User:Jasperd13/sandbox

James Rowland Angell

Background:

Angell was born in Burlington, Vermont on May 8, 1969 to a renowned academic family. He earned his Bachelor's degree in 1890 from the University of Michigan, and studied under John Dewey to receive his Master's in 1891. Angell went to Harvard where he earned a second master's in psychology in 1892, while working with William James. He then went to Berlin and Halle, where he worked toward his doctorate, writing his dissertation on the treatment of freedom in Kant. While in Europe, he attended lectures by Ebbinghaus and Helmholtz. However, he never earned his doctorate for failure to make requested stylistic changes.

Career:

He first took a post at the University of Minnesota, but moved to the University of Chicago after being offered a post by John Dewey. There, he coauthored a paper with his colleague Addison W. Moore that laid the foundations for Functionalism. In 1904, while still at Chicago, Angell published Psychology; An Introductory Study of the Structure and Functions of Human Consciousness. This became a major statement for the functionalist approach to psychology. In 1905, Angell became the head of the newly created department of psychology at the University of Chicago, and the president of the American Psychological Association. During this period, Angell supervised John B. Watson and Harvey Carr. In 1921, he took up presidency at Yale, where he remained until his retirement in 1937.

Contributions to Psychology:

Angell is identified with John Dewey and functional psychology, and he is notable for his three major points about functionalism. First, psychologists should not concern themselves with mental elements themselves. Rather, mental activity should be studied in the context of evolution to deal with the conditions of the current environment. Second, mental functions work as a liaison between an organism's need and its external environment, and consequently aid in the survival of the organism. Third, mental functions cannot and should not be studied separately from behavior. The study of mental functions is only useful in as far as it can describe the relationship between mental function and the environment.

Harvey Carr

Background:

Harvey Carr was born on April 30, 1873. He received his B.S. from the University of Colorado in 1901 and his M.S. in 1902. He worked at the University of Chicago with John Dewey and John B. Watson. He also studied under James Rowland Angell and received his Ph.D. in 1905.

Career:

Carr took over as head of the animal laboratory at Chicago, after John Watson left the post. In 1919, Carr took over as head of the psychology department. Carr began teaching at Chicago in 1926 where he directed the experimental psychology laboratory. He also served as president of the American Psychological Association.

Contributions to Psychology:

In 1907, Carr performed the famous kerplunk experiment with John B. Watson. The experiment, conducted on rats, showed how to turn voluntary motor responses into a conditioned response. In 1925, Carr published Psychology: A Study of Mental Activity. This book was able to organize all of the ideas of the functionalist school of psychology because functionalism was accepted as the current school of thought. Additionally, with Carr as department head, the psychology department at Chicago awarded 150 doctoral degrees between the years 1919 and 1938.

Helen Bradford Thompson Woolley

Background:

Helen Bradford Thompson was born on November 6, 1874 in Englewood, Illinois. She received her Bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1897. In 1900, Thompson graduated from the University of Chicago with her Ph.D. in experimental psychology. Her dissertation was the first to study differences between the sexes.

Career:

In 1901, Thompson took up a teaching position at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. In 1905, she left her post to marry Paul Gerhardt Woolley, MD, and Thompson adopted the name Helen Thompson Woolley. In 1921, Woolley moved to the Merrill-Palmer School in Detroit, Michigan. Here she co-developed the Merrill-Palmer Mental Scale for Children. In 1926, Woolley moved to the Child Welfare Institute of the Teacher's College at Columbia University. In 1930, Woolley resigned from the Teacher's College due to a serious mental breakdown from which she never recovered.

Contributions:

Woolley's dissertation was the first study to challenge Darwin's claim that women were biologically inferior to men. The study compared the motor abilities, sensory thresholds, intellectual abilities, and personality traits of men and women, finding men superior in some aspects and women in others. From this study, Woolley then became one of the earliest psychologists to claim that environment and society played a significant role in the formation personality. She also co-developed the Merrill-Palmer Mental Scale for Children.

James McKeen Cattell

Background:

James McKeen Cattell was born on May 25, 1860 in Easton, Pennsylvania. In 1883, Cattell graduated with an M.A. from Lafayette College. Francis Andrew March, a philologist was a significant influence on Cattell during this time period. Cattell moved to Germany for his graduate studies, where he studied under Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig and Hermann Lotze at the University of Gottingen. Cattell received his Ph.D. under Wundt in 1886, and he was the first American to publish a dissertation in psychology. Cattell was willing to go against conventions, as evident by his experimental use of hashish.

Career:

After received his Ph.D., Cattell took up a teaching post at the University of Cambridge. In 1889, he took up a teaching position at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1891, he moved to the University of Columbia were he took up the position of head of the department of psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. He was also president of the American Psychological Association.

Contributions to Psychology:

Cattell was the first American psychologist to emphasize the statistical analysis of quantifiable results. He worked hard to establish psychology as a hard science that could be separated into individual, measurable units. Cattell was also one of the earliest proponents of mental tests. To him, tests of intelligence and cognitive ability on large numbers of people were a way to make psychology measurable. Probably his single greatest contribution to American psychology was Cattell's work as an ambassador of psychology. He worked to promote the applications of psychology to make the field more relevant.