Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) is widely regarded as the founder of experimental psychology. By establishing the first formal psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig in 1879, he transformed psychology from a branch of philosophy into an independent experimental science. His approach — using controlled laboratory methods to study the structure of conscious experience — set the template for scientific psychology and trained the first generation of experimental psychologists.
Method and Theory
Wundt's primary method was trained introspection: carefully controlled self-observation of one's own conscious experiences under standardized laboratory conditions. Unlike casual self-reflection, Wundt's introspection involved trained observers reporting their immediate conscious experiences (sensations, feelings, images) in response to carefully controlled stimuli. His theoretical framework, voluntarism, emphasized the active, organizing role of attention and will in structuring conscious experience — foreshadowing modern research on attentional control and executive function.
While Wundt's specific methods and theories were largely superseded — behaviorists rejected introspection, and cognitive psychologists developed objective behavioral measures — his broader contributions endured: the establishment of psychology as an experimental science, the creation of the laboratory as the site of psychological research, the founding of the first psychology journal (Philosophische Studien), and the training of a generation of researchers who went on to found psychology departments worldwide. His insistence that mental processes could be studied scientifically laid the groundwork for modern cognitive psychology.