i had to do a school project on this and i encluded the web pages i used. hope this helped.
The Master of the Playing Cards was a highly notable German engraver active in South-Western Germany from the 1430s to the 1450s. He is "the first personality in the history of engraving" (Levenson, NGA Catalogue)
A Brief History of Scientific Thinking in Psychology (from Liebert & Liebert, Science and Behavior, 4th ed., 1995, Schultz & Schultz, A History of Modern Psychology, 6th ed., 1996, and Viney, W., 1993, A history of psychology)
Classical Greek philosophy
The Greeks asked questions about how knowledge is acquired: epistemology
Authority
Rationalism - practice of employing reason (logic) as legitimate source of knowledge
Empiricism - practice of employing direct observation as a source of knowledge
Aristotle (384 - 323 BC): Founder of Science
Started as physician, later studied with Aristotle for 20 years. Was tutor to King Philip of Macedon's son, Alexander the Great. Started world's first zoo, wrote 400 volumes of philosophy
Most important publications are on logic and biology.
Logic is the method of correct thinking (is the logy in biology, psychology, etc.
In biology, carefully observed wide range of organisms. Noted the step-by-step progression from simplest living organisms to most complex, a rudimentary version of the theory of evolution.
Also experimented by breaking open eggs at various stages of incubation and observing the development of the embryo inside
Almost 2,000 years passed from Aristotle's writings until next significant development in history of science
Early European philosophers of science
The spirit of mechanism
In 17th century Europe various mechanical toys: water running through pipes operated figures that moved, played musical instruments, and produced word-like sounds; hidden pressure plates were activated when people stepped on them sent water flowing to produce the movements.
The Zeitgeist of the times included the philosophy of mechanism, the image of the universe as a great machine.
Craftsmen who developed the mechanical clock were among the first to apply the principles of physics and mechanics to the construction of machinery; they used levers, pulleys, cranes, pumps, etc. to serve agriculture and industry. Clocks were a technological sensation. No other mechanical device has had such an impact on society.
Philosophers saw the regularity, predictability, and precision of clocks as a model for the physical universe: the clockwork universe: a machine set in motion by the Creator, and which will run without intervention.
Includes ideas of
Determinism: that all events are determined by past events
Reductionism: the idea that complex phenomena can be explained by reference to simpler phenomena on a "lower" level
Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650)
Born into nobility, received broad education in philosophy, science, mathematics (invented Cartesian geometry, parts of calculus), got degree in law. Traveled throughout Europe, studying the "book of the world."
Wrote set of four rules for thinking (Accept nothing that is not self-evident, Divide problems into simplest parts, Solve problems by proceeding from simplest to most complex, Always recheck your results) that led to "Cogito, ergo sum" ("I think, therefore, I am") through a method of systematic doubt:
"I noticed that while I was trying to think everything false, it must needs be that I, who was thinking this, was something. And observing that this truth, I am thinking, therefore I exist, was so solid and secure that the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptics could not overthrow it, I judged that I could accept it as the first principle..."
From this principle, he deduced that there must be a sharp distinction between mind and body - this is called Cartesian dualism. (Logic: the "I" of the cogito has the only characteristic that it thinks. Thinking itself has no physical existence. So the "I" above has no physical existence. But the body exists in time and space - can be measured.)
Since body and mind are distinct, the methods we use to study them should be distinct, too.
Proposed a rational approach to study of mind, empirical approach to study of body
All physical events (including body) result from "secondary causes" that are physical and mechanical, and can be understood by application of empiricism
Problem of mind-body interaction dealt with through pineal gland - seat of interaction
Proposed doctrine of ideas that the mind has both derived ideas (produced by external stimulation, e.g., sound of bell produces idea of bell) and innate ideas (e.g., God, the self, perfection, infinity) that are not produced by experience.
Primary contributions:
Deterministic, mechanistic, materialistic concept of world - clockwork universe
Doctrine of ideas
Attempt to resolve mind-body problem
Inventions in optics (better lenses than Galileo, mechanical pump, described circulation of blood, explained idea that air has weight.
Frances Bacon (1561 - 1626)
His book New Organon was designed to replace Aristotle's Organon. Bacon argued for empiricism. Developed procedure for inductive logic (invented and used by Aristotle, but not explained well) - to arrive at explanation.
Explanation of heat by listing all things that have heat (fire, sunshine) compare to list of things that sometimes have heat (bodies, stones, etc.).
Then take each common factor (cause) and test against new data, eliminating those that didn't work out - note that this is hypothesis generation and testing.
Concluded that motion is the critical component of heat.
Empiricism and Associationism
John Locke (1632-1704)
Rejected existence of innate ideas - all knowledge derived from experience
Mind is tabula rasa (blank tablet, clean slate) upon which experience writes
Two difference sources of ideas: sensation (direct sensory experience) and reflection (result of mind's operations on sensations).
Recognized simple ideas (elemental; can't be broken down) and complex ideas (compounds of simple ideas) [reductionism]
Theory of association: knowledge results from linking (associating) of simple ideas into complex thoughts
Primary qualities exist in objects themselves (e.g., size and shape) vs. secondary qualities that only exist when we perceive objects (color, odor, pain)
Experiment: prepare three containers of water: warm, cool, and lukewarm. Place left hand in warm, right in cool. Then place both in lukewarm. Your left had will feel cool, your right will feel warm. But the lukewarm water is the same temperature for both hands, so your perceptions are not the direct experience of the temperature of the water.
George Berkeley (1685 - 1753)
Rejected Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities; all knowledge was a function of the experiencing or perceiving person - there were no primary qualities. There can be no color without the perception of color, no shape without the perception of shape. This position was later called mentalism.
David Hume (1711 - 1776)
Distinguished impressions, basic elements of mental life (today, sensations and perceptions) and ideas, mental experiences in the absence of stimulating object (today, images).
Laws of association: resemblance (similarity) and contiguity in time and space
James Mill (1773 - 1836)
Goal was to destroy the idea of subjective or psychic activities, and demonstrate that the mind was nothing more than a machine. Empiricists who argued that the mind was similar to a machine didn't go far enough: the mind is a machine. [Re: Skinner]
Mind has no creative function: association is automatic and passive: sensations that occur together in a certain order will be reproduced mechanically as ideas.
John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873)
At age 3, reading Plato in original Greek; at 11 wrote first scholarly paper; at 12 had mastered the standard university curriculum; at 18 described himself as "logical machine"; at 21 suffered severe mental depression. One of first feminists: abhorred lack of rights of women (no financial or property rights; compared women to other disadvantaged groups; condemned idea that wife must submit to sex with her husband on demand, even against her will, declared marriage should be a partnership).
Argued against mentalism of James Mill: said mind plays more active role in formation of ideas - complex ideas are more than sum of parts, because they take on new properties not found in simple ideas (e.g., mix blue, red, & green you get white, not in any of the 3 colors).
Methods: agreement, difference, comcomitant variation for identifying cause
By middle of 19th century, 200 years after Descartes's death, period of prescientific psychology was at an end. The ideas that had gained ascendency during this time were:
Positivism was introduced by Auguste Comte( 1798 - 1857): doctrine that recognizes only natural phenomena or facts that are objectively observable; everything speculative, inferential, debatable was rejected.
Materialism: all facts of universe can be sufficiently explained in physical terms
Empiricism: pursuit of knowledge through observation of nature
Physiological influences on psychology
In 1795 the royal astronomer of England, Nevil Maskelyne, noticed that the observations of his assistant were 5/10ths of a second different than his own. The assistant couldn't manage to correct the problem and was fired. Twenty years later, the data were investigated by Friedreich Wilhelm Bessel, a German astronomer. Bessel thought that the "errors" were really attributable to personal (individual) differences in the two observers. If so, then differences in observation times would be found among all astronomers. He found his hypothesis was correct. He called this the "personal equation."
Conclusion 1: astronomers would have to take into account individual differences
Conclusion 2: individual differences would have to be considered not only in astronomy, but in every other science as well
The event thus focused attention on the role of the human observer
Four scientists (Helmholtz, Weber, Fechner, and Wundt) are directly responsible for the initial application of experimental methods to the study of the mind
Hermann von Helmholtz (1821 - 1894)
One of first experimental studies of physiological responses: studied speed of neural impulse by stimulating a motor nerve in the leg of a frog, reaction times for sensory nerves in humans (very large individual differences and differences from person to person led him to abandon this work)
Revised work on vision done earlier by Young, to propose the Young-Helmholtz theory of color vision. Also worked on audition (perception of tones and harmony).
Ernst Weber (1795 - 18778)
Two-point threshold
Just noticeable differences (jnd) (this term given by Fechner?
Weber's Law (fraction) shows a constant relation of the amount of change in stimulus (strength) necessary to be noticed: R/R = K, where R is the amount of change needed for a jnd and R is the strength of the stimulus at the time. E.g., for weight, the fraction is 1/50; thus, for 300 gm weight, it would be necessary to add (or subtract) 1/50 x 300 = 6 gm for the difference to be noticed. This was the first formula to attempt to bridge the physical and psychological worlds.
