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Unit 6B: Chapter 12 Notes

Adapted from History of Psychology: The Making of a Science (Edward P. Kardas, 2014)

Susanne Nishino, Ph.D. 2013

Chapter 12: Functional Psychology

American Universities before Daniel Coit Gilman – Johns Hopkins

• Before founding of Johns Hopkins University 1876, all American colleges & universities teaching

institutions only

• Research not known & practice, not financially support

• Most 19 th

century American colleges & universities originally chartered as seminaries

• In Europe three predominant university models

• Daniel Coit Gilman (1831-1908) took German model, altered slightly

– British

– French

– German

• Coitman assumed presidency Johns Hopkins 1876, created modern research university, key

changes to German model required adequate preparation, fellowships, now familiar academic

department headed by chair, departmental faculty now had to be specialists

• Revolutionalized American higher education, paved way for rapid growth of psychology in U.S.

in late 19 th

& early 20 th

centuries

19 th

Century American Psychology Pioneers

• Psychology nearly unknown in U.S.

• William James changed that by teaching 1 st

psychology course in U.S.

• Others brought psychology back following studies in Europe, men such as G. Stanley Hall &

James McKeen Cattell traveled to Germany to study with Wilhelm Wundt & learn about the new

psychology

• Many new psychologists left labs & brought psychology into schools, workplace, mental

asylums, also began to work on psychology of animal mind

• Colleges & universities changing, American schools reorganized curricula, faculty,

administration, missions, research & training of future researchers became top priority

• By 3 rd

decade of 20 th

century psychology primarily American enterprise

• Three schools of psychology vied with each other over definition of psychology discipline

– Structuralism

– Functionalism

– Behaviorism

William James (1842-1910)

• Around time Gilman reforming American higher education, James laying foundation for

psychology to occupy new educational structure

• 1874 Taught comparative anatomy & physiology, also taught 1 st

graduate course in psychology

in U.S., following year taught new course in physiological psychology, set up small teaching lab,

he and Wundt performing psychology experiments, 1 st in the world, at same time, many

empirical results from James’s lab research eventually published

• James based physiological psychology course on new and converging scientific disciplines:

evolution, psychophysics, & archeology

• Sought to include data from as many disciplines as possible under umbrella of psychology, in

later years explored nature of religious thought, attended seances

• 1889 Harvard’s 1 st

professor of psychology, still member of philosophy department, Harvard did

not establish psychology department until 1934 under Hugo Munsterberg who succeeded James

• Fig. 12.2 p. 263 Early North American Psychology Laboratories

James: The Principles of Psychology

• James textbook 1890, contributions to psychology continue to be recognized today

– Space perception

– James-Lange theory of emotions

– Importance of instinct

– Pre-eminence of habit

– Use of psychopathology to explain normal behavior

– Early version of self psychology

– Model of memory that anticipated Atkinson-Shiffrin information processing

– Understanding the importance of physiological inhibition

– Overt attempts to understand vague, transitory, or mystical states

James’s Textbook Topics Including :

• Perception of space

• Perception of time

• Perception of things

• Perception of reality

• Stream of thought

• Association

• Attention

• Imagination

• Self-consciousness

• Emotions

• The Will

• Necessary truths

• Functions of the brain

• Habit

• Discrimination & comparison

• Memory

• Instinct

• Hypnotism

Jamesian Psychology: Pragmatism

• Textbook topics endured the test of time, most are still part & parcel of psychology today

