Directions: Use the following text to answer the Questions on the worksheet. Founder

Name: ____________________________

The Beginning of Modern Psychology

Directions: Use the following text to answer the Questions on the worksheet.


Founder: Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

Field of Psychology: Structuralism

Focus Question: Why is structuralism significant in learning about psychology but has little relevance to psychology today?

With his students, Wilhelm Wundt founded a field of psychology that came to be known as structuralism. Structuralists were concerned with discovering the basic elements of conscious experience. Wundt broke down conscious experience into two separate categories: objective sensations and subjective feelings. Objective sensations, such as sight and taste, were assumed to accurately reflect the outside world. Subjective feelings were thought to include emotional responses and mental images.

Stucturalists believed that the human mind functioned by combining these basic elements of experience. For example, a person can experience an apple objectively by observing its shape, color, texture, and taste. The person can also experience the apple subjectively by remembering how good it feels to bite into it. Using the method of introspection, Wundt and his students carefully examined and reported their experiences.

Structuralism is important because it is considered the first major school of thought in psychology. Wundt was the first to found a psychology lab, making structuralism the first scientific approach to understanding psychology. 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.

Founder: William James (1842-1910)

Field of Psychology: Functionalism

Focus Question: Why is functionalism significant in learning about psychology but has little relevance to psychology today?

A decade after Wundt, introspection convinced Harvard University professor William James (1842-1910) that experience cannot be broken down the way structuralists believed. James maintained that experience is a fluid and continuous “stream of consciousness.” He focused on the relationships between experience and behavior and described his views in The Principles of Psychology. The book, which was published in 1890, is considered by many people to be the first modern psychology textbook.

James was one of the founders of the school of functionalism. Functionalist were concerned with how mental processes help organisms adapt to their environment. They stressed the application of their findings to everyday situations. Functionalism differed from structuralism in several ways. Whereas structuralism relied only on introspection, the methods of functionalism included behavioral observation in the laboratory as well as introspection. Functionalists proposed that adaptive behavior patterns are learned and used because they are successful. Furthermore, successful actions are repeated and become habits.

Functionalism is often given credit for its Influence on a later field of psychology known as behaviorism and also applied psychology. In addition, 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. Despite these influences, Functionalism received its criticism as well. "It is literature. It is beautiful, but it is not psychology," said Wilhelm Wundt of functionalist William James’ The Principles of Psychology (Fancher, R.E., 1996). Lastly, even though Functionalist influenced Behaviorism, Behaviorist argued that functionalism was still not scientific enough.