Psychology Qualifying Practice Exam

Structuralism in psychology focuses on conscious experience as a composition of basic sensory elements and how those elements combine to form thoughts and perceptions. Wilhelm Wundt set up the first psychology lab and developed early experimental methods to study these elements, while Edward Bradford Titchener carried the approach to the United States and used trained introspection to identify the smallest components of experience and how they come together. This emphasis on breaking experience into building blocks is why their names are closely linked to structuralism. Other figures you might see associated with different traditions—Freud with psychoanalysis, Watson with behaviorism, and Rogers with humanistic psychology—address different aspects of mind and behavior, not the elemental structure Structuralism aimed to map.