treatment of mental disorders if you're interested check out this video i'll also link up in the cards on the cognitive approach to see how they developed objective measurements for studying mental processes so to finish we can now consider how psychology has emerged from the time of wilhelm want to the scientific method it is today firstly we have one with his method of introspection

trying to study conscious experience through controlled methods he went on to write the first textbook on psychology called the principles of physiological psychology secondly in the early 1900s behaviourism came along and used laboratory methods to objectively measure behavior for example b.f skinner studied the influence of reward and punishment in the learning of behavior in fact he created his own highly controlled box called the skinner box to ensure he had control over all the variables and could carefully measure through observation the results then in the 1960s with the dawn of computer technology came the cognitive approach

their focus was on studying internal mental processes such as memory in a highly scientific way through controlled experiments that could be objectively measured and replicated then with the further development of technology in the 1980s the biological approach became the most dominant way of studying behavior and the mind for example advances in technology allowed for the study of how genetics may be involved as well as the role of different brain chemicals and how they can influence human behavior and now we come to our own time with cognitive neuroscience today we now have a combination of cognitive

and biological approaches with the further advancement of brain scanning technology this allows psychologists to observe participants brains working in the present moment while they are thinking certain thoughts can you imagine explaining to avant that in little over a hundred years after his pioneering work that we would have the technology to watch specific brain structures at work whilst participants are thinking certain thoughts and that's why he's called the father of psychology it was his work that led to the development of a scientific way of studying the mind that many have argued led us to where we

are today for more information on the different approaches in psychology check out the description below where you'll find a link to the playlist for all the approaches as well as other helpful information and if you wanted to watch the first video on the behaviourist approach you can click on the video on the screen now and it's also linked in the description too i hope you found this video helpful and we'll see you in the next one