A History of Psychology

Globalization, Ideas, and Applications

Robert B. Lawson, E. Doris Anderson, Antonio Cepeda-Benito

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780415788274
• eBook ISBN: 9781351846875
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Global, interdisciplinary, and engaging, this textbook integrates materials from philosophical and biological origins to the historical development of psychology. Its extensive coverage of women, minorities, and psychologists around the world emphasizes psychology as a global phenomenon while looking at both local and worldwide issues. This perspective highlights the relationship between psychology and the environmental context in which the discipline developed. In tracing psychology from its origins in early civilizations, ancient philosophy, and religions to modern science, technology, and applications, this book integrates overarching psychological principles and ideas that have shaped the global history of psychology, keeping an eye toward the future of psychology. Updated and revised throughout, this new edition also includes a new chapter on clinical psychology.

Section III
Schools of Psychology

8
Voluntarism and Structuralism

Chapter Overview

Learning Objectives

Introduction

Psychophysical Laws and Consciousness

Weber’s Law

Weber–Fechner Law

Stevens’ Law

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920)

Establishment of Psychology as an Independent Science

Voluntarism: The Subject Matter and Method of Study

The Composition of Consciousness

Apperception

Mental Chronometry

Völkerpsychologie or Cultural Psychology

Alternatives to Voluntarism

Franz Brentano (1838–1917) and Act Psychology

Oswald Külpe (1862–1915) and Imageless Thought

Edward Bradford Titchener (1867–1927) and Structuralism

The Origins of the Psychological Experiment

The Elements of Love

Summary

Chapter Overview

Psychology has gradually evolved into a science over the past 138 plus years. In the early formative years of psychology, it was the work of a few German scientists that launched the discipline as a separate science from biology, chemistry, physics, and the extensive influences of philosophy. Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795–1878) focused his psychological experiments upon psychophysics and consciousness by studying systematically the just noticeable difference (JND). The JND was defined as the difference between two stimuli detected accurately on 75% of the presented trials.

Gustav Fechner (1801–1887) argued for psychophysical parallelism, according to which the mental and physical worlds run parallel to each other but do not interact. Fechner developed the Weber–Fechner law, according to which the perceived intensity of a stimulus increases arithmetically as a constant multiple of the physical intensity of the stimulus or S = K Log R. In other words, changes of physical intensity gallop along at a brisk pace while the corresponding changes of perceived intensity creep along. The Weber and the Weber–Fechner laws were the first laws to provide a mathematical statement of the relationship between the mind and the body. Another significant contribution to the psychophysical foundations of psychology was made almost 100 years later when S. S. Stevens (1906–1973) demonstrated that psychological intensity (experiences of physical magnitudes) grows as an exponential function of physical stimulus intensity, that is, equal stimulus ratios always produce equal sensory ratios although different ratios hold for different sensory modalities (S = KΦ^b).

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) used Weber and Fechner’s work on the relationship between subjective and physical intensities as a key component in the establishment of psychology as an independent science. Voluntarism, as Wundt’s new psychology became known, focused upon the specific subject matter of immediate conscious experiences of an adult studied by systematic introspection. The use of systematic introspection or the more specific strategy known as internal perception, a narrow focus on verbal immediate responses to precisely controlled stimuli by trained observers, was an attempt to avoid committing the stimulus error. The stimulus error arises when the person focuses primarily upon a description of the stimulus instead of the conscious experience evoked by a stimulus.

Wundt’s interests were widely diversified and included topics such as mental chronometry and cultural psychology or Völkerpsychologie. Mental chronometry was a systematic laboratory method for measuring the speed of mental processes that included measurements of discrimination and choice reaction times. The primary objective of mental chronometry was to demonstrate that psychological or mind functions could be measured, studied scientifically, and yield consistent findings indicating that mind or psychological processes follow identifiable laws.

Some of Wundt’s contemporaries differed with him not only about the subject matter of psychology, but also the primary methods of study of psychological phenomena. For example, Franz Brentano (1838–1917) envisioned an alternative subject matter for psychology that focused upon the study of the activities or acts of the mind consisting of recall, feelings, and judging, his Act Psychology. Likewise, Oswald Külpe (1862–1915) focused upon the study of imageless thought. Külpe argued that some thoughts or ideas arose in consciousness without specific images, which ran directly opposite to Wundt’s psychology that consciousness always consisted of some combination of the three elements of consciousness (i.e., sensations, feelings, and images).

