Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

4 CHAPTER 1 Introduction and Research MethodsWilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) Germanphysiologist Wilhelm Wundt is generallycredited as being the founder of psychologyas an experimental science. In 1879, heestablished the first psychology researchlaboratory in Leipzig, Germany. By theearly 1900s, many American students hadcome to study at Wundt’s facilities, whichnow occupied several floors at the university.By that time, Wundt’s research hadexpanded to include such topics as culturalpsychology and developmental psychology.Edward B. Titchener (1867–1927) Born inEngland, Titchener studied with Wundt inGermany and then became a psychologyprofessor at Cornell University in 1892. Incontrast to the psychology programs atboth Harvard and Columbia Universities atthe time, Titchener welcomed women intohis graduate program at Cornell. In fact,more women completed their psychologydoctorates under Titchener’s direction thanwith any other male psychologist of hisgeneration (Evans, 1991).Wilhelm WundtThe Founder of PsychologyBy the second half of the 1800s, the stage had been set for the emergence of psychologyas a distinct scientific discipline. The leading proponent of this idea was aGerman physiologist named Wilhelm Wundt. Wundt used scientific methods tostudy fundamental psychological processes, such as mental reaction times in responseto visual or auditory stimuli. For example, Wundt tried to measure preciselyhow long it took a person to consciously detect the sight and sound of a bell beingstruck.A major turning point in psychology occurred in 1874, when Wundt publishedhis landmark text, Principles of Physiological Psychology (Diamond, 2001). In thisbook, Wundt outlined the connections between physiology and psychology. Healso promoted his belief that psychology should be established as a separate scientificdiscipline that would use experimental methods to study mental processes. Afew years later, in 1879, Wundt realized that goal when he opened the first psychologyresearch laboratory at the University of Leipzig. Many regard this event asmarking the formal beginning of psychology as an experimental science (Wade &others, 2007).Wundt defined psychology as the study of consciousness and emphasized the use ofexperimental methods to study and measure consciousness. Until he died in 1920,Wundt exerted a strong influence on the development of psychology as a science. Twohundred students from around the world, including many from the United States, traveledto Leipzig to earn doctorates in experimental psychology under Wundt’s direction.Over the years, some 17,000 students attended Wundt’s afternoon lectures on generalpsychology, which often included demonstrations of devices he had developed to measuremental processes (Blumenthal, 1998).Edward B. TitchenerStructuralismOne of Wundt’s most devoted students was a young Englishman named Edward B.Titchener. After earning his psychology doctorate in Wundt’s laboratory in 1892,Titchener accepted a position at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. There heestablished a psychology laboratory that ultimately spanned 26 rooms.Titchener eventually departed from Wundt’s position and developed his own ideason the nature of psychology. Titchener’s approach, called structuralism, became thefirst major school of thought in psychology. Structuralism held that even our mostcomplex conscious experiences could be broken down into elemental structures, orcomponent parts, of sensations and feelings. To identify these structures of consciousthought, Titchener trained subjects in a procedure called introspection. The subjectswould view a simple stimulus, such as a book, and then try to reconstruct their sensationsand feelings immediately after viewing it. (In psychology, a stimulus is anythingperceptible to the senses, such as a sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste.) Theymight first report on the colors they saw, then the smells, and so on, in the attemptto create a total description of their conscious experience (Tweney, 1997).In addition to being distinguished as the first school of thought in early psychology,Titchener’s structuralism holds the dubious distinction of being the first schoolto disappear. With Titchener’s death in 1927, structuralism as an influential schoolof thought in psychology essentially ended. But even before Titchener’s death, structuralismwas often criticized for relying too heavily on the method of introspection.As noted by Wundt and other scientists, introspection had significant limitations.First, introspection was an unreliable method of investigation. Different subjectsoften provided very different introspective reports about the same stimulus. Evensubjects well trained in introspection varied in their responses to the same stimulusfrom trial to trial.