History of Psychology

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History of Psychology

• Chapter 7
• Functionalism Development and Founding

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I. William James (1842-1910) Anticipator of
Functional Psychology

• James did not found functional psychology
• James did influence the movement of functional
  psychology

William James
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I. William James (1842-1910) Anticipator of
Functional Psychology

• A. James early life
• From wealthy family
• Educated in England, France, German, Italy,
  Switzerland,and US.
• Illness and family
• Travel is a way of coping with his restlessness
• Used will power to cure his depression

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I. William James (1842-1910) Anticipator of
Functional Psychology

• B. James's career
• 1 . abandoned chemistry lab work too demanding
• 2. medicine little interest
• 3. rejected biology could not tolerate the
  precise collecting and physical demands of field
  work
• 4. interested in learning from Helmholtz and
  Wundt

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I. William James (1842-1910) Anticipator of
Functional Psychology

• 5. 1875-1876 taught his first course in
  psychology
• a. first time experimental psychology taught in
  United States
• 6. 1890 Principles of psychology
• 12-year effort
• a. most influential psychology textbook ever

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I. William James (1842-1910) Anticipator of
Functional Psychology

• 7. 1890s recognized as America's leading
  philosopher
• 8. 1899 Talks to Teachers
• The beginning of educational psychology
• Applying psychology in classrooms

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I. William James (1842-1910) Anticipator of
Functional Psychology

• C. The Principles of Psychology
• a. goal of psychology study of living people as
  they adapt to their environment
• b. function of consciousness is required for
  survival
• c. emphasizes nonrational aspects of human nature
  e.g., Emotion or passion
• d. beliefs are determined by emotional factors

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I. William James (1842-1910) Anticipator of
Functional Psychology

• D. The subject matter of psychology A new look
  at consciousness
• 1.phenomena is the subject matter of psychology
  and is to be found in immediate experience
• 2. conditions the importance of the body,
  especially the brain, in mental life.

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I. William James (1842-1910) Anticipator of
Functional Psychology

• 3. rebelled against artificiality and narrowness
  of the Wundtians approach
• 4. introspection does not show elements exist
  independently of the observer (psychologists'
  fallacy)

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I. William James (1842-1910) Anticipator of
Functional Psychology

• 5. consciousness is
• a. continuous flow stream of consciousness
• Consciousness is a continuous flowing process and
  that any attempt to reduce it to elements will
  distort it.
• b. always changing, not recurrent, cumulative,
  selective criterion is relevance
• c. enables one to adapt to one's environment by
  allowing one to choose

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I. William James (1842-1910) Anticipator of
Functional Psychology

• E. The methods of psychology
• 1 .introspection is a basic tool and is less than
  perfect
• 2. experimental method
• a. did not use it much
• b. but acknowledged its use as a means to
  psychological knowledge, especially for
  psychophysics

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I. William James (1842-1910) Anticipator of
Functional Psychology

• E. The methods of psychology
• 3 .comparative method supplements introspection
  and experimentation
• 4. implied functional psychology is not
  restricted to a single technique

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I. William James (1842-1910) Anticipator of
Functional Psychology

• E. The methods of psychology
• 5. emphasized the value of pragmatism
• a. validity of an idea is its practical utility
• b. anything is true if it works

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I. William James (1842-1910) Anticipator of
Functional Psychology

• F. The theory of emotions
• 1 .before James emotion precedes physical
  arousal/response (fear?run)
• 2. James physical arousal/response precedes
  emotion (run?experience fear)
• if no bodily change, then no emotion

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The Functional inequality of women---Mary
Calkins (1863-1930)

• A. Mary Calkins
• 1. James helps her to overcome barriers of
  discriminaiton
• 2. denied PhD from Harvard University awarded
  honorary degree from Columbia University

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The Functional inequality of women---Mary
Calkins (1863-1930)

• 3. 1st women president of the APA
• 4. 1906 ranked 12th among the 50 most important
  psychologist in the US
• 5. paired associate technique

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The Functional inequality of women---Mary
Calkins (1863-1930)

