Chapter 5
Structuralism
In the beginning of the 20th century, Edward Bradford Titchener, a professor at Cornell University, was conducting controversial experiments using his graduate students as subjects in order to collect data for his burgeoning system of psychology. Many of these experiments used introspection as the experimental method. One example is the stomach tube experiment, which was used to study the sensitivity of students’ internal organs. During the experiment, students would swallow a rubber tube and subsequently have hot and cold water poured down the tube. The tube often remained in the body for the entire day, during which students were asked to report on the sensations they experienced. Another study asked students to reports on their feelings and sensations during urination and defecation. A third study asked married students to record their feelings and sensations during sexual intercourse.
Titchener presented himself as a representative of Wilhelm Wundt’s experimental psychology when he introduced it in the United States. The truth was just the opposite. Titchener changed Wundtian psychology so radically that his branch of psychology was labeled “structuralism.” As such, structuralism was the first American school of thought and lasted approximately 20 years. Whereas Wundt's central concern was with apperception (the active synthesis of conscious elements into the higher-level mental processes), Titchener instead emphasized association (focus on mental elements and their mechanical linking). In this way, the goal of Titchener’s psychology was to discover the nature of elementary conscious experiences.
Titchener’s persona was a stereotype of Germanic imperiousness, as was demonstrated by the authoritative and formal lecture style he adopted from Wundt. Despite his demeanor, Titchener drew large audiences to his grand lectures and was respected by students and faculty alike. During his career, Titchener supervised over 50 doctoral candidates whose dissertations and later work reflected many of Titchener’s own interests and ideas. He published over 60 scholarly articles and spent a significant amount of time translating Wundt’s work into English.
One confounding aspect of Titchener’s career was his treatment of women. “Although he did not relent about permitting women to attend meetings of the Titchener Experimentalists, he did work to open doors to women that were kept firmly closed by most other male psychologists.” Titchener was one of the few male psychologists at the time to welcome women into graduate programs, and he was one of the few prominent psychologists to support women in faculty appointments. In 1929, two years after Titchener’s death, Titchener’s Experimentalists became the Society for Experimental Psychologists and welcomed women members.
Titchener's most important book was Experimental Psychology: A Manual of Laboratory Practice (1901-1905) as it prompted the growth of psychology laboratories and was the training manual for the first generation of American experimental psychologists. He insisted that conscious experience is the only appropriate subject matter for the science of psychology. Original source material written by Titchener discusses the difference between dependent and independent experience. His method was rigorous experimentation, and his technique was introspection. Titchener cautioned against the stimulus error (confusing mental processes with the stimulus or object being observed), because when one focuses on the stimulus/object instead of the conscious content, they neglect what has been learned in the past about the object. In this way, he distinguished between consciousness (the sum of our experiences at a given time) and mind (the sum of our experiences over a lifetime).
Titchener was adamant that the only appropriate subject pool was normal adult humans. The study of any other subject population simply was not psychology. In addition, the practice of applied psychology was anathema to him. He believed that psychology’s purpose was to discover the structures of the mind. He was unconcerned with the application of such knowledge and opposed branches that dealt with practical issues, such as child or animal psychology.
Titchener's work focused on the first of three tasks he defined for the new science, namely, the reduction of consciousness to its elements. He proposed three states of consciousness: sensations, images, and affective states. He argued that elements of sensation could be assessed and grouped not solely on the basis of quality and intensity, as Wundt had proposed, but on the basis of duration and clearness. He rejected Wundt's tridimensional theory, arguing that feelings have but one dimension: pleasure/displeasure.
In his last years, Titchener discarded the notion of mental elements and proposed that the focus of psychology should be on processes of mental life. He questioned the term structural, replacing it with the term existential. He also began to favor the phenomenological approach instead of the introspection method because it examines experiences as they occur.
Titchener continued to hold firm in his ideas about what psychology should be about while psychology moved beyond him. When he died of a brain tumor in 1927, the era of structuralism died with him. The strongest criticisms of structuralism are argued against its primary research method: introspection. A century before Titchener, philosophers questioned the possibility of the mind studying itself. Titchener himself could not clearly define what introspection was and how it should be done. In practice, there was low reliability between observers. Other critics said that introspection was more retrospection because of the time lag between experience and report. On the other hand, Titchener did clearly define conscious experience, and used the most rigorous scientific methods. Today introspection (defined as self-report) is used in a variety of fields. Titchener’s structuralism also served well as a target of criticism that developing movements in psychology could push against as these new movements were defined.
