The Beginning of Psychology: VoluntarismStructuralism

1
The Beginning of Psychology Voluntarism/Structur
alism

• Fechner - not interested in nurturing the new
  discipline
• German universities more advanced, research
  emphasized

2
Wilhelm Wundt (b. 1832)

• Got Psychology going
• Got it into the university system
• Made it a scientific discipline

3
Wundts Background

• Student from SW Germany
• Studied medicine at Heidelberg under Robert
  Bunsen
• Research on salt deprivation

4
Wundt the Physiologist

• Medical degree 1855
• Berlin with Johannes Muller and du Bois-Reymond
• Research on muscle movement
• Published first book in 1858
• Heidelberg with Helmholtz roomed with Ivan
  Sechenov

5
Wundt the Psychologist

• The value of experimentation
• His faith in psychophysical methods
• His long-term strategy to make psychology an
  experimental science
• Wundt awarded Ausserordentlicher position at
  Heidelberg

6
Experimental Psychology is Born

• "Principles of Physiological Psychology" 1873-74
  contained chapters on
• Movement
• Sensation
• The nervous system
• Experimental methods of psychophysics
• His own research

7
Leipzig, 1879 Landmark Date

• Weber and Fechner are there
• The Institute of Experimental Psychology
• Psychology is Born!
• Awarded the first Ph.D. in Psychology

8
Other Contributions to the Field

• A new journal Philosophical Studies
• Book on anthropological (cultural) psychology
• In general, a cheerleader for psychology

9
Wundt's Legacy

• First experimental laboratory in Psychology
• Got psychology recognized as separate discipline
• Produced Ph.D. students in Psychology taught
  over 24,000 students

10
Wundt's View of Psychology

• Psychology is a science of conscious experiences
• Psychology is concerned with phenomena
• Psychology seeks to control phenomena
  experimentally, measure them, and ultimately to
  derive general laws that will explain how
  observable phenomena arise

11
Psychology Deals with Direct Experience

• We can turn the mind inward upon itself and see
  directly without any instruments
• Hence, the technique of Internal Perception

12
Exploring the Mind Analysis and Synthesis

• Analysis
• Synthesis

13
Limitation of Analysis/Synthesis Approach

• The (synthesis) portion is not amenable to
  experimental method, even though it is the more
  complex and interesting part of psychology (e.g.,
  memory, language, reasoning)
• Later on, revised this Volkerpsychologie

14
Wundt's Voluntarism System

• Elements of consciousness
• Will

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3 Elements of Consciousness

• Sensations
• Feelings (3-d array)
• pleasant/unpleasant
• calm/excited
• effortful/relaxed
• Volitions
• Tendencies to respond in particular ways

16
Consciousness

• Consists of mixtures of sensations, feelings, and
  volitions

17
Voluntarism Act of will

• We focus attention on particular elements by
  exercising our will
• Will is the mortar that holds the building blocks
  of consciousness together

18
Wundts Students Research

• Visual perception experiments (color,
  afterimages, color blindness)
• Visual illusions and size constancy
• Chemical senses
• Reaction time experiments (mental chronometry)
• Attention

19
Edward Titchener (b. 1867) and Structuralism

• Student of Wundt
• Englishman who moved to U.S. at Cornell

20

• 1st Ph.D. student Margaret Floy Washburn
• The Experimentalists
• Editor for "Mind and American Journal of
  Psychology

21
Titcheners View

• Agreed with Wundt that psychology is the science
  of direct, immediate experience
• Analysis of sensations sheds light on how
  elements are combined
• Emphasis on the experimental technique of
  Introspection

22
Titchener's Structuralism

• Focus is on breaking up meaningful perceptions
  into their elemental sensations
• His theory is parsimonious
• No behavior
• No instinct
• No motivation

23
3 Elements of Consciousness

• Sensations - basis for everything in the mind
• Images
• Elements of ideas
• Less vivid, clear, intense, and prolonged than
  sensations
• Feelings
• Pleasantness-unpleasantness

24
Sensations

• Over 44,000 different sensations cataloged
• 4 attributes of sensations
• Attensity
• Quality
• Protensity
• Intensity

25
How do Sensations Combine?

• Law of Contiguity

26
What about Attention?

• Attention is drawn to sensation attention
  clarity

27
Evaluation of Voluntarism/Structuralism

• No clear scientific assumptions
• The focus is on the observers training
• Properly trained to report direct experience
• Observer must expect the stimulus
• Must be in a state of strained attention
• Observations repeated many times to reveal any
  problems

28
Criticisms of Voluntarism/Structuralism

• Introspection is really "retrospection"
• Introspecting alters the experience
• Results from other labs did not corroborate
• Other psychological data excluded due to method
• Structuralism was an exclusive club

29
Impact of Voluntarism/Structuralism

• A separate discipline from psychophysics
• Careful experimental method
• Gave psychologists identity
• Gave us something to criticize (!)

