Chapter 8 Applied Psychology: The legacy of functionalism

Fda (food and drugs act) raid on coca-cola

Harry Hollingworth - the psychologist that was hired by corporate lawyer of coca-cola company
to conduct an impressive research program which proves the amount of caffeine in coca-cola
does not have harmful effects on human behavior or thought processes

The intensive 30-day research program involves 64000 individual measurements. Data were
recorded on a wide range of motor and mental functions under conditions providing various
dosages of caffeine. No harmful effects or significant declines and performance were found.
Coca-cola company won the case. This case demonstrated that sound experimental research
could be funded by a major corporate entity without dictating or prejudicing the results.
Psychologists could now have successful and financially 13 careers in applied psychology
without challenging their professional integrity.

Toward a practical psychology

American psychology was guided much more by the ideas of darwin, galton, and spencer than
by the work of wundt
Wundt's psychology and Titchener's structuralism could not survive in the american intellectual
climate or zeitgeist they were not practical kinds of psychology- which deal with the mind in use
can be applied to everyday demands and problems.
American psychologist was oriented toward the practical which means people valued what
works. The new american psychologist transform the german species of psychology in
aggressive american fashion. They began to study not what the mind is but what it does. The
move toward a practical psychology was occurring at the same time that's functionalism was
being founded as a separate school of thought. The applied psychologists took their psychology
into the real world.

The Growth of american psychology

Psychology grew and prospered in the united states in the years 1880 to 1900.
- by 1900 there were 41 laboratories better equipped than germany
-by 1895 there were three american psychology journals
- by 1900 there were 40 doctoral programs at us universities
- from 1892 to 1904 over 100 Ph.Ds awarded in psychology
- by 1933 52% of the articles published in psychology were in english and only 14% in German.
By the end of the 20th century, english has become the dominant language at international
meetings and in the published literature, the apa journal psychological abstracts no longer
covered publications in languages other than english
-The british publication Who's Who in science for 1913 stated that the united states was
predominant in psychology, having more of the world's leading psychologist (84) then germany,
england , and france combined.
Economic influences on applied psychology

Many the first generation of applied psychologist in the United States were compelled to
abandon their dreams of pure academic experimental research as the only way to escape a life
of poverty
G Stanley Hall advised a Midwestern colleague to make psychology's influence felt outside the
University
James Cattell urges colleagues to make practical applications and develop a profession of
applied psychology
G Stanley Hall proclaimed that the one chief and immediate field of application for psychology
was its application to education

Applied psychologists:
1. James McKeen Cattell
2. Lightner Witmer
3. Walter Dill Scott
4. Hugo Munsterberg

Four psychologist who extended the new science into other areas, including industry,
psychological testing, the criminal justice system, and mental health clinics. These psychologist
were trained by Wundt at Leipzig to become a academic psychologist, it all moved away from
Wundt's teachings when they began their careers in American Universities. They provide
striking examples of how American psychology came to be influenced more by Darwin and
Galton than by Wundt, and how the Wundtian approach was re fashioned when transplanted to
American soil.

Mental testing

The functionalist spirit of American psychology was also well represented in the life and work of
James McKeen Cattell who promoted a practical, test oriented approach to the study of mental
processes.
James McKeen Cattell
-His psychology was concerned with human abilities rather than the content of consciousness,
and in this respect he comes close to being a functionalist.
-He became interested in psychology as a result of his own experiments with drugs.
-He recorded in the journal the effects of the drugs on his cognitive functioning.
-He chose to conduct experiments on reaction time the time required for different mental
activities and the results of this work reinforced his desire to become a psychologist
- he was a student of wundt and made it clear to Wundt but he would choose his own project on
the psychology of individual differences a topic that was not central to Wundtian psychology. His
interest in individual differences, a natural outcome of a evolutionary point of view, haven't been
a feature of American psychology, not German psychology
- he shared an interest in individual differences with Francis Galton and under his influence
became one of the first American psychologists to stress quantification, ranking, ratings, even
though he was personally mathematically illiterate.
- he developed the widely used order of merit ranking method and was the first psychologist to
teach the statistical analysis of experimental results. Wundt did not favor statistical techniques,
so it was Galton's influence on Cattell that was responsible for the emphasis on statistics that
came to characterize the new American psychology. This emphasis also explains why American
psychologist began to focus studies of large groups of subjects, for which statistical
comparisons could be made, rather than an individual subjects, as Wundt did
- in addition to statistics, he was interested in Galton's work in Eugenics
- He believed that a professor should maintain some distance from University concerns, so he
made his home 40 miles from the campus. She called is home Fort Defiance
- he helped found the American Association of University professors
- in 1921, he organize the psychological corporation
-he coined the term mental test - tests of motor skills and sensory capacities

