Women in Psychology

Question 1

Dr. Ethel Williams

Answer 1

1906 - First female doctor in Newcastle upon Tyne; First woman to open a medical practice in Newcastle
1917 - Co-founded Northern Women’s hospital

Question 2

Mary Whiton Calkins (1863-1930)

Answer 2

• Instructed at Wellesley College (newly formed women’s university with only women instructors)
  1890 - Offered a position in Experimental Psychology
• Allowed to study under James at Harvard but not as a registered student -> All other students dropped so she was the only remaining student of Principles of Psychology
• Wrote a paper on associative learning
• Given an unofficial PhD (she was refused a PhD by Harvard despite being one of the strongest psychologists in the country)
  1905 - First woman to be elected president of APA
• Offered a PhD by Radcliffe College but refused on the grounds that was not where she had studied
• Opened the first women laboratory (12yrs after Wundt); first lab to be founded by a woman at a women university to be filled with women studying and conducting experiments

Question 3

Explain associative learning

Answer 3

• Examines stimulus-response learning
• Underpinned by two separate cognitive processes:
  *Learning that a response is paired with a stimulus
  *Forming an association between stimulus-response pair

Question 4

Margaret Floy Washburn (1871-1939)

Answer 4

1894 - First woman to receive a PhD, at Cornell University in 1894
1922 - Second female president of the APA
- Translated Wundt’s work into English
- Emphasized the importance of comparative psychology and studying the behaviour of animals
- Studied under Cattell (only allowed to audit classes) -> recommended to move to Cornell which offered her a scholarship and gave her a PhD
- Titchener’s first graduate student
- Her PhD thesis was published by Wundt

Question 5

What were Margaret Washburn’s contributions to psychology?

Answer 5

• Published a book called ‘Animals Minds’ which explored topics such as animal consciousness
• Comparative psychology (researching animal minds as a way to understand humans)
• Social consciousness
• Emotional processes
• Argued that the study of minds and mental states is crucial to understanding behaviour

Question 6

Beatrice Edgell (1871-1948)

Answer 6

• First British woman to receive a Psychology PhD, at the University of Würzburg (1901)
• Wrote and defended her dissertation in German
• First woman professor of Psychology in Britain
• First woman president of the BPS

Question 7

Inez Beverly Prosser (1895-1934)

Answer 7

• First African-American woman to be awarded a PhD in Psychology (Educational Psychology)
• Dissertation research: Self-esteem and personality variables in matched pairs of African-American middle-school children. With half the children attending segregated schools and the other half attending integrated schools
• Concluded: Racist environments in integrated schools worsened outcomes for black children -> Until bias and racism were shifted, they were better off in segregated schools

Question 8

Ruth Winifred Howard (1900-1997)

Answer 8

• One of the first women of colour to receive a PhD
• Recorded developmental data from 229 sets of triplets
• Importance of inherited factors