Wilhelm Wundt

By the second half of the 1800’s, the stage had been set for the emergence of Psychology as a distinct scientific discipline. The leading proponent of this idea was a German physiologist named Wilhelm Wundt. Wundt used scientific methods to study fundamental psychological processes, such as mental reaction times in response to visual or auditory stimuli. For example, Wundt tried to measure precisely how long it took a person to consciously detect the sight and sound of a bell being struck.

A major turning point in Psychology occurred in 1874, when Wundt published his landmark text, “Principles of Physiological Psychology”. In this book, Wundt outlined the connections between physiology and psychology. He also promoted his belief that psychology should be established as a separate scientific discipline that would use experimental methods to study mental processes. A few years later, in 1879, Wundt realized that goal when he opened the first psychology research laboratory at the University of Leipzig. Many regard this event as marking the formal beginning of psychology as an experimental science.

Wundt defined psychology as the study of consciousness and emphasized the use of experimental methods to study and measure consciousness. Until he died in 1920, Wundt exerted a strong influence on the development of Psychology as a science. Two hundred students from around the world, including many from the United States, traveled to Leipzig to earn doctorates in experimental psychology under Wundt’s direction. Over the years, some 17,000 students attended Wundt’s afternoon lectures on general psychology, which often included demonstrations of devices he had developed to measure mental processes.

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