Karl Pearson- proposed the formula for calculating the correlation coefficient

John Edgar Cover - the first to advocate the use of experimental and control groups

The psychological testing movement

Although Cattell coined the term mental test, the first truly psychological test of mental ability
was developed by Alfred Binet
Alfred Binet
- he provided an effective measure of human cognitive abilities and thus initiated the Era of
modern intelligence testing.
-he also conducted research on issues in developmental, experimental, educational, and social
psychology
-he disagreed with Galton and Cattell's approach, which used tests of sensorimotor processes
to attempt to measure intelligence
- he believed that assessing such cognitive functions as memory, attention, imagination, and
comprehension would provide a more appropriate measure of intelligence

Binet and Theodore Simon- investigated the intellectual tasks that the majority of children could
master at different ages. The test focuses on 3 cognitive functions: Judgement, comprehension,
and reasoning
- introduced the concept of mental age - defined as the age at which children of average ability
could perform specific tasks

Henry Goddard - called his translation of the intelligence test the Binet-Simon Scale

Lewis M. Terman - call the intelligence test the Stanford-Binet Scale

- he adopted the concept of the intelligence quotient (IQ) - the IQ measure- defined as the ratio
between mental age and chronological age, became the most important criterion for student
placement and advancement

World War 1 and group testing

Robert Yerkes - prepared the army alpha (literate) and the army beta (illiterate) to aid the war
effort

Emil Kraeplin - used what he called free association test- in which a patient responded to a
stimulus word with the first word that came to mind

Carl Jung- in 1910, developed a similar device, his word association test- to determine
personality complexes in his patients

Robert Woodworth- constructed the personal data sheet- a self report inventory on which
respondents were instructed to check the nervous symptoms that applied to them, like the army
alpha an army beta served as a prototype for future group test

Ideas from medicine and engineering

To lend authority and scientific credibility to their fledgling enterprise, intelligence testers had
adopted terminology from the older discipline of medicine and engineering. Their purpose was
to persuade people but psychology was just as legitimate, scientific, and essential as the more
established Sciences

Racial differences in intelligence

Henry Goddard -,who had translated binet test, visited the entry point for millions of european
immigrants to the united states and believe that the doctors that were examining the new
arrivals we're failing to prevent mentally retarded people from entering the country and only
identified no more than 10% of those people with mental retardation and he proposed that
psychologists conduct the examinations instead by using his translation of the Binet intelligence
test

- the interpreter of the Binet best intent out that he himself could not have answered the
questions when he was a new arrival in the united states and that the test was unfair to people
unfamiliar with the english language or american culture in which Goddard disagreed

- the evidence from the later testing of immigrant populations was later used to support federal
legislation restricting the immigration of racial and ethnic groups assume to be inferior in
intelligence

- the idea of racial differences in intelligence received additional support 1921 when the results
from the world war 1 testing of the army recruits were made public. The data showed that blacks
and immigrants from mediterranean and latin american countries measured lower IQs than
whites. Only northern european immigrants had IQs equal to those measured for whites. These
findings raise questions among scientists , politicians , and journalist . How could any
democratically elected government survive if its citizens were stupid? How should groups with
low IQs be allowed to vote? Should the government refuse entry to immigrants from low IQ
countries? How could the notion that people were created equal be meaningful?

Horace Mann Bond- an african american scholar published a number of books and articles in
which he argued that any recorded differences in the IQ scores between blacks and whites were
attributable to environmental rather than inherited factors. His research showed that blacks from
northern states scored higher on intelligence tests than whites from southern states, a finding
that severely damaged the charge that blacks were genetically inferior.

- in 1994 The Bell Curve was published arguing that , based on intelligence test scores , blacks
are inferior and intelligence to whites. Testing experts endorsed the conclusion that intelligence
test are not culturally biased against american blacks or other native born , english speaking
people in the US rather IQ scores predict equally accurately for all such americans , regardless
of race and social class.

-A report by the APA's Board of Scientific Affairs that today's cognitive ability test did not seem
to discriminate against minority groups but reflected , in quantitative terms , the discrimination
that had been created by society over time

Contributions of women to the testing movement

- many female psychologists found employment in the applied field particularly the helping
professions such as clinical and counseling psychology , child guidance , and school
psychology

-Florence L. Goodenough - develop to the Draw-a-Man test (now the Goodenough-Harris

drawing test)- a widely used nonverbal intelligence test for children.

