Applied psychology: the Legacy of functionalism Ms. Wilson

Topics FDA Raid: Target Coca-Cola Mental Testing James McKeen Cattell (1860-1944) The Clinical Psychology -Lightner Witmer (1867-1956) Industrial Organizational- Walter Dill Scott (1869-1955) The Hawthorne Studies and Organizational Issues Hugo Münsterberg (1863-1916)

FDA Raid: Target Coca-Cola Drug bust for a substance that was hazardous and habit-forming (caffeine) Forbidden under new FDA regulations Substance was the syrup base for Coca-Cola Coca-Cola recruits Harry Hollingworth to conduct research Hollingworth insists on high ethical standards Conducted a 40 day research program Involved 64,000 individual measurements Data collected on motor, sensory and mental skills Results: no harmful effects or significant declines in performance were found

Toward a Practical Psychology Wundt’s psychology not suited for American Zeitgeist Structuralism evolved into functionalism Study changes to not what the mind is but what it does Move toward a practical psychology: Applied Psychology

The Growth of American Psychology Between 1880-1900: rapid growth of psychology research and practice in the U.S. Increase in student interest 1893 Chicago World’s Fair: psychology is put on display with research instruments and a demonstration testing laboratory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE1JXHwFU9w America embraced psychology with enthusiasm

Economic Influences on Applied Psychology Job opportunities in academia are quickly being filled, new Ph.D. graduates forced to look beyond university employment Hollingworth shows that psychology can be applied to advertising and has mass appeal Need for psychologists to enter other industries to escape poverty Need to develop the value of psychology (and increase psychologists’ profits)

James McKeen Cattell (1860-1944) Interested in psychology as a result of his own experiments with drugs Conducted experiments on reaction time Studied with Wundt at Leipzig Admired Galton’s emphasis on measurement and statistics Became one of the first American psychologists to stress quantification, ranking, and ratings Developed the order or merit ranking method

James McKeen Cattell (1860-1944) (cont’d.) Interested in Galton’s work in eugenics Argued for the sterilization of delinquents and “defective persons” Argued for offering incentives to healthy, intelligent people if they would intermarry Mental tests of motor skills and sensory capacities (unlike intelligence tests) Cattell coined the term A young boy uses an instrument to measure vital capacity. Vital capacity was believed to be related to intelligence. Archives of the History of American Psychology/University of Akron

The Psychological Testing Movement Alfred Binet (1857–1911): developed the first truly psychological test of mental ability Used more complex measures than those selected by Cattell Disagreed with Galton and Cattell’s approach Believed that assessing cognitive functions would provide a more appropriate measure of intelligence Assessed memory, attention, imagination, and comprehension With Theodore Simon: appointed by French govt., to study learning abilities of children having difficulty in school. Developed the Binet Simon intelligence test This test measured important factors of intelligence rather than lower level abilities involving sensory, motor and perceptual elements

Binet, Terman, and the IQ Test Mental age: the age at which children of average ability can perform certain tasks Binet coined the phrase and developed several tests to measure mental age Lewis M. Terman Studied with Hall Invented a test of the intelligence quotient (IQ): a number denoting a person’s intelligence Determine by the following formula: mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100 Lewis Terman

World War I and Group Testing How do psychologists aid the war effort? Psychological testing applied to the problem of assessing the level of intelligence of great numbers of recruits To classify them and assign them suitable tasks APA President Robert Yerkes and his team adopted the test developed by Otis and developed the Army Alpha and Army Beta. Grouped into Army Alpha and Army Beta (Beta is a is for non-English-speaking or illiterate people) More than one million men were tested Personality tests used when the army expressed interest in separating out neurotic recruits

World War I and Group Testing (cont’d.) After the war: Psychological testing gained the success of public acceptance The public education system in the United States was reorganized around the concept of the intelligence quotient Many psychologists found gainful employment developing and applying psychological tests Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) was introduced in 1926

Racial Differences in Intelligence Henry Goddard wanted to develop a research program at Vineland Training School for the Feeble Minded Coined the term, “moron” Testing of immigrants at Ellis Island indicated that many were mentally retarded Later, research showed that the test favored those familiar with English and the American culture IQ testing showed Blacks had a lower IQ than whites Some thought this meant Blacks were inherently less intelligent Later, evidence showed that IQ differences are environmental, not biological Henry Goddard (1866-1957)

Lightner Witmer (1867-1956) Began the field of clinical psychology Started the world’s first psychology clinic Different from modern clinical psychology Interested in assessing and treating learning and behavioral problems in schoolchildren Offered the first college course on clinical psychology Started the first clinical psychology journal, The Psychological Clinic in 1907. Pioneer of functional psychology Lightner Witmer (1867-1956)

Lightner Witmer (1867-1956) (cont’d.) Clinics for child evaluation: Cases: hyperactivity, learning disabilities, and poor speech and motor development Evaluation: Physical evaluation: emotional and cognitive functioning could be affected by physical problems Social workers gave summary of family history: genetic factors largely responsible for behavioral and cognitive disturbances Later, Witmer realized that environmental factors were important

The Profession of Clinical Psychology Clinical psychology advanced slowly as a profession Changed when the United States entered World War II in 1941 Large numbers of draftees had severe anxieties, depression, antisocial demeanors, uncontrolled anger, and generally unstable psychic presentations Army established training programs for hundreds of clinical psychologists to treat military personnel

The Industrial Organizational Psychology Movement: Walter Dill Scott (1869-1955) The first person to apply psychology to personnel selection, management, and advertising Advertising and human suggestibility: Scott argued that because consumers often do not act rationally, they can be easily influenced Employee selection: Scott devised rating scales and group tests to measure the characteristics of people who were already successful in those occupations Walter Dill Scott (1869-1955)

The Impact of the World Wars World War I: monumental increase in the scope, popularity, and growth of industrial-organizational psychology Evaluated the job qualifications of three million soldiers Demonstrated psychology’s worth World War II: brought psychologists into war work for testing, screening, and classifying recruits Increase in engineering psychology; human engineering

The Hawthorne Studies An investigation of the effects of the physical work environment Results: Social/psychological workplace were much more important than the physical conditions Example: workers were motivated to know that management cared about them and their boss was interested in them as individuals Led to exploration of leadership, work groups, work climate, communication, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7RHjwmVG hs

Hugo Münsterberg (1863-1916) Wrote hundreds of popular magazine articles and almost two dozen books Interest in applied areas: clinical, industrial, and forensic psychology Forensic psychology and eyewitness testimony: psychology and the law Topics: crime prevention, hypnosis to question suspects; mental tests to detect guilty persons; the questionable trustworthiness of eyewitness testimony 1908, On the Witness Stand http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Munster/Witness/ Hugo Münsterberg (1863-1916)

Hugo Münsterberg (1863-1916) (cont’d.) Psychotherapy: Treated patients in his lab using suggestion Believed mental illness was really a behavioral maladjustment problem Industrial psychology: Contributed to: vocational guidance, advertising, personnel management, mental testing, employee motivation, and the effects of fatigue and monotony on job performance Munsterberg and controversy

Applied Psychology in the U.S.: A National Mania End of world wars: applied psychology becomes more respected profession Academic psychology benefited from success of applied psychology during war years People believed psychologists could fix and sell anything Increasing demand to fix real-world problems More popular than academic psychology