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William James: The Later Years - Online Essays

William James: The Later Years

William James introduced experimental psychology to America. He began giving laboratory demonstrations to students at least as early as Wundt, and he and his students started performing laboratory experiments about the same time as Wundt and his students. Ironically, while James made much of the value of experimentation, he himself found it boring. He usually spent no more than two hours a day in the laboratory. Yet he believed in it and had his students perform a broad array of experiments. Although James hated to do experiments, he forced himself to when it was the best way to prove or disprove a theory.
But James's own experiments were only one source of his ideas about psychology. ...

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the most important of the investigative methods. Introspection required both concentration and practice, because inner states follow each other rapidly and often are blended and difficult to distinguish from one another. Just as with practice one can notice, observe, name, and classify objects outside oneself, one can do so with inner events. Introspection is in reality, immediate retrospection; the conscious mind looks back and reports what it has just experienced.
James admitted that introspection is difficult and prone to error. Who could be sure of the exact order of feelings when they were excessively rapid? Etc… But he said that the validity of some kinds of introspective reports could be tested and verified by at least half a dozen kinds of well-established experimentation. The duration of simple mental processes for one, could be estimated introspectively and then verified by reaction-time experiments; the introspective report of how many digits or letters one could ...

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William James: The Later Years. (2005, January 14). Retrieved January 12, 2026, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/William-James-The-Later-Years/20532

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Added: 1/14/2005 01:57:55 AM
Category: Biographies
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 1193
Pages: 5

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