• Variability hypothesis (Darwinian ideas)
• The notion that men show a wider range and
  variation of physical and mental development than
  women the abilities of women are seen as more
  average
• Women less likely to benefit from education
• Inequality between the sex

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The Functional inequality of women---Helen
Woolley (1874-1947)

• B. Helen Woolley
• 1. Born in Chicago
• 2. Parents supported the idea of education for
  women
• 3. 1990, received her Ph.D. under Angell and Deway

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The Functional inequality of women---Helen
Woolley (1874-1947)

• 4. 1921, the president of the National Vocational
  Guidance Association
• 5. 1924, director of the new Institute of Child
  Welfare Research at Columbia University.
• 6. Worked on the area of child development,
  education, vocational education, and school
  guidance counseling

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The Functional inequality of women---Helen
Woolley (1874-1947)

• 7. Her dissertation was the first experimental
  test of Darwinian notion that women are
  biologically inferior to men.
• The results showed no sex differences in
  emotional functioning and only small differences
  in intellectual abilities. Women were slightly
  superior to men in memory and sensory perception.
  
• She attributed the differences to the social and
  environmental factors

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The Functional inequality of women---Leta
Hellingworth (1886-1939)

• C. Leta Hollingworth
• 1. Received her Ph.D. under Cattell at Columbia
  U.
• 2. Married women can not permitted to teach in
  public school at that time.

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The Functional inequality of women---Leta
Hellingworth (1886-1939)

• 3. Conducted studies on variability hypothesis
• 4. The results refused the variability hypothesis
  and the notion of female inferiority
• 5. Challenged the idea of womans desire to have
  career was abnormal or unhealthy

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The Functional inequality of women---Leta
Hellingworth (1886-1939)

• 6. Contribute to clinical, educational, and
  school psychology, especially the educational and
  emotional needs of gifted children.
• 7. But, she was never able to obtain research
  grant support.

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Functionalism at the Chicago School ---John
Dewey (1859-1952)

• A. Career
• 1. Undistinguished early life
• 2. Taught high school for few years
• 3. 1884 received his Ph.D. at John Hopkins
  University
• 4. 1886 Psychology (first American textbook in
  psychology)

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Functionalism at the Chicago School ---John
Dewey (1859-1952)

• 5. established a laboratory school at U of
  Chicago----cornerstone for education movement
• 6. 1904 Columbia U., to work on application of
  psychology to educational and philosophical
  problems

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Functionalism at the Chicago School ---John
Dewey (1859-1952)

• B. 1896 "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology
• 1 . attacked molecularism, elementism, and
  reductionism of reflex arc
• 2. behavior cannot be reduced to sensorimotor
  elements
• 3. consciousness cannot be meaningfully analyzed
  into elements

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Functionalism at the Chicago School --James
Rowland Angell (1869-1949)

• A. Career
• 1. Born in an academic family
• 2. studied under Dewey at the University of
  Michigan (undergraduate)
• 3. Read James book and work with him and
  received a masters degree.

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Functionalism at the Chicago School --James
Rowland Angell (1869-1949)

• 4. Studied in Germany for his Ph.D. but did not
  receive his degree
• 5 . no PhD but received 23 honorary degrees
• 6. Accepted a position at the U. of Chicago.
• 7. president of Yale University helped develop
  the Institute of Human Relations
• 8.1906 APA 15th president

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Functionalism at the Chicago School --James
Rowland Angell (1869-1949)

• B. The province of functional psychology
• 1. 1904 Psychology
• a. function of consciousness is to improve the
  organism's adaptive abilities
• b. goal of psychology to study how the mind
  assists the adjustment of the organism to its
  environment

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Functionalism at the Chicago School --James
Rowland Angell (1869-1949)

• 2. identified three themes for functional
  psychology
• a. the psychology of mental operations
• b. the psychology of the fundamental utilities of
  consciousness
• c. the psychology of psychophysical relations
  (mind-body relations)
• 3. gave functionalism necessary focus and stature

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Functionalism at the Chicago School---Harvey A.
Carr (1873-1954)

