Question

History of Psychology Chapter 4

Your responses must be in paragraph format, do not use bullets. Make sure your response is detailed.

-Why is Wundt, and not Fechner, considered the founder of the new psychology?

-Describe Wundt’s cultural psychology. How did it lead to division within psychology?

-How was Wundt’s psychology influenced by the work of the German physiologists and the British empiricists? Describe the concept of voluntarism.

Answer 1

1) Fechner, the renowned experimental psychologist is considered to be the originator of new psychology. He argued the power of mind to measure perceptions and sensations. He is also considered to be the founder of Psychophysics ,  a new branch of study in psychology. Though made significant observation about the new psychology, Wundt,is considered to be the first one who transformed psychology as a science. He established laboratories to investigate senses which was a rare case in the 19th century. This foundation to new psychology as a science discipline earned Wundt, the title of the founder of new psychology.

2) The experiment of mental developments with a cultural dimension could roughly be called as cultural psychology. Whatever a person learns over time from a cultural phase, like language, pattern of living etc, governs the intellect and shapes the society subsequently. This cultural aspect is propounded by Wundt who has extensively talked about it in his famous work ''(Social Psychology. An Investigation of the Laws of Evolution of Language, Myth, and Custom". However the cultural psychology was often misread as ethnology and it paved way for the divisions of various branches in anthropology.

3) The scientific method by which the psychological factors are analyzed was mostly indebted to the German physiologists and the British Empiricists. In transforming psychology to a science, these empirical methods were taken and applied. Voluntarism is the idea of recognition of the supreme authority of will in making conscious decisions. The understanding of any aspects in relation to the consciousness works through will.