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The Functionalist Protest
• Functionalists’ Goal: Determine how the
organism uses the mind to adapt to the
environment
• First uniquely American system of
psychology
• Deliberate protest against Wundt's and
Titchener's systems
• Interest in applying psychology to real world
The Evolution Revolution:
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
• On the Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection (1859):one of the
most influential books in the world
– Form and substance of American
psychology shaped by Darwin’s ideas
An Ode to Evolution
• Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.
– Erasmus Darwin. The Temple of Nature. 1802.
Other Predecessors
• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1809):
Active Modification
– Through efforts to adapt to
environment
– Inherited by succeeding
generations
• Vestiges of Creation (1844) by
Anonymous
Other Predecessors
• Darwin Read Thomas Malthus, Essay on the
Principle of Population (1789)
– Food supply increases linearly
– Human population increases exponetially
– Result: Starvation is an inevitable part of a
cycle
– Only the most aggressive, intelligent and
flexible will survive
– Social welfare is bad for the Britain
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
Setting the Stage – 19th century Britain
• Zeitgeist
– Receptive
intellectual climate
– Social evolution due
to industrial
revolution
– Growing dominance
of science – it was
working!
The World Comes to Europe
The World comes to Europe
• Fossils and bones of
extinct species found
• HMS Beagle: 1831-1836
• Captain Fitzroy was looking for a creationist!
• Darwin makes Geological and Zoological
observations that challenge Biblical notions.
Galapagos Finches
Peter and Rosemary Grant:
visited islands in 1973 to
observe modifications in
several generations of 13
finch species – Changes
occur faster than Darwin
predicted!
Darwin Finally Goes Public
• Worked on his theory of evolution for 22 years
• A. R. Wallace (1858) wrote Darwin about a theory
of evolution that he developed in 3 days!
• Ethical dilemma for Darwin
• Darwin overwhelmed with new physical illness
• Spontaneous variability among members of a
species is inheritable – He described genes and
mutations without the benefit of biochemistry!
• Natural selection: process that leads to survival
of organisms which adapt to the environment;
Elimination of those which do not
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
and the Evolution Controversy
• Striving biologist; Leader among
England's scientists
• Champion of Darwin’s theory
• 1860: Debate on theory of
evolution at Oxford: Huxley
versus bishop Samuel
Wilberforce who defended the
Bible and Robert Fitzroy, captain
of HMS Beagle
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
and the Evolution Controversy
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1865 Fitzroy Commits suicide
Wilberforce dies
1925: Scopes Monkey Trial
1987: Louisiana “Equal Time”
case
• 1999: Kansas State BOE
• 2004: Dover, PA
The Genie is out of the Bottle
– The white supremacy movement
– Social and Economic Darwinism
The Genie is out of the Bottle
– Darwin’s other work
• 1871: The Descent of Man
–Emphasized similarity between
animal and human processes
• 1872: The Expression of the Emotions
in Man and Animals
• 1877: A Biographical Sketch of an
Infant
The Evolution of Machines
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
– Machines would become self-acting
– Capable of simulating human intelligence
– Humans become dependent on machines
– Suggested machines would become superior
Darwin and Psychology
– Subject matter of psychology goes from
elements to functions of consciousness
– Continuity in mental functioning between
humans and lower animals/humans and ancestors
– Studying animal behavior can help us understand
human behavior
– How does the brain function and adapt?
– Methods were broadened in scope
– Increased focus on individual differences and
their measurement – no trait is accidental!!
Individual Differences:
Francis Galton (1822-1911)
• Darwin emphasized differences
within species – including humans!
• Had been examined by Weber,
Fechner, Helmhotz but ultimately
considered inappropriate by the
early German schools
• Galton – Darwin’s cousin mixed
evolution with statistics
Galton’s Work
• Mental Inheritance
– Hereditary Genius (1869)
• Eminent men have eminent sons
• Specific forms of genius inherited
• Founded eugenics: improve inherited human
traits through artificial selection
• Applied statistical concepts to heredity
problems
• Eminence not a function of opportunity
Francis Galton (1822-1911)
• “I have no patience with the hypothesis
occasionally expressed, and often implied,
especially in tales written to teach children to
be good, that babies are born pretty much
alike, and that the sole agencies in creating
differences between boy and boy, and man and
man, are steady application and moral effort.”
Galton’s Work
– 1874: English Men of Science
– 1889: Natural Inheritance
– Established eugenics laboratory at
university college, London
– 1904: founded organization for
promoting racial improvement
– Clearly opposed the British Empirical
movement of the 17th century
Statistical Methods and
“Differential Psychology”
– Galton assumed statistical techniques of
Biology could be applied to mental
characteristics. In doing so, developed:
• Mean and standard deviation
• Correlation Measures
– His student, Pearson, developed productmoment coefficient of correlation
• Pearson’s r: for Galton’s discovery of
regression toward the mean
Why Galton?
– Mental Tests (coined by J.M. Cattell)
– Intelligence and sensory capacities
Galton’s Passtimes
• “Arithmetic by Smell” and other topics
– Self-induced paranoia
– Validity of religious beliefs
– Power of prayer
– Yawns and coughs as a measure of
boredom
– Arithmetic by Smell
Animal Psychology and the
development of Functionalism
• Before Darwin: animals were automata
• With Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in
Man and Animals…
– Continuity between humans and animals
– Search for evidence of intelligence in animals
– Human emotional behavior: inheritance of
behavior that was (or still is) useful
Seeing what you want to see
• Ernst Haeckel (1866)
– “Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny”
– The statement influenced many developmental
psychologists
Studies of Animal Intelligence
• George John Romanes (1848-1894)
– British physiologist
– Formalized and systematized
study of animal intelligence
– Animal Intelligence (1883)
• Early comparative psychology
• Washburn’s The Animal Mind
(1908)
– Theory based on anecdote
Conway Lloyd Morgan (1852-1936)
• Proposed a Law of Parsimony:
“Behavior must not be attributed to a
higher mental process when it can be
explained in terms of lower mental
processes”
– Lloyd Morgan’s Canon (1894)
• Goal: give comparative psychology a
more scientific basis
• Believed most animal behavior due to
learning based on sensory experience
• First to conduct large-scale experimental
studies in animal psychology
Foundations of Functionalism
• Darwin’s Legacy for Psychology
– Regard each anatomical structure,
including the brain, as a utilitarian
element in a total living adaptive system
• Indirect Legacy
– Galton and measurement
– Comparative Psychology
– Lloyd Morgan inspires Behaviorism