Functionalism

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Functionalism
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• 1st American school of psychology
• Very eclectic like Americans
• Only real commonality was that psychology was to
  have a function
• Two most influential functionalist psychologists
• John Dewey while at the University of Chicago
• James Cattel while at Columbia

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John Dewey

• PhD at Johns Hopkins with G. Stanley Hall
• Eventually chosen to be the chair of philosophy
  department at the new University of Chicago
• 1887 He wrote the 1st psychology textbook in
  U.S. Not as good as William James (1890)
• 1896 He wrote the classic paper The reflex
  arc concept in psychology cited as the 1st
  functionalist paper

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Deweys purpose for psychology

• Study the mind as a coordinated whole and study
  behaviors and ideas in a functional context
• To study behaviors and ideas, you have to study
  how they allow organisms to adapt to their
  environment

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Dewey and education

• Proposed a very progressive education system
• Children should learn to learn not through rote
  learning and memorization
• Designed educational laboratory to determine the
  best ways to teach children
• Conclusion best way was to promote creative
  thought instead of the memorization of dogma

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Dewey and education (cont.)

• Dewey left Chicago in 1904 and moved to Columbia
  where he moved further away from psychology.
  Became an internationally know educational
  consultant
• Why?
• Politics

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James Angall

• Credited with formulating what functionalist
  psychology should be and how it differed from
  structuralism
• Functionalism studies how consciousness works and
  why it works this way
• Functionalism studies the mind in action because
  it cannot be stopped for analysis it is
  continually changing and adapting
• Functionalism involves the study of the
  interaction between the physical and
  psychological worlds

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Angalls most important contribution

• Harvey Carr took over chair when Angall left
  continued the idea that psychology should never
  become restrictive
• John B. Watson founder of behaviorism
• Both heavily involved in animal research

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Functionalism at Columbia University

• James Mckeen Cattel
• PhD with Wundt
• Most influenced by Galton
• 1890 published Mental Tests and Measurements
  while at University of Pennsylvania

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Cattel at Columbia

• Freshman test given to 100 volunteers a year.
• Anthropomorphic test attempt to measure
  psychological abilities using physical
  measurements ( similar to Galton)
• Unsuccessful no correlation between scores o n
  the physical tests and academic performance
• Demonstrated the need to design tests that
  measured complex mental processes

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Other contributions of Cattel

• Memory human memory not as good as we think
• Judgments of relative rank
• Two important students Edward Thorndike and
  Robert Woodworth

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Cattel after Columbia

• Fired from Columbia University for pacifist
  beliefs
• Sued Columbia and won, but never got his position
  back
• Formed the Psychological Corporation
• 1st psychologist elected to the National Academy
  of Sciences
• Bought and saved the journal Science from
  extinction

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Robert S. Woodworth

• Took over chair of the department at Columbia
  when Cattel fired
• Very eclectic in his approach
• Developed psychometric tests
• Studied imageless thought
• Stressed the importance of motivation
• The most honored psychologist in U.S. history

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Edward Thorndike

• Like most functionalist came to major in
  psychology after reading James Principles of
  Psychology
• Studied with James at Harvard until he moved to
  Columbia to study with Cattel
• Best known for his work with cats and his puzzle
  boxes
• Highly critical of early comparative
  psychologists and largely ignored their works

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Contributions of Thorndike

• Law of effect
• Learning to learn
• Prolific writer over 430 publications in 43
  years at Columbia
• Of course most of his work was criticized by
  Titchner

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Fate of Functionalism

• Up until 1920s Functionalism made psychology
  very important and influential
• Seen as exciting
• More in line with society idea about being useful
• Not identified with any one person
• The decline of functionalism
• So diverse that it split up into many different
  disciplines academic and applied
• The rise of behaviorism

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Discrimination against women in early 20th
century Psychology

• Inferiority of women firmly believed when it had
  never been scientifically investigated
• Academia dominated by men and the fact was so
  obvious it didnt need to be studied
• Example Broca (circular arguments)
• Older people have smaller brains than young
  people. Young people more intelligent
• primitive people have smaller brains than
  civilized people, and are less intelligent
• Women have smaller brains than men, they are less
  intelligent

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Galton and the inferiority of women

• Women inferior because of poorer performance on
  sensory discrimination tasks
• Women scored higher on tests of visual imagery.
• Therefore visual imagery not an important task
  because women are better and they are inferior

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Misuse of Darwins theory

• Variability hypothesis based upon Darwins data
  that in many species males show greater
  variability in traits and abilities than females
• Interpretation of data
• Since women have less variability they tend to
  cluster around the mean be more average and
  have few abilities

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Helen Bradford Thompson Woolley

• Investigated sex differences scientifically
• Found little or no sex differences in emotional
  functioning and intelligence
• Differences that were found could be attributed
  to environmental factors
• Accused by males as giving a feminist
  interpretation to the data