Functionalism
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 1st 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
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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 1st 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 1st
“functionalist” paper
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Cattel after Columbia
 Fired from Columbia University for pacifist beliefs
 Sued Columbia and won, but never got his position back
 Formed the Psychological Corporation
 1st psychologist elected to the National Academy of
Sciences
 Bought and saved the journal Science from extinction
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Discrimination against women in
early 20th 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
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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
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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
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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”
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