Weber's work was strictly experimental
Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801 - 1887)
On October 22, 1850, Fechner realized, independently of Weber's work, that there must be a quantitative relationship between stimuli and sensations. He discovered Weber's work and expanded on it; integrating Weber's equation to obtain Fechner's Law: S = k log R, where S is the perceived sensation, k is a constant, and R is the stimulus strength. This says the strength of a mental sensation is a constant logarithmic function of the stimulus, and that as the mental series increased arithmetically, the stimulus series must increase geometrically.
Established psychophysical methods
Method of limits: standard stimulus along with comparison stimuli of greater/lesser magnitude in ascending/descending series.
Method of constant stimuli: standard stimuli compared to variable stimuli in random order (S reports whether each comparison is =, <, or > standard)
Method of average error: subject manipulates comparison stimuli to match standard
The formal founding of psychology
Wilhelm Wundt (1852 - 1920)
Wundt's topic was consciousness
Used experimental methods of natural sciences, especially physiology, to study consciousness. So the Zeitgeist in physiology and philosophy helped shape the new psychology's subject matter and methods.
Wundt's view was that consciousness was composed of many parts that could be understood by breaking down into simpler ones (analysis and reduction). But he did not think the elements were static (atoms of the mind) connected mechanically by association. Instead, consciousness is actively organizing its own content. Thus, study of the elements, content, and structure of consciousness alone would provide understanding of psychological processes. Wundt focused on the process of organizing elements, not the elements themselves, as had earlier British empiricists.
Method was introspection (examination of one's own mental state). Borrowed method from psychophysics, where comparison of 2 weights requires subject to report on internal state.
Goals: (1) analyze conscious process into elements, (2) discover how the elements interact (are synthesized and organized), (3) determine laws of connection governing organization.
How do we organize elements to see, e.g., a tree (not a collection of elements)? Doctrine of apperception, creative synthesis that creates new properties from synthesis of elements combined. Compare H2 and O = H2O (water). So, process of association is not passive and mechanical.
Wundt showed that an experimental psychology of the mind is possible. He studied vision (color, peripheral vision, contrast, negative afterimages, color blindness, etc), hearing, minor senses, and reaction time, attention, feelings, verbal associations.
Didn't gain popularity in US because it was not practical (applied). In 1910, only 4 scholars listed themselves as psychologists, although had 3 journals (in 1925, only 25).
Position declined during 1918-39 (perhaps because of his defense of Germany about WWI; Wundt blamed England for starting the war). Even in Germany, Gestalt psychology and psychoanalysis overshadowed his views, and in the US they were eclipsed by functionalism and behaviorism. Collapse of German economy after WWI prevented even Leipzig Library from purchasing copies of Wundt's last books. Lab was destroyed in bombing raid during WWII. Is still considered the most important psychologist of all time by historians of psychology.
Other Developments: In England, Darwin's and Galton's ideas were being developed
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850 - 1909)
Was interested in the formation of associations.
Developed nonsense syllables to measure memory (forgetting). Prior to this, the primary method of studying association (e.g., as by the British philosophers) was to examine existing associations, e.g., "fire - hot"). Found that meaningless material is about nine times harder to learn than prose or poetry. Also found that the time needed to learn an element of a longer piece is greater than the time to learn an element of a shorter piece. He discovered the "forgetting curve":
Franz Brentano (1838 - 1917)
Argued against Wundt's idea that psychology should study the content of consciousness; he said psychology should study mental activity, e.g., the act of seeing. He called his approach act psychology
Oswald Külpe (1862 - 1915)
Initially follower of Wundt, but later led a group of students in protest against Wundt's ideas; worked on problems that Wundt had ignored. Külpe's subjects made detailed retrospective judgements about complex problems Külpe put to them, e.g., establishing a logical connection between concepts. Wundt didn't want his subjects to make detailed subjective judgements; he preferred objective, quantitative judgements, such as reaction times and judgements of weights.
Wundt proposed that all experience is composed of sensations or images. Külpe believed that thought could occur without any sensory or imaginal content, i.e., that there is imageless thought.
Structuralism - E. B. Titchener (1867 - 1927)
Titchener was a student of Wundt's but dramatically altered Wundt's views in "translating" it to English to bring psychology to the U.S.
Wundt's concern was organization/synthesis of elements of consciousness into higher level cognitive processes through apperception; Titchener focused primarily on the elements of consciousness
Wundt thought mind had power to organize mental elements voluntarily; Titchener's view was more mechanical through associationism
Titchener discarded Wundt's views of apperception
Titchener's life
Studied under Wundt (only 2 years), but found ideas about psychology were not well received in his native England, where these were favorite subjects of philosophy
Went to Cornell at 25. Autocratic style, required his junior professors to attend lectures in front row; he entered through door leading to lectern. Flamboyant production lectures
More than 50 doctoral candidates carried on his ideas
Translated Wundt's books into English, and wrote several of his own, including important Experimental Psychology: A Manual of Laboratory Practice (1901-05), 4 volumes.
Karl Dallenbach quotes Titchener as saying "A man could not hope to become a psychologist until after he had learned to smoke." Another student was talking to him while he was smoking a cigar, and his beard caught on fire. He kept on talking until she interrupted him to tell him, by which time the fire had caught his shirt and underwear. Women were not allowed at his meetings of Experimentalist, because he thought they were too pure to smoke, a necessary component of the discussion. Still, 1/3 of his doctorates were women when Harvard and Columbia excluded them, and he advocated their right to serve as faculty. First woman to earn doctorate in psychology was Margaret Floy Washburn, who was Titchener's first doctoral student. She was first woman psychologist elected to National Academy of Sciences, served as president of APA, and established Vassar College, wrote important book on comparative psychology.
Somewhere at Cornell is Titchener's pickled brain
System: content of conscious experience
The subject matter of psychology is conscious experience as that experience is dependent on experiencing persons. Compare study of light & sound by physicists and psychologists: physicists study from standpoint of physical processes; psychologists study how they are experienced/perceived by humans. What physicists study is independent of experiencing person; not so for psychology.
Stimulus error: confusing mental processes with what we are observing, e.g., observe an apple and report it as an "apple" rather than reporting the brightness, color, shape they are experiencing. To call it an apple is to fail to distinguish what they have learned about the in the past from what they are experiencing; they are dealing with mediate, not immediate, experience (Wundt's terms).
Introspection: trained. Subjects had to unlearn tendency to call red shiny object an "apple," even though in life this tendency is beneficial and necessary. T used qualitative and subjective, rather than objective and quantitative, because objective methods not able to discover elementary sensations and images of consciousness, which were core of psychology (as opposed to Wundt, who had core as synthesis of elements into whole). Goal was to discover atoms of the mind.
T considered subjects to be passive recorders, machinelike. So, humans also machines. The human-as-machine analogy continued through first half of 2th century. Introspection was a serious business, required much training and discipline.
A student, Cora Friedline, recalled that grad students swallowed stomach tubes (with a condom at the end) and hot and cold water was poured down for students to report sensations (they kept tubes in all day). Students required to record sensations during urination and defecation. Married students were required to make notes of their sensations during intercourse, and attach recording devices to parts of their bodies.
For T, the three problems of Psychology were: (1) reduce conscious processes to simplest components, (2) determine laws by which elements were associated, (3) connect elements with their physiological conditions. Very like natural science.
T proposed 3 elementary states of consciousness: (1) sensations (basic elements of perception that occur in sounds, sights, smells, other experiences evoked by physical objects), (2) images (elements of ideas, found in process that reflects experiences not actually present at the moment, such as memory of past experience, (3) affective states (affections) (elements of emotion as in love, hate, sadness). Presented a list of >44,000 sensations qualities, including 33,820 visual & 11,600 auditory, each distinct from others.
All conscious processes can be reduced to one of attributes of quality, intensity, clearness, and duration.
T's views changed dramatically over time; he dropped notions of sensation and affection, even stopped using term mental elements by 1918; took to calling his approach "existential psychology" rather than "structural psychology." Dropped introspective approach in favor of phenomenological approach; dropped notion of breaking experience into elements.
Criticisms of structuralism
Introspection
Method of introspection (criticisms are more appropriate to T and Kulpe than Wundt, because Wundt focused on objective, measurable introspection). Any attempt to observe conscious experience alters it (a la Kant). Compte argued that if mind were capable of introspection, it would divide itself into two parts, the one doing the observing and the one being observed: "the mind may observe all phenomena but its own"
Little agreement among introspectionists. Training creates a bias
Problem with "stimulus error": use of terms like "table" is stimulus error. Needed to be stricken from vocabulary. But introspective language never developed.
Artificial and sterile for focus on elements; experience cannot be analyzed into elements; does not come to us as particles. Gestaltists said must focus on whole
Scope of psychology as defined by structuralism too narrow, didn't include child psych and animal psych (his first Ph.D. wrote in comparative psych?)
Contributions
Clearly defined subject matter
Used scientific methods (in best tradition of science): self-report (introspection?) is still used in psychophysics
Cognitive psych uses introspection, too
Functionalism: antecedent influences
Functionalism is concerned with mind as it functions or is used by organism in adapting to environment: What do mental processes accomplish? What does mind do, and how does it do it? A "real world" approach (compare structuralism as concern about elements, rather than use); interested in using psychology to solve everyday problems. It a protest against structuralism; but didn't want to found school, because didn't have the ambition to do so. Result was that functionalism didn't become rigid as other schools.
