Structuralism

 Structuralism is a theory of consciousness that seeks to analyze the elements of mental

experiences, such as sensations, mental images, and feelings, and how these elements
combine to form more complex experiences.
 Structuralism was founded by Wilhelm Wundt, who used controlled methods, such as
introspection, to break down consciousness to its basic elements without sacrificing any of
the properties of the whole.
 Structuralism was further developed by Wundt’s student, Edward B. Titchener.
 Titchener proposed 3 elementary states of consciousness: Sensations (sights, sounds,
tastes), Images (components of thoughts), and Affections (components of emotions).

Structuralist School Of Thought

Structuralism proposes that the structure of conscious experience could be understood by
analyzing the basic elements of thoughts and sensations.
Structuralism is considered the first school of thought in psychology, and was established in
Germany by Wilhelm Wundt, and mainly associated with Edward B. Titchener.
Structuralism looked to examine the adult mind in terms of analyzing the basic elements of
thoughts and sensations, and afterward to discover the manner by which these segments fit
together in complex structures.
Wundt’s aim was to record thoughts and sensations, and to analyze them into their
constituent elements, in much the same way as a chemist analyses chemical compounds, in
order to get at the underlying structure. The school of psychology founded by Wundt is
known as voluntarism, the process of organizing the mind.
Wundt’s theory was developed and promoted by his one-time student, Edward Titchener
(1898), who described his system as Structuralism, or the analysis of the basic elements that
constitute the mind.

Introspection: Structuralism’s Main Technique

Introspection is the process by which a person looks inward at their own mental processes to
gain insight into how they work. It is the self-observation of one’s consciousness.
Wundt’s introspection was not a casual affair, but a highly practiced form of self-
examination. He trained psychology students to make observations that were biased by
personal interpretation or previous experience, and used the results to develop a theory of
conscious thought.
Highly trained assistants would be given a stimulus such as a ticking metronome and would
reflect on the experience. They would report what the stimulus made them think and feel. The
same stimulus, physical surroundings and instructions were given to each person.
 Wundt’s method of introspection did not remain a fundamental tool of psychological
experimentation past the early 1920″s. His greatest contribution was to show that psychology
could be a valid experimental science.
Titchener trained his students to become skilled at trained introspection, and to report only
the sensations as they were experienced without reliance on “meaning words”, which he
called a stimulus error.
Using this approach, Titchener’s students reported various visual, auditory, tactile, etc
experiences: In An Outline of Psychology (1899), he reported over 44,000 elements of
sensation, including 32,820 Visual, 11,600 Auditory, and 4 Taste.

Titchener’s Structuralism
Elements of the Mind
Titchener (1908) concluded that three kinds of mental components could be considered to
constitute conscious experience:
1. Sensations (components of discernments),
2. Images (components of thoughts),
3. Affections (expressions of warmth which are components of emotions).
He suggested these components could be dissected into their unique properties, which he
identified as quality, intensity, duration, clearness, and extensity.
 Quality – “cold” or “red”: distinguishes each element from the others.
 Intensity – how strong, loud, bright etc. the sensation is.
 Duration – course of a sensation over time; how long it lasts.
 Clearness (attensity) – role of attention in consciousness – clearer if attention is directed
toward it.
Pictures and expressions of warmth could be separated further into just bunches of sensations.
It can therefore be concluded that by following this train of reasoning, all of the thoughts in
question were pictures, which, being developed from rudimentary sensations, implied that all
perplexing thinking and thought could, in the end, be separated into simply the sensations
which he could get at through introspection.

Interaction of Elements
The second issue in Titchener’s hypothesis of structuralism was the topic of how the
psychological components consolidated and interfaced with one another to shape any
conscious experience.
His decisions were generally founded on thoughts of associationism. Specifically, Titchener
centers around the law of contiguity, which is the idea the elements combine together.
Titchener dismissed Wundt’s ideas of apperception and innovative blend (intentional
activity), which were the premise of Wundt’s voluntarism. Titchener contended that
consideration was essentially a sign of the “clearness” property inside sensation.

Physical and Mental Relationship

When Titchener distinguished the elements of the mind and the specific interactions they
make with each other, his theory was concerned with figuring out why the components
cooperate in the manner they do.
Specifically, Titchener was keen on the connection between the physical process and the
conscious experience – he wanted to discover specifically what was responsible for most of
the interactions between them.
Titchener accepted that physiological cycles give a nonstop foundation that gives mental
cycles a coherence they in any case would not have. As a result, the sensory system doesn’t
cause any form of conscious experience, yet can be utilized to clarify a few attributes of
mental occasions.

