PSYB57H3 Chapter : textbook notes.docx
Document Summary
Wilhelm wundt and his students launched the new enterprise of research psychology, defining their field for the first time a separate from philosophy and biology. Psychology needed to be concerned largely with the study of conscious mental events- feelings, thoughts, perceptions and recollections. The only way to study thoughts is for each of us to introspect or look within, to observe and record the content of our own mental lives and the sequence of our own experiences. Introspection is the study of conscious experiences and so can tell us nothing about unconscious events. Data concerned with behaviour are objective data, stimuli are measureable, recordable, physical events. Beliefs, wishes, goals and expectations cannot be directly observed, these can only be observed via introspection, which is useless. A great deal of behaviours couldn"t be explained with reference only to objective, overt events.
