1 Major Paradigms and Approaches in Psychology: John G. Benjafield

1 Major Paradigms and
Approaches in Psychology
John G. Benjafield
When does the history of psychology begin? Some argue that it goes back at least
to the ancient Greeks, who attempted to solve problems with which contempor-
ary psychologists are still concerned (Robinson, 1976, 2013). For example, there
are similarities between Aristotle’s (384–323 BCE; McKeon, 1941; Tigner &
Tigner, 2000) and Robert J. Sternberg’s (1949–; 1988, 2000) conceptions of the
nature of intelligence. The study of such similarities can provide a rich context
within which to think about contemporary psychology. However, other histor-
ians stress that much of psychology has a relatively modern beginning. As
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), one of the originators of the modern psych-
ology of learning, put it, “Only in recent times do we find an advance, at first slow
but later increasing in rapidity, in the development of psychology” (1908, p. 3).
The historical process by which psychology became an independent subject
largely took place during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Danziger,
2013, p. 830; Green, Shore, & Teo, 2001). This new psychology was to have its
own subject matter and research methods that were distinct from older subjects
such as philosophy. “Such concepts as . . . personality, behavior, and learning
were given such radically changed meanings by modern psychology that there
simply were no earlier equivalents” (Danziger, 1997).
As psychology began to differentiate itself from other subjects, there were
many attempts to say precisely what psychology should and should not be, a
process that led to many disagreements. Such differences of opinion led to the
formation of distinctive approaches to psychology that came to be called schools.
Each of these early schools promoted its own agenda and criticized that of its
competitors. By the 1930s, these schools were taken to be so characteristic of
psychology that their study became an essential part of the undergraduate
curriculum. Notable among the textbooks that provided students with overviews
of these competing approaches were E. G. Boring’s (1929) A History of Experi-
mental Psychology, Edna Heidbreder’s (1933) Seven Psychologies, and Robert
S. Woodworth’s (1931) Contemporary Schools of Psychology. We will begin with
a discussion of the major schools that Boring, Heidbreder, and Woodworth
considered. Although the schools are no longer a central part of psychology,
many of the issues that they raised are still relevant today.1 We will then explore
1
I was still using Heidbreder’s (1933) text in the 1970s. Even though it was forty or more years old,
students loved it and found that it gave them an understanding of psychology that was
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Major Paradigms and Approaches in Psychology 5
the ways in which Thomas Kuhn’s (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
was received by psychologists. Kuhn argued that a mature science was informed
by a paradigm that unified the field. The debate concerning the degree to
which psychology has had paradigms will then be reviewed. Finally, we will
consider the possibility that much of the work of psychologists is not informed so
much by schools or paradigms as it is by specific problems, often of an
interdisciplinary sort.
Schools of Psychology
Introspectionism
Psychology at the end of the nineteenth century was considered by many to be
the study of the mind by means of introspection (Heidbreder, 1933, p. 125).
This view of psychology was pioneered by Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) in
Germany and E. B. Titchener (1867–1927) in the United States. The method
of introspection advocated by Wundt (1894, 1973) and Titchener (1898) was
not “armchair psychology” (Scripture, 1936, p. 241) of the sort done by
philosophers ruminating about the nature of their own mental life. Rather,
introspection was to be a scientific method like any other. However, psych-
ology had a different subject matter than other sciences. For example, physi-
cists study objective events, such as the motion of physical bodies. By contrast,
psychologists study subjective events. Titchener (1901) illustrated the differ-
ence between the two kinds of subject matter by means of the Müller-Lyer
illusion, shown in Figure 1.1.
Images such as the Müller-Lyer can be approached in two ways. First, there
is the objective way. One could measure the lengths of the two horizontal lines
and discover that both are of the same length. Then there is the subjective way.
One could ask experimental subjects to say which of the two horizontal lines
appears to them to be the longest. The subjects will almost inevitably say “the
line on the left.” The psychologist is interested in the subject’s experience of the
lines, rather than in their objective length.
Figure 1.1 The Müller-Lyer illusion.
unavailable in their other courses. I eventually moved on to more current texts (e.g., Benjafield,
2012a, 2015). However, because Heidbreder’s text gives students a sense of “being there” that no
current text can capture, it can still be a useful part of the curriculum.
6 jo h n g . be n ja f i el d
As far as the introspectionists were concerned, the basic unit of subjective

experience was the sensation, which they took to be an elementary experience
that arises as the result of a stimulus. In some cases, asking subjects to report
their experiences when exposed to particular stimuli gives reliable results.
However, as the experimental situations get more complex, the results become
less reliable. In part, this may be because subjects differ in the way they describe
their experiences. For example, subjects may use a variety of words to describe
their experience of different noises, including “abrupt, rough, harsh, startling,
[and] unsatisfying” (Titchener, 1901, p. 53). In an attempt to obtain reliable
results, Titchener trained his subjects to use a standard language when describ-
ing their experiences. For example, they were to report the duration and
intensity of the experience given rise to by a stimulus, rather than say the first
thing that came to mind. Above all, they were to avoid describing the experi-
mental situation objectively. To do so was to commit what Titchener called the
stimulus error. The task of the experimental subject was to describe one’s
subjective experiences, not the stimulus that was causing them.
There were many critics who considered the introspectionists’ effort to create
a science of subjectivity to be a failure. As a result, the introspective method as
practiced by Titchener fell into disuse. However, other ways to study subjective
experience were proposed, as we shall see.
Functionalism
The Principles of Psychology by William James (1842–1910; 1983) is one of the
most influential textbooks in the history of psychology. Because James had “a
talent rare among intellectuals for the popularization of complex ideas” (Croce,
2010, p. 351), his descriptions of psychological phenomena seemed to readers to
“match their own experience” (Richards, 1991, p. 210). While James was not,
strictly speaking, a member of the school called functionalism, his influence on
its formation was considerable, as we shall see.
James (1983, p. 1275) took Darwin’s evolutionary theory seriously, and
argued that “consciousness would not have evolved unless it enhanced the
organism’s chances of survival” (Green, 2009, p. 77). James treated “mental
processes as rooted in the needs and practices of living organisms . . . an attitude
which . . . became that of the first characteristically American school of psych-
ology, functionalism” (Heidbreder, 1933, p. 198).
James (1904) welcomed functionalism, which he described as the work of
John Dewey [1859–1952], and at least ten of his disciples, [who] have
collectively put into the world a statement . . . both theoretical and practical,
which is so simple, massive, and positive that . . . it deserves the title of a new
system of philosophy. (p. 1)
One of Dewey’s “disciples” was J. R. Angell (1869–1949; 1907, p. 61), who