Forerunners of Functionalism
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Published Origin of Species (1859) 1 year before Fechner published Elements of Psychophysics and 20 years before Wundt established lab in Leipzig.
{Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (French naturalist) formulated behavioral theory of evolution that emphasized modification of bodily form through efforts to adapt to environment; such modifications could be inherited by succeeding generations., E.g., giraffes get long neck by trying to reach for food.}
After a childhood in which he was thought of as somewhat dull, he entered Cambridge Univ, where he associated with the dissipated and low-minded, drinking, singing, playing cards. His father secured him a position as a naturalist on the H.M.S.Beagle, which explored Tahiti and New Zealand, etc., from 1831-36. Conceived of theory of evolution, and changed personal life to serious intellectual to develop it. Retreated to village outside of London to think and write. He had physical symptoms [vomiting, flatulence, boils, rashes, dizziness, trembling, depression] whenever his routine was interrupted. Evolution was condemned by church even before he published, some 22 years later (in order to collect irrefutable evidence to support his views). In 1858, after publishing a 35 page summary (1842) and a 200 page essay (1844), he received a letter from Alfred Russell Wallace, outlining a theory of evolution very similar to Darwin's. That prompted him to publish his own work, which sold out immediately, and established Darwin's fame.
Both Wallace and Darwin had been influenced by Malthus's book on population, which notes food supply increases arithmetically, but population increases geometrically. Darwin extended this argument to species: only those individuals that survive will be able to pass on their genes; others will die out. Must be accompanied by genetically inherited tendency to variation, so individuals will be different from each other.
Darwin also published The descent of man (1871), The Expression of emotion in man and animals (1872), which argued that emotions were remanent of movements that once served some practical function, and "A biographical sketch of an infant" (1877) in Mind, which is an early source of modern child psychology.
Darwin's influence on psychology
Raised possibility of continuity between man and lower animals. If human mind evolved from simpler beings, then did those simpler beings possess (simpler) minds? Gives animal psychology.
Darwin's work brought focus on functions of mind and consciousness, which seemed more interesting than study of elements.
Francis Galton (1822-1911): Individual Differences
Cousin of Darwin. Wundt and Titchener did not consider individual differences part of psychology.
Hereditary Genius (1869) argued that genius is inherited, and too much attention has been given to environmental influences. Argued that not only genius was inherited, but the specific form of genius (scientists come from scientists, etc.). Wanted to encourage genius and discourage unfit, founded eugenics, or factors that improve inherited qualities of humans: breed together most intelligent to improve human race. Proposed development of intelligence test to determine which people should be encouraged to breed.
Statistical methods. Wanted to quantify everything. (Counted yawns and coughs and used as measure of boredom.) Belgian statistician, Adolph Quetelet, had applied statistical methods and normal curve to biological data, showed that most physical measurements fall on normal curve. Galton adopted this method to measures of intelligence. Suggested that any large set of numbers (normal) could be described by mean and sd. Discovered the correlation, regression to mean. Karl Pearson was student.
Galton originated mental tests. Assumption was that mental capacity could be measured in terms of sensory abilities (based on Locke's view that all knowledge comes from senses, and that lower grade idiots often have reduced sensory capacity). Invented many instruments to measure sensory capacity.
Animal psychology and the development of functionalism.
Before Darwin, Descartes' view as animals as automata had dominated thinking. Scientists proposed a continuum between animals and humans on all aspects of physical and mental functioning.
George John Romanes (1848-1894) systematized study of animal intelligence. Published Animal Intelligence (1883), first book on comparative psychology. Used anecdotal method (use of observations, often by untrained observers, uncritically accepted), using introspection by analogy (later discarded): same mental process that occur in human minds also occur in minds of animals being observed. Weakness in this method was recognized by Conway Lloyd Morgan, Romanes's student. Morgan proposed Law of Parsimony (Lloyd Morgan's Canon) - behavior must not be interpreted in terms of higher mental process when it can be explained by lower mental process. Wundt had earlier noted that "complex explanatory principles can be used only when the simpler have proved insufficient."
Comparative psychology was an outgrowth of Darwin's notion of continuity of species; basic to Darwin is function - as a species evolves, physical form is determined by requirements for survival. When psychologists began to think of mental processes in same way, they got functional psychology.
Functionalism: Development & Founding:
By about 1900, psych in the US had become distinct from both Wundt and T brand of psych, neither of which was concerned with the purpose or usefulness, the function, of consciousness. The reason Functionalism thrived in the US and not on the continent was because of the American Zeitgeist, which was ready to accept evolution and the functionalist attitude derived from it. He coined phrase "survival of the fittest."
Herbert Spencer (1820-1905).
Hailed as hero when he emigrated to US in 1882; met by Andrew Carnegie. Had neurotic fear of being around unwanted people.
Social Darwinism. Spencer argued that all aspects of universe, including human behavior and character, social institutions, is evolutionary.
Promoted individualism and laissez-faire economic system, which would lead to human perfection; criticized government regulation of lives; opposed subsidies for education and housing. Assistance from state interfered with natural evolutionary process; those unable to accept developments will not survive. [Isn't the construction of government - that constructs supports for education, etc. - also an evolutionary process? Would he also oppose a revolution against the capitalists and the overthrow of the capitalist system? Or, should the government protect capitalists?] This view corresponded with the Western mentality of survival against a hostile environment; desire to be independent of government.
Synthetic philosophy. His idea that knowledge and experience can be explained in evolutionary principles. Views were praised by Conway Lloyd Morgan, Alfred Russell Wallace (named first son after Spencer), and Darwin, who said Spencer was "a dozen times my superior". James used Spencer's book Principles of Psychology in his classes at Harvard. In this book, Spencer argues that the mind exists in its present form because of past and continuing efforts to adapt to various environments.
William James (1842-1910).
Notes on personal life
Had long interest in mentalism, spiritualism, attempts to communicate with dead, etc. Was criticized by Titchener and Cattell for espousal of psychical phenomena that they, as experimentalists, rejected. Founded no formal system; trained no disciples. Espoused form of psych that was scientific, he was not an experimentalist himself in attitude or deed. Referred to psychology as the "nasty little science", and "an elaboration of the obvious." Was not his life-long interest. He did some work and moved on.
From wealthy, prominent family. Educated in US and in several countries on continent. Was encouraged to science, but at 18 decided to become artist. Worked with painter William Hunt, and quit because lacked talent. Enrolled in medical school, but thought was much "humbug," except for surgery. Quit and tried biology, but couldn't take the precise collecting and details, as he found in a trip to Amazon Basin with zoologist Louis Agassiz. Resumed medical studies, because nothing else interested him.
Was frequently ill with depression, digestive disorders, insomnia, visual disturbances, and weak back. Feared to even go out at night. After he married, he left home after every child was born to get away from intimacy of relationship.
Wanted to study with Helmholtz and Wundt, to bring scientific method to psych.
Completed medical degree (Harvard) in 1869.
Took teaching position at Harvard in physiology. Taught first course in psychology "The Relations Between Physiology and Psychology" in 1875-76, making Harvard first U in US to offer instruction in experimental psychology, although James had never taken a formal course in psychology.
[On one of his trips away from home wrote back to his wife that he had fallen in love with an Italian woman: "You will get used to these enthusiasms of mine and like them," believing his attraction to other women was a tribute to his wife.]
Wrote his book The Principles of Psychology over 12 years; was big success, still considered major contribution; became most influential book on psych for generations. Wundt and Titchener were attacked in the book; Wundt called it "literature," even James didn't like it: "loathsome, distended, tumefied, bloated, dropsical mass, testifying to nothing but two facts: first, theat there is no such thing as a science of psychology, and second, that [James] is an incapable." Afterwards, decided he wanted nothing more to do with psych, so arranged for Hugo Munsterberg to take over Harvard lab, while James continued to work in philosophy.
James didn't like experimental work, was not an experimentalist; thought results of experimental research weren't in proportion to amount of effort.
Later wrote on applications of psychology to teachers, and Varieties of Religious Experience, and other work in philosophy.
At age 53, became smitten with a 21-year old student, and, in a display of "prowess" carried an extra load on a camping trip, injuring his already weak heart; died in 1910 of heart failure.
Principles of Psychology. Why was James the greatest figure in American psych?
Wrote with clarity and style
Opposed Wundtian position that goal was analysis of conscious experience into elements
Offered new way of looking at psych, congruent with American functional approach: goal of psych is study of people as they adapt to their environment. Consciousness functions to guide us to ends required for survival; required for human evolution.
Treats psych as biological science; mental processes are a useful, functional activity of living creatures as they attempt to maintain themselves and adapt to world.
Emphasized nonrational elements of human nature; passion as well as thought
The subject matter of psych
Psych is science of mental life; study of Phenomena and conditions.
Conditions are physical being, biology
Opposed restrictiveness of Wundtian position, narrow and artificial. Conscious experiences are simply what they are, not collections of elements; discovery of discrete elements through trained introspection doesn't show the elements exist independently of observer - psychologists read into experience what their viewpoints tell them is there. Compare trained food taster, who can analyze tastes into elements; untrained person can't report such elements of tastes, those tastes may not be present in his conscious experience of taste. Simple sensations do not exist in conscious experience, but only as results of convoluted process of inference e or abstraction. "No one ever had a simple sensation by itself. ... simple sensations are results of discriminative attention, pushed often to a very high degree."
