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The Origins of Modern Scientific Psychology in Germany

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Experimental conditions must allow for controlled ... Not purely physiological. Goals important. Laws. Psychic resultants ... physiological conditions ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: The Origins of Modern Scientific Psychology in Germany


1
The Origins of Modern Scientific Psychology in
Germany
  • Why Germany?
  • Englandgentlemen amateurs
  • Francedivision between research and teaching
  • Germanyfree teaching and learning
  • Faculty of philosophynatural philosophy
  • Research as a career
  • The roots
  • Subject matter from philosophy
  • Mechanism
  • Issue of how we gain knowledge of the world
  • Methods from sensory physiology
  • Psychophysicscontrolled study of psychological
    phenomena

2
Wilhelm Wundt (18321920)
  • 1879official dateWundts lab at Leipzig
  • Influence
  • Focus on psychology
  • Institutional
  • Texts
  • Lab
  • JournalPhilosophical studies
  • Many students

3
Wundts Psychology
  • Many ideas
  • Focus on consciousness
  • (Three psychologies, consciousness, unconscious,
    and adaptation)
  • Dynamic synthetic theoryattention
  • Analytic atomistic research
  • Objectify experience
  • Analyze experience into basic elements
  • How are elements synthesized
  • Voluntarismmind is self-organizing

4
Research Method
  • Immediate experienceunmodified by past
    experience
  • Mediate experienceinformation other than the
    experience itself
  • Study immediate experience through internal
    perceptionreport experience under controlled
    conditionsmake internal perception external
    perception
  • Observer able to determine when process is
    introduced
  • Be in a state of readiness or strained attention
  • Able to repeat the observation several times
  • Experimental conditions must allow for controlled
    variation of the stimuli
  • Judgments of size, intensity and duration of
    stimuli

5
Research Program
  • Mental chronometryspeed of psychological events
  • Reaction time
  • Maskelyn and Kinnebrook 1795
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (17841846) personal
    equation (individual difference)
  • Mental operations take time
  • Experimental study of the observer
  • Franciscus Cornelius Donders (18181889)
  • Complication studies

6
  • Reaction time
  • Apprehension admitting
  • stimulus into consciousness
  • Apperception focusing
  • Reactionvoluntary behavior
  • Attention/apperception
  • Sensorial versus muscular attitude
  • Range of attention/apperception

7
  • Feelings
  • Pleasure/displeasure
  • Tension/relief
  • Excitement/depression
  • Apperception
  • Creative synthesis
  • Law of psychic resultants
  • All actions voluntaryvoluntarism
  • Not purely physiological
  • Goals important

8
  • Laws
  • Psychic resultants
  • Psychological relations
  • Psychological contrasts
  • Developmental
  • Mental growth
  • Heterogeneity of ends
  • Development towards opposites
  • Völkerpsychologie

9
Comment
  • Wrote fast
  • Attempting to establish school
  • Heavily philosophical
  • Romantic/idealist rather than positivist
  • Theoretical not pragmatic
  • Human mind rather than individual differences
  • Why ignored
  • Not American
  • Methodological weaknesses
  • Emphasis on consciousness
  • Surprisingly modern
  • Methods still used
  • Weakness of introspection

10
Outlines of Psychology
  • What is the subject matter of psychology?
  • How does this differ from the natural sciences?
  • How does the focus of psychology differ from the
    natural sciences?
  • What are the two basic methods of science?
  • What method must psychology use? Why?
  • What kind of psychology uses observation?

11
Edward Bradford Titchener (18671927 and
Structuralism
  • Schools of psychology
  • Structuralismcontents of consciousness
  • Associationismelements of consciousness
  • Positivismavoid theory
  • Student of Wundt, but
  • Contents over processes
  • Qualitative introspection

12
  • Psychologystudy experience dependent on the
    observer
  • Contents not functions
  • Consciousnesssum of experiences
  • Methodinspection of experience
  • Systematic introspection
  • Stimulus error focus on stimulus rather than
    experience
  • Experimental Psychology A Manual of Laboratory
    Practice
  • T

13
  • Elements of consciousness
  • Reduce conscious processes to simplest components
  • Sensations
  • Images
  • Affections
  • Characteristicsquality, intensity, duration
    (protensity), clearness (attensity)
  • Attensity replaces attention
  • Meaning context
  • Determine the laws of association
  • Connect elements to physiological conditions
  • Late in life shift to dimensions rather than
    elements
  • Phenomenology rather than introspection

14
  • Criticism
  • Subjective method
  • Focus on consciousness
  • Other approaches reacted against structuralism

15
Franz Brentano (18381917)Act Psychology
  • Former priest (rejected infallibility) and
    philosopher
  • Observational approach relying on logic and
    experience
  • Focus on mental activity not contents
  • Acts contain the contents/objects
  • Intentionality
  • Observe internal states indirectly
  • Phenomenology
  • Carl Stumpf (18481936)
  • Edmund Husserl (18591938)

16
Hermann Ebbinghaus (18501909)
  • Memory and learning
  • Higher mental processes
  • Methodological innovation
  • Nonsense syllables
  • Effects of repetition
  • Meaning
  • Association
  • Forgetting curve
  • Associationist

17
  • Georg Elias Müller (18501934)
  • Dynamic view of memory
  • Subjects organized lists
  • Interferenceretroactive, proactive
  • Methodologist
  • Oswald Külpe (18621915) and the Würzburg school
  • Higher mental processes
  • Systematic introspection
  • Fractionation and repetition
  • Imageless thought controversy
  • Aufgabedetermining tendency
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