1. The variability hypothesis had stated that males are more superior in terms of ability as compared to females, specifically in terms of intelligence. To be precise, he stated that most geniuses are mostly male. Hollingworth and Wooley had refuted the idea of variability hypothesis and had criticized the logic of the hypothesis. They stated that there was no empirical evidence which could prove that men were superior to woman n terms of ability. To examine the relevance of variability hypothesis, Hollingworth and Wooley gathered a data on the birth of 1000 male and 1000 female infants. There research proved that the variability hypothesis had not favored men or women. (Shields 855)
2. Stanley hall was extremely influenced by evolutionary theory of Darwin. He also had read about the inheritance behavior of humans and had always felt that there is a strong link between the evolutionary theory and inheritance behavior of human. For this reason he had examined the aspects of childhood development and tried to link them with the evolutionary theory and recapitulation theory. (Partridge)
Hall’s recapitulation theory states that every human being goes through changes in psychic as well as somatic senses and they later on follow the evolution a human’s mind and body.
3. G. Stanley Hall is regarded to be the pioneer of the greatest experimental psychologists. He was the first person who introduced child and educational psychology and is regarded to be the founding father of this form of psychology. He also founded many psychological and scientific journals which included the American journal of Psychology and he also founded the American Psychological Association. He was influential in the development of psychology in the US and across the globe. He was famous for being known as a genetic psychologist as he linked genetic psychology with child psychology. He believed that when children develop, their mental abilities had resembled to those of their ancestors and their parents and they developed their own abilities over a lifetime in their own way.
4. Titchener and Dewey had contributed a lot to the functional psychology. They had proven the mental processes of a human in a systematic and accurate manner. They did not focus on mere consciousness rather they had focused on the purpose of consciousness and human behavior.
There was no single form of functionalism. Functionalism had influenced the educational system and it was not only focused on educational psychology as it had integrated the functions of genetic and child’s psychology. Structuralism on the other hand was mainly concerned with experimental psychology. (Leonard 10)
5. John Angell’s view on functionalism was quite interesting. The three major themes of functionalism were:
- Functional psychology is concerned with mental operations through mental activity and its direct relation with biological forces.
- Mental processes can help in the co operation among the needs of the organism and the human environment.
- Mind and body are not different because functionalism is concerned with the study of mental operations and its relationship with the behavior.
Harvey Carr had made an extensive research on psychology. (Schacter 26) According to him, the subject matter of psychology was that psychology has consisted of all matters which included biological, psychological and social processes.
6. Woodworth’s Dynamic psychology was an attempt to explain the human behavior by combining the theories of motivation, perception, learning and thinking. (Heidbreder 199) This theory had a functionalist approach towards psychology and was quite different from the behaviorist theory. Woodworth’s views of introspection are quite interesting as he stated that introspection is able to provide a privileged access to our mental state and is not dependent on other sources of human knowledge.
Woodworth did not directly consider himself to be a functional psychologist but his theories did depict a sense of functionalism as his theories were a blend of various acts of human behavior.
References
Heidbreder, Earl. "Robert Sessions Woodworth 1869-1962". British Journal of Psychology, (1953) 54: 199–200
Leonard, Zonus: “Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking”. Psychology Press (1989), p. 10.
Partridge, “Genetic Philosophy of Education”: An Epitome of the Published Writings of G. Stanley Hall (1912)
Schacter, Daniel. “Psychology” (2007) Worth Publishers, pp. 26–7
Shields, Arnold: “Ms. Pilgrim’s Progress: The contributions of Leta Stetter Hollingworth to the psychology of women”. American Psychologist, (1975) 30, 852-858
