Andrew S. Winston WOOLLEY, HELEN THOMPSON (1874-1947).American psychologist. Woolley contributed to several fields within psychology, including psychology of women, child development, child assessment, and child psychology. Her work often is not well known, but it has had obvious effects in the aforementioned fields. Woolley's belief that environment was of more consequence than innate abilities and traits resonated throughout her life's work.Woolley attended the University of Chicago under the tutelage of James Roland Angell, James H. Tufts, and John Dewey. She was a distinguished student (Rossiter, 1982), and in 1900 she became the first woman to receive a doctorate in psychology from the University of Chicago (Rosenberg, 1982). Her doctoral dissertation, "Psychological Norms in Men and Women," was published as a book entitled The Mental Traits of Sex: A n Experimental Investigation of the Normal Mind in Men and Women (Chicago, 1903). This study was the first to use scientific investigation to support the contention that males and females are biologically complementary, in contrast to the prevailing belief of that time, that males were innately, biologically superior to females (Stevens & Gardner, 1982). Woolley's results led her to conclude that men and women were more alike than different and that socioenvironmental factors (e.g., child-rearing practices, parentaUsocieta1 expectations for boys versus girls, and the different opportunities for experiences available to each gender) were largely responsible for the restricted range of personal and professional achievements then made by women. Her evidence and conclusions laid the groundwork for the field known as the psychology of women and became the basis for other studies in that field, notably those of Leta Stetter Hollingworth.Most of Woolley's career as a psychologist was devoted to the many facets of child psychology. Her interest in this field appears to have been sparked by the birth of her fist daughter in I907 and by her ardent observations of her daughter's activities. Woolley wrote numerous articles about child development from psychophysiological, behavioral, and personality perspectives. Her work in this area influenced the professional Elizabeth Murdoch James WORD-ASSOCATION TEST. See Projective Techniques: Testing: and the biography of lung.
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