History and Systems Exam 2

Voluntarism

Wilhelm Wundt's idea that the mind actively organizes basic thoughts and feelings into more complex ideas, rather than just receiving information.

• Wundt focused on how the mind organizes information, not just the individual parts of consciousness.

Introspection

Looking inward and examining your own conscious experiences, such as thoughts, sensations, and feelings.

• Did not originate with Wundt who referred to it as internal perception

• he studied it in a lab with many rules and conditions

Tridimensional theory of feelings

Wundt's theory that feelings have three dimensions:

• Pleasure ↔ Displeasure

• Tension ↔ Relaxation

• Excitement ↔ Depression (calmness)

Apperception

The process of actively organizing and understanding information in the mind.

• ex: Hearing different musical notes and recognizing them as one melody.

Common enterprise

A group of researchers working together toward a shared scientific goal, using similar ideas and methods.

• Expanded psychology as a science

Act psychology

Franz Brentano's approach that focused on what the mind does, rather than what the mind contains.

• Ex: Seeing a red flower is different from the color red itself.

• Color red is a physical quality, while the act of seeing red is a mental activity.

Phenomenology

Studying experiences as people directly experience them, without breaking them into smaller parts.

• unbiased

Imageless thought

The idea that thinking can happen without mental pictures or sensory images.

• ex: Understanding a math problem without picturing anything in your mind.

Systematic experimental introspection

A method where people carefully describe their thoughts and mental experiences after completing a task.

• Unlike Wundt's method, this approach often involved more detailed reports of complicated mental processes.

Fechner developed important methods, but Wundt established psychology as an independent science.

• Fechner contributed, but Wundt actively “sold” psych as a science

Why Is Wilhelm Wundt Considered the Founder of New Psychology Instead of Fechner?

• intentional and deliberate act

• more than great scientific contribution

• requires publishing and promoting new ideas/material so others can learn about and use them.

What are the requirements for founding a school of thought?

Dealt with the various stages of human mental development as expressed in

language, art, myths, social customs, law, and morals

• Wundt believed some psychological processes could not be understood by studying individuals in laboratories.

What did Wundt’s Cultural Psychology deal with? (6)

Higher mental processes such as learning and memory

• Can be studied using non experimental methods of sociology, anthropology, and

  social psychology

What did Wundt think could NOT be studied experimentally?

consciousness/ conscious experience

• especially: Sensations and Feelings

• consciousness organizes its own content

What were the primary areas of study in Wundt's new psychology?

Mediate experiences

Understanding something by interpreting it or thinking about what it means.

• Example: “I have a toothache.” (concept)

Immediate experiences

Experiencing a sensation directly, without interpreting it.

• Example: The actual feeling of pain from your toothache

• Analyze the basic elements of consciousness

• Discover how those elements are organized and combined into more complicated experiences.

• Determine the laws that explain how mental elements connect and operate

Wundt’s 3 goals for new psychology

Sensations

Occur when a sense organ (eyes, ears, skin) is stimulated and the information reaches the brain.

• Example: Seeing a bright light.

feelings

the emotional part of an experience.

• Example: Finding the light pleasant or unpleasant.

• Wundt believed feelings could be described using his Tridimensional theory of feelings

• little long term effect on psychology

• Not appropriate for solving real-world problems

• approached psych as academic science but had no interest in applying

  it to practical concerns

Fate of Wundt’s psychology

• Introspection was difficult to verify bc its self observation

  • Different people could report different experiences.

• Wundt’s political opinions were controversial

What were criticisms of Wundt’s psychology?

meaningless combinations of letters/syllables used to study memory processes

• He used them because ordinary words already have meanings and associations that could affect memory.

What are Nonsense syllables? and why did Hermann Ebbinghaus used them?

Ebbinghaus' curve of forgetting

People forget information very quickly at first, but then rate of forgetting slows over time.

• negative exponential curve

• Swallow a rubber tube, have hot water poured down it, and then cold water poured down it

  • Did this to study organ sensitivity

• Married students asked to record feelings and sensations during sexual relations

• Record feelings and sensations during urination or defecation

Examples of experiments that were performed in E.B. Titchener’s lab.

Wundt

• Focused on how the mind actively organizes basic mental experiences into complex thoughts.

• Believed the mind could voluntarily organize these experiences.

• Called this process apperception.

Titchener

• Focused on identifying the basic elements of consciousness.

• Believed mental elements connect automatically through association.

• Rejected Wundt’s idea of apperception.

• Believed psychology’s main goal was to discover the basic parts of conscious experience.

Wundt = Organization: How the mind combines and organizes experiences.

Titchener = Elements: What are the basic parts of conscious experience?

Differences between Wundt and Titchener:

They would smoke in the meetings and women are “too pure to smoke”

Why did Titchener exclude women from the meetings of Titchener’s Experimentalists?

Margaret Floy Washburn

1st woman to earn doctorate in psychology

• believed psychology should study conscious experience.

