Chapter 9

Voluntarism and Structuralism

Voluntarism, Psychology's First School of Thought

• Schools of Thought
  • People not a place
    • all think the same way about a problem in a discipline
  • Modern psychology does not have schools of thought
    • Why?
      • schools of thought presuppose a successful solution
      • modern psychology has had to face the reality that no such simple solution is likely
      • modern psychology is eclectic when it comes to theorizing
  • The schools of thought:
    • Voluntarism--Wundt
    • Structuralism--Titchener
    • Functionalism--centered at Chicago and Columbia
    • Behaviorism--Watson
    • Gestalt--successor of voluntarism in Europe
    • Psychoanalytic--Freud

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

• Born into an academic and professional family, but Wundt himself was shy
• Another poor secondary student
• Academic career included stints with:
  • Johannes Muller
  • Hermann Helmholtz
• Ended up at Leipzig
• From 1875-79, he set up lab in experimental psychology
• 1879 is usually chosen as founding of psychology because research was emerging from lab by then
• Trained 186 graduate students (116 in psychology)
  • Why is this important?
    • because it is how theories get spread in science
    • compare to William James later (trained very few students)
• 53,735 pages written by Wundt in his lifetime!

Wundt's Psychology

• Mediate vs. Immediate Experience
  • Other sciences based upon experiences mediated by instruments
  • Psychology based upon consciousness in real time
• Goals of Wundt's Psychology
  • Discover the elements of thought (notice the metaphor "element")
  • Discover the laws by which elements become more complex mental experiences
• Introspection
  • Objective use of old philosophical technique--experimental introspection
  • For Wundt, introspector must:
    • know when to introduce process
    • must be ready
    • must be able to repeat observations
    • must be able to vary stimuli
• Elements of Thought
  • Sensations
    • have modality
    • very similar to images (an assertion that will help lead to the fall of voluntarism, structuralism, and functionalism later)
  • Feelings
    • secondary to sensations
    • come from subjective aspects of sensations
    • characteristics
      • pleasure--displeasure
      • tension--relief
      • excitement--depression
• Perception, Apperception, and Creative Synthesis
  • Perception
    • a passive and automatic process (for Wundt)
    • elements experienced simultaneously
  • Apperception
    • an active and voluntary process
    • where "voluntarism" comes from
    • when combined with attention, explains behavior
  • Creative synthesis
    • the voluntary rearrangement of elements
    • made psychology different than physical sciences (for Wundt)
• Mental Chronometry
  • Reaction time
  • Franciscus Cornelius Donders (1818-1889)
    • Dutch physiologist, pioneered use of technique
  • 20% of Wundt's early work used reaction time
    • first example of a psychological research program
  • eventually abandoned because of many variable that affect reaction times
  • modern cognitive psychology still used mental chronometry (i.e., Sperling's partial report procedure)
• Volkerpsychologie
  • massive (10 volumes) work that occupied his last 20 years
  • emphasized study of language
• Research Topics
  • Psycho-sensory topics in general
  • Reaction time
  • Attention
• Summary
  • Wundt is somewhat misunderstood today
  • Distortion of his ideas began early (i.e., his American students)
  • As psychology becomes more cognitive, Wundt is being rediscovered
  • Founder of psychology
  • Prolific writer
  • Trained many students

Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927)

• Life
  • British
  • Studied at Oxford
  • Spent two years with Wundt
  • Came to Cornell in 1892 and spent the rest of his career there
• Style
  • Formal
    • his faculty was required to attend his lectures
    • dressed in academic regalia
  • Private
    • wife took all of his calls
  • Stories
    • beard on fire
    • Boring and cigar
    • his brain at Cornell
• Structuralism
  • Consciousness
    • sum total of mental experience at any given time
  • Mind
    • sum of accumulated experiences of a lifetime
  • Goal
    • to describe consciousness (not to explain it it)
  • Used introspection
    • introduced the stimulus error
  • Elements (44,000+ elements)
    • included sensations, images, and affections
    • properties of sensations and images:
      • quality
      • intensity
      • duration
      • clearness
      • extensity (spread out in space)
    • properties of affections were like above but without clearness and extensity
  • Theory
    • rejected apperception and creative synthesis
    • substituted associationism (recall he was British)
    • attention was not used
  • Introspection
    • main methodology of structuralism
    • criticized as retrospection
    • unreliabe method
  • Functionalism
    • grew as a response to structuralism

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)

• Fechner's Psychophysics inspired him
• Investigated memory experimentally for first time
  • Invented the nonsense syllable
  • The "high road" to memory
  • Used savings method
  • Much of his data is still valid today

Franz Clemens Brentano (1838-1917)

• Philosopher
• Priest
  • Left priesthood over doctrine of Papal infallibility
• Act Psychology
  • Processes more important
    • i.e., judging, recalling, loving, hoping, etc.
  • Intentionality
    • Acts refer to (i.e., "intend") to things outside of oneself
• Empirical psychologist (instead of "experimental psychologist")
  • Believed in looser form of introspection (phenomenological introspection)
  • Believed in crucial experiments (instead of programmatic experimentation)
• Published little, preferred oral communication
• Freud was one of his students

Carl Stumpf (1848-1936)

• Another of Brentano's students
• Shared Brentano's view of phenomenology
  • i.e., no analysis into elements
• Was a musician
  • Explored psychology of melody
  • Melody persists despite changes in instrument, tempo, and other variables
  • i.e., Muzak perception
• Trained Kohler, Wertheimer, and Koffka, the founders of Gestalt school
• Involved in Clever Hans case
  • Sent Oskar Pfungst, one of his graduate students to investigate

Oswald Kulpe (1862-1915)

• Wundt's assistant and Titchener's roommate
• Went to Wurzburg in 1894, hence "Wurzburg School"
• Became Wundt's rival
  • Imageless thought
    • believed that Wundt's categories were not sufficient
    • some thoughts occurred without images
  • Mental set (einstellung)
    • some tasks create their own determing tendencies
      • i.e., 7 3 (Ach)
• Inability of Wundt and Kulpe to resolve the differences in data from introspection led to demise of voluntarism and structuralism.

URLs

• Museum of the History of Psychological Instrumentation--index, interm., medium, links, graphics
  • This page is a digitized version of the 1903 E. Zimmermann (Leipzig) catalog and price list of psychological equipment. It serves as a distant mirror to the history of psychology by exhibiting research equipment of the time. http://www.chss.montclair.edu/psychology/museum/museum.html
• Psychology: Scope and Schools of Thought--tutorial, basic, medium, links, graphics
  • Six pages about early psychology from a larger on-line course. Covers Wundt and structuralism, James, Freud, behaviorism, and humanistic psychology. http://www.ets.uidaho.edu/levine/u5s1p1.htm
• Wilhelm Wundt--graphic, basic, short
  • A photo (profile) of the founder of psychology. http://www.psy.kuleuven.ac.be/labexp/wundt.html
• Wilhelm Wundt and Colleagues--graphic, basic, short
  • A photo of Wundt in his lab with several colleagues, Friedrich Sander is also identified. http://rpssg3.psychologie.uni-regensburg.de/drosler/research/droeseng/wundt.html
• A Translation of Wundt's Folk Psychology--text, adv., medium, links
  • George H. Mead's review (1919) of the English translation of one of Wundt's later works. http://paradigm.soci.brocku.ca/~lward/PUBS/MEAD_068.HTML