THE BIOLOGIST AS PSYCHOLOGIST: HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN'S EARLY MENTAL ABILITY INVESTIGATIONS

Abstract

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.

Thinking in multitudes: Questionnaires and composite cases in early American psychology

“…The undertaking of research within laboratory spaces, the training of students in experimental practices, and the establishment of psychology laboratories were all key features of the discipline’s early development (Capshew, 1992; Coon, 1993; Kroker, 2003). And yet, as has been argued elsewhere (Young, 2012a, 2014), the earliest years of scientific psychology involved as much non-experimental as experimental practice. This is perhaps best exemplified in the proliferation of questionnaire research during this period (Young, 2012a, 2012b, 2016).…”

“…And yet, as has been argued elsewhere (Young, 2012a, 2014), the earliest years of scientific psychology involved as much non-experimental as experimental practice. This is perhaps best exemplified in the proliferation of questionnaire research during this period (Young, 2012a, 2012b, 2016).…”

“…Questionnaires, in contrast, were often distributed widely amongst the public. In the process, they generated information on the mental lives of a diverse array of individuals, and this data could then be used to interrogate a variety of forms of difference between groups, including differences based on gender, race, nationality, age, and other characteristics (see Young, 2012a). Detecting differences between groups in this way was simply impossible in the context of experimentation undertaken with a homogeneous body of participants.…”

An exploratory digital analysis of the early years of G. Stanley Hall’s American Journal of Psychology and Pedagogical Seminary.

“…'" Other terms used, at times, synonymously with questionnaire during this period include topical syllabi and census (see Young, 2012). vatiotial accounts provided by school teachers and teachers in training of their pupils; for instance, Herman Lukens's (1896) study of children's drawings.…”

Numbering the mind

“…The systematized use of ranking to construct scaled questionnaires was novel, but the employment of ranking as a means of organizing information was far from original. Earlier psychological questionnaires also employed ordered rankings, but to less systematic ends (see Young, 2012b, 2014). Perhaps most notably, psychologist James McKeen Cattell’s American Men of Science project, which was precipitated by the newly founded Carnegie Institution’s desire to identify exceptional scientists to whom it could funnel money, used rankings as a means of ordering pre-eminent scientists in various fields (Godin, 2007).…”