Robert S. Woodworth

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Robert Sessions Woodworth (born October 16, 1869 in Belchertown , Massachusetts , † July 4, 1962 in New York ) was an influential American psychologist in the first half of the 20th century. In 1921 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences , 1935 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 1936 to the American Philosophical Society .

Act

Woodworth's book Psychology: A Study of Mental Life , first published in 1921, has been reprinted several times and has been the first introduction to psychology for generations of American students. His book Experimental Psychology , published in 1938 - and especially the second edition written in 1954 with Harold H. Schlosberg - was hardly less successful.

In the 1929 edition of the first-mentioned text, Woodworth introduced the term stimulus-organism-response (SOR) to describe his functionalist approach to psychology and the difference to the simple stimulus-response model (Stimulus -Response, SR) of behaviorism .

During the First World War Woodworth launched the Woodworth Personal Data Survey (WPDS), which is considered the first personality test. The WPDS was designed to identify the possibility of " trench shock " in new recruits. Even if the test was developed too late to be operationally used, it nonetheless had a major impact on the design of later personality tests.

Honors

He received honorary degrees from Columbia University (1929), the University of North Carolina (1946), the University of Pennsylvania and Amherst College (1951).

literature

  • Clarence H. Graham: Robert Sessions Woodworth . A Biographical Memoir. Ed .: National Academy of Sciences (=  Biographical Memoirs ). Washington DC 1967 ( nasonline.org [PDF]).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member History: Robert S. Woodworth. American Philosophical Society, accessed December 11, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Woodworth, Robert S.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Woodworth, Robert Sessions
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Belchertown , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1962
Place of death new York