Chapter 7: American Psychological Science and Practice Between The World Wars

Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)

argued against the idea that intelligence is solely inherited and criticized psychologists for being too confident when talking about something as important as intelligence.

The Psychologists’ League and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI)

two new organizations developed by younger psychologists who didnt feel supported by the APA

George Ellery Hale (1868-1938) and James Rowland Angell (1869-1949)

scientists who were in favor of an ethos of collaboration and cooperative research to increase productivity and efficiency of scientific work

neobehaviorism

relations between stimuli and responses were lawful and indicate how organisms adapt and learn

Oswald Külpe (1862-1915)

developed an experimental psychology based on positivism, thus redefining psychology to focus on observed things rather than internal mental states

(Percy Bridgman [1882-1961])

developed operationism; argued that each construct introduced by scientists should be specified in terms of how its measured

operational definition (Bridgman)

the set of methods or techniques used to measure the construct

Ernst Mach (1838-1916)

developed logical positivism; argued that all scientific constructs had to be linked to observable events

nursery school movement

lead to pre/kindergarden schools being established in university centers to become laboratories for the scientific study of children

social Darwinism

argued that competition—among individuals, corporations, nations—was the way the real world worked and that those who won were best adapted to the conditions of the day

Gordon Allport (1897-1967)

brought the term personality into regular use by academic psychologists and into the research domain of the field.

Hawthorne effect (Elton Mayo [1880-1949])

the idea that improved lighted had little effect on worker productivity, but increased attention paid to the workers

group fallacy (Floyd Allport)

the idea that social behavior wasn’t reducible to the sum of its individual parts

field theory (Kurt Lewin [1890-1947])

the idea that the effects of specific stimuli had little meaning unless they were considered in the context of the situation they were a part of

action research (Lewin)

attempted to work with participants in the research to generate data and use the results for social change