1 Functionalism

2  1 st 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

3 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 1 st 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 1 st “functionalist” paper

4 Dewey’s 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

5 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

6 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

7 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

8 Angall’s 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

9 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

10 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

11 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

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

13 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

14 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

15 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

16 Fate of Functionalism  Up until 1920’s 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

17 Discrimination against women in early 20 th 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 didn’t 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

18 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

19 Misuse of Darwin’s theory  Variability hypothesis – based upon Darwin’s 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

20 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”