was an important advocate of functionalism in his own right. As a graduate
student, Angell (1936) studied James’s Principles of Psychology with Dewey,
and described it as the book that “unquestionably affected my thinking for the
next 20 years more profoundly than any other” (p. 5). Angell (1907) character-
ized functionalism “as a protest against the exclusive excellence of another
starting point for the study of the mind” (p. 61), by which he meant introspec-
tionism. However, functionalism turned out to be much more than just a protest
movement. Functionalists had broader interests and more eclectic methods
than did the introspectionists, as well as a more practical approach to psych-
ology. Much like James, the functionalists were inspired by Darwin’s evolution-
ary theory and studied the ways in which people adapt to the environments in
which they find themselves.
As a result of his reading of the Principles of Psychology, “William James was
John Dewey’s philosophical hero” (Gale, 1997, p. 49). Dewey, who worked at the
University of Chicago as well as Teachers College, Columbia University, exem-
plifies the functionalist approach. Moreover, Dewey’s influence on educational
psychology in the United States was profound. Dewey argued that the psycho-
logical assumptions made by the educators of his time were flawed. One of these
assumptions was that children should be taught “technical acquisitions that are
to be needed in the specialized life of the adult” (Dewey, 1900, p. 107). This
approach, called formal discipline, held that the job of education is to provide
children with the knowledge that they will require when they are adults. Conse-
quently, the child’s mind is filled with facts about mathematics, geography, and
so on, that may be relevant to an adult, but that are not yet relevant to a child.
Dewey argued that education should be sensitive to the interests of the child.
His approach became known as progressive education, and it acquired the
reputation of allowing children to study whatever they wanted. However, this
was not what Dewey had in mind. He only intended for children to be given
some power to choose the problems they work on (Dewey, 1900, p. 108).
Indeed, the role of teachers became even more important in Dewey’s approach
than it was under formal discipline. For example, in order to facilitate the
acquisition of meaningful skills that will be useful in adulthood, it is important
that teachers use the resources of the local community to familiarize children
with its “physical, historical, economic, [and] occupational aspects” (Dewey,
1997, p. 40). Responsibly conducted, progressive education meant that a
teacher could no longer simply teach by rote. As a result, the teacher’s job
was “more difficult to carry on than was ever the traditional system” (Dewey,
1997, p. 40).
Behaviorism
The view that the study of consciousness has no place in psychology was
forcefully stated by John B. Watson (1878–1958). “Psychology as the behavior-
ist views it” (Watson, 1913) became one of the most influential articles in the
history of psychology. Watson’s article has been cited more frequently than any
other article containing the keyword consciousness and published before 1975
(PsycINFO, 2017).
In his doctoral dissertation, Watson studied the behavior of white rats in mazes.
It is an obvious but nonetheless important point that the introspective method
cannot be used with animals. Watson argued that introspection had no place in
the study of people, either. “The time seems to have come when psychology must
discard all reference to consciousness; when it need no longer delude itself into
thinking that it is making mental states the object of observation” (Watson, 1913,
p. 163). Real scientists do not waste their time trying to observe consciousness.
Rather, they use their consciousness to make objective observations. Behavior can
be observed objectively, while subjective experience cannot. By making psych-
ology the study of behavior only, the study of both humans and other animals
could be made parts of an integrated scientific discipline.
Watson (1916) realized that it was not enough to do away with introspection.
He accepted that it was “incumbent upon me to suggest some method which we
might begin to use in place of introspection” (p. 89). For this purpose, Watson
turned to the method of conditioning as developed by the Nobel Prize–winning
Russian physiologist I. P. Pavlov (1849–1956). In a laboratory setting, when a
dog was presented with food in a bowl, the dog would salivate. After repeated
exposure to this procedure, Pavlov observed that dogs were salivating when
presented with an empty bowl or in the presence of the person who usually
brought the bowl. How was one to understand the generalization of the
response of salivation to previously neutral stimuli such as the person who
brought the food?
Pavlov (1928) approached this question by distinguishing between an uncon-
ditioned stimulus and a conditioned stimulus. An unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
elicited an unconditioned response (UCR), such as the sight of food (UCS)
automatically eliciting salivation (UCR). Unconditioned connections were built
into the nervous system of the animal. By pairing a neutral stimulus with the
unconditioned stimulus, the neutral stimulus could come to elicit the uncondi-
tioned response. The previously neutral stimulus, such as the sight of the bringer
of food, became a conditioned stimulus (CS), and the occurrence of salivation in
the presence of the conditioned stimulus was a conditioned response (CR). Of
course, in the world outside of the laboratory the animal could learn a great
many more connections between CS’s and CR’s. These connections are signals
that guide the animal in the direction of the things it needs, such as food. When
an animal tracks its prey, it does so by responding to the conditioned stimuli
that signal the presence of its quarry.
Notice that there is no place for consciousness in Pavlov’s explanation of the
process of conditioning. The conditioned connections are located in the central
nervous system. Subjective experience plays no role in the construction of the
network of learned connections. Indeed, one might say that subjective experi-
ence is an epiphenomenon (James, 1983, p. 133), meaning that it is simply a
byproduct of brain processes. Consequently, the causes of behavior can be
studied objectively, with no recourse to subjective experience.
Behaviorists made the most of their differences with the introspectionists.
However, behaviorists and introspectionists were actually somewhat similar to
one another in that they were both forms of associationism, an approach that
goes back at least to Aristotle (384–323 BC; McKeon, 1941). However, it was
largely as a result of the work of John Locke (1632–1704; 1964) that associa-
tionism “became part of a taken for granted framework” of much of psych-
ology (Danziger, 1997, p. 48). Associationist psychology held that the mind was
made up of elementary units that were bound together by connections called
associations. Both introspectionism and behaviorism were elementaristic, mean-
ing that they broke everything down into simple units, such as sensations in the
case of the introspectionists or conditioned reflexes in the case of the
behaviorists.
Gestalt Psychology
Gestalt psychology was based largely in Berlin, and included Max Wertheimer
(1880–1943; 1967), Kurt Koffka (1886–1941; 1935), and Wolfgang Köhler
(1887–1967; 1967), among others. Gestalt psychology rejected both introspec-
tionism and behaviorism for their elementarism. Gestalt means “whole” or
“configuration,” and the gestalt psychologists argued that no unit of experience
or behavior could be understood in isolation from the whole of which it was a
part. Their classic demonstration of this point was apparent motion (Koffka,
1935, p. 280f ). Suppose a subject is presented with two lights that alternately go
on and off. If the lights go on and off at the right rate, then the observer sees not
two lights but one light moving back and forth. The gestalt psychologists
believed that the phenomenon of apparent motion occurs because observers
tend to construct experiences that are as simple as conditions allow. It is not as
if we have been conditioned to see the two lights as one. Rather, we spontan-
eously organize our experience to be as simple and unified as possible, a
tendency called the minimum principle (Hatfield & Epstein, 1987; Köhler, 1967).
Gestalt psychologists made much of demonstrations such as apparent motion
in which all the subjects reported the same experiences. Subjects were not trained
in how to report their experiences. Rather, gestalt psychology relied on the naïve
description of experience, an approach called phenomenology (Koffka, 1935,
p. 73; Gurwitsch, 1966, pp. 3–55). Since they believed that the same laws of
organization (Wertheimer, 1958) determined the basic structure of everyone’s
experience, then such a simple, straightforward method made sense to them.
Moreover, they argued that the organization of subjective experience is the same
as the organization of the corresponding processes in the brain. The gestalt
psychologists called this correspondence isomorphism (i.e., same form) (Köhler,
1960). Gestalt psychologists did not invent the concept of isomorphism. Indeed,
it had been introduced earlier in other scientific subjects including biology,
chemistry, and mathematics (Benjafield, 2008, p. 110; 2013, p. 44) to describe
the fact that different phenomena may be organized in the same way. Thus, the
gestalt psychologists could argue that their holistic approach was similar to that
taken by older, more respected sciences. From their viewpoint, it was gestalt
psychology that was truly scientific, rather than behaviorism or introspectionism.
Gestalt psychology seemed strange to many anglophone psychologists

