PSYC 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Edward B. Titchener
17 May 2018
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PSYC 1010 Lecture 2 Notes
Introduction
Structuralism
• Before long, this new science of psychology became organized into different branches,
or schools of thought, each promoted by pioneering thinkers.
• Two early schools were structuralism and functionalism.
• As physicists and chemists discerned the structure of matter, so Edward Bradford
Titheer aied to disoer the id’s struture.
• He engaged people in self- reflective introspection (looking inward), training them to
report elements of their experience as they looked at a rose, listened to a metronome,
smelled a scent, or tasted a substance.
• What were their immediate sensations, their images, and their feelings?
• And how did these relate to one another?
• Alas, introspection proved somewhat unreliable.
• It required smart, verbal people, and its results varied from person to person and
experience to experience.
• As introspection waned, so did structuralism.
• Hopig to assele the id’s struture from simple elements was rather like trying to
understand a car by examining its disconnected parts.
• Philosopher- psychologist William James thought it would be more fruitful to consider
the evolved functions of our thoughts and feelings.
• Smelling is what the nose does
• Thinking is what the brain does.
• But why do the nose and brain do these things?
• Under the influence of evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin, James assumed that
thinking, like smelling, developed because it was adaptive
• It contributed to our aestors’ surial.
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