Outline
I. Swallow the rubber tube – A college prank?
A. Titchener conducted research at Cornell to collect data for the psychological system he was developing
1. method: introspection
B. Titchener asked his students to do a variety of outrageous things
1. swallow a rubber tube, leave in for a day, return to lab to have hot water poured down, then have cold water poured down
a. to study organ sensitivity
b. many vomited before keeping tubes down
c. when water poured down, they reported the sensations
2. students carried notebooks to record feelings while urinating or defecating
3. married students were asked to report on sensations during sex
II. Edward Bradford Titchener (1867 – 1927)
A. Wundt’s experimental psychology was introduced in America by Titchener
1. although Titchener claimed to represent Wundt’s ideas, in fact he radically altered them
2. the label “structuralism” can only be applied to Titchener’s work
B. Wundt: experimental psychology
1. acknowledged the elements of consciousness
2. emphasis on apperception: the active organization or synthesis of elements
3. organization of mental elements voluntary, not mechanical
C. Titchener: structuralism
1. emphasis on elements of consciousness
2. association (mental linking of elements) is mechanical
3. discarded Wundt’s apperception
4. central task of psychology: discover the nature of elementary conscious experiences
D. Titchener’s career
1. most of his career was spent at Cornell University
2. like Wundt, made every lecture a dramatic presentation
3. often mistaken for being German because of authoritative style and formal manner
4. as he grew older became more intolerant of dissent
E. Titchener’s life
1. Oxford
a. philosophy and the classics
b. research assistant in physiology
c. colleagues skeptical of scientific approach to psychological issues
d. seen as a brilliant student with a flair for languages
2. Ph.D. with Wundt: 1892
3. Cornell University
a. 1893 – 1900: established laboratories, did research, wrote
b. from 1900
(1) directed students’ research
(2) that research produced his system
(3) translated Wundt’s books
4. Dies of a brain tumor at age 60
5. his books
c. 1896: An Outline of Psychology
d. 1898: Primer of Psychology
e. 1901 – 1905: Experimental Psychology: A Manual of Laboratory Practice
(1) one of the most important books in history of psychology
(2) stimulated growth of laboratory work in psychology in the United States
(3) influenced a generation of experimental psychologists
(4) popular text, translated into 5 languages
6. his personal style and life
a. praised as an outstanding teacher
b. had a variety of hobbies
(1) conducted a weekly musical ensemble
(2) coin collecting
(3) learned Chinese and Arabic
c. was autocratic toward students, though kind as long as they were deferential
d. Titchener was concerned and involved with his students even after they left Cornell
F. Titchener’s Experimentalists: No women allowed!
1. beginning in 1904 a group named Titchener’s Experimentalists held regular meetings to discuss research observations in experimental psychology
2. Titchener’s rule: no women
a. desire for active discussion and interaction in a “smoke-filled room”
b. women “too pure to smoke”
c. refused Christine Ladd-Franklin’s request to present her research
d. Ladd actively protested Titchener’s rule
3. Titchener actively worked to advance women in psychology
a. accepted women in his graduate programs
b. 1/3 of the 56 doctorates awarded by him were to women
c. more female doctorates than any other contemporary psychologist
d. hired female faculty
e. Margaret Floy Washburn 1st women to earn doctorate in psychology and Titchener’s 1st doctoral student
(1) wrote Animal Mind, major comparative psychology book
(2) 1st female psychologist elected to National Academy of Sciences
(3) president of APA
4. firmly adhered to “no women” rule for Titchener experimentalists yet backed female psychologists
G. The content of conscious experience
1. subject matter of psychology: conscious experience
2. dependent on the experiencing person; other sciences independent of experiencing persons
a. Original source material on structuralism from A Textbook of Psychology (1909)
b. Titchener discusses his dependent/independent distinction
3. warned against stimulus error: “Confusing the mental process under study with the stimulus or object being observed”
4. consciousness: the sum of our experiences existing at a given time
5. mind: the sum of our experiences accumulated over a lifetime
6. Titchener sees structural psychology as a pure science
a. only legitimate purpose: to discover the facts (structure) of the mind
b. no applied aspects; objected to branches that dealt with applied issues
c. subjects: only normal adult humans
H. Introspection: describe the elements of conscious state rather than report the observed stimulus by its familiar name
1. self -observation
2. trained observers
3. adopted Külpe’s label, “systematic experimental introspection”
a. used detailed, qualitative, subjective reports of mental activities during the act of introspecting
4. opposed Wundt’s approach (focus on objective quantitative measurements)