Maude Merril James- wrote with Lewis Terman the 1937 revision of the Stanford-Binet
intelligence test, which became widely known as Terman-Merrill test

Thelma Gwinn Thurstone- married L.L. Thustone and help develop the Primary Mental Abilities
test battery which is a group intelligence test

Psyche Cattell-- daughter of james mckeen cattell, extended the age range of the stanford-binet
downward with the Cattle Infant Intelligence Scale. Her test could be used with infants as young
as 3 months old .

Anne Anastasi- became an authority on psychological testing and was named the most
prominent female psychologist in the english-speaking world

- no woman was elected president of the american association for applied psychology , despite
the fact that by 1941 one third of its members where women and also approximately half of all
psychology jobs in educational and clinical organizations were held by women

The clinical psychology movement

-while Cattell was changing forever the nature of american psychology by applying it to the
measurement of mental abilities, a student of Cattell and Wundt was applying psychology to the
assessment and treatment of abnormal behavior--Lightner Witmer

Lightner Witmer - began the field of clinical psychology

- in 1896 the world's first psychology clinic
- he did not practice psychotherapy, instead he was interested in assessing and treating
learning and behavioral problems in school children which is an applied specialty area now
called School Psychology
- started the first college course on clinical psychology
- started the first journal, Psychological Clinic
- he was one of those pioneers of the functionalist approach to psychology who believes that the
new science should be used to help people solve problems rather than to study the contents of
the mind
- was chosen as a successor by Cattell
-doubted Wundt's introspective method
- recommended that psychology be applied to practical affairs
- recognize that emotional and cognitive functioning could be affected by physical problems
- realized that environmental factors were more important than genetic factors for behavioral
and cognitive disturbances
- he believed in involving families and schools in the treatment of his patients , arguing that if
home and school conditions were improved , a child's behavior might change for the better

The profession of clinical psychology

Clifford Beers- wrote A Mind That Found Itself, which became immensely popular and focus
public attention on the need to deal humanely with mentally ill people

Hugo Munsterberg - wrote Psychotherapy which describe techniques for treating a variety of
mental disorders. He also promoted clinical psychology by describing specific ways in which
disturbed persons could be helped

William Healy- established the first child guidance clinic in 1909, the purpose was to treat
childhood disorders early so that the problems would not develop into more serious
disturbances in adulthood. These clinics used Witmer's team approach , in which physicians ,
psychologist , psychiatrist , and social workers combined to evaluate all aspects of a patient's
problem

- the ideas of sigmund freud were crucial to the advancement of clinical psychology and move
the field far beyond its origins in Witmer's clinic. Freudian psychoanalysis both fascinated and
outrage segments of the psychology establishment and the american public. Freud's ideas
provided clinical psychologist with their initial psychological techniques of therapy

- when the united states entered world War war II in 1941 the army established training
programs for hundreds of clinical psychologist so they could treat the emotional disturbances of
military

- The Department Of Veterans Affairs remains the largest employer of psychologist in the united
states

- clinical psychology is the largest of the applied specialty areas , with more than one third of all
graduate students enrolled in clinical programs
The industrial organizational psychology movement

Walter dill scott - another student of wundt at Leipzig who left the world of peer introspective
psychology to apply the new science to advertising and business
-he dedicated adult life to make the market place in the workplace more efficient and to
determine how business leaders could motivate employees and consumers
- his work reflects the concern of the functionalist school of psychology with practical
- he was the first person to apply psychology to personnel selection, management, and
advertising
- he was the author of the first book in the field in the first to hold the title of professor of applied
psychology
- he was the founder of the first psychological consulting company
- first psychologist to receive the distinguished service medal from the us army
-wrote The Theory and Practice of Advertising
-Noted that the human sense organs for the windows of the soul and that advertisements are
the nervous system of the business world
- argue that because consumers often do not at rationally , they can be easily influenced .
- He cited emotion , sympathy, and sentimentality as factors that heighten consumer
suggestibility -Law of suggestibility
- he believes that women wear more persuadable then wear men and applying his law of
suggestibility he recommended that companies use direct commands to sell products.
- for selecting the best employees , especially among sales people , business executives , and
military personnel , scott devised rating scales and group test to measure the characteristics of
people who were already successful in those occupations
- he was not only measuring general intelligence but in addition he was interested in
determining how a person used his or her intelligence, in other words, he wanted to understand
how people processed information and how intelligence operated in the everyday world
- he defined intelligence not in terms of specific cognitive abilities but in practical terms such as
judgment , quickness , and accuracy which were the characteristics needed to perform well on a
job

- the pioneers of applied psychology reflected the american functionalist spirit and the goal of
making psychology useful