Mental life is continuous flow, "stream of consciousness." We can never experience same thought/sensation twice. Mind is continuous, no sharp disruptions in flow of consciousness. Mind is selective; we can only attend to small part of sensory world, so mind chooses from stimuli, filtering some, combining/separating others, rejecting others. Criterion of selection is relevance.
Purpose of consciousness is enable us to adapt to environment by allowing us to choose. Distinguished choice and habit (involuntary, nonconscious).
Methods of psych
Introspection, but is aware of problems. Should be supplemented by experiment and comparative methods. These methods show major difference between structural and functional psych: functionalism not restricted to single technique.
Emphasized value of pragmatism - meaning should be sought and tested in its practical consequences ("if it works, it's true'). James was friend of C.S. Peirce. James wrote book Pragmatism.
Theory of emotions.
Usual explanation of emotion is we see wild animal, have fear (emotion), then run. James said we see, then run, then fear ("Our feeling of the [bodily] changes as they occur IS the emotion"), the James-Lange theory of emotions.
Habit
Living things are "bundles of habits" reinforced by repetition
The Chicago School
Titchener, by distinguishing "functionalism" and "structuralism" may have played a role in the founding of functinalism
John Dewey (1859-1952) arrived at Chicago in 1894
Undistinguished early life until junior year U Vermont. Taught high school, then went to John Hopkins (Ph.D. 1884), then to Michigan & Minnesota. Published first American text in psych, Psychology (1886), popular until James's work.
10 years at UC. Established lab school. Went to Columbia in 1904. Brilliant but not a good teacher
"The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (Psych Rev, 1896) last work in psych proper, attacked psychological molecularism, elementism, reductionism of reflex arc with its distinction between stimulus and response. Argued that neither behavior nor conscious experience could be reduced to parts/elements. Reflex arc proponents argue that behavior unit ends with response; Dewey says is more of a circle than arc, because following the response, the perception of stimulus changes, so perception and response must be a unit, not composition of sensations and responses. Reflexive behavior cannot be meaningfully reduced to elementary units.
Since behavior should not be artificially dissected, we should take as subject matter of psychology the total organism as it functions in the environment
Dewey's contributions were in influence on scholars and his development of philosophy for new school. When he left U Chicago in 1904, leadership passed to Angell.
James Rowland Angell (1869 - 1949)
Molded functionalist school into working school, made psych dept at U Chicago most influential of time as training ground for functionalists.
Born in Vermont to academic family (grandfather president of Brown Univ and later pres at U Michigan). Did undergraduate work at University of Michigan. Read James Principles and studied with James at Harvard, got MA in 1892.
Wundt wouldn't accept any more grad students, so he went to Univ of Halle. Never finished Ph.D. (Needed to rewrite in better German). Went to U Minnesota, and after 1 year to U Chicago
Province of Functional Psychology. Psychology (1904) embodied functionalist view. Function of consciousness is to improve the organisms adaptive abilities. Goal of psych is to study how mind assists this adjustment of the organism to its environment.
Angell's 1906 presidential address to APA, "The province of functional psychology." (Argued that functionalism wasn't new, but that structuralism had set itself apart from earlier traditions.)
Functional psych is
psych of mental operations, not mental elements. Task of psych to discover how a mental process operates, or what it accomplishes, and under what conditions.
Psych of fundamental utilities of consciousness. Consciousness mediates between needs of organism and demands of environment. Since consciousness has survived, it must serve some purpose; functionalism tries to find this purpose.
Psych of psychophysical (mind/body) relations. Is no real distinction between mind & body; different entities but belonging to same order, assumes easy transfer from one to other.
Harvey Carr (1873 - 1954)
Math major at DePauw U in Indiana and U Colorado; switched to psych because of friendly prof, then transferred to U. Chicago because was no lab at Colorado.
Took Angell's course in experimental psych, and worked with John B. Watson, who introduced him to animal psych. Later taught at a Texas high school, then a teachers college in Michigan. Returned to Chicago in 1908 to replace Watson, and succeeded Angell as head of psych dept. While he was chair, UC awarded 150 Ph.D.s
Functionalism: Final form
Reached its height while he was at U Chicago.
Argued that functionalism was the American psych - behaviorism, psychoanalysis, Gestalt, etc., were needlessly exaggerated forms operating on limited aspects of psych. Functionalism was all encompassing.
Carr defined subject matter of psych as mental activity (memory, perception, feeling, imagination, judgement, will).
Function of mental activity is to acquire, fixate, retain, organize, and evaluate experiences, and to use experiences to determine one's actions.
By 1925 when Psychology was published, functionalism was mainstream American psych. Carr believed literature and art could provide important insights on mental activities; introspection could be used, as well as experimentation.
Chicago school promoted shift away from exclusive use of subjective mind or consciousness toward the study of objective, overt behavior. Became the bridge between structuralism (mind only) and behaviorism (behavior only).
From Psychology
Psychophysical processes are mental operations involved in performance of adjustive response.
Type of conduct that reflects mental activity is adaptive or adjustive behavior.
The reactive disposition of an individual...what he can and cannot do, is a function of his native equipment, of the nature of his previous experiences, and of the way in which these have been organized and evaluated. The term self is generally employed to characterize an individual from the standpoint of his reactive disposition.
Personality is all those traits and characteristics of self that make or mar his efficiency in dealing with other individuals, mind is used to characterize intellectual characteristics.
Subject matter of psych is mental activity ("acquisition, fixation, retention, organization, and evaluation of experiences, and their subsequent utilization in the guidance of conduct").
Psych is concerned with personality, mend, and self, but these can be studied only through their manifestations. "The various concrete activities involved in an act of adjustment are the observable data and the subject matter of psychology."
Methods. Mental acts can be observed subjectively (introspection) or objectively (behavior). They are alike in nature.
Subjective:
Introspection gives more "intimate" view of meatal events.
May be difficult, since minds sometimes engaged in something else
Validity of subjective observations cannot always be tested
Introspection must be confined to trained subjects
Instruments such as eye movement photos may be used
Method of experimentation:
Provides means of discovering facts that would not ordinarily be noticed
Can be tested by other experimenters
Indirect:
Creations and products of mental activity, e.g., inventions, literature, art, political institutions, ethical systems
Mental acts can be influenced by anatomy and physiology
Relations to other sciences: gather material from sociology, education, neurology, physiology, biology, anthropology.
Functionalism at Columbia University
Alternative views of functional psych developed by Woodworth and Cattell
Robert S. Woodworth (1869 - 1962)
BA from Amherst, then taught high school science, then math at a small college. Heard G. Stanley Hall give lecture, and read James's Principles. Went to Harvard, got MA, then Ph.D. from Cattell at Columbia. Taught physiology in NYC hospitals, then England, then Columbia, retiring in 1945. Continued to lecture until 1958, then retired again, age 89. Gardner Murphy was student.
Wrote Dynamic Psychology (1918) and Dynamics of Behavior (1958), Psychology (1921), and Experimental Psychology (1938, 1954).
Disdained schools, too restrictive, but was pretty much functionalist S - O - R. So, subject matter of psych is both consciousness and behavior. The external stimulus and response can be observed objectively, but internal events can only be found through introspection.
Dynamic psych is concerned with motivation.
Woodworth emphasized physiological events underlying behavior. Focused on cause-effect relationships. Psychology's goal should be to determine why people behave as they do.
Critics of Functionalism
Titchener at Cornell attacked functionalists. A student of his surveyed texts and found the term "function" had not been clearly defined.
Titchener said functionalism was not psych at all, because did not adhere to principles of structuralism
Too much interest in practical and applied
Contributions of Functionalism
Vigorous opposition to structuralism [?]
Animal psych became more important
Child psych, mental disabilities
Enabled psychologists to supplement introspection with other techniques [especially experimental?], including physiological research, mental tests, questionnaires, and objective descriptions of behavior.
Functionalism's Legacy: Applied Psychology
Growth of Psychology in US. Even though Wundt trained many of the psychologists in US, they preferred the functionalism and its Darwinian approach. Wanted an applied psychology.
Psychology grew and prospered in US: in 1880, there were no labs in US, but by 1900 there were 42, and better equipped than those in Germany.
Journals went from 0 in 1880 to 3 in 1895.
By 1903, more Ph.D.s were awarded in Psychology than in any other science except chemistry, zoology, and physics.
In 1910, 50% of articles in Psychology were in German, 30% in English; by 1933, 52% in English, 14% in German
US had more leading psychologists than Germany, Franc, England combined.
Reasons for shift
So many Ph.D.s, they couldn't find work in academia.
But psychology held in low esteem (1912: C. A. Ruckmick)
Public schools needed info on teaching
Granville Stanley Hall (1844 - 1924)
First American doctoral degree in psychology. Began first lab in US, founded first Psychology journal in US. Organized and was first pres of APA.
Life
Father purchased draft exemption to avoid service in Civil War, was ashamed of that.