because it had developed within a different intellectual tradition than the British
empiricism with which anglophone psychologists were familiar. Gestalt psych-
ology was foreshadowed by German thinkers such as the polymath Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832; 1995; 1970), whose use of the word gestalt
to refer to the “self-actualizing wholeness of organic forms” inspired the gestalt
psychologists (Ash, 1995, p. 85f ). However, the word gestalt was foreign to
anglophone psychologists, some of whom could never quite fathom what it was
supposed to mean (e.g., Wheeler, Perkins, & Bartley, 1931, 1933a, 1933b,
1933c). This example illustrates the importance of familiarizing ourselves, as
far as possible, with the ways in which psychology is done in different countries
(Pickren, 2010, 2012).
Psychoanalysis
The invention of psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was extraor-
dinarily important not just for psychologists and psychiatrists, but for ordinary
people as well. Versions of Freud’s ideas were widely circulated in popular
culture as well as in scholarly journals. As a result, what many ordinary people
took to be the Freudian view of human nature became almost “common sense”
(Richards, 2000; Shakow & Rapaport, 1964). Indeed, the vocabulary of psy-
choanalysis is still used in everyday conversation. Examples include words and
phrases such as Oedipus complex, id, defense mechanisms, phallic symbols, and
Freudian slips (Kelly, 2014).
Freud “always regarded” The Interpretation of Dreams (1965) “as his most
important work” (Strachey, 1965, p. xx). In it he presented the fundamental
concepts that were to guide his subsequent thinking. To begin with, there was
the distinction between conscious, preconscious, and unconscious mental pro-
cesses. The conscious part of the psyche contains that of which we are aware.
The preconscious consists of what we are not now aware, but could become so.
Many of our memories belong here. The unconscious includes sexual desires
and experiences that have been repressed, meaning that they have been actively
forgotten. Wishes and experiences that have become unconscious can only
access consciousness by first passing through the preconscious. However,
unconscious material is usually blocked from access to the preconscious by a
censor, which consists of those prohibitions we have acquired through social-
ization. The censor is an internalization of the ways that significant others in
our lives want us to be. In Freud’s subsequent formulations of psychoanalysis it
became the superego.
When we dream we regress to a time before the censor was fully developed.
As a consequence, repressed wishes and experiences can enter the preconscious.
Unconscious material is never expressed in a dream without first being clothed
in preconscious material. The dream is thus a fusion of unconscious and
preconscious ideas. That is why it is necessary to analyze a dream, to uncover
the latent content of the dream as disguised in its manifest content – the dream as
experienced. Psychoanalysis enables the deeper meaning of a dream to be