Edward Bradford Titchener (1867–1927) was responsible for introducing Wundt’s voluntarism to the United States under the name of structuralism.

Wundt’s conceptualization of the psychological experiment was the first in a series of three specific models that have been integral steps in the construction of the current psychological experiment as we know it today. The Leipzig or Wundtian model was characterized by the lack of distinction between the ideas of experimenter and subject as they were interchangeable roles. The Parisian model did not permit the interchange of roles between the experimenter and the subject as in the Leipzig model, but rather established rigid experimenter–subject (or doctor–patient) roles considered critical for objective experimentation. Finally, the American model, the most recent model, introduced the study of populations, samples, and groups of persons rather than only the study of individuals, leading to an emphasis on keeping individual subjects anonymous and constructing experimental protocols requiring relatively brief experimenter–subject contacts.

Recently, psychologists taking the lead from Wundt’s analysis of consciousness into three components (sensations, feelings, and images) have studied systematically human love and identified three components of love. Specifically, the triangular theory of love describes the three elements of love: intimacy, passion, and decision or commitment. According to this theory, it is possible to have combinations of some or all of these three elements that yield different types of love. Love that is referred to as liking is the combination of experiences of the intimacy component of love in the absence of passion and decision commitment, while romantic love is the combination of intimacy and passion causing lovers to be drawn not only physically to each other, but also with an emotional bond yet without necessarily a long-term commitment. The combination of all three elements of love is consummate love and is very difficult to maintain once it is reached.

Learning Objectives

When you finish studying this chapter, you will be prepared to:

• Define the relationship between the mental and physical worlds as described by the psychophysical laws proposed by E. H. Weber, G. T. Fechner, and S. S. Stevens.
• Identify and define Fechner’s three psychophysical methods
• Describe the role that psychophysics played in the development of Wundt’s psychology of voluntarism
• Explain the challenges that psychology faced in the early years as an independent science
• Identify the subject matter (immediate conscious experience) and method of study (systematic introspection of conscious experiences) of Wundt’s new psychology, voluntarism
• Describe the elements of consciousness according to Wilhelm Wundt
• Explain and define simple, discrimination, and choice reaction times as expressions of mental chronometry
• Compare and contrast the work of Franz Brentano and Oswald Külpe to that of Wundt
• Describe E. B. Titchener’s study of consciousness and his core context theory of meaning
• Define and distinguish between Wundt’s voluntarism and Titchner’s structuralism
• Explain the social development of the psychology experiment
• Identify the three components of the triangular theory of love

Introduction

The majority of what we take for granted today in the field of psychology in many respects is the direct result of pioneers such as Ernst Heinrich Weber, Gustav Theodor Fechner, Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt, and Edward Bradford Titchener. The foundation of the current field of psychology, not even considering the subfields and clinical practices, are based on findings from their early basic research utilizing laboratory experiments. The psycho-physicists such as Weber and Fechner and much later S. S. Stevens introduced the strategy of examining the relationship between the physical and mental worlds by deriving mathematical equations that arose from empirical laboratory-based experiments.

Wundt was then successful in introducing this view of rigorous study of psychological phenomena into somewhat controlled laboratory experiments. Accordingly, Wundt defined the subject matter of psychology and established the first laboratory and method of study for psychology. Although his early methods have changed and have been expanded greatly as the science has grown, his was the first step toward the empirical basis of laboratory research in psychology.

Psychophysical Laws and Consciousness

Psychophysics set out to describe and understand how the intensity of sensory experiences related to the physical intensity of stimuli and to determine if a lawful relationship existed between the physical and subjective worlds. In the beginning, psychophysics provided laboratory-based tools to determine the relationship between the mental and physical worlds, and also set the stage for the importance of defining the subject matter and methods of study in the subsequent schools of psychology, beginning with Wundt’s voluntarism.

Weber’s Law

Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795–1878) was a professor of anatomy at the University of Leipzig, where his earlier studies in anatomy, biology, physiology, and physics prepared him, along with his brother, to discover the utility of excitatory and inhibitory functions of the central nervous system. Later his interests shifted toward the study of sensations arising from the skin and muscles, which led him to publish a classic in experimental psychology in 1834, The Sense of Touch (Weber, 1978).