Interested in theology, visited Germany to find interest in the liberated attitudes of Germans. Returned at age 27, in debt, preached, got teaching job at Antioch College
Read Wundt's Physiological Psychology; took leave of absence.
Went to Cambridge to tutor English, and also studied psychology
Degree awarded in 1878.
Back to Europe, Berlin, became Wundt's student at Leipzig, living next door to Fechner. Not very interested in Wundt's views
Returned to US with no job prospect, saw best chance at applying psychology to teaching. Talks at Harvard led to appointment in 1882 at Johns Hopkins, the first grad school in US 5 years earlier.
Here founded in 1882 (formally in 1883) first psychology lab in US
Students included Cattell and Dewey
Founded Am J Psychology in 1887
Became pres of Clark U in 1888
Was receptive to women and minorities, Jews.
First black Ph.D. in psychology was Francis Sumner, who studied with Hall (who later went to Howard U)
Established 2 more journals, Pedagogical Seminary (now J. Genetic Psychology) and J. Applied Psychology.
APA founded in 1892, mostly by Hall, who was first president.
Clark awarded 81 doctorates under Hall
First to become interested in Psychoanalysis, largely responsible for early attention in US; invited Freud and Jung to participate in conferences at Clark
Was described as personally difficult to get along with, untrustworthy, unscrupulous, devious, and aggressively, self-promoting.
Philosophy:
Evolution is framework for development
Genetic psychologist
Made extensive use of questionnaires
Developed child study movement
Wrote 2-volume work: Adolescence: etc.. , proposed his recapitulation theory of psychological development; children repeat life history of human race in their personality development
Much interest in sex, that was roundly criticized (even though he didn't allow women into his lectures about it). E. L. Thorndike said his book was "chock full of errors, masturbation, and Jesus" (Viney)
James McKeen Cattell (1860 - 1944)
Life
Easton, PA; BA at Lafayette College (father was president).
Studied under Wundt
Won fellowship to Hopkins in 1882 to study philosophy. Became interested in psychology as result of own experiences with drugs (hashish, morphine, opium)
G. S. Hall began to teach there; Cattell took Hall's lab course, then to Germany (Wundt) to get Ph.D. in 1886.
Taught at Bryn Mawr College and U Penna, lecturer at Cambridge U, where he met Francis Galton. As result, became one of first Americans to stress measurement, statistics.
Wundt didn't like statistical analysis, which is one reason why we focus on analysis of groups, rather than individuals, which Wundt favored.
Got interested in eugenics, and offered each of his children $1000 if they would marry children of college profs.
Left after becoming prof to go to Columbia U, remained for 26 years.
Started Psychology Review, and acquired Science, which was about to go under. Began series of reference books, including Am men of science and also bought Popular Science Monthly.
Favored more faculty participation in U affairs, and helped found AAUP.
Was dismissed from Columbia for disloyalty to country in 1917 after writing letters to congressmen opposing use of draftees in combat; sued for libel and was awarded $40,000, but not reinstated. Isolated self and wrote satirical pamphlets about U, became embittered, and never returned to academia.
Founded first psychological business, Psychological Corporation
Contributions
Mental tests (of elementary sensorimotor
Most effective as organizer, administrator
The Psychological Testing Movement
Alfred Binet (1857 - 1911)
Disagreed with Galton and Cattell about nature of tests
In 1904, French ministry of public instruction appointed Binet and Simon to commission to study problems of children having difficulty in school
Constructed first Intelligence test: 30 items related to judgement, comprehension, reasoning.
Revised 3 years later, concept of mental age introduced (age at which children of average ability could perform the task)
Terman (also studied with Hall) developed later version, and named it Stanford-Binet; adopted concept of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) ratio of mental age to chronological age x 100
WWI
Titchener didn't want to find ways for psychology to aid war effort, as did then pres of APA, Robert Yerkes.
Yerkes hired Arthur Otis as one of psychologists to design test for army. Otis developed multiple choice type of question.
Also helped develop personality inventory
American public instruction greatly influenced by Stanford-Binet, and it became most important criterion for placement
Edison published an intelligence test, but it was only a random series of questions he thought were simple: "What telescope is the largest in the world?" "What is the weight of air in a room 20' x 30' x 10'" "what city in the US leads in the making of laundry machines?" resulted in loss of faith in IQ testing following series of articles in NY Times.
Psychologists used language of engineering; tests were measurement instruments similar to thermometers (then only available to doctors), X-rays, etc, thus promoting their own status.
Schools referred to as education factories
Racial issues: Henry Goddard in 1912 visited Ellis Island and administered the Stanford-Binet (through interpreter) to immigrant. Interpreter pointed out that immigrant couldn't be expected to be familiar with American culture, Goddard disagreed.
Later testing showed most immigrants got low scores, ranging up to 87% (Russians). These data used to support restrictions of immigration.
Army tests also showed draftees had mental age of 13; blacks lower than whites, etc.
Response: how could we survive if people were so stupid? Prevent them from voting?
Horace Mann Bond (1904 - 1972) showed that blacks from northern states had higher IQ scores than whites from southern states, thus environment must be more important.
Lightner Witmer (1867 - 1956)
Opened first psychology clinic - started the field of clinical psychology (what we now know as school psychology)
Studied with Cattell at U Penna, who wanted him to take over for him, but only on condition he get Ph.D. from Wundt.
State boards of ed were establishing college departments of education, who wanted psychologists to help with applied problems; Witmer established clinic to deal with disturbed children and learning problems.
The clinical psychology movement
Witmer's books; also book by former mental patient, A mind that found itself , Clifford Beers.
Munsterberg's book on psychotherapy, and Freud.
Still, clinical psychology grew slowly, until WWII, which needed clinical psychologists to treat vets with mental problems.
Walter Dill Scott (1869 - 1955)
Student of Wundt, went into advertising and motivation (efficiency).
Wrote Theory and practice of advertising (1903). Consumers are not rational, and can easily be influenced; focused on emotion and sympathy in heightening suggestibility; women are more easily influenced than men by emotional ads. Promoted direct commands "Use Pears Soap" and coupons
Personnel selection and management
The Industrial/Organizational Psychology Movement
Wars greatly influenced growth and importance
Also spawned engineering psychology, human engineering, human factors engineering, ergonomics
Hawthorne Studies
Western Electric's Hawthorne (Ill) plant: began as effect of physical work environment (lighting and temperature) on efficiency. Found social and psychological conditions more important than physical conditions.
Led to studies of leadership, motivation, etc.
Hugo Munsterberg (1805 - 1916)
Stereotypical German prof: wrote hundreds of magazine articles and lots of books; was White House guest. Honored prof at Harvard (for awhile), president of APA; a founder of applied psychology. By time he died, was publicly scorned.
Ph.D. from Wundt in 1885 and MD later
Worked on psychophysics, gained followers and students
James offered him lab at Harvard, but transition from pure experimental to applied in US was not easy.
Dictated a 400 page book in < month, was big success, leading him to publish more to lay public readership on wide variety of topics; did correspondences courses, mental tests, etc.
Tested a confessed killer of 18 people who had accused a labor leader of hiring the killings; Munsterberg pronounced testimony of killer true before trial of labor leader had ended, in acquittal. Munsterberg was denounced.
Also opposed prohibition, and received donations from Busch brewery for $50,000, bad timing just after he published articles opposing prohibition.
Women should not teach in public schools, poor role models for boys, couldn't teach as well as men, shouldn't be trained for careers because takes them away from home, shouldn't be allowed to server on juries.
President of Harvard and his colleagues didn't approve, and his defense of Germany during WWI led to accusations he was a spy. Died of stroke during lecture.
Contributions:
Forensic Psychology: crime prevention, hypnosis, eyewitness testimony, mental tests, lie detector tests,
Clinical Psychology: no subconscious, mental problems are behavioral maladjustment; approach was to suppress ideas that were disturbing
Industrial psychology: best way to improve efficiency was to match workers temperaments to jobs via testing. Since he found that talking while working decreased productivity, but rather than prohibiting talking, design workplace so workers couldn't talk to each other.
Applied Psychology in the US
By 1920's psychology had interest of public, who thought psychologists could fix mental problems and workplace problems; 75% said they did applied work.
But with the economic collapse of the '30's, psychology came under attack for failure to live up to promise, and its reputation declined until WWII.
Now applied psychology much larger than academia (70% academic before WWII, 30% in 1989), lead to shift in power to applied, and a breaking away of others to form APS in 1988.
Behaviorism: Antecedent Influences
Watson brought together three forces to form Behaviorism: (1) philosophical tradition of objectivism and mechanism; (2) animal psychology; (3) functional psychology
The philosophical tradition of Objectivism (from Descartes) along with Auguste Comte's positivism, which emphasized positive knowledge (facts), the truth of which is not debatable. According to Comte, the only valid knowledge is that which is social in nature and is objectively observable, thus ruling out introspection, which depends on a private individual consciousness and can't be objectively observed.
By the time Watson started working on behaviorism, the objectivist, mechanist, and materialist influences were strong.
