Structuralism- Chapter 5

Women who were not Titcheners students

Christine Ladd Franklin & Mary Calkins

Christine Ladd Franklin

• First women psychologist

• Professor

• published papers but did not get her doctoral degree until 44 years late

Mary Calkins

• First women to complete PHD, but did not receive the degree in her life time

- Offered her degree at Radcliff, but she refused it since she did all her work at Harvard 

• 1st woman President of the APA 

why study women 

• women didn’t dominate the field at first 

•  Need for role models, women are barely talked about

• Throughout the feminist movement that brought the first female professionals. But this is a lie.  

• APA style?

APA style

60s and 70s- if articles are written by women, people would be biased and not read the article. However, this ended up not being good, because people don’t realize that women are in the field

Why Titchener?

• first to have women study and get doctoral degrees

• had terminal masters(46) & Doctoral student(57)

• Ambivalence

ambivalence exemplified

-   Ambivalence- hot and cold personality

-   He either helped women educationally or hurt them educationally

How many women under Titchner went on to be in academics? 

8 total- Washburn, Gamble,Goudge,Whitchurch, Squire, Adams

Out of Titchner’s “8”

• 3 taught at COED universities

• 2/3 were under the supervision of male colleagues

• 5/8 taught at womens college

• Titchener purposely recommended women’s colleges for women and not for men

• Could teach, not research

Margert Washburn

-   Department chair of Wellsley

-   Second women president of APA 1921

-   50 most outstanding psychologists by APA board in 1903

Elenor Gamble

Took over as department chair of Wells upon Mary Calkins retirement

Mabel Goudge

had private practice 

Anna Kelman Whitchurch

industrial psychology

Grace Adams

doctoral at psychology and wrote articles against psychology

• Went on the be journalistic

• Was a war correspond

Alice Hamlin & Lucy May Day 

helped husbands with his work. With Lucy’s husband, they collaborated, but did not want to put name on work out of fear it wouldn’t get published

Titchners Experimentalists

• Helped men gain entry in the field

• Created the IQ score(w/h Boring, Yerkes, Terman)

EG Boring, Yerkes, Terman (IQ score)

-   Influence on psychology, at the start of WW1

-   Came up with the testing movement

-   Army Alpha and Beta(basis for IQ testing)

The Experimentalist- No women allowed 

Christine Ladd Franklin- wrote letters to Titchener, saying that he was wrong

Alice Hamlin and Lucy May Day- With the help of their husbands, they hid under a table to listen to meetings. Shouldn’t have had to do this

women today

• More women receiving PHD today

• Still more women teaching in woman’s colleges

• Married men and divorced single woman receive the most doctorates

anti-nepotism

couldn’t hire people in the same family to work in the same department

• hiring women just to meet a certain number

Incentive for Minorities

-   The man or women(spouse) could get fired if the “other” does something wrong

-   Or could falsely vote for them 

Glass ceiling

   - woman could see what job they wanted, but there is something blocking me

-   Doesn’t really exist for anyone anymore

-   Still happening with minorities

Titcheners Structuralism 

psychology is a conscious experience that is dependent on the person who is experiencing it

ex: a room is only 85 degrees if there is someone in the room to experience it. If they are in the room, the feeling of “warmth is dependent on the person” 

Titcheners Stimulus Error

the idea that people confuses the mental process with the object they are observing

• focus on the stimulus object instead of the conscious content

ex: a person who sees an apple describes as an apple versus describes the apples color brightness, color, and shape

Titcherner’s introspection 

self observation relied on people trained to describe object on its conciousness state rather than reporting the objects name 

• however he unlearned this practice in the lab 

How did Titchener differ from Wundt

he wanted to study complex processes. wanted to look at the parts and not the whole

Titcheners elements of consciouness 

1. Reduce consciousness processes to their simplest components 

2. determine laws by which these elements were associated

3. connect the elements with their physiological  

Find the part of science you want to study, find how they make a complex whole, and make laws based on findings

Titchner’s Defintion of Psychology- the science of the mind

Wundt defined as the study of consciousness (did not want to study the mind). Wanted to keep people subjective

• restrictiveness

Titchener only wanted to study the normal, human, adult, mind(restrictive)

-   Leaves out the abnormal

-   Leaves out animals

-   Leaves out children  

why was Titchner’s definition of Psychology so restrictive?

·      When beginning a field, start with the basics

·      We should just look at the activity of the mind

methods of Psychology

careful description of the subject matter

Titchener’s Introspection

includes reductionism 

reductionism

·      how elements come together to form compounds and how compounds form the whole

-   Pulls from Wundt and reductions

-   Calls elements atoms of experience

Reductionism terms

point of view, psycholophial parallelism, the meaning of an object

point of view 

is the observational or attitudinal perspective and individual takes concerning the world of his or her experience

-   One observable universe that we all look at differently

-   Once we find an observation/POV, stick to this (ensure reliability??)

Psycholophical parallelism 

belief that since the mind and body are the same thing, they cannot influence one another

The meaning of an object is that which is directly observed

-   Sensation, images, and immediate feelings

-   What you can see, touch, taste or feel

- No abstractions

Titchners Elements of Consciousness

includes quality, intensity, propensity, atensity, extensity

quality

the essence of an image 

intensity of an image

the strength or degree of an image

• Image can be any sensation

• Could include volume for sound

Propensity

the duration of an image

-   How long does the image last

-   How long do you remember

Extensity 

the spreadoutedness of image

-   How much space something takes up in a image

Titchener Controversies

1. Imageless thought

2. Sensory v. Motor reaction time

Imageless thought

gave people a problem to solve(complex math problem). But stopped them before they could finish. Then gave them a completely different problem. Then asked oh did you find a solution to the first problem)

where is the controversey in the imageless thought technique

Titchner hired professionals(?)

• check

Sensory v. Motor Reaction

-   Are Sensory reaction times faster or Motor Reaction times

-   Titchener and Wundt said motor/ used trained observers  

-   Baldwin said sensory