PSYC85H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Wilhelm Wundt, Experimental Psychology, Apperception
Document Summary
For many years, wundt"s fame in psychology rested on two facts: he founded what is often called the first laboratory in experimental psychology, at. Leipzig in 1879: his laboratory attracted a great many young scholars, often americans, who went on to develop the first psychology elsewhere. Approach laboratory research was suitable only for relatively simple psychological processes. More complex psychological processes (e. g. our ability to use language) could not be explained by experimental, laboratory methods rather, they required observations of the products of language and thought as they occurred naturally. Mill"s notion of mental chemistry mill argued that complex ideas were the result of the combination of simpler ones. Mill was skeptical of the possibility of discovering mental elements through introspection however, wundt believed that this goal might be accomplished using introspection combined with the experimental method. Beginning with wundt, a large part of the history of psychology is concerned with attempting to develop a scientifically respectable introspective method.
