Psyc. 192 Ch. 7: Functionalism and Evolutionary Psyc. – Flashcards

Herbert Spencer's idea that knowledge and experience can be explained in terms of evolutionary principles.

The philosophy that brought Spencer so much recognition and acclaim was Darwinism, the notion of evolution and the survival of the fittest. Spencer extended it far beyond Darwin's own work. Spencer argued that the development of all aspects of the universe is evolutionary, including human character and social institutions, in accordance with the principle of "survival of the fittest" (a phrase Spencer coined). It was this emphasis on what came to be called social Darwinism- applying the theory of evolution to human nature and society- that met with such enthusiasm in America. In Spencer's utopian view, if the principal of survival of the fittest were allowed to operate freely, then only the best would survive. Therefore, human perfection was inevitable as long as no action was taken to interfere with the natural order of things. Individualism and a laissez-faire economic system were vital, whereas governmental attempts to regulate business and industry and welfare were opposed. Any assistance from the state would interfere with the natural evolutionary process. Spencer's views were compatible with the American ethos and that is why his philosophical system influenced every field of learning. Spencer formulated a system he called synthetic philosophy. He based this all-encompassing system on the application of evolutionary principles to human knowledge and experience. Spencer discussed the notion that the mind exists in its present form because of past and continuing efforts to adapt to various environments.

Butler asked "is it possible that machines could evolve to higher forms the way animals and humans were said to do," and also extended the theory of evolution to machines. Butler wrote that the evolution of machines had already occurred. He also proposed that mechanical evolution was occurring through the same processes that guided human evolution: natural selection and the struggle for existence. The rapid development of technology made it clear to Butler that machines made greater evolutionary strides than animals had, and he predicted that machines would one day become capable of stimulating human mental processes, a kind of intelligence.

Hollerith was an engineer who developed a new and improved way of processing information in which a machine automatically counted holes punched in a pattern and produce the tabulations. His punched card system radically altered the processing of this type of information and led to renewed hopes and fears that machines, in time, would duplicate human cognitive functioning.

James's work was the major American precursor of functional psychology, and he was a pioneer of the new scientific psychology as it developed in the US. Some of his colleagues viewed him as a negative force in the development of a scientific psychology because he maintained a widely publicized interest in mental telepathy, clairvoyance, seances, etc. many American psychologists, like Titchner and Cattell, criticized James for his enthusiastic espousal of the very materialistic and psychical phenomena that they as experimental psychologists were trying to avoid. He was important for helping to popularize psychology and to make it a more applied discipline. Three reasons have been suggested for his overwhelming stature and influence: 1) James wrote with a clarity that is rare in science, 2) he opposed Wundt's goal for psychology, namely the analysis of consciousness into elements, and 3) James offered an alternative way of looking at the mind, a view congruent with the functional approach if psychology. In James's "The Principles of Psychology," he presents what eventually became the central tenet of American functionalism- that the goal of psychology is not the discovery of the elements of experience, as Wundt and Titchner had argued, but rather the study of living people as they adapt to their environment. The function of consciousness is to guide us to those ends required for survival. Without it, human evolution could not have occurred.

James stated that "psychology is the science of mental life, both of its phenomena and their conditions. The term phenomena is used to indicate that the subject matter of psychology is to be found in immediate experience. The term conditions refers the the importance of the body, particularly the brain, in mental life. James declared that simple sensations do not exist in conscious experience but exist only as the result of some convoluted process of inference or abstraction. He stated that mental life is a unity, a total experience that constantly changes. James coined the term "stream of consciousness" to express his idea. Since consciousness is always changing, we can never experience the same thought or sensation more than once. They will differ because of the effect of intervening experiences. Thus our consciousness can be described as cumulative and not recurrent. The mind is continuous and selective. It filters out some experiences, combined or separates others, selects or rejects still others. The most important criterion for selection is relevance. He believed that consciousness must have some biological utility and that its function was to enable us to adapt to our environment by allow us to choose. James believed that introspective results could be verified by appropriate checks and by comparing the findings obtained from several observers. The functionalist movement would not be restricted to a single ,ethos,much as Wundt's or Titchner's for,s of introspection. Functionalism would accept and apply other methods as well. James emohasized the value for psychology of pragmatism. James's theory of emotions argued that the arousal of the physical response precedes the appearance of the emotion. He also suggested that a person's sense of self is made up of three components: the material, the social, and the spiritual. James believed that repetitive or habitual actions involve the nervous system and serve to increase the plasticity of neural matter. As a result, habits become easier to perform on subsequent repetitions and require less conscious attention; they also have enormous social implications.

Refers to the condition as a peculiarly American nervousness with a variety of symptoms: depression, anxiety, insomnia, hypochondria, headache, skin rash, nervous exhaustion, and something called brain collapse. James called it Americanitis, and it quickly became the most prominent ailment if the upper class. The Rexall drug company introduced a medicine called Americanitis elixir.

William James's idea that consciousness is a continuous flowing process and that any attempt to reduce it to elements will distort it.

The doctrine that the validity of ideas is measured by their practical consequences.

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.

For nearly 20 years after the formal founding of psychology as a scientific discipline, women faced barriers in becoming psychologists and thus having a chance to make a significant contribution to the development of the filed. Much of the myth of the intellectual superiority of men derived from the variability hypothesis based on Darwinian ideas of male variability.

Hall's idea that the psychological development of children repeats the history of the human race.

Two psychologists who contributed directly to the founding of the functionalist school of thought were John Dewey and James Angell, the founders of the new system which James designated the "Chicago School."

