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HS-08-ApplyingPsychology1week7.pptxContemporary Issues: Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology
Unit 8
Applying the New Psychology
Desire for Application of Psych
E. W. Scripture: Thinking, Feeling, Doing (1895)
Focus: Exp Psych for General Public
PhD w/ Wundt (1891); later medicine (1906)
Hall brought to Clark (1 yr), then Yale (Exp. Psych Lab)
Co-founded APA with Hall (1892)
Fired from Yale (1903) due to argument re: nature of psych
Columbia Med Sch (1915-1919): Speech & Language
Rest of life in UK & Vienna
Basic laboratory findings had real-world relevance
e.g., RT to help fencers
e.g., Combo psychoanalytic with exercise approaches to the correction of speech problems (most work was in speech) i.e., stuttering of emotional origin
Application of Psychology
Context
American Pragmatism
Pierce, Dewey, and James (late 19th & early 20th centuries); meaning of any idea is a function of its practical outcome.
Personal: Low pay for professors; needed additional income streams
Convincing U admin of the need for laboratory budgets
More experimental psychologists being produced than laboratory positions available
The Mental Testing Movement
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)
Memory; learning curve; forgetting; perception
Nonsense Syllables; Forgetting Curve
1st Standard Research Report: introduction, methods, results, discussion section
Completion test: abilities of children via sentence completion
More academic relevance than two-point thresholds
Alfred Binet (1857-1911)
Charcot (hypnotism); developmental; educational & social psych
Individual psychology
1904: French Gov: create a test to ID students needing alt. education
The Binet-Simon scales (1905, 1908, 1911) (Simon was B’s student)
“Normal” standardized by 10 children from each of 5 age groups
Mental levels
Débile scoring at two mental levels below normal
Stressed test limitations
Intelligence malleable
Mental “orthopedics”
Mental Testing In America
Henry H. Goddard (1866-1957)
PhD from Clark (with G. S. Hall) in 1899
Vineland Training School for Feeble-Minded Girls and Boys (NJ)
Secures Binet scales (1908)
translates, first use in U.S.
Diagnostic scheme
Idiot mental age 1-2
Imbecile mental age 3-7
Moron mental age 8-12
Term invented by Goddard
Goddard cause was heredity
Vineland as ideal for those labeled morons
Isolate from society
Prevent breeding
Eugenics (very popular in Amer)
The Kallikak Family
Goddard’s Research Was 2 Tiered
Binet-Simon Measuring Scale
Observe & question feeble-minded children at home to learn what they could (300 families)
Discovered two general lines descended from Martin K.
2 women (Quaker wife; affair w/"feeble-minded" barmaid)
“bad” side high percentage of feeblemindedness
“good” side virtually no feeblemindedness
Goddard feeblemindedness therefore inherited
Methodological problems
Effect of preconceived biases on data interpretation
The Kallikak Family
Q: What other things might be involved?
- Poor mistress & opportunities, nutrition, medical care, etc.
