History of Psychology

LECTURE 1
 Why study History?

Early developments in the field of psychology

help us understand the nature of psychology in
the twenty-first century
 The Development of Modern Psychology

• The origins of the field we call psychology can be traced to two

different time periods, some 2,000 years apart. Thus, psychology
is among the oldest of all scholarly disciplines as well as one of
the newest

• Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek philosophers (Vth

century BC) - Ideas and speculations about human nature and
behavior: memory, learning, motivation, thought, perception,
and abnormal behavior

• Ancient philosophical writings later became included in the

formal discipline of Psychology
 The Development of Modern
Psychology
…. 19th century philosophers studied human nature by
speculating, intuiting, and generalizing based on their own
experience

Transformation when philosophers applied tools and methods

like biological and physical sciences to explore questions about
human nature
Psychology distinguished itself from Philosophy
Researchers came to rely on carefully controlled
observation and experimentation to study the human
mind
 The Development of Modern
Psychology
Early philosophical approaches to questions of
human nature as the “prehistory” of modern
psychology - Kurt Danziger

“history of psychology is limited to the period

when psychology recognizably emerges as a
disciplinary subject matter and that it is extremely
problematical to talk about psychology as having a
history before that”
(Danziger, quoted in Brock, 2006, p. 12)
 The Development of Modern
Psychology
The idea that the methods of the physical and biological sciences
could be applied to the study of mental phenomena was
inherited from both philosophical thought and physiological
investigations of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.

19th Century
Philosophers  clearing the way for an experimental attack on
the functioning of the mind
Physiologists  understanding the bodily mechanisms
underlying mental processes
Philosophical influences on
Psychology

The Mind Body Problem

1596–1650
Rene Descartes….
• Descartes’s most important work for the development of
modern psychology was his attempt to resolve the mind-
body problem
• Before Descartes, the accepted theory was that the
interaction between mind and body flowed essentially in one
direction. The mind could exert an enormous influence on the
body, but the body had little effect on the mind
• Descartes’s theory : the mind influences the body but the
body exerts a greater influence on the mind than previously
supposed
• The relationship is not unidirectional, but mutual
 Positivism
19th Century -- European philosophical thought
infused with a new spirit: positivism

Positivism (Auguste Comte,): The doctrine that

recognizes only natural phenomena or facts that
are objectively observable
1798–1857
Comte….
• Comte undertook a systematic survey of all
human knowledge
 those facts that had been determined
solely through the methods of science

• His positivistic approach was based exclusively

on facts that are objectively observable and
not debatable
 Materialism

• The doctrine that considers the facts of the

universe to be sufficiently explained in physical
terms by the existence and nature of matter

• The materialists’ work on mental processes

focused on physical properties— the anatomical
and physiological structures of the brain
Empiricism

• The pursuit of knowledge through the

observation of nature and the attribution of
all knowledge to experience
 Positivism, materialism, and
empiricism became the philosophical
foundations of the new science of
psychology

Of these three philosophical orientations, empiricism played

the major role. Empiricism could be related to the growth of
the mind; that is, to how the mind acquires knowledge.
According to the empiricist view, the mind grows through the
progressive accumulation of sensory experiences
 British Empiricists
creative synthesis— the
proper combining of mental
elements always produces
some distinct quality that was
not present in the elements
themselves John
Locke,

John
Stuart George
Mill Berkeley

Analysis of the James David

Phenomena of the Mill Hartley
Human Mind (1829)
Mind is a machine
Physiological influences on
Psychology
David Kinnebrook Makes a Mistake: The
Importance of the Human Observer

David Kinnebrook’s work was lonely, tedious, and highly demanding.

