Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychological laboratory in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany. He was interested in studying conscious experience.
Wundt did experiments involving introspection. Introspection is
self-examination of the mind, or conscious experience. Wundt asked subjects to
introspect about the feelings and sensations they had in response to a physical
stimulus. For example, Wundt might place a rock in a person's hand and the
person would tell him all of the sensations that he was feeling as a result of
having a rock in his hand. Introspective reports were an exhaustive analysis of
consciousness, so they could go on for several minutes, even up to an hour.
Introspection was done by trained individuals. Wundt would not ask anyone off
the street for introspective reports. He wanted people to have some idea of the
sort of report that he was asking for, so they had to be trained.