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The First Experimental Psychology Lab

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

 James Lacy, MLS, is a fact-checker and researcher.

While the study of the mind and behavior is a subject as old as time, psychology has not always existed as it does today. Most experts actually consider psychology itself a relatively young discipline. So when did psychology really begin to emerge as a science?

Psychology's earliest roots are in philosophy and physiology. According to most psychology historians, the establishment of the very first experimental psychology lab officially marked psychology's beginning as a separate and distinct discipline.

When exactly was the first psychology lab formed and who was responsible for this important event in psychology history? The question of which lab was first really depends on whether we look at experimental labs or teaching labs. While it may seem like a minor distinction, it was the formation of the first lab devoted to the experimental study of the mind that truly set psychology off on its own path as an academic and scientific discipline.

The World's First Psychology Lab

Wilhelm Wundt , a German doctor and psychologist (seated in photo), was responsible for creating the world's first experimental psychology lab. This lab was established in 1879 at the University of Leipzig in Germany. By creating an academic laboratory devoted to the study of experimental psychology, Wundt officially took psychology from a sub-discipline of philosophy and biology to a unique scientific discipline.

Because of the important role Wundt played in psychology history, he is often regarded as the

" father of psychology ."

Wundt had significant influence on early psychology and left his mark on some of his most successful students in the field, including James McKeen Cattell , and greatly influenced other students of the time, such as G. Stanley Hall . In addition to being an important figure in the history of psychology, many students who were trained in his lab went on to make their own important contributions to the field of psychology.

The First Psychology Lab in the U.S.

In 1883, Wundt's student G. Stanley Hall created the first experimental psychology lab in the United States at John Hopkins University. This helped establish psychology as an independent discipline in the U.S. and contributed to the growth of the field.

Wundt, James, and Hall: Who Was First?

It may surprise many to learn that neither Wundt nor Hall can exclusively lay claim to having the world's first lab or the first American lab. In 1875, a full four years before Wundt established his lab and eight years before Hall established his, Williams James formed a psychology lab at Harvard University.  

So why is James not credited with creating the world's first laboratory, or at the very least, America's first lab? Because his lab was used for teaching demonstrations rather than experimentation and original research. For this reason, Wundt and Hall are generally credited with creating the first and second experimental psychology labs.  

The establishment of the world's first psychology lab is so significant because it helped psychology get recognized as distinct discipline in its own right. By forming an experimental lab devoted to the scientific study of the human mind and behavior, Wundt was able to formally establish psychology as a separate field of study.

A Word From Verywell

Modern psychology is quite different from its rather modest beginnings in Wundt's lab. While this first psychology lab likely bears little resemblance to the labs of today, this early experimental setting helped pave the way for the future of psychology.

By taking a scientific approach to the study of the human mind and behavior, Wundt's lab formally established psychology as a science separate and distinct from the fields of philosophy and biology. Wundt's lab was also used to help train other psychologists who went on to help spread psychology throughout the world. Soon, other labs began appearing outside of Germany and the United States, including psych labs in Russia, China, France, and Canada.

Boring EG. A History of Experimental Psychology. 2nd Ed. Englewood-Cliffs: Prentice Hall; 1960.

Balance W, Evans R, Evans R. Wilhelm Wundt 1832–1920: A brief biographical sketch .  J Hist Behav Sci . 1975;11(3):287-297. doi:10.1002/1520-6696(197507)11:3<287::aid-jhbs2300110309>3.0.co;2-l

Shiraev E.  A History Of Psychology: A Global Perspective . Los Angeles: SAGE; 2015.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Experimental Psychology

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• First Online: 18 April 2024
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• Chen Shuyong 2 &
• He Dongjun 3  

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Experimental psychology refers to the branch of psychology concerning the basic process and design method of experimental research and its application in the field of basic research and practice of psychology.

Brief History

Before the nineteenth century, the problems of psychology were mostly discussed in the field of philosophy, using the method of speculation and empirical generalization. There was a prevailing belief that the experimental method was not applicable for the study of psychological phenomena. After the Renaissance, the materialist philosophical trend of ideas and the development of natural science in Europe gave birth to the experimental psychology at the end of the nineteenth century. The former includes John Locke’s materialist empiricism, David Hartley’s associationism, and Julien Offray de La Mettrie’s mechanical materialism. The latter includes the research on nerve conduction in physiology, the debate on brain function localization and the establishment of the...