He had to live in the same building where he worked and had to be
available from 7 in the morning until 10 at night, seven days a week. In
addition, many nights an alarm bell rang in his tiny bedroom,
summoning him to work again. For this he was paid a tiny salary, given
three meals a day, and, he had his shoes shined

He worked in the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England

The year was 1795
He held the job one year, eight months, and 22 days before he was
fired – for making an error in his observation (on time taken by a star
to pass from one point to the other) The error could not be altered
and when it was 8/10th of a second he was fired
 Physiological influences on Psychology
• 20 years later Wilhelm Bessel a German astronomer
interested in errors of measurement suspected that the so-
called mistakes made by Kinnerbrook were attributable to
individual differences—personal differences among people
over which they have no control

• Bessel’s work resulted in focus on the role of the human

observer to account fully for the results of their
experiments
 The study of human sense organs—those
physiological mechanisms through which we
receive information about our world—as a way
of investigating the psychological processes of
sensing and perceiving
 Physiological influences on Psychology
Physiology became an experimentally oriented
discipline during the 1830s, primarily under the influence of the
German physiologist Johannes Müller (1801–1858), who
advocated the use of the experimental method

Research on Brain Functions: Mapping from the Inside

• Marshall Hall (1790–1857) – reflex behaviour
• Pierre Flourens (1794–1867) - concluded that the cerebrum
controls higher mental processes, parts of the midbrain
control visual and auditory reflexes, the cerebellum controls
coordination, and the medulla governs heartbeat, respiration,
and other vital functions
 Physiological influences on Psychology

Paul Broca (1824–1880) - Broca performed an autopsy on a man

who for many years had been unable to speak intelligibly. The
clinical examination revealed a lesion in the third frontal
convolution of the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex. Broca
labeled this section of the brain the speech center; later it came
to be known, appropriately, as Broca’s area
Research on Brain Functions: Mapping from the
Outside
• Franz Josef Gall (1758–1828) - dissected the brains of
deceased animals and humans
Gall believed that a mental characteristic (conscientiousness,
benevolence, or self-esteem) when well developed would
correspond to a protrusion or bulge on the surface of the skull in
the area controlling that characteristic. If that ability was weak,
there would be an indentation in the skull
Gall mapped the location of 35 human attributes
• Research on nerve impulses and
electrical stimulation - Santiago Ramón y Cajal
(1852–1934)

Schultz, 2011
The Mechanistic Spirit…

• In 1840s a movement to connect all phenomena to Physics

was established - the Berlin Physical Society

• So nineteenth-century physiology:
materialism, mechanism, empiricism, experimentation,
and measurement

• The next step was to apply the experimental method to the

mind itself
 The Beginnings
of
Experimental Psychology
ESTABLISHING PSYCHOLOGY
AS A SCIENCE
Lecture 2
The Beginnings of Experimental
Psychology
Role of Scientific Revolution in society
• The achievements of the scientific
revolution represented the
beginning of enlightened thought
• During 17th and 18th centuries
when confidence in human
reason and experience 
superseded faith in religion and
traditional authority
The first experimental Physiologists…
Four scientists applying the experimental method to the mind - the subject
matter of the new psychology were:
• Hermann von Helmholtz
• Ernst Weber
• Gustav Theodor Fechner
• Wilhelm Wundt

All were German scientists who had been trained in physiology, and all were
aware of the impressive developments in modern science
Why GERMANY?
• Experimental physiology was firmly
established and recognized to a degree not
yet achieved in France and England

• Biology was accepted slowly by scientific

communities of England and France

• Germany, with its faith in taxonomic

description and classification, welcomed
biology to its family of sciences
Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894)
• He was one of the greatest scientists of the nineteenth
century, was a prolific researcher in physics and
physiology – Attended medical school and served the
army for 7 years

• Psychology ranked third among his areas of scientific

contribution, yet his work, together with that of
Fechner and Wundt, was instrumental in beginning
the new psychology

• He emphasized a mechanistic and deterministic

approach, assuming that the human sense organs
functioned like machines. He also liked technical
analogies, such as comparing the transmission of
nerve impulses to the operation of the telegraph
Archives of the History of American Psychology/
University of Akron
Helmholtz’s Contributions to the New Psychology
• Major investigations involved:
• Speed of neural impulse
• Vision
• Hearing
 The speed of the neural impulse
• Scientists had assumed that the nerve
impulse was instantaneous it traveled too
fast to be measured

• Helmholtz  first empirical measurement of

the rate of conduction by stimulating a motor
nerve and the attached muscle in the leg of
a frog
• He recorded the precise moment of stimulation and of the resulting movement in the leg
muscle of the frog

• Working with nerves of different length, he recorded the delay between:

