Structuralism And Edward Titchener Psychology Essay

structural linguistics And Edward Titchener Psychology strainEdward Titchener was a famous psychologist who was born in Chichester, England in 1867. He examine physiology, classics, and philosophy at Malvern College and Oxford University before pursuing his doctorate degree in clinical affable science at the University of Leipzig (King, Viney, Woody, 2009). charm at the University of Leipzig, Titchener canvass on a lower floor Wilhelm Wundt, a psychologist who is known as the father of observational psychological science (Schultz Schultz, 2011). by and by Titchener completed his doctorial degree in Ger some, he attempted to find oneself a job in England, just now was non successful in doing so. He ratiocinationed up earning a job at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York as a professor of psychology. At the age of 28, Titchener gain the title of full professor at Cornell (King et al., 2009). go at Cornell, Titchener produce eight books, over 60 articles, and transla ted much of Wundts work into English (Schultz Schultz, 2011). As the head of one of the well-nigh rigorous doctoral program in the United States, he supervised over 50 students in the clinical psychology program at Cornell (King et al., 2009). Titcheners first student who graduated was Margargont Floy Washburn, who after became famous for her work in comparative psychology, which is the study of homo demeanor in relation to animals and other species (King et al., 2009). In a time expiration when nearly schools would not accept women into their programs, Titchener had 19 women graduate under his supervision. This was the most of any other male psychologist in his generation (Hergenhahn, 2008).Titchener structured the doctoral program at Cornell base on the German model, which included an raging mixture of lab research and in subject work. While his students worked independently, he was heavy involved in helping them out with their research. Titchener was described as having a powerful ainity, a strong reference book, and a paternalistic way with his students (King et al., 2009).Wundt and Titchener two believed in using self-contemplation to discover the mental elements of human hand over got. both of these scientists also believed that constituteing and classifying sensations and feelings were an essential part of judgement the human experience (Chung Hyland, 2012). However, Titchener matte images were a category of mental elements, and Wundt did not. Both Wundt and Titchener used an experimental sexual climax in their work. However, Wundt believed that psychology cannot only be study as an experimental science. He matte that psychology should also be studied by means of and through historical analyses and naturalistic observation (Chung Hyland, 2012). In addition, Wundt believed that the manners used to study psychology could be utilized to describe social customs, religion, myths, morals, art, law, and language (King et al., 2009). Ti tcheners overtake was to a greater extent than rigid in that he only believed that psychology could be studied in the laboratory through evidence-based methods. Another difference between Titchener and Wundt was that Wundt believed that visible events could be explained by antecedent events, and that higher psychological wait ones could not be studied in the laboratory (Schultz Schultz, 2011). Titchener only studied psychology through introspection, focusing on internal processes (Hergenhahn, 2008).Titcheners goal for psychology was to make it an judge science, classified in the equal category as physics and chemical science (King et al., 2009). He firmly believed that psychology should be studied in a laboratory, and that studying psychology was no different than studying physics, chemistry, and other baffling sciences. Titcheners view on psychology was call(a)ed Structuralism. He believed that human thoughts, emotions, and behaviors could be charted on a table as element s are on the oscillatory table. Titcheners view was reductionistic in that he did not feel it was primal to understand how the part of the fountainhead worked together as a whole, further just the various(prenominal)istic part themselves. He matte up that if each part could be soundless then all one would need to do is to learn how these parts interact to conclude in a thought or behavior.Structuralism had five chief(prenominal) goals for psychology 1) to study it using particular(prenominal) methods, 2) to will more definitions in the field of psychology, 3) to use it to make assumptions about more general philosophical issues, 4) to make connections between the physical sciences and psychology, and 5) to prove that psychology should be in the same category as the hard sciences.Titchener believed that all science begins with experience, and that without this, at that place could be no cognition or knowledge. He felt that experiences could have various points of view d epending on the person who is experiencing the situation. Titchener believed that the main difference between the accepted physical sciences and psychology was that psychological experience was dependent on human judgment, and the other physical sciences were not dependent on human experience.While Titchener had many goals for psychology, he set the received problems with psychology, and why it was not an accepted science. Titchener believed that the basic elements of experience needed to be identified and categorized. Next, sym raily how each element interacts with other was essential to understanding human experience. Finally, causal relations between experiences needed to be identified. Titchener believed that the method of studying psychology was not different than any other science. While hard scientists used inspection to make many of their observations, Titchener called the observation by psychologists introspection. While many criticized introspection due to its subjectiv e nature, Titchener firmly believed introspection could be objective if individuals were formally trained in the practice. Introspection was a scientific form of observation in Titcheners eyes. match to Titchener, observation is considered scientific if it has three properties 1) one can isolate the experience, 2) the experience can be varied, and 3) the experience can be repeated.Titchener believed that the senses were the key access points to the mind. One of his specific goals was to identify mental elements connected to each sense. After he identified each element, Titchener wanted to categorize the elements. The three mental elements that Titchener identified were 1) upholdions, which were emotions, 2) images, which were ideas, memories, and thoughts, and 3) sensation, which tie in to perception. He believed that all sensations had intravenous feeding characteristics 1) quality, which was the main descriptor, 2) intensity, which was the strength or amount, 3) clearness, whi ch was how understandably the sensation could be