H&S 6 Flashcards
Significance of Childlike Jenny
Humans and animals are alike after all. 1838 Charles Darwin was amazed and inspired to write about her.
Functionalists’ central interest
- 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).
How was Functionalism a reaction to Structuralism?
- 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.
Forerunners of Functionalism
(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.
The Evolution Revolution: Charles Darwin. How was he and wasn’t he special compared to Erasmus Darwin, Lamark, Lyell?
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.
Erasmus Darwin
Animals evolved from a single living filament and were given animation by God. God started the world but didn’t interfere after that.
Lamark
Behavioral theory of evolution which emphasized that animals body’s change over time to adapt to their environment
Lyell
Earth had passed through various stages while evolving into its present structure
Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
(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.
Thomas Henry Huxley and the evolution controversy.
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.
Fitzroy
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.
Darwin’s other work: The Descent of Man
1871
– gathered evidence for human evolution from lower life forms, emphasizing the similarity between animal and human mental processes.
Darwin’s other work: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
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.
Darwin’s other work:
Mind: A Biographical Sketch of an Infant
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.
Darwin’s influence on psychology
- His focus on animal psych formed the basis of comparative psych
- Emphasized the functions of consciousness rather than its structure
- Accepted methodology and data from many fields – scientists can successfully use techniques other than introspection
- Focused on the description and measurement of individual differences
Francis Galton and individual differences
(1822-1911)
- Mental inheritance and eugenics
- Statistical methods
- Mental tests
- Word-association test
Galton: Mental inheritance and eugenics
- 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.
Galton: Statistical methods
- 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
Karl Pearson (Galton’s Student)
– developed the current formula for calculating the correlation coefficient
Galton: Mental tests
– 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.
Galton: word-association test
first experiment attempt to examine associations – adopted by Wundt and elaborated on by Jung.
Animal Psychology and the Development of Functionalism
- 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.
Studies of animal intelligence: George John Romanes
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.
Studies of animal intelligence: C. Lloyd Morgan
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.
law of parsimony
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.