• Along with Charles Sanders Peirce turned efforts toward developing pragmatism a new

approach to philosophy

• Pragmatism = the approach to philosophy developed by Charles Sanders Peirce, William James,

and later John Dewy that argued that truth is always a practical compromise between

empiricism & idealism

• Comprehensive system of Jamesian psychology never existed, cobbled psychology derived from

training & interests in biology, psychophysics, experimental psychology, archeology, religion,

mysticism, & parapsychology

• Wide view of what discipline should include contrasted with narrower & more strictly

experimental views of most American psychologists

• By end of James’s life, period of American students studying abroad had ended, studying at

home, in labs & departments in distinctly American brand of psychology

• James, strictly speaking was a functionalist, did not participate in later development of its

thought

• Functionalism = an early school of thought in American psychology that sought to discover ways

to improve the match between organism, their minds, & their environments

• Came to own brand of functional psychology when reading Darwin, Darwin equated animal

structures with biological functions, consequently to survival

• James thought same type of functional relationship might hold between mental events &

survival of organism

• Required introspection as a method, James embraced introspection as necessary for complete

psychology

• Like Wundt saw the necessity & potential for new experimental methods but believed could not

provide answers to all questions

James: Introspection & Phenomenology

• James believed consciousness functional & adaptive, could not be studied in isolation, had to be

studied as part of expanding “stream of consciousness” that changed constantly and could be

pushed in new directions through action of the self via the will

• Thus, James helped give rise to new kind of psychology based on phenomenology

• Phenomenology = the philosophical system that examines conscious experience itself directly,

intentionally, and from one’s own point of view

• Phenomenology helped serve as midwife for many new areas of psychology, including “Freud’s

psychodynamic theories . . . personality research; social, clinical, and child psychology; abnormal

psychology; and educational and school psychology” (Pajares, 2003, quoted p. 266).

James: Subconscious & Unconscious

• After writing The Principles of Psychology James interested in emerging French psychology

studying subconscious thought & psychopathology, corresponded with Pierre Janet, met with

Freud & Jung

• Practiced the establishment of a complete psychology that included experimental methods as

well as yet to be developed methods for studying topics unapproachable by experimentation

• Psychology’s path to future in U.S. did not follow James’s model, by & large stuck to

experimental methods only, began to use methods on animals as well as humans

• By 3 rd

decade of 20 th

, American psychology little resemblance to James’s model

Physiology of Emotion: James-Lange Theory of Emotion

• Study of emotion long history, pivotal in human behavior

• James & Lange independently proposed 1 st

scientific theory of emotion in late 19 th

century, in

theory, an environmental event starts emotional reaction, event followed by cognitive appraisal

of situation, and then by physiological responses associated with emotion

• Two other theories followed James-Lange

• Cannon-Bard theory, argument that components comprising emotional responses are

independent from each other, largely not supported by research

• Schachter-Singer theory posits all physiological emotional responses the same,

interpretation of the particular emotion depends more on cognitive evaluation of the

situation, contend any proper theory of emotion must evaluate the environmental

context surrounding it

Hugo Munsterberg (1863 – 1916): Applied Psychology

• Recruited by William James to Harvard

• In Germany set up small lab, began experiments in psychophysics, began to work in more

practical & applied areas, including clinical research

• Conducted some earliest examples of clinical research

• Therapy & Forensics (study of human behavior as relates to crime & punishment) applied

interests

• 1 st

psychologist to research fallibility of eyewitness testimony & coerced extraction of

confessions, not until Elizabeth Loftus efforts (1979) that psychological research actually led to

changes in police practices

• 1 st

to examine relationship of psychology to workplace (industrial-organizational psychology),

investigated hiring, improving worker efficiency, & advertising

• Greatest contribution to psychology was founding the areas of applied psychology, employs vast

majority of psychologists today

• Last of major European talent imports to young history of American psychology, rise of Nazis

1933 led to 2 nd

wave

Granville Stanley Hall (1844-1924): 1 st

U.S. Research Laboratory

• Americans who had gone to Europe for training made up bulk of next generation of

psychologists, founded labs & conducted research in two distinctly different schools of

psychology: Functionalism & Behaviorism

• Before schools fully emerged there were psychologists at work who did not fit neatly into

emerging schools of thought, one was G. Stanley Hall

• Early attracted to philosophy & evolution, studied under William James, 1 st

American to obtain

PhD for psychological dissertation

• Never committed believer in introspection, after returned home from study in Europe also lost

enthusiasm for laboratory work, claimed to have founded 1 st

psychology laboratory in the U.S.

