Start of Psychology

Wilhem Wundt
 Wilhelm Wundt was a German scientist who
founded a laboratory in Leipzig that took
a structuralist approach to psychology

 Wundt's lab, founded in 1879, was the first of its

kind

 The subject matter of Wundt’s psychology was

“Consciousness”
 Wundt's students include:
 Hugo Münsterberg (contributed to the
development of industrial psychology and taught at
Harvard University)
 Edward Bradford Titchener (founded the first
psychology laboratory in the United States at
Cornell University),
 Lightner Witmer (founder of the first psychological
clinic in the US and coined Clinical Psychology)
 Wundt's students include:

 Charles Spearman
(who developed the two-factor theory of
intelligence and several important statistical analyses)
The lab at Leipzig
 The Lab
 Wundt’s lab was lead by J.M. Cattell in 1888
 The laboratory was 4 rooms but expanding to 6 rooms.
• An international collection of 20 researchers worked in groups
of at least two
 Two researchers needed, with the one acting as subject, the other taking
charge of the apparatus and registering the results.
• The researcher would publish the study in philosophical Studies.
 Methodology
 Wundt’s primarily method was introspection.
• Wundt’s introspection used laboratory instruments to
present stimuli.
• The subject was to respond with a simple response such
as saying “yes” or “no”, pressing a key.
 These responses were made without any description of
internal events.
 Introspection
 Introspection is looking at oneself and examining personal
thoughts and emotions.
 The word 'introspection' literally means 'to look inward. '
 It involves what a person is thinking about themselves and
experiencing in the present moment and is a process that is
reflective in nature.
 Multiple research directions in 1888
 Psychophysics
• Measurement of sensation
 Psychometry
• Duration of mental processes
 Time-sense
• Time-relations of perceptions estimation of intervals of
time.
 Association of ideas.
• The time it takes for one idea to suggest another
The Equipment
 Wilhem Wundt
 19th century Associationism and empiricism had influenced wundt’s work approach

 For him consciousness includes many different parts and could be studied by method
of analysis or reduction

 However, he did not believe that these elements of mind were static (like atoms for
associationists) nor do these elements connects passively through a mechanical
process of association

 Instead Wundt believed that consciousness actively organizes itself and the study of
its’ structure and organization would give an understanding of human psychology.
 Voluntarism
 Voluntarism:
• The idea that mind has the capacity to organize mental contents into higher-level processes
 For Wundt focus was on mind’s self-organizing capacity.

 This focus of thought helped developed him his system labeled

“Voluntarism”

 Wundt emphasized not just the elements of mind is of importance, as for

associationists, but rather the process of actively organizing these elements

 This does not mean he refused the importance of elements

 Wundt
 Wundt proposed his system of psychology in his famous book called “Outline of psychology”
 For Wundt, Psychology is the science of experience.

 And experience is divided into two parts;

• Immediate Experience
• Mediate Experience

 Mediate Experience:
• Mediate experience and data are obtained via measuring devices and thus is not direct.
•  provides meaning and additional information not contained in the event or stimulus itself.
Immediate Experience:
 Immediate experience and data are events in human consciousness as they occurred.
 the elements or characteristics of the event or stimuli as perceived directly and without interpretation .
 Wundt
 For Wundt, psychology is the study of immediate
experiences or conscious experiences

 Immediate experiences can be analyzed based on two

basic psychical elements
• Sensations
• Feelings
 Sensations are the objective contents of consciousness
 Feelings are the subjective contents of consciousness
 Wundt’s Tridimensional Theory of Feelings

 Tridimensional Theory of Feelings:

 Pleasure/displeasure;
 Tension/Relaxation &
 Excitement/Depression

 Human emotions result from the fusion of

a characteristic 'mixture' of six basic forms
of feeling
 Wundt’s Principle of Creative Synthesis

 Elements of consciousness might form a complex or

a compound whose characteristics were different
from the characteristics of component elements
 Wundt’s Method of Study
 INTROSPECTION

 Examination of one’s own mind to inspect and

report on personal thoughts or feelings

 Certain rules must be followed in order to conduct

introspection
 Rules of Introspection
 Introspectionist should be able to locate from where the
process starts

