Introspection

 Introspection is the first systematic method to study the mind by breaking up

conscious awareness into basic structures of thoughts, images and sensations.

 The study of one’s own consciousness through self-examination of one’s thoughts and
feelings.

 It is created by Wilhelm Wundt.

 His aim was to try to analyse the nature of human consciousness, and thus represented
the first systematic attempt to study the mind under controlled conditions.

Outline:

 Participants were trained in introspection (the systematic method used to study the
mind by breaking up conscious awareness into basic structures of thoughts, images
and sensations).

 Wundt and his co-workers presented participants with stimuli.

 He would then ask participants to describe their perception of the stimuli.

 For instance, participants might be given a ticking metronome and they would report
their thoughts, images and sensations.

 These perceptions would then be recorded.

 Isolating the structure of consciousness in this way is called structuralism. The stimuli
that Wundt and his co-workers experienced were always presented in the same order
and the same instructions were issued to all participants.
Wundt’s role

Outline:

 Wundt known as ‘the father of Psychology’ as his work marked the separation of
modern scientific psychology from its broader philosophical roots.

 Wundt founded the Institute of Experimental Psychology in Leipzig, Germany in the

1870s.

 He published one of the first books on psychology, helping to establish the subject as
an independent branch of science.

 Wundt promoted the use of introspection as a way of studying mental processes.

 Introspection is the systematic analysis of own conscious experience of a stimulus.

 In this controlled setting he was able to study the building blocks of human thought
known as structuralism.

 An experience was analysed in terms of its component parts like sensations,

emotional reaction etc.

 For example, Wundt would ask people to focus on an everyday object and look
inwards noticing sensations, feelings and image.

 Participants thoughts were broken down using scales e.g. calm – excited pleasant-
unpleasant and were carefully recorded.

 All introspections were controlled using standardised procedures e.g. same ticking
metronome.

 Wundt identified higher mental processes (learning, language, emotions, etc.) that
could not be studied in a strictly controlled manner.

 His work paved the way for later development of the field of cultural psychology
based on general trends in behaviour of groups of people.
Evaluation

A strength of Wundt's work is that it was highly controlled. For example, the stimulus used,
such as the metronome would last a specific period of time. Additionally, the participants
would receive the same instructions and the responses were carefully recorded. Furthermore,
Wundt's work was replicable. The experiment could easily be repeated over and over again.
These features of Wundt's work would be considered scientific today.

However, a limitation is that whilst Wundt's work could be repeated, responses varied so
much from person to person because it was so subjective that no general principles could be
established from this method. This suggests that Wundt's methods were flawed and would not
meet the criteria for science today. Nowadays, main features of science include paradigm,
paradigm shift, falsifiability, replicability and objectivity. As Wundt’s study of introspection
produced subjective data (rather than objective), so that it was very difficult to establish
general laws. Therefore, it was criticised by other psychologists at the turn of the 20th
century.