Psy 421: Systems and Theories of Psychology

Notes for Chapters 9-12: Evolution, Functionalism, and early behaviorism

Evolution
William Paley--(1743-1805)--
Creation theory, organs are so carefully designed they must have a designer.
(Helmholtz--defended evolution: careful study of, e.g., the eye, suggests that it was not designed very well)
Buffon (1707-1788)--Studied flora and fauna, age of earth must be very great
Lamarck (1744-1829)--voluntary effort leads to inherited physical changes

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Voyage of the Beagle--saw (and collected) many closely related species
Read Malthus's essay on the principle of population
Found mechanism for evolution

1. natural variability of species
2. those variants better adapted to environment more likely to live to procreate.
3. Variations in parent tend to be represented in offspring
This concept substitutes variation for essentialism in species. There is a continuum between different categories rather than a well defined break. One cannot really give a completely reliable answer to when one category ends and another begins.

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)--
Evolutionary associationism
survival of the fittest
Social Darwinism
Charles Lyell (1797-1875)--
Uniformitarianism rather than
Catastrophism: geological formations required many millennia to develop.
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)--independently proposed evolutionary mechanism
Thomas Huxley (1825-1895)--major publicizer of evolution, epiphenomenologist

Early Animal Psychology

George Romanes (1848-1894) anecdotal stories of animal intelligence, a comparative psychology
C. Lloyd Morgan (1852-1936) Morgan’s canon, limit interpretations of behavior to as simple mental processes as is compatible with the data.
Jacques Loeb (1859-1924) tropisms--movements have elementary physico-chemical explanations
Willard Small (1870-1943) maze learning of laboratory rat
Ivan Sechenov (1829-1905) Thoughts are reflexes of the brain. Inhibitory and excitatory reflexive action

Francis Galton (1822-1911)
 Promulgated Darwin's individual differences idea.
Human physical & mental traits are distributed normally
Hereditary Genius-prominent people have prominent relatives
 Made many contributions in such domains as: Mental imagery, free association tests, questionnaires, twin studies, correlation, regression, anthropometry, cross-cultural measures, cross species measures, nature and nurture, intelligence testing, eugenics meteorology, weather maps,

William James (1842-1910)
Criticized Wundt and German "brass instrument" psychology
Free will and mechanistic determinism--which is true? Each has its own uses.
This idea led to pragmatism. Accept or believe that which is useful
mind is purposive and shows itself when there is an obstacle to overcome.
Flow and continuity of consciousness, always changes
Definitions of self--empirical self, self as knower (subjective self), self esteem
Effortful acts can become habits,
James-Lange theory of emotion

Early functionalists
Hugo Munsterberg (1863-1916)--applied psychology, forensic psychology, human factors, clinical, industrial (individual differences)
Mary Calkins (1863-1930) first woman president of APA, studied with Munsterberg, paired associates learning, self psychology (self, object, and relation between them.
G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924)-- 1878 (first psych PhD in America), Founder of APA 1892, started child, adolescence and geriatric psychologies
J. McK. Cattell (1860-1944) Experimenter (psychophysics, mental tests) and editor. Became "dean" of American Psychology

John Dewey (1859-1952)
emphasized process and change
interdependence and interrelationship of things
anthropological-biological orientation, one has a transaction with one’s environment
The reflex arc concept
Scientific study of education
progressive education--practical and involving, not rote
founded laboratory school at Chicago, and trained teachers in Teacher’s College at Columbia

James Angell (1869-1949)
Formally defended functionalism as an approach to psychology, how and why rather than what
Mental operations not mental elements (Darwin based act psychology)
Was interested in the utility and results of consciousness, rather than its structure or process

E. L. Thorndike (1874-1949)
attacked formal discipline (faculty psychology)
practical education
word counts and children’s dictionary
puzzle box in animal study, studied baby chickens, cats and dogs
Trial and error learning
law of effect (positive (successful outcomes stamp in responses)
law of exercise (practice makes perfect)
transfer of training (identical elements)

R. S. Woodworth (1869-1962)
General experimental psychologist
Worked with Thorndike
Importance of Motivation in behavior (S-O-R, not S-R is the important sequence)
mechanism becomes a drive
eclectic psychologist
Classical textbook in experimental psychology

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
Excellent experimenter (chronic preparations in alert healthy animals)
won Nobel Prize in 1904 for physiology (of digestion)
Conditioning was discovered serendipitously due to irregularities of reflexes (psychic reflexes)
mental should be reduced to measurable physiological quantities
Concept of conditional response extremely influential--believed they were due to nervous system activity
Concepts of conditioning studied by Pavlov
Conditioned and unconditioned stimulus, conditioned and unconditioned response
Basic conditioning paradigm

    CS--UCS-->UCR
    CS-->CR
Concepts studeied in conditioning: Inhibition, Excitation, Extinction, Disinhibition, Spontaneous recovery,
Stimulus generalization, Conditioned discrimination, Experimental neurosis; Higher order conditioning

John B. Watson (1878-1958)
Founded Behaviorism--a strong environmentalist
extremely influential in setting the pattern for American Psychology
Conditioned and unconditioned reflexes can account for all of behavior
Consciousness plays no greater role in psychology than physics
Studied maze-learning in rats and conditioned emotion in children.
Believed parents should not "spoil" children by holding and comforting them

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