Edwin G. Boring, a historian of experimental psychology, claimed that “the application of the experimental method to the problem of mind is the great outstanding event in the history of the study of mind, an event to which no other is comparable.” Producing a comparison by manipulating independent variables and observing their effects on dependent variables (measured behavior) defines the basic methodology of experimental psychology. This method allows the psychologist to determine causal relations between the manipulated and measured variables.
Experimental Psychology in the 19th Century
The birth of experimental psychology usually is cited as 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt opened his psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig. Wundt, however, had many precursors who experimented on psychological phenomena. Important compatriots include Ernst Weber, who studied the sense of touch and Gustav Fechner, who developed psychophysical methods. Hermann von Helmholtz made a variety of experimental contributions in sensory and neural physiology and is known for his books summarizing the psychology and physiology of vision and hearing.
In the United States, William James and his students at Harvard University scientifically studied psychology while Wundt was developing his laboratory. James had a psychological laboratory at Harvard that may have opened prior to Wundt’s at Leipzig, although there is controversy about this possibility.
Wundt rates as founder of experimental psychology because of two legacies. The first relates to his written contributions to early psychological thought, which counted over 50,000 pages in 491 items. One of his books went through 15 editions, and Wundt founded the first journal devoted to experimental psychology, Philosophische Studien, in 1881.
The second legacy results from his teaching and advising. Wundt directed 186 doctoral dissertations, and the Leipzig laboratory was cosmopolitan, with students coming not only from Europe but also from Russia and the United States. Many of his students became major figures in the history of experimental psychology.
Although Wundt’s importance should not be underestimated, many early figures in experimental psychology did not have direct ties to him. Some prominent ones include: Franciscus Donders (reaction time), Hermann Ebbinghaus (human memory), Ewald Hering (color vision), Oswald Kiilpe (perception), and Edward L. Thorndike (animal learning).
The laboratories of James and Wundt were quickly emulated. This was the case especially in North America, where over 40 psychological laboratories were established by the end of the nineteenth century.
Schools of Psychology
Around 1900, different approaches to experimental psychology cohered into schools of thought that dominated theory and research for nearly four decades. These schools are: structuralism, functionalism, behaviorism, and Gestalt psychology. Their research and theoretical disagreements provided an intellectually rich background for contemporary experimental psychology.
Structuralism
Edward B. Titchener studied with Wundt and later went to Cornell University. Titchener proclaimed that psychology’s subject matter is mind with consciousness as the direct object of examination. Consciousness represented the sum of current mental processes, and the task of the experimenter involved selecting some point to obtain data. To obtain these data, structuralists used introspection as their primary method of investigation. Because introspection required well-trained observers to make accurate verbal reports of their conscious elements, structuralists studied the “generalized normal adult, mind,” ignoring behavior as data and ignoring animals, children, and humans with limited verbal skills.
Titchener thought his approach was rigorous and experimental; however, the school ran into serious difficulties owing to heavy reliance on introspection. Introspective reports lack reliability across observers, and they lack validity because they cannot be independently corroborated. Thus, moot controversies arose between introspectionists in different laboratories, resulting in vigorous attacks against introspection, especially by the behaviorists and Gestalt psychologists. Structuralism as a school died when Titchener died, but its legacy was profound. Structuralism served as a target on which the other schools practiced their theories and methods.
Functionalism
If structuralism examined the “is” of mental life, then functionalism studied what mental life is for. Functionalism tried to apply Darwinian survival notions to psychology by minimizing introspection of consciousness and emphasizing how basic psychological processes fit into an organism’s adaptation. Thereby, animals, children, and the demented became objects of study in contrast to structuralism.
The broader scope demanded methodology other than introspecton, and the functionalists were among the first to study animals in controlled circumstances. One aim involved studying how learning led to adaptation. Thorndike, among the first animal experimentalists, developed procedures now known as instrumental conditioning. Thorndike and his colleagues at Columbia University, James McKeen Cattell and Robert S. Woodworth, were a prominent group of functionalists, along with those at the University of Chicago, who included James Angell and Harvey Carr. One of Angell’s students, John B. Watson, later rebelled against the remnants of mentalism in functionalism and founded a new school of thought.