(a) stimulation of the nerve near the muscle and the muscle’s response
(b) stimulation farther from the muscle

These measurements yielded the conduction speed of the neural impulse: 90 feet per second
Helmholtz’ Experiments on human subjects…
• Reaction time for sensory nerves in human subjects  studying the complete
circuit from stimulation of a sense organ to the resulting motor response

• Implications for Psychology:

• Helmholtz’s demonstration that the speed of conduction was not instantaneous

suggested that thought and movement follow each other at a measurable interval and
do not occur simultaneously, as had been thought

• Helmholtz’s work was one of the earliest instances of experimentation and

measurement for a psychophysiological process
 Helmholtz experiments on Vision and Audition

• Helmholtz investigated the external eye muscles and the mechanism

by which internal eye muscles focus the lens
• Theory of color vision  published in 1802 by Thomas Young, and this
work is now known as the Young-Helmholtz theory of color vision

• Theory of audition  the perception of tones, the nature of harmony

and discord, and the problem of resonance
Helmholtz’s Contributions to the New Psychology
• Major investigations involved:
• Speed of neural impulse
• Vision
• Hearing

• He contributed a large and important body of knowledge to the study of

the human senses

• His work helped strengthen the experimental approach to the study of

topics that would become central to the new psychology
 Ernst Weber (1795–1878)

• He earned his doctorate at the University of

Leipzig in 1815 and taught anatomy and
physiology there from 1817 until his retirement in
1871
• His primary research interest was the physiology
of the sense organs
• He applied physiology’s experimental methods to
problems of a psychological nature
• Weber explored cutaneous senses and muscular
sensations

Archives of the History of American Psychology/

University of Akron
What should be the difference between two
points for us to be able to distinguish it as
two sensations?
 Two-Point Thresholds
• Weber’s experimentally determined the accuracy of the two-point discrimination of
the skin — that is, the distance between two points that must be spanned before
subjects report feeling two distinct sensations

• Without looking at the apparatus, which resembles a drawing compass, subjects

are asked to report whether they feel one or two points touching the skin

• When the two points of stimulation are close together, subjects report a sensation
of being touched at only one point. As the distance between the two sources of
stimulation is increased, subjects report uncertainty about whether they feel one or
two sensations. Finally, a distance is reached where subjects report two distinct
points of touch
 Two-Point Thresholds

This procedure demonstrates the two-point threshold the point at which the two
separate sources of stimulation can be distinguished

Weber’s research marks the first systematic, experimental demonstration of the

concept of threshold  the point at which a psychological effect begins to be
produced
How do we know one weight is heavier than
another?

- The Development of Psychology’s first quantitative law

 Weber: Just Noticeable Differences
Weber’s research led to the formulation of psychology’s first quantitative law

• He wanted to determine the just noticeable difference (jnd)—that is, the smallest
difference between weights that could be detected

• He asked his subjects to lift two weights—

a standard weight and a comparison weight
and to report whether one felt heavier than the other
• Small differences between the weights resulted in
judgments of sameness;
large differences resulted in judgments of disparity
between the weights
 Weber: Just Noticeable Differences
• Weber found that the just noticeable difference between two weights was a
constant ratio, 1:40, of the standard weight

Example:

A weight of 41 grams was

reported to be “just noticeably
different” from a standard
weight of 40 grams, and an 82-
gram weight was just noticeably
different from a standard weight
of 80 grams
 Weber: Just Noticeable Differences
How can muscle sensations contribute to a person’s ability to distinguish between the
weights?

• Subjects could detect smaller differences between the weights when the weights were
lifted (a ratio of 1:40) than when the weights were placed in the hand (a ratio of 1:30)

Hefting the weights  tactile (touch) and muscular sensations

Placed in palms  tactile sensations

Weber concluded that the internal muscular sensations in the first instance
must have an influence on the individual’s judgements
 Weber’s Contribution to Psychology
Weber suggested that discrimination among sensations depended not on the absolute difference
between two weights but on their relative difference or ratio

Weber’s research showed that there does not exist a direct correspondence between a
physical stimulus and our perception of it

• His research provided a method for investigating the relationship between body and
mind—between the stimulus and the resulting sensation

