Robert Sessions Woodworth (October 17, 1869 – July 4, 1962) was an American academic
psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...
and the creator of the
personality test
A personality test is a method of assessing human personality constructs. Most personality assessment instruments (despite being loosely referred to as "personality tests") are in fact introspective (i.e., subjective) self-report questionnaire ( ...
which
bears his name. A graduate of Harvard and Columbia, he studied under
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
along with other prominent psychologists as
Leta Stetter Hollingworth
Leta Stetter Hollingworth (25 May 1886 – 27 November 1939) was an American psychologist, educator, and feminist. Hollingworth also made contributions in psychology of women; clinical psychology; and educational psychology. She is best known for ...
,
James Rowland Angell
James Rowland Angell (; May 8, 1869 – March 4, 1949) was an American psychologist and educator who served as the 16th President of Yale University between 1921 and 1937. His father, James Burrill Angell (1829–1916), was president of the Un ...
, and
Edward Thorndike
Edward Lee Thorndike (August 31, 1874 – August 9, 1949) was an American psychologist who spent nearly his entire career at Teachers College, Columbia University. His work on comparative psychology and the learning process led to the theory o ...
. His textbook ''Psychology: A study of mental life'', which appeared first in 1921, went through many editions and was the first introduction to psychology for generations of undergraduate students. His 1938 textbook of
experimental psychology
Experimental psychology refers to work done by those who apply experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ human participants and animal subjects to study a great many topics, in ...
was scarcely less influential, especially in the 1954 second edition, written with
Harold H. Schlosberg
Harold Schlosberg (January 3, 1904 – August 5, 1964) was an American psychologist who was professor of psychology at Brown University from 1928 until the end of his life. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y, Schlosberg earned his Bachelor's (1925) and Ph ...
. He is known for introducing the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) formula of behavior. A ''
Review of General Psychology
''Review of General Psychology'' is the quarterly scientific journal of the American Psychological Association Division 1: The Society for General Psychology. The journal publishes cross-disciplinary psychological articles that are conceptual, th ...
'' survey, published in 2002, ranked Woodworth as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with
John Garcia
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Second E ...
,
James J. Gibson
James Jerome Gibson (; January 27, 1904 – December 11, 1979) was an American psychologist and is considered to be one of the most important contributors to the field of visual perception. Gibson challenged the idea that the nervous system ...
,
David Rumelhart
David Everett Rumelhart (June 12, 1942 – March 13, 2011) was an American psychologist who made many contributions to the formal analysis of human cognition, working primarily within the frameworks of mathematical psychology, symbolic artif ...
,
Louis Leon Thurstone
Louis Leon Thurstone (29 May 1887 – 29 September 1955) was an American pioneer in the fields of psychometrics and psychophysics. He conceived the approach to measurement known as the law of comparative judgment, and is well known for his cont ...
, and
Margaret Floy Washburn
Margaret Floy Washburn (July 25, 1871 – October 29, 1939), leading American psychologist in the early 20th century, was best known for her experimental work in ethology, animal behavior and motor theory development. She was the first woman to ...
.
Early life
Woodworth was born in
Belchertown, Massachusetts
Belchertown (previously known as Cold Spring and Belcher's Town) is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 15,350 at the 2020 census ...
on October 17, 1869. His father was a Congregationalist minister who had graduated from
Yale College
Yale College is the undergraduate college of Yale University. Founded in 1701, it is the original school of the university. Although other Yale schools were founded as early as 1810, all of Yale was officially known as Yale College until 1887, ...
and
Yale Divinity School
Yale Divinity School (YDS) is one of the twelve graduate and professional schools of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Congregationalist theological education was the motivation at the founding of Yale, and the professional school has ...
, and his mother was a teacher who had graduated from
Mount Holyoke College
Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United States.
...
. Since Woodworth's mother was his father's third wife, he grew up in a large family with children from each of his father's marriages. His father's approach to parenting was authoritative and strict. He attended high school in
Newton, Massachusetts
Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is approximately west of downtown Boston. Newton resembles a patchwork of thirteen villages, without a city center. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the population of Ne ...
with the plan of becoming a minister. He received his A.B. degree from
Amherst College
Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educatio ...
in 1891, focusing on religion, the classics, mathematics, science, and history. During his senior year, Woodworth took a class in psychology by
Charles Edward Garman, which caused him to change his future plans. Rather than becoming a minister, he taught mathematics at a high school for two years and at a college for two years in
Topeka, Kansas
Topeka ( ; Kansa language, Kansa: ; iow, Dópikˀe, script=Latn or ) is the Capital (political), capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the County seat, seat of Shawnee County, Kansas, Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the ...
