EMERGENCE AND GROWTH

OF PSYCHOLOGY
WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?
Consciousness = Quality/ state of being
aware of an external object or
something within oneself.

Topic of study for Indian & Western

scholars.

Western perspective
Within psychology, Behaviourism is an
exception to this trend. Ordinary states of consciousness

Indian perspective
Superior states of
consciousness
THE BEGINNINGS OF PSYCHOLOGY IN
THE WEST
Generated an interest in
The discovery of individual differences among WHAT GOES ON
astronomers in the recording of astronomical WITHIN THE HUMAN
events. BEING?

The understanding that the physical world and

our experience of it is not identical.

An intense investigation of the human sensory apparatus

and nervous system followed.
HERMANN HELMHOLTZ (1821 –1894)
German physicist & physician.
Considered that nothing was beyond scientific investigation.
Studied visual and auditory systems in great detail.
Differentiated between
sensations & perceptions-
Measured the speed of nerve impulses (and found them to be
remarkably slow). Sensations: Raw data provided by the
sense receptors

He believed that there is a difference b/w the world & how we

experience it.

This is because our senses are not capable of responding to Perception: The meaning that past
everything that is present.
experiences give to those raw sensations
Yet the mind takes what ever sensory information is available and
creates the best possible interpretation of external reality.
WEBER AND FECHNER-
PSYCHOPHYSICS
Ernst Weber (1795 –1878). German physician

Experimentally studied the relationship b/w physical stimuli & their corresponding sensation.

Gave the concept of just noticeable difference (jnd).

Example: A given weight (40g) must increase by at least 1 gram, for the mind to detect the
change.

Gustav Fechner (1801 –1887), German experimental psychologist, philosopher, physicist.

He stated that as a stimulus gets larger, the change in it must also be greater…… for change
to be detected.
For example, if a stimulus is 40grams, a difference of only 1gram can be detected.
But if the stimulus is 200grams, it takes a difference of 5 grams to be detected.
 THE FORMAL BEGINNINGS OF
PSYCHOLOGY
Now that it had been demonstrated that mental events could be studied
experimentally, the ground was laid for the founding of scientific psychology.

Helmholtz, Weber, Fechner were pioneers in experimental psychology.

It was Wilhelm Wundt who took these diverse achievements & synthesized them into a
unified program.

As early as 1862, Wundt performed an experiment that led him to believe that a full-
fledged discipline of experimental psychology was possible.

But who was Wilhelm Wundt? And what was this experiment?
 WILHELM MAXIMILIAN WUNDT (1832–
1920): HIS STORY
Only sibling to survive was a brother, 8 years his elder,
Born at Mannheim (town in South-Western
Germany) who went away to school.
Only friend his own age was a child with intellectual
challenges.
Fourth & last child of a minister in a
Church. Received early education from a young vicar, who was
Wundt’s closest friend till he entered high school.
His paternal & maternal familyHigh school
was full of was a disaster: no friends, daydreaming,
physically
historians, scientists, government officials. punishment from teachers, failing.

Despite the intellectually stimulating

atmosphere (or perhaps because of it)…..

…..he remained shy & fearful of new

situations.
WUNDT’S STORY
The following year, he re- started high school, this time in another city and school where his
brother and
Aftercousin were students.
receiving his med. degree in 1855 (aged 23), he went to Berlin and studied with
Johannes Müller.
Müller
He did much so influenced
better there. Wundt that he decided to pursue a career in experimental physiology.
After a year, Wundt returned to the Univ. of Heidelberg, &became Helmholtz’s lab assistant.
There he wrote his first book, Contributions to the Theory of Sense Perception (1862).
After highInschool: Enrolledthe
in the premedical program
thatat the Univ. of Tübingen. A year laterlife.
he
transferred toitthe
he Univ.
formed plan forwhere
of Heidelberg, psychology
he became ahetopwas to follow
student. for the rest of his
 DEVELOPING PSYCHOLOGY AS A SCIENCE

1862: Experiment with the “thought meter” in which persons had to

attend to the sound of a bell and position of the pendulum at the same
time.

