1. Chapter 5: Wundt and His Contemporaries
A History of Psychology
(3rd Edition)
John G. Benjafield

2. Can Eminence be Measured?
Korn, David, and Davis (1991):
Surveyed prominent historians of psychology
Asked who they considered to be the 10 most important psychologists of all time, in order of importance:
Wundt, James, Freud, Watson, Pavlov, Ebbinghaus, Piaget, Skinner, Binet, Fechner
Tradition dates back to the work of James McKeen Cattell (1903):
James, McKeen Cattell, Münsterberg, Hall, Baldwin, Titchener, Royce, Ladd, Dewey, Jastrow

3. Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) Studied with Müller and Helmholtz
1875: became a professor at University of Leipzig, Germany
1879: founded the first laboratory in experimental psychology
Lab attracted many young scholars

4. Wundt’s Methods
Derived in part from more established disciplines, especially chemistry
Influenced by J.S. Mill’s notion of ‘mental chemistry’
However: Mill was skeptical of the possibility of discovering mental elements through introspection
While: Wundt believed introspection appropriate if combined with experimental method

5. Wundt’s Methods
1. Laboratory research suitable only for simple psychological processes
2. Complex proceses require naturalistic observations
Ex. our ability to use language

6. Wundt’s Lab (Biervliet, 1892)
Approx. 20 persons of varying backgrounds and nationalities
Divided into groups
Each group:
Worked on a different problem
Had one member who was the chief experimenter
Had one or more members who served as experimental participants

7. Introspection Two types of introspection:
Self-observation: casually engaged in by everyone
Open to personal bias
Inner perception: deliberately observing one’s own mental processes
Subjective unless made under controlled conditions

8. Example of an Experiment in Wundt’s Lab
Materials: metronome
Participant:
Not listening to the metronome in ‘usual’ way (ie. while playing the piano)
Task is to pay attention carefully to the experiences that the metronome elicits

9. Example continued
What are the participants’ experiences as the metronome beats?
Wundt argued that consciouness is rhythmically disposed
Successive beats have same physical characteristics but different psychological characteristics

10. Terminology
Apperception: process by which we organize and make sense out of our experience
Creative synthesis: through apperception, our experiences become a unified whole and not just a series of elementary sensations
Apprehension: the process by which individual impressions enter one’s consciousness
Span of apprehension: how many impressions we could be aware of at one time
Wundt estimated this number at 6

11. Wundt on Emotions
Wundt believed that emotion was a central aspect of all psychological processes
Close relationship between emotion and volition (acts of will)
Voluntary acts: occur when there are conflicting emotions; acts of will develop more slowly

12. Tridimensional Theory of Feeling
Basic feelings vary along three dimensions:
Tension–relief
Excitement–depression
Pleasantness–unpleasantness
Any feeling can be thought of as located within the three-dimensional space
Wundt believed that this model was completely general

13. The Wundt Curve
Wundt curve: relationship between the intensity of a stimulus and its pleasantness
Vertical axis: the degree to which a person feels positive or negative in a particular situation
How positive or negative you feel is a function that rises and then falls as a stimulus intensity increases
Inverted U shape
Wundt curve implies that we will get the most pleasure form moderate levels of stimulus intensity

14. Psychophysical Parallelism
Wundt
There is no psychical process which does not run parallel with a physical processes
No point-for-point correspondence between every mental event and every event in the nervous system
Mental structures have to be understood in terms of their own law of combination
Fecher
There is no psychical process which does not run parallel with a physical process
Point-for-point correspondence between every mental event and every event in the nervous system

15. Complementary Explanations
Psychology
Studies the person
Deals with the experiencing participant
Physiology
Studies the person
Treats the person as an object

16. Cultural Psychology Völkerpsychologie
= ‘folk psychology’
= cultural psychology
Wundt’s aim was to ‘trace the evolution of mind in man’
Needed to adopt in psychology the same approach that Darwin had adopted in biology

