Download - Chapter 8: Structure or Function? A History of Psychology (3rd Edition) John G. Benjafield
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Chapter 8: Structure or Function?
A History of Psychology
(3rd Edition)
John G. Benjafield
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Edward B. Titchener (1867–1927)
• Graduated from Oxford
• 1890–1892: Studied with Wundt at Leipzig
• Established psychological laboratory at Cornell University, Ithaca
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Titchener’s Method
• Believed ‘the unconscious’ = fiction• Introspection: process by which individuals
describe their experience• Psychophysical parallelism: by referring to events
in the nervous system we may be able to explain mental processes without regarding those events in the nervous system as causing mental processes
• Psychology = the study of the generalized human mind by means of experimental introspection
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Phases of Titchener’s Career
1. 1890s: Titchener established the basic characteristics of his introspectionist approach
– Structural vs. functional psychology
2. First decade of the twentieth century: Titchener was preoccupied with methodological issues
– Experimental Psychology
3. Until 1915: Titchener was taken up with defending himself against various critics
– Ex. imageless thought controversy
4. Titchener made some radical changes to his previous beliefs
– Consciousness
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Structuralism
• Structuralism: aimed to uncover the elementary structures of mind
= Titchener’s psychology
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Experimental Psychology
• Provides details about how a beginner student in experimental psychology can acquire the fundamental skills of the discipline
• Explains that a psychological experiment consists of an introspection or a series of introspections made under standard conditions
• Content divided into two parts:– Qualitiative – Quantitative
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Imageless Thought Controversy
• Critics: the Würzburgers– Reported that introspection often yielded
nothing more clear and distinct than imageless thoughts
– The concept of imageless thought was inconsistent with Titchener’s way of analyzing mental processes
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Dimensions of Consciousness
• Titchener developed an abstract approach to the study of consciousness
• Stressed the analysis of consciousness in terms of dimensions
• Never settled the questions of what dimensions of consciousness were or how many there were – He died before producing the great work on
the subject that many of his students expected
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Boring and the Dimensions of Consciousness
• E.G. Boring published an account of what he considered to be Titchener’s central views
• Singled out four dimensions for discussion: – Quality, intensity, extensity, and protensity
• These dimensions all refer to sensory experience
• Noted the phenomenological nature of the dimensional approach to experience
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Titchener’s Influence
• Little left of the content of Titchener’s system to influence subsequent generations of psychologists– His method of introspection received less and
less support
• Proposition that psychology was an experimental discipline continued to receive widespread support in academic psychology
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Functionalism
• Set out to violate the strictures that Titchener tried to place on psychology
• Open to methods other than introspection– Attempts to select the method to fit the particular
problem
• Interested in what function psychological processes serve
• Focus on how organisms adapt to their environment
• Attempts to be practical as well as scholarly
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John Dewey (1859–1952)
• Undergraduate at the University of Vermont
• 1884: PhD in philosophy at Johns Hopkins
• 1894: joined the University of Chicago– Chair of the Department of Philosophy,
Psychology, and Education
• 1904–1930: Teacher’s College at Columbia University
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Reflex Arc Concept
• Paper contains:– A criticism of the reflex concept as
elementaristic and mechanistic– A positive statement of a more organic
approach to psychological phenomena
• Suggested that a stimulus is created by an organism through the act of paying attention to something
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Dewey’s Influence on Educational Practice
• Teachers influenced by the psychological assumptions they make about children and the educational process
• Children and adults are different – Adult is already in possession of cognitive abilities
that the child is only in the process of developing
• Argued against teaching the 3Rs • Progressive education movement
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James R. Angell (1869–1949)
• Studied with both Dewey and James
• 1894: Professor of Psychology at Chicago
• Did not believe in restricting psychology to laboratory investigation
