PSY270H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Confounding, Theory Of Multiple Intelligences, Dependent And Independent Variables
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Structuralism seeks to understand the structure (configuration of elements) of the mind and its perceptions by analyzing those perceptions into their constituent components (affection, attention, memory, sensation, etc. Consider, for example, the perception of a flower. Structuralists would analyze this perception in terms of its constituent colors, geometric forms, size relations, and so on. In terms of the human mind, structuralists sought to deconstruct the mind into its elementary components; they were also interested in how those elementary components work together to create the mind. Functionalism seeks to understand what people do and why they do it. This principal question about processes was in contrast to that of the structuralists, who had asked what the elementary contents (structures) of the human mind are. Functionalists held that the key to understanding the human mind and behavior was to study the processes of how and why the mind works as it does.
