Describe Wundt’s cultural psychology. How did it lead to division within psychology?
Apart from his interest in laboratories and experimental work, Wundt was also interested in the domain, where culture and surroundings played a major role. He wrote a book named Cultural psychology which is often inaccurately translated as folk psychology.
The various stages of human mental levels or development are dealt in cultural psychology. Cultural psychology encompasses the language, folklore, myths, customs, stories, law, art, and music and how it affects the mental development of a person.
According to Wundt, the simple mental processes such as perception and sensation could be analyzed and studied experimentally. These human traits could be understood in the setting of lab.
The higher mental processes according to Wundt, like learning and memory were dependent upon the facets of a society. According to him, these higher mental processes could not be analyzed or assessed in labs. Hence, these human traits were impossible to be experimentally understandable.
He advised the use of non experimental tools used in anthropology, sociology and social psychology. This view of his was later disproved, and met with debates. Later, it was possible to study these processes t by experimental means.