What is the difference between titchener and wundt

Wundt focused on making the introspection process as structured and precise as possible. Observers were highly trained and the process itself was rigid and highly-controlled. In many instances, respondents were asked to simply respond with a "yes" or "no. The goal of this process was to make introspection as scientific as possible. Edward Titchener , a student of Wundt's, also utilized this technique although he has been accused of misrepresenting many of Wundt's original ideas.

While Wundt was interested in looking at the conscious experience as a whole, Titchener instead focused on breaking down mental experiences into individual components and asked individuals to describe their mental experiences of events. While introspection has fallen out of favor as a research technique, there are many potential benefits to this sort of self-reflection and self-analysis.

While Wundt's experimental techniques did a great deal to advance the cause of making psychology a more scientific discipline, the introspective method had a number of notable limitations. The use of introspection as an experimental technique was often criticized, particularly Titchener's use of the method. Schools of thought including functionalism and behaviorism believed that introspection lacked scientific reliability and objectivity. Because the process is so subjective, it is impossible to examine or repeat the results.

A few other problems with introspection:. Also, because observers have to first be trained by the researchers, there is always the possibility that this training introduces a bias to the results.

Those engaged in introspection might be thinking or feeling things because of how they have been influenced and trained by the experimenters. Research has also shown that people are largely unaware of many of the workings of their own minds, yet are surprisingly unaware of this unawareness.

Cognitive biases are a good example of how people are often unaware of their own thoughts and biases. Despite this, people tend to be very confident in their introspections. When evaluating the self and others, people give greater weight to introspection about themselves while judging others on their outward behavior. The problem is that even when introspections don't provide useful or accurate information, people remain confident that their interpretations are correct, a phenomenon known as the introspection illusion.

The use of introspection as a tool for looking inward is an important part of self-awareness and is even used in psychotherapy as a way to help clients gain insight into their own feelings and behavior. While Wundt's efforts contributed a great deal to the development and advancement of experimental psychology, researchers now recognize the numerous limitations and pitfalls of using introspection as an experimental technique.

Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter. Brock AC. The History of Introspection Revisited. In: Clegg JW, editor. Self-Observation in the Social Sciences. Hergenhahn B. An Introduction to the History of Psychology. The unseen mind. Valuing thoughts, ignoring behavior: The introspection illusion as a source of the bias blind spot. Wundt established his psychology laboratory at the University at Leipzig in In this laboratory, Wundt and his students conducted experiments on, for example, reaction times.

A subject, sometimes in a room isolated from the scientist, would receive a stimulus such as a light, image, or sound. He created the first laboratory for psychological research. However, despite his efforts to train individuals in the process of introspection, this process remained highly subjective, and there was very little agreement between individuals. William James — was the first American psychologist who espoused a different perspective on how psychology should operate.

Key to that theory is the idea that natural selection leads to organisms that are adapted to their environment, including their behavior.

Adaptation means that a trait of an organism has a function for the survival and reproduction of the individual, because it has been naturally selected. Functionalism focused on how mental activities helped an organism fit into its environment. Functionalism has a second, more subtle meaning in that functionalists were more interested in the operation of the whole mind rather than of its individual parts, which were the focus of structuralism.

Like Wundt, James believed that introspection could serve as one means by which someone might study mental activities, but James also relied on more objective measures, including the use of various recording devices, and examinations of concrete products of mental activities and of anatomy and physiology Gordon, William James, shown here in a self-portrait, was the first American psychologist. Hysteria was an ancient diagnosis for disorders, primarily of women with a wide variety of symptoms, including physical symptoms and emotional disturbances, none of which had an apparent physical cause.

The method of psychoanalysis, which involves the patient talking about their experiences and selves, while not invented by Freud, was certainly popularized by him and is still used today.

Westen also argues that critics fail to consider the success of the broad ideas that Freud introduced or developed, such as the importance of childhood experiences in adult motivations, the role of unconscious versus conscious motivations in driving our behavior, the fact that motivations can cause conflicts that affect behavior, the effects of mental representations of ourselves and others in guiding our interactions, and the development of personality over time.

Westen identifies subsequent research support for all of these ideas. Some current practices in psychotherapy involve examining unconscious aspects of the self and relationships, often through the relationship between the therapist and the client. These men are credited with introducing psychologists in the United States to various Gestalt principles. For example, a song may be made up of individual notes played by different instruments, but the real nature of the song is perceived in the combinations of these notes as they form the melody, rhythm, and harmony.

