第1章心理学入門

Culture impacts individuals, groups, and society. An ongoing issue researchers are trying to correct is that certain populations have been over-studied and the results of these studies have been applied to other populations. For example, Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan discuss how WEIRD societies have been overstudied and the results have been wrongly applied to non-WEIRD societies (2010). WEIRD stands for western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan found that there are many differences between people in the WEIRD group and people in less industrialized, less urban, and non-Western societies. These differences occur in a variety of areas, including perception, cooperation, and moral reasoning. That is, people vary depending on their culture and environment. Multicultural psychologists develop theories and conduct research with diverse populations, typically within one country. Cross-cultural psychologists compare populations across countries, such as participants from the United States compared to participants from China.

In 1920, Francis Cecil Sumner was the first African American to receive a PhD in psychology in the United States. Sumner established a psychology degree program at Howard University, leading to the education of a new generation of African American psychologists (Black, Spence, and Omari, 2004). Much of the work of early psychologists from diverse backgrounds was dedicated to challenging intelligence testing and promoting innovative educational methods for children. George I. Sanchez contested such testing with Mexican American children. As a psychologist of Mexican heritage, he pointed out that the language and cultural barriers in testing were keeping children from equal opportunities (Guthrie, 1998). By 1940, he was teaching with his doctoral degree at the University of Texas at Austin and challenging segregated educational practices (Romo, 1986).

Two famous African American researchers and psychologists are Mamie Phipps Clark and her husband, Kenneth Clark. They are best known for their studies conducted on African American children and doll preference, research that was instrumental in the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court desegregation case. The Clarks applied their research to social services and opened the first child guidance center in Harlem (American Psychological Association, 2019).

Listen to the podcast below describing the Clarks' research and impact on the Supreme Court decision.

The American Psychological Association has several ethnically based organizations for professional psychologists that facilitate interactions among members. Some psychologists belonging to specific ethnic groups or cultures are interested in studying their own communities, and these organizations provide an opportunity for the growth of research on the interplay between culture and psychology.

Although rarely given credit, women have been contributing to psychology since its inception as a field of study. In 1894, Margaret Floy Washburn was the first woman awarded the doctoral degree in psychology. She wrote The Animal Mind: A Textbook of Comparative Psychology, and it was the standard in the field for over 20 years. In the mid 1890s, Mary Whiton Calkins completed all requirements toward the PhD in psychology, but Harvard University refused to award her that degree because she was a woman. She had been taught and mentored by William James, who tried and failed to convince Harvard to award her the doctoral degree. Her memory research studied primacy and recency (Madigan & O’Hara, 1992), and she also wrote about how structuralism and functionalism both explained self-psychology (Calkins, 1906).

Another influential woman, Mary Cover Jones, conducted a study she considered to be a sequel to John B. Watson’s study of Little Albert (you’ll learn about this study in the chapter on Learning). Jones unconditioned fear in Little Peter, who had been afraid of rabbits (Jones, 1924).

Ethnic minority women contributing to the field of psychology include Martha Bernal and Inez Beverly Prosser; their studies were related to education. Bernal, the first Latina to earn her doctoral degree in psychology (1962) conducted much of her research with Mexican American children. Prosser was the first African American woman awarded the PhD in 1933 at the University of Cincinnati (Benjamin, Henry, & McMahon, 2005).