Weber’s experiments stimulated additional research and focused the attention of

later physiologists on the usefulness of the experimental method for studying
psychological phenomena
Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887)
• He began medical studies at the University of
Leipzig in 1817, and while there he attended
Weber’s lectures on physiology

• Before graduating from medical school, Fechner’s

humanistic viewpoint rebelled against the
prevailing mechanism of his scientific training

• Under the pen name “Dr. Mises” he wrote

satirical essays ridiculing medicine and science

• Troubled by the current atomistic approach to

Archives of the History of American Psychology/
University of Akron
science, he subscribed to the “day view”— the
universe can be regarded from the standpoint of
consciousness
 Mind and Body: A Quantitative Relationship
• October 22, 1850, is a significant date in the history of psychology. While lying in bed that morning,
Fechner had a flash of insight :-

the connection between mind and body could be found in a quantitative relationship
between a mental sensation and a material stimulus
 Fechner: An increase in the intensity of a
stimulus does not produce a one-to-one
increase in the intensity of the sensation.
Rather, a geometric series characterizes
the stimulus and an arithmetic series
characterizes the sensation

Example: adding the sound of one bell to that of an already ringing bell
produces a greater increase in sensation than adding one bell to 10
others already ringing

This means that the amount of sensation (the mental quality) depends on the amount of
stimulation (the physical quality)

To measure the change in sensation, we must measure the change in stimulation

Thus, it is possible to formulate a quantitative or numerical relationship between the
mental and material worlds
Fechner proposed two ways to measure sensations:

1. we can determine whether a stimulus is present or absent, sensed or not

sensed
2. we can measure the stimulus intensity at which subjects report that the
sensation first occurs  Absolute threshold of sensitivity

Absolute threshold: The point of sensitivity

below
. which no sensations can be detected
and above which sensations can be Differential threshold:
experienced The point of sensitivity
at which the least
amount of change in a
By how much must a weight be increased or stimulus gives rise to a
decreased before subjects will sense the change— change in sensation
before they will report a just noticeable difference in
sensation?
 Fechner’s Contribution to Psychology

The immediate result of Fechner’s insight was his research on

psychophysics - the relationship between the mental [psycho-] and
material [physics] worlds

Fechner crossed the barrier between

body and mind
by relating
one to the other empirically
making it possible
to conduct experiments on the mind
 The Formal Founding of Psychology
Middle of the nineteenth century  the methods of the natural sciences were being used to investigate
purely mental phenomena

New techniques developed, apparatus devised, important books written, and widespread interest
aroused

British empirical philosophers and astronomers emphasized the importance of the senses, and
German scientists were describing how the senses functioned. The positivist intellectual spirit of the
times, encouraged the convergence of these two lines of thought. Still lacking, however, was someone
to bring them together, someone to “found” the new science

This final touch was provided by Wilhelm Wundt

Thank you
ESTABLISHING PSYCHOLOGY AS
A SCIENCE
Lecture 3
 The Beginnings of
Experimental Psychology
The first experimental Physiologists…

Four scientists applying the experimental method to the mind -

the subject matter of the new psychology were:
• Hermann von Helmholtz
• Ernst Weber
• Gustav Theodor Fechner
• Wilhelm Wundt

All were German scientists who had been trained in physiology,

and all were aware of the impressive developments in modern
science
 Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887)
• He began medical studies at the University
of Leipzig in 1817, and while there he
attended Weber’s lectures on physiology

• During medical school, Fechner’s

humanistic viewpoint rebelled against the
prevailing scientific training
• He did not have faith in the current
atomistic approach to science, but believed
Science should be regarded from the
standpoint of consciousness

Archives of the History of American Psychology/

• Under the pen name “Dr. Mises” he wrote
University of Akron satirical essays ridiculing medicine and
science
Mind and Body: A Quantitative relationship

• October 22, 1850 - Fechner had a flash of insight :-

the connection between mind and body could be found in a

quantitative relationship between a mental sensation and a
material stimulus
 Fechner: An increase in the intensity of a
stimulus does not produce a one-to-one
increase in the intensity of the sensation

Rather, a geometric series characterizes the

stimulus and an arithmetic series
characterizes the sensation

Example: adding the sound of one bell to that of an already

ringing bell produces a greater increase in sensation than
adding one bell to 10 others already ringing

