Functionalism

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

 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”. 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 principle of survival of the fittest were allowed to
operate freely, then only the best would survive.
 People, programs, businesses, or institutions that could not adapt were unfit for survival
and should be allowed to perish (to become “extinct”), for the betterment of society as
a whole. If government continued to support poorly functioning enterprises, then these
enterprises would endure, ultimately weakening society and violating the basic law of
nature that only the strongest and most fit shall survive. Again, Spencer’s idea was that
by ensuring only the best survived, society could eventually achieve perfection.
 This message was compatible with America’s individualistic spirit, and the
phrases “survival of the fittest” and “the struggle for exis- tence” quickly became
part of the national consciousness.
 This pioneer nation was being settled by hardworking people who believed in free
enterprise, self-sufficiency, and independence from government regulation. And
they knew all about the survival of the fittest from their daily lives. Land was
freely available to those with the courage, cunning, and ability to take it and to
make a living from it. The principles of natural selection were vividly
demonstrated in everyday experiences, particularly on the Western frontier, where
survival and success depended on one’s ability to adapt to the demands of a
hostile environment; those who could not adapt did not survive.
 The people of the United States were oriented toward the practical, the useful, and
the functional. In its pioneering stages, American psychology mirrored these
qualities. For this reason, the United States was more accepting than other nations
of evolutionary theory. American psychology became a functional psychology,
because evolution and the functional spirit were in keeping with Americans’ basic
temperament.
William James (1842–1910)

 “far and away the greatest of American psychologists . . . in any country . . .

perhaps of any time” John Dewey
 “the most brilliant psychologist the world has ever known” John Watson
 James founded no formal system of psychology and trained no disciples; there
would be no Jamesian school of thought. Although the form of psychology with
which he was associated attempted to be scientific and experimental, James
himself was not an experimentalist in attitude or deed.
 James worked in psychology for a while and moved on. Later in life, this
fascinating and complex man who contributed so much to psychology turned his
back on it.
 James did not found functional psychology, but he presented his ideas clearly and
effectively within the functionalist atmosphere that was pervading American
psychology. In doing so, he influenced the functionalist movement by inspiring
subsequent generations of psychologists.
The Principles of Psychology

 Why is James considered by so many scholars to be the greatest American

psychologist? Three reasons have been suggested for his overwhelming stature
and influence. First, James wrote with clarity rare in science. His writing style has
magnetism, spontaneity, and charm. Second, he opposed Wundt’s goal for
psychology; namely, the analysis of consciousness into elements. Third, James
offered an alternative way of looking at the mind, a view congruent with the
functional approach to psychology. In brief, the times in American psychology
were ready for what James had to say.
 In The Principles of Psychology, James presents what eventually became the
central tenet of American functionalism that the goal of psychology is not the
discovery of the elements of experience 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.
Consciousness is vital to the needs of complex beings in a complex environment;
without it, human evolution could not have occurred.
 James also emphasized nonrational aspects of human nature. People are creatures
of emotion and passion as well as of thought and reason. Even when discussing
purely intellectual processes, James stressed the nonrational. He noted that
intellect can be affected by the body’s physical condition, that beliefs are
determined by emotional factors, and that reason and concept formation are
influenced by human wants and needs. Thus, James did not consider people to be
wholly rational beings.
The Subject Matter of Psychology: A New
Look at Consciousness
 James stated at the beginning of The Principles that “Psychology is the Science of
Mental Life, both of its phenomena and their conditions” ( James, 1890, Vol. 1, p.
1). In terms of subject matter, the key words are phenomena and conditions.
Phenomena is used to indicate that the subject matter of psychology is to be found
in immediate experience; conditions refers to the importance of the body,
particularly the brain, in mental life.
 According to James, the physical substructures of consciousness form a basic part
of psychology. Consciousness must be considered in its natural setting, which is
the physical human being. This awareness of biology—of the action of the brain
on consciousness—is a unique feature of James’s approach to psychology.
 James rebelled against the artificiality and narrowness of the Wundtian position.
He believed that conscious experiences are simply what they are, and they are not
groups or collections of elements. The discovery of discrete elements of
consciousness through introspective analysis does not show that these elements
exist independently of a trained observer.
 A trained food taster learns to discriminate individual elements in a flavor that
might not be perceived by an untrained person. An untrained person experiences a
fusion of flavor elements, a total blend of ingredients not capable of analysis.
Similarly, the fact that some trained observers can analyze their conscious
experiences in a psychol- ogy laboratory does not mean that the elements they
report are present in the consciousness of anyone else exposed to the same
experience. James considered such an assumption to be the “psychologists’
fallacy.”
 Striking at the heart of Wundt’s approach to psychology, 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.
 In place of the artificial analysis and reduction of conscious experience to its
alleged elements, James called for a new program for psychology. Mental life is a
unity, a total experience that changes.
 Consciousness is a continuous flow, and any attempt to divide it into temporally
distinct phases can only distort it. James coined the phrase stream of
consciousness to express this idea.
 Because consciousness is always changing, we can never experi- ence the same
thought or sensation more than once. We may think about an object or a stimulus
on more than one occasion, but our thoughts each time will not be identical. They
will differ because of the effect of intervening experiences. Thus, our
consciousness can be described as cumulative and not recurrent.
 The mind is also continuous. There are no sharp disruptions in the flow of
consciousness. In addition, the mind is selective. Because we can pay attention to
only a small part of the world of our experiences, the mind chooses from among
the many stimuli to which it is exposed. It filters out some experi- ences,
combines or separates others, selects or rejects still others. The most important
criterion for selection is relevance. The mind selects relevant stimuli to attend to
so that our consciousness can operate logically and a series of ideas can lead to a
rational conclusion.
 Overall, James emphasized the function or purpose of consciousness. He believed
that consciousness must have some biological utility or it would not have survived
over time. The function of consciousness is to enable us to adapt to our
environment by allowing us to choose. Pursuing this idea, James distinguished
between conscious choice and habit; he believed habits to be involuntary and
nonconscious. When we encounter a new problem and need to choose a new way
of coping, consciousness comes into play. This emphasis on purposiveness
reflects the impact of evolutionary theory.
The Methods of Psychology

