Functionalism was the psychological school of thought that followed Structuralism and moved away from focusing on the structure of the mind to a concern with how the conscious is related to behavior… How does the mind affect what people do One of the major proponents of Functionalism was Thorndike (created the ever-popular puzzle box) who studied the primary issue of functionalism…WHAT FUNCTION DOES A BEHAVIOR HAVE. In addition, this school of thought focused on observable events as opposed to unobservable events (like what goes on in someone’s mind).