They first appear in the written
Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2024 10:24 am
Margaret Floy Washburn was the first woman to earn a PhD in American psychology (1894) and the second woman, after Mary Whiton Calkins, to serve as President of the APA. Ironically, Calkins earned her PhD from Harvard in 1894, but the university's administrators refused to grant her the degree.
The general policy of the time was that married women could not serve as teachers or professors in coeducational settings. Washburn therefore never married and served as a professor at Vassar College for 36 years. She was an accomplished researcher and prolific writer. As was customary, Washburn brought many of her undergraduate students, all women, to her laboratory and included them as authors on many of her publications.
Her main research interests were animal behavior and the basic psychological processes of sensation and perception. The book for which she is best known was “The Animal Mind” (1908), which was the first book based on experimental work in animal cognition. The book went through many editions and was for several years the most widely used book south korea number in comparative psychology. Pursuing her interest in basic processes, Washburn developed a motor theory of consciousness. The theory was most fully developed in her book, “Movement and Mental Imagery” (1916). There, she integrated the experimental method of introspection with an emphasis on motor processes. The basic premise of her work was that thought was based on movement. Therefore, consciousness is linked to motor activity. In addition to serving as President of the APA, Washburn received many honors. Perhaps her highest honor was being named a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences. She was the second woman to receive that honor.
A full account of her career can be found in Robert S. Woodworth (1948), Margaret Floy Washburn. «Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, I 25, 275-295. A more intimate portrait of her life and work that also places her story in the context of her times can be found in Elizabeth Scarborough and Laurel Furumoto, «Untold Lives: The First Generation of American Women Psychologists
The general policy of the time was that married women could not serve as teachers or professors in coeducational settings. Washburn therefore never married and served as a professor at Vassar College for 36 years. She was an accomplished researcher and prolific writer. As was customary, Washburn brought many of her undergraduate students, all women, to her laboratory and included them as authors on many of her publications.
Her main research interests were animal behavior and the basic psychological processes of sensation and perception. The book for which she is best known was “The Animal Mind” (1908), which was the first book based on experimental work in animal cognition. The book went through many editions and was for several years the most widely used book south korea number in comparative psychology. Pursuing her interest in basic processes, Washburn developed a motor theory of consciousness. The theory was most fully developed in her book, “Movement and Mental Imagery” (1916). There, she integrated the experimental method of introspection with an emphasis on motor processes. The basic premise of her work was that thought was based on movement. Therefore, consciousness is linked to motor activity. In addition to serving as President of the APA, Washburn received many honors. Perhaps her highest honor was being named a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences. She was the second woman to receive that honor.
A full account of her career can be found in Robert S. Woodworth (1948), Margaret Floy Washburn. «Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, I 25, 275-295. A more intimate portrait of her life and work that also places her story in the context of her times can be found in Elizabeth Scarborough and Laurel Furumoto, «Untold Lives: The First Generation of American Women Psychologists