Margaret Floy Washburn
First Woman PhD in psychology Established psychology lab at Vassar
Born	July 25, 1871(1871-07-25) New York, New York, U.S.
Died	October 29, 1939 (aged 68) Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S.

Margaret Floy Washburn^[1] (1871–1939), leading American psychologist in the early 20th century, was best known for her experimental work in animal behavior and motor theory development. She was the first woman to be granted a Ph.D in psychology (1894). Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... is the 206th day of the year (207th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1871 (MDCCCLXXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... This article is about the state. ... This article is about the state. ... Motto: (Out Of Many, One) (traditional) In God We Trust (1956 to date) Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington D.C. Largest city New York City None at federal level (English de facto) Government Federal constitutional republic  - President George Walker Bush (R)  - Vice President Dick Cheney (R) Independence from... is the 302nd day of the year (303rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Poughkeepsie City of Poughkeepsie Town of Poughkeepsie Poughkeepsie, Arkansas This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... This article is about the state. ... Motto: (Out Of Many, One) (traditional) In God We Trust (1956 to date) Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington D.C. Largest city New York City None at federal level (English de facto) Government Federal constitutional republic  - President George Walker Bush (R)  - Vice President Dick Cheney (R) Independence from... 1871 (MDCCCLXXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Year 1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... A psychologist is a scientist or clinician who studies psychology, the systematic investigation of the human mind, including behavior and cognition. ... Ethology is the scientific study of animal behaviour (particularly of social animals such as primates and canids), and is a branch of zoology. ... Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph. ... Psychology (from Greek: ψυχή, psukhÄ“, spirit, soul; λόγος, logos, knowledge) is both an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of mental processes and behavior. ... 1894 (MDCCCXCIV) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ...

Biography

Born July 25, 1871 in New York City, she was raised in Harlem by her father, Francis, an Episcopal priest, and her mother, Elizabeth Floy, who came from a prosperous New York family. She was an only child, entered school at age 7 and at age 9 moved to Ulster county, New York when her father was placed in a parish there. She graduated from high school in June 1886, at age fifteen, and that fall she entered Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, as a preparatory student. She there became a member of Kappa Alpha Theta fraternity for women and graduated in 1891. She became determined to study under James McKeen Cattell in the newly established psychological laboratory at Columbia University. As Columbia had not yet admitted a woman graduate student, she was admitted only as an "auditor." She did well and Cattell encouraged her to enter the newly organized Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University, which she did in 1892. is the 206th day of the year (207th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1871 (MDCCCLXXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ... For other uses, see Harlem (disambiguation). ... Secondary education - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Year 1886 (MDCCCLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... Vassar College is a private, coeducational, liberal arts college situated in Poughkeepsie, New York, USA. Founded as a womens college in 1861, it was the first member of the Seven Sisters to become coeducational. ... Poughkeepsie (New York) Poughkeepsie (pronounced ) is a city in New York, U.S.A. and serves as the county seat of Dutchess County, located in the Hudson River Valley midway between New York City and Albany. ... James McKeen Cattell (May 25, 1860-January 20, 1944), American psychologist, was the first professor of psychology in the United States. ... Alma Mater Columbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. ... “Cornell” redirects here. ... 1892 (MDCCCXCII) was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ...

At Cornell, she studied under E. B. Titchener, his first and only major graduate student at that time. She conducted an experimental study of the methods of equivalences in tactual perception and earned her Master's degree in absentia from Vassar College in 1893 for that work. She did her doctor's thesis on the influence of visual imagery on judgements of tactual distance and direction. This work was sent by Titchener to Wilhelm Wundt and published in Philosophische Studien (1895). In 1894, she became the first woman to receive a PhD in psychology and was elected to the newly established American Psychological Association. Edward B. Titchener (1876-1927) was an Englishman and a student of Wilhelm Wundt before becoming a professor of psychology at Cornell University. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Vassar College is a private, coeducational, liberal arts college situated in Poughkeepsie, New York, USA. Founded as a womens college in 1861, it was the first member of the Seven Sisters to become coeducational. ... Year 1893 (MDCCCXCIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (August 16, 1832-August 31, 1920) was a German psychologist, physiologist, and professor who is, along with William James, regarded as the father of psychology. ... Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph. ... Psychology (from Greek: ψυχή, psukhē, spirit, soul; λόγος, logos, knowledge) is both an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of mental processes and behavior. ... The American Psychological Association (APA) is a professional organization representing psychology in the US. It has around 150,000 members and an annual budget of around $70m. ...