This means that the amount of sensation (the mental quality) depends on
the amount of stimulation (the physical quality)

To measure the change in sensation, we must measure the change in

stimulation
Thus, it is possible to formulate a quantitative or numerical relationship
between the mental and material worlds
 Fechner’s Contribution to Psychology

The immediate result of Fechner’s insight was his research on

psychophysics - the relationship between the mental [psycho-] and
material [physics] worlds

Fechner crossed the barrier between

body and mind
by relating
one to the other empirically
making it possible
to conduct experiments on the mind
 The Formal Founding of
Psychology
By the middle of the nineteenth century, the methods of the natural sciences were
being used to investigate purely mental phenomena

Techniques developed, apparatus devised, widespread interest aroused

British empirical philosophers and astronomers emphasized the importance of the

senses, and German scientists were describing how the senses functioned. The
positivist intellectual spirit of the times encouraged the convergence of these two
lines of thought. Still lacking, however, was someone to bring them together,
someone to “found” the new science

This final touch was provided by Wilhelm Wundt

The New Psychology
 No Multitasking Allowed
Wilhelm Wundt had never heard of multitasking

Even if he had, he would not have believed it was possible to pay

attention to more than one stimulus or to engage in more than
one mental activity at precisely the same moment in time, such
as sending a text message and noticing a clown on the campus

No one had heard of multitasking in the middle of the

nineteenth century before there were phones of any kind, much
less instant messages, e-mail, videogames, and other electronic
gadgets simultaneously claiming our time and attention
1861 – Germany -- Wilhelm Wundt (29-year-old) researcher in
physiology and a part-time lecturer at the University of
Heidelberg - teaching basic laboratory techniques to
undergraduate students

In his makeshift lab at home, he was attempting to conduct

research to spark the development of the new science of
psychology
Wundt’s interest in David Kinnebrook
Wundt interested in Friedrich Bessel’s (German astronomer)
“personal equation,”
- the errors of measurement among astronomers that had led to
the firing of David Kinnebrook back in 1796

Wundt was intrigued with:

the systematic differences between astronomers in their
measures of the passage of stars across grid lines in telescopes.
These slight differences [a mere half-second with Kinnebrook and
Maskelyne depended on whether the astronomer first focused
his attention on the star or on his timing device
 Wundt’s experiment…
If the observer looked first at the star, he obtained one reading
If he looked at the grid line first, he made a slightly different
reading
It was impossible for the observer to focus his attention on both
objects at the same instant

Wundt’s interest in this problem led him to modify a pendulum

clock so that it presented both an auditory and a visual stimulus,
in this case a bell and a pendulum swinging past a fixed point. He
called the instrument a Gedankenmesser, meaning “thought
meter” or “mind gauge,”
and he used it to measure the mental process of perceiving the
two stimuli
 Wundt’s experiment…
Inferences drawn: it was impossible to perceive two things at
the same moment
He could either attend to the sound of the bell or to the sight of
the pendulum passing a specific point

The results of his measurements showed that it took one-eighth

of a second to register both stimuli sequentially. To the casual
observer, the stimuli appeared to occur simultaneously, but not
to the trained researcher

With this discovery, Wilhelm Wundt had measured the mind

 Wundt – far ahead of his time

“consciousness holds only a single thought, a single perception.

When it appears as if we have several percepts simultaneously,
we are deceived by their quick succession”

Relevance in daily life: distracting effects of text messaging

while driving, poor performance on a cognitive task while
multitasking
 The Founding Father of Modern Psychology

• Wundt was the founder of psychology as a formal academic

discipline
• He established the first laboratory, edited the first journal,
and began experimental psychology as a science
• He investigated the areas —sensation and perception,
attention, feeling, reaction, and association
Why have the honors for founding the
new psychology fallen to
Wundt and not
Fechner?
 Founding father of Modern Psychology
• Wundt’s contribution to the founding of modern psychology
stems not so much from any unique scientific discovery as
from his vigorous promotion, or selling, of the idea of
systematic experimentation

• Fechner’s objective was to understand the relationship

between the mental and material worlds. He sought to
describe a unified conception of mind and body that had a
scientific basis
• Wundt’s goal was to promote psychology as an independent
science

And David Kinnebrook never knew the part he played!!