Influence of Animal Psychology on Behaviorism
Most important influence on behaviorism was animal psych, which grew out of evolution theory
Jacques Loeb developed theory of animal behavior based on tropism (involuntarily forced movement)
Animal's response is forced; doesn't require any explanation in terms of animals consciousness'
Argued that consciousness among animals was revealed by associative memory (association between stimulus and response)
Robert Yerkes began animal studies in 1900
Rat maze introduced by W.S. Small at Clark University
(Animal psychologists had a hard time finding jobs, and were the first to be fired, because most administrators saw now application for their work)
Clever Hans
Government committee (including Carl Stumpf) concluded that no trickery was involved.
Stumpf assigned problem to one of his grad students, Oskar Pfungst
Pfungst found that horse responded to slight movement by owner or stranger indicating when to start/stop counting
Pfungst's report was reviewed by Watson, and influenced his thinking
Edward Lee Thorndike (1874 - 1949)
Personal
First American psychologist to receive all his education in U.S.
Studied under James at Harvard
Wanted to work with children, but was forbidden following a scandal involving an anthropologist's measuring children after they had "loosened' their clothing. Used chicks, instead.
Couldn't find a place to run the chicks through mazes improvised by standing books on end, so James allowed him to use his basement
Left Harvard after girl didn't return his advances, went to Columbia to study with Cattell
Took two chicks with him, then started to work with cats and dogs
Didn't want to be animal psychologist, but only to get to top of heap, then quit
Started working with children, education, etc.; elected president of APA in 1912, had income of $70,000 (tremendous sum in 1924).
Spent 50 years at Columbia, published 507 articles, many of which are lengthy books.
Connectionism: Thorndike's system describing the relationship between situations and responses:
"If all these [connections] could be completely inventoried, telling what the man would think and do and what would satisfy and annoy him, in every conceivable situation, it seems to me that nothing would be left out.... Learning is connecting. The mind is man's connection-system."
Only difference between association of ideas is that Thorndike is talking about connections between situations and responses - very mechanical.
The puzzle box - hungry cat put in box with food outside; various devices (levers, pulleys) had to be manipulated, sometimes several in secession, in order to escape and get the food.
Recorded number of wrong behaviors or time to get out. This is trial and error learning.
Successful behaviors were "stamped in" and unsuccessful behaviors were "stamped out." Formalized as the law of effect: Acts that produce satisfaction in a given situation become associated with that situation, so that when the situation recurs the act is likely to recur.
Thorndike later used human subjects, and found that rewarding a response strengthened it, but punishing a response did not produce a comparable negative effect. He revised the law of effect to place greater emphasis on reward than on punishment.
Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov (1849 - 1936)
Helped shift emphasis from traditional interest in subjective ideas to objective and quantifiable physiological events, e.g., glandular secretions, muscle movements.
Life:
One of 11 children of priest. Blow to head at age of 7 forced his father to school him at home, intending to become priest.
After learning about Darwin's theories, walked several hundreds miles to St. Petersburg to attend university, studying animal physiology.
He was too well educated to return to peasant background, and not wealthy enough be aristocrat, so became one of intelligentsia, which he pursued with energy and hard work of peasant.
Got degree in 1875, and started medical training. Completely dedicated to research (not practice of medicine). His wife took care of all practical matters so he could devote all of his time and energy to research; in return, he promised not to drink or play cards, and only to socialize on Saturdays and Sundays. He was completely indifferent to practical things; his wife had to remind him to pick up his pay. Lived in poverty until he was 41. He slept on a cot at the laboratory for a time because he couldn't afford an apartment. Students took up collection for him (under pretext of paying him for lectures), but he spent the money on dogs for his research.
Temper was well-known. In 1917, during the Bolshevik Revolution, one of his assistants got caught in gunfire in the streets and was 10 min late for class; Pavlov berated him for allowing gunfire to interfere with work.
Work on digestive system won Nobel Prize in 1904
Conditioned reflexes (first called by Pavlov "psychic reflexes")
Reflexes conditioned or dependent on formation of association between stimulus and response
Accidentally discovered when he noticed that dogs salivated before food was paced in their mouth, at sight of assistant who placed food in their mouths.
"At first in our psychical experiments .. we conscientiously endeavored to explain our results by imagining the subjective state of the animal. But nothing came of this except sterile controversy and individual views that could not be reconciled. And so we could do nothing but conduct the research on a purely objective basis."
First, presented bread to dog, who learned to salivate. Then tested buzzer, lights, whistles, ones, bubbling water, and ticking metronomes.
Technique was sophisticated and allowed quantitative measure of amount of conditioning.
He designed special cubicles in which the animals were placed during testing so the animals couldn't see the researcher. He later designed and built a special "Tower of Silence" with extra-thick glass, double steel air-tight doors, and steel girders embedded in sand; a moat filled with straw surrounded the building.
Pavlov studied the process of reinforcement as well as extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, discrimination, and higher-order conditioning.
Some 200 collaborators came to work with Pavlov, more than anyone since Wundt.
Note on E. B. Twitmyer
Presented a paper at the 1904 APA meeting reporting the same results as Pavlov, using human subjects and the knee jerk reflex. Nobody paid any attention; there were no questions from the audience.
Why? Zeitgeist not ready for conditioned reflex? Twitmyer was too young and inexperienced (Ph.D. two years earlier). His talk delivered just before lunch (Wm. James chairing session), and session was running late, so many people were impatient.
Pavlov showed that psychological phenomena could be studied in physiological terms with animal subjects, that the methods are broadly applicable, and quantifiable.
The conditioned reflex provided psychologists with a basic element of behavior, a concrete unit of behavior that could form the basis for complex behavior, and could be experimented upon in the laboratory. His views also reinforced the reductionistic and mechanistic view of behavior.
The influence of Functionalism on Behaviorism
Functionalism represented the most objective approach to psychology then current; based in Darwin's views
One of Functionalism's primary spokesmen, Cattell, stated in a speech at which Watson was present, that "I am not convinced that psychology should be limited to the study of consciousness.... I see no reason why the application of systematized knowledge to the control of human nature many not in the course of the present century accomplish results commensurate with the nineteenth-century applications of physical science to the material world." Woodworth said that "... more and more of them [psychologists] from 1904 on, expressed a preference for defining psychology as the science of behavior rather than as an attempt to describe consciousness." As early as 1911, Walter Pilsbury, who had studied with Titchener, described psychology in his textbook as the "science of behavior." William Montague presented a paper titled "Has Psychology Lost Its Mind?" and spoke of the "movement to dispense with the concept of mind or consciousness and to substitute the concept of behavior...". Books appeared with titles identifying psychology as the study of behavior appeared. Angell, in 1910, commented that consciousness would disappear from psychology, and three years later, before Watson's manifesto was published, suggested that it would be profitable if consciousness were lost and human and animal behavior were described objectively instead.
Behaviorism: The Beginnings:
John B. Watson (1878 - 1958)
Announced his goal to found a new school, recognizing that he did not originate it
Life:
Born on farm in SC, educated in one-room school. Mother intensely religious, father opposite, drank heavily, gambled, given to violence, had several extramarital affairs. Family on edge of poverty. Father ran off with another woman when Watson was 15; Watson resented him rest of his life.
Watson was delinquent during youth and teenage years; lazy and insubordinate, never got better than passing grades; teachers say he was indolent, argumentative, got into fights, was twice arrested.
Enrolled in Baptist school to become a minister, to satisfy his promise to his mother. After his mother died, he went to Univ of Chicago to study with John Dewey, but found Dewey incomprehensible, and switched to psychology to work with Angell.
Received Ph.D. at age 25, the youngest person to get a Ph.D. from UC. Later married one of his students, then 19, who had written a long love poem to Watson on one of her exam papers.
Was not a good introspector, and preferred working with rats to humans.
In 1908 went to Johns Hopkins to take over laboratory. He was asked to come by James Baldwin, but Baldwin was forced to resign because of a scandal (he was arrested in a police raid on a house of prostitution). Watson was promoted.
Was ambitious and intense, often feared losing control, responding to his fear by working still harder.
In 1913 he published "Psychology as the Behaviorist View It" in the Psychological Review, making him an important person in psychology at age 31.
Psychology from the standpoint of a behaviorist was published in 1919. Although ideas met some resistance, support grew, and by 1920's, universities were offering courses on behaviorism. E. B. Titchener worried that behaviorism had engulfed the country like a tidal wave.
He fell in love with a your graduate assistant, Rosalie Rayner, and carried on a affair, writing her torrid love letters, 15 of which were found by his wife; excerpts were printed in the Baltimore Sun during the sensational divorce proceedings.
He was criticized by his colleagues, and became embittered toward the field. He was forced to resign, and took a job in advertising at 4 times his academic salary; in 3 years he was vice-president.
Proposed studying consumer behavior under laboratory conditions, and emphasized that advertising messages should focus on style rather than substance, trying to convey newness, in order to make customers dissatisfied with whatever they had. Used celebrity endorsements.
Wrote articles for the popular press conveying ideas of behaviorism to public, but had little formal contact with academia. Published book Behaviorism, and a book on child and infant care in which he stated that parents should never "hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap. ... Shake hands with them in the morning. Give them a pat on the head if they have made an extraordinarily good job of a difficult task...." This book had a greater impact on the public than anything else he did. His son recalled that Watson was unable to show affection.