understood. Freud did not believe that there was a specific set of rules for
interpreting a dream. Rather, each dream needs to be understood in a case-
by-case-method, as a part of a particular person’s life as a whole.
The psychoanalytic approach to dream interpretation was quite different
than the other approaches we have considered thus far. It involved one person
(the analyst) determining the meaning of the experience of another person (the
analysand). The richness of the material that psychoanalysts uncovered fascin-
ated many people. However, other approaches that used experimental methods
were critical of what they regarded as a lack of objectivity in psychoanalysis.
Indeed, some psychoanalysts acknowledged that “neither Freud nor other
psychoanalysts’ writings give a systematic statement of the psychoanalytic
theory,” and tried to recast the theory in terms that would be more acceptable
to other approaches (Rapaport, 1959, p. 57). However, for the most part, other
schools tended to distance themselves from what they perceived to be the
unscientific nature of psychoanalysis.
How Important Were the Schools?

The schools provided frameworks within which many psychologists worked.
However, by no means all psychologists were adherents of a particular school.
Indeed, Woodworth argued that many psychologists who did not work to
advance the cause of a school were nonetheless highly respected.
Certainly, the leaders of each of the schools are [people] of outstanding ability;
but so are many other psychologists whose leadership is due to their output
of important research rather than to any effort on their part to found systems in
which the field of psychology shall be defined. (Woodworth, 1931, p. 206)
As support for this contention, Woodworth (1931) observed that of the
thirty-seven presidents of the American Psychological Association elected since
1892, “about six might have been named as adherents of one or another school”
(p. 206).
Green, Feinerer, and Burman (2013, 2014) have provided evidence that is
consistent with Woodworth’s opinion. They studied the early history of Psy-
chological Review, a journal that “is probably the only publication which can
claim to be one of the very best psychology journals in both 1900 and 2000”
(Burgard, 2001, p. 45). Psychologists were grouped together if they worked on
similar topics such as memory, emotion, vision, attention, and so on. This
procedure made plain the existence of “communities of researchers who were
not committed to one particular ‘school’ or another” (Green, Feinerer, &
Burman, 2014, p. 276). A notable such community of researchers was respon-
sible for “the enormous growth in mental testing which, although it may have
originated with . . . the Functionalist school, rapidly outgrew that category and
continued on unabated” (p. 276). Later in this book several topics will be
considered that may owe the early part of their histories to particular schools
with their subsequent histories being relatively autonomous.
It is difficult to put precise dates on the age of schools. As we have seen,

introspectionism largely went out of business as a result of attacks by function-
alists, behaviorists, and gestalt psychologists. Indeed, after Titchener’s death,
his student E. G. Boring (1963) wrote a book that was critical of introspection
and stands as a precursor of neuroscience, a development to be considered later.
Heidbreder (1933) observed that over time the functionalist “orientation . . .
became firmly established in American psychology, not as the special concern of
any one group or school, but as obviously having a place in the pursuits proper
to psychology. Before long they were simply taken for granted” (pp. 48–49).
Although its importance as a school waned, aspects of gestalt psychology
continued to be influential, particularly in the fields of perception (e.g., Wallach,
1948), cognition (e.g., Duncker, 1945; Newell, 1985; Simon, 2007), and social
psychology (e.g., Asch, 1952). Behaviorism (e.g., Skinner, 1964) and psycho-
analysis (e.g., Erikson, 1950) continued to have adherents. In particular, the
behaviorist insistence on objective methods was consistently an aspect of most
approaches.
Now we will jump ahead to the 1960s and 1970s, when the notion of schools
or systems as ways of organizing psychology gave way to the belief that the
history of science, including psychology, could be understood in terms of
paradigms.
Paradigms
Thomas Kuhn’s (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions changed
the way that the history of science was understood by psychologists. Kuhn
argued that the history of a particular science was not a continuous accumula-
tion of knowledge, but rather it was punctuated by discontinuities. Over a
period of time, workers in a particular discipline would be guided by a set of
assumptions that worked well. However, at a certain point these assumptions
would be called into question, and the entire discipline would undergo a radical
restructuring. The principles that govern a scientific subject during normal times
are called paradigms. From time to time there are paradigm clashes, at the end
of which the subject is fundamentally reorganized and a new paradigm is put
into place. Examples of such restructurings are the Einsteinian revolution in
physics and the Darwinian revolution in biology.
Kuhn’s approach to the history of science had a profound effect on the way
that psychologists thought about the history of their subject. One of the reasons
that Kuhn’s work was so influential in psychology was that his view of the
nature of science explicitly drew on the work of psychologists (Driver-Linn,
2003). For example, he used the phenomenon of a gestalt switch to illustrate his
belief that progress in science was not continuous. Here is an example of a
gestalt switch, taken from Koffka (1935, p. 640). Imagine the following situ-
ation. “Swimming under a bridge came two ducks in front of two ducks, two
ducks behind two ducks, and two ducks in the middle.” When asked to say how
many ducks there are in all, most people say six, because they imagine a pair of
ducks followed by a second pair and then a third pair. However, one could also
imagine four ducks swimming in single file, with two ducks in the front, two
ducks in the back, and two ducks in the middle. Both are possible representa-
tions of the situation as described. Like this example, a gestalt switch in science
occurs when there are competing ways of organizing the same facts. Also like
this example, arguments can be made as to which way of organizing the facts is
best. However, ultimately one organization wins out.
Ideally, the choice that is made satisfies all the workers in the field. However,
even after a successful paradigm switch occurs, there may be serious,
scientifically-minded individuals who continue to believe that working within
the older paradigm yields insights that would not be available otherwise. For
example, there are those who argue that Newton’s rational mechanics still has
something to offer that is not captured by Einstein’s revolutionary paradigm
(e.g., Doyle, 2006; Truesdell, 1958). There are also those who do not work
within an older paradigm, but rather put forward serious critiques of aspects of
the currently received paradigm. One example is the suggestion that the Dar-
winian paradigm overestimates the importance of natural selection and conse-
quently underestimates the importance of other determinants of the form taken
by organisms (Fodor & Piatelli-Palmerini, 2011, pp. 72–91; Saunders & Ing-
ham, 2017; Thompson, 1992). Even a successful paradigm may not unite all the
workers in a field. There will inevitably be those who do not conform to the
views of the majority and choose to champion a minority view instead. Some-
times they may turn out to be right (e.g., Asch, 1956; Sternberg, 2003).
Does Psychology Have Paradigms?