identified, and 4) duration, which was the duration of the sensation. The mental elements could have more than these four characteristics, but all had these. The only mental element that did not have all four was affections because Titchener did not believe that emotions were distinct or palmy to identify. Titchener had a unique view on the mind and body relationship.Titchener believed that the mind and body influence each other, but that they were two different views of the same experience. According to him, the mind and body were parallel and never physically interacted, but one could influence the other. Some historians classified Titchener as a psychophysical parallelist, but this was controversial. This whitethorn have been thought to be controversial because s professedly parallelist would never say that the mind and body could influence one another in any way. Another unique aspect to Titcheners opinion on the mind and body r elationship was that he did not believe in commonsense interactionism. This was likely due to his empiricist nature that everything had to be objectively studied in a lab setting. Titchener influenced many aspects of psychology that are important today.The first reach of psychology that Titchener was interested in was attention. He stranded attention into two categories primary and secondary. Primary attention was passive and involuntary. It was influenced by intense stimuli, and thought to be related to novel and sudden stimuli. According to Titchener, secondary attention was active and voluntary. This involved attention under situations in which one needs to actively concentrate when distractors are in the environment. Titchener felt that this was related to advanced stages of development, and that infants were not capable of secondary attention. Another area of psychology that Titchener was interested in was ties.Titchener wanted to analyze how the mental elements of human expe rience interact therefore, understanding associations was important to him. Titchener appreciated how philosophers such as Aristotle, Hobbes, and Bain placed a large emphasis on association. Titchener proposed that all association can be broken down to the law of contiguity. He felt that every law of association involved contiguity. Titchener also believed that emotions do not play an important part in association. Titchener stated, feelings only play a role by virtue of their sensory and imaginal components, and not their affective character (Cite). Titchener thought highly of Ebbinghauss work with nonsense syllables in regard to understanding association, but he felt that Ebbinghaus was missing an important component, intrinsic meaning. Titchener believed that personal impressions and associative processes operate together, and they cannot be separated. Titchener understood that intrinsic processes in human race are important, and cannot be left out when studying association. A t hird area of psychology that Titchener studied was meaning.Titchener believed that meaning, from a psychological perspective, had everything to do with context. In his opinion, meaning was a combination of the laws of attention and the laws of the connection of sensations. Titchener believed that everything humans acquire and experience had a context and a background. He understood that when individuals process things, memories of their past experiences play a large role in how they hear what they experience. Titchener felt that the context of a situation or object was the psychological equivalent of its actual meaning. Interestingly, he noted that humans frequently had trouble in identifying their own contexts when doing introspection. Emotion was another area that Titchener was interested in studying.In the area of emotion, Titchener had a problem with the James-Lange theory, which states that humans experience emotions based on how the body behaves. For example, when we see a bear, we run, and then become afraid. there were a number of reasons why Titchener had a problem with this theory. First, he believed it was not a novel theory, in that Descarte and Spinoza discussed physical origins of emotions. Next, Titchener felt that there were specific flaws in this theory. He argued that physical changes in the body may look exactly the same for different emotions. For example, when somebody is crying, it could be crying of joy as opposed to tears of despair. In addition, Titchener felt that sensible sensations were too simple of an explanation for emotions, which are complicated and not substantially defined. He wrote in detail about how difficult categorizing emotions was, and stated that most theorists that attempt to understand and classify emotions do it subjectively, and their theories are not scientific.Toward the end of Titcheners career, he became frustrated with his inability to identify and quantify all of the mental processes in human experienc e. Instead of having three main elements (Images, sensation, and affections), he proposed that affect was simply a byproduct of sensations images and sensations. Specifically, Titchener believed that affect may have been a form of sensation on a spectrum from pleasant to unpleasant. In addition, he proposed that images may have been a type of sensation. Titchener separated himself from trying to identify and classify all mental processes, and grew to feel that human experience was more abstract and on a spectrum. Titcheners Structuralism eventually was overtaken by behaviourism for a number of reasons.It was hard to defend introspection as an objective, scientific method. It was thought that individuals may not accurately report what they feel and experience. Next, structural linguistics placed no weight on psychological development, personality, abnormal behavior, learning, individual differences, evolution, and practicality. Behaviorism focused on what could be observed, and the relationship between outdoor(a) events and behavior. This lead to a great understanding in learning, performance, and the origin of behaviors. nearly importantly, the methods of behaviorism were practical, quantifiable, measurable, classifying them as credibly scientific. Behaviorists criticized Structuralists for focusing too much on the internal, which cannot be observed. Behaviorists the studied cause and effect of behavior focusing on external events in the environment. This was more practical and effective than methods such as introspection.While Titcheners structuralism was too rigid to survive, it paved an important path in the field of psychology for its future. He was the first to fight a fight that has gone on for years, making psychology classified as a true, empirically-based science. Titchener also touched on areas in psychology that are crucial in the field today such as attention, association, meaning, and emotion. While he was not never able to create a periodic t able of the mental elements of experience, his empirically-based methods are used today in many areas of psychology.