30
German Competitors to Wundt/Titchener
31
Hermann Ebbinghaus (b. 1850)

• Background
• Ph.D. Philosophy in 1873
• Chair of Philosophy at Berlin 1880
• 1885 "Concerning Memory an investigation in
  experimental psychology

32

• Journal of Psychology and Physiology of the Sense
  Organs
• Fired from Berlin, replaced by Carl Stumpf
• Moves to Breslau (1894)
• Introductory Textbook Principles of Psychology
  (1897)

33
Ebbinghaus and Human Memory

• Impressed by Fechners book
• Psychophysical methods to study higher mental
  processes that Wundt said could not be studied
• Objective methods must be used

34
The Method

• Use Sinnlose Silben" - "meaningless syllable"
• A "pure" measure of memory?
• Exert control over experimental conditions

35
The Experiments

• Varied length of the list, interval between
  recall, amount of original learning
• Examined practice and overlearning
• repetitions in original learning inversely
  related to repetitions in relearning
• Distributed vs. massed practice

36
Forgetting

• Rapid forgetting over time (Ebbinghaus Curve)
• Number of syllables I can repeat without error
  is about 7"

37
Overall Contributions of Ebbinghaus

• Experimental methods for higher mental processes
• Groundbreaking memory work
• Textbooks
• Ebbinghaus Completion Test

38
Ebbinghaus Students

• William Stern
• One of first to study language in children
• IQ score
• William Lowe Bryan
• Indiana U. President

39
Georg E. Muller (b. 1850)

• Lotze (1873) directed his thesis
• Buddies with Fechner
• 1878 The Foundations of Psychophysics
• U. of Gottingen

40
3 Phases of Mullers Career
41
Phase 1 Psychophysics

• Response bias
• Transformations on data

42
Phase 2 Memory

• Memory drum
• Interference theory of forgetting (retroactive
  inhibition)

43
Phase 3 Visual Perception

• Extended Hering's opponent-color theory of color
  vision

44
Muller A liberal thinker

• Collaborated with women, but they weren't allowed
  to receive Ph.D's at that time

45
A New Movement in Psychology

• Wundt/Titchener dominated
• Others said that Psychology should not be bound
  to a single method of science

46
Act Psychology

• Emphasizes the interaction of the individual and
  the environment
• Psychological events cannot be reduced to
  individual components without losing their
  identity
• Against structuralism

47
Franz Brentano (b. 1838)

• Background
• 1855 Joined Dominicans
• Studied under Trendelenberg
• Ph.D. Philosophy ordained
• Instructor at U. of Wurzburg

48
Trouble in Wurzburg Against the Pope

• Infallibility issue with the Pope
• Vatican 533 Brentano 2
• Professor of Philosophy at U. of Vienna
• Encountered an interesting medical student there

49
Brentanos Approach

• Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874)
• Not interested in research approach, was
  interested in description

50
Criticizing Wundt/Titchener

• They made the soul too passive
• The soul makes the body work
• We are more than a collection of sensory inputs

51
Act Psychology

• Psychology is the science of psychic phenomena
  expressed as acts and processes
• Psychic phenomena, or acts, are directed toward
  an object
• The psychological act is directed, intentional,
  purposive

52
3 Categories of Mental Acts

• Presentation
• Judging
• Desire

53
The Concept of Intentionality

• Consciousness is an intentional, goal-directed
  activity
• Consciousness always intends something

54
Method

• Internal perception is an indirect way to study
  mental phenomena

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Edmund Husserl (b. 1859)
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• Studied under Wundt
• Studied logic with Brentano degree with Stumpf
• U. of Gottingen
• Nazis in 1933

58
Husserl and Phenomenology

• (1913) Logical Investigations
• Science of examining the data of conscious
  experience
• A separate science that comes before psychology
• Husserls 2-Step Method
• Careful Description
• Wesensschau

59
Contributions of Husserl

• Proposed other methods to examine consciousness
  that emphasized the scrutiny of ones self
• Thus, anticipated latter-day phenomenological
  psychology (humanistic psychology)

60
Carl Stumpf (b. 1848)

• Wurzburg w/ Brentano
• Ph.D. Gottingen w/ Lotze
• Back to Wurzburg then back to Gottingen then
  replaced Brentano at Wurzburg then replaced
  Ebbinghaus at Berlin

61
Stumpfs Work

• (1873) On the psychological origin of space
  perception"
• Said perception was wholistic
• Must focus on classification of experience

62
3 Levels of Classification

• Sensations and images
• Perceiving, willing, desiring
• Relations (Cognitive classifications)

63
Psychology of Music

• 1883-90 Tone Psychology

64
Stumpf's Students

• Pfungst (Clever Hans)
• Kohler, Koffka, Lewin

65
Contributions of Stumpf

• Emphasized phenomenology
• Psychology of music
• Mentor for the Gestalt Psychologists

66
Oswald Kulpe (b. 1862) The Assassin of
Structuralism

• Science is my Bride

67

• Worked under Wundt
• Thesis with Muller in Berlin
• Back to Leipzig as instructor
• 1893 Introduction to Philosophy

68
Kulpe at Wurzburg

• Moves to Wurzburg 1894
• Established the Wurzburg School

69
How to Measure Thought?

• Systematic Experimental Introspection
• Marbes weight lifting experiment
• S's couldn't introspect on decision process
• Failure to be able to introspect started up the
  imageless thought controversy

70
Imageless Thought?

• Wundt/Titchener claimed that thinking depended on
  mental images
• Kulpe found that in some experiments S's
  responses followed a stimulus word automatically
  without conscious awareness
• Said that "awareness" was neither image nor
  sensation

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Final Nail in the Coffin of Voluntarism/Structural
ism