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Robert S. Woodworth (1869–1962)
• Background in mathematics and physiology
• 1903: Taught Psychology at Columbia
• 1942: Retirement– Continued to be extremely productive
• Wrote an introductory text, Psychology– Sold over 400,000 copies between 1922 and
1939
• 1938: wrote Experimental Psychology
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S-O-R Framework
• S-O-R– S = stimulus– R = response– O = organism (subject)
• W-O-W– O = organsim– W = world (environment)
• Set: similar in meaning to the determining tendency of the Würzburgers– Combination formula: W-S-Ow-R-W
• Ow = individual’s adjustment to the environment, or set
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Intelligence Testing
• Functionalism created a climate in America within which applied psychology could flourish– Ex. emergence of intelligence tests in the
United States
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James McKeen Cattell (1860–1944)
• Trained with Wundt at Leipzig
• Year at Cambridge– Became acquainted with Sir Francis Galton’s
methods
• Cattell spent much of his career at Columbia University to the further development of measures of individual differences
• 1890: first to introduce the term mental test
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Examples of Cattell’s Mental Tests
Test Description
Dynamometer pressure Strength of hand squeeze
Rate of movement How quickly the hand can be moved a distance of 50cm
Sensation of areas Two-point threshold: How far apart on the skin must two stimuli be in order to be detected as two and not just as one
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Alfred Binet (1857–1911)
• Invented the most influential form of intelligence test – In collaboration with Theophile Simon– Test to discriminate between normal and
subnormally intelligent children
• The Binet-Simon scale allows children to be compared in terms of their mental age– Mental age: determined by the age level of the
items a child can pass
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Examples of Binet and Simon’s Items
Age Item
3 Give family name
4 Repeat three numbers
5 Compare two weights
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Evolution of Binet and Simon’s Test
• Lewis M. Terman– Developed the most successful adaptation of the
Binet-Simon scale in an American context = Stanford-Binet
– Innovation of the intelligence quotient, or IQ
• William Stern– IQ obtained by dividing the person’s mental age (MA)
by his or her chronological age (CA)
100xCA
MAIQ
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Army Intelligence Testing
• 1917: Robert M. Yerkes appointed chair of a committee to investigate how psychology could contribute to the war effort
• The tests that Yerkes and his group developed were derived from many sources, including the Binet tests– Army Alpha = literate soldiers; Army Beta = illiterate
soldiers• Group test administration• Problems:
– Cultural bias– National differences in intelligence– Racial differences in intelligence
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What is ‘Intelligence’?
• Acquired? Innate?
• Binet: intelligence as a collection of different skills
• Boring: capacity to do well in an intelligence test
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Psychology in Business
As the mental testing industry was beginning to develop, the application of psychology to problems of interest to
business was also emerging as a discipline.
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Frederick W. Taylor (1856–1915)
• Lifetime focus on efficiency
• Scientific management– Ex. Bethlehem Steel Company
• Methods developed further by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth – Time and motion study
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Elton Mayo (1880–1949)
• 1926: National Research Council studied the effect of changes in the level of lighting in the Western Electric Plant in Hawthorne, Illinois on workers’ output
• Mayo became part of a group called in to investigate
• Hawthorne effect: any change in work conditions increases output
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Taylor vs. Mayo
Taylor
• Assumed that an individual is motivated by self-interest
• Focused on individual behaviour seen as a collection of bodily movements
Mayo
• Saw the individual as motivated by the interests of the group to which the person belonged
• Focused on behaviour as determined by the quality of one’s interpersonal relationships
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Comparative Psychology
• Comparative psychology: understanding the evolution of behaviour through the comparison of different species
• George John Romanes– Mind = subject matter– Anthropomorphic – Continuity– Criticism: anecdotal
• C. Lloyd Morgan– Experimental approach to study of animal behaviour– Canon
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Edward L. Thorndike (1874–1949)
• Research animal intelligence• Puzzle box: apparatus assembled by
Thorndike out of wood • Procedure:
– Cat placed in puzzle box with food outside– Cat required to pull on a string; push a latch
• Thorndike concluded that the cat did not use reason to escape
• Law of Effect