She then took teaching posts, in turn, at Wells College, Cornell’s Sage College, and University of Cincinnati. At Cincinnati, she was the only woman on the faculty. In 1903, she returned to Vassar College as Associate Professor of Philosophy, where she remained until 1937 when a stroke necessitated her retirement (as Emeritus Professor of Psychology). She never fully recovered and died at her home in Poughkeepsie, New York on October 29, 1939. She never married, choosing instead to devote herself to her career and the care of her parents. Wells College is located in Aurora, New York. ... The Sage Colleges is a private educational institution comprising three colleges in New York: Russell Sage College, a womens college in Troy, New York, Sage College of Albany, a co-educational college in Albany, New York, and the Sage Graduate School, which operates both in Troy and in Albany. ... The University of Cincinnati is a coeducational public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio. ... A faculty is a division within a university. ... 1900 (MCMIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Friday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar. ... The meaning of the word professor (Latin: one who claims publicly to be an expert) varies. ... For other uses, see Philosophy (disambiguation). ... Year 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... A stroke or cerebrovascular accident (CVA) occurs when the blood supply to a part of the brain is suddenly interrupted by occlusion (an ischemic stroke- approximately 90% of strokes), by hemorrhage (a hemorrhagic stroke - less than 10% of strokes) or other causes. ... Poughkeepsie (New York) Poughkeepsie (pronounced ) is a city in New York, U.S.A. and serves as the county seat of Dutchess County, located in the Hudson River Valley midway between New York City and Albany. ... is the 302nd day of the year (303rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Professional career

Washburn was a major figure in psychology in the United States in the first decades of the 20th century, substantially adding to the development of psychology as a science and a scholarly profession. Washburn used her experimental studies in animal behavior and cognition to present her idea that mental (not just behavioral) events are legitimate and important psychological areas for study in her book, The Animal Mind (1908). This, of course, went against the established doctrine in academic psychology that the mental was not observable and therefore not appropriate for serious scientific investigation.

Besides her experimental work, she read widely and drew on French and German experiments of higher mental processes stating they were intertwined with tentative physical movements. She viewed consciousness as an epiphenomenon of excitation and inhibition of motor discharge. She presented a complete motor theory in Movement and Mental Imagery (1916). She wrote two books titled "The Animal Mind"(1908) and "Movement and Mental Imagery" (1917). During the 1920's she continued to amass experimental data from around the world to buttress her argument. She remained anchored in behaviorist tenets but continued to argue for the mind in this process. She took ideas from all major schools of thought in psychology, behaviorism, structuralism, functionalism, and Gestalt psychology, but rejected the more speculative theories of psychodynamics as being too ephemeral. In current psychology research, echoes of Washburn's insistence that behavior is part of thinking can be seen in dynamic systems approach that Thelen and Smith (1994) use to explain the development of cognition in humans. Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment. ... Behaviorism (also called learning perspective) is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things which organisms do — including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors. ... Structuralism as a term refers to various theories across the humanities, social sciences and economics many of which share the assumption that structural relationships between concepts vary between different cultures/languages and that these relationships can be usefully exposed and explored. ... Functionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviorism. ... This does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... It has been suggested that Psychodynamic psychology be merged into this article or section. ... In engineering and mathematics, a dynamical system is a deterministic process in which a functions value changes over time according to a rule that is defined in terms of the functions current value. ... Look up Cognition in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Washburn's published writings span thirty-five years and include some 127 articles on many topics including spatial perception, memory, experimental aesthetics, individual differences, animal psychology, emotion and affective consciousness. At various times in her career, she was an editor for the American Journal of Psychology, Psychological Bulletin, Journal of Animal Behavior, Psychological Review, and Journal of Comparative Psychology. She was the president of the American Psychological Association in 1921, an honorific title at that time. She was the first woman psychologist and the second woman scientist to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1932. The American Psychological Association (APA) is a professional organization representing psychology in the US. It has around 150,000 members and an annual budget of around $70m. ... President Harding and the National Academy of Sciences at the White House, Washington, DC, April 1921 The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine. ...

Sources

• O'Connell, A. G., & Russo, N. F. (Eds.). (1990). Women in psychology: A bio-bibliographic source book. West Port, CN: Greenwood Press, Inc.
• Scarborough, E. & Furumoto, L. (1987). Untold lives: The first generation of American women psychologists. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Thelen, E., & Smith, L. B. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press
• Washburn, M. F. (1908). The animal mind: A textbook of comparative psychology. New York: Macmillan.
• Washburn, M. F. (1916). Movement and mental imagery: Outlines of a motor theory of the complexer mental processes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Washburn, M. F. (1932). Some recollection. In C. Murchison (Ed.), A history of psychology in autobiography (Vol. 2, pp. 333-358). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.

Notes

^  Mary Floy Washburn is not a partner in the famed Cannon-Washburn experiment (where a balloon is swallowed and then inflated to determine the effect of stomach size on the hunger drive). This was erroneously indicated in Haggbloom, S., et al. (2002). The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century. Review of General Psychology, 6, 139-152. The correct personage, A. L. Washburn, was a graduate student of W. B. Cannon, who together published, in 1912, An explanation of hunger, American Journal of Physiology, 29, 441-454. This error was uncovered by Black, S. L. (2003). Cannonical [sic] confusions, an illusory allusion, and more: a critique of Haggbloom, et al's list of eminent psychologists (2002). Psychological Reports, 92, 853-857.