 Must be able to maintain attention

 The entire observation must be capable of being repeated

 It must be possible to manipulate the stimuli in order to

vary the experimental conditions
 Wundt supported that Subject matter of psychology,
consciousness, needs to be studied for its’ content-
sensations and feelings
 Franz Brentano
 Brentano on the other hand supported that
psychology should study “MENTAL ACTS” rather
than mental contents- ACT PSYCHOLOGY

 For Wundt;
• Psychology studies contents like colors and sounds
 For Brentano;
• Psychology studies mental acts such as seeing a color or
hearing a sound
 Three types of Mental Acts
 Ideating;
• Refers to as having an idea (sensing, imagining, real or not)

 Judging;
• Refers to determining affirmation or denial of objects (rejecting or
perceiving)

 Feeling;
• Refers to having a certain attitude towards anything.
STRUCTURALISM
 Edward Bradford Titchener
 Titchener held that an experience should be
evaluated as a fact,
 As it exists without analyzing the significance or
value of that experience
 Wundt’s main concern was the organization of the elements
identified in the conscious awareness-
 their creative synthesis into higher-level cognitive processes
through apperception

 (Apperception is any of several aspects of perception and

consciousness)

 For Titchener, mental elements or contents and their

mechanical linking through the process of association was more
important.
 Hence psychology’s subject matter should only
concern itself with identification of the nature of the
elementary conscious experiences-
 to analyze consciousness into its component parts
and thus determine its’ structure.
 Structuralism
Structuralism was a school of thought that sought to
identify the components (structure) of the mind (the
mind was the key element to psychology at this point).

Structuralisms believed that the way to learn about the

brain and its functions was to break the mind down into
its most basic elements.

They believed, the whole is equal to the sum of the parts.

 Structuralism----
Edward Bradford Titchener(1867-1927)

 The content of conscious experience

 1. Subject matter of psychology

• a. conscious experience
• b. as that experience is dependent on the person
who is actually experiencing it.

 2. Dependent on the experiencing individual

• Other sciences: independent of experiencing
persons (e.g., temperature)
 Structuralism----
Edward Bradford Titchener(1867-1927)

 Consider phenomena in terms of how human

observe and experience these phenomena, e.g.,
light and sound.

 Stimulus error:
• Confusing the mental process with the object we are
observing.
• See an apple and describe that object as an apple
instead of reporting the elements of color, brightness,
and shape they are experiencing.
 Structuralism----
Edward Bradford Titchener(1867-1927)

 Immediate versus mediate experience

• Color, brightness, or shape (immediate
experience)

• Other than color, brightness, or shape (mediate

experience: interpreting the object)
 Structuralism----
Edward Bradford Titchener(1867-1927)

 Consciousness: the sum of our experiences as

they exist at a given time

 Mind: the sum of our experiences

accumulated over a lifetime
 Structuralism----
Edward Bradford Titchener(1867-1927)

 Pure science
• a. only legitimate purpose: to discover the facts
(structure) of the mind
• b. no applied aspects
• c. only normal adult humans
 Structuralism----
Edward Bradford Titchener(1867-1927)

 Opposed Wundt’s approach

• Wundt: synthesis (Whole)
• Titchener: component parts (Parts)

 Goal: analysis; to discover the atoms of the mind

 Structuralism----
Edward Bradford Titchener(1867-1927)

 Mechanist:
• subjects were “agents” and were like mechanical
recording instruments

 Proposed an experimental approach to

introspective observation in psychology:
• an experiment is an observations that can be
repeated, isolated, and varied
 Wundt vs Titchener
 Wundt:  Titchener:
(experimental psychology) (structuralism)
• 1. organization of elements • 1. focused on elements
• 2. through Apperception • 2. through Association
• 3. Mind has the power to • 3. Analyze
organize mental elements consciousness into its
voluntarily component parts and
determine its structure.
What do you see?

What sensations are elicited when you are presented with this
stimulus?

According to Structuralism, it is not whether you know or do not

know the correct name of the stimulus that is of importance, but
rather the sensations which the stimulus concerned elicits from
each person.
 Structuralism (Titchener)
 The subject matter
• Analyze Consciousness into basic elements
 Basic premise
• The whole is equal to sum of its parts ─ breaks the mind down into its most basic
elements
 Main objective
• Sought to identify the components of the mind
 Method
• Introspection ─ self-observation of one’s immediate experience of a stimulus
 Identifying statement
• Human beings function similarly to machines
• Structuralism cannot be used on children
• Therapist trained in introspection must be mature in order to manage biases.