He was handsome and charming, loved the public eye, raced speedboats, hobnobbed with wealthy society, and prided himself on his ability to take on all challengers in extensive drinking bouts.
His wife died when she 37 (he was 57), and he never recovered; became a recluse. Refused to appear for an award from the APA because he was fearful he would break down and weep.
Program
Psychology was a science of behavior, must exclude all mentalist concepts, including mind, consciousness, etc. Purely objective and experimental branch of natural science. Confine itself only to what could be observed.
Objective mental tests were in use, but Watson proposed that the results be considered as samples of behaviors, not measures of mental qualities. Thus, a tests did not measure intelligence or personality, but the responses to subject made to the test.
He admitted verbal reports, in spite of his opposition to introspection, because he thought of speaking as behavior, objectively observable. He limited it to situations in which it could be verified (as in reporting difference between tones), and excluded unverifiable reports, e.g., images, feelings, mental states, etc.
The most important research method, the conditioned reflex, was adopted 2 years after behaviorism's inception in 1913.
Conditioning occurs when a response becomes attached to a stimulus other than the one that originally aroused it (dogs salivating to tone). He proposed reducing all behavior to elementary conditioned S-R (stimulus-response) bonds.
Continued the atomistic approach also used by Structuralists; reductionism.
Role of human subjects changed with this approach; previously, the subject was both observer and observed; now the subject was only observed. The name "subjects" was used as opposed to the word "observers," as had been previously used. They no longer observed, they merely behaved, and were observed by the experimenter. The human response machine: "You put a stimulus in one of the slots and out comes a packet of responses."
Subject matter of psychology
Subject matter of psychology was the elements of behavior; no mentalistic concepts allowed. But he still wanted to explain the totality of behavior.
Distinguished "explicit" responses, which were directly observable, from "implicit" responses, such as glandular secretions, that occurred inside the organism. Note that these implicit responses are not directly observable; they were potentially observable.
Initially, Watson accepted the concept of instincts; later he rejected the idea, saying they were just conditioned responses.
Emotions were simply bodily responses to specific stimuli: a stimulus, such as an attacker, produces a pattern of internal bodily changes (rapid heart beat, etc.); those responses are the emotion.
Classical study with "Little Albert," who was conditioned to fear a white rat by striking a metal bar with a hammer behind him when Albert was shown the rat. Generalized to rabbits, Santa Clause whiskers, etc.
Never has been replicated.
Thought processes were regarded as implicit motor behavior, especially, movement of the tongue and larynx as in speech (thinking is implicit speech). Note that Watson couldn't just ask subjects whether they thought in sentences or words, because that would require an introspective response. So measurements were taken of tongue and larynx during speech (and also of the fingers of signers), and it was found that there was slight movement some of the time but not always.
The public was greatly interested in Watson's ideas about a society based on scientifically controlled behavior, free of myths, customs, etc.; took on a fervor of a religion. His book Behaviorism was very favorably reviewed New York Times, etc. Most famous passage is:
"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in, and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select--doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggar man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and the race of his ancestors" (Watson, 1930, p. 104).
As a result of Watson's charm, charisma, and message of hope, Americans turned much attention to psychology.
Karl Lashley (1890 - 1958)
Ardent supporter of Watson's behaviorism, although the result of his research on brain mechanisms challenged a basic point in Watson's system.
Principle of equipotentiality: One part of the cerebral cortex is essentially equal to any other in its contribution to learning.
Law of mass action: The efficiency of learning is a function of the total mass of cortical tissue
But found there was no specific sensory or motor cells that corresponded to connections between sensory and motor apparatus, and thus challenged Watson's point-to-point reflex view, in which brain is simply a relay station to channel incoming sensory signals to outgoing motor responses.
Criticisms of Watson's behaviorism
William McDougall (1871 - 1938)
Debated Watson on February 5, 1924
Argued that behaviorism couldn't account for the experience of enjoying a violin concert: "How [will the behaviorist] explain the fact that the vibrations emitted by the catgut stimulate all the thousands into absolute silence and quiescence, and the further fact that the cessation of the stimulus seems to be a stimulus to the most frantic activity? ... The behaviorist knows nothing of pleasure and pain, of admiration and gratitude." Also, if behavior is determined by past experience, there can be no free will; if no free will, there could be no human initiative, creativity, etc.
Contributions of behaviorism
Made psychology more objective in methods and terminology. Boring said that by 1929, only 16 years after its inception, it was already past its prime; it was born of protest against mentalism, and so thoroughly won the war, that there was nothing left to protest.
Watson's system died by being absorbed into the main body of thought in the discipline.
Behaviorism: After the Founding: The evolutions of behaviorism.
Three stages of evolution of behaviorism: Watsonian behaviorism (1913 - 1930), Neobehaviorism (1930 - 1960), Neo-neobehaviorism or sociobehaviorism (1960+).
Stage I: Neobehaviorism: 1930 - 1960
Agreed that (1) the core of psychology is study of learning, (2) most behavior, no matter how complex, can be accounted for by the laws of conditioning, and (3) psychology must adopt the principles of operationism.
Operationism (Percy Bridgman, The logic of modern physics, 1927): physical concepts must be defined in precise terms and all concepts lacking physical reference be discarded. "What do we mean by the length of an object? ... To find the length of an object, we have to perform certain physical operations. The concept of length is therefore fixed when the operations by which length is measured are fixed; ... the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations."
Everything not defined in such terms is a pseudo-problem. The soul cannot be defined in physical term, nor can consciousness, nor can mind; therefore, these are pseudo-problems, and must be excluded from science.
Edward Chace Tolman (1886-1959)
Studied with Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka, and was trained in Titchenerian traditions of structuralism, but then became acquainted with Watsonian behaviorism.
After graduation was instructor at Northwestern U, then to UC Berkeley (served in OSS during WWII); helped lead faculty opposition to loyalty oath.
In Purposive behaviorism in animals and men (1932) Tolman presented his views.
Behaviorist; rejected introspection
Behavior "reeks of purpose"; is oriented toward achieving some goal.
The fact of learning is objective behavioral evidence of purpose.
Watsonians criticized this because purpose relies on the assumption of consciousness; Tolman replied that it didn't make any difference whether the rat was conscious or not, he was only interested in the overt behaviors.
Intervening variables occur between the observable independent variable and dependent variable, and are the actual determinants of behavior: S-O-R. E.g., hunger cannot actually be seen, but must be inferred. However, hunger can be precisely and objectively related to an experimental variable, such as the length of time since the organism last ate. It can also can be related to an objective response, such as the amount of food the animal eats when offered food or speed with which it is consumed. Therefore, hunger can be precisely defined and is amenable to quantification and experimental manipulation.
Tolman rejected Thorndike's Law of Effect, saying that reward and reinforcement had little influence on learning. He proposed a cognitive theory of learning, in which repeated performance of an act strengthened the relationship between cues in the environment and the organism's expectations. The relationships were called sign Gestalts. Learning a maze establishes a pattern of sign Gestalts, which Tolman called a cognitive map.
Experiment 1: Rats were run in a cross-shaped maze. Group I rats started at different points, but always found food at the same place. Group II rats always made the same response (turns) even though food was found at different places (start at one end of the X maze on some trials, then start at other end on other trials). Group I rats learned the maze better.
Experiment 2: A hungry rat is allowed to wander freely in a maze, with no reinforcement (food); no learning is observed. Placed in the maze later, this rat learns more quickly than a rat with no previous experience. This Tolman called latent learning.
Tolman had great influence; is a forerunner of cognitive psychology.
Edwin Ray Guthrie (1886 - 1959)
One-trial learning. Single principle: contiguity. A single pairing of stimulus and response creates an S-R association.
Clark Leonard Hull (1884 - 1952)
Received Ph.D. from U. Wisconsin at age 34, and was on faculty at UW for 10 years. Later went to Yale (worked with Hilgard).
Mathematico-deductive theory of rote learning (1940, with 5 colleagues) and Principles of Behavior formulated a mathematical system of learning, final form is in A behavior system (1952). He used a hypothetico-deductive method, in which theorems are derived from postulates established a priori. A very mechanistic, deterministic approach.
"Progress will consist in the laborious writing, one by one, of hundreds of equations; in the experimental determination, one by one, of hundreds of the empirical constants contained int he equations; ... in the objective definitions of hundreds of symbols appearing in the equations; in the rigorous deduction, one by one, of thousands of theorems and corollaries, from the primary definitions and equations; in the meticulous performance of thousands of critical quantitative experiments." (Hull, 1943, pp 400-401) Very similar to "cycle of scientific inquiry."
Nonspecific drives were basis of system, an intervening variable arising from state of tissue need that arouses or activates behavior; the basis of behavior is the reduction or satisfaction of a drive. Drive energizes, but does not direct, behavior. Primary drives, which are associated with biological need states that are directly involved with organisms survival - (e.g., food, water, sex, relief from pain, temperature regulation, urination, etc. are distinguished from secondary drives, which are learned and are associated with the reduction of primary drives (e.g., burn from touching a hot stove activates primary drive of reducing pain, and also secondary learned drive of fear of the stove).
