Psychology
Structuralism and Functionalism in Psychology
Structuralism and functionalism are two early schools of thought in psychology. Structuralism focused on breaking down mental processes into their basic components, while functionalism emphasized the purpose and function of these processes. Structuralism was championed by Edward Titchener, while functionalism was promoted by William James. These two approaches laid the foundation for the development of modern psychology.
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10 Key excerpts on "Structuralism and Functionalism in Psychology"
eBook - PDF- Duane Schultz(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
1. Functional psychology is the psychology of mental operations, in contrast to the psychology of mental elements (structuralism). Wundtian and Titch-enerian elementism was still strong and Angeli promoted functionalism in direct opposition to it. The task of functionalism is to discover how a mental process operates, what it accomplishes, and under what conditions it occurs. Angeli argued that a mental function, unlike a given moment of conscious-ness studied by the structuralists, is not a momentary or perishable thing. It persists and endures in the same manner as biological functions. A physiological function may operate through different structures, and a mental function may operate through ideas that are different in content. 2. Functionalism is the psychology of the fundamental utilities of conscious-ness. Consciousness, viewed in this utilitarian spirit, serves to mediate between the needs of the organism and the demands of its environment. Functionalism studies mental processes not as isolated and independent events, but as an active, ongoing part of biological activity, and as part of the larger movement of organic evolution. Structures and functions of the organism exist because by adapting the organism to the conditions of its environment they have enabled it to survive. Angeli believed that because consciousness has survived, it, too, must perform an essential service for the organism. Functionalism had to discover precisely what this service was, not only for consciousness, but also for more specific mental processes such as judging and willing. 3. Functional psychology is the psychology of psychophysical relations, concerned with the total relationship of the organism to the environment. Functionalism encompasses all mind-body functions and leaves open the study of nonconscious or habitual behavior. It assumes a relationship between the mental and the physical, an interplay of the same sort that occurs between forces in the physical world.
eBook - PDF- C. James Goodwin(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Its author, E. B. Titchener, was a young professor from Cornell University who had been in the United States for just a half dozen years, but already had a reputation as a talented laboratory psychologist with some clear and uncompromising ideas about the new psychology. In the article he labeled his approach a “structural” psychology, and he contrasted it with what he saw at other American universities, which he labeled a “functional” psychology. Drawing a parallel to biology, he wrote that structuralism is like anatomy—the purpose is analysis. Just as the anatomist organizes knowledge about the body into component structures, so would a structural psychologist analyze the human mind and organize it into its elementary units, basic sensations for example. Functionalism , on the other hand, is like physiology. The physiologist examines how the various parts of the body operate and the functions they serve to help keep people alive; similarly, the functional psychologist studies how the mind serves to adapt people to the environment. Although not rejecting a functional approach outright, Titchener used the biology metaphor to argue that it was futile to study function before structure had been fully described. Anatomy provides the foundation for physiology, Titchener contended. Similarly, a thorough understanding of the structure of the human mind was a necessary prerequisite to the study of its function. As Titchener had written 2 years earlier in An Outline of Psychology , the psychologist’s goal “is to ascertain the nature and number of the mental elements. He takes up mental experience, bit by bit, dividing and subdividing, until the division can go no further. When that point is reached, he has found a conscious element” (Titchener, 1896/1899, p. 16). Structuralism was never widely popular in America, but, as we shall see, Titchener had an undeniable impact.
