evaluation of the origins of psychology
- Created by: imyimss
- Created on: 28-09-18 19:51
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- EVALUATING THE ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY
- Wund's methods were unreliable
- relied on 'non-observable' responses
- participants could report on own conscious experience but processes themselves were unobservable
- introspective experimental results were not reliably reproduced by other researchers
- behaviourists, Pavlov + Thorndike, were already producing reliable results and discovering principles that could generalise humans
- relied on 'non-observable' responses
- A scientific approach tests assumptions about behaviou
- relies on objective and systematic methods of observations so knowledge acquired is more than passive acceptance of theories
- establishes cause of behaviour from empirical and replicable methods
- scientific theories that no longer fit the fats can be refined or abandoned
- scientific knowledge is self-corrective
- a scientific approach is not always appropriate
- if human behaviour isnt subject to laws / regularities of scientific method then predictions become impossible and methods inappropriate
- most subject matter in psychology is unobservable so cannot be measured with degree of accuracy
- psychological knowledge is inferential
- gap between data obtained and the theories put forward to explain this data
- Introspection isn't particularly accurate
- Nisbett + Wilson claim that we have very little knowledge of the cause of a processes underlying our behaviour and attitudes
- implicit attitudes
- a person may be implicitly racist which influences the way they react to different ethnic groups
- such attitudes exist outside of conscious awareness, introspection wouldn't uncover them
- challenges value of introspective reports of behaviour
- Introspection is still useful in scientific psychology
- it hasn't been abandoned entirely
- Hunter et al used introspective methods as a may of making happiness a measurable phenomenon in 2003
- introspection offers way of understanding momentary conditions that affect happiness
- could help them improve quality of life
- Wund's methods were unreliable
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