Bentley studied psychology at the University of Nebraska. He also studied under Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig during the AY1886-1887, later taking his bachelor’s degree in 1895. He then commenced graduate work at Cornell University under the supervision of Edward B. Titchener, receiving his Doctor of Philosophy in 1899.
The Bentleys were from Upstate New York, the town of Warners northeast of Syracuse. Harry Kirke Wolfe was his mentor. Teaching at Cornell, Bentley was elevated to assistant professor in 1902.
Chairman of the Psychology Department in 1910.
He left Cornell for Illinois in 1912. During the First World War, he conducted United States. Army Air Corps research on the ear.
In 1928, Bentley returned to Cornell and became Titchener’s successor as the Sage Professor of Psychology and Chairman of the Psychology Department. Bentley opposed both the behaviorism and mentalism movements of psychology.
In his view, psychological functions were different.
They surmounted a distinction between the organism and the environment. The environment was absorbed by the organism. Research into psychological functions ought to describe the functions modes and derivations.
At the University Nebraska, Madison tapped into the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity.