• Hall founded lab to conduct research, James had created his to teach physiological psychology

• James & Hall different visions about psychology

• Hall originally focused on laboratory experiments & German-style research, James emphasis on

topics difficult to approach experimentally

• In short run Hall’s approach more successful especially in founding university based psychology

laboratories, in long run James vision of future of psychology more prescient

• Hall began to move away from lab based psychology but never doubted its fundamental

importance to psychology

• Became interested in broader topics such as child & adolescent psychology

• Interest in children, among 1 st

to emphasize relationship between development, evolution, &

adaptation

• Created Adolescent Psychology as new subdiscipline of Developmental Psychology, difficulty

when began to research adolescent sexuality

• Eventually moved to other topics including religion and aging

• 1 st

President of American Psychological Association

Hall’s Influence on American Psychology

• Large number of students meant in large part responsible for much of growth of American

psychology during the period, many students went on to become famous psychologists

• Invited Freud & Jung to Clark, cracked open psychology’s door for eventual admittance of

abnormal & clinical psychology, two of discipline’s largest subfields today

• Hall’s Firsts – 1 st

American PhD, Wundt’s 1 st

American student, 1 st

research lab in U.S., founded

American Journal of Psychology 1 st

in U.S., founded American Psychological Association, 1 st

President, granted 1 st

PhD to African American: Francis Cecil Sumner (1920)

James McKeen Cattell (1860-1944)

• Wundt student, worked on reaction time studies, improved laboratory equipment used to

conduct those types of studies

• 1 st

to offer Statistics course in U.S., have been integral part of psychology curricula ever since

• Brief association with Galton, caused Cattell to think about role of statistics in psychology

• Both Galton & Cattell believed decline of eminent intellects in society, Galton attributed to

heredity, Cattell argued that lack of environmental opportunities (good schools) was main

cause, believed decline could be reversed

• Constant issues with school administrations over academic freedom & faculty governance, rest

of life outside academic, most influence on psychology & science because of editorship of

journals

• 1 st

to use words “mental test”

Cattell: Statistics & Testing

• Cattell’s methods for measuring scientific productivity & performance have been modified since

his days “Money devoted to R&D [research and development] is now the preferred statistic”

(Godin, 2007, quoted p. 274)

• Cattell created directly of eminence ranking of U.S. universities, statistics, analyzed change &

correlated

• Attempted to measure & correlate academic performance, data collected yielded low

correlations, abandoned this line of research

• Soon after Binet & others using complex cognitive tasks successfully launched testing movement

in psychology

• 1921 Cattell & Columbia colleagues began Psychological Corporation, idea to enlist psychologists

as consultants to industry & education, became financially successful as publisher of

psychological tests not as consultants

Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949): Animal Research & Learning

• Famous for animal research

• Wanted to explore learning experimentally

• Designed series of experiments designed to look at problem of learning, built series of puzzle

boxes, animals could only escape by learning to operate mechanisms

• Puzzle boxes yielded interesting results, latency decreased = learned to escape faster after

chance discovery of action that operated escape mechanism

• Constructed 1 st

learning curves, highlighted behaviors not ideas as basic data for psychology

• Learning Curve = graphical representation of the progress of learning over time with the

dependent variable shown on the y-axis and the time shown on the x-axis

• Laid groundwork for Behaviorism, psychology’s next school of thought

• Continued animal experiments, led to idea of “stamped in” “stamped out” behaviors, discovered

animals did not benefit from instruction

Thorndike: Law of Effect

• Major contribution laws of learning, most important law of effect

• Law of effect “Of several responses made to the same situation, those which are accompanied

or closely followed by satisfaction to the animal will, other things being equal, be more firmly

connected with the situation, so that, when it recurs, they will be more likely to recur: those

which are accompanied or closely followed by discomfort to the animal will, other things being

equal, have their connections with that situation weakened, so that, when it recurs, they will be

less likely to occur. The greater the satisfaction or discomfort, the greater the strengthening or

weakening of the bond” (Thorndike, 1911, quoted p. 277)