Influence On Psychology
Despite the fact that structuralism spoke to the development of psychology as a field separate
from reasoning, the basic school lost significant impact when Titchener eventually passed
away.
Over the years Titchener’s approach using introspection became more rigid and limited. By
today’s scientific standards, the experimental methods used to study the structures of the
mind were too subjective; the use of introspection led to a lack of reliability in results.
Other critics argue that structuralism was too concerned with internal behavior, which is not
directly observable and cannot be accurately measured.
Also, because introspection itself is a conscious process it must interfere with the
consciousness it aims to observe.
The development drove, nonetheless, to the advancement of a few countermovements that
would in general respond firmly to European patterns in the field of exploratory psychology.
Conduct and character were past the degree considered by structuralism. In isolating
significance from current realities of involvement, structuralism contradicted the
phenomenological convention of Franz Brentano’s demonstration psychology and Gestalt
psychology, just as the functionalist school and John B. Watson’s behaviorism.
Filling in as an impetus to functionalism, structuralism was consistently a minority school of
psychology in America.
 Functionalism

Functionalism is a psychological philosophy that describes the mind as a functional tool that
allows us to adapt to our environments. It posits that our mental states and behaviors are
survival mechanisms, in line with our inherent biological goals. Sound like evolution? That’s
because functionalism, or functional psychology, stems directly from Darwin’s school of
thought, emerging in the late 19th century as a counter to the prevailing theory of
structuralism. Unlike structuralism, which tries to simply understand our subjective
experience of consciousness, functionalism also aims to find meaning and purpose in what
we experience.

Key Terms
Functionalism

An approach to psychology that analyses mental states and behaviors in terms of their
purposes, placing an emphasis on the broad capability of the human mind. Functionalism
marked a major departure from conventional ‘structuralist’ ideas in psychology from the 19th
century onwards.

Structuralism

The precursor to functionalism, which advocates for an ‘introspective’ approach to

psychology, focusing on understanding the individual structures that make up our
consciousness.

Evolutionary Psychology

A strand of psychology that considers our mental processes, emotions and behaviors as
strategies we use in order to adapt to and survive in our environments.

History

The origins of functionalism are traced back to William James, the renowned American
psychologist of the late 19th century. James was heavily influenced by Darwin’s theory of
evolution, and was critical of the structural approach to psychology that had dominated the
field since its inception. James argued that instead of focusing on the specific ‘introspective’
elements that make up our consciousness, psychology should consider the purpose of
consciousness, psychological states, and behavior.

Although James is credited as being the first to advocate for a functional approach to
psychology, the school of functionalism itself did not fully emerge until later in the 19th
century, when scholars at the University of Chicago began to formalise the theory. It was
here that John Dewey, Harvey A. Carr and James Rowland Angell would all develop
functionalism, focusing especially on the biological and animal dimensions of learning and
behavior. Another group of functionalists would emerge in Columbia University, most
notably Edward Thorndike. Thorndike’s work on reinforcement theory and behavior analysis
provided the basis for the empirical laws that emerged under behaviorism later in the 20th
century.

Consequences
Functionalism had an important influence on the trajectory of psychology from the 19th
century onward. Once functionalism took off, most structuralist ideas – which had
previously dominated the field – were disputed and didn’t make their way into the modern
psychology we know today. Most notably, functionalism led directly to the emergence of
behaviorism in the mid 20th century, which views human behavior as a type of ‘reflex’ in
response to external stimuli.

Famous behaviorists including B.F. Skinner and Iain Pavlov based many of their ideas
around reinforcement learning and conditioning on the findings of functionalists. You’ve
likely heard of Pavlov’s famous classical conditioning experiment in which he conditioned
dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. That probably wouldn’t have happened without
functionalism, which was the starting point for studies that considered our mental processes
and behaviour as responses to external stimuli. The field of behaviorism and its practical
application in Applied Behavior Analysis (which uses empirical approaches to encourage
positive behaviour) would go on to become a hugely popular philosophy in clinical
psychology, and continues to be used today as an intervention for people with conditions
such as autism, dementia and addiction.

