PSYC85H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Forgetting Curve, Experimental Psychology, Wilhelm Wundt
Document Summary
Wundt invented a non-experimental approach called cultural psychology" that was a precursor of social psychology. Born in germany, wundt studied with both muller and helmholtz before becoming a prof at leipzig in. Historians of psychology placed wundt first in a ranking of the most eminent psychologist of all time. Schmidgen showed that wundt"s earliest interests was experimental chemistry. Schmidgen noted that wundt had been influenced by j. s. Mill argued that complex ideas were the result of the combination of simpler ones (ex. Mill was skeptical of the possibility of discovering mental elements through introspection. Wundt believed that this goal might be accomplished using introspection combined with the experimental method. Wundt was aware that there were problems with any introspective method. He made a distinction between two forms of introspection: self-observation and inner perception. Self-observation of the sort casually engaged in by everyone cannot be the basis of a scientific psychology because it is open to personal bias.