Behaviorism
John B. Watson’s agenda focused on ridding psychology of mentalistic concepts that he believed led to sloppy science:
Psychology as the behaviorist sees it is a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods nor is the scientific value of its data dependent on the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness. The behaviorist, in his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal responses, recognizes no dividing lines between man and brute. ([1913]. Psychology as the behaviorist sees it. Psychological Review, 20, 158-177)
Watson’s manifesto rested on the success of his early animal research. His dissertation, written in 1907, as well as other research he did at Chicago, concerned how rats learned mazes. These methodologically clever experiments had a major impact on experimental psychology that is still seen today. While still in graduate school, he conducted field studies on bird behavior. as well as research on a variety of animals. He accepted a position in the department of psychology at Johns Hopkins University in 1908.
In his 12 years at Hopkins, Watson’s influence on psychology grew. He undertook famous studies on the classical conditioning of emotions in children, and he popularized the conditioning methods of Ivan Pavlov. Watson was fired in 1920 as a result of a marital scandal, and he had only occasional ties to academic psychology thereafter. Nevertheless, Watson had a substantial impact on experimental psychology. Because its main dependent variables are behaviors, experimental psychology today can be characterized as behavioristic.
Gestalt Psychology
On the basis of perceptual phenomena such as apparent movement, the Gestalt psychologists developed theories contrary to the atomistic and analytic approaches of most experimentalists. The school began in Germany around 1912 under the aegis of Max Wertheimer and his students Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka. With the rise of Nazism, these psychologists came to the United States.
Gestalt roughly means “whole” or “form,” and this notion appears in the creed of Gestalt psychology: the whole is different from the sum of its parts. Thus, breaking a percept into its components is a counterproductive way of understanding it. This idea was also applied to animal learning by emphasizing insight and intelligence rather than conditioned reflexes. Later, Kurt Lewin extended the notion to motivation and social behavior. Although the molar approach of the Gestaltists tempered the excesses of structuralism and behaviorism, their early impact was limited. Later, a Gestalt flavor appears in contemporary cognitive psychology.
Learning Theory
From the middle 1930s to the late 1950s, a major topic of concern of experimental psychologists was learning. Students of animal learning, such as Edwin Guthrie, Clark Hull, B. F. Skinner, Kenneth Spence, and Edward C. Tolman, dominated the literature of psychology and broadened the conditioning techniques of Pavlov, Thorndike, and Watson. Hull’s influence extended to personality theory and social psychology, and Skinner’s ideas were applied to teaching and the treatment of behavior disorders.
Contemporaneously, several experimentalists focused on human learning. Extending the general method used by Ebbinghaus. Arthur Melton and Benton Underwood studied the learning and memory of simple verbal items under controlled conditions.
Contemporary Experimental Psychology
Much of contemporary experimental psychology focuses on cognition leading to cognitive psychology and experimental psychology often being used as synonyms, interest in cognition began with information processing theory. George Miller and Herbert Simon were the pioneers of this approach, in which data processing by digital computers provided a metaphor for cognition. Cognitive psychologists use experiments to test theories of the inner workings of the mind/brain in contrast to a behavioristic approach. This appealing method resulted in a reliance on experimentation to study language, social psychology, human factors, and industrial psychology. Furthermore, cognitive psychology has led to a dramatic increase in the use of physiological methods as tools for understanding. Thus, experimental psychologists may use magnetic resonance imaging or electroencephalography to study cognition.
The behavioristic heritage is not dead. Conditioning remains a focus of many experimental psychologists, and conditioning techniques are widely used to investigate the physiological substrates of behavior.
Bibliography:
- Anderson. J. R. (1995). Learning and memory. New York: Wiley. Includes a survey of contemporary work on basic learning and conditioning phenomena, as well as an overview of research on memory.
- Boring, E. G. (T950). A history of experimental psychology (2nd ed.). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. The standard reference work on the history of experimental psychology. A long, detailed work that is worth the effort.
- Gardner. H. (1985). The mind’s new science: A history of the cognitive revolution. New York: Basic Books. A readable history of the development of cognitive psychology and cognitive science.
- Hearst, E. (Ed.). (1979). The first century of experimental psychology. Hillsdale. NJ: Erlbaum. Published on experimental psychology’s centennial. the book contains excellent chapters on the schools of psychology, animal learning, and cognition. This is an advanced treatment.
- Hilgard, E. R. (1987). Psychology in America: A historical survey. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
- Hothersall, D. (T995). History of psychology (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. A college-level textbook that has interesting vignettes of many figures in the history of experimental psychology.
- Kantowitz, B. H., Roediger, H. R., & Elmes, D. G. (1997). Experimental psychology: Understanding psychological research (6th ed.). Minneapolis: West. A college textbook that includes a discussion of how to conduct valid experiments.
- Sternberg. R. J. (1996). Cognitive psychology. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace.