H&S 6

Question 1

Significance of Childlike Jenny

Answer 1

Humans and animals are alike after all. 1838 Charles Darwin was amazed and inspired to write about her.

Question 2

Functionalists’ central interest

Answer 2

• How the mind functions and how it is used by an organism to adapt to its environment.
• everyday problem: how people function in and adapt to different environments?
• Functionalism is responsible for the rapid development of applied psych (possibly its most important legacy).

Question 3

How was Functionalism a reaction to Structuralism?

Answer 3

• Darwin changed the focus of new psych from the structure of consciousness to its functions.
• Functionalism was the first American system of psychology, and a deliberate protest against Wundt’s experimental and Titchener’s structural psychology, both of which were seen as too restrictive.

Question 4

Forerunners of Functionalism

Answer 4

(Darwin, Fechner, Galton, Wundt)
– the major work on the functions of consciousness, individual differences, and animal behavior was being performed at the same time Wundt and Titchener chose to exclude these areas from their definitions of psych.

Question 5

The Evolution Revolution: Charles Darwin. How was he and wasn’t he special compared to Erasmus Darwin, Lamark, Lyell?

Answer 5

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

• Scholars had hypothesized and speculated over evolution, but Darwins On the Origin of the Species introduced so much well-organized data that it could not be ignored.
• The zeitgeist demanded the theory and Darwin became its agent.

Question 6

Erasmus Darwin

Answer 6

Animals evolved from a single living filament and were given animation by God. God started the world but didn’t interfere after that.

Question 7

Lamark

Answer 7

Behavioral theory of evolution which emphasized that animals body’s change over time to adapt to their environment

Question 8

Lyell

Answer 8

Earth had passed through various stages while evolving into its present structure

Question 9

Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection

Answer 9

(1859)

• inherited variation among individual members of each species
• survival of the fittest: “…species that cannot adapt do not survive.”
• Natural selection

Darwin worked on this book for many, many years before publishing. He would likely have delayed longer except another man, Wallace, came up with a similar theory in a matter of days which he asked for Darwin’s assistance in publishing. All 1,250 copies were sold the day it was published. Wallace was a very humble and honorable man. He was not bitter, and was proud to have spurred Darwin on to publish his work.

Question 10

Thomas Henry Huxley and the evolution controversy.

Answer 10

Huxley (1825-1895)

• Promoted science as a “new religion” to blue collar workers.
• outspoken advocate of evolution, and charismatic speaker. Spoke for Darwin at the debate on evolution at Oxford.

Question 11

Fitzroy

Answer 11

The captain of the Beagle voyage, a devout Christian who brought Darwin on the boat with the intention of him gathering evidence to support creationism. Apologized profusely for mistakenly providing Darwin with the opportunity to collect his data and eventually committed suicide.

Question 12

Darwin’s other work: The Descent of Man

Answer 12

1871
– gathered evidence for human evolution from lower life forms, emphasizing the similarity between animal and human mental processes.

Question 13

Darwin’s other work: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

Answer 13

1872
– Darwin was interested in emotional expressions in human and animals, and believed they could be described through evolution.
- In this book, he described emotional expressions as the remnants of movements that once served a practical function. Emotional expressions evolve and those that are useful survive.

Question 14

Darwin’s other work:

Mind: A Biographical Sketch of an Infant

Answer 14

1877
– a diary of his infant sons development. Illistrated Darwin’s thesis that children pass through a series of developmental stages that parallel the stages of human evolution.

Question 15

Darwin’s influence on psychology

Answer 15

1. His focus on animal psych formed the basis of comparative psych
2. Emphasized the functions of consciousness rather than its structure
3. Accepted methodology and data from many fields – scientists can successfully use techniques other than introspection
4. Focused on the description and measurement of individual differences

Question 16

Francis Galton and individual differences

Answer 16

(1822-1911)

• Mental inheritance and eugenics
• Statistical methods
• Mental tests
• Word-association test

Question 17

Galton: Mental inheritance and eugenics

Answer 17

• genius is inherited
• Coined the word “eugenics.”
• wanted to encourage the birth of eminent individuals and discourage birth of the unfit.
• we should develop intelligence tests to determine exceptional people for selective breeding, and then offer them money to marry and produce children.

Question 18

Galton: Statistical methods

Answer 18

• suggested that any large set of measurements or values for human characteristics could be meaningfully described by two numbers: the mean and the standard deviation
• his work yielded the correlation (which he called co-relations): he observed that inherited characteristics tend to regress toward the mean
• modern stats techniques for determining validity, reliability, and factor-analytic methods are a result of Galton’s research on correlations

Question 19

Karl Pearson (Galton’s Student)

Answer 19

– developed the current formula for calculating the correlation coefficient

Question 20

Galton: Mental tests

Answer 20

– tests of motor skills and sensory capacities (intelligence tests use more complex measures of mental abilities).

• Galton assumed that intelligence could be measured in terms of sensory capacities (smartest people = keenest senses)
• Developed important lab equipment to measure senses – whistle, etc.
• Anthropometric lab in 1884, measured sensory abilities of over 9,000 people to determine the range of human capacities in the British population and determine its collective mental resources.

Question 21

Galton: word-association test

Answer 21

first experiment attempt to examine associations – adopted by Wundt and elaborated on by Jung.

Question 22

Animal Psychology and the Development of Functionalism

Answer 22

• Before Darwin, animals were believed to be automata with no minds or souls (Descartes). -Darwin believed there is no sharp distinction between human and animal minds, they feel pleasure and pain and have emotions.
• Darwin is responsible for the topic of animal intelligence growing in popularity.

Question 23

Studies of animal intelligence: George John Romanes

Answer 23

1848-1894

• Formalized and systematized the study of animal intelligence.
• Published Animal Intelligence- generally considered the first book on comparative psychology. Purpose was to demonstrate the high level of animal intelligence and its similarity to human intelligence.
• Used the anecdotal method and introspection by analogy.

Question 24

Studies of animal intelligence: C. Lloyd Morgan

Answer 24

1852-1936

• Recognized the weaknesses in the anecdotal and introspection-by-analogy methods.
• Proposed the law of parsimony to counteract the prevailing tendency to attribute excessive intelligence to animals.
• Goal was to make the methods of comparative psych more scientific.
• Morgan followed Romanes’s approach of observing animal behavior and describing it through introspective examination of his own mental processes, but he refrained from ascribing higher mental processes to animals when their behavior could be explained by lower-level processes.

Question 25

law of parsimony

Answer 25

Held that an animal’s behavior must not be interpreted as the outcome of higher mental processes when it can be explained in terms of a lower mental process. His goal was to make the methods of comparative psych more scientific.