- Stephen F. Davis, William Buskist, Stephen F. Davis, William F. Buskist(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
Although Titchener was a commanding presence, most American psychologists believed that the structuralist approach was at best incomplete, and they became associ-ated with a school of thought called functionalism. This was a way of thinking that had direct ties to Darwinian evolutionary thinking, and it is a way of thinking that permeates American psychology to this day. Functionalists believed that, rather than the study of structure of human consciousness, psychology’s goal ought to be to under-stand how human conscious experience enables the organ-ism to adapt to the environment and thereby prosper. As James Angell put it in “The Province of Functional Psychology,” his famous 1906 address as president of the American Psychological Association (APA), structuralists were interested in the question “What is mind?” whereas functionalists wanted to know “What is mind for?” To answer the question of how human consciousness func-tioned, psychologists were led to investigate a much wider range of topics than those of interest to Titchener. For example, although Titchener considered the study of chil-dren to be outside the realm of psychology (children were not considered capable of accurate introspection), func-tionalists were interested in children to learn something about how the ability to adapt developed in them. William James Although he would not have labeled himself a func-tionalist, William James (184–1910), whose concerns about psychology as a science opened this chapter, epito-mized the spirit of this school of psychology. Today we recognize James as one of psychology’s brightest lights, and his Principles of Psychology (1890) is considered psychology’s most important book. As an indication of the esteem in which his peers held him, he was elected to the presidency of the APA twice, and when James McKeen Cattell of Columbia asked psychologists to rank their peers for eminence in 190, James was ranked first on every return (Hothersall, 004).
eBook - PDF- Duane Schultz(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
The Wundtian and Titchenerian elementism was still quite strong and Angelí promoted functionalism in direct and open opposition to it. The task of functionalism is to discover how a mental process operates, what it accomplishes, and under what conditions it appears. Angelí argued that a mental function, unlike a given moment of consciousness studied by the structuralists, is not a momentary perishable thing. Rather, it persists and endures in the same manner as do biological functions. Just as a physiological function may operate through diflFerent structures, a mental function may operate through ideas that are markedly difl'erent in their content. 2. FunctionaHsm is the psychology of the fundamental utilities of con-sciousness. Consciousness, viewed in this utilitarian spirit, serves an end: It mediates between the needs of the organism and the demands of its environment. Thus, functionalism studies mental processes not as isolated and independent events, but as an active ongoing part of the larger bio-logical activity and, indeed, as part of the larger movement of organic evolution. Structures and functions of the organism exist as they are because by adapting the organism to the conditions of its environment they have enabled it to survive. Angelí believed that since consciousness THE CHICAGO SCHOOL 159 has survived, it too must perform an essential service that the organism could not otherwise accomplish. Functionalism had to discover precisely what this service is, for consciousness as well as for more specific mental processes, such as judging and willing. 3. Functional psychology is the psychology of psychophysical relations concerned with the total relationship of the organism to the environment. Thus, functionalism includes all mind-body functions. This point leaves open the study of nonconscious or habitual behavior.
- Tracy Henley(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Sahakian (1975) marks the beginning of functional-ism at 1896, with the publication of John Dewey’s article “The Reflex Arc in Psychology.” Titchener was at Cornell from 1892 to 1927, meaning that structuralism and functionalism over-lapped. Members of the two schools were some-times adversaries, and there was little constructive dialog between them. The schools nicely illustrate Kuhn’s concept of paradigm because their assump-tions, goals, and methodologies were distinctly different. For the structuralist, the assumptions con-cerning the mind were derived from British and French empiricism, the goal was to understand the structure of the mind, and the primary research tool was introspection. For the functionalist, the assump-tions concerning the mind were derived from evo-lutionary theory; the goal was to understand how the mind and behavior work in aiding an organ-ism’s adjustment to the environment, and research tools included anything that was informative—be it introspection, the study of animal behavior, or the study of the mentally ill. In short, structuralism and functionalism were incommensurable. Characteristics of Functional Psychology Functionalism was never a well-defined school of thought with one recognized leader or a singular methodology. Amid functionalism’s diversity, how-ever, common themes ran through the work. Keller (1973) explains: ■ The functionalists opposed what they consid-ered the sterile search for the elements of con-sciousness in which the structuralists engaged. ■ The functionalists wanted to understand the function of the mind rather than provide a static description of its contents. They believed that mental processes had a function—to aid the organism in adapting to the environment. That is, they were interested in the “is for” of the mind rather than the “is,” its function rather than its structure.
