1940: Psychology

A review of progress in psychology during the past year reveals a series of gradual advances in a large number of lines rather than any single outstanding discovery. Many of these advances are merely extensions of knowledge or additional recognition accorded to research developments of the past few years.

General Psychology.

In the field of general psychology significant progress continues in the adaptation of experimental to statistical methods for analyzing the relative importance and interrelations of factors in human behavior. The methods of factorial analysis are now being extended from the original field of measuring intellectual abilities to include analyses of the factors that underlie individual differences in perception, motor skills, and mechanical abilities. A method comparatively new to psychology, the analysis of variance, is attracting a great deal of attention because of its possibilities in controlling and studying many variables at once instead of single pairs of variables at a time, as has previously been considered necessary in most experiments.

Physiological Psychology.

In physiological psychology recent studies have shown measurable electrical action potentials which indicate that minute contractions in arm muscles are a factor in what has usually been considered to be a 'mental set' in the old experiment of judging lifted weights. This type of work represents a technological advance in Fechner's historical problem of 'inner psychophysics,' or the interrelations between stimuli, intermediate processes, and overt responses. Fechner originally was unable to study intermediate processes except as they could be inferred from the end overt response, or by introspective descriptions.

The startling series of electrophysiological evidences reported three years ago in support of the venerable Helmholtz or 'resonance' theory of hearing are now being revaluated in the light of further evidence which suggests a combination of the resonance and frequency theories.

Another biological approach to psychology is the theory of constitutional bodily types as one of the factors underlying various psychological characteristics such as temperamental qualities. The most recent work suggests three primary kinds of body build, whose names, endosome (round, fat), mesosome (well muscled), and ectosome (thin) are derived from three main layers of tissue in embryological development. The present theory recognizes the previously neglected fact of continuous gradation between these types by stating an individual's degree of each type in five body areas, the head, shoulders and arms, upper trunk, abdomen, and legs. Minor factors of hirsutism and masculine vs. feminine secondary sex characteristics are also recognized. As yet only minor correspondences of structural to functional characteristics such as temperaments have been reported, but the classification provides a useful method for testing such relationships.

Comparative Psychology.

Relatively few changes have appeared in animal or comparative psychology during the year. The production of experimental neuroses in animals continues to be a promising approach to the understanding of the origins of certain types of abnormal behavior in human beings. The advantage is, of course, the greater possibility of controlling the various factors in animal environments and of being able to try experiments which might be too strenuous for human subjects.

Child Psychology.

In child psychology the continued interest in the education of the emotions is illustrative of the increasing emphasis upon the socialization of children as compared to the older emphasis upon skills such as the 'three R's.'

Differential psychology exhibits a relative quiescence on the nature-nurture controversy on intelligence, with evidence as to the importance of long continued and large differences in environment now being more widely accepted.

Educational Psychology.

Educational psychology is undergoing a rather thorough self-examination by national committees of leaders in the field. A major outcome appears to be a shift of interest from older technical problems of learning to an examination of the social setting to which the child must learn to adjust. Anthropologists are contributing surveys of social factors such as the influence of foreign and low economic sections of a community on the child's problems, while the psychoanalyst's study of basic needs and adjustments represent another approach. One older topic, the transfer of training, is being reinvestigated to emphasize that the type as well as the amount of training or practice is a major factor in determining the degree of transfer from one activity to another.

Vocational Psychology.

Vocational psychology, though still relatively undeveloped, shows a number of significant lines of progress. A survey of the special abilities of all scientists in America is under way for possible use in the current emergencies, and the first newly drafted soldiers are undergoing classification by revised army intelligence and special ability tests. A number of psychologists are cooperating on the problems of selecting, training and rating the efficiency of aviation students who are enrolled in widespread college training courses.

Employee or 'in service' training programs in private and public organizations are receiving increasing recognition as a logical procedure to follow up a program of personnel selection. The method of informal conferences between employees in the same type of work is proving especially helpful in such problems as developing better public relations, and in introducing plans for new developments in business procedures. In older and better known technical skills such as repairing electrical machines the training programs are often more formal, providing intensive training and checks through regular inspection of skillful and defective work during an extended training period. From the standpoint of ultimate benefits, perhaps the most significant aspect of personnel work is not in greater emphasis upon selection and training of workers so much as in improvement of industrial and social relationships among members of business organizations. Unfortunately the significant advances along this line are relatively rare, though the large scale experiments of one of the largest electrical manufacturers has resulted in making this the major emphasis in their personnel program.

Avocational Psychology.

With the increasing growth of leisure time from shorter working hours, avocational psychology shows great opportunities for the study of all fields of arts and other recreations. Further studies of individual differences in artistic abilities are showing significant relationships to the intellectual and temperamental backgrounds and work methods of students, as well as many other minor factors.

Social Psychology.

As in the past year or two social psychology continues to hold a major share of professional interest, because of present political and military trends and also because of its latent possibilities for both scientific and social progress. Writers in the field still show little agreement as to the major problems which are believed to constitute the field at present. One group conceives social psychology as primarily a pure science emphasizing the analysis of social phenomena, while another group believes that it should go further in actively advocating specific viewpoints in the furtherance of social progress, for example, in labor conflicts. The applied social science of polling public opinion showed increasing accuracy and significance in forecasting and analyzing trends leading up to the recent national election. An unusual type of study analyzed panic behavior aroused by a recent nation-wide radio broadcast dramatization of an invasion from Mars. The listeners' backgrounds in educational and religious matters was shown to be important in determining their adequacy in evaluating the startling situation brought about by hearing only fragments of the broadcast. A more practical type of social research by psychologists and other educators is the study of effective methods of group discussion as a democratic method of solving community problems. Such studies show a convergence of developments with studies on all other forms of problem solving, from personal defense or adjustment mechanisms to inductive reasoning such as experimental methods in science.

Abnormal Psychology.

Shock therapy or the artificial production of coma and convulsions continues to be a major interest in abnormal psychology. Various treatments, such as heavy doses of insulin and metrazol, are being extended to other psychoses in addition to dementia praecox, their first application. One interesting aspect of such treatments seems to be the fact that certain of the physiological deficiencies such as oxygen and blood sugar supplies to the brain may be remedied by producing even greater temporary deficiencies by the shock, so that the added severity of the shock may start a readjustment to these deficiencies. The use of electrical shocks on the forehead is another method now being investigated as a safer and more controllable method of producing the coma and convulsions in shock therapy. Another interesting development is a series of studies which show that in cases of mental deterioration, vocabulary skills remain nearer the original levels of mental abilities than other skills and thus afford some basis for estimating the level from which intellectual deterioration began.

Psychological Research.

Attempts to systematize the findings of psychological research into a single viewpoint continue, with an increasing freedom from the relatively narrow viewpoints which have often characterized recent years in psychology. One significant trend is the attempt to formulate the basic assumptions and theories necessary to predict certain types of learning behavior. The method attempts to discover or devise a set of principles which are so rigorous that they can be formulated in symbolic logic, and deductions from them can be evaluated experimentally. The first developments will probably be most significant as a test of the usefulness of these exact methods.

As a supplement to this slower procedure of building a system of psychology by highly exact analyses beginning on only one narrow area is the less striking but more familiar eclectic approach of attempting to classify all of the major contributions from all viewpoints in psychology. These contributions must then be translated into a common terminology, and searching for a minimal list of concepts, assumptions, and principles which would organize the findings into a relatively simple and consistent classification of observed facts, together with the most promising hypotheses where facts are not available, and the methods for testing the hypotheses.