Question

Who is the American psychologist who proposed the functionalist approach and whose textbook, Principles of Psychology, dominated the field of psychology for the fifty years after its publication?

a.
Sigmund Freud
c.
Abraham Maslow
b.
B.F. Skinner
d.
William James

Answer 1

Option (d), William James is the American psychologist who proposed the functionalist approach and wrote the textbook 'Principles of Psychology', which greatly influenced psychology.

Step-by-step explanation:

The American psychologist who proposed the functionalist approach and authored the influential textbook Principles of Psychology is William James. His work focused on how mental activities served as adaptive responses to an organism's environment and helped it fit into its environment.

While similar to Wilhelm Wundt in using introspection, James also employed more objective measures, including various recording devices, and his perspective became known as functionalism. Functionalism emphasized the operation of the whole mind rather than its individual parts, a departure from the focus of structuralism.