Unfortunately, in moving to the United States, these men were forced to abandon much of their work and were unable to continue to conduct research on a large scale. Despite these issues, several Gestalt principles are still very influential today. Considering the human individual as a whole rather than as a sum of individually measured parts became an important foundation in humanistic theory late in the century.

The ideas of Gestalt have continued to influence research on sensation and perception. Structuralism, Freud, and the Gestalt psychologists were all concerned in one way or another with describing and understanding inner experience. But other researchers had concerns that inner experience could be a legitimate subject of scientific inquiry and chose instead to exclusively study behavior, the objectively observable outcome of mental processes.

Early work in the field of behavior was conducted by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov — Pavlov studied a form of learning behavior called a conditioned reflex, in which an animal or human produced a reflex unconscious response to a stimulus and, over time, was conditioned to produce the response to a different stimulus that the experimenter associated with the original stimulus.

The reflex Pavlov worked with was salivation in response to the presence of food. The salivation reflex could be elicited using a second stimulus, such as a specific sound, that was presented in association with the initial food stimulus several times. John B. Watson — was an influential American psychologist whose most famous work occurred during the early 20th century at Johns Hopkins University.

While Wundt and James were concerned with understanding conscious experience, Watson thought that the study of consciousness was flawed.

Because he believed that objective analysis of the mind was impossible, Watson preferred to focus directly on observable behavior and try to bring that behavior under control. Watson was a major proponent of shifting the focus of psychology from the mind to behavior, and this approach of observing and controlling behavior came to be known as behaviorism.

A major object of study by behaviorists was learned behavior and its interaction with inborn qualities of the organism. Behaviorism commonly used animals in experiments under the assumption that what was learned using animal models could, to some degree, be applied to human behavior.

Behaviorism is largely responsible for establishing psychology as a scientific discipline through its objective methods and especially experimentation. In addition, it is used in behavioral and cognitive-behavioral therapy. Behavior modification is commonly used in classroom settings. Behaviorism has also led to research on environmental influences on human behavior. Skinner — was an American psychologist. Like Watson, Skinner was a behaviorist, and he concentrated on how behavior was affected by its consequences.

Therefore, Skinner spoke of reinforcement and punishment as major factors in driving behavior. As a part of his research, Skinner developed a chamber that allowed the careful study of the principles of modifying behavior through reinforcement and punishment. Skinner is famous for his research on operant conditioning. The Skinner box is a chamber that isolates the subject from the external environment and has a behavior indicator such as a lever or a button.

The same stimulus, physical surroundings and instructions were given to each person. Titchener concluded that there were three kinds of mental components that could be considered to constitute conscious experience:. These components could be blockquoteated into their particular properties, which he decided were quality, intensity, duration, clearness, and extensity.

Pictures and expressions of warmth could be separated further into just bunches of sensations. It can therefore be concluded that by following this train of reasoning all of the thoughts in question were pictures, which being developed from rudimentary sensations implied that all perplexing thinking and thought could in the end be separated into simply the sensations which he could get at through introspection.

The second issue in Titchener's hypothesis of structuralism was the topic of how the psychological components consolidated and interfaced with one another to shape any type of conscious experience. His decisions were generally founded on thoughts of associationism. Specifically, Titchener centers around the law of contiguity, which is the idea the elements combine together. Titchener dismissed Wundt's ideas of apperception and innovative blend intentional activity , which were the premise of Wundt's voluntarism.

Titchener contended that consideration was essentially a sign of the "clearness" property inside sensation. When Titchener distinguished the elements of the mind and the specific interactions that they make with each other, his theory was concerned with figuring out for what reason the components cooperate in the manner they do.

Specifically, Titchener was keen on the connection between the physical process and the conscious experience - he wanted to specifically discover what was it between the two of them that was responsible for most of the interactions between them.

Titchener accepted that physiological cycles give a nonstop foundation that give mental cycles a coherence they in any case would not have. As a result, the sensory system doesn't cause any form of conscious experience, yet can be utilized to clarify a few attributes of mental occasions.

Despite the fact that structuralism spoke to the development of psychology as a field separate from reasoning, the basic school lost significant impact when Titchener eventually passed away. Over the years Titchener's approach using introspection became more rigid and limited.

Other critics argue that structuralism was too concerned with internal behavior, which is not directly observable and cannot be accurately measured. Also, because introspection itself is a conscious process it must interfere with the consciousness it aims to observe. The development drove, nonetheless, to the advancement of a few countermovements that would in general respond firmly to European patterns in the field of exploratory psychology.