Weber was interested in determining how we detect or become aware of the difference in intensities between two stimuli, which we do automatically on a daily basis when, for example, we lift objects and notice one just heavier than another, or when we turn up the volume on our radio or television so we can hear it just a little more loudly. Weber found that the judgments we make of the intensive differences between two stimuli are relative rather than absolute. For example, if we had one canister or box filled with sand and this standard stimulus weighed 120 grams, the question then becomes how much do we have to change (increase or decrease) the weight of another canister or box (the comparison stimulus) to just notice the difference in weight between these two stimuli. In this example for lifted weights, Weber found consistently that he had to add (or subtract) 3 grams to the comparison stimulus for the difference to be just noticed reliably (i.e., on 75% of the test trials). Thus, the relative difference between two weights had to be 1/40 to detect reliably the difference between the weights of the two objects.

Put another way, K = Δ I/I, where K is the experience of the just noticeable difference (JND), Δ I is the amount of change of the physical intensity of the comparison stimulus over the standard stimulus or I (Weber, 1978). Thus, to just notice the difference consistently between a standard stimulus, say, of 200 grams, the other lifted weight (the comparison stimulus) had to weigh now 5 grams more (205 grams) to be perceived consistently as just heavier or 5 grams less (195 grams) to be perceived consistently as just lighter than the standard. Ratios between the intensities of stimuli matter rather than the absolute differences between the intensities of the stimuli. K = Δ I/I is known as Weber’s Law and was the first mathematical statement that described the relationship between the physical and psychological worlds.

In general, the Weber fraction varies from one sensory system to another, and is valid only over the middle of the intensive continuum for any sensory system. Thus, for example, the Weber fraction is 1/50 for length so if the length of a line (the standard stimulus) was 100 millimeters (just a little more than 3¾ inches) then the comparison stimulus or other line would have to be 104 millimeters long (just a little more than 4 inches) to be perceived consistently as just longer, while the comparison would have to be 96 millimeters to be perceived consistently shorter than the standard of 100 millimeters. However, the just noticeable differences for very heavy or very light weights or very long or very short lines would yield Weber fractions much larger than the above 1/40 and 1/50, respectively. Albeit, Weber’s findings were all that some others needed to make the case that the mind or psychological functions could be measured and psychology could be considered a separate discipline distinct from philosophy and biology although arising from and related to both of these disciplines.

Weber–Fechner Law

Gustav T. Fechner (1801–1887) was a trained physician who argued for psychophysical parallelism, according to which the mental and physical worlds run parallel to each other but without direct interaction. After graduating with his MD in 1822, he focused his work strictly on physics. His interest in a demonstrable relationship between the mind and body emerged following his resignation from his position as the chair of physics at the University of Leipzig in 1838, as a result of severe emotional exhaustion. His emotional disturbance was a reaction to what he perceived as permanent blindness; however, when he regained his sight, his emotional health improved as well. He resumed his faculty position at the University of Leipzig in 1848 as a professor of philosophy rather than as professor of physics.

His program of work in psychophysics began with the publication of Zend Avesta, On Concerning Matters of Heaven and the Hereafter (Fechner, 1851). This magnum opus contained the psychophysical law that bears his name, which came to him in a dream on the morning of October 22, 1850, when he had an insight that there must be a measurable relationship between sensory and physical intensities. According to the Weber–Fechner Law, the perceived intensity of a stimulus increases arithmetically while physical intensity gallops along as a constant multiple of physical intensity, or S = K Log R. In this equation, S is the perceived intensity, K is a constant, and Log R is the logarithmic function of the physical intensity of the stimulus. The logarithmic function describes sensation as growing in equal steps (arithmetically) while the corresponding stimulus intensity continually increases as a function of a constant multiple (geometrically). Thus, larger and larger outputs of stimulus energy are required to obtain corresponding sensory incremental ef...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Brief Contents
• Contents
• Preface
• Timeline of Philosophy and Psychology in the Context of General History
• SECTION I The Present: Globalization, Psychology, and History
• SECTION II Early Philosophical and Biological Foundations of Scientific Psychology
• SECTION III Schools of Psychology
• SECTION IV Diversity in Psychology
• SECTION V Applied Psychology
• Epilogue
• References
• Name Index
• Subject Index