 “The work I here present to the public is an attempt to mark
out a new domain of science.”
Wilhelm Wundt, first edition of his Principles of Physiological
Psychology (1873–1874)

Although Wundt is considered to have founded psychology, he

did not originate it  psychology emerged from a long line of
creative efforts
The study of conscious experience
• Wundt’s psychology relied on the experimental methods of the
natural sciences, particularly the techniques used by the
physiologists

• The Zeitgeist in physiology and philosophy helped shape both the

methods of investigation of the new psychology and its subject
matter

• The subject matter of Wundt’s psychology was, in a word,

consciousness
“The first step in the investigation of a fact must therefore be a
description of the individual elements … of which it consists” - Wundt
 The study of conscious experience
• Voluntarism (derived from volition): The idea that the mind has the capacity to
organize mental contents into higher-level thought processes
The elements of consciousness were basic. Without the elements,
there would be nothing for the mind to organize (ex: stimulus for
sensation)

According to Wundt, psychologists should be concerned with the study of

immediate experience rather than mediate experience
• Mediate and immediate experience: Mediate experience provides information
about something other than the elements of that experience; immediate
experience is unbiased by interpretation

Example: “The rose is red,” - implies that our primary interest is in the flower and
not on perceiving “redness.” – mediate experience
describing the experience perceiving the rose’s redness - immediate experience

Immediate experience is unbiased or untainted by any personal interpretations

 Elements of Conscious Experience

Wundt outlined his goals as follows:

• Analyze conscious processes into their basic elements
• Discover how these elements are synthesized or organized
• Determine the laws of connection governing the organization
of the elements
 The Method of Introspection
Wundt described his psychology as the science of conscious
experience, and therefore the method of a scientific psychology
must involve observations of conscious experience

Introspection: Examination of one’s own mind to inspect and

report on personal thoughts or feelings
 Observers must be able to determine when the process is to be
introduced
 Observers must be in a state of readiness or strained attention
 It must be possible to repeat the observation several times.
 It must be possible to vary the experimental conditions in terms
of the controlled
 manipulation of the stimuli
Sensations….
Wundt suggested that sensations were one of two elementary
forms of experience
• Sensations are aroused whenever a sense organ is stimulated
and the resulting impulses reach the brain
• Sensations can be classified by intensity, duration, and sense
modality
Wundt recognized no fundamental difference between
sensations and images because images are also associated with
excitation of the cerebral cortex
Feelings….

• Feelings are the other elementary form of experience

• Sensations and feelings are simultaneous aspects of

immediate experience

• Feelings are the subjective complements of sensations but do

not arise directly from a sense organ

• Sensations are accompanied by certain feeling qualities; when

sensations combine to form a more complex state, a feeling
quality will result
 Tridimensional theory of feelings
.
• Wundt proposed a tridimensional theory of feelings, based on
his personal introspective observations

• Tridimensional theory of feelings: Wundt’s explanation for

feeling states based on three dimensions:
– pleasure/ displeasure
– tension/ relaxation
– excitement/depression
Organizing the Elements of Conscious
Experience
How is the unified conscious experience compounded from the
elementary parts?
When we look at objects in the real world, our perceptions have a unity or
wholeness. When we look out the window we see a tree, not individual
sensations or conscious experiences of brightness, color, or shape are
reported
Our visual experience in the real world comprehends the tree as a whole, not
as the elementary sensations and feelings that constitute the tree

Wundt explained the phenomenon through his doctrine of apperception

Apperception: The process by which mental elements are

organized
Apperception …
Apperception is an active process

Our consciousness is not merely acted on by the

elemental sensations and feelings we experience.
Instead, the mind acts on these elements in a creative
way to make up the whole
 Wundt’s legacy
Wundt began a new domain of science and conducted
research in a laboratory he designed exclusively for that purpose

He published the results in his own journal and tried to

develop a systematic theory of the nature of the human mind

Some of his students went on to found laboratories to

continue experimenting on the problems by using the
techniques that Wundt set forth
 Wundt’s legacy
Developments in England:
• Charles Darwin proposed a theory of evolution, Francis Galton
began work on a psychology of individual differences. These
ideas influenced the direction of psychology

