Volunteerism
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) – Founding of
psychology as a science……established first
research lab in Leipzig in 1879.
---wedded physiology and philosophy and the
result was something different than the
two….brought empirical methods of physiology to
the question of philosophy
Important to Wundt is the concept of “will”…..we
decide what to attend to and not…..Different than
associationist’s passive ‘mental chemistry’, but he
still called Apperception (equivalent to Attention),
but voluntary behavior was emphasized.
Subject Matter of Psychology – psychology was a
science of the mind or conscious experience…
---thought consciousness at a given moment can be
experienced two ways…. Directly (immediate) and
indirectly (mediate)…. Example…moon produced
objective pattern on senses and subjective feelings.
Wundt wanted to study the elements of
consciousness as they were impacted by sensation.
Direct objective form of an object is its shape,
position, and intensity of light……(immediate
experience)…
…which is mediated by personal experience
(subjective or mediate)……Psychology studies
immediate experience and other science mediate
information…….that’s b/c psychology is
concerned with the mind which is the only
immediate way to experience an object….other
science have to use instruments, which mediates
how perceive any stimulus.
Four Beliefs about nature of consciousness
1. Consciousness is not stable….hard to study
2. Mind is not a single unified whole, but divided
into different processes (sensing, feeling, thinking
etc).
3. Mental events occur in a lawful fashion (you
can find rules that govern them).
4. Mental evens cannot be reduced to
physiological events…even if there is a
physiological basis
Methodology –Introspection –the observation and
reporting of conscious experience…..Wundt had
strict methods
---proper training needed to ensure that valid
descriptions are made…..introspector had to be
able to distinguish between immediate experience
and mediate experience……
Historical Analysis – provide information from
which the nature of mental events could be
inferred. Look at behavior to reveal the parts of
the mind responsible…(only way to study
questions of voluntary actions).
Research Topics----reactions time –mental
chronometry…..reaction time method originated
with Helmoholtz…..Wundt wanted to use his
method to measure the speed of mental events.
----subject had to judge position of a pointer
moving across a calibrated scale at the exact time
a bell sounded…..worlds fastest thought occurred
in one-tenth of a second
----demonstrated that objective experimental
analysis of mental processes is possible
Apprehension, Apperception, and Voluntary
Behavior -- sensory impression in consciousness
known as apprehension (sensed but not perceived)
---when attention is focused on impression it is
known as apperception.
----thus, there are two zones of
consciousness…..background zone where mental
events are sensed and a zone of focal
consciousness where events are perceived more
clearly…………….key assumption of his system is
that apperception is not passive….requires act of
will or intent.
Social Psychology –Volkerpsycholgie more ethnic
or cultural psychology…..always interested in
problem of relationship between individuals and
society….
---creative synthesis….postulated lower mental
processes (sensing, feeling, willing) played a role in
higher processes (thinking, language), but higher
processes not just a simple addition of lower
processes. Higher processes are distinctly
different than merely the simple elements that
compose them.
Language – most relevant to contemporary
psychology.
---distinguished between outer and inner linguistic
phenomena
---outer – what can be directly observed…written
spoken statements
----inner – the internal cognitive principles that
are assumed to be responsible for outer
phenomenon
---group mind….he believed different ethnic
groups had different collective minds….arrived at
this idea by combining creative synthesis to social
psychology……just as a person’s mind is creative
synthesis from individual psychic experiences, so
is the group mind created from individual minds
of a common culture.
Contributions – created independent science of
psychology…..by training large number of
students and starting new journal
----created experimental psychology
---43 psych labs by 1900
---bad economics after WWI left many of his ideas
unexplored……ideas not seen again until the
cognitive revolution (but Wundt not given credit).