Methods of psychology

The method of classical psychology as practiced by Wilhem Wundt at his Leipzig laboratory and taught by Edward Titchener at Cornell was introspection. Introspection is the consideration of one's own inner events. Systematic introspection, an orderly method of recording one's insights, was the research method used from approximately 1880 to 1920.

The use of introspection was backed by the philosophical doctrines of Locke and Descartes: they maintained that the person was able to observe each and every of his mental states. This concept was known as the transparency of the mind, and reached its highest point with the theories of Wundt and Titchener, who insisted that the examination of the stream of consciousness allowed psychologists to completely analyze mental processes.

The idea that the mind can infallibly perceive its own activity was challenged first by Sigmund Freud in the early 20th century. Freud found that unconscious motives, entirely hidden to introspection, can actually influence human behavior. The method of introspection was also of no use to psychologists when an upsurge of evolution theory led them to the study of animals. In experiments with animals, psychologists had only behavior to observe as the subjects could not make a report of their inner events.

Behaviorism further attacked the use of introspection as a research method arguing that inner events were known only by the person who experienced them. Behaviorists even rejected the concept of psychology as the science that studies the contents of the mind or how the mind works. To them, psychology should deal only with observable behavior, so psychology is the science that studies behavior. Thus, introspection lost its central position, and it is currently used only as a complement to observation.

Experimental work in psychology can be seen as belonging to the tradition initiated in the 17th century by Francis Bacon. Bacon was the proponent of scientific knowledge based only in observation and built up by inductive reasoning. In his work New Organon published in 1620, he propounds that scientists should clean their minds of any preconception before setting to observe facts. This would produce the most objective knowledge that men could obtain. Bacon's view was considered to be confirmed by the success of the natural laws discovered by eminent scientists like Galileo Galilei, William Harvey, Isaac Newton, and Robert Boyle.

It is now considered, however, that the clean state of mind advocated by Bacon is impossible to achieve. Every observation of a natural phenomenon or of the outcome of an experiment must be interpreted, and this interpretation is only possible within the frame of a theory. Furthermore, theories suggest what facts should be observed and what experiments must be done. When a theory has been set forth that is based on wrong data, or wrongly inducted from good data, it is usually easy to signal this circumstance. It is not so easy to prescribe methods to determine the correctness of a theory

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