In the United States :

• Early American psychologists, who were Wundt’s students at
Leipzig, returned to the United States and made of Wundtian
psychology something uniquely American
The New Psychology

Lecture 4
 The Formal Founding of
Psychology
By the middle of the nineteenth century, the methods of the natural sciences were
being used to investigate purely mental phenomena

Techniques developed, apparatus devised, widespread interest aroused

British empirical philosophers and astronomers emphasized the importance of the

senses, and German scientists were describing how the senses functioned. The
positivist intellectual spirit of the times encouraged the convergence of these two
lines of thought. Still lacking, however, was someone to bring them together,
someone to “found” the new science

This final touch was provided by Wilhelm Wundt

The New Psychology
 No Multitasking Allowed
Wilhelm Wundt had never heard of multitasking

Even if he had, he would not have believed it was possible to pay

attention to more than one stimulus or to engage in more than
one mental activity at precisely the same moment in time, such
as sending a text message and noticing a clown on the campus

No one had heard of multitasking in the middle of the

nineteenth century before there were phones of any kind, much
less instant messages, e-mail, videogames, and other electronic
gadgets simultaneously claiming our time and attention
1861 – Germany -- Wilhelm Wundt (29-year-old) researcher in
physiology and a part-time lecturer at the University of
Heidelberg - teaching basic laboratory techniques to
undergraduate students

In his makeshift lab at home, he was attempting to conduct

research to spark the development of the new science of
psychology
Wundt’s interest in David Kinnebrook
Wundt interested in Friedrich Bessel’s (German astronomer)
“personal equation,”
- the errors of measurement among astronomers that had led to
the firing of David Kinnebrook back in 1796

Wundt was intrigued with:

the systematic differences between astronomers in their
measures of the passage of stars across grid lines in telescopes.
These slight differences [a mere half-second with Kinnebrook and
Maskelyne depended on whether the astronomer first focused
his attention on the star or on his timing device
 Wundt’s experiment…
If the observer looked first at the star, he obtained one reading
If he looked at the grid line first, he made a slightly different
reading
It was impossible for the observer to focus his attention on both
objects at the same instant

Wundt’s interest in this problem led him to modify a pendulum

clock so that it presented both an auditory and a visual stimulus,
in this case a bell and a pendulum swinging past a fixed point. He
called the instrument a Gedankenmesser, meaning “thought
meter” or “mind gauge,”
and he used it to measure the mental process of perceiving the
two stimuli
 Wundt’s experiment…
Inferences drawn: it was impossible to perceive two things at
the same moment
He could either attend to the sound of the bell or to the sight of
the pendulum passing a specific point

The results of his measurements showed that it took one-eighth

of a second to register both stimuli sequentially. To the casual
observer, the stimuli appeared to occur simultaneously, but not
to the trained researcher

With this discovery, Wilhelm Wundt had measured the mind

 Wundt – far ahead of his time

“consciousness holds only a single thought, a single perception.

When it appears as if we have several percepts simultaneously,
we are deceived by their quick succession”

Relevance in daily life: distracting effects of text messaging

while driving, poor performance on a cognitive task while
multitasking
 The Founding Father of Modern Psychology

• Wundt was the founder of psychology as a formal academic

discipline
• He established the first laboratory, edited the first journal,
and began experimental psychology as a science
• He investigated the areas —sensation and perception,
attention, feeling, reaction, and association
Why have the honors for founding the
new psychology fallen to
Wundt and not
Fechner?
 Founding father of Modern Psychology
• Wundt’s contribution to the founding of modern psychology
stems not so much from any unique scientific discovery as
from his vigorous promotion, or selling, of the idea of
systematic experimentation

• Fechner’s objective was to understand the relationship

between the mental and material worlds. He sought to
describe a unified conception of mind and body that had a
scientific basis
• Wundt’s goal was to promote psychology as an independent
science

And David Kinnebrook never knew the part he played!!