eBook - ePub- John A. Goldsmith, Bernard Laks(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
The last fifteen years have seen the growth of what is called functional psychology. This type of psychology decries the use of elements in the static sense of the structuralists. It throws emphasis upon the biological significance of conscious processes instead of upon the analysis of conscious states into introspectively isolable elements. I have done my best to understand the difference between functional psychology and structural psychology. Instead of clarity, confusion grows upon me.The functionalists replace the confusion in the mind’s content with confusion in the mind’s functions, as far as Watson can tell. And now, nearly halfway through the article, Watson began to describe his own view:This leads me to the point where I should like to make the argument constructive. I believe we can write a psychology . . . and never go back upon our definition: never use the terms consciousness, mental states, mind, content, introspectively verifiable, imagery, and the like. . . . It can be done in terms of stimulus and response, in terms of habit formation, habit integrations and the like. Furthermore, I believe that it is really worth while to make this attempt now.The psychology which I should attempt to build up would take as a starting point, first, the observable fact that organisms, man and animal alike, do adjust themselves to their environment by means of hereditary and habit equipments.10Watson’s views on the role of heredity in explaining behavior changed over the years. Here, in his first paper on behaviorism, he leaves the door wide open to the study of hereditable behaviors, but that would change during the 1920s, after he had left academia, when he argued that the behaviorist should explain behavior based purely on what is happening in the environment surrounding the organism:Secondly, that certain stimuli lead the organisms to make the responses. In a system of psychology completely worked out, given the response the stimuli can be predicted; given the stimuli the response can be predicted. Such a set of statements is crass and raw in the extreme, as all such generalizations must be. Yet they are hardly more raw and less realizable than the ones which appear in the psychology texts of the day.
eBook - ePubPsychology
From Spirits to Psychotherapy: the Mind through the Ages
- Anne Rooney(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Arcturus(Publisher)
As the name suggests, functionalism was concerned with the functioning of the mind – its action and what its action is used for. Instead of looking only at the mainstream – the psychology of normal, adult humans – functionalism also examined animal behaviour, child psychology and abnormal psychology. As the environment for each person is different, the characteristics that make one person suited to their environment are not necessarily the same as the characteristics that make another person suited to theirs – such as patience in a driving instructor or competitiveness in a stock broker. Consequently, functionalism was equally concerned with differences between people and with the common ground they share.PUTTING IT TO USEBecause it is preoccupied with how and why the mind works as it does, functionalism has a clear interest in the uses of mental processes and behaviours. The functionalists were interested in psychology as a practical science with useful applications, rather than as a pure science (knowledge for its own sake). In functionalism, we find the origins of the applications that attempt to use psychology to make people’s lives better: improving education, work and the treatment of the sick, for example. Intelligence testing became an important strand in applied psychology during the early 20th century. Functionalism, then, was broadly pragmatic – a point of clear distinction from the structuralists, who avoided any practical application of psychological knowledge.THE BIRTH OF AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY
The publication of Principles of Psychology by William James marked the point at which American psychology broke away from philosophy and from European traditions in psychology. Running to nearly 1,400 pages, the Principles set out a view in opposition to Wundt’s. The brother of the novelist Henry James, William taught at Harvard where he set up a teaching laboratory in 1875. Although established four years later, Wundt’s laboratory is generally considered the first because it was experimental, whereas James’ was used exclusively for demonstrations.James popularized the phrase ‘stream of consciousness’. He believed that consciousness was continuous, from birth to death, and constantly changing. It could therefore not be divided or stopped for psychologists to take a look at it. The ‘elements of consciousness’ approach taken by Wundt was meaningless in James’ view. Furthermore, the importance of consciousness for the individual is that it aids survival. Its decision about which things to attend to (or not) is governed by what things are useful to the individual.