5. goal in line with empiricists and associationists: to discover the atoms of the mind
6. mechanist: subjects were “reagents”: impartial, detached, mechanical recording instruments
7. mechanistic viewpoint: observers as machines
8. Titchener’s experimental approach
a. experiment = an observation “that can be repeated, isolated, varied”
(1) frequent repetition
(2) strict isolation (control)
(3) vary observations widely
b. reagents (subjects)
(1) introspected on variety of stimuli
(2) gave long, detailed reports of elements observed
(3) for example, a chord is struck on a piano
(a) chord consisted of three individual notes
(b) subjects report on how many tones, mental characteristics of the sounds, any other elements
I. Elements of consciousness
1. defined three essential problems for psychology (the bulk of his work)
a. reduce conscious processes to simplest components
b. determine laws by which elements associated
c. connect the elements with their physiological conditions
2. aims same as those of the natural sciences
a. decide the area of study
b. discover its elements (stage that Titchener was working on)
c. demonstrate how those elements form complex phenomena
d. formulate laws governing those phenomena
3. proposed three elementary states of consciousness
a. sensations: “...basic elements of perception and occur in the sounds, sights, smells, and other experiences evoked by physical objects in our environment.”
b. Images: “...elements of ideas...not actually present in the moment,” e.g., “memory of a past experience.”
c. affective states: “elements of emotions”
4. characteristics of mental elements
a. discovered 44,500 basic and irreducible elements of sensation
(1) each is conscious
(2) each is distinct from all others
(3) each could combine with others to form perceptions and ideas
b. each element could be categorized according to characteristics basic to all sensations (Titchener added duration and clearness to Wundt’s quality and intensity)
(1) quality: attribute differentiating each element from the other, e.g., “cold,” “red”
(2) intensity: strength, weakness, loudness, or brightness of sensation
(3) duration: sensation’s path over time
(4) clearness: the role of attention in conscious processing
c. sensations and images have all four
d. affective states lack clearness because focusing on an element of emotion makes it disappear
e. some sensory processes have extensity (they take up space)
5. rejected Wundt’s tridimensional theory; proposed affections have only one dimension: pleasure/displeasure
6. 1918:
a. dropped concept of mental elements
b. suggested study of dimensions (quality, etc.)
7. early 1920s
a. questioned term structural psychology
b. called it “existential psychology”
c. considered replacement of introspection with phenomenological approach (experience as it occurs, without analysis)
III. Criticisms of Structuralism
A. Titchener stood firm as psychology moved beyond him
B. he thought he was establishing a foundation for psychology, but he was only one phase in its history
C. Structuralism collapses when he dies
IV. Criticisms of Introspection
A. Titchener and Külpe’s approaches were subject to criticism because they were qualitative; Wundt’s approach not as criticized because more objective
B. introspection had been attacked for a century or more
1. Kant
2. Comte
3. Maudsley
C. one direct criticism: Titchener’s approach more precise yet not defined well
D. a second direct criticism: precise task of trained observer is unclear/unknown
1. unreliability within and between subjects
2. special introspective language never created
E. a third direct criticism: introspection is retrospection
F. additional criticisms of Titchener
1. artificiality and sterility
2. the structuralist definition of psychology is too narrow
V. Contributions of Structuralism
A. Subject matter (conscious experience) clearly defined
B. Research methods: good science
C. Introspection remains a viable method
D. Impact on cognitive psychology
E. Strong base against which others could rebel
Lecture prompts/Discussion topics for chapter five
· Is it possible for the mind to observe itself? Is there any other way one could observe a mind?
· How is Titchener’s style different from/similar to the professors you have had? What about his personal style would have benefited the discipline? What would have been disadvantageous?
· Provide several stimuli and ask students to become introspectionists by reporting, as best they can, on their sensations, images (a memory that is recalled), and affective states (emotions). Probably the easiest for them to report will be the affective states, especially if you choose vivid stimuli (such as an image of war or triumph, or a noxious or pleasant odor or taste). Probably the most difficult will be the sensations, but you can cue them with Titchener’s 4 aspects of sensations. Quality is a characteristic like “cold” or “red”. Intensity is the strength or weakness of the sensation. Duration is the course of the sensation over time. Clearness is if our attention is easily drawn to the stimulus.