HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY
The Rise & Fall of German Structuralism
(and a bit about Sir Francis Galton)
Dr Richard Roche
Dept of Psychology,
NUI Maynooth.
Email: Richard.Roche@nuim.ie
Wündt’s Leipzig Lab
• Psychophysics;
• Time Sense;
• Mental Chronometry
Interested in the difference between perception and
apperception
In apperception, the stimulus is perceived, recognised,
interpreted, and “thought about”
Experiments on the Span of Apperception
Wündt and colleagues would present arrays of stimuli
very briefly (~100ms) and test a participant’s recall of
what was presented
Regardless of the nature of the stimuli (letters, numbers,
words, shapes), usually between 4-6 objects could be
correctly recalled
Concluded that 4-6 thoughts or ideas could be held in
consciousness at any one moment
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Wündt’s Leipzig Lab
The idea of Creative Synthesis:
Wündt argued that perceived ideas will be organised and
combined in a way consistent with prior associations or
experience
Apperceived ideas, however, could be combined in many
different ways, including novel ways that have not been
experienced before.
In this respect, Wündt was not really a reductionist
Wündt’s Leipzig Lab
The Method of Introspection:
if Psychology is to study conscious experience, then the
main tool for this study should be the observation &
recording of one’s own subjective experience.
Sensations and Feelings
Sensations – Mode (visual, auditory etc.)
Quality (colour, pitch etc.)
Intensity
Duration
Wündt’s Leipzig Lab
Sensations and Feelings
Feelings – three basic dimensions
pleasantness – unpleasantness
tension – relaxation
activity – passivity
But Wündt himself expressed reservations about the use
of introspection as an investigative tool for psychology
E.B. Titchener (1867-1927)
Born Chichester;
Philosophy & Classics, and later
Physiology at Oxford.
Spent 2 years at Wündt’s lab in
Leipzig.
When experimental psychology was met with scepticism
in England, he went to Cornell to teach and direct the lab.
He ran the lab for the rest of his life, becoming a cult
figure in Cornell, being very popular with his students
While he maintained that he followed Wündt’s teachings,
he actually differed significantly from his old mentor’s
approach.
He termed his approach Structuralism – the subject
matter of Psychology should be the study and analysis of
the basic elements of conscious experience; atomistic
view of consciousness not shared by Wündt
Structural Psychology was a “pure science” for Titchener
– interested in generalisable aspects of human mind, not
individual differences or case studies of abnormality.
The Methodology of Structuralism:
Titchener trained his students to become adept at trained
introspection – to report only the sensations as they were
experienced without reliance on “meaning words” – he
called this stimulus error
Using this approach, Titchener’s students (“reagents”)
meticulously reported various visual, auditory, tactile,
gustatory, olfactory etc. experiences:
In “An Outline of Psychology” (1896), he reported over
44,000 elements of sensation:
• 32,820 Visual,
• 11,600 Auditory,
• 4 Taste, etc.
Elements of Consciousness:
Titchener proposed 3 elementary states of consciousness:
• Sensations:
basic elements of perception – sights, sounds, tastes,
smells etc. Evoked by physical objects present in the
environment.
• Images:
elements of ideas – reflects experiences not actually
present at that time, e.g. memory of a sight.
• Affective States:
feelings – the elements of emotion: love, hate, anger,
sadness etc.
Characteristics of the Elements:
Claimed that elements could be distinguished by:
Quality – “cold” or “red”: distinguishes each element
from the others.
Intensity – how strong, loud, bright etc. the sensation is.
Duration – course of a sensation over time; how long it
lasts
Clearness – role of attention in consciousness – clearer if
attention is directed toward it
Later he identified dimensions as: quality, intensity,
protensity (duration), attensity (clearness) & extensity
The Fate and Criticisms of Structuralism:
Structuralism effectively died with Titchener in 1927.
The main criticisms of it were aimed at:
Introspection as an investigative tool – Kant, Comte,
Maudlsey
Lack of agreement across reagents – no consistency.
Objections to the extreme reductionist approach:
This objection was best captured by the Gestalt
movement, which emerged in Germany from 1890
onwards…
Gestalt Psychology
1890 – Christian von Ehrenfels coined the term Gestalt
(meaning “form” or “shape”) to describe the way certain
qualities (gestaltqualitäten) could not be broken down
into separate sensory elements
Gestalt Psychology
1910 – Max Wertheimer, former student of von Ehrenfels,
founded the Gestalt movement with colleagues Kurt
Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler
Gestalt Principles:
Some qualities are emergent from the arrangement of
elements, rather than from the elements themselves.
Human perceptual system must somehow impose
attributes on stimuli over and above the mere elements
that are perceived.
Perception is more than the addition of sensory elements
– it imposes its own order on the elements of sensation,
organising them into “wholes” or gestalts.
A: the Kanizsa triangle. B: Tse's volumetric worm.
C: Idesawa's spiky sphere. D: Tse's "sea monster".
Francis Galton (1822-1911) and Individual Differences
Born Birmingham;
Cousin of Darwin;
estimated IQ of 200
Educated in medicine and mathematics, later became an
explorer – Sudan, SW Africa – meteorology...
When his cousin published On the Origin of Species he
became interested in the idea of the heritability of
characteristics in humans.
Galton’s Influence
Galton made several major contributions to psychology:
1869 – Hereditary Genius: proposed that greatness or
genius occurred within families too often to be
attributable to environmental factors. Often, the specific
type of genius was inherited – music, science etc.
He founded the science of Eugenics: dedicated to
improving the hereditary qualities of the human race.
Wanted to encourage the birth of eminent people and
discourage the birth of the unfit.
Suggested “breeding” the more talented, like livestock, to
ensure that the offspring would be exceptional…
His work in this area led him to become interested in the
areas of measurement and statistical methods
Previously, Quetelet (a Belgian statistician) had been first
to apply statistical methods and the normal distribution to
human data.
Galton proposed that mental capacities may be similarly
distributed, e.g. intelligence.
He also arrived at an important tool in statistics – the
correlation (he called it “co-relation”):
For example, he found a way to quantify the relationship
between body size and head length
Later, his student Pearson went on to develop the
mathematical formula for correlation which is still used
today
Mental Tests
Galton developed a number of mental tests, assuming that
the measurement of sensory capacities could reveal
intelligence (agreeing with Locke’s view).
Invented apparatus to measure sound frequency
discrimination, a photometer (colour matching), measures
of reaction time, sensitivity to movement, olfactory
discrimination…
Founded his Anthropometric Laboratory in 1884 in
London.
Association
Galton was fascinated by the association of ideas, and the
speed at which they took place.
Famous “Pall Mall walk” – he would focus on an object
until it suggested one or more associated ideas. He
repeated the walk several days later and found high
consistency for many of the associations.
From this, he developed a Word Association Test
consisting of 75 words, each on a separate card – reaction
time taken to generate 2 associations was measured with a
stopwatch. Many associations originated in childhood…
This type of test is still used in some clinical contexts
today, and Carl Jung was to use it heavily in his work
Mental Imagery
Among the other things to interest Galton were mental
imagery, which led him to use a psychological
questionnaire extensively as subjects tried to recall, and
then generate an image of, what they had for breakfast.
He was horrified to discover that some people had little or
no capacity for generating mental imagery at all!
Later he concluded that imagery is normally distributed in
the population, with clarity and vividness varying
normally. Further, he also reported data which suggested
that it was also an hereditary capacity.
Also studied number forms, synaesthesia, paranoia etc.