SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT
Wilhelm Wundt, in Germany,
established the foundations of modern psychology in 1879. He wanted to study,
experimentally,
the conscious experience of individuals. As discussed earlier, the
different schools of thought gradually emerged after psychology took this
scientific turn. These schools were basically different ways of observation,
description, understanding, and prediction of psychological phenomena; in the present
context, mental processes and behavior
Earlier Schools Of Thought
The earlier schools that paved the way for
further developments in modern psychology were
•
Structuralism: focused on studying the
conscious experience by looking into its individual parts or elements.
•
Functionalism: focused on what the mind does and how
it does.
•
Gestalt
psychology:
focused on studying the whole experience of a person rather than breaking it
into individual components.
•
Psychodynamic School: focuses
on the unconscious forces that drive/ motivate human behavior.
•
Behaviorist / Behavioral School: focuses on studying the behavior that
is observable and overt.
Prevalent
Approaches / Models / Perspectives
At present some of the
earlier approaches still exist. Psychologists belonging to these sets of
theories have contributed a lot to the body of psychological knowledge and
practice.
Today, we can see at
least six approaches or models of dealing with the psychological phenomena.
Biological Approach
The psychological model
that views behavior from the perspective of biological functioning. The role of
brain, genes, neurotransmitters, endocrine glands etc. How the individual nerve
cells are joined together,
how the inheritance of certain
characteristics from parents and other ancestors influences behavior, how the
functioning of the body
affects hopes and fears, what behaviors are due to instincts, and so on.
Psychologists using the biological model view even more complex kinds of behaviors
such as emotional responses e.g. anxiety, as having critical biological
components.
Psychodynamic Approach
The approach that concentrates on the belief that
behavior is motivated by the inner forces, over which
individuals have little
control. Founded by the Viennese physician Sigmund Freud in early 1900s,
proponents of
psychodynamic perspective give importance to the inner unconscious experiences
and the forces that led that behavior. Freud believed that unconscious determinants
of behavior had a revolutionary effect on 20th century thinking, not just in
psychology but also in related fields a well. Although many of the basic
principles of psychodynamic thinking have been highly criticized, the model
grown out of Freud’s work has provided a way not only for treating mental
disorders but also for understanding everyday phenomena such a prejudice and
aggression.
Behaviorist / Behavioral Approach
The psychological model
that focuses on the overt observable behavior. The model emerged as a reaction
to the earlier approaches that emphasized the significance of hidden,
underlying, predetermined forces. The behaviorists suggest that observable
behavior alone should be the main area of interest to psychology.
Humanistic Approach
The
psychological model, that suggests that people are in control of their lives.
It is considered as one of the most recent approaches to psychology. This
approach rejected the view, that predetermined, automatic, biological forces,
unconscious processes or the environment determines behavior. On the contrary,
it proposes that people themselves decide about their lives. A failure in being
capable of doing so leads to psychological problems. It also stresses the idea
that people, by nature, tend to move towards higher levels of maturity and
maximum potential
Cognitive
Approach
The psychological model that focuses on how people
know, understands, and thinks about the world. Main
emphasis is on how people understand of the world, and
their thinking, affects their responses; how it may
lead to positive or negative psychological
consequences, and even health-related outcomes.
Earlier
Schools of Thought
Structuralism
•
The school of thought that focused
upon the study of mind and conscious experience: consciousness, thinking, and
emotions. They used introspection as their method of study.
•
Focused upon the structure and
operations of the mind rather than studying whole things and phenomenon. Hence
named as Structuralism.
•
The first well formed system of psychology
that laid the foundations for the scientific
and experimentally oriented study of mind and mental processes.
•
Emerged from the work of Wilhelm
Wundt who set up the first psychology laboratory at Leipzig, Germany, in 1879
to study the “building blocks of the mind”, and is generally known as the
founder of “scientific psychology”. He proposed materialism because he did not
think a science could be operated solely through physical investigations of the
brain. He felt that the study of mind must be a science of experience. He
supported the existence of the science of psychology quite independent of
biology and physiology. He believed that psychology must have an experimental side.
Subject matter of psychology
According to Wundt, the
subject matter of psychology is to be immediate experience, as contrasted to
mediate experience. By mediate experience Wundt meant experiences used as a way
to find out about something other than the experience itself. This is the way
in which we use experience in gaining knowledge about the world.
Immediate experience is
the experience as such, and the task of psychology is to study this immediate
experience. The physicists are, on the other hand, interested in studying only
the mediate experience, but the Wundtian psychologists study immediate
experience.