• psychology was different from other sciences because it studied experiences as they are experienced by a person.

ex: Physics/chemistry: temperature of a room is always the same for everyone-its 85 degrees

Psychology: I feel cold in 85 degrees, my sister feels warm

What was the proper subject matter for psychology according to Titchener? How does it

differ from the subject matter of other sciences?

The Stimulus Error

happens when someone describes an object instead of their immediate sensory experience.

• ex: You look at an apple and say:

Incorrect: "I see an apple."

Correct for Titchener's introspection: "I see a round, red shape."

sum of our experiences as they exist at any given moment.

• He distinguished consciousness from the mind, which he viewed as the accumulation of experiences over a lifetime.

How did Titchener define consciousness?

Titchener’s three problems for psychology

• identify the basic elements of conscious experience.

• Discover how these elements combine into more complicated experiences.

• Explain why mental processes occur, including their relationship to the nervous system.

Titchener’s three elementary states of consciousness

1. Sensations — Basic experiences from the senses.

• Ex: Seeing blue or hearing music.

2. Images — Mental pictures or memories of previous experiences.

• Ex: Imagining your bedroom.

3. Affective states — Basic emotional experiences.

• Ex: Feeling happy, sad, or unpleasant.

Quality — What makes an experience different from another.

• Ex: Red is different from blue.

Intensity — How strong the experience is.

• Ex: A loud sound versus a quiet sound.

Duration — How long the experience lasts.

• Ex: A sound lasting one second versus five seconds.

Clearness — How much attention or focus the experience receives.

• Ex: A sound you're concentrating on versus background noise.

Four Characteristics of Elementary States

Clearness

Which characteristic do affective states lack?

Criticisms of Structuralism:

• Outdated ideas: Psychology was changing, but Titchener continued using old methods and ideas.

• Too focused on the past: Many psychologists believed structuralism could not keep up with new developments in psychology.

Criticisms of Introspection

• Subjective: People describe their own experiences, so their answers may differ.

• Changes the experience: Thinking about a feeling while experiencing it may change the feeling itself.

• The mind studying itself: It is difficult for the mind to objectively study its own thoughts.

• Observer bias: Even highly trained observers can be influenced by their own opinions or expectations

Structuralism = outdated, introspection = subjective and unreliable.

criticisms of Structuralism and Introspection

• Establishing psychology as a laboratory science.

• Encouraging controlled experiments.

• Catalyst for other schools of thought:

Contributions of structuralism

Functionalism

an approach to psychology that studies what the mind does and how it helps people adapt to their environment.

Eugenics

The attempt to supposedly improve the human population by controlling who reproduces based on inherited traits. This movement promoted discriminatory and harmful practices.

• Proposed by galton

Mental tests

tests of motor skill and sensory capacities (unlike intelligence tests)

Introspection by analogy

Assuming that animals experience thoughts or feelings similar to humans based on their behavior.

Anecdotal method

Studying animal behavior using stories or observations of individual events, rather than carefully controlled experiments.

Mental ladder

The belief that animals and humans can be arranged in a hierarchy according to their mental abilities, from simple to complex.

Law of parsimony

The idea that we should use the simplest reasonable explanation for behavior.

• we should not explain an animal's behavior using a complex mental ability if a simpler process can explain it.

Jenny the Orangutan

Acted like human:

• Wore a girl’s dress

• Sat at a table

• Used a spoon to eat from a plate

• Drank from a cup

• Understood her keeper’s directions

• Knew right from wrong

• Could anticipate a whipping

Darwin believed the difference between human and animal intelligence was largely a difference in degree rather than kind.

• Believed man should be humble to consider himself created from animals

How did Charles Darwin compare Jenny’s intelligence to a human’s?

No longer concerned with the structure of consciousness but its function (purpose and usefulness of mental processes)

How did Charles Darwin change Psychology?

Structuralism:

• What is the mind made of?

• Studies elements of consciousness

• Focuses on structure

• Mainly uses introspection

• Associated with Titchener

Functionalism:

• What does the mind do?

• Studies the purpose of consciousness

• Focuses on function

• Uses multiple research methods

• Influenced by Darwin and James

Structuralism = what the mind IS.

Functionalism = what the mind DOES.

Functionalism vs Structuralism

What does the mind do?

How does it do it?

What questions does Functionalism ask?

against Wundt and Titchener’s systems (structuralism, voluntarism?)

Functionalism was an intentional protest of:

Aristotle

Noticed that living things have similarities and differences and can be arranged in levels of complexity.

Al-Jahiz

• Explained how animals are connected, adapt to their environments, and how the fittest survive, according to God's will.

Erasmus Darwin

Suggested that all warm-blooded animals came from a common ancestor and that species change over time to adapt to their environments.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Believed organisms change their bodies to adapt to their environments and pass those acquired changes to their offspring.

Charles Lyell

Explained that Earth developed gradually through different stages over a long period of time.