eBook - PDFHistory of Modern Psychology
A Global Perspective
- C. James Goodwin(Author)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Whereas a structuralist is interested in mental contents, the “what?” of conscious experience, Angell stated, the functional 8 Sound localization depends in part on sound waves reaching our ears at slightly different times. Angell, who was deaf in one ear, served as his own observer in a study on how localization was accomplished monaurally (Hunter, 1949). 222 CHAPTER 7 CLASSICAL ORIENTATION OF STRUCTURALISM AND FUNCTIONALISM psychologist wants to study mental operations, the “how?” and “why?” of consciousness. If the structuralist is asking What is consciousness? the functionalist is asking What is consciousness for? Furthermore, with a dig at what he considered to be the highly artificial nature of the results from Titchenerian-style research, Angell argued that a minute analysis of some hypothetical “moment of consciousness” fails to capture the importance of consciousness for everyday life: If you adopt as your material for psychological analysis the isolated “moment of consciousness,” it is very easy to become so absorbed in determining its constitution as to be rendered somewhat oblivious to its artificial character. The most essential quarrel which the functionalist has with structuralism arises from this fact. (p. 441) Angell then explicitly rejected the analogy between psychology and biology that Titchener had used to argue for the primacy of his structuralist approach. As you recall, Titchener had likened structuralism to anatomy and argued that just as anatomy provides the basis for physiology, so must structuralism precede functionalism. Angell would have none of it. Anatomy involves material objects that can be manipulated, observed, and measured with precision, but mental contents are “evanescent” and “fleeting,” Angell argued. With the analogy between anatomy and structuralism shown to be faulty, Angell believed the supposed primacy of structuralism over functionalism to be meaningless.
eBook - PDF- C. James Goodwin(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Dewey’s reflex arc paper might have been the foundation paper for functionalist thinking, but it was not a “Here is what functionalism means” type of paper. Angell’s was—he called it “The Province of Functional Psychology.” Angell made it clear that functional psychology was not a dogmatic “school” of psychology, but rather “little more than a point of view, a program, an ambition” (Angell, 1907/1948, p. 439). He then drew a sharp contrast between functional and structural psychologies. Whereas a structuralist is inter- ested in mental contents, the “what?” of conscious experience, Angell stated, the functional psycholo- gist wants to study mental operations, the “how?” and “why?” of consciousness. If the structuralist is asking What is consciousness? the functionalist is asking What is consciousness for? Furthermore, with a dig at what he considered to be the highly artificial nature of the results from Titchenerian-style research, Angell argued that a minute analysis of some hypothetical “moment of consciousness” fails to capture the importance of consciousness for everyday life: If you adopt as your material for psychological analysis the isolated “moment of consciousness,” it is very easy to become so absorbed in determining its constitution as to be rendered somewhat oblivious to its artificial character. The most essential quarrel which the functionalist has with structuralism arises from this fact. (p. 441) Angell then explicitly rejected the analogy between psychology and biology that Titchener had used to argue for the primacy of his structuralist approach. As you recall, Titchener had likened structuralism to anatomy and argued that just as anatomy provides the basis for physiology, so must 7 Sound localization depends in part on sound waves reaching our ears at slightly different times. Angell, who was deaf in one ear, served as his own observer in a study on how localization was accomplished monaurally (Hunter, 1949).
- Martin Farrell(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Introduction In the previous chapter we saw how pragmatism emphasised the connection of ideas with their practical consequences and how functionalism, exempli fi ed in the work of Dewey, applied this approach to psychology. For the functionalists, mental states had to be understood in terms of the functions that they performed, and these functions were a matter of allowing an organism to survive in its environment. The idea of a pure realm of consciousness, completely divorced from the practical demands of action, was rejected; mental states could only be studied validly in connection with the behaviour to which they were intrinsically connected. This strain of thought was taken to a more radical conclusion by behaviourism. To the most radical of the behaviourists – and both J. B. Watson and B. F. Skinner, two of the thinkers to be discussed in this chapter, described themselves as radical behav-iourists – functionalism had not gone far enough. It was not simply the case, as the functionalists had argued, that one cannot talk about mental states without also talking about behaviour, but that so-called ‘ mental states ’ were nothing more than types of behaviour. Before examining the ideas of Watson and Skinner, however, we turn to one of the important precursors of behaviourism, E. L. Thorndike. E. L. Thorndike: against introspection Edward Lee Thorndike (1874 – 1949) was an important forerunner of behaviour-ism, and many of the ideas that are associated with the later behaviourism of Box 16.1 Edward Lee Thorndike Edward Lee Thorndike was born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, in 1874, the son of a Methodist preacher. He started to study literature at Harvard but, upon reading William James ’ s Principles of Psychology , he decided, after also attending some of James ’ s lectures, to switch exclusively to psychology.
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