Who is regarded as the founder of psychology and defined psychology as the science of consciousness using introspection?

• A. Wilhelm Wundt
• B. B. F. Skinner
• C. Sigmund Freud
• D. Ivan Pavlov

Answer: (A)

This question tests who first established psychology as a distinct experimental science and tied it to the study of conscious experience using introspection. Wilhelm Wundt is the figure who did that. He set up the first psychology laboratory and defined psychology as the science of conscious experience, aiming to measure and analyze mental processes with controlled, systematic introspection. He sought to break experience into its basic elements and study them under standardized conditions, which gave psychology its methodological birth. The other names became influential in later theories—Skinner in behaviorism, Freud in psychoanalysis, and Pavlov in classical conditioning—but they are not credited with founding psychology or naming it as the science of consciousness studied through introspection.