As a physiologist and philosopher, Wundt's interests shaped his beliefs on the connection between the body and the mind. The first psychology lab in history was established by Wundt in 1879 and is housed at the University of Leipzig. His goal was to demonstrate that the mind could be studied and analyzed in the same way as any other scientific experiment. Based on the following ideas, he created hypotheses and conducted experiments:

Based on these ideas and a tweaked experiment from his physiology days, Wundt devised a technique to examine his patients' mental states. As a physician, Wundt measured his patients' responses to controlled physical stimuli, such as noise or flashing light, to see how quickly they responded. These tests were the ancestors of contemporary hearing and vision evaluations. Wundt pondered if he might use a similar method to test the intellect.

The result was an experiment in which Wundt asked his participants to focus on a metronome and then explain their feelings about the metronome. Through describing their thoughts, feelings, and auditory experiences while concentrating on the ticking metronome, Wundt started to make sense of how regulated stimuli influence the brain. He also made an effort to gauge the brain's chemical activity both during and after these tests.

Although Wundt's work was archaic by the standards of contemporary psychology, it was innovative enough to train more than a hundred students in the nascent field and served as an inspiration to subsequent generations of psychologists, including Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, Carl Jung, the developer of analytical psychology and expander upon Freud's theories, William James, the man who introduced modern psychology to America, and Alfred Alder, the man who established the link between social skills and emotional needs.

The work produced by these individuals laid the foundation for the many subfields of psychology and psychotherapy that exist today, including cognitive-behavioral therapy. People all over the world who are interested in subjects like comprehending the criminal mind, knowing more about the darker thoughts that govern human behavior at all ages, and the deliberate actions people take to manipulate others psychologically are drawn to the field of dark psychology.

Fundamentally, Dark Psychology is the focused study of the darker aspects of human nature, including what constitutes it, how to recognize it, where the boundaries are, and how it may be used for both evil and good intentions. It covers both mild and severe uses, such as studying the minds of criminals who use their understanding of human behavior to victimize others, to the clever car salesman who consistently has the best sales numbers on his team because he can read his customers and build a friendly connection with them based on observations. Influence tactics like manipulation and persuasion are commonplace.

While you may be able to see certain telltale signals here and there, there are other, more covert methods of control that people use over you that you may never completely understand. You may want to be a more persuasive person for a variety of reasons. Maybe you want to liberate yourself because you feel that you are already heavily influenced by other people.
Perhaps you are the sort of person who is easily seduced by others, in which case now is the ideal time for you to learn how to better defend yourself from any form of influence that may come your way. It might be that you are attempting to market yourself or your brand and to help you accomplish your goals in life, you need to learn how to convince others to believe in you more.