Thorndike: Human Learning

• Law of Exercise another law proposed by Thorndike, stated that learning would last longer when

animals were exposed to more instances of a stimulus (the puzzle box) and a response

(escaping)

• Not new ideas, difference supported by experimental findings

• Anticipated Behaviorism

• Stimulus-Response (S-R) connections would become one of major mainstays of later behavioral

psychology

• Left animal work after 30 years, work with children led to tremendous success in applied areas

of testing & educational psychology

• Monkey research – discovered that monkey learning curses much steeper and learned faster

• Thorndike & Woodworth (1901) influential study on transfer of learning, results showed no

transfer took place, work led to radical revisions in school curricula

• Created new designs for children’s dictionary

• One of 1 st

successful developer of tests, one of 1 st

to make substantial income from work

outside academics, applied statistical methods to vocation & school

The University of Chicago (1892)

• Oil baron John D. Rockefeller (Harvard of the Midwest), admitted women & minorities, women

on faculty, 1 st

university to house independent sociology department

• Psychology housed in philosophy department: psychology, education, philosophy

• Functional Psychology emerged from U. of Chicago & Columbia U. as responded to Titchener’s

(1898) criticism of their research, 1 st

to call them “functionalists” Titchener argued while

questions about biological & psychological function useful & necessary, asking them before

structure of mind was fully understood was premature & would lead to misleading results

• June Etta Downey (1875-1932), present on original psychology faculty list at U. of Chicago

• Functionalism

• Chicago Functionalism

– John Dewey

– James Rowland Angell

– Harvey Carr

• Columbia Functionalism

– Robert Sessions Woodworth

John Dewey (1859-1952): Chicago Functionalism

• Seeds of functionalism grew at Chicago

• Dewey usually credited as founder of Functionalism after publish article, reflex arcs as circles,

coordinated actions between stimuli & movements only noticed when reflexes went amiss,

implication that psychology needed ecological approach

• “If Dewey is correct, we need to be talking about an intact organism with a brain, including,

ultimately, an organisms with a mind in Dewey’s sense, acting in the environment” (Manicas,

2002, quoted p. 280)

• Expert in educational psychology, influence still felt

• Like other Functionalists put stock in a psychology that extended far outside the laboratory &

into applied settings

James Rowland Angell (1869-1949): Chicago Functionalism

• Dewey hired to teach experimental psychology

• 1 st

person to head Chicago’s new department of psychology

• President of American Psychological Association, speech one of best descriptions of functional

psychology, contrasted Titchener’s Structuralism, three ways to define functional psychology

– Psychology of mental operations, not description of mental elements

– Psychology of the utility of consciousness

– It is psychophysics itself

• Speech (quoted on p. 281) also contained

– Animal Psychology, linked psychology to biology & evolutionary

– Developmental Psychology, linked to processes of change

– Clinical Psychology, linked to deviancy

• “Like the functionalist approach, today’s psychology is broad and inclusive, rooted in biology,

and both behavioral and cognitive” (Dewsbury, 2003, quoted p. 281)

• During war worked with US Army on personnel classification

Harvey Carr (1873-1954): Chicago Functionalism

• Educational slant, became experimental psychologists

• After Dewey left Chicago, John B. Watson hired, Carr studied under Watson conducting

experiments using Titchener’s lab manual

• Carr became main spokesman for functional psychology

• Competed against two other viewpoints

– Titchener’s Structuralism

– Watson’s Behaviorism

• Functionalism won contest with Structuralism, soon overwhelmed by Behaviorism,

• Functionalist ideas about animal psychology, mental testing, educational psychology, child

psychology, & psychopathology carried the day

• Quote from Carr still defining psychology using older non-behavioral terminology p. 282

• Behaviorism displaced Functionalism for many reasons

• Carr willing to dispense with introspection, but unwilling to let go of mind, human or animal

• Proposed new mechanisms to counter behaviorist’s single minded obsession against mentalism

