CONTINUE, INTRODUCTION TO THE

PSYCHOLOGY

IDEAS OF STRUCTURALISM AND

FUNCTIONALISM

LECTURER: Abdirahman Musse

Structuralism vs. functionalism
 An opposing school of thought – functionalism – was led by William James
and John Dewey.
 While structuralists essentially wanted to determine ‘’what is consciousness?
 functionalists wanted to determine ‘what is consciousness used for?’ – in
other words, they wanted to study the purpose, or function, of consciousness
and basic mental processes.
 The two camps debated passionately over which approach to psychology was
best, each hoping to shape the direction of their fledging academic subject.
 Although neither won the war, the creative tensions led to the establishment
of the first psychology lab in the USA (Johns Hopkins University).
Behaviorism
 Around 1913, American psychologist John B. Watson founded a new
movement that changed the focus of psychology.
He believed that internal mental processes should not be studied,
because they cannot be observed; instead, Watson advocated that
psychology focus on the study of behavior and thus his movement
became known as behaviorism.
As Watson saw it, behavior was not the result of internal mental
processes, but rather the result of automatic response to stimuli from
the environment.
 Behaviorism became focused on how conditions of the environment
affect behavior and, specifically, how humans learn new behavior from
the environment.
The language of psychology
Psychology has its own terms including some words, phrases and
approaches that may be familiar to you but mean different things to
psychologists from normal (sick) people.
For example, if a person says ‘behavior’ then a psychologist would say
‘define the behavior’. If a person says ‘personality’ then a psychologist
will ask ‘which aspect of personality?’.
What is a science?
 One common misconception about science is that it is all about statistics and
hard math's! It is not – there are plenty of scientists that produced scientific
theories without reaching for the calculator (think of Darwin or Piaget for
example).
Science is about technology – there are plenty of examples of technology that
have no scientific basis (e.g. ‘lie detector’) and plenty of science that has no
technology (e.g. Darwin once again).
 Researching psychology
 Psychology, as you would imagine, generates a considerable number of
research questions and consequently requires a range of methods for
gathering evidence to answer them.
Between groups design
 Allocates matched groups of people to different treatments. If the measures
are taken at one time this is a cross-sectional design, whereas if they are
tested over two or more time periods then this would be a longitudinal
design.
 For example, if we want to see whether a certain psychological approach
(e.g. behavioral) to pain management works we would have one group that
has the intervention (the experimental group) and another group (the control
group) that does not.
 Cont.…
If we followed these people over time to see whether the behavioral intervention
worked then it would be a longitudinal design.
We also have to remember to use an appropriate control group – we could not give
the group nothing as the mere fact that the experimental group were receiving the
intervention might be enough to cause improvement.
Within participants design
 This type of design is used when the same people provide measures at more than
one time and differences between the measures at the different times are recorded. An
example would be a measure taken before an intervention and again after the
intervention.
 For example, you introduce a psychological intervention to try to improve the mental
health of a group of people with learning disabilities living in supported
accommodation.
Cont.…
 You measure the levels of mental health before the treatment,
and then again after you have undertaken the intervention.
There are obvious problems with this – did we keep everything
else constant? How can you be sure that it was to down to the
intervention specifically?
Cross-sectional studies
 These studies obtain the responses from a group of
participants on one occasion only. With appropriate randomized
sampling methods, the sample can be assumed to be a
representative cross-section of the population under study.
 Cont.…
 So, for example, we can explore how many people are under stress at any
one point in time.
 If we collect enough participants then we can probably also compare specific
subgroups: is stress greater in men than women, is it greater in nurses or
doctors (or psychologists)? These studies are quite common, but we must make
sure the sample is representative and we cannot infer any cause and effect.
Observations
 A simple kind of study involves observing behavior in a relevant setting. Hence,
we can explore interactions within a consultation setting: how do patients react
to bad news? How do nurses react to giving good news?
 Structured interviews
 An interview schedule is prepared with a standard set of questions that are
asked of each person, by telephone or by face-to-face interview.
 A semi-structured interview is more open ended and allows the interviewee to
address issues that they feel are relevant to the interview.
Longitudinal design
 These designs involve measuring responses of a single sample on more than
one occasion over a period of time.
 These can either be prospective (where the recordings are taken and then
planned for the future) or retrospective (where the recordings are obtained from
already collected records).
These types of designs are among the most powerful designs available for the
evaluation of treatment and of theories about human behavior.
 Meta-analysis
 This is a statistical analysis of the results from a number of studies already
completed, and it’s defined as ‘A statistical analysis that combines or integrates
the results of several independent clinical trials considered by the analyst to be
“combinable”.‘
Questionnaires
This is a popular and frequently employed method of study in psychology.
Questionnaires consist of a standard set of items with accompanying instructions.
Ideally a questionnaire will be both reliable (i.e. measure the same thing on more
than one occasion) and valid (i.e. measure the thing that they say they are
measuring).
 Surveys
 This is a systematic method for determining how a sample of participants respond to
a set of questions (or questionnaires) at one or more times.
 For example, we may want to know what people with alcohol problems think of the
service they are receiving and how this compares to the views of the service
providers.
In this case we would do two surveys – one with the service users, and one with the
service providers.
Randomized controlled trials
 Randomized controlled trials (RCTs), involve the systematic comparison of
interventions using a fully controlled application of one or more ‘treatments’ with a
random allocation of participants to the different treatment groups.
This design is the ‘gold standard’ to which much research in psychology and
healthcare aspires. People are allocated at random (by chance alone) to receive one
of several interventions.
 Qualitative techniques
 The methods discussed so far are quantitative techniques favored by many in
psychology and healthcare. However, there are also a number of qualitative
techniques that may be of use. For example, there are diary studies which
can help the researcher collect information about the temporal changes in
health status (e.g. dealing with a life limiting condition).There are also narrative
approaches in which the desire is to seek insight and meaning about health and
illness through the acquisition of data in the form of stories concerning personal
experiences (e.g. dealing with substance abuse). Cases studies provide a
‘thick description’ of a phenomenon that would not be obtained by the usual
quantitative or qualitative approach. Focus groups are a common approach
which involves a group of participants discussing a focused question or topic
which can lead to the generation of interactive data.
 Action research
This basic principle of a spiral of steps lives on in the design of many action
research studies. A simple diagram of the action research spiral is shown in Figure
1.4. Many action research studies now aim to empower the disempowered and to
challenge the social structures that create such power imbalances.
These developments have led to what has become known as ‘participatory action
research’. Participatory action research is built on the concept of a group of co-
researchers working together as equal participants trying out various actions,
evaluating and reflecting on their effectiveness as a group and then developing
and, hopefully, improving their actions.
Through this process the co-researchers begin not only to analyze the situation
they are in, but also to build a sense of empowerment as they are able to take
action to respond to their analysis.