Views in regard to evolution

• Aristotle = Similarities among species

• Al-Jahiz = Adaptation and survival

• Erasmus Darwin = Common ancestry

• Lamarck = Acquired traits passed down

• Lyell = Earth changes gradually over time

• travel and exploration - showed that species varied across different environments.

• examples like Jenny - Showed similarities between humans and animals.

• public fascination with fossils - showed that organisms existed in the past that were different from living species.

What influenced attitudes toward the idea of evolution?

• The social Zeitgeist was being transformed by the Industrial Revolution.

• Values: People stopped relying only on the Bible or ancient thinkers to understand human nature and society.

• Cultural norms: Science became more influential

• Relationships

• Migration

Scientific Changes During Darwin's Time

1. Variation — Individuals within a species are different from one another.

• Example: Some birds have longer beaks than others.

2. Natural selection — Organisms with inherited characteristics that help them survive and reproduce are more likely to pass those characteristics to future generations.

3. Survival of the fittest — Organisms best adapted to their environments are more likely to survive and reproduce. Fitness means reproductive success, not necessarily physical strength.

4. Inheritance — Offspring inherit characteristics from their parents.

fundamental points of Darwin’s theory of evolution

• Animal psychology: Psychologists began studying animal behavior to better understand humans.

• Function over structure: They focused on what the mind does and how it helps us adapt, rather than just identifying its basic elements.

• Multiple research methods: Psychologists began using methods and evidence from different scientific fields.

• Individual differences: Psychologists focused on measuring how people differ in intelligence, behavior, and abilities.

How Darwin’s ideas influenced psychology

believed education should match a child's abilities instead of assuming everyone should learn the same subjects

• covered in his book: The Examination of Talented Individuals

Juan Huarte

focused on the belief that intelligence and exceptional abilities are inherited.

• argued that intelligence was largely passed down genetically.

Francis Galton’s book Hereditary Genius

Mental tests - measured things such as:

• Reaction time

• Hearing ability

• Vision

• Sensitivity to touch

• Physical strength

• Ability to distinguish weights

believed people with better sensory abilities might also have higher intelligence.

How did Galton test for intelligence

Darwinism

The theory of evolution by natural selection (survival of fittest).

Synthetic philosophy

idea that knowledge and experience can be explained in terms of evolutionary principles

• Herbert Spencer's attempt to explain many different areas of knowledge, including biology, psychology, and society, using the general principle of evolution

Social Darwinism

Appling the theory of evolution to human nature and society

• Premise: Society develops through competition, and people or groups considered better adapted are more likely to succeed.

• Proposal: Spencer argued that government should interfere as little as possible with competition and social development.

He believed that helping people who were struggling could interfere with what he considered the natural progress of society.

because it seemed to support:

• Individualism

• Competition

• Capitalism

• Free enterprise (laissez-faire)

• Limited government involvement

• The belief that hard work and ability lead to success

Why Was Social Darwinism Popular in America?

Criticized for his interests in mental telepathy, clairvoyance, spiritualism, communication

with the dead at séances

Why was William James was criticized by other psychologists of his time?

Neurasthenia/Americanitis

Symptoms: insomnia, hypochondria, headache, skin rash, nervous exhaustion, and brain collapse

• associated with the stressful, fast-paced American lifestyle.

Typical Victims: educated, middle-class and upper-class Americans, including professionals and people living busy urban lives.

• James wrote with a clarity that is rare in science

• Opposed Wundt’s goal for psychology

• Offered an alternative way of looking at the mind

Why is William James important to Psychology?

Principles of Psychology

Book by William James where he stated goal of psychology is to study living people as they adapt to their environment.

• also stated that the function of consciousness is to guide us to those ends required for survival. Without it, human evolution could not have occurred

James’s stream of consciousness

idea that consciousness is a continually flowing process and any attempt to reduce it to elements will distort it

theory of emotions (James-Lange Theory)

Idea that our body reacts first, and then we experience the emotion

• ex: You see a spider → your heart races → you feel afraid.

Contradicted past thinking (thought opposite: emotion —> body react)

The three-part self

James believed there are three parts to the self:

• Material: everything unique our own (i.e., clothes)

• Social: recognition we get from others

• Spiritual: our inner and subjective being

Clothing is an example of all three selves being expressed

• ex: a Businessman dressing in a suit

Variability hypothesis

claimed that men showed greater variation in intelligence and abilities than women.

argued that:

• Men were more likely to be intelligent.

• Women were closer to average. (would not benefit from education)

• exposure to education would damage women physically and emotionally

Helen Bradford Thompson Woolley:

• research found that men and women were much more similar in their psychological abilities than earlier researchers had claimed.

• Women were slightly superior to men in memory and sensory perception

Leta Stetter Hollingworth:

• Her data refuted the variability hypothesis and other notions of female inferiority

  • She found the menstrual cycle was not related to performance deficits

  • Challenged the concept of an innate instinct for motherhood

How did research by Helen Bradford Thompson Woolley and Leta Stetter Hollingworth refute ideas of variability hypothesis?