Proposed law of primary reinforcement, that when an S-R relationship is followed by a reduction in need (primary drive), the probably that the S will be followed by the same R increases. There is also a mechanism for secondary reinforcement: if the intensity of the stimulus is reduced as the result of a secondary or learned drive, the drive will act as a secondary reinforcer.
Habit strength is the strength of the S-R connection resulting from a number of reinforcements; is related to persistence of the conditioning.
In Hull's system, learning cannot take place without a reduction of a drive so it is a need-reduction theory, as opposed to Guthrie's contiguity theory and Tolmans's cognitive theory.
Problems with his system: The requirement for precise quantification reduced the range of applicability of his findings. His system made many specific predictions, which required modification every time a research result didn't conform to its predictions.
Followers included John Dollard, Carl Hovland, Neal Miller, Robert Sears, Hobart Mowrer, and Kenneth Spence.
B. F. Skinner (1904 - 1990)
The most famous and most influential American psychologist in the world.
Born in Susquehanna, Pa., had stable and affectionate childhood, attended small school (only 8 in graduating class); liked high school. Built things as child, kept assortment of pets. Enrolled at Hamilton College, but wasn't happy. Other students belittled him; during senior year he retaliated by playing practical jokes on others and criticizing the faculty and administration. Graduated with degree in English, wanted to be a writer, but had no success. At least 6 women rejected him, hurt him badly.
Read of Watson and Pavlov, and enrolled as grad student in psychology at Harvard, though he had never before taken a psychology course. Went into psychology not because he was committed to becoming a psychologist, but to escape from an "intolerable alternative." Got Ph.D. in 3 years, then taught at U. Minnesota (1936-1945) and U. Indiana (1945-1947) before returning to Harvard.
Book The behavior of organisms (1938) sold only 500 copies and got negative reviews; 50 years later it was called "one of a handful of books that changed the face f modern psychology." A mid-life crisis at age 41 led to Walden Two (1948), in which he mapped out his plan for a society in which everything is controlled by positive reinforcement.
Star began to rise in 1960s, because of his work in education and his work in behavior modification.
Remained productive until his death at age 86. He built in his basement his own personal "Skinner box," containing only a mattress, a small book shelf, and a TV. He went to bed at 10:00, slept for 3 hours, worked for an hour, slept another 3 hours, and rose at 5:00 to work for 3 more hours, walk to his office for more work, administering self-reinforcement (listening to music) in the afternoon.
Skinner's behaviorism is in some respects a renewal of Watson's. Skinner advocated an empirical system with no theoretical framework.
Devoted to study of responses; concerned with describing behavior, not explaining it. The task of scientific inquiry is to establish functional relationships between the experimenter-controlled stimulus conditions and the organisms's subsequent response. The human organism is a machine. His system has been called the "empty organism" approach; human organisms are operated by forces in the environment, not by themselves. Didn't oppose all theorizing; only premature theorizing without adequate data.
Didn't believe necessary to use lots of subjects and data; didn't need statistical analysis; focus on single subject. Groups of subjects force attention to averages, and individual differences are lost.
Operant conditioning. Behavior is emitted by organism, operant behavior, distinct from respondent behavior, elicited in classical conditioning. Operant behavior operates on environment; is instrumental in producing some result. Skinner thought operant behavior is more representative of every day learning.
Law of acquisition: the strength of an operant behavior is increased when it is followed by the presentation of a reinforcing stimulus. Differs from Thorndike (no mention of pleasure-pain or satisfaction-dissatisfaction) and Hull (no drives).
Lot of research on punishment, learning, reinforcement schedules, secondary reinforcement, generalization; used other animals.
Discovery of reinforcement schedules was result of his running low on pellets; asked himself what would happen if he only gave the reinforcement once per minute, regardless of what the rat did (to save pellets).
Speech and language is verbal behavior and is learned like any other.
He developed an aircrib for infants modeled on the Skinner box, but it was not a commercial success. He also worked on the teaching machine (developed in the 1920s), which was enthusiastically accepted. His work on behavior modification (use of positive reinforcement - no punishment) was also successful and well received, especially for institutionalized patients.
Criticisms:
Extreme opposition to theory. It is impossible to operate without theory; because the experiment is planned in advance of doing it, that is itself evidence of theorizing. Acceptance of basic principles of conditioning is also rudimentary theory.
Narrow range of behaviors studied (bar pressing, pecking, etc.). Animals show a tendency called instinctive drift (Breland & Breland, 1961) to substituted instinctive behaviors for learned ones, even when instinctive behaviors interfered with obtaining food.
Description of acquisition of language is challenged on grounds that infants do not learn language by being reinforced on word-by-word basis; rather they learn the rules of language; the potential to construct rules has to be inherited, not learned.
The neo-neobehaviorists: The cognitive challenge
Albert Bandura (1925 - )
Born in Canada, after graduation form high school (only 20 students and 2 teachers) worked on Alaskan Highway. Got Ph.D. from U. Iowa in 1952.
Social cognitive theory stresses influence of beliefs, expectations, instructions. Responses are not always triggered by external stimuli, but are self-activated. When an external reinforcer alters behavior, it does so because the person is consciously aware of what is being reinforced and anticipates the same reinforcement for behaving in the same way.
Has shown that individuals can learn all kinds of behavior without directly experiencing reinforcement through observing others; we get vicarious reinforcement. We can visualize and imagine possible consequences, and then make a conscious decision to behave; there is no direct link between stimulus and response, or between behavior and reinforcement; cognitive processes mediate.
We learn through modeling others. To Skinner, whoever controls the reinforcers controls behavior; to Bandura, whoever controls the models controls behavior.
Research indicates we are more likely to model others of our age and sex, peers who have solved problems similar to our own.
Also impressed by models of high status and prestige.
Simple behaviors are more likely to be modeled than complex behaviors.
Hostile and aggressive behaviors are highly likely to be modeled, especially in children.
It is not the actual schedule that determines behavior, but what the person thinks the schedule is.
Self-efficacy is our sense of self-esteem or self-worth; our feelings of adequacy and efficiency in dealing with life's problems. People who are high in self-efficacy believe they are able to cope with problems and overcome them. They seek challenges, persevere at tasks, and are confident. Low self-efficacy people feel they don't have ability to control environment or solve problems; give up early, avoid challenges. High self-efficacy is related to success in career, grades, etc.
Bandura's approach to behavior modification involves observational learning and modeling, and is successful for treating phobias.
Julian Rotter (1916 - )
Grew up in Brooklyn, NY; Ph.D. from Indiana U in 1941; job at state mental hospital, then US Army in WWII, and taught at Ohio State University. and U of Connecticut.
First to use term social learning theory. A cognitive approach to behaviorism
We always perceive ourselves as conscious beings able to influence experiences that affect our lives.
We have a subjective expectation of the outcome of our behavior
We form an estimate of likelihood that a particular behavior will lead to certain reinforcement, and adjust behavior accordingly
We place different values on different reinforcers
The same reinforcement can have different effects on different people
Locus of control is our judgement of whether reinforcement depends on our own behavior (internal locus of control) or on external factors (external locus of control).
Internals tend to be physically and mentally healthier, get better grades, show less anxiety and depression, are more skillful and popular, have higher self-esteem.
The fate of behaviorism
Although the radical behaviorism of Watson through Skinner has now faded in acceptance, methodological behaviorism as espoused by Hull, Tolman, Bandura and Rotter, with their heavily cognitive theories, remain influential.
Gestalt Psychology:
"Gestalt" means "form," "shape," "configuration."
1. shape or form as property of object, e.g., angular, symmetrical, etc.
2. whole or concrete entity that has as one of its attributes a specific form or shape, e.g., triangles.
Three founders: Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Kohler. Major advances made by Kurt Lewin, who developed "field theory," which survived long after Gestalt died elsewhere. (Lewin was for a time at UW-Madison.)
Founded in opposition to elementism of Structuralism
Theme: "Whole is greater than sum of its parts." Focus on learning and perception (mostly perception); the act of combining sensory elements creates new patterns that did not exist in individual elements (note Wundt's apperception has same ideas).
Antecedents in Kant, who argued perception is not passive, but that elements are organized in a priori fashion, not thorough mechanical associations. Brentano also wanted to focus on act of experiencing, similar to Gestaltists.
Phenomenology: unbiased description of immediate experience just as it occurs; uncorrected observation (sort of common sense approach).
Changing Zeitgeist in physics: focus on fields, away from particles. (Kohler studied with Max Planck)
Phi phenomenon: apparent motion discovered by Max Wertheimer; used stroboscope, and later tachistoscope (with slits); Koffka and Kohler were his subjects. Problem for Wundt was that can't explain apparent movement as the summation of two simple elements (separate slits of light).
Later, examined perceptual constancies and insightful learning (Kohler), productive thinking in humans (Wertheimer)
Gestalt principles of perceptual organization: Proximity, continuity, similarity, closure, simplicity, figure/ground.
Although gained many followers in Europe, lost battle with behaviorism because their arguments were against structuralism, not behaviorism. Also, behaviorism was at peak of popularity, and hard to displace; language problems in translation; many people wrongly believed Gestalt only dealt with perception; all 3 major figures settled in small colleges in US, without graduate programs, so had no disciples to carry on.
i used this for my project