But Wundt found that:

1. Humans could attend to only one thought at a time

2.

3. It takes about 1/10th of a second to shift from one thought (bell) to

another (position of the pendulum)

Wundt concluded not only that experimental psychology was feasible

 WUNDT’S LIFE
1862: in his book, Wundt enunciated the need for a new field of experimental psychology to study
human consciousness.

1874: In Principles of Physiological Psychology Wundt stated that his goal was to create such a
field.

1875: Offered appointment to teach at the Univ. of Leipzig. He remained there for 45 years.

Wanted to teach experimental psychology at Leipzig, but the univ. could not provide space for
equipment

1876: Obtained the space & began teaching experimental psychology.

1879: His lab was fully active and highly popular with students.
WUNDT’S LIFE Wundt’s primary interest was work.

His psychology students became pioneers of

experimental psychology throughout the world.
His wife and family only 1 paragraph in his
From 1853 to 1920, Wundt wrote 53,735 pages!.
entire autobiography.

His even analyzed his psychological

experiences when he was seriously ill and near
death.

He died at the age of 88 years

WUNDT’S
Goals for Psychology: PSYCHOLOGY
Mediate and Immediate experience:
1. To understand elements of consciousness. All sciences are based on experience.
Psychology is no exception.
But other sciences were based on mediate
2. Understand the laws through which elements
combine into more complex experiences. experience. i.e. experience (mediated) various
measuring devices.
Psychology was to be based on immediate
experience.
i.e., human consciousness which requires no device
View of the mind: to be accessed.
He believed that we are not just passive recipients of
sensations.
The mind acts on what comes from outside giving it
forms, qualities not found in either external stimulation
 WUNDT’S USE OF
INTROSPECTION
HOW TO DISCOVER THE ELEMENTS
SCIENTIFICALLY?
To study the basic mental processes, Wundt used
introspection. Selbstbeobachtung i.e., self–observation

Wundt distinguished between:

Pure introspection: Relatively unstructured
self-observation used by earlier philosophers
Experimental introspection made use of lab
instruments to make the results precise.
In most instances saying “yes” or “no” to an
event was all that was needed.
Sometimes the subject responded by pressing a
telegraph key.

Experimental introspection: Which he

believed to be scientifically respectable
ELEMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Consciousness consists of 2 types of elements- Sensations and
Feelings
Within a modality, there are
Modality qualities.
E.g., Taste:
Sensations From which sense
it is? (e.g., sweet, sour, salty, bitter
Come from the
sense organs tongue)
eg Intensity
TASTE
(e.g. How strong a All sensations are accompanied by feelings.
taste is).
From his own introspections, he formulated his tri-
dimensional theory of feeling
Feelings can be seen in terms of 3 dimensions:
Pleasant- unpleasant,
Excitement-calm
Sensations and feelings are not Concentrated-relaxed attention.
experienced in isolation. Many elements
are experienced simultaneously.
To understand simple conscious phenomena,
experimentation could be used.
Higher mental processes: Could be deduced
from cultural products as religion, social
customs, myths, history, language, art, & law.
Wundt studied these topics for the last 20 years of
his life.
His research culminated a 10-volume
Völkerpsychologie (“group” or “cultural”
psychology).
Voluntarism:
APPERCEPTION: The part of the perceptual field the
individual attends to.
Attention and apperception go hand in hand; what is attended
to is apperceived.
Apperception is Under the individual’s control. Humans can
decide what is attended to.
Most behaviour & selective attention are undertaken for a
purpose; i.e., motivated.
Due to his emphasis on will, choice, purpose Wundt called
his approach voluntarism.
Voluntarism, then, was psychology’s first school—not
structuralism, as is often claimed.
Voluntarism & structuralism had very little in common.
CAUSATION & PREDICTION

Natural sciences seek to PREDICT events by understanding CAUSE & EFFECT RELATIONSHIPS.

Wundt believed that physical events could be predicted on the basis of antecedent conditions.