 “The work I here present to the public is an attempt to mark
out a new domain of science.”
Wilhelm Wundt, first edition of his Principles of Physiological
Psychology (1873–1874)

Although Wundt is considered to have founded psychology, he

did not originate it  psychology emerged from a long line of
creative efforts
The study of conscious experience
• Wundt’s psychology relied on the experimental methods of the
natural sciences, particularly the techniques used by the
physiologists

• The Zeitgeist in physiology and philosophy helped shape both the

methods of investigation of the new psychology and its subject
matter

• The subject matter of Wundt’s psychology was, in a word,

consciousness
“The first step in the investigation of a fact must therefore be a
description of the individual elements … of which it consists” - Wundt
 The study of conscious experience
• Voluntarism (derived from volition): The idea that the mind has the capacity to
organize mental contents into higher-level thought processes
The elements of consciousness were basic. Without the elements,
there would be nothing for the mind to organize (ex: stimulus for
sensation)

According to Wundt, psychologists should be concerned with the study of

immediate experience rather than mediate experience
• Mediate and immediate experience: Mediate experience provides information
about something other than the elements of that experience; immediate
experience is unbiased by interpretation

Example: “The rose is red,” - implies that our primary interest is in the flower and
not on perceiving “redness.” – mediate experience
describing the experience perceiving the rose’s redness - immediate experience

Immediate experience is unbiased or untainted by any personal interpretations

 Elements of Conscious Experience

Wundt outlined his goals as follows:

• Analyze conscious processes into their basic elements
• Discover how these elements are synthesized or organized
• Determine the laws of connection governing the organization
of the elements
 The Method of Introspection
Wundt described his psychology as the science of conscious
experience, and therefore the method of a scientific psychology
must involve observations of conscious experience

Introspection: Examination of one’s own mind to inspect and

report on personal thoughts or feelings
 Observers must be able to determine when the process is to be
introduced
 Observers must be in a state of readiness or strained attention
 It must be possible to repeat the observation several times.
 It must be possible to vary the experimental conditions in terms
of the controlled
 manipulation of the stimuli
Sensations….
Wundt suggested that sensations were one of two elementary
forms of experience
• Sensations are aroused whenever a sense organ is stimulated
and the resulting impulses reach the brain
• Sensations can be classified by intensity, duration, and sense
modality
Wundt recognized no fundamental difference between
sensations and images because images are also associated with
excitation of the cerebral cortex
Feelings….

• Feelings are the other elementary form of experience

• Sensations and feelings are simultaneous aspects of

immediate experience

• Feelings are the subjective complements of sensations but do

not arise directly from a sense organ

• Sensations are accompanied by certain feeling qualities; when

sensations combine to form a more complex state, a feeling
quality will result
 Tridimensional theory of feelings
.
• Wundt proposed a tridimensional theory of feelings, based on
his personal introspective observations

• Tridimensional theory of feelings: Wundt’s explanation for

feeling states based on three dimensions:
– pleasure/ displeasure
– tension/ relaxation
– excitement/depression
Organizing the Elements of Conscious
Experience
How is the unified conscious experience compounded from the
elementary parts?
When we look at objects in the real world, our perceptions have a unity or
wholeness. When we look out the window we see a tree, not individual
sensations or conscious experiences of brightness, color, or shape are
reported
Our visual experience in the real world comprehends the tree as a whole, not
as the elementary sensations and feelings that constitute the tree

Wundt explained the phenomenon through his doctrine of apperception

Apperception: The process by which mental elements are

organized
Apperception …
Apperception is an active process

Our consciousness is not merely acted on by the

elemental sensations and feelings we experience.
Instead, the mind acts on these elements in a creative
way to make up the whole
 Wundt’s legacy
Wundt began a new domain of science and conducted
research in a laboratory he designed exclusively for that purpose

He published the results in his own journal and tried to

develop a systematic theory of the nature of the human mind

Some of his students went on to found laboratories to

continue experimenting on the problems by using the
techniques that Wundt set forth
 Wundt’s legacy
Developments in England:
• Charles Darwin proposed a theory of evolution, Francis Galton
began work on a psychology of individual differences. These
ideas influenced the direction of psychology

In the United States :

• Early American psychologists, who were Wundt’s students at
Leipzig, returned to the United States and made of Wundtian
psychology something uniquely American