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Module 2

1. Structuralism was founded in Germany in the late 19th century and aimed to analyze consciousness through introspection by describing the basic elements, how they are combined, and their connection to the nervous system. 2. A key figure was Edward Titchener who defined psychology as the analytic study of the normal adult mind through introspection. He believed conscious experience consisted of sensations, images, and affective states. 3. Titchener identified over 44,000 individual sensation qualities and used introspection to uncover the "atoms of the mind". However, structuralism and introspection were later criticized for producing inconsistent results across laboratories and not accounting for unconscious processes.

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40 views

Module 2

1. Structuralism was founded in Germany in the late 19th century and aimed to analyze consciousness through introspection by describing the basic elements, how they are combined, and their connection to the nervous system. 2. A key figure was Edward Titchener who defined psychology as the analytic study of the normal adult mind through introspection. He believed conscious experience consisted of sensations, images, and affective states. 3. Titchener identified over 44,000 individual sensation qualities and used introspection to uncover the "atoms of the mind". However, structuralism and introspection were later criticized for producing inconsistent results across laboratories and not accounting for unconscious processes.

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MODULE 2

Introduction
• Structuralism, a systematic movement founded in Germany
• Highly developed introspective psychology
• In 1898, in order to differentiate his perspective from the others, Titchener came
up with the name structural psychology or structuralism .
• Structuralism had the following aims:
• To describe the components of consciousness in terms of basic elements.
• To describe how these basic elements are combined.
• To explain the connections of the elements of consciousness to the nervous
system (i.e., physical processes).
The definition of psychology, according to structuralism is as
follows -
“psychology is the analytic study of the generalized adult normal
human mind through introspection.”
Antecedents of
Structuralism
• German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–
1894) measured the speed of the neural impulses and
explored the physiology of hearing and vision.
• His work indicated that our senses can deceive us and
are not a mirror of the external world.
• Helmholtz developed two major theories in
psychophysiology
• transduction of physical stimuli into nervous
impulses
• how qualitative, stimulus information is coded into
neural signals.
 Wundtian psychology has its roots in natural science
as it is adopts the methodology and analytic goals
common to physics, chemistry, and biology.

 The approach emphasizes that psychology should be


studied by defining psychological events in terms of
variables

 Introspection

 This system is sometimes also referred to as content


psychology, as its aim was to study the content of the
mind
Wilhelm Maximilian
Wundt (1832 – 1920)
Source: https://en.wikipedia.orgWilhelm Maximilian
Wundt (1832 – 1920)
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org
Titchener’s Structuralism
Titchener asserted that conscious experience is
the subject matter of psychology
conscious experience: real time experience
Titchener also talked about stimulus error which
is quantifying a object on the basis of it’s
physical properties
Subject matter is focusing on the sensations
Consciousness: sum or aggregate of our
Edward Bradford experiences as they exist at a given period of
Titchener (1867-1927)
Source: www.verywellmind.com time
Mind: sum or aggregate of our experiences as they exist at a given
period of time
Difference between consciousness and mind
consciousness consists of the mental processes occurring at a given
moment,
mind consists of the sum total of these processes

According to him, the purpose of psychology was not to reform societies


or cure sick minds, but to discover the facts of the structure of the mind
Introspection
Titchener described his method of introspection by using the term
systematic experimental introspection, which was given by Oswald
Külpe
• Titchener used subjective, detailed, qualitative reports of his subjects’
mental activities for the purpose of introspection, in a similar way as
used by Külpe
• Titchener’s aim was to uncover the so-called atoms of the mind.
• Titchner focused on the elements or on the parts of the consciousness
The Mechanistic Approach
The mechanistic spirit of philosophy also inspired Titchener, as can be
seen in his image of the observers who used to bring in the data in his
laboratory.
He actually thought that human beings are more like machines if we do
consider the observers in the laboratory to be machines.
This thinking was influenced by the Galilean-Newtonian mechanical view
of universe, an idea that continued to exist even after the slow death of
structuralism.
The Elements of Consciousness
Titchener proposed that psychology had three crucial goals:
To reduce conscious processes to their simplest components.
To identify laws by which these elements of consciousness were
associated.
To connect the elements with their physiological conditions.

Tichener’s research primarily focused on the first aspect


 Sensations

 Images
Affective states
Sensations: are the basic elements of perception and can occur in
the smells, sights, sounds, and other experiences that arise from
physical objects presentin the natural world.
• Images: are the elements of ideas that can be found in the process
that reflects past experiences,
• Affective states: or affections, are the elements of emotion and are found
in experiences like love, anger hate, happiness, sadness etc
In his book, An Outline of Psychology (1896), Titchener gave a list of all
the elements of sensation that he had discovered through his extensive
research.
The list included approximately 44,500 individual sensation qualities
11,600 were identified as auditory sensations, whereas the rest Structuralism
32,820 were identified as visual sensations

• Titchener believed that each of these elements was conscious and


different from all of the others that would combine with other
elements to give rise to perceptions and ideas
• Titchener added clearness and duration to the Wundtian attributes of
intensity and quality.
• Quality: is the characteristic, such as “warm” or “red” that explicitly differentiates
each element from every other element,
• Intensity refers to the strength, weakness, loudness, or brightness of a sensation,
• Duration is the course or time till a sensation lasts
• Clearness is concerned with the significant role that attention plays in conscious
experience; experience towards which our attention is directed is clearer than
experience towards which our attention is not
• directed.
Titchener added clearness and duration to the Wundtian attributes of
intensity and quality.
Quality: is the characteristic, such as “warm” or “red” that explicitly
differentiates each element from every other element,
Intensity: refers to the strength, weakness, loudness, or brightness of a
sensation,
Duration: is the course or time till a sensation lasts
Clearness: is concerned with the significant role that attention plays in
conscious experience; selective attention
Contributions of Structuralism
Their subject matter, conscious experience, was clearly defined.
Their research methods were in the highest traditions of science, as they
were based on observation, experimentation, and measurement.
The method of introspection: Also, responses on attitude scales and
personality tests or inventories, and clinical reports from patients etc. are all
introspective in nature.
Cognitive
processes such as reasoning that are based on introspection are
commonly used in psychology today; gather information
Finally, cognitive psychology also put greater emphasis on introspection
as its interest in conscious processes revived
Criticism
Definition of introspection; introspection can be thought of as a generic
term that includes a large number of specific methodical procedures.
The second source of criticism in Titchener’s methodology was the
training process of introspection, or precisely, the uncertainty about what
the introspectors were trained to do.
Observersat different laboratories frequently obtained different results,
even when experimental conditions were most rigidly controlled.
Yet another criticism of introspective method arose from the notion of the
unconscious mind, which was proposed by Sigmund Freud in the early
years of the 20th century.
Critics also argued that introspection was actually a form of retrospection,
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