Functionalism concerns itself with how psychological phenomena and behavior help someone adjust and accommodate to their surroundings. William James, in his opposition to the structuralists, was more concerned with the psychological functioning rather than the components of consciousness. He was also the first to emphasize applied psychology, with functionalism’s influence noted in educational and evolutionary psychology. For functionalists, the main psychological processes were the reason for advancements in survival. For example, functionalists would view anxiety by understanding the reason it makes a person’s organs ready to deal with a potential threat, rather than simply cataloguing its component parts.
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