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Further Reading

Kantowitz BH, Roediger HL, Elmes DG (2015) Experimental psychology, 10th edn. Cengage Learning, Boston

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Zhang X-M, Hua S (2014) Experimental psychology. Beijing Normal University Publishing Group, Beijing

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School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

Chen Shuyong

School of Psychology, Chengdu Medical University, Chengdu, China

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Correspondence to He Dongjun .

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© 2024 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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Shuyong, C., Dongjun, H. (2024). Experimental Psychology. In: The ECPH Encyclopedia of Psychology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6000-2_753-1

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B.A. in Psychology

What Is Experimental Psychology?

The science of psychology spans several fields. There are dozens of disciplines in psychology, including abnormal psychology, cognitive psychology and social psychology.

One way to view these fields is to separate them into two types: applied vs. experimental psychology. These groups describe virtually any type of work in psychology.

The following sections explore what experimental psychology is and some examples of what it covers.

Experimental psychology seeks to explore and better understand behavior through empirical research methods. This work allows findings to be employed in real-world applications (applied psychology) across fields such as clinical psychology, educational psychology, forensic psychology, sports psychology, and social psychology. Experimental psychology is able to shed light on people’s personalities and life experiences by examining what the way people behave and how behavior is shaped throughout life, along with other theoretical questions. The field looks at a wide range of behavioral topics including sensation, perception, attention, memory, cognition, and emotion, according to the  American Psychological Association  (APA).

Research is the focus of experimental psychology. Using scientific methods to collect data and perform research, experimental psychology focuses on certain questions, and, one study at a time, reveals information that contributes to larger findings or a conclusion. Due to the breadth and depth of certain areas of study, researchers can spend their entire careers looking at a complex research question.

Experimental Psychology in Action

The APA  writes about  one experimental psychologist, Robert McCann, who is now retired after 19 years working at NASA. During his time at NASA, his work focused on the user experience — on land and in space — where he applied his expertise to cockpit system displays, navigation systems, and safety displays used by astronauts in NASA spacecraft. McCann’s knowledge of human information processing allowed him to help NASA design shuttle displays that can increase the safety of shuttle missions. He looked at human limitations of attention and display processing to gauge what people can reliably see and correctly interpret on an instrument panel. McCann played a key role in helping determining the features of cockpit displays without overloading the pilot or taxing their attention span.

“One of the purposes of the display was to alert the astronauts to the presence of a failure that interrupted power in a specific region,” McCann said, “The most obvious way to depict this interruption was to simply remove (or dim) the white line(s) connecting the affected components. Basic research on visual attention has shown that humans do not notice the removal of a display feature very easily when the display is highly cluttered. We are much better at noticing a feature or object that is suddenly added to a display.” McCann utilized his knowledge in experimental psychology to research and develop this very important development for NASA. 

Valve Corporation

Another experimental psychologist, Mike Ambinder, uses his expertise to help design video games. He is a senior experimental psychologist at Valve Corporation, a video game developer and developer of the software distribution platform Steam. Ambinder told  Orlando Weekly  that his career working on gaming hits such as Portal 2 and Left 4 Dead “epitomizes the intersection between scientific innovation and electronic entertainment.” His career started when he gave a presentation to Valve on applying psychology to game design; this occurred while he was finishing his PhD in experimental design. “I’m very lucky to have landed at a company where freedom and autonomy and analytical decision-making are prized,” he said. “I realized how fortunate I was to work for a company that would encourage someone with a background in psychology to see what they could contribute in a field where they had no prior experience.” 

Ambinder spends his time on data analysis, hardware research, play-testing methodologies, and on any aspect of games where knowledge of human behavior could be useful. Ambinder described Valve’s process for refining a product as straightforward. “We come up with a game design (our hypothesis), and we place it in front of people external to the company (our play-test or experiment). We gather their feedback, and then iterate and improve the design (refining the theory). It’s essentially the scientific method applied to game design, and the end result is the consequence of many hours of applying this process.” To gather play-test data, Ambinder is engaged in the newer field of biofeedback technology, which can quantify gamers’ enjoyment. His research looks at unobtrusive measurements of facial expressions that can achieve such goals. Ambinder is also examining eye-tracking as a next-generation input method.

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