 “Introspective observation is what we have to rely on first and fore- most and
always. . . . the looking into our own minds and reporting what we there discover.
Everyone agrees that we there discover states of consciousness” (James, 1890,
Vol. 1, p. 185)
 James was aware of the difficulties of introspection, and he accepted it as a less-
than-perfect form of observation. However, he believed that introspective results
could be verified by appropriate checks and by comparing the findings obtained
from several observers.
 Although James did not make widespread use of the experimental method, he
acknowledged it as an important path to psychological knowledge, primarily for
psychophysics research, the analysis of space perception, and research on
memory.
 To supplement introspective and experimental methods, James recommended the
comparative method. By inquiring into the psycho- logical functioning of
different populations—such as animals, infants, preliterate peoples, or
emotionally disturbed individuals—psychology could uncover meaningful
variations in mental life.
 The methods James cited in The Principles point to a major difference between
structural and functional psychologies: The functional- ist movement would not
be restricted to a single method, such as Wundt’s or Titchener’s forms of
introspection. Functionalism would accept and apply other methods as well. This
eclectic approach broad- ened considerably the scope of American psychology.
Pragmatism

 James emphasized the value for psychology of pragmatism, the basic tenet of
which is that the validity of an idea or conception must be tested by its practical
consequences. The popular expression of the pragmatic viewpoint is “anything is
true if it works.”
 Pragmatism had been advanced in the 1870s by Charles Sanders Peirce, a
mathematician and philosopher and a lifelong friend of James. Peirce’s work
remained largely unrecognized until James wrote a book entitled Pragmatism
(1907), which formalized the doctrine as a philosophical movement.
The Theory of Emotions

 Psychologists assumed that the subjective mental experience of an emotion preceded

the bodily expression or action. The traditional example—we see a wild animal, we
feel fear, and we run away—illustrates the idea that the emotion (the fear) comes
before the body’s reaction (running away).
 James reversed the order. He stated that the arousal of the physical response
precedes the appearance of the emotion, especially for what he termed “coarser”
emotions such as fear, rage, grief, and love. For example, we see the wild animal, we
run, and then we experience the emotion of fear. “Our feeling of the [bodily]
changes as they occur is the emotion” (James, 1890, Vol. 2, p. 449).
 To support this idea, James noted the introspective observation that if bodily changes
such as rapid heart rate, shallow breathing, and muscle tension did not occur, then
there would be no emotion. James’s views on emotions have stimulated considerable
controversy and a great deal of research.
The Three-Piece Self

 The material self consists of everything we call uniquely our own, such as our
body, family, home, or style of dress. He thought that our choice of clothing was
particularly important.
 The social self refers to the recognition we get from other people. James pointed
out that we have many social selves; we present different sides of ourselves to
different people.
 The spiritual self, refers to our inner or subjective being.
 Psychologists have suggested that our choice of clothing and manner of dress
influence and reflect not only our material self, as James believed, but also our
social and spiritual selves. Further, how we are perceived, recognized, and judged
by other people can all be influenced by how we dress. Thus, clothing can be a
form of self- expression, as it appears to have been for James.
Habit

