Tag: History of Psychology

Book review: FREUD’S PATIENTS: A BOOK OF LIVES

Mar 7, 2022Russell T. Warnebook review, case studies, Freud's Patients: A Book of Lives, History of Psychology, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, psychoanalysis, scientific fraud, Sigmund Freud

I came away from the book with a taste of how profoundly evil Freud was.

1930s environmentalism in the IQ debate

Aug 15, 2021Russell T. WarneHistory of Psychology, human variability, In the Know: Debunking 35 Myths About Human Intelligence, intelligence

It is clear that the pre-war views of intelligence and race were not guided blindly by racism.

Book review: Gina Perry’s THE LOST BOYS

Jun 27, 2021Russell T. Warnebooks, Gina Perry, History of Psychology, replication crisis, social psychology, Stanford Prison Experiment, The Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif's Robbers Cave Experiment

One of social psychology’s “classic” studies is the Robbers Cave experiment, conducted in the summer of 1954. In that study, 22 white American boys were divided into two teams at an experimental summer camp at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma.

In praise of Sandra Scarr

Mar 11, 2021Russell T. Warneheritability, History of Psychology, human variability, intelligence, IQ, politics, Sandra Scarr

Given the impressive level of her empirical accomplishments, it should not be surprising that her theoretical accomplishments are also worth remembering.

Book review: Victoria F. Nourse’s IN RECKLESS HANDS

Jan 14, 2021Russell T. Warnebehavioral genetics, books, Buck v. Bell, crime, David Hume, Eleanor Roosevelt, eugenics, genome-wide association studies, Harlan F. Stone, History of Psychology, human rights, In Reckless Hands: Skinner v. Oklahoma and the near triumph of American eugenics, legal issues, Nazi Germany, philosophy of science, presentism, Skinner v. Oklahoma, Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, Victoria F. Nourse

Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942) was a U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled unanimously that Oklahoma’s law permitting the compulsory sterilization of “habitual offenders” in prisons was unconstitutional. This ruling came just 15 years after the infamous Buck v. Bell (1927), in which the court 8-1 ruled the exact opposite in regards to a woman who was supposedly “feeble-minded” (to use the terminology of the time).

The lost intelligence tests

Sep 23, 2020Russell T. WarneClaude Bastiat, Flynn effect, History of Psychology, intelligence testing, IQ testing, standardized tests

Last year, I co-authored an article with my student where we identified the first known publication of the subtests that appear on the Stanford-Binet 5, the WPPSI-IV, WISC-V, and WAIS-IV (Gibbons & Warne, 2019). Much to our suprise, we found that the majority of subtest formats on these popular intelligence tests were created by 1908.…

Discovery of IQ scores for conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton

Aug 3, 2020Russell T. WarneArmy Beta, case studies, conjoined twins, Daisy and Violet Hilton, digit span, History of Psychology, intelligence testing, personality testing

Archival research can sometimes be very surprising. I experienced this firsthand last week when I doing some research for a manuscript that I am coauthoring with a colleague. I was reading some historical scientific articles when I stumbled upon a book chapter entitled “A Study of a Pair of Siamese Twins” (Koch, 1928). Of course,…

Jolly’s A HISTORY OF AMERICAN GIFTED EDUCATION: An essential resource

May 7, 2020Russell T. WarneA History of American Gifted Education, books, gifted education, history of education, History of Psychology, Jennifer Jolly, Leta S. Hollingworth, Lewis Terman

The latest book that I’ve finished is A History of American Gifted Education (Jolly, 2018), a lively tome that should be required reading for any graduate student or scholar in the field. Jennifer is a colleague, and we are guest co-editors on a special issue for a journal, and I am one of her associate…

Leta Hollingworth was a eugenicist, too

Apr 21, 2020Russell T. Warneeugenics, genetic fallacy, gifted education, history of education, History of Psychology, Leta S. Hollingworth, Lewis Terman

Leta Hollingworth is one of the pioneers of gifted education. She was the first to create a research-based special curriculum for gifted children, and she was much more interested in the social and emotional development of gifted children than anyone else in the field at the time. Although neglected after her death, Hollingworth’s reputation made…

Intelligence research: An example of Thomas Kuhn’s “normal science”

Feb 10, 2020Russell T. WarneHistory of Psychology, In the Know: Debunking 35 Myths About Human Intelligence, philosophy of science, psychology, Thomas S. Kuhn

Psychology is a mess. And I don’t say that because of the consequences of the replication crisis. No, compared to biology and the physical sciences, psychology is a mess because it has no unifying theory. Biology has evolutionary theory as a powerful framework for understanding everything from ecology to genetics. Chemistry has atomic theory, which…