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William James: Functionalism

PSYCHOLOGY

Late 19th century

Early 20th century

Approximately late 17th century

Branch of philosophy until 1870's where it then became an independent science who don't need no man

Researchers believed that to be a true science they needn't assume things so they turned to study overt behaviour and disregarded mental processes and therefore psychology became known as

The name 'psychology' originated from two Greek words: 'psyche' and 'logos.'

Psyche: soul or mind

Logo: study or knowledge

"The study of the soul or mind"

"The study of mental life"

"The scientific study of behaviour"

Late 20th century (1970's)

VCE Psychology

Thanks to the technology breakthrough in the 70's, new technologies such as scanning devices made it clear to psychologists that in order to fully understand behaviour they needed to know about mental processes and vice versa. From that realization, the definition of psychology changed once again and is still the definition for it today.

In VCE, we like to break it down and make it a bit more precise and specific so therefore we need to know the definition of psychology as:

"The systematic study of the mind and behaviour"

"The scientific study of mental processes and behaviour in animals and humans"

William James: a lil' biography

FUNCTIONALISM

What is it and what does it do?

Functionalism vs Structuralism

In 1890, William James proposed functionalism as an alternative approach to look at consciousness, a different perspective than that of structuralism

Wilhelm Wundt

William James

It looks at how the mind/consciousness functions and adapts in a continuously changing environment, how it allows us to survive, what the purpose is of our mental processes.

Focuses on understanding and explaining consciousness

Focuses on purpose/function of mental processes in relation to environment adaptability

"A never-ending constantly changing stream of thoughts, feelings and sensations."

Importance of introspection

and experimentation

Broke down into basic elements

Defined psychology as 'the

study of consciousness'

Described as a stream of consciousness

Asks what and where

Asks why and how

Basic stuff

German discovery

His beliefs

Example: If we see a bear, do we run because we are afraid or are we afraid because we're running?

American discovery

Study through direct observation

Didn't like or believe in the divided or structured ways of science

1842-1910, 68 years old, NYC

Lacked a single framework, never forced anything, would bring up both sides to question and accept contradictions

American psychologist, philosopher and trained physician.

Inspiration/Influence

Disagreements with functionalism

Refused to be tied down to a restricted system of thoughts

"Father of American Psychology"

Not based on controlled experiments

Theories provided little predictive ability

Charles Darwin - Origin of Species (inspiration)

Height of industrial revolution - relates to functionalism, humans like machines (influence)

Interests

Methods

How does this relate to us today?

Why we're learning about him

Psychology

Art

Psychology we're learning today would not be as

developed.

Helped create psychology

Science

Influential

Created new research methods such as questionnaires, physiological measures and mental tests.

Introspection - participants look inwards and report about a particular topic. Not a valid technique for modern psychology. Place in clinical.

Experimental research - testing a cause and effect relationship

Comparative method - studying and comparing one thing to another

eg) comparing variations in behaviour between animals and humans or children and adults

Medicine

Religion

Helps the way the way we look at things in science.

Proposed a different perspective and is known for developing the approach of functionalism

Philosophy

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