James, William (January 11, 1842, New York - August 16, 1910, Chocorua, New Hampshire) - American philosopher and psychologist, one of the founders and prominent exponents of pragmatism and functionalism. The older brother of the writer Henry James. From 1878 to 1890, James wrote his “Principles of Psychology,” in which he rejected the atomism of German psychology and put forward the task of studying concrete facts and states of consciousness, rather than data located “in” consciousness. James viewed consciousness as an individual stream in which the same sensations or thoughts never appear twice. James considered selectivity to be one of the important characteristics of consciousness. In James's view, consciousness is a function that "in all likelihood, like other biological functions, evolved because it is useful." Based on this adaptive nature of consciousness, he assigned an important role to instincts and emotions, as well as individual physiological characteristics of a person. James's theory of emotions, put forward in 1884, became widespread. In 1892, James founded the first laboratory of applied psychology in the United States at Harvard University. The theory of personality, developed by him in one of the chapters of Psychology, had a significant influence on the formation of personology in the USA.