8 Flashcards
The importance of the FDA Raid on Coca-Cola
- Demonstrated that sound experimental research could be funded by a big corporate entity without prejudicing the results.
- Demonstrated that psychologists could have successful careers in applied psych without challenging their professional integrity
- The Hollingworths took over 64,000 individual measurements, and it paid for Leta to go to grad school
Psychology grew tremendously from 1880-1900- How?
- grew from 0-41 labs, and they were better equipped than Germany’s labs
- grew from 0-3 American journals
- People used to go to Germany to study psych but now there were 40 American PhD programs so people could stay at home
- Over 100 psych PhDs were awarded
- Journal articles were now mostly written in English instead of German
- Who’s Who in Science stated that the US had the most leading psychologists, more than Germany, England, and France combined.
20 years after its founding in Europe, U.S. assumes undisputed leadership- how?
- Student interest + required psych course
- Growing number of labs
- Immediate and avid interest of the public
- Psychologists popularizing psychology to the public: Psych lab at the world fair where people could have their sensory capabilities measured
- It was just the right environment and Zeitgeist, the American spirit was fitting for psych
Contextual forces that compelled applied psychology
- The number of people with psych PhD’s had increased, and they had to find a way to apply their skills that was economically beneficial
- Psych was less popular with administrators than students, and therefore received less funding. To increase budgets and salaries they had to demonstrate its practicality
- education had become big business, and psychologists realized that was where they could apply psych
James McKeen Cattell
(1860-1944) Mental testing!
- Studied under Wundt and Gall.
- Galton provided him with his primary goal of measuring individual psychological differences
- 1st to teach statistical analysis of experimental results.
- Organized the Psychological Corporation to provide psychological services to industry
Mental Tests
Tests of motor skills and mental capacities: Cattell
- To make psych more like the physical sciences, Cattell believed we needed to apply a series of mental tests to a large number of individuals
- Similar to Galton’s tests, Cattell’s tests dealt with elementary sensorimotor measurements
- He correlated test scores with measures of academic performance, but the correlations were disappointingly low
- He concluded that tests of sensory and motor abilities were not valid predictors of college achievement or intellectual ability
Cattell’s influence on American psychology
- linked psych to the greater scientific community
- active in promoting psych through lectures, journals, and promoting practical applications
- organizer, executive, and administrator of psychology science and practice
- built on Galton’s work
- reinforced the functionalist movement (mental tests, individual differences, promotion of applied psych)
Alfred Binet
1857-1911 –
- initiated era of modern intelligence testing
- believed assessing cognitive processes would provide a more appropriate measure of intelligence than sensorimotor abilities
- Binet and Simon worked together to develop an intelligence test for French schoolchildren
- Binet later introduced the concept of mental age.
Terman
- developed the Stanford-Binet version of the test that is now used
- adopted the concept of the intelligence quotient, the ratio between mental and chronological age
How does War play a role in the testing movement?
- The army needed to assess the intelligence of large numbers of recruits in order to assign them to suitable tasks.
- needed tests that could evaluate multiple people at once and were simple to administer.
- These tests advanced psychology’s stature publicity; became prototypes for later tests
- Inspired the development and application of group testing for personality characteristics
Army tests
- Yerkes - Army Alpha and Army Beta
- Personal data sheet – group army test to weed out neurotic recruits
Henry Goddard
Ellis Island, 1912
- public concern that the Doctors at Ellis Island were not weeding out mentally retarded immigrants.
- Goddard visits Ellis island and suggests that psychologists conduct examinations using his translation of the Binet test.
- The evidence from these tests was used to support legislation restricting immigration of racial and ethnic groups assumed to have inferior intelligence.
Horace Mann Bond
1904-1972
- Published books and articles arguing that the differences in IQ between blacks and whites were a result of environment rather than intelligence. -Demonstrated that blacks from northern states scored higher on intelligence tests than whites from southern states.
- Severely damaged the argument that blacks were genetically inferior.
The Bell Curve
1994 Herrnstein and Murray
Contributions of Women to the testing movement:
Florence Goodenough
- Ph.D. from Stanford
- Draw-a-Man test, widely used nonverbal intelligence test for children.
- Pioneer in test construction