Hist & Syst Exam 4 Ch. 13 Flashcards
SG: Zeitgeist: Nineteenth century post-Renaissance empiricism (description, significance for psychology)
- Empiricism is very strong
- Psychology’s birth (1870’s)
- Post-Renaissance empiricism prepared emergence of psychology
SG: Germany: climate for emergence of psychology (description, science and philosophy)
- Psychology emerged in Germany because empiricism did not align with German philosophy
- Intellectual climate varied and German’s were uncommitted to single model of psychological inquiry
SG: Psychology as a natural science: description, features, characteristics
- Analytic study of variables under experimental scrutiny
SG: Structural psychology: subject matter, various names
- Analytic study of generalized adult human mind through method of introspection
- Can’t see what others see when they look inward
- Voluntarism (Wundt): study of the will (selective attention)
o Focusing on one stimulus out of all the stimulus in the world
o What do you choose to pay attention to (will)? - Structuralism (Titchener): emphasis on mental structures
o What is in the mind before you think about it
SG: Structural psychology: three goals
- Describe components of consciousness in terms of elements
- Describe combos of basic elements
- Explain connections of elements to nervous system
SG: Structural psychology: content (consciousness definition, image in thought, mechanism of association)
- Images must be part of it
- Wants to study content of the mind
SG: Structural psychology: method (study of immediate experience, introspection/limits, trained scientists)
- Study immediate experience
- Use introspection to describe immediate experience
- Only trained scientists can conduct method of introspection
SG: Wundt: Principles of Physiological Psychology (description, contents, significance)
- Call for a new discipline of psychology
- Published in 1873 and 1874
- Attempted to establish the paradigm/framework of psychology as an experimental science of the mind to be studied through its processes
- Ethnic psychology is which the scientific study of human nature could reveal higher mental processes through an anthropological approach
- Volkerpsychologie: more expansive in its inclusion and flexible in terms of methodology
SG: Wundt: first experimental psychology laboratory (location, year)
Leipzig in 1879
SG: Wundt: three dimensions of emotion (descriptions)
- Human motivation
o Pleasant-Unpleasant
o Strain-relaxation
o Excitement-Calm
SG: Titchener: one dimension of emotion (description)
- Pleasant-unpleasant: regulate emotions to organic visceral reactions
SG: Titchener: structural psychology (degree of consistency with American psychology)
- Not consistent with American psychology, which was focused on applied practicality of psychology not on theory
Ebbinghaus: memory studies (relation to Fechner’s work)
- He studied memory the way that Fechner studied sensations
- Inspired by Fechner’s Elemente der Psychophysik
- Viewed the law of repetition as the key to quantification of memory
- Presented subject with 3-letter syllables, typically vowel separating two consonants
o Deliberately chose ones without meaning that might confound memorization
o Retention curve showing forgetting over time from initial acquisition
SG: Structural psychology: impact (significance for psychology)
- Pushed psych into science
- Put method of introspection to the test
- Confined definition to contents of mind
- Provided point of argument that others could react to/oppose
- When Titchener died, American _____ died with him
SG: Psychology as a human science: description, features, characteristics
Recognition of psychic phenomena of a dynamic nature
- Based on observation and description
- Activity of the mind is active; mainstream German tradition of the human mind
- Brentano
SG: Act psychology: subject matter
Study of psychic phenomena (experience) expressed as acts and processes
- Focused not on what’s in the mind, but what is the mind doing
- Very contextual: can’t separate the acts of the mind from its environment
SG: Act psychology: content (consciousness definition)
- Character of movement centers on inseparable interaction of individual and environment
SG: Act psychology: major goal
- More open methodologies empirically based on observation but not necessarily experimental…
SG: Brentano: Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (description, contents, significance)
- Acceptance of various methods of empiricism
- Broadens understanding of empiricism in this book
- Subject matter is study of psychic phenomena expressed as acts and processes
o Psychology as consciousness described in terms of unity of expressed acts - See the mind through what it does
SG: Brentano: two levels of psychological study (names, descriptions)
- Pure psych
o Physiological, personality, social - Applied psych
o Psychology’s value for other sciences
SG: Brentano: three levels of psychic phenomena (names, descriptions)
- Representational level: mere awareness; conscious that you are conscious
- Cognitive level: judgement; intentionality; thought; makes judgements about what it sees
- Personalization level: individualized interest; what is the purpose for the person (most human level)
SG: Brentano: impact (direct or indirect)
- Indirect through his students
- Didn’t write much
SG: Stumpf: relationship with Brentano
- Student of Brentano at Wurzburg
- “human mind as a human mind”
SG: Würzburg School: imageless thought (significance in relation to structural psychology)
- Kulpe
- Seriously challenged the position of structural psych
- Can initiate thoughts without sensory input: mind is active, it creates
- Challenges structural psychology
