PSYCHOLOGY

Approaches to Human Behaviours

Psychological perspectives are different ways of thinking about and

explaining human behavior. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to
studying and understanding the human mind and behavior. That’s
why psychologists utilize a variety of perspectives when studying
how people think, feel, and behave. Exploring different perspectives
gives us a fuller, richer way to look at psychology—and solve
problems that people might be experiencing.
The early years of psychology were ”dominated by a succession of
these different schools of thought. If you have taken a psychology
course, you might remember learning about structuralism,
functionalism, psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and humanism—all of
which are different schools of psychological thought.
As psychology has grown, the number and variety of topics
psychologists investigate have also expanded. Since the early
1960s, the field of psychology has flourished. It continues to grow
rapidly, as has the depth and breadth of subjects studied by
psychologists.
Some of the most prominent psychological perspectives
include:
•The psychodynamic perspective focuses on unconscious
influences
•The behavioral perspective looks at learning via associations and
reinforcement
•The cognitive perspective focuses on how we think and process
information
•The biological perspective is concerned with the brain and
genetic influences
•The cross-cultural perspective emphasizes how culture affects
behavior and thought
•The evolutionary perspective examines the role of natural
selection and inheritance
•The humanistic perspective focuses on growth and self-
fulfillment
Structuralism : According to Structuralism, psychology is the
study of consciousness. Though before the arrival of the
structuralists, psychology was already being considered as the
study of consciousness but they further added that psychology is
concerned with the study of the structure of consciousness (the
supposed structure of mind). The structuralists defined
consciousness to have a definite structure and said that it can be
defined in terms of its structure. The structuralist school has many
followers, but two of the very important names belong to the
Structuralist school of thought are Wilhelm Wundt and Edward
Bradford Titchner.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

Wilhelm Wundt who recognized that psychologists must adopt a
scientific outlook and adopt experimentation as the methodology, if
psychology is to expand and flourish. Wundt based his proposition
that since speculation could not be the mode of scientific
investigation any more; therefore, psychology also has to adopt the
new mode of investigation if it has to be become a science. Wilhelm
Wundt is known for establishing the first psychology laboratory at
Leipzig, Germany, in the year 1875.
Wundt defined psychology as the study of consciousness. He
further argued, that if consciouness exist, which actually does, then
it must have a structure. To elaborate his viewpoint further, he went
on to explain the structure of consciousness. According to him.
Consciousness could be studied by three things:
1) Experimentation: It was the most important mode of scientific
investigation. Psychologists therefore, needed to conduct experiments
which revealed the true nature of consciousness.
2) Introspection: It was regarded as a mean of looking into and
understanding the structure of consciouness.
3) Looking at the past history of man that has shaped his
consciousness: According to Wundt, looking into the past of individuals
gave insight into the consciousness of the individuals. Wundt himself also
conducted some experiments and based upon them he proposed that
consciousness is a process which has three compartments: Ideas,
Feelings and Emotions.
Wundt also outlined the abnormal states of consciouness. He then went
on to elaborate hallucinations, hypnotic states and dreams. According to
him, all of these abnormal activities of the consciousness are caused due
to the break down of attention.
 Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927)

Contributions of Titchener to psychology can be gauged from three

things that he tried to do, are:
•Contents of Consciousness : This means that Titchener
explained what consciousness is actually composed of. He then
went on to elaborte the contents of consciousness.
•Combination of these contents : The second contribution of
Titchener is that he described the combination of contents of
consciouness which mean that, which contents get together to
result in an activity
•Connections between the contents : The third contribution of
Titchener is that he explained the connection between the contents
of consciouness which means that consciouness is a product of
contents being related with each other and working together.
According to Titchener, there are three elementary states of
consciousness – sensations, images, and affective states. There
were many criticisms regarding the method of introspection used by
Titchener.
Unlike Wundt, who gave three methods to study consciouness, the
subject matter of psychology. Titchener argued that since the only
way psychology could be studied was introspection which he
defined as systematic and controlled self observation. Titchener
went on to say that introspection is a special method of gaining
knowledge and understanding consciousness and not everyone
could introspect. This made him train subjects to introspect.
Wilhelm Wundt, who was a teacher of Titchener, tried to establish a
scientific outlook of psychology. But there was a flaw in Titchener’s
ideas, which was that he took psychology back to the realm of
speculation and moved away from the modern empirical approach.
Criticism of structuralism :
•This school has failed to cover all areas of human behavior. Hence
this system has limited scope.
•Division of human mind into structures is unnatural.
•The method of introspection is subjective and cannot be relied on.
Merits of Structuralism :
•Psychology got recognized as a separate field from philosophy.
•It provided introspection as a method of studying behavior.
•It made psychology a scientific field by establishing laboratory and
using technique of systematic observation.

The school of structuralism was propagated by Wilhelm Wundt

(1832-1920) and was taken further by Titchener. Structuralism
emphasized on studying structure of mind (basic units of
consciouness) using method of introspection. The method of
introspection was subjected to criticism.
Functionalism (next class)