Psychological events could not due to:

1. Will
2. Principle of the heterogony of ends.

According to this principle, a goal-directed activity (e.g., going for a party) seldom attains just its goal and
nothing else.

Something unexpected almost always happens that, changes one’s entire motivational pattern.
When elements are attended to, they can be
arranged & rearranged according to the
individual’s will.
Wundt called this phenomenon creative
synthesis
Principles:
Principle of contrasts: Opposite experiences
intensify one another.
For example, after a painful experience,
pleasure is more pleasurable
Principle toward the development of
opposites: After a prolonged experience of 1
type, there is an increased tendency to seek the
opposite type of experience.
This applies to the life of an individual & to
human history.
 THE HISTORICAL
MISUNDERSTANDING
Blumenthal (1975):
OF WUNDT
“Wundt as portrayed today bears little resemblance
to the actual historical figure.”

Wundt’s early use of the word element was responsible for

him being misinterpreted.
Titchener came to be viewed as the U.S. representative of
Wundtian ideas. That was a mistake.
While some of Wundt’s ideas are detectable in Titchener’s
psychology, an enormous gulf separated the two.
By misrepresenting Wundt,
psychology has overlooked a rich
source of ideas.
Wundt’s true psychology is being
rediscovered due to psychology’s
return to cognition & research on
human information processing.
EDWARD BRADFORD
TITCHENER(1867–1927)
Born on January 11, England

Attended Malvern College, a prestigious secondary school.

Went to Oxford (1885 to 1890), where his academic record was outstanding.

Developed an interest in experimental psychology & translated Wundt’s Principles of

Physiological Psychology.

After graduation from Oxford, Titchener went to Leipzig and studied for 2 years with
Wundt.

By 1892, he was offered a job at Cornell University.

When Titchener arrived at Cornell, he was 25 years old, and he remained there for the rest
of his life.
 THE IRON FIST
Titchener remained a loyal British subject and never became a U.S. citizen.

Titchener ruled his domain with an iron fist.

He determined what the research projects would be and which students would work on
them.

For him, psychology was experimental psychology (as he defined it). Everything that
preceded his version of psychology was not psychology at all.
PSYCHOLOGY’S GOALS
Titchener agreed with Wundt that psychology should study immediate experience—that
is, consciousness.
He defined:

Goal of Psychology: To determine the what, how, and why of mental life.

It was the structure of the mind

that Titchener wanted to
describe.
Thus he named his school
structuralism
TITCHENER’S USE OF
INTROSPECTION
Titchener’s use of introspection was more complicated than
Wundt’s.

Toward the end, Titchener became more liberal

Titchener’s subjects had to be trained to avoid errors.
The worst thing introspectionists could do: Name the object!
This amounted to a stimulus error.
Titchener wanted his subjects to report sensations (not perceptions).
about introspection.
He found that allowing untrained people to
simply describe their experience could be an
important source of information.
But he passed away before he could explore this
idea.

Did Titchener reach the same conclusions as Wundt by using

Introspection?
Titchener rejected Wundt’s notions of apperception & creative synthesis.
Wundt: Apperception is under the individual’s control. Humans can decide
what is attended to.
Titchener: It is just that some sensations are more vivid than others, and it is
those we attend to.
 MENTAL ELEMENTS
For Titchener elements consist of:

Sensations

Affections

Images

Titchener (1896) concluded that there are over 40,000 identifiable sensations:
Most are related to the sense of vision (about 30,000)
Audition is next (about 12,000)
& then all the other senses (about 20)
The attributes of sensations &
images:
Sense : taste (Imagine eating Mithai)
Quality (e.g., sweetness)
Intensity (e.g., highly sweet)
Duration (e.g., mouth is sweet for
long, atleast 10 mins)
Clearness (sweetness is standing
out from other sensations)
Extensity (how spread out is the
sensation in space)- sweetness is
spread on the entire tongue
MENTAL ELEMENTS
Affections attributes:
Quality (e.g. pleasant)
Intensity (e.g., highly
Titchener did not accept pleasant)
Wundt’s tri-dimensional Duration (e.g., lasts for
theory. at least 3 minutes)
He believed feelings to have
only 1 dimension:
pleasantness-unpleasantness.
He rejected the remaining
dimensions
 LAW OF COMBINATION
Titchener (1910) made the law of contiguity his basic law of association:
After events occur together, the reoccurrence of only one event evokes
the 'memory' of the others.
For example, if we think of thunder, we immediately think of
lightning, since the two often occur one after the other.