Main
Presumption
•
All
human mental experience could be understood as the combination of simple events
or elements. By analyzing the basic elements of sensations and other
mental experiences, the underlying structure of the mind could be unveiled
•
Task of psychology is to identify the
basic elements of consciousness just like physicists could break down the basic
particles of matter
At Wundt’s Laboratory
•
Studies and experiments were
conducted on the fundamental elements that form the foundation of thinking,
consciousness, emotions and other mental states
•
Systematic, organized and objective procedures were
used so that replication was possible
•
The procedure used for studying the
“structure of mind” was called “Introspection”; a method used to study the
structure of the mind, in which subjects were asked to describe in detail what
they were experiencing when exposed to a stimulus.
Introspection
o The subjects gave detailed reports of what
they experienced when they were exposed to a
stimulus
The Impact of Wundt’s Lab
Attracted
leading scientists and students from Europe and U.S.A
James
Mckeen Cattell
Known for his work on individual differences and
“Mental Tests”.
Emil
Kraeplin
Postulated a physical cause of mental illness
In 1883, he gave the first classification system of
mental disorders
Hugo
Munsterberg
First to apply psychology to industry and law
Edward
B. Tichener
Known as the formal founder of Structuralism
Edward Bradford
Tichener
•
American psychologist, who was
English by birth, but German in professional and personal temperament, who
spent his most productive years in Cornell University, New York.
•
He was solely concerned with studying
the brain, and the unconscious, and for this he believed, we should break it
down into basic elements. After that, we can construct the separate elements
into a whole and understand what it does.
•
He believed that we can study
perception, emotions and ideas through introspection, by reducing them to their
elementary parts
•
There are four elements in the sensation of taste:
sweet, sour, salty and bitter
•
Ideas and images are related: ideas were always
accompanied by images
•
The underlying process in emotions was affection
Criticism
This school of thought has been criticized on various grounds
i.e.
It was Reductionist
It reduced all complex
human experience to simple sensations It was Elementalistic
The structuraralists
sought to look at individual elements first, and then combine parts into a
whole, rather than study the variety of behavior directly.
It was Mentalistic
Structuralism studied only verbal reports of human
conscious experience and awareness, ignoring the study of subjects who could
not report their introspection.
Functionalism
An
approach that concentrated on what the mind does, in other words the functions
of mental activity, and the role of behavior in allowing people to adapt to
their environments. The functionalist psychologists start with the fact that
objects are perceived and “how” they are perceived. They asked “why” as well. This school
became prominent in the1900s. It emerged as a reaction to Structuralism.
•
Founded by William James, also known as the founder of
American Psychology.
•
Emphasized “function” rather than
“Structure” of human consciousness i.e., what the mind does
Focused upon
the way humans adapt to their environment; what roles behavior played in
allowing people to better adapt to their environment
•
Examined the ways in which behavior allows people to
satisfy their needs
•
Functionalists were especially interested in education
and applied psychology
•
Method of Investigation
Longitudinal
Research
Observation, interviews,
and testing of a person over a long period of time: made possible to observe
and record the subject’s development and his reaction to different
circumstance.
William
James
He was the leading precursor of functionalist
psychology. James was a Harvard University professor, primarily
trained in physiology and medicine. Psychology and philosophy fascinated him, and he treated psychology as a natural
science. In 1875 he offered his first course in psychology. In 1890 he
published “Principles of Psychology”, a two-volume book, which became a leading
psychology text in the U.S.
James wrote about the
stream of consciousness, emotions, the self, habit formation, mind-body link
and much more. He was also interested in will, values, religious and mystical
experiences. James said: “We should study consciousness but should not reduce
it into elements, content and structure”. Acts and functions of mental
processes need to be focused upon, rather than contents of the mind.
Consciousness was an ongoing stream, and was in continual interaction with the
environment. Careful observation is important; Wundt’s rigorous laboratory
methods are of little value. James believed that each individual has a
uniqueness that could not be reduced to formulas or numbers
John
Dewey
•
Famous American educator
•
One of the key founders of “Functionalism”
•
Stimulus– Response phenomenon is not
an automatic behavior, the goal of the person performing it has the main role
in it; the stimulus and the response determine each other
•
It is the function, or the goal, of the whole action
that elicits response
•
Dewey developed the field of ‘School
Psychology’ and recommended ways for meeting student’s needs
•
Teachers are strongly influenced by their psychological assumptions about children
and the educational process
Teachers need to
understand two issues:
i.
Children and adults are different;
teaching/education should be in accordance with children’s developmental readiness
ii.