.
Following his stint as a teacher, Woodworth attended a lecture by
G. Stanley Hall
Granville Stanley Hall (February 1, 1846 – April 24, 1924) was a pioneering American psychologist and educator. His interests focused on human life span development and evolutionary theory. Hall was the first president of the American Psy ...
, and he was enthralled by Hall's emphasis on “the importance of discovery through investigation” (p. 374). The lecture had such a profound effect on Woodworth that he hung a sign labeled “investigation” over his desk at home. He then read James's ''Principles of Psychology'', and he had a similar captivating experience to many other students interested in psychology of the time. He decided then to finally follow a career path in psychology.
In 1895, he returned to college as an undergraduate student at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, studying philosophy with
Josiah Royce
Josiah Royce (; November 20, 1855 – September 14, 1916) was an American objective idealist philosopher and the founder of American idealism. His philosophical ideas included his version of personalism, defense of absolutism, idealism and his ...
, psychology with
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
, and history with
George Santayana
Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana (; December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952), was a Spanish and US-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Born in Spain, Santayana was raised ...
. Here at Harvard, he met
Edward Lee Thorndike
Edward Lee Thorndike (August 31, 1874 – August 9, 1949) was an American psychologist who spent nearly his entire career at Teachers College, Columbia University. His work on comparative psychology and the learning process led to the theory o ...
and
Walter B. Cannon
Walter Bradford Cannon (October 19, 1871 – October 1, 1945) was an American physiologist, professor and chairman of the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School. He coined the term "fight or flight response", and developed the theory ...
, and the three became longtime friends. While working with James, he encouraged Woodworth to keep a dream diary. The two were not able to find a significant correlation between the content of one's dreams and the day's events. However, Woodworth noted that he often dreamed about incomplete or interrupted topics and events, later emphasized by
Bluma Zeigarnik
Bluma Wulfovna Zeigarnik (russian: Блю́ма Ву́льфовна Зейга́рник, p=ˈblʲumə ˈvulʲfəvnə zʲɪjˈɡarnʲɪk; 9 November Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O.S._27_October.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.htm ...
with the
Zeigarnik effect
Named after Lithuanian-Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, in psychology the Zeigarnik effect occurs when an activity that has been interrupted may be more readily recalled. It postulates that people remember unfinished or interrupted tasks bette ...
.
In 1896, Woodworth earned his A.M from Harvard, followed by being an assistant at the Harvard Medical School in the physiology department from 1897 to 1898. Here, he observed Cannon's experiments on hunger and emotions.
James McKeen Cattell
James is a common English language surname and given name:
*James (name), the typically masculine first name James
* James (surname), various people with the last name James
James or James City may also refer to:
People
* King James (disambiguat ...
offered Woodworth a graduate fellowship at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
, one of the two primary functionalist schools in psychology. In 1899, Woodworth earned his PhD under Cattell. His dissertation was entitled ''The Accuracy of Voluntary Movement''.
Academic life
Early research
Thorndike, who was now at Columbia, worked with Woodworth on the concept of
transfer of training Transfer of training is applying knowledge and skills acquired during training to a targeted job or role. This is a term commonly used within industrial and organizational psychology.
For example, after completing a safety course, transfer of tra ...
. These studies related to a significant issue of the time within education, as academics like James supported a "disciplinary subject" education under the assumption that the brain can be exercised. Many subjects like Latin were taught for their disciplinary value and not necessarily the subject matter. Woodworth and Thorndike empirically studied the benefits of a disciplinary education along with transfer of training and found no effect. However, as their contemporaries pointed out, they did not use a control group and, therefore, their studies had minimal value.
In 1902, Woodworth accepted a fellowship to work with
Charles Sherrington
Sir Charles Scott Sherrington (27 November 1857 – 4 March 1952) was an eminent English neurophysiologist. His experimental research established many aspects of contemporary neuroscience, including the concept of the spinal reflex as a system ...
at the University of Liverpool. Sherrington and Cattell both offered him a job afterwards, and Woodworth accepted Cattell's offer to study at Columbia, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Psychometrics
Woodworth followed in Cattell's footsteps in psychological testing and measurement. He first was in charge of a project where he tested about 1,100 people at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition. According to Hothersall, he took a "remarkably sensible and fair-minded position on racial differences in test performance" (p. 376). Woodworth emphasized that that labeling is based on alleged differences both internal (mental function and size) and external (skin color), making it difficult to compare them empirically. The characteristics are not equally measurable, and individual differences are very important, according to Woodworth, so experiments that claim to demonstrate sharp differences in races ignore overlap within a population. Additionally, Woodworth disagreed with the norm of the time with labeling civilizations as "primitive" or "advanced" because he noted that differences on the evolutionary time scale are likely minute to produce a mental status change .
