Download American Psychology

American Psychology
• Early history
• Functionalism
• Central figures
Early History
• Existed in America during most of 19th Century
– Mental philosophy
– Built largely on Scottish – Reid and followers
– And usually taught in a religious context
• Darwin presented special challenges
– But if mental life had evolved and was functional
– Then so could spiritual
The Emphasis on Individual Differences
• German little interested
• Inheritance from Britain
– Class in Britain
– But self-made man in US
• Scottish school and emphasis on mental faculties
• Phrenology
American Emphasis on Practicality
• Generally a problem solving culture
• Needs of education
– Measurement
– Child development
• Functionalism
• New universities
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Clark
John Hopkins
Chicago
Stanford
Assumptions of American Functionalism
• An approach based on Darwin
• Key assumptions
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Psychology should be useful
Relate individuals to culture and society
Focus on functions of characteristics – Darwin
Explain individual differences
– Stabilizing factors such as habit
– Consciousness is crucial as guide to behavior
Philosophical Background
• American pragmatism
– William James
– John Dewey
– C.S. Peirce
• Deep roots in Scottish common sense school
Nature of Truth
• Suspicious of object-subject distinction
– Experience cannot be divorced from things
– Focus on thinking rather than thoughts
• Truths are not absolute
– Conditioned on social and cultural factors
– Truth resides in consequences of beliefs
– “Cash value” of ideas – James
• Beliefs reflect experience directly
– We believe everything
– Unless corrected
Homes of Functionalism
• Chicago with Dewey and Mead
• Michigan
• Columbia
Fate of Functionalism
• Never outlived founders
• But several implications
– Helped resolve tensions between science, materialism, and religion
– Gave psychology a broad focus for research
– Helped to unite various aspects of psychology
• Social, developmental, etc.
• Non-ideological but problem centered
– And helped to lay the groundwork for behaviorism
William James (1842-1910)
• Born into wealthy and eccentric family
– Never went to school
– Knew many New England intellectuals
– Father Swendenborgianism – transcendentalism
James’s Education
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Wanted art
Tried general science
Medical degree at Harvard (1969)
Studied chemistry with Charles William Eliot
Field trip with Agassiz to Brazil
Some study in Germany
Early Career
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Could not practice medicine
Depression and living at home
Asked by Eliot (now President of Harvard) to teach physiology
In 1880 became assistant professor of Philosophy
Interests became psychological – combine philosophy and biology
Principles of Psychology in 1890.
Intellectual background
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Scottish realists
Hume and empiricists
French – Renouvier
Magpie
The Principles: Basic Ideas
• Began with physiological overview
– Common at time
– Did not imply a deep commitment to materialism
• People are partially victims of bodies
– Habits registered in brain
– Behavior guides thought as well as reverse
The Principles: Consciousness I
• Does it exist
– No if viewed as a thing
– He opposes the British associationist notions: “The mind-stuff theory is the theory that our
mental states are compounds… The mind-stuff theory is unintelligible. Atoms of feeling
cannot compose higher feelings. When grouped in a certain way, we name them this thing or
that; but the thing we name has no existence outside our minds.”
– Opposes the old mind-body distinction
• Consciousness does exist as a process
The Principles: Consciousness II
• Consciousness is always personal
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And always changing
It is a continuity – a stream
It is selective
Will an important component and guide
The Principles: Consciousnesses III
• “Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such
words as ‘chain’ or ‘train’ do not describe it fitly as it presents itself. It
is nothing jointed; it flows. A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by
which it is most naturally described”
The Principles: Consciousness IV
• “The traditional psychology talks like one who should say that a river consists of
nothing but pailsfull, spoonsfull, quartpotsfull, barrelsfull, and other molded
forms of water. Even were the pails and the pots all actually standing in the
stream, still between them the free water would continue to flow. It is just this free
water of consciousness that psychologists resolutely overlook”
The Principles: The Self I
• Wants to avoid Humean extreme
• But also Germanic: “The Ego is only a cheap and nasty edition of the soul. The
ego is as ineffectual and windy an abortion as Philosophy can show. Kant deemed
it next to no importance at all. It was reserved for his successors to call it the First
Principle of Philosophy, to spell its name in capitals and pronounce it with
adoration, to act in short as if they were going up in a balloon, whenever the
notion of it crossed their minds.”
The Principles; The Self II
• The experiencing “I”
– A linguistic convenience
– A set of feelings attached to experience
• The “me”
– Can be object of thought and based on reactions of others.
– “Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals
who recognize him and carry an image of him in their minds”
The Importance of James
• Textbook used widely for generations
• View of psychology was broad
• Tolerant
• Great influence on Harvard
– Allport
– Bruner
• Swept away by behaviorism.
G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924)
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Poor childhood and Williams College
Then Union Theological as way to get advanced education
Studied in Germany for year
Then PhD with James from Harvard in 1878 – first psychology PhD
Johns Hopkins in 1881
President of Clark in 1888
Hall’s Impact
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Every American PhD except his before 1993 directed by him
Began APA in 1892
Several journals
Emphasized developmental and educational
From evolutionary perspective
James McKeen Cattell (1860-1944)
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Studied in Germany
Taught at Hopkins
Then back to Germany to work with Wundt
Worked with Galton and individual differences
Appointments at Penn and then Columbia
Cattell’s Influence
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Earl work on IQ and individual differences
Began journals
Study of scientific genius
Began AAUP
Students
– Woodworth
– Thorndike