Wilhelm Wundt

1
Wilhelm Wundt
Chapter 4

• (1832 1920)

2
The Founding of Psychology

• Why is Wundt called the
• father of psychology?
• Wundt actively promoted the field of psychology

3
Wundts Firsts

• laboratory (became model for psychology
  laboratories everywhere)
• trained a large number of the first generation of
  psychologists

• journal in experimental psychology
• college class
• textbook

4
The Founding of Psychology

• Wundts Written Works
• First to use term experimental psychology
• Offered proper methods for psychology
• Six editions of textbook
• Discussed problems that were the focus of
  psychology research for years
• Examples reaction time and psychophysics

5
Review of Zeitgeist

• Mechanism
• Reductionism
• Determinism
• Empiricism

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Review of Zeitgeist

• Empiricism
• Basic question How does the mind learn?
• Before 17th c.
• Authorities Aristotle
• Dogma Church
• After Descartes (and acceptance of empiricism)
• experimentation
• observation

7
Wundts life

• A poor student, always disliked school
• Did not get along with classmates, ridiculed by
  teachers
• Original goal
• Get an MD work in science and make a living
• Disliked medicine, switched to physiology
• Student of Johannes Müller
• Lab assistant to Helmholtz
• While working in physiology, conceived of
  independent, experimental science of psychology
• Professor of philosophy at Leipzig 1875 1920

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Wundts New Psychology

• Divided psychology into two parts
• experimental
• social
• He argued that higher mental processes
• Cannot be studied experimentally
• Are conditioned by language and culture
• Can be studied using (unscientific) methods of
  sociology and anthropology

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Wundts New Psychology

• Subject matter of psychology
• consciousness
• Consciousness made of many parts or elements
• periodic table of the mind

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Wundts New Psychology

• Sensations
• Stimulation of a sense organ leads to impulses
  that reach the brain
• Classified by
• intensity
• duration
• sense modality

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Wundts New Psychology

• Sensations Example of an experiment
• Dropping ball

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Wundts New Psychology

• Feelings
• Subjective reaction to stimuli
• Occur with sensations, but do not arise directly
  from a sense organ
• Emotions compounds of feeling elements
• Tridimensional theory of feelings
• Pleasure/displeasure continuum
• Tension/relaxation
• Excitement/depression

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Wundts New Psychology

• Feelings Example of an experiment
• Listening to a metronome

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Wundts three goals for psychology

• Break conscious processes into their basic
  elements
• Discover how these elements are organized
• Determine the laws of connection governing the
  organization of the elements

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Wundts New Psychology

• Immediate experience
• consist of sensations or feelings
• unbiased by interpretation
• Mediate experience
• influenced by past experience
• interpretations of meaning of sensations
• Wundts conclusion
• Only immediate experiences should be studied

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Introspection

• Is the examination of ones own mental state,
  internal perception
• Previously used in psychophysics to study
  sensation
• Wundt added precise experimental control over the
  conditions

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Introspection

• Wundts four rules
• Observers must know when the procedure will begin
• Observers must be in a state of readiness or
  strained attention
• The observation must be repeatable numerous times
• The experimental conditions must be varied in
  terms of control over stimulus manipulation

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Voluntarism

• From volition will
• Power of the will to organize mental elements
  into higher-level thought processes
• Emphasized the activity, not the elements
• Process is NOT passive

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Apperception

• process of combining elements into a whole
  concept, which often leads to emergent qualities
• Opposite of the passive, mechanical
  associationism of most of the other British
  empiricists
• Precursor to gestalt idea that the whole is
  different from the sum of its parts

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Apperception
21
Review of Zeitgeist

• Mechanism
• Reductionism
• Determinism
• Empiricism

22
The fate of Wundt's psychology in Germany

• In Germany, psychology remained a subspecialty of
  philosophy for 20 years
• Lack of financial support from government
• In contrast, psychology in the United States grew
  more rapidly
• Other economic and political contextual forces
• Economic collapse of Germany after WWI
• Financial ruin of German universities
• Destruction of Wundt's laboratory during WWII
  bombing

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Criticisms of Wundtian psychology

• Disapproval of method of introspection
• Differences in results obtained by different
  observers
• Who is correct?
• Introspection as a private experience
• Cannot settle disagreements by repeating the
  observations in different subjects
• Other psychologists suggested alternative
  methods, and succeeded in studying higher
  cognitive processes

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Criticisms of Wundtian psychology

• Wundts personal political views
• Blamed England for starting WWI
• Viewed the German invasion of Belgium as
  self-defense
• Other schools of thought
• In Europe, Gestalt psychology and psychoanalysis
  challenged and outshined Wundt's views
• In the United States, functionalism and
  behaviorism overshadowed Wundtian psychology

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Which theory does Wundts work support?

• Personalistic theory?
• Naturalistic theory?

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Wundts legacy

• Rejection of nonscientific thinking
• Summarized and combined physiology and philosophy
• Training the first generation of psychologists
• Severing of ties between psychology and
  non-modern philosophy
• Served well in provoking rebellions
• Considered by many as the most important
  psychologist of all time

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Looking ahead

• Psychology fraught with divisions and
  controversies from the beginning
• New ideas appearing other countries
• Darwin
• Freud
• Titchener
• Germany did not remain the center of psychology

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Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)

• Gentleman scientist
• Read Fechners works
• Studied learning and memory with nonsense
  syllables

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Forgetting Curve
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Structuralism
Chapter 5
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Introduction

• Wundts experimental psychology was introduced in
  America by Titchener
• Titchener claimed to be a loyal disciple of
  Wundt, but in fact he altered these ideas
  radically
• The label structuralism can only be applied to
  Titcheners work

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Titchener Structuralism

• Opposed Wundt's approach
• Titchener interested in elements/parts, not
  wholes
• Much more mechanistic than Wundt
• His observers were passive, impartial, mechanical
  instruments recording stimuli

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Titcheners Personality

• Autocratic
• But also helpful and kind at times

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Titcheners experimentalists

• Regular meetings to share research observations
  and listen to guest speakers
• no women allowed!
• Wundt wanted an atmosphere where he could smoke
  and speak freely without fear of offending anyone
• Women too pure to smoke
• Refused Christine Ladd-Franklin's request to
  present her research, which she actively
  protested for years

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On the other hand

• Titchener actively worked to advance women in
  psychology
• Accepted women in his graduate programs
• 1/3 of the 56 doctorates awarded by him were to
  women, more than any other contemporary
  psychologist
• Advocated for hiring female faculty
• Margaret Floy Washburn 1st women to earn
  doctorate in psychology and Wundt's 1st doctoral
  student