Functionalism
What is Functionalism?
Functionalism is a school of thought proposed by William James, which suggests that the mind’s primary purpose is to help humans adapt to their environment. This approach emphasizes the overall function of the brain in fulfilling practical needs, rather than analyzing its separate components.
The Basic Idea
It posits that our mental states and behaviors are survival mechanisms, in line with our inherent biological goals. Sound like evolution? That’s because functionalism, or functional psychology, stems directly from Darwin’s school of thought, emerging in the late 19th century as a counter to the prevailing theory of structuralism. Unlike structuralism, which tries to simply understand our subjective experience of consciousness, functionalism also aims to find meaning and purpose in what we experience.
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
– William James, American Psychologist
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.
