William James & Psychology questions with verified solution

William James & Psychology.William James -Trained as a physician and taught philosophy -Established the first teaching lab in America (1875) -Thought introspection was useless -Sought to discover how consciousness was fundamental to human survival -Wrote Principles of Psychology (still used today) -Stream of consciousness -Selective attention Determinism -Every event, action, and decision results from something independent of the human will -Things happen in order, because the have happened in the past -Events are predictable -Except we have free will... James' Functionalism -Collected mental phenomena and then tried to account for them in terms of how they serve us (like darwin) THINK ADAPTION -Assumption: mental life is something that we can access directly and is conscious -Conscious activities are the result of a brain working in an environment -Sought to understand the functions of consciousness through learning motivations and attention Characterizing Mental Life -Purposeful and willful -Exhibits intentionality -Something we are aware of -Private, personal, and unique -Always changing -Continuous -Selective, attentive, and interested Stream of Consciousness -We feel things/experience things because we choose to focus on those things and not the infinite number of other things going on in and around us -Against breaking down consciousness into separate parts, but viewed it as a stream -Sought to discover the role of consciousness to human survival Selective Attention -Choosing what to be consciously aware of out of our worlds -Certain attention of different parts of consciousness Habit -Neural pathways fire automatically in appropriate situations -Maintains social order/preserves status quo -How you're raised is how you are going to be (determinism) -Because they are neurally ingrained they are difficult to change Free Will -You can predict things (determinism, things happen in order) -Determinism is for methodology, but free will exists -We are free to live as if we are free -What we attend to is our reality Theory of Emotion (James-Lange Theory) -Bodily changes result from the perception of a situation -Recognition of the bodily changes produce subjective feelings/emotions -Emotion: stimulus - autonomic arousal - conscious feeling (fear)