Psychology Coursework: Comparison of roles of James, Hall, and Calkins (Coursework Sample)

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Comparison of roles of James, Hall, and Calkins
James, Hall, and Calkins had a significant role in psychology. William James was the father of psychology and the founder of functionalism. He advanced functionalism ideas out of his philosophy of pragmatism. According to James, the meaning of any plan is found on the consequences (Hothersall, 2003). Calkins though a student of James developed interest experimentalism and self. Calkins’ interest in studying aspects of the Self-was influenced by the early ideas of William James. The views of consciousness and the transitive feeling were the epicenters of the works of Calkins on the Self. Even though Calkins tried describing the self for many years, she concluded that she was unable to explain the self. Calkins worked on memory and association and developed the paired association technique (Hergernhahn and Hanley, 2013).
Different from James and Calkins, Hall had interest in child psychology. Hall published some papers on adolescent development. He based most of his works on Evolution theory.He also believed that humans are non-reasoning beings and that instincts influence them. These instincts according to Hall require a form of control or manipulation by a leader to achieve the greater good of the society. Most of the works of Hall especially in child psychology are still applicable in the current psychology studies.
There is a similarity between James and Calkins early work. These two did set up first psychology laboratory. James created a psychology lab in the year 1875 (Hergernhahn and Hanley, 2013). Calkins did develop what was known as a women psychology lab. Calkins set the psychology lab in collaboration with Edmund Sanford at the Wellesley College.
James, Hall, and Calkins made several publications in psychology. James Published book titled The Principles of Psychology. He also published another version of his book titled ‘The briefer Course’ that became so popular to then psychology students. James supervised few graduate students like Mary Calkins. James published two more books in 1897. The published books were titled 'The Will to Believer' and the 'Varieties of Religious Experience,' which was published in 1902. Other works by James include ‘Some Problems in Philosophy’ and ‘Essays in Radical Empiricism.’ Some of his students became famous and recognized as a father to modern American education (Hergernhahn and Hanley, 2013).
Calkins published four books. The first book titled ‘An introduction to Psychology was published in 1901. The second book titled ‘The Persistent Problems of Philosophy was published in 1901. In 1918 she published another book titled ‘The Good Man and The Good.’ Calkins made two publication from her 1918 publication. In her career, she was able to publish over 100 papers.
Similarly, Hill published a significant amount of work on adolescent development. He has been cited as the founding member of American Society for Psychical Research (Hergernhahn and Hanley, 2013). He was one of the early psychologists in the anomalistic psychology field. In 1880, he founded the child-study movement. He was in charge of the Peculiar and Exceptional Children study that offered a description of the permanent misfits.
If I had to choose a professor to learn from I will choose Calkins. I feel that Calkins was so strong to struggle to achieve in a world that rejected her. I would like to study her strengths especially her work on the self. Calkins is known to be the first woman to earn a doctorate in Psychology at Harvard and denied the degree because of her gender (Hothersall, 2003). She later was the first woman president of APA. In a list of top-ranked psychologists, Calkins was ranked number fifty (Hergernhahn and Hanley, 2013). The excellent aspect of Calkins is her struggle to achieve. Even though she was denied a degree from Harvard for being female, she did not give up she continued working as she pushed for equality. She worked as a member of the faculty at Wellesley College for more than forty years. I feel she has so much experience that would be a plus in my line of study.
Comparison of structuralism and functionalism
Structuralism and functionalism are psychological theories advanced by early psychologists. The two theories explain human behavior. The two arguments approach human behavior and psychology from different perspectives. Structuralism, for example, delinked psychology from philosophical and biological doctrines and made it an independent discipline (Krober, 2011). It described human mind by creating elements in the consciousness. Structuralism established inner experiences like sensations and feelings. The basis of structuralism is in the subjective introspection technique (Lenhard, 2015). During the experiments, subjects had to concentrate their sensations and emotions. The result of the research was subjective hence limiting the accuracy of the approach.
The criticism of structuralism led to the Birth of functionalism. Functionalism theory argues that there was no structure on the consciousness. Functionalism theory proposed that a study on the roles and functions of the human mind was preferable to studying the structure of the mind (Lenhard, 2015). Psychologists like James opposed the ideologies of functionalism.James asserted the focus of research ought to be on the purpose of consciousness and the mind (Krober, 2011). James also argued that psychology was a practice field and not theoretical as proposed by the structuralist approach. Proponents of functionalism like James explained that it was an objective way of studying the mind instead of looking at the human brain in an introspective manner. There was, however, no scientific way of analyzing the unconscious.
Structuralism shaped psychology as an independent field. It led to experimental psychology. Functionalism led to behaviorisms. It also led to early contributions to measures of behavior. Functionalism looked at the function of behavior instead of looking at the structure of behavior. One would argue the difference between functionalism, and structuralism is in the type of studies. Functionalism focuses on objective studies and proposes it would be wise to study aspects of behavior and the mind regarding function. Structuralism focuses on the human mind and the fundamental elements identified by introspection.
Functionalism is a school of thought centered at both Chicago University and Columbia University. In Chicago University, functionalism was molded into themes. Some of the themes used in Chicago were Psychology involving mind and body relations, functionalism as a psychology of mental operations and psychology involving fundamental consciousness. At Columbia University psychology was dynamic in the sense that it dealt with causal factors and the motivations for behavior and feelings. Woodworth at Columbia put much emphasis on the behavior and the psychological events that cause behavior.
History of Mental Intelligence and testing
The history of intelligence can be traced to the early 1900s when the works of William Stern led to the term intelligent quotient (IQ). The term IQ was used by Alfred Binet and Simon Theodore in 1905. Binet and Simon advanced the first modern intelligence test which was later known as Binet-Simon intelligence scale. The test was adopted by many psychologists from different countries. The early practices were developed in the United States by Lewis Terman and adapted it for use in America (Duckworth et al., 2011; Kaufman, 2009). Terman published the Stanford-Binet IQ test. The test measured intelligence by dividing mental age of the participants with his or her chronological age. The mental age was identified as the age of a group with a similar mean score matching that of the child. Herbert Goddard in the year 1908 translated the Binet-Simon Intelligence scale into English (Fletcher and Hattie, 2011). Goddard made an effort of distributing over 22,000 copies of the Binet-Simon translated scale in the United States.
The next advances were made by Wechsler in 1939 when he published a test for the adult population. The test was known as WAIS (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale). After publication of WAIS, another scale known as WISC was developed for the young people (Kaufman, 2009).
Other contributions were made by Robert Yerks who pioneered the study of the primate and human intelligence. Yerks established the Army’s Alpha and Beta Intelligence Tests.These tests were nonverbal and were used for soldiers in the United States. Charles Spearman studied the general intelligence factor mostly abbreviated as g. According to the theory, in any normal population, the correlation of the IQ and g will be 90%. Such a high score indicates that the IQ and general intelligence of participants have a positive correlation (Kaufman, 2009).
Raymond Cattell published the Culture-Fair intelligent Test to try and separate the genetics and environmental factors. The Cattell test and that of Raven known as progressive Matrices focused on predicting general intelligence instead of measuring the specific skills (Fletcher and Hattie, 2011).
There have been some controversies in the testing of intelligence. The contention is based on the criticisms that accompany the different tests primarily due to their use in the society. One such blame is on the validity of the test. The IQ tests ignore vital aspects of the environment that cause discrepancy to the test scores. In some situations, the participant’s test-skill would be evaluated rather than the intended variable.
Another controversy in intelligent testing is in the use of the tests to predict social outcomes. Even though test scores show some correlation, it does not mean the test can demonstrate a direct causal effect on the predictio...