 James describes all living creatures as “bundles of habits”. 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.
 The Principles was a major influence on American psychology, and its publication
inspired tributes even a century later (Donnelly, 1992; Johnson & Henley, 1990).
It affected the views of thousands of students and inspired psychologists to shift
the new science of psychology away from the structuralist view and toward the
formal founding of the functionalist school of thought.
Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930)

• Calkins later developed the paired-associate technique

used in the study of memory and made significant and
lasting contributions to psychology.
• She became the first woman president of the APA and
in 1906 ranked 12th among the 50 most important
psychologists in the United States.
• Harvard declined to grant a doctoral degree to a
woman, even though Calkins’s examina- tion was
described as the “most brilliant examination for the
Ph.D. that we have had at Harvard”
• Harvard did not award doctoral degrees to women
until 1963.
Helen Bradford Thompson Woolley (1874–
1947)
• Her major professors were James Rowland Angell and John
Dewey; Dewey called Thompson one of his most brilliant
students.
• Helen Woolley’s doctoral dissertation at the University of
Chicago was the first experimental test of the Darwinian
notion that women were biologically inferior to men, an idea
assumed at the time to be so obvious that it needed no
scientific study
• The results showed no sex differences in emotional
functioning and only small nonsignificant differences in
intellectual abilities. The data also revealed that women
were slightly superior to men in abilities such as memory
and sensory perception.
Leta Stetter Hollingworth
(1886–1939)
• In 1916, she earned her Ph.D. from Teacher’s College, Columbia
University, studying with Edward L. Thorndike, and worked as a
psychologist for the civil service in New York City. Five years
later she was cited in American Men of Science for her
contributions to the psychology of women.
• Leta Hollingworth conducted extensive empirical research on the
variability hypothesis: the idea that for physical, psychological,
and emotional functioning, women were a more homogeneous
and average group than men and thus showed less variation.
• She also made significant contributions to clinical, educational,
and school psychology, especially the educational and emotional
needs of so-called “gifted” children, a term she coined
The Founding of Functionalism

 The scholars associated with the founding of functionalism had no ambition to

start a new school of thought. They protested against the restrictions and
limitations of Wundt’s version of psychology and of Titchener’s structuralism, but
they did not want to replace these with another formal “ism.”
 Functionalism was never as rigid or as formally differentiated a systematic
position as Titchener’s structuralism. There was not a single functional
psychology, as there was a single structural psychology. Several functional
psychologies coexisted, and although they differed somewhat, all shared an
interest in studying the functions of consciousness. Further, as an outgrowth of
this emphasis on mental functions, the functionalists became interested in the
potential applications of psychology to everyday problems of how people function
in and adapt to different environments.
The Chicago School

 Two psychologists who contributed directly to the founding of the functionalist

school of thought were John Dewey and James Rowland Angell. In 1894, they
arrived at the newly established University of Chicago; later, each appeared on the
cover of Time magazine. None other than William James later announced that
Dewey and Angell should be considered the founders of the new system, which
James designated the “Chicago school”.
John Dewey (1859–1952)

 Dewey spent 10 years at the University of Chicago. 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,” published in the
Psychological Review (1896), was the point of departure for functional
psychology.
 In this important work, Dewey attacked the psychological molecularism,
elementism, and reductionism of the reflex arc with its distinction between
stimulus and response.
 Reflex arc: The connection between sensory stimuli and motor responses.
James Rowland Angell
(1869–1949)
 James Rowland Angell molded the functionalist movement into a working school of
thought. He made the psychology department at the University of Chicago the most
influential of its day. It became the major training ground for functional psychologists.
 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.
Angell then 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.
2- Functional psychology is the psychology of the fundamental utilities 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.
Criticisms of Functionalism

 One criticism of functionalism was that the term itself had not been defined
clearly. C. A. Ruckmick, a student of Titchener’s, examined 15 introductory
psychology textbooks to determine how the various writers defined the term
function. In the first usage, function is essentially the same as activity; for
example, the actions of remembering and perceiving are functions. In the second
usage, function is defined in reference to the usefulness of some activity to the
organism, such as the function of digesting food or of breathing.
 Another criticism from Titchener and his followers involved the definition of
psychology as a whole. Structuralists claimed that functionalism was not
psychology at all. Why? Because functionalism did not adhere to structuralism’s
subject matter and methods!
Contributions of Functionalism

 Functionalism’s vigorous opposition to structuralism had an immense impact on

the development of psychology in the United States. The long-range
consequences of the shift in emphasis from structure to function also were
significant. One result was that 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. Functional psychologists
supplemented the introspective method with data obtained from other methods,
such as physiological research, mental tests, questionnaires, and objective
descriptions of behavior. These approaches, rejected by the structuralists, became
respectable sources of information for psychology.