Erwin Roth

Erwin Roth (1926–1998)

Erwin Roth (born May 29, 1926 in Marktbreit am Main; † April 7, 1998 in Salzburg ) was a German-Austrian psychologist, full professor of psychology at the University of Salzburg (1970–1988) and chairman of the German Society for Psychology from 1978–1980 .

Life

Childhood, youth, military service and prisoner of war

Coming from a Franconian family of winemakers and craftsmen, Roth attended a secondary school in Würzburg after elementary school in Marktbreit and from there switched to the teacher training institute , where the students were barracked and uniformed at the time. In March 1943 Roth was drafted into the Reich Labor Service and in May of the same year for military service. He received training as a pilot and got his license in 1944. He was no longer used as a pilot during the war, but assigned to the Brandenburg-Briest flight instructor school. In April 1945 he was taken prisoner by the United States and then extradited to France. He first had to work for a farmer and then in harsh conditions for three and a half years in a coal mine in northern France.

Studies and academic background

After returning to Germany, Roth made up his Abitur in 1949 and began to study at the University of Würzburg in the winter semester of 1949/50, primarily with Gustav Kafka . In 1954 he took the diploma examination with Wilhelm Arnold and received his doctorate in 1957 at the University of Würzburg with the subject: Investigations to determine the diagnostic reliability of simple aptitude test procedures . Roth took up a position as research assistant to Hans Thomae at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität. From 1963 he worked with Theodor Scharmann at the Institute for Economic and Social Psychology. His habilitation took place in 1967 at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg .

Roth was married to Margit Roth geb. Lick, Rainer F. Lick's sister , had four children from the marriage (* 1955 Gaida, * 1956 Gritta, * 1957 Jens, * 1963 Anne).

Services

Roth was head of the Social Science Research Center and from 1968-1970 professor at the College of Education at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

From 1970 Roth became a professor at the University of Salzburg. From 1976-1977 he was the founding dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences.

Methodologically, Roth is regarded as a representative of an empirical-experimentally oriented psychology. In terms of content, his work related to the areas of intelligence research, studies on the ability to learn and their age-related changes, personality psychology, organizational psychology and attitude research. His work on the speed of information processing ( Hick's law ), on intelligence and aging processes, which were developed in the context of the so-called Erlanger School of Information Psychology, is significant . With his work on the speed of information processing, he opened up the possibility of measuring intelligence on a higher measurement level (absolute scale) than can be achieved with the intelligence quotient (IQ), which only reaches the ordinal scale level. Due to his interest in EEG correlates of intelligence, he founded the Department of Physiological Psychology at the Salzburg Institute.

In his capacity as secretary of the DGfPs , he hosted the 29th Congress of the German Society for Psychology in Salzburg in 1974. In 1980 Roth was President of the 32nd Congress of the German Society for Psychology in Zurich.

At the University of Salzburg, Roth founded a research institute for organizational psychology assigned to the Senate in 1982, which had specifically taken on tasks in applied research, but which has since been integrated into the organizational structure of the institute for psychology.

Roth took on another important task as ombudsman for the Salzburg State Hospitals.

selected Writings

• 1964: The speed of information processing and its relationship to intelligence. Journal for Experimental and Applied Psychology 11, pp. 616–622
• 1967: Attitude as a determination of individual behavior. Göttingen: Hogrefe (habilitation thesis).
• Ed. 1972: Executives and management structures in commercial enterprises. Research results of the social science research center of the University of Erlangen / Nuremberg (Vol. I-IV). Frankfurt am Main: Academic Publishing Company.
• with Oswald, WD & Thumbslang, K. 1972: Intelligence. Aspects - Problems - Perspectives. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
• 1967: Personality Psychology. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
• with Oswald, WD (1979). The number connection test (ZVT). Göttingen: Hogrefe.
• Erwin Roth. Wehner, E. 1992: Psychology in Self- Representations (pp. 245-274). Bern: Huber.
• Ed. 1998: Intelligence. Basics and recent research . Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
• with Heidenreich, K. 1995: Social science methods. Teaching and manual for research (3rd completely revised edition). Munich: Oldenbourg.
• Ed. 1989: Organizational Psychology. Encyclopedia of Psychology, Vol. 3 - Economic, Organizational and Work Psychology. Göttingen: Hogrefe.

literature

• K. Thumblang & J. Sauer, (1986): Aspects of psychological research. Festschrift for Erwin Roth's 60th birthday. Göttingen: Hogrefe.

Web links

• Literature by and about Erwin Roth in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cf. Joachim Sauer (1986). Biographical notes on the scientific development of Erwin Roth. In Konrad Thumb Lang & Joachim Sauer (Eds.), Aspects of Psychological Research. Festschrift for Erwin Roth's 60th birthday (pp. XIII-XXV). Göttingen: Hogrefe.
2. ↑ cf. Siegfried Lehrl (2015). Has the IQ become obsolete? Mentally Fit, 25 (5): 3-6.
3. ↑ cf. Helmut E. Lück "100 Years of the German Society for Psychology" ( PDF ( Memento of the original from July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ) 
4. ^ Department of Social Psychology at the University of Salzburg