Chapter 3:

Germany and the Birth of

a New Science
Why Germany? Why Now?
• Nineteenth-century Germany had an expanding university
system that focused on technical and scientific disciples
• Most other countries focused on the classics, theology, and arts

• The German concept of “science” is broader:

• Wissenschaft – focus on obtaining true knowledge (includes humanities Wilhelm Dilthey
and philosophy) (1833-1911)
• Geisteswissenschaften (“science of the mind” or “human sciences”)
Author of
• Naturwissenschaften (“science of nature” or “natural sciences”) Introduction to
• Science – focus on specific methodology (experimentation) that the Human
originated in Britain Sciences (1883)
Chapter Outline

I. Wilhelm Wundt
II. Other Early German Founders
I. Wilhelm Wundt
Basic Biography
• Born 1832 in Neckarau, Germany
• Came from a professional family
• Isolated childhood
• Had extensive fantasy life (interfered with school)
• Obtained M.D. in 1855 (University of Heidelberg)
• Had no interest in practicing medicine
• Became research assistant to Helmholtz (1865-1874)
• Principles of Physiological Psychology (1873)
• Hired by University of Leipzig (1875)
• Established first psychology laboratory (1879)
• Published many works over the Leipzig years
• Died 1920 in Großbothen (Leipzig suburb)
• Buried in Leipzig’s South Cemetery
University of Leipzig (December 1879)
Wundt’s Psychology
• The scientific method can be used to reveal law-like
regularities of our “inner” (psychological) reality
Locke’s qualities of ideas:
• In essence, psychology is a middle ground between:
• Philosophical interpretations of experience (e.g., Fechner) • Primary = natural sciences
(e.g., sensory physiology)
• Purely physical interpretations of experience (e.g., Helmholtz)
• Secondary = psychology
(consciousness)
• Psychology and physiology do not describe two different
processes, but the same process from outside (physiology)
and inside (psychology)
Wundt’s Psychology
“The exact description of consciousness
[inner experience] is the sole aim of
experimental psychology.” – Wundt

• Kantian (nativist) influence: • The “elements” of sensory perception

• The mind actively constructs
experience (apperception)
• The mind creatively constructs
experience (creative synthesis)
are combined either by:
• Association = requires no attention from
the person
• Apperception = requires attention from the
person (voluntarism)
Wundt’s Methods
• Physiological apparatuses
• Complication pendulum
• Chronoscope
• Psychophysical piano

• Introspection (self-observation)
• Methodological issues

• Objective measures
• Reaction time
Sensory Multitasking
• The complication pendulum:
• Presents participants both visual and auditory stimuli
• Identification of single (visual or auditory) occurred rather quickly
and without directed attention from the participants
• Identification of both took longer and required conscious attention
shifts from the participants

• We can “automatically” attend to only one sense at a time –

sensory multitasking requires effort and intent
Völkerpsychologie (Cultural Psychology)
• The relationships between “cultural products” (religion, art, customs, etc.)
• Not concerned with typical historical details (events, people, etc.)

• Collective structuring of human consciousness

• Collective consciousness (the mass effects of psychological laws)

• Early form of social psychology?

Wundt saw völkerpsychologie as a necessary supplement to his

experimental psychology – but we have largely surrendered the topic to
sociology, anthropology, and “social historians”.
Wundt’s (Paradoxical) Legacy
Influence Non-influence/Counterinfluence
• Developed a broad scope for psychology • His theoretical views no longer influence
psychology
• Established early experimental methodology
• Völkerpsychologie largely abandoned
• Wrote authoritative textbooks used throughout
the world for two generations • Many psychologists reacted against him for
being to narrow (focus on sensation stimuli) or
• Mentored almost 200 doctoral students from
lack of application
across the world:
• New schools (e.g., functionalism) would be
• James Cattell (early psychological testing) established as protests of Wundt’s system
• Edward Titchener (structuralism)
• Charles Spearman (intelligence & statistics)
II. Other Early German Founders
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)
• Early forerunner of cognitive psychology
• Studied memory via nonsense syllables (e.g., XAJ)
• The forgetting curve
• Serial position effect (primacy and recency)
• Repetition for learning (maintenance rehearsal)

• Also contributed to research on language and optical

illusions
Franz Brentano (1838-1917)
• Developed an approach called Act Psychology
• The role of intention (all mental events have an intentional object that they
are about)
• The nature and representation of this intentional object in the person’s mind
is of vital importance

• Opponent of Wundt:
• More important to study actions of consciousness rather than contents
• Introspection unreliable (people can’t report their own consciousness)

Other than Freud, Brentano’s influence was more significant in philosophy

(phenomenology and existentialism) than in psychology
Carl Stumpf (1848-1936)
• Early work focused on music cognition
• Subjective characteristics of tones, instruments, melodies
• Influenced music criticism and the emotional effects of harmony and
instrumentation among composers

• The cognitive-evaluative theory of emotion

• Emotional experiences are the result of cognitive evaluations of the situation,
not physiological processes
• Early version of the current “cognitive labeling” theory

• One of the first myth busters

• The case of Clever Hans
Oswald Külpe (1862-1915)
• Early forerunner of Gestalt Psychology
• Taught its founder Max Wertheimer

• Imageless thought (recognition is independent of memory)

• Unconscious motivations for thought and behavior
• Mental sets (mental rigidity due to previous experience)
• Ignoring aspects of reality for what is known or comfortable