Kuhn’s discussion of paradigms in other sciences gave psychologists the oppor-
tunity to wonder whether any of the schools should be regarded as paradigms or
whether psychology was preparadigmatic (Farrell, 1978). For example, Kirsch
(1977) proposed that introspectionism was the first paradigm in psychology,
followed by behaviorism. Other psychologists found the paradigm concept less
compelling (e.g., Buss, 1978), arguing that psychology still needed to sort out
fundamental methodological and theoretical issues before it could claim para-
digmatic status. Still others thought that a new contender for paradigmatic
status, called cognitive psychology, was emerging (Neisser, 1972; Segal & Lach-
man, 1972). Before considering the utility of the paradigm concept in psych-
ology any further, the development of cognitive psychology itself must be
examined.
Cognitive Psychology
Cognition has meant different things to different people, but among its
central meanings is the study of the processes whereby we come to understand
things. Cognition includes several different processes, including perception,

attention, memory, concepts, language, problem-solving, decision-making, cre-
ativity, and intelligence. Thus, cognitive psychology is not the study of one
thing, but of many. There are several people who contributed to the emergence
of cognitive psychology during the 1950s and 1960s. One of these was George
Miller (1920–2012), who knew several of those who figure prominently in the
history of cognitive psychology. Miller (2003) pointed to a symposium held at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1956 as an important
milestone in that history. On that occasion, several people who had been
working independently began thinking of themselves as belonging to an
approach called cognitive psychology. These included Noam Chomsky (1928–;
1957), whose approach to language revolutionized the field. “The story of
psycholinguistics in the second half of the 20th century is to a large extent the
story of the evolution of Chomsky’s theory” (Rosenberg, 1993). The year
1956 also marked the publication of A Study of Thinking by Jerome Bruner
(1915–2016) and his colleagues (Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin, 1956). The study
of higher mental process in North America had been dormant during the
behaviorist era, and Bruner’s work reawakened interest in this topic. Another
participant at the 1956 symposium was future Nobel prizewinner Herbert
Simon (1916–2001; Newell, Shaw, & Simon, 1958; Pickren, 2003), whose work
established the computer simulation of mental processes as an important
approach to cognition.
Computer Simulation
Much of cognition takes place outside of awareness. A simple example is the
process of addition, as illustrated in the following version of a classic experi-
ment (Ach, 1951). Answer the following question as quickly as you can. How
much is 5 + 7? What mental process preceded your answer? Most people say
that the answer just comes to them, without much, if any, thought preceding it.
By contrast, we are aware of many of the strategies we use to attempt to solve
more complex problems (Miller, Galanter, & Pribram, 1960). For example,
consider the following problem, from Simmel (1953). Suppose you have eight
coins and a balance. One of the coins is counterfeit, and therefore lighter than
the others. How can you find the counterfeit coin by using the balance only
twice? Think about this problem for a few minutes.
If you are like most people, you initially thought of dividing the coins into
two sets of four. Then the counterfeit coin will be among the lighter set of four.
The lighter set of four coins can be divided into two groups of two coins each,
which you can weigh against each other. One of these two groups will be lighter,
and must contain the counterfeit coin. However, you have already used the
balance twice, so you have not solved the problem. It often takes some time
before people see that you can begin by dividing the eight coins into two groups
of three and one group of two. Then you can then weigh three coins against
three. You can work out the solution from there.
How do we know that most subjects begin the problem-solving process using
the procedure we have just described? One way is to ask subjects to think aloud,
or to speak while they are thinking. The method of thinking aloud (Claparède,
1933; Duncker, 1945) is neither introspection (in Titchener’s sense) nor retro-
spection (recalling your thoughts after they occur). Subjects do not address the
experimenter, but say what they are thinking as they are thinking it.
Thinking aloud was found to be a very useful technique for the computer
simulation of thinking (Ericsson & Simon, 1980; Newell 1977). By thinking
aloud, subjects provide a description of their mental processes. These protocols
are used as the rough outline for the creation of a computer program that
mimics the subject’s thinking. Such computer simulations “have an exceedingly
important role . . . as a tool for achieving a deeper understanding of human
behavior” (Simon, 1981, p. 26).
In the early days of computer simulation (e.g., the 1950s and 1960s), it was
hoped that computer simulations of human behavior would be able to pass
Turing’s test (Turing, 1950), meaning that the program could behave in a way
that was indistinguishable from the behavior of people. However, such fidelity
was more difficult to achieve than was originally hoped (French, 2000; Pinar
Saygin, Cicekli, & Akman, 2000). Nevertheless, as Broadbent (2017) has
observed, a great deal of effort is still being put into the study of what makes
the behavior of a machine similar to that of a human, “with the study of human
behavior informing the construction of robots and tests with robots informing
us about human cognition, emotion, and behavior. What will be the conse-
quences of the human quest to make copies of ourselves?” (p. 646).
The Information-Processing Approach

