PS101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Gestalt Psychology, Wilhelm Wundt, Reductionism
Document Summary
Started when people wondered about human nature and human behaviour. When studying why a certain behaviour or mental process occurs, one can study the influences of: As a discipline, psychology builds upon questions posed by philosophy (the roots of psych) backed up by methods borrowed from the physical sciences. Philosphers were the ones arguing about what it was to be human, alive, and to experience things. Conducted experiments (not as we would understand them today): Goal: to understand how the simplest elements of structure of conscious experience combine to create more complex perceptions and behaviours. Measurements used in his experiments: reaction times, attention span, perception of visual stimuli, touch and hearing: structuralism (titchener student of wundt continues the tradition) Belief that all experience could be reduced to basic elements. Could identify the structures (ex chemistry water = h2o) Problem: lots of criticism; not objective (stimulus stays the same but reported experience could change, both within and across people: functionalism.