Mental Testing & Immigration
Concern over change in immigration patterns
Before 1892 – more from western and northern Europe
After1892 – more from southern and eastern Europe
1913 Goddard @ Ellis Island to detect morons in the immigrant population
Intelligence Classification of Immigrants of Different Nationalities (1917)
Most Ellis Island immigrants were mentally feeble-minded (many sent back)
80% of Hungarians - 83% of Jew
79% of Italians - 87% of Russians
The Immigration Restriction Act, passed in 1924 (till 1965)
Late 1920s, Goddard reversed opinions,
question the validity of the tests
morons could be educated
Feeble-minded should be allowed children
Lewis M. Terman (1877-1956)
Ph.D. Clark 1905; Stanford 1910 - 1942
Created & standardized Stanford-Binet test (1916)
Institutionalized IQ concept (from Stern in Germany)
[Mental age / Chronological age] x 100
Implied unitary concept of intelligence
Believed intelligence, measured by IQ, was inherited
Helped create group test for Army & schools
Longitudinal study of giftedness (1921) IQ=135+
1st long, large group study (n=1500)
Meritocracy
Study outlived Terman
Low attrition rates
White, middle class overrepresented
Outcome Questioned traditional concept of gifted student as bright but socially inept and prone to burnout
Leta Hollingworth (1886-1939)
Columbia
Masters: got job giving Binet Test; PhD in 1916 (with Thorndike)
Researched sex differences
Variability Hypothesis
Hyp: males had more variability than females
Females in middle of IQ
Males more in higher & lower ends
Looked at 1,000 patients no variance differences
Suggest societal expectations
Mental Incapacity During Menstruation (Dissertation)
Hyp: females incapacitated during menstruation
studied perform q3 days x 3 mo no evidence for effect
Pioneer in gifted education (Best known for this)
Gifted Children: Their Nature and Nurture (1925)
First textbook in gifted education
Favored enrichment rather than grade acceleration
Robert M. Yerkes (1876-1956)
Harvard Ph.D. 1902 – comparative psychology
cognitive diff between primates & humans is qualitative
Primates had less cultural influences so better to study
Yerkes Primate Center (Atlanta) named for him
Proposed and organized Army testing program (1917-19)
Army Alpha (verbal test): for literate soldiers
e.g., commands, analogies, disarranged sentences
Basis of the SATs
Army Beta (non-verbal test): for illiterate soldiers
e.g., picture completion, digit-symbol
1.7 million soldiers tested
minimal effect on war, but testing big business in postwar era
Controversial report:
Average mental age of 13
Darker people less intell; fairer more intell (e.g., B 10.4; Ital 11)
Nation in trouble? Or bad tests?
Terman: “There is nothing about an individual as important as his IQ”
Lippmann (New Republic) 1922 – Criticized Studies
conditions of IQ testing, bias, social problems.
Applying Psychology to Business
Walter Dill Scott (1869-1955)
Ph.D. with Wundt; Prof @ NW
Psychology applied to advertising
The Theory and Practice of Advertising 1903
Urged appeals to emotion (humans not very rational)
Hugo Münsterberg (1863-1916)
Ph.D. with Wundt; also MD; Prof @ Freiburg
1892 – James brought to U.S. to run Harvard lab
Soon developed interests in applied psychology
Forensic psychology
On the Witness Stand (1908)
Therapy (psychophysical parallelism)
Psychotherapy (1909)
I/O Psych
Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913)
Münsterberg’s “Economic Psychology”
“Our aim is to sketch the outlines of a new science, which is to intermediate between the modern laboratory psychology and the problem of economics.”
Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913)
find the best possible man
to produce the best possible work
to secure the best possible effects.
Employee selection
“selection of those personalities which by their mental qualities are especially fit for a particular kind of economic work”
Simulation strategy (Boston Elevated Railway)
Procedure created that captured essence of the task
Better drivers outscored poor drivers
Job analysis strategy (Telephone operators)
Job analyzed into specific cognitive skills
Tests developed for each (e.g., memory, attention)
Other Leading Industrial Psychologists
Walter Van Dyke Bingham (1880-1952)
Carnegie Institute Division of Applied Psychology (Pitts, PA)
Address problems of Pitt. companies
e.g., Bureau of Salesmanship Research
e.g,. Research Bureau for Retail Training
Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878-1972)
Time and motion studies with husband (uneducated businessman)
Pioneer in ergonomics
Mother of 12 (movie: Cheaper by the Dozen about her)
Harry Hollingworth (1880-1956) - Married to Leta Hollingworth
Prototype of psychologist trained as experimentalist but forced by circumstances to be an applied psychologist (needed $)
Coca-Cola study
Lawsuit: Pure food & drug act: effects of caffeine
Found no sig, effect
The Psychology of Functional Neurosis (1920)-PTSD
One of 1st books on Clinical Psych
Applied Psychology in Europe Psychotechnics
WWI: many killed; infrastructure destroyed
Russian revolution
Wartime application in WWI became peacetime applications in the 1920s
Münsterberg a pioneer, as was Stern (coined the term)
Prior work on physio on fatigue, etc
Main activity was employee selection
U.S. – greater use of paper-and-pencil tests
Europe – greater use of simulations with elaborate apparatus
Validation problems