The use of techniques such as thinking aloud was called subjective behaviorism
(Miller et al., 1960, p. 211). Such techniques are behavioristic because they rely
on objective data (e.g., the subject’s thinking aloud protocol), but they have a
tinge of subjectivity in that the protocols are taken as descriptions of the
subject’s experience. Miller, Galanter, and Pribram encouraged psychologists
to listen to their subjects because “language, for all its notorious shortcomings,
is still the least ambiguous of all channels open from one human being to
another” (p. 194). However, by no means have all cognitive psychologists
thought it necessary to regard consciousness as a part of the new cognitive
psychology. For example, Ulric Neisser (1928–2012; 1972, p. 629), whose
influential work we will consider in a moment, argued that cognition could be
understood entirely without reference to conscious, introspectively given phe-
nomena. Instead, it is understood in terms of a flow of information in the
organism. Theoretical terms like “storage,” “retrieval,” “recoding,” and “selec-
tion,” now in common use, do not refer to elements of consciousness but to
hypothetical stages of activity or processing.
The language of information processing illustrated in the previous paragraph
came to be used by the majority of cognitive psychologists, a development
RESPONSE RESPONSE
OUTPUT GENERATOR
LONG-TERM
STORE
S REHEARSAL
E BUFFER
N
S
STIMULUS O R SHORT-TERM
INPUT R E STORE
Y G
I Self - addressable memory bank
S not subject to decay
T
E Memory bank subject
R to rapid decay
CONTROL PROCESSES
• Stimulus analyzer programs
• Alter biases of sensory channels
• Activate rehearsal mechanism
• Modify information flow from SR to STS
• Code and transfer information from STS to LTS
• Initiate or modify search of LTS
• Heuristic operations on stored information
• Set decision criteria
• Initiate response generator
Figure 1.2 An information-processing model. Source: Shiffrin, R. M., &

Atkinson, R. C. (1969). Storage and retrieval in long-term memory. Psychological
Review, 76, 180
Neisser (1972, p. 628) called a “paradigm shift.” Cognitive psychologists used

flowcharts like that in Figure 1.2 to represent how people process information.
Although superficially alike, the information-processing approach in psych-
ology actually bore little resemblance to the original form of information theory
(Shannon & Weaver, 1949) as it was created by engineers and computer
scientists (Collins, 2007). Indeed, information processing as conceived of by
psychologists was “far more complex . . . than [the original form of] information
theory” (Luce, 2003, p. 186).
A milestone in the development of the information-processing approach was
Neisser’s (1967) textbook Cognitive Psychology, which was, for a while, the
cognitive psychologist’s bible. It has been cited over 10,000 times, according to
Google Scholar (2017). Neisser received his undergraduate degree from Har-
vard, where he worked with George Miller. He then did a master’s degree at
Swarthmore, which was still home to gestalt psychologists such as Wolfgang
Köhler (1960; Neisser, 1967, p. 50) and Solomon Asch (1962, 1969; Neisser,
1967, pp. 90–91). After completing a PhD at Harvard, in 1957 he took a
position at Brandeis University, where he was influenced by the humanistic
psychologist Abraham Maslow (1962). At that time, humanistic psychology
described itself as a “third force,” which meant an alternative to both
behaviorism and psychoanalysis. Indeed, the behaviorist B. F. Skinner (1964)

was a favorite target of humanistic psychologists, who argued that explanations
based on stimulus–response connections could never yield a full understanding
of human nature. While Maslow’s humanistic orientation was not an explicit
part of Neisser’s cognitive psychology, it did express itself in Neisser’s (2007,
p. 80) attitude that cognitive psychology itself should become the “third force,
that is, a theoretical approach that was neither behaviorism nor
psychoanalysis.”
As a result of his 1967 book, Neisser (2007, p. 284–285) became “a star, now
introduced everywhere as the father of cognitive psychology.” However, as the
1970s progressed, Neisser (1976) began to have doubts about the creature he
had helped create. He felt that the emphasis on computer models had produced
a cognitive psychology that was too narrow. It had become too academic and
was unengaged with cognition as it occurred in the real world. In this respect,
Neisser (1976, p. 7) now went so far as to compare information-processing
psychology to “nineteenth century introspective psychology, though without
introspection itself.” He encouraged the development of an ecologically valid
(Brunswik, 1956) cognitive psychology, by which he meant an approach that
makes “a greater effort to understand cognition as it occurs in the ordinary
environment and in the context of natural purposeful activity” (Neisser, 1976,
p. 7) . Since then, to some extent, cognitive psychology has broadened its range
of interests and become more attuned to practical problems (e.g., Benjafield,
Smilek, & Kingstone, 2010; Sternberg & Sternberg, 2016).
Did cognitive psychology rise to the status of a paradigm in Kuhn’s sense?
There are those who believe that it did (e.g., Hyman, 2014, p. xvi). However,
some cognitive scientists take a more complex view, arguing that, while Kuhn’s
paradigm theory is basically correct, it can be improved “using methods from
cognitive psychology” (Chen & Barker, 2000, p. S209). Their assumption is that
contemporary cognitive psychology has developed an understanding of concep-
tual change and development that is more sophisticated than the cognitive
psychology that was available to Kuhn (Andersen, Barker, & Chen, 2006).
Thus, Bird (2012, p. 880) claims that the time is “ripe for renewed investigation
and development” of Kuhn’s ideas using “the tools of current psychology and
cognitive science, in a climate that is more receptive than that which Kuhn
himself faced.”
Neuropsychology
The history of neuroscience and the history of psychology overlap to a
considerable extent (Wickens, 2015). As an example, Sigmund Freud’s (1954)
“Project for a scientific psychology” was an attempt to state in neurological terms
what he later formulated in psychological terms (Pribram & Gill, 1976). Freud
suggested that the primary process of the nervous system was to remain at rest
until energy accumulates to the extent that it must be discharged, thus enabling
the nervous system to return to a state of rest. Neuroscience was insufficiently

