PSYCH101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Wilhelm Wundt, Empiricism, Contiguity

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH101
• Professor: Stephanie Denison

Document Summary

Human beings are the only creature that contemplates itself. Most data obtained in psychological research are based on observations of behaviour because behaviour is directly observable and the mind is not- able to make inferences about the mind. Wundt was first psychologist to create a psychology-based laboratory. Behaviour and mental experiences have physical causes that can be studied scientifically: 2. The way people behave, think, and feel is modified over time by their experiences in their environment: 3. The body"s machinery, which produces behaviour and mental experience, is a product of evolution of natural selection. Church held philosophers back, believed in dualism, or the material body and immaterial soul. All human actions can be understood as reflexes since all human behaviour is initiated by a stimuli in the environment. British empiricism was inspired by people such as locke, hartley, james mill and john stuart mill. Empiricism: the idea that human knowledge and thought derive ultimately from sensory experience.