The impact of the world wars

-World war I brought about a monumental increase in the scope , popularity , and growth of
industrial organizational psychology
- World war II brought even more psychologist indoor work for testing , screening , and
classifying recruits
- the need to identify military personnel who possess the ability to learn the required skills led
psychologist to refine their selection and training procedures
- these necessities of war also spawned a new specialty within industrial psychology variously
called engineering psychology , human engineering , human factors engineering or ergonomics
- engineering psychologist work closely with weapons systems engineers to supply information
about human capacities and limitations and their work directly influences the design of military
equipment to make it more compatible with the abilities of the people who use it
The hawthorne studies and organizational issues

-The primary focus of industrial psychologists during the 1920s was the selection and placement
of job applicants or matching the right person with the right job
- in 1927 , the scope of the field broaden considerably with an innovative research program
conducted by the western electric company at its hawthorn plant in illinois. These studies
extended the field beyond selection and placement to more complex problems of human
relations , motivation , and morale
- the research began as a straightforward investigation of the effects of the physical work
environment such as conditions of lighting and temperature on the efficiency of the employees
- the results founded that social and psychological aspects of the workplace where much more
important than the physical conditions in other words , just the fact of being questioned or
observed on the job as part of a research programme persuaded many workers that
management cared , that their boss was truly interested in them as individuals and not merely
as interchangeable cogs in the great industrial machine
- the hawthorne studies led psychologists to explore the social psychological work climate
including the behavior of leaders , informal work groups , employee attitudes , communication
patterns between workers and managers , and other factors capable of influencing motivation ,
productivity , and satisfaction
- recognizing the importance of organizational variables , the APA's division of industrial
psychology was raining the Society for Industrial and Oganizational Psychology

Contributions of women to industrial organizational psychology

- industrial organizational psychology as a profession historically has provided career

opportunities for women

Lillian Moller - the first person to receive a Ph.D in the field of industrial organizational
psychology
- with her husband frank gilbreth, she promoted time and motion analysis as a technique to
improve efficiency in job performance
- she responsible for major changes in the way in which work is managed and the efficiency with
which it is carried out both in organizations and in the home

Hugo Munsterberg
- he was the stereotypical german professor , for a time was a phenomenal success in american
psychology and much in the public eye
- he wrote hundreds of popular magazine articles and almost two dozen books in such applied
areas such as clinical , industrial , and forensic psychology
- was a frequent visitor to the white house as the guest of presidents Theodore Roosevelt and
William
Howard Taft
- he was a powerful consultant to business and government leaders
- he described as a prolific propagandizer for applied psychology
- his first book was American Traits which was a psychological , social , and cultural analysis of
american society
- forensic psychology deals with psychology and the law. He wrote magazine articles on such
topics as crime prevention , using hypnosis to question suspects and administering mental test
to detect guilty persons and the questionable trustworthiness of eyewitness testimony
- in 1908 he published On The Witness Stand, which describe the psychological factors that can
affect the trials outcome. These include false confessions , the power of suggestion in the cross
examination of witnesses , and the use of physiological measurements to detect heightened
emotional states in suspects end defendants.
- in 1909, he published the book Psychotherapy which was not well received by lightner witmer
- he was also a promoter of industrial psychology
- in 1909 he published an article titled Psychology and the Market which covered several areas
to which psychology could contribute to vocational guidance , advertising , personal
management , mental testing , employee motivation , and effects of fatigue and monotony in job
performance
- he worked as a consultant for several companies and performed a great deal of practical
research for them
-he published his findings in Psychology and Industrial Efficiency
- he argued that the best way to increase job efficiency , productivity , and satisfaction was to
select workers for positions that match their mental and emotional abilities by developing the
proper psychological selection techniques , such as mental tests and jobs simulations , to
access the applicant's knowledge skill and abilities
- his research serve the purposes of business it was functional research that was oriented
toward helping people in some way
- he was the quintessential american functional psychologist , reflecting and displaying the spirit
of the times

Applied psychology in the united states: A national mania

- the Journal of Applied Psychology thrived during the war years

- academics psychology also benefited from the success of applied psychology during the war
years
- however in the decade of the worldwide economic depression, applied psychology came under
attack for failing to live up to its promises

Comment
The nature of american psychology changed when it was no longer restricted to lecture halls ,
libraries , and laboratories but extends into many areas of everyday life. Today applied
psychology works in industrial organizational psychology , forensic psychology , community
psychology , consumer psychology , population and environmental psychology , health and
rehabilitation psychology , family services , exercise and sport psychology , military psychology ,
media psychology , addictive behaviors , religion , culture , and concerns of minority groups
- none of these areas of application would have been possible had psychology remain focus on
the mental elements or the contents of conscious experience