advanced to make Freud’s initial formulation convincing, so he subsequently
turned to psychological language as the medium for expressing his ideas. Even so,
there was much in the “Project for a scientific psychology” that remained of
interest to neuroscientists over 100 years later (e.g., Bilder & LeFever, 1998).
However interesting Freud’s neuropsychology may be to psychoanalytically
oriented psychologists, other neuroscientific approaches have been more
attractive to most psychologists. Some important features of current neurosci-
ence were proposed by D. O. Hebb (1904–1985), who studied at the University
of Chicago and Harvard University with another neuroscience pioneer, Karl
S. Lashley (1890–1958; 1929). Hebb proposed that he and Lashley write a
general neuropsychological theory, but Lashley demurred (Hebb, 1980,
p. 296). Hebb (1949) went ahead by himself and wrote The Organization of
Behavior, a book that was described as having “revitalized physiological psych-
ology, which had been in the doldrums for years” (Hilgard, 1987, p. 72).
One of Hebb’s most important conceptions is the cell assembly, which is a
system of interconnected neurons. These neurons become interconnected as a
result of firing simultaneously. Cell assemblies are the physiological embodi-
ment of simple ideas. They can become associated with one another to form the
substrate of more complex thought processes. The function of cell assemblies is
to mediate between stimuli and responses.
Hebb (1958, p. 103) hypothesized that “whenever an impulse crosses a
synapse it becomes easier for later impulses to do so. More precisely: when
neuron A fires, or takes part in firing, another neuron B, some change occurs in
A or B or both which increases A’s capacity to fire B in the future” (Hebb, 1958,
p. 103). This process is called the Hebb rule (McClelland, Rumelhart, & Hinton,
1986, p. 36; Milner, 2003), although the idea did not originate with Hebb.
“Something like it had been proposed by many psychologists, including Freud
in his early years as a neurobiologist” (Milner, 1993, p. 127). Be that as it may,
the Hebb rule as well as other Hebbian ideas became important parts of many
approaches to cognitive neuroscience (Brown & Milner, 2003; Dawson, 2005).
As was the case with cognitive psychology, neuroscience has also been
proposed as a candidate for paradigmatic status. Indeed, neuroscience is some-
times seen as one of the missing pieces of the puzzle that enables psychology to
become a complete paradigm. For example, Melchert (2016) concluded that
Despite all that remains to be discovered, the behavioral and neurosciences
have advanced dramatically, and a unified paradigmatic understanding of
human psychology has emerged that is consistent with theory and research
across the natural sciences (APA Presidential Task Force, 2010). Psychology is
no longer a preparadigmatic academic discipline, but has become one of the
paradigmatic natural sciences. (p. 490)
Melchert’s (2016) conclusion has its critics. These include Joseph (2017) and
Tryon (2017), as well as Henriques (2017, p. 393), who argues that psychologists
still need to “recognize that the field of psychology is fragmented and lacks a
clear meta-theoretical perspective.”
Paradigms Revisited
As we have seen, many psychologists have claimed paradigmatic status
for various schools and approaches. We have also seen that other psychologists
have disputed these claims for paradigmatic status. However, rather than argue
about whether or not a particular approach constitutes a paradigm, some
psychologists have called into question Kuhn’s core concept of revolutionary
change during which one paradigm is abandoned in favor of another. For
example, Leahey (1992, p. 316) argued that such revolutionary change is not
characteristic of psychology’s history, which is more accurately described in
terms of “continuity and development instead of revolution.” In a similar vein,
Sanbonmatsu and Sanbonmatsu (2017, p. 134) said, “Kuhn’s analysis amounts
to abstract speculation that bears little relation to how scientists normally think
and what scientists normally do.”
Even if one was to accept the validity of Kuhn’s approach to the history of
science, there is no consensus that any approach in psychology has actually
risen to the status of a Kuhnian paradigm (e.g., Driver-Linn, 2003, p. 276), with
some saying outright that “Kuhn’s model of paradigmatic science is inapplic-
able to psychology, whether or not it is true elsewhere” (Green, 2015, p. 208). If
Kuhn’s approach to science does not work for psychology, are there other
approaches that will? Let us examine one possibility. As Kuhn (1970, p. vi)
observed, there were aspects of the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean
Piaget’s (1896–1980; 1971a; 1971b) approach that could be used to better
understand the history of science. Others have explored the similarities and
differences between Piaget’s and Kuhn’s theories (e.g., Burman, 2007; Driver-
Linn, 2003, pp. 272–273; Tsou, 2006). Piaget (1971b) proposed a general theory
of development, intended to apply equally to both children’s thinking and
scientific reasoning. Piaget argued that both individual development and his-
torical development tend toward self-regulation. A system is self-regulating “if
transformations inherent in a structure never lead beyond the system but always
engender elements that belong to it and preserve its laws” (Piaget 1971a, p. 14).
Arithmetic is a good example. By means of operations such as addition,
subtraction, multiplication, and division, you can transform one number into
another number. The system never leads beyond itself. Adding two numbers
never yields anything but another number. However, few systems are as reliable
as arithmetic. When it comes to psychological experiments, for example, one is
often confronted with outcomes that are inconsistent or inconclusive, indicating
that “more research is required.” From Piaget’s viewpoint, this open-endedness
occurs because there can never be a system to end all systems. Science is in a
never-ending process of construction, and is never “finished.” This remains true
even if “we substitute ‘society’ or ‘[hu]mankind’ or ‘life’ or even ‘cosmos’” for
science (Piaget, 1971b, p. 141).
Attractive as Piaget’s approach may be, there is still the problem that no
single psychological theory, however complete, is attractive to all the workers in
the subject. For example, if one examines the use of the word paradigm in
psychology, one can easily see that it is polysemous, meaning that it has multiple
meanings. Indeed, the majority of words in the vocabulary of psychology are
polysemous (Benjafield, 2012b). Polysemy is a state of affairs that is also
common in the vocabulary of other subjects (Benjafield, 2013, 2014). This need
not cause problems, as long as the author is clear about the specific meaning of
the word that is being used. As it happens, there are many cases in which the use
of the word paradigm does not conform to Kuhn’s sense. Rather, the word’s
meaning is tailored to fit a particular context (e.g., Driver-Linn, 2003, p. 273).
The result is that many subfields in psychology are declared to have paradigms,
with the meaning of paradigm changing to suit the subfield being described
(e.g., Jackson, 2017). Again, one might argue that there is nothing wrong with
this as long as authors are clear about what they actually mean by the word
paradigm. Readers who encounter the word paradigm must not assume that
they know what it means, but should make every effort to grasp exactly how the
author is using the word.
The Varieties of Psychology

