Wilhelm Wundt (jan 1, 1832 – jan 1, 1920)

Description:

German Physiologist

-Renowned "Father"/founder of psychology

******In 1879 he opened up the FIRST PSYCHOLOGY LAB at Leipzig, dubbing this year the BIRTH YEAR OF PSYCHOLOGY******

-Became a master of experimental methods and techniques under Helmholtz

-Belief that psychology is the scientific study of the mind; called for a scientific examination of human consciousness

Described two psychologies:
1) voluntarism (experimental)
2) Völkerpsychologie (non-experimental)

-Goals of psychology:
a) Discovering the facts of consciousness for the purpose of revealing its underlying laws by studying the content, rather than the objects, of experience.
b) Analyzing experience into its basic component parts, while recognizing experience as more than the sum of its parts

-Established the first psychological journal at Leipzig in 1881, "Philosophische Studien" (Philosophical Studies)

-Developed two major programs of "New" Psychology that utilized experimental methids developed in physiological research:
1) Examination of immediate conscious experience with experimental methods in a laboratory
2) Study of higher mental processes with non-laboratory methods

-Distinguished between, and studied, mediate and immediate conscious experience

-Separated "introspection" into two categories: self-observation and internal perception

-Pioneer of using qualitative measurements

-Distinguished between "contents" vs. "objects" of experience

-Believed that an implication of evolutionary theory was that cultures could be arranged on a continuum from "primitive" to "advanced" by studying the social customs, myths, religions, and languages of cultures differing in levels of sophistication

-Wrote about language, but it wasn't touched on for a few decades when psycholinguistics became a key element in the rise of cognitive psychology

-Focused a lot on studies of sensation and perception (e.g. positive and negative afterimages, visual contrast, illusions, and the perception of size, depth, and motion)

-Study of reaction time dubbed "mental chronometry" (measure of mental speed)

-Sought to patch up the human error in astronomers' self-calculated judgments of transit time by making it quantifiable using a "personal equation" (subtractive method/complication experiment):
1) to calculate the discrimination time:
---a) "DRT" (Discrimination Reaction Time)
---b) "SRT" (Simple Reaction Time)
------discrimination time = DRT - SRT
2) to calculate the choice time:
---a) "CRT" (Choice Reaction Time)
---b) "SRT" (Simple Reaction Time)
------choice time = CRT - DRT

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