Children are similar to adults in the
sense that they perform better when they have some control over what they are
to accomplish; the curriculum should be designed
accordingly
Applied psychology flourished following the emergence
of functionalism
i.
James Mckeen Cattell began studying ways to measure intelligence
ii.
Psychology entered the world of
business; Frederick Taylor developed ‘scientific management’
iii.
Other functionalists: James Rowland Angell, Harvey A.Carr
James Rowland Angell
•
Founded the psychology department in Chicago, the most
influential of its time.
•
Believed that the function of
consciousness is to improve the adaptive abilities of the organism and that
psychology must study how mind did these kinds of adjustments with respect to the environment.
Harvey A.Carr
•
Defined the subject matter of
psychology as mental activity, whose function is to acquire, fixate, retain,
organize and evaluate experiences and use these experiences in some kind of action.
•
Carr believed that the study of
cultural products such as literature, art, language or social and political
institutions could provide information on the kind of activities that produced
the actions and behaviors.
Gestalt Psychology
•
An approach that focuses on the
organization of perception and thinking in a ‘‘whole” sense rather than on the
individual elements of perception. Instead of considering the individual parts
that make up thinking, gestalt psychologists concentrated on how people
consider individual elements as units or wholes. They made great contributions
to the understanding of the perceptual phenomena.
•
This school developed as a reaction to structuralism
in the early 1900s
•
In contrast to the structuralist
approach of breaking down conscious experience into elements, or focusing upon
the structure, the Gestalt school emphasized the significance of studying any
phenomenon in its overall form.
•
The word gestalt means “Configuration”
•
The main concept that the Gestaltists
posed was that the “WHOLE” is more than the sum of its parts, and it is
different from it too.
•
They concentrated on how people consider individual
elements together as units or wholes
•
The concept of Gestalt applies to
everything, objects, ideas, thinking processes and human relationships
•
Any phenomenon in its entirety may be
much greater than when it is seen in a disintegrated form
•
Three German psychologists Max
Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler were regarded as the founders of
gestalt school as each one of them had done significant work in his respective field.
Max
Wertheimer
•
The founder of Gestalt Psychology, born in Prague in 1880
•
Studying at the University of
Frankfurt he became aware of a form of apparent motion that was called “Phi phenomenon”
•
Phi
phenomenon = when
two lights are in close proximity to each other, flashing alternately they
appear to be one light moving back and forth; therefore the whole was different
from the separate parts; movement perceived whereas it never occurred
•
We perceive experiences in a way that calls for the
simplest explanation, even though reality may be entirely different; this is
Gestalt Law
of Minimum Principle. We tend to organize our experience so that it is as
simple as possible.
•
Explanation of phi phenomenon led to
a separate school of thought i.e., Gestalt school, that had deep rooted impact
on learning, ethics, and social psychology
Gestalt Laws of
Organization
We organize our
experiences according to certain rules, in a simple way:
Proximity: Close or nearer objects are perceived as coherent and
related.
Similarity: Tendency to perceive objects,
patterns or stimuli as groups, which are similar in appearance parts of the
visual field that are similar in color, lightness, texture, shape, or any other
quality
Good Continuation: Tendency to group the
stimuli into smooth and continuous patterns or parts Closure: It is the perceptual
tendency to fill in the gaps and completing the contours; enables us to
perceive the disconnected parts as the whole
object.
Figure and Ground: Our perceptual tendency to
see objects with the foreground as well as the background the object is being recognized with
respect to its background. e.g. black board and chalk. (These will be discussed
in detail in the section of perception).
Kurt Koffka
•
Wrote the famous “Principles
of Gestalt Psychology” (1935)
•
Talked about
geographical versus behavioral environment: people’s behavior is determined by how they perceive the environment
rather than by the nature of the environment.
Wolfgang Kohler
•
Gave the
concept of “insight” and “transposition”, as a result of his observations of a
caged chimpanzee and experiments with chickens
•
Insight = spontaneous restructuring of the situation
•
Transposition =
generalization of knowledge from one situation to another
•
Kohler also talked about
Isomorphism; changes in the brain structure yield changes in experiences
Other major contributions
•
Gestalt
approach to ethics: Truth is truth when it is
complete and corresponds fully to the facts of the situation
•
Zeigarnik’s Effect: Bluma Zeigarnik’s
experiments; we remember interrupted tasks better.
The tension caused by
unfinished tasks helps us in remembering
•
Group
Dynamics: Instead of
focusing on people’s individual attributes we should see them as whole persons
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