2. Structuralism

Wilhelm Wundt conducted an experiment in 1862 that led him to believe?

that the discipline of psychology was possible (could actually happen)

What was the experiment that Wilhelm Wundt conducted?

took 1/10 of a second d to shift attention from the sound of the bell to the position of the pendulum or vice versa

how do you change attention of hearing to seeing?

What was Wilhelm Wundt's conclusion from the experiment?

the experimental study of psychology was feasible (could actually happen)

Why did he say this?
Because we can actually measure something.

Wilhelm Wundt suggested a new field of experimental psychology that would uncover facts of?

human consciousness (awareness --> able to observe)

Who was Wilhelm Wundt?

a German scientist to be first referred to as a psychologist

How did Wilhelm Wundt treat psychology?

as a scientific study of conscious experience

what would legitimize it to be a discipline = conduct scientific research

What popular technique did Wilhelm Wundt use?

introspection (internal perception)

what is introspection?

examine your own conscious experience as objectively as possible

what does introspection do?

makes the mind observable, because it was observable, it could be repeated (research methods)

what is structuralism?

attempt to understand the structure or characteristics of the mind

focused on the brain
functions + characteristics

How did Wilhelm Wundt spread structuralism?

he had many labs throughout the world and trained many students from all over the world

Wundt's goal was to understand consciousness, which is?

understanding mental laws that govern the dynamics of consciousness

mental law = idea that what we are aware of comes from structure

what was an important concept?

the concept of the will (the nerve to do something of the mind)

Wundt's first school

Voluntarism

what's voluntarism

emphasis on
1. will
2. choice = the nerve to do something
3. purpose = motivation behind behaviour (e.g. hot in room, what behaviours are observed? irritated. motivation behind it? alleviate)

ideas that are just innate or other things such as experience influences decisions

What was experimental psychology used to understand?

immediate consciousness but limiting in understanding higher mental processes

what is immediate consciousness

what's happening right now (e.g. 5 senses)

you can only be conscious right now

before = higher mental process --> structuralism doesn't look at that

Structuralism states that all sciences are based on

experience including scientific psychology

what is the subject matter of psychology?

to be human consciousness as it occurred

introspection

used to study mental processes involved in immediate experience

pure introspection

unstructured self-observation (earlier philosophers)

experimental introspection

scientifically respectable (Wundt's interest)

What are Wundt's two basic types of mental experience (2)

1. sensations

2. feelings

What are sensations?

when a sense organ is stimulated and resulting impulse reaches the brain

(e.g. how do we know something is hot? it's higher than our body temp. message is sent to brain. relationship between senses and brain)

all sensations are accompanied by?

feelings

perception = subjective --> how YOU experience something in your own experience

Tridimensional theory of feelings

feelings described in terms of the degree in which they possess 3 attributes

what are the 3 attributes of the tridimensional theory of feelings?

1. pleasantness vs. unpleasantness
(positive affect vs. negative affect)

2. excitement vs. calm
(arousal vs. non arousal)

3. strain vs relaxation
(intensity)

what is perception?

passive process of interpretation

Wilhelm Wundt was?

a determinist = no free will

in what way did Wundt show there was no free will?

idea that behaving was based on what we are aware of

Wundt trained how many doctoral students?

over 100

Wundt was the founder of?

scientific psychology for his work on establishing it as an independent academic discipline

he moved to science because of his work through his experiments on attention

Who is Edward Titchener?

Studied under Wundt for 2 years

psychology was an experimental psychology

anything that was not his psychology was not psychology

psychology = science --> does not deal with values but with facts

True or False: Titchener was an experimentalists

true

he excluded women when talking about research (because of cigar smoke at the meetings)- revised after his death

who was outraged by Titchener's policy that women were excluded

Christine Ladd-Franklin

Who was Margaret Floy Washburn

first doctoral student and elected president of the APA in 1921

what did Titchener agree with Wundt?

psychology should study immediate experience - consciousness

what was the goal of psychology according to Titchener?

to determine the
1. what = careful introspection (just stating)
2. how = answer to the question of how mental elements (senses) combine
3. why = neurological correlates of mental events (what parts of the brain explain how)
of mental life

the goals were used to explain?

conscious experience in terms of unobservable cognitive processes

Titchener named his version of psychology as?

structuralism

Titchener sought a type of periodic table for _____ elements like what chemists had for physical elements

mental

What did Titchener use? (6)

1. introspection = describe what you see
e.g. Apple
introspection = round, smooth, red

2. stimulus error = interpret (subjective)
e.g. Apple
SE = calling it an apple. now interpreting, subjective

3. mental elements (sensations = perception, images = ideas, affections = emotions)

4. law of combination

5. context theory of meaning

6. neurological correlated of mental events

True or False: Wundt's ideas are not present in contemporary psychology

false. they are present

True or false: Titchener's systems are questionable

true

what was an attempt to scientifically study what had been philosophical concerns in the past

structuralism

what was a major tool of structuralists

introspection

What did structuralism exclude?

other developments from researchers outside the school

structuralism has no interest in?

abnormal behaviours

what did structuralism ignore? (4)

1. personality

2. learning

3. psychological development

4. individual differences

true or false: psychology was heading in a directions that addressed important areas that structuralists neglected

true