• A. Career
• 1 . mathematics major, switched to psychology
• 2. first course in experimental psychology taught
  by Angell

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Functionalism at the Chicago School---Harvey A.
Carr (1873-1954)

• 3. lab assistant with J. B. Watson
• 4. introduced to animal psychology by Watson
• 5. PhD at Chicago (1905)
• 6. chair at Chicago 1919-1938 150 PhDs

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Functionalism at the Chicago School---Harvey A.
Carr (1873-1954)

• B. Peaked under Carr
• 1. Maintained the functional psychology was the
  American psychology
• 2. nothing could be added to the functional
  psychology

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Functionalism at the Chicago School---Harvey A.
Carr (1873-1954)

• 3. 1925 Psychology
• a. the most refined form of functionalism
• b. the subject matter is mental
  activity/processes
• including memory, perception, feeling,
  imagination, judgment, will

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Functionalism at the Chicago School---Harvey A.
Carr (1873-1954)

• c. function of mental activity
• 1) to acquire, retain, organize, and evaluate
  experiences
• 2) to use these experiences to determine one's
  actions
• d. adaptive behavior the specific form of action
  in which mental activities appear adaptive
  behavior.

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Functionalism at the Chicago School---Harvey A.
Carr (1873-1954)

• 4. Functionalism was the mainstream psychology
• 5. accepted data from introspection and
  experiments
• 6. emphasis on objectivity
• 7. Used both animal and human as subjects

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Functionalism at the Chicago School---Harvey A.
Carr (1873-1954)

• 8. Carr believed study of cultural creations
  provided information about the mental activities
  that produced them
• 9. Chicago school bridged move from study of
  subjective consciousness toward study of
  objective overt behavior

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Functionalism at Columbia University---Robert
Woodworth (1869-1962)

• A. Career
• 1. heard Stanley Halls talk, read Jamess book
  decided to become a psychologist
• 2. 1899 PhD from Columbia with Cattell
• 3. taught physiology three years in hospitals
• 4. 1903-1945 taught at Columbia U. (retired a
  second time in 1958)

Robert Woodworth
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Functionalism at Columbia University---Robert
Woodworth (1869-1962)

• B. Dynamic psychology
• 1. psychological knowledge
• a. begin with investigation of nature of the
  stimulus and the response (external, objective
  events)
• b. However, miss the living organism itself
• 1) acts to determine the response

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Functionalism at Columbia University---Robert
Woodworth (1869-1962)

• 2. Stimulus and response can be observed
  objectively
• 3. inside the organism can be known only through
  introspection.
• 4. Accepted introspection, and observational and
  experimental methods are all useful tools for
  psychology

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Functionalism at Columbia University---Robert
Woodworth (1869-1962)

• 5. dynamic psychology
• a. concerned with the causal factors and
  motivations in feelings and behavior.
• 6. emphasized physiological events that underlie
  behavior
• 7. psychology's goal determine why people behave
  as they do

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Criticisms of Functionalism

• A. "Functionalism" not well defined
• 1. Two definition
• an activity
• the usefulness of some activity to the organism,
  e.g., function of digestion or breathing
• 2. Carr the two definitions are not inconsistent
  and both referred to the same process.
• B. Titchener's structuralists functionalism is
  not psychology

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Criticisms of Functionalism

• C. Applied aspects
• 1. Carr argued both pure and applied psychology
• a. adhere to rigorous scientific procedures
• b. valid research can be performed in
  classrooms, labs, etc.
• c. it is the method, not the subject matter, that
  counts
• 2. Later, applied psychology has become so
  pervasive in American psychology

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Contributions of Functionalism

• A. shift in emphasis from structure to function
• B. research on animal behavior became an area of
  study for psychology
• C. inclusion of humans other than "normal adults"
  as subjects
• Infant, children, or people with mental
  disabilities

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Contributions of Functionalism

• D. inclusion of methods beyond introspection
• Physiological research, mental tests,
  questionnaire,s, and objective descriptions of
  behavior
• E. emphasis on the application of the methods and
  findings of psychology to the solution of
  practical problems.