The Biologist as Psychologist

Henry Fairfield Osborn's Early Mental Ability Investigations

Bibliographic Data

ID4755263
AuthorsJ L Young (0000-0002-1579-5569, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume48
Issue3
Pages197-217
Publication date2012-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-5061 • E-ISSN: 1520-6696
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/jhbs.21547
PMID22589139
OpenAlexW1558903168
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited81

In the early 1880s, biologist Henry Fairfield Osborn conducted some of the first questionnaire research in American psychology. This article details how he came to distribute Francis Galton's questionnaire on mental imagery in the United States, as well as how he altered it to suit his own burgeoning psychological research interests. The development and circulation of questionnaires at the very beginning of American scientific psychology, first by Osborn and later by G. Stanley Hall, is discussed in terms of the new psychology's often-overlooked methodological plurality. Further, Osborn's late nineteenth century interest in individual variation and group differences in mental imagery ability are discussed in relation to his pervasive educational and social concerns, as well as his eventual status as a prominent eugenicist in the twentieth century United States. This research into mental imagery ability foreshadows the eugenic-oriented intelligence testing that developed in the early twentieth century

Biologist · Eugenics · Galton's problem · History of psychology · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Psychological research · Relation (database) · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology

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