In 1906, the American Psychological Association appointed Woodworth as part of a committee to study psychometrics. With the onset of World War I, APA asked Woodworth to assist them in trying to prevent what was then known as "
shell shock
Shell shock is a term coined in World War I by the British psychologist Charles Samuel Myers to describe the type of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) many soldiers were afflicted with during the war (before PTSD was termed). It is a react ...
". He generated the
Woodworth Personal Data Sheet The Woodworth Personal Data Sheet, sometimes known as the Woodworth Psychoneurotic Inventory was a personality test, commonly cited as the first personality test, developed by Robert S. Woodworth during World War I for the United States Army. It wa ...
(WPDS), which has been called the first personality test. It was a test of emotional stability to measure a soldier's susceptibility based on existing cases of the disorder. Although the test was designed too late for it to be used operationally, the test was highly influential in the development of later personality inventories with measures of neuroticism.
Woodworth published ''Psychology: A study of mental life'', which appeared first in 1921, and ''Experimental Psychology'' in 1938, which he worked on for nearly twenty years, and they became the definitive texts for thousands of psychology students.
Additionally, Woodworth published ''Contemporary Schools of Psychology'' in 1932. He described the history of psychology according to a view that differing schools of psychology are complementary and not incompatible. This tolerant, open-minded view was likely a result of his unique perspective of psychology, being part of the subject for nearly the entire fifty years of its existence. He was renowned for this contribution, later being known as the dean of American Psychology.
In 1914, Woodworth was elected president of APA, and in his presidential address, he discussed the question of the existence of imageless thoughts. He spent the summer of 1912 working in
Oswald Külpe
Oswald Külpe (; 3 August 1862 – 30 December 1915) was a German structural psychologist of the late 19th and early 20th century. Külpe, who is lesser known than his German mentor, Wilhelm Wundt, revolutionized experimental psychology at his ti ...
's lab studying the topic much to
Titchener's dismay. According to Titchener, imageless thoughts were not possible. Woodworth disagreed, stating that even if most thoughts have corresponding sensations and/or images, some do not.
Woodworth was strongly opposed to "epistemological tables of commandments" such as the strict and narrow approaches of Titchener and Watson, preferring a somewhat eclectic approach.
Motivational psychology
Woodworth introduced and popularized the expression Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) to describe his
functionalist approach to psychology and to stress its difference from the strictly Stimulus-Response (S-R) approach of the
behaviorists
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual' ...
in his 1929 second edition of ''Psychology''. He later published the theory in ''Dynamic psychology'' (1918) and ''Dynamics of Behavior'' (1958).
Within his modified S-O-R formula, Woodworth noted that the stimulus elicits a different effect or response depending on the state of the organism. The "O" (for organismic) mediates the relationship between the stimulus and the response.
Woodworth advocated the creation of a technical vocabulary for psychology rather than only relying on often subjective operational definitions, but he was ignored by the community.
He conveniently ignores the fact that he held very important and influential positions, such as being chairman of the National Research Council's Division of Anthropology and Psychology, in his autobiography. He only mentions his participation, demonstrating his modesty.
In 1956, Woodworth was first recipient of the American Psychological Foundation gold medal for "Distinguished and continuous service to scholarship and research in psychology and for contributions to the growth of psychology though the medium of scientific publication" (p. 689).
A determined and persistent psychologist, Woodworth retired from Columbia at age 70, but he continued to lecture until age 89 and continued to write until age 91. Woodworth died on July 4, 1962.
More recently the theory has been extended to theorize that artificial organisms (AI-enabled systems) can also elicit responses.
[Rodrigo Perez-Vega, Valtteri Kaartemo, Cristiana R. Lages, Niloofar Borghei Razavi, Jaakko Männistö, Reshaping the contexts of online customer engagement behavior via artificial intelligence: A conceptual framework, Journal of Business Research, 2020,ISSN 0148-2963,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.11.002.]
References
Sources
*
*
*
*
External links
Biography by Paul F. Ballantyne*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Woodworth, Robert S.
1869 births
1962 deaths
Harvard College alumni
Teachers College, Columbia University alumni
Robert S.
Presidents of the American Psychological Association