Dewey spent 10 years at the University of Chicago, where he established a laboratory school- a radical innovation in education- which became the cornerstone for the progressive education movement. Dewey's article "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" was the point of departure for functional psychology. In this work, he attacked the psychological molecularism, elementism, and reductionism of the reflex arc. In doing so, Dewey was arguing that neither behavior nor conscious experience could be reduced to elements, as Wundt and Titchner claimed to do. The proponents of the reflex arc argued that any unit of behavior ends with the response to a stimulus. Dewey was arguing that the behavior involved in a reflexive response cannot be meaningfully reduced to basic sensorimotor elements any more than consciousness can be meaningfully analyzed into elementary component parts. Dewey's ideas were strongly influenced by evolutionary theory. In the struggle for survival, both consciousness and behavior support the life of the organism.

Calkins developed the paired associate technique used in the study of memory and made significant and lasting contributions to psychology. She became the woman president of the APA in 1906. James was instrumental in facilitating her graduate education and helping her overcome barriers of prejudice and discrimination.

Woolley's research on the effects of child labor led to changes in the state's labor laws. Her doctoral dissertation was the first experimental test of the Darwinian notion that women were biologically inferior to men. The results showed no sex differences in emotional functioning and only small, insignificant differences in intellectual abilities. The data also revealed that women were slightly superior to men in memory and sensory perception. She then attributed these differences to social and environmental factors, the differences in child rearing practices and expectations for boys and girls, rather than biological determinants.

Hollingworth conducted extensive empiracle research on the variability hypothesis and focused on physical and sensorimotor functioning and intellectual abilities in a variety of subjects: infants, male and female college students, and menstruating women. Her data refuted the variability hypothesis. She also challenged the concept of an innate instinct for motherhood and questioned the idea that women could find satisfaction only through bearing children. She also made significant contributions to clinical, educational, and school psychology, especially the educational and emotional needs of gifted children a term she coined.

Hall received the first doctoral degree in psychology, he began what is considered the first psychology lab in the US and the first American psychology journal. He was the organizer and first president of the APA and one of the first applied psychologists. Hall was one of the first American psychologists to become interested in Freudian psychoanalysis and was largely responsible for the early attention Freud's system received in the US. Hall's work had a single theme: evolutionary theory. His work was governed by the conviction that the normal growth of the mind involved a series of evolutionary stages. Hall's genetic interests led him to the psychological psychology of children, which he made the core of his psychology. His early studies on children generated great public enthusiasm and led to the formalization of the child study movement. In Hall's "Adolescence," it contains the most complete statement of his recapitulation theory of psychological development.

The connection between sensory stimuli and motor responses.

Angell molded the functionalist movement into a working school of thought. Angell argued that the function of consciousness is to improve the organism's adaptive abilities. The goal of psychology is to study how the mind assists the organism in adjusting to its environment. He described the three major themes of the functionalist movement: 1) Functional psychology is the psychology of mental operations, in contrast to structuralism, which is the psychology of mental elements. The task of functionalism is to discover how a mental process operates, what it accomplishes, and under what conditions it occurs. 2) Functional psychology is the psychology of the fundamental utilities of consciousness. Thus, consciousness is viewed in a utilitarian spirit as it mediates between the needs of the organism and the demands of the environment. Structures and functions of the organism exist because they allow the organism to adapt to its environment and survive. Functional psychologists needed to discover the precise service of consciousness. 3) Functional psychology is the psychology of psychophysical relations (mind-body relations) and is concerned with the total relationship of the organism to its environment. It recognizes no real distinction between mind and body.

Woodworth did not formally belong to the functionalist school. He disliked the constraints imposed by membership in any school of thought. Nevertheless, much of what he wrote about psychology was in the functionalist spirit of the Chicago school. He argued that a stimulus is not the complete cause of a particular response. The organism, with its varying energy levels and it's current and past experiences, also acts to determine the response. Psychology,just consider the organism as interpolated between the stimulus and the response. Therefore, Woodworth suggested the subject matter for psychology must be both consciousness and behavior (later adopted by humanistic psychologists and the social learning theorists). Woodworth introduced into functionalism a dynamic psychology that elaborated on the teachings of Dewey and James. A dynamic psychology is concerned with motivation; Woodworth's intention was to develop what he called "motivology".

Robert Woodworth's system of psychology, which was concerned with the influence of causal factors and motivations on feelings and behavior.

For the first time in the US, the new psychology was divided into warring factions: Titchner's lab at Cornell for the structuralist came and the psychology department at Chicago for the functionalist school. The structuralists disdained any application of psychological knowledge to real world problems, whereas the functionalist school had no interest in maintaining psychology as a pure science and never apologized for their practical interests.

Research on animal behavior, which was not part of the structuralist approach, became a vital area of study for psychology. The functionalists' broadly based psychology also incorporated studies of infants, children, and people with mental disabilities. Functionalist psychologists supplemented the introspective method with data obtained from other methods,i.e. Mental tests p, etc. Functionalism influenced psychology in terms of methods: statistical tests, mental tests, interests in mental inheritance, interested in animals and animal intelligence, Morgan's law of parsimony for animals, etc.

Statistics; Use of animals as models (comparative psychology); Study of individual differences (can study gender, disabilities, developmental stages, etc); Applied psychology; Areas of methodologies (questionnaires, observation, etc.); Educational psychology; Neuroethology (how do animals' behaviors promote their survival, elephant reading is an example).