Psychology

Psychology is the scientific study of the mind and behavior, covering conscious and unconscious mental processes such as perception, cognition, emotion and motivation. Although questions about the mind go back to ancient philosophy, psychology emerged as an independent experimental science only in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when Wilhelm Wundt opened the first laboratory devoted exclusively to psychological research at the University of Leipzig in 1879. Wundt's students carried his experimental methods, controlled measurement of sensation, reaction time and attention, to universities across Europe and North America, establishing psychology as a discipline distinct from both philosophy and physiology within a generation.