Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

 structuralism 
,
focused on uncov-
ering the fundamental mental components of perception, consciousness, thinking, 
emotions, and other kinds of mental states and activities.
To determine how basic sensory processes shape our understanding of the world, 
Wundt and other structuralists used a procedure called
 introspection 
,
in which they 
structuralism
Wundt’s approach, 
which focuses on uncovering the 
fundamental mental components of 
consciousness, thinking, and other 
kinds of mental states and activities.
introspection
A procedure used to 
study the structure of the mind in 
which subjects are asked to describe in 
detail what they are experiencing 
when they are exposed to a stimulus.
Wilhelm Wundt
M O D U L E 2 
A Science Evolves: The Past, 
the Present, and the Future
Key Concepts
What are the origins of 
psychology?
What are the major 
approaches in contemporary 
psychology?
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presented people with a stimulus—such as a bright green object or a sentence printed 
on a card—and asked them to describe, in their own words and in as much detail as 
they could, what they were experiencing. Wundt argued that by analyzing people’s 
reports, psychologists could come to a better understanding of the structure of the mind.
Over time, psychologists challenged Wundt’s approach. They became increas-
ingly dissatisfi ed with the assumption that introspection could reveal the structure 
of the mind. Introspection was not a truly scientifi c technique, because there were 
few ways an outside observer could confi rm the accuracy of others’ introspections. 
Moreover, people had diffi culty describing some kinds of inner experiences, such as 
emotional responses. Those drawbacks led to the development of new approaches, 
which largely replaced structuralism. 
The perspective that replaced structuralism is known as functionalism. Rather 
than focusing on the mind’s structure,
 functionalism 
concentrated on what the mind 
does and how behavior functions. Functionalists, whose perspective became promi-
nent in the early 1900s, asked what role behavior plays in allowing people to adapt 
to their environments. For example, a functionalist might examine the function of 
the emotion of fear in preparing us to deal with emergency situations.
Led by the American psychologist William James, the functionalists examined how 
behavior allows people to satisfy their needs and how our “stream of consciousness” 
functionalism
An early approach 
to psychology that concentrated on 
what the mind does—the functions 
of mental activity—and the role of 
behavior in allowing people to adapt 
to their environments.