Edward Bradford Titchener
History & Systems
PSYC400-01
Thomas E. Van Cantfort, Ph.D.
Edward Bradford Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener
Titchener dramatically altered Wundt’s system of
psychology when he brought it from Germany to the
United State,
Ú while professing to be a loyal follower.
‚ He offered his own approach, which he called
structuralism, and claimed that it represented the form
of psychology set forth by Wundt.
‚ Yet the two system were radically different, and the
label, structuralism, can properly be applied only to
Titchener’s psychology.
‚ Structuralism attained a prominence in the United States
that lasted for some two decades around the turn-of-thecentury,
Ú It was challenged and overthrown by newer
movements.L
‚
Edward Bradford Titchener
‚
‚
In Titchener’s view, the fundamental task of psychology
was to discover the nature of these elementary conscious
experience
Ú that is, to analyze consciousness into its component
parts and thus determine its structure.
Titchener became interested in Wundt’s new psychology.
Ú It was natural, then, that he should journey to Leipzig,
the mecca for scientific pilgrims, to study under
Wundt.
Ú He studied two years under Wundt earning his
doctoral degree in 1892.
Ú Titchener translated Wundt’s books from German into
English.
Ú Titchener’s own books included:
< An Outline of Psychology (1896),
< Primer of Psychology (1898), andL
‚
‚
‚
Wundt recognized elements or contents of consciousness,
Ú but his overriding concern was their organization or
synthesis into higher level cognitive processes through
apperception.
In Wundt’s view, the mind had the power to organize
mental elements voluntarily,
Ú a position that contrasted with a passive, mechanistic
notion of association favored by most of the British
empiricists and associationists.
Titchener accepted the focus on mental elements or
contents and their mechanical linking through the
process of association.
Ú He discarded Wundt’s doctrine of apperception,
however, and concentrated on the elements
themselves.L
Edward Bradford Titchener
< Experimental Psychology: A manual of Laboratory
Practice (1901-1905)
! considered among the most important books in the
history of psychology.
‚ These Manuals, as the individual volumes of that work
came to be called,
Ú stimulated the growth of laboratory work in
psychology in the United States and influenced a
generation of experimental psychologist.L
Edward Bradford Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener
Conscious Experience
Conscious Experience (continued)
According to Titchener, the subject matter of psychology
is conscious experience as that experience is dependent
on experiencing persons.
Ú This kind of experience is different from the study by
scientists in other disciplines.
< For example, light and sound are studied by both
physicists and psychologists.
! Physicists examined the phenomena from the
standpoint of the physical processes involved;
! psychologists consider them in terms of how they
are observed and experience by humans.
‚ Other sciences, Titchener said, are independent of
experiencing persons, and he offered, the example
temperature.L
‚
The temperature in a room may be 85 degrees Fahrenheit
whether or not anyone experiences it.
Ú When observers are present in that room and report
that they feel uncomfortably warm,
Ú that feeling is thus experience by and dependent on
those experiencing individuals – those people in the
room.
‚ To Titchener, this type of experience was the only proper
subject matter for psychology.
‚ Titchener warned that in studying conscious experience,
we must not commit what he called the stimulus error;
Ú that is, confusing the mental process with the object we
are observing.L
‚
Edward Bradford Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener
Conscious Experience (continued)
‚
Conscious Experience (continued)
For example, observers who see an apple and described
it as an apple,
Ú instead of reporting that color, brightness, and shape
they are experiencing, are committing the stimulus
error.
Ú The object of observation is not to be described in
everyday language but rather in terms of the conscious
contents of the experience.
Ú When observers focus on the stimulus object instead of
on the conscious process,
< they failed to distinguish what they have learned in
the past about the object (an apple) from their own
immediate experience.L
When they described anything other than these; color,
brightness, and spatial characteristics, they are
interpreting the object, not observing it, and
Ú thus they are dealing with mediated – not immediate –
experience.
‚ Titchener defined consciousness as the sum of our
experiences as they exist at any given time,
Ú and mind as the sum of our experiences accumulated
over a lifetime.
‚ Consciousness and mind are similar, except that
consciousness involves mental processes occurring at the
moment
Ú where as mind involves the sum total of these
processes.L
Edward Bradford Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener
‚
Conscious Experience (continued)
‚
‚
The structural psychology Titchener proposed was a
pure science;
Ú he had no applied or utilitarian concerns.
Ú Psychology was not in the business of curing “sick
minds,” he said, or of reforming individuals or society.
Ú It’s only legitimate purpose was to discover the facts, or
structure, of the mind.
He believed that scientist had to remain free of concerns
about the pratical worth of their work.
Ú For this reason he opposed the development of child
psychology, animal psychology, and other areas that
did not fit with his introspective experimental
psychology of the contents of consciousness. L
Introspection
Titchener’s form of introspection, or self-observation,
Ú relied on observers who were trained to describe their
conscious state and
Ú not the observed or experience stimulus.
‚ Titchener realize that everyone learned to describe
experience in terms of stimulus
Ú such as calling a red shiny round object an apple
Ú and that in everyday life this is beneficial and
necessary.
‚ In the laboratory, however, this practice had to be
unlearned.L
‚
‚
‚
‚
Edward Bradford Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener
Introspection (continued)
Introspection (continued)
Titchener adopted Külpe’s label, systematic
experimental introspection, to describe his method
Ú Like Külpe, he used detailed, qualitative, subjective
reports of his subjects’ mental activity during the act of
introspecting.
He opposed Wundt’s approach, with its focus on
objective, quantitative measurements,
Ú because he believed it was incapable of uncovering the
elementary sensations and images of consciousness.
These were the core of his psychology – not the synthesis
of the elements through apperception but L
Edward Bradford Titchener
Consciousness
Consciousness (continued)
To Titchener, the three essential problems for psychology
were:
Ú 1) to reduce conscious processes to the simplest
components,
Ú 2) to determine the laws by which the elements of
consciousness were associated, and
Ú 3) to connect the elements with their physiological
conditions.
‚ Thus, the aim of Titchener’s structural psychology
coincided with those of the natural sciences.
‚ After scientists decide which part of the natural world
they wish to study,L
‚
‚
the analysis of complex conscious experience into its
component parts.
< Titchener emphasized the parts, where as Wundt
emphasized the whole.
< Titchener’s goal was to discover the atoms of the
mind.L
Edward Bradford Titchener
‚
‚
Ú
they proceed to discover its elements, to demonstrate
how those elements are compounded into complex
phenomena, and
Ú to formulate laws governing those phenomena.
‚ The bulk of Titchener’s research efforts were devoted to
the first problem--discovering the elements of
consciousness.
‚ Titchener proposed three elementary state of
consciousness:
Ú sensations,
Ú images, and
Ú affective states.L
Ú
Edward Bradford Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener
Consciousness (continued)
Consciousness (continued)
The sensations are the basic elements of perception and
occur in the sounds, sights, smells, and other experiences
evoked by physical objects in our environment.
Images are the elements of ideas, and they are found in
the process that reflects experiences not actually present
at the moment,
Ú such as memory of a past experience.
Affective states, or affections, are the elements of
emotions and are found in experience such as love, hate,
and sadness.L
‚
‚
In An Outline of Psychology (1896), Titchener presented a
list of the elements of sensations that he discovered
through his research.
Ú The list includes more than 44,000 sensations qualities;
< of these 32,820 were identified as visual sensations,
and 11,600 as auditory.
Ú Each element was believed to be conscious and distinct
from all others, and each could be combined with
others to form perceptions and ideas.
Although basic and irreducible, these elements could be
categorized, just as chemical elements are grouped into
classes.L
‚
Edward Bradford Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener
Consciousness (continued)
Consciousness (continued)
Despite their simplicity, mental elements have
characteristics that allow us to distinguish among them.
‚
To the Wundtian attributes of quality and intensity,
Ú Titchener added duration and clearness.
‚
He considered these four attributes to be basic
characteristics of all sensations;
Ú they are present, to some degree, in all experiences.
‚
Duration is the course of a sensation overtime.
‚
Clearness refers to the role of attention in conscious
experience; that which is the focus of our attention is
clearer than that toward which our attention is not
directed.
The sensations and images possess all four of these
attributes, but affective states have only quality, intensity,
and duration.
Ú They lack clearness; Titchener believed it was
impossible to focus attention directly on an element of
feeling or emotion.L
‚
Quality is the characteristic--such as “cold” or “red”-that clearly distinguishes each element from every other.
‚ Intensity refers to the strength, weakness, loudness, or
brightness of a sensation.L
‚
Edward Bradford Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener
Consciousness (continued)
Criticism of Structural Psychology
When we try to do so, the affective quality – the
sadness or the pleasantness, for example – disappears.
‚ Some sensory processes, particulary those involving
vision and touch also possess the attribute of extensity,
in which they take up space.L
‚
Ú
‚
Edward Bradford Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener
Criticism of Structural Psychology (continued)
‚
‚
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant had written, a
century before Titchener’s work,
Ú that any account at introspection necessarily alters the
conscious experience being studied,
Ú because it introduces and observing elements into the
content of conscious experience.
The positivist philosopher Auguste Comte also attacked
the introspection method,
Ú arguing that if the mine were capable of observing its
own activities, it would have to divide itself into two
parts
< one doing the observing and the other being
observed.
< This Comte claimed, was impossible.L
The most severe criticisms of structuralism has been
directed at the method of introspection.
Ú These charges are more relevant to introspection as
practiced by Titchener’s and Külpe’s laboratories,
< which dealt with subjective reports of the elements of
consciousness,
< than to Wundt’s internal perception method, which
dealt with more objective and quantitative responses
to external stimuli.
Introspection, broadly defined, had been used for a long
time, and attacks on the method were not new.L
Criticism of Structural Psychology (continued)
‚
Several decades before Titchener proposed his structural
psychology, Comte wrote:
Ú “the mine may observe all phenomena but its own . . .
The observing and observed organ are here the same,
and its action cannot be sure and natural.
Ú In order to observe, your intellect must pause from
activity; yet it is this very activity that you want to
observe.
Ú If you cannot effect, you cannot observe; if you do
effect it, there is nothing to observe. The results of such
method are in proportion to its absurdity.”L
Edward Bradford Titchener
Edward Bradford Titchener
Criticism of Structural Psychology (continued)
Criticism of Structural Psychology (continued)
‚
‚
‚
‚
The method of introspection was not the only target of
criticism. The Structuralist movement was accused of
artificiality and sterility for its attempts to analyze
conscious processes into the elements.
Critics charged that the whole of an experience cannot be
recaptured by any later association of the elemental
parts.
Experience, they argued, does not come to us in
individual sensations, images, or affective states but
rather a unified whole.L
Edward Bradford Titchener
Criticism of Structural Psychology (continued)
Because consciousness was best perceived by the person
having the conscious experience, the best method for that
subject matter was self-observation.
‚ Although the subject matter and aims, of the
structuralists are no longer vital,
Ú introspection – defined as the beginning of a verbal
report based on experience – is still used in many areas
of psychology.
Ú Introspective reports involving the higher-level
cognitive processes, such as reasoning, are obtained
from subjects in many areas.M
‚
‚
‚
Something of the conscious experience must inevitably
be lost in any artificial effort to analyze it.
We’ll see that the Gestalt school of psychology make
effective use of this point in launching their revolution
against structuralism.
Despite these criticisms, there is no denying that
Titchener and the structuralist made important
contributions to psychology.
Ú Their subject matter – conscious experience – was
clearly defined.
Ú Their research methods were in the best tradition of
science, involving observation, experimentation, and
measurement.L