Context Theory of Meaning:

In accordance with the law of contiguity.
whenever you see a rattle, you also think of babies.
The rattle (here, called the core) ELICITS the image of a baby.
The elicited image (baby) creates the context through which the core becomes meaningful.
NEUROLOGICAL CORRELATES OF MENTAL EVENTS
For Titchener explaining the mind-body relationship came dangerously close to
speculation.

Essentially, Titchener believed that physiological processes provide a continuous

substratum that give psychological processes a continuity they otherwise would not
have.

Neurophysiological processes are the why of mental life, if why is understood to

mean a description of the circumstances under which mental processes occur.
 TITCHENER’S
PERSONA
Anecdotes about Titchener’s authoritarian style abound.
The dinner incident with the Cornell’s president
Titchener’s students were in awe of him.

Titchener was an accomplished musician.

He conducted a small orchestra in his home on Sunday nights. Students with
musical ability participated.
He was a knowledgeable collector of ancient coins.
He was well versed in several languages.
 THE EXPERIMENTALISTS
Titchener was a member of the APA but never attended a meeting.

1904: Founded his own organization, the Experimentalists

& ran it according to his own definition of psychology.

Membership was by Titchener’s invitation only.

He apparently felt the need to create an organization separate from the APA
for two reasons.
1. He was upset because the APA failed to expel one member whom he
believed to be guilty of plagiarism.
2. He believed that the APA was too friendly toward a variety of applied topics
and was drifting away from pure experimental psychology.
 NO SPECULATION
Titchener wanted describe mental experience, which he felt could be done accurately.

He sought to avoid explanations & theories that involved speculation (which he felt
Wundt was prone to)

In believing that speculation has no place in science, he accepted the positivism

of Ernst Mach.
Years later, B. F. Skinner took the same position toward use of theory.

For both, science meant carefully describing what could be observed

For both theorizing meant entering speculation

TITCHENER’S PARADOXICAL
RELATIONSHIP WITH WOMEN However, Titchener’s first doctoral candidate was
Margaret Floy Washburn, the first woman ever to
APA admitted women as members. But the Experimentalists receive a doctorate in psychology.
excluded them. Washburn went on to be president of the APA in
1921.
One female psychologist Christine Ladd-Franklin was the
outraged.
6 of Titchener’s first 12 doctorates were awarded
Titchener suggested that women might be offended by to women.
excessive cigar smoke. 1894 -1927: Of his 56 doctoral students, 19 were
women.
Took women into his graduate program at a
To that she replied: time when Harvard & Columbia would not.
“Have your smokers separated if you like (though I for one Favored hiring women for academic positions
always smoke when I am in fashionable society). when they were the best candidates for a job.

This did not cause Titchener to change his exclusionary policy.

THE PROBLEMS OF INTROSPECTION
Wundt’s voluntarism is still with us, but Titchener’s structuralism is not.

What caused the extinction of structuralism?

One reason was the flaws on scientific introspection:

1. Lack of agreement on the results of introspection.

2.

3. The idea that introspection was really retrospection because the event being reported had already occurred.
4.

5. Also, it was suggested that one could not introspect on something without changing it—that is, that
observation changed what was being observed.
NARROW CONCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY
Titchener opposed creating a psychology with applied value- Science seeks pure
knowledge
Structuralism excluded several developments like:

Animal studies (because animals cant introspect)

Abnormal behaviour (even though Freud was making

strides)

Structuralists ignored the study of personality, learning, psychological development,

individual differences.
Structuralism did not assimilate an important development in human history— the
doctrine of evolution.
Thus it was short-lived.