Since the 1990s there have been several attempts to determine which
approaches to psychology have been the most influential (e.g., Friman et al.,
1993; Robins, Gosling, & Craik, 1999). Spear (2007) is perhaps the most
informative of these studies. Spear searched for keywords associated with
behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and psychoanalysis
across a broad sample of psychological journals. Figure 1.3 gives the frequency
20
Behavioral
18
Psychoanalytical
16 Cognitive
Articles with keywords (%)
14 Neuroscience
Cognitive AND Neuroscience

12
10
0
1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Year
Figure 1.3 Frequency of occurrence in journal articles of keywords

associated with different approaches. Source: Spear, J. H. (2007). Prominent
schools or active specialties? A fresh look at some trends in psychology. Review of
General Psychology, 11, 374
with which these keywords were associated with the various approaches. One
important result is the growth of both neuroscience and the combination of
cognition and neuroscience, otherwise known as cognitive neuroscience. None-
theless, Spear (2007, p. 376) concludes that no approach is dominant, and that
cognition and neuroscience have simply “taken their place among other spe-
cialty areas in psychology.”
Psychology and Interdisciplinary Approaches

We appear to be left with a situation similar to that described in the section on
“How important were the schools?” Although there are approaches to psych-
ology that merit close attention, there are also a great number of psychologists
who owe no allegiance to any one way of doing psychology. Rather, they are
interested in working on particular problems, and will tailor their approach to
fit the problem (Maslow, 1946).
One index of the degree to which psychologists adopt a problem-centered
approach is that, more than any other group, psychologists are attracted to
interdisciplinary projects. “The striking feature of postwar cross-disciplinary
ventures is the omnipresence of psychologists” (Backhouse & Fontaine, 2010,
p. 208). Indeed, Backhouse and Fontaine (2010, p. 207) called psychology “the
driver of cross-disciplinary social science.” Such projects bring together a
variety of approaches from subjects as different as psychology, economics,
political science, sociology, and anthropology. Examples of interdisciplinarity
that are important in the history of psychology include the Department of
Social Relations at Harvard (Allport & Boring, 1946), the Institute of Human
Relations at Yale (Morawski, 1986), and the Research Center for Group
Dynamics at MIT (Lewin, 1945).
Backhouse and Fontaine (2010, p. 215–216) suggest that “the centrality of
psychology in these [interdisciplinary] enterprises can be explained by what
historians of psychology have called its ‘protean identity’ (Capshew, 1999,
p. 54; Ash, 2003, p. 269).” “Not belonging to a well-integrated discipline may
have had the salutary effect of enabling psychologists to be flexible enough to
cooperate with and appreciate the aims of those in other fields” (Benjafield,
2013, p. 48).
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1 Major Paradigms and

Figure 1.1 The Müller-Lyer illusion.

As far as the introspectionists were concerned, the basic unit of subjective

One of Dewey’s “disciples” was J. R. Angell (1869–1949; 1907, p. 61), who

Gestalt psychology seemed strange to many anglophone psychologists

experienced. Psychoanalysis enables the deeper meaning of a dream to be

How Important Were the Schools?

It is difﬁcult to put precise dates on the age of schools. As we have seen,

Does Psychology Have Paradigms?

things. Cognition includes several different processes, including perception,

The Information-Processing Approach

Figure 1.2 An information-processing model. Source: Shiffrin, R. M., &

Neisser (1972, p. 628) called a “paradigm shift.” Cognitive psychologists used

behaviorism and psychoanalysis. Indeed, the behaviorist B. F. Skinner (1964)

the nervous system to return to a state of rest. Neuroscience was insufﬁciently

The Varieties of Psychology

Cognitive AND Neuroscience

Figure 1.3 Frequency of occurrence in journal articles of keywords

Psychology and Interdisciplinary Approaches

Robinson, D. N. (2013). Historiography in psychology: A note on ignorance. Theory &

Titchener, E. B. (1898). The postulates of a structural psychology. Philosophical Review,

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