• Most prominent mechanism was adaptive act, three components: motivating stimulus, sensory

stimulus, and an activity, adaptive act designed to explain interrelatedness of all three

components

• Motivating stimulus aroused an activity and the sensory stimulus directed it toward a particular

goal, example zoo, panther on loose, now aroused different adaptive response

• Carr last Functionalist in Chicago

Robert Sessions Woodworth (1869-1962): Columbia Functionalism

• Helped James with dream research

• 1 st

to use terms independent & dependent variables

• Interested in two problems: motivation & mind-body, lifetime interests

• Researched variety of areas including anthropometry, thinking, time perception, motor control,

kinesthetic imagery (required introspection)

• Unlike behaviorists willing to use variety of methodologies other than experimentation in order

to solve problem at hand

• Eclectic approach with preference for objective data but no taboo against data from

introspection, if helps to understand what organism is doing in relation to environment

• While Functionalism battling Structuralism, Behaviorism being born

• Saw Titchener & Watson as bogey-men, too dogmatic & exclusionary, against Titchener

insistence on sensations, against Watson’s prohibition on introspection

• Woodworth’s solution = Dynamic Psychology

Woodworth: Dynamic Psychology

• Dynamic Psychology = Woodworth’s attempt to define psychology as an eclectic discipline of

activity and thought that could not be approached by any single methodology

• Included mixture of experimentation, introspection, comparative psychology, and mental

testing, also reformulation of Thorndike’s S-R psychology (adopted by Watson & behaviorists) to

S-O-R, “O” stood for organism, put organism between stimulus & response, hoped to account

for psychological variables that might appear, especially motivation, preferred “activity” over

word “behavior”, believed Watson preempted word

• “As to “behavior,” it would be a very suitable term, if only it had not become so closely

identified with the “behaviorist movement” in psychology, which urges that consciousness

should be entirely left out of psychology, or at least disregarded. “Behavior psychology,” as the

term would be understood to-day, means a part of the subject and not the whole” (Woodworth,

1921, quoted p.284).

• Footnote “A series of waggish critics has evolved the following: “First psychology lost its soul,

then it lost its mind, then it lost consciousness; it still has behavior, of a kind” (Woodworth,

1921, quoted p. 284). Summarizes history of psychology to his day.

Functionalism as Phoenix

• Fundamentalist struggling with definition of psychology itself, unsatisfied with Titchener’s

Structuralism & Watson’s Behavioralism

• Search for solution abrupt end once Behaviorism came on scene, next 30 years nearly all

American psychologists devoted to creating positivistic & non-mental science of behavior

• Behavioralists could not suppress forever questions asked by functionalists

• Recent times aided by information processing metaphor, questions rise again from ashes of

Functionalism

• Ideas

• Research university

• Laboratories

• Fellowships

• Functionalism

– Applied psychology

– Clinical psychology

– Forensics

– Educational psychology

– Emotion

– Child psychology

– Adolescent psychology

Ideas

• Pragmaticism

• Psychoanalyst approach

• Mental Tests

• Statistics

• Adaptive Act

• Learning

• Law of effect

• S-R psychology

• Learning curve

• Dynamic Psychology

• Behaviorism

Summary

• Much changed in US after Civil War

• Daniel Coit Gilman set model for colleges & universities, revised German model research

university

• William James, face American psychology

• Hugo Munsterberg emphasized applied psychology by conducting research in clinical, forensic,

& industrial psychology

• G. Stanly Hall, training of many psychologists, founding of American Psychological Association

• James McKeen Cattell differentiated American psychology from European, founded journals,

conducted research along Galtonian lines

• Edward Lee Thorndike early animal research set stage for Behaviorism, later contributions

centered on animal learning, educational psychology, & testing

• Functionalism short-lived, centered on Chicago & Columbia

• Chicago Dewey, Angell, & Carr

• Columbia Thorndike, Dewey, & Woodworth

• Woodworth dynamic psychology & textbook in experimental psychology influential past

midpoint of 20 th

century