17. Wundt’s Influence
Figure against whom many subsequent psychologists reacted negatively
Ideas often distored
Wundt’s cultural psychology is now being appreciated
Why? For its recognition that the human mind is a product of social and historical forces

18. Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909)
Educated at University of Bonn, Germany
Travelled extensively in England and France
By chance, came across a copy of Fechner’s Elements of Psychophysics
Ebbinghaus was impressed by the potential for applying objective methods to the study of psychological processes
Went on to conduct a series of investigations of learning and memory

19. Ebbinghaus’ Method Ebbinghaus pioneered the use of nonsense syllables
A consonant followed by a vowel followed by a consonant
Ex. pib, wol
Benefits of using nonsense syllables:
They are relatively meaningless
Therefore relatively uninfluenced by previous learning
Provide a quantifiable measure of learning and memory
In terms of the number of syllables remembered, the number of trials required to learn a list, etc.

20. Ebbinghaus’ Method Ebbinghaus acted as his own participant
Experiments involved constructing lists from a pool of 2,300 nonsense syllables
All 2,300 were used before any were repreated
Process:
Go through the list from beginning to end, reading the syllables at a rate governed by a metronome (150 beats per minute)

21. Forgetting Curve Curve greatest immediately after learning
Declined more gradually afterwards
Remote associations: associations formed between all items in the list, not only between adjacent items

22. Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930)
Studied at Harvard
Was denied the degree because she was a woman
1905: served as the first woman president of the American Psychological Association

23. Calkins’ Method Participants learned pairs of items
Became possible to attempt to determine which factors were the most important determinants of learning
Ex. influence of frequency
Technique became standard method in the study of human learning
But has never received the same recognition as Ebbinghaus
Came to be called the Paired Associates Method

24. Calkins’ Method Participant shown a list of pairs of items
Ex. different colours paired with different numbers
Participant is given one of the members of the pair and asked to give the first response that comes to mind

25. Practical Applications
(Calkins [1896] 1966: 534):
‘The prominence of frequency is of course of grave importance, for it means the possibility of exercising some control over the life of the imagination and of definitely combating harmful or troublesome associations’

26. The Self Calkins: psychology is the study of the self Self =
A totality; one of many characters
A unique being
An identical being
A changing being

27. Franz Brentano (1838–1917) 1873: left Catholic priesthood
1874: Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vienna
Student: Carl Stumpf

28. Franz Brentano Mental phenomena Physical phenomena
Ex. a musical chord, which I hear
Physical phenomena
Ex. hearing a sound

29. Act Psychology Focus on the Act
Vs. Wundt: focus on the experience
Mental acts can be named only by an active verb
Mental acts are intentional
Laid the groundwork for phenomenological psychology

30. Classes of Mental Acts Ideating Judging Loving-Hating
I see, I hear, I imagine
Judging
I acknowledge, I reject
Loving-Hating
I feel, I wish, I desire

31. Phenomenological Psychology
Developed by Carl Stumpf and Edmund Husserl
Method: attempt to describe consciousness as it presents itself to us
Avoid presuppositions as to its nature or purpose
Phenomenological approaches tend not to be experimental

32. Edmund Husserl Developed Brentano’s concept of intentionality
Argued that by comparing a number of similar experiences, we can intuitively grasp their essential nature

33. The Würzberg School First decade of the 20th century
Group of psychologists at University of Würzberg, Germany
Mentor of the group: Oswald Külpe

34. Würzbergers’ Method
Studied complex mental processes by means of introspection
Vs. Wundt: only simple mental processes could be studied with introspection
Systematic experimental introspection
Participants looked back on their experiences after they had occurred and then described them
Later retrospection

35. The Würzberg School
Imageless thoughts: when no images correspond to a mental operation
Determining tendencies: give thinking a direction

36. The Würzberg School Introduced several complications into psychology:
Introspection could no longer be regarded as a simple procedure for investigating simple phenomena
Some important mental processes appeared to be inaccessible to introspection because they were unconscious