Functionalism also had a direct influence on the education system in the US. This was largely
due to John Dewey’s theory that children should learn at the pace that best suits their level of
intellectual development, and that the curriculum should encourage students to draw from
their own interests and experiences. Functionalist and behaviorist ideas are also used in
special education settings as tools for positive behavior support.

Finally, the experimental tradition that grew up alongside functionalism brought a wide range
of research methods that are still used in modern psychology today. These include
observation studies, physiological measures, mental tests, and questionnaires.

Controversies

Functionalism is sometimes considered the bridge between early structuralist-based ideas,

and modern behaviorism. Naturally, it has received criticism from both schools of thought.

At first, structuralists argued that functionalism did not fully define or attempt to understand
the mental processes they were dealing with. Instead of trying to explain mental states and
behaviors in the context of environmental stimuli, structuralists believed that psychologists
should focus on introspection and understanding these aspects of consciousness for what they
are. They also argued against the applied nature of functional psychology, believing that it
distracted from the core goal of identifying the structures of consciousness.

Behaviorists in the mid-late 20th century would also take issue with some aspects of
functionalism. While functionalists believed it was important to accept the role of
consciousness and internal cognitions such as pre-existing beliefs, behaviorists were only
concerned with the study of human behavior, and rejected any idea that did not view mental
states as directly influenced by external stimuli.
 Structuralism and Functionalism

What Were Structuralism vs. Functionalism?

Structuralism and functionalism were the two earliest schools of thought in psychology.
When psychology was first established as a science separate from philosophy, the debate over
how to explain human behavior and analyze the mind began. As a result, different approaches
and perspectives emerged.

Both functionalism and structuralism made important contributions to the development

of modern psychology. In order to get an idea of how the field of psychology emerged and
got to where it is today, it can be helpful to look at these older perspectives and the impact
that they had.

What Was Structuralism in Psychology?

Structuralism emerged as the first school of thought in psychology. Wilhelm Wundt, the
founder of the first experimental psychology lab, advocated some of the ideas associated with
the structuralist school.

Structuralism was the first school of psychology and focused on breaking down mental
processes into the most basic components. Researchers tried to understand the basic elements
of consciousness using a method known as introspection.

One of Wundt's students, Edward B. Titchener, would later go on to formally establish and
name structuralism, although he broke away from many of Wundt's ideas and at times even
misrepresented the teachings of his mentor. Wundt's theories tended to be much
more holistic than the ideas that Titchener later introduced in the United States.

Strengths of Structuralism

Structuralism is important because it is the first major school of thought in psychology. The
structuralist school also influenced the development of experimental psychology.

While Wundt's work helped to establish psychology as a separate science and contributed
methods to experimental psychology, Titchener's development of structuralism helped
establish the very first "school" of psychology. Structuralism itself did not last long beyond
Titchener's death.

Criticism of Structuralism

By today’s scientific standards, the experimental methods used to study the structures of the
mind were too subjective—the use of introspection led to a lack of reliability in results. Other
critics argue that structuralism was too concerned with internal behavior, which is not directly
observable and cannot be accurately measured.

What Was Functionalism in Psychology?

Other theories also surfaced to vie for dominance in psychology. In response to structuralism,
an American perspective known as functionalism emerged from thinkers such as the
evolutionist Charles Darwin and William James. Functionalists sought to explain mental
processes in a more systematic and accurate manner.

Other important functionalist thinkers included Edward Thorndike, John Dewey, Mary
Whiton Calkins, Harvey Carr, Hermann Ebbinghaus, and John Angell.

Rather than focusing on the elements of consciousness, functionalism in psychology focused

on the purpose of consciousness and behavior. Functionalism also emphasized individual
differences, which had a profound impact on education.

Strengths of Functionalism

Functionalism was an important influence on psychology. It influenced the development of

behaviorism and applied psychology. Functionalism also influenced the educational system,
especially with regards to John Dewey’s belief that children should learn at the level for
which they are developmentally prepared.

Criticism of Functionalism

Functionalism was criticized perhaps most famously by Wundt. "It is literature. It is

beautiful, but it is not psychology," he said of functionalist William James’ book The
Principles of Psychology.

Structuralism vs. Functionalism

While these two schools of thought served as the foundation for the future developments of
psychology, there were important differences between the two.

Structuralism
 Focused on breaking things down to their smallest parts
 Examined the capabilities of different parts of the mind
 Used introspection to study feelings and sensations
Functionalism
 Focused on how things worked together
 Examined how the mind functions in different environments
 Used objective techniques to explore memories and emotions