In the early 20th century, there was little room for women researchers in academia. Certain fields, such as psychology, were almost exclusively male. Graduate programs did not admit women, and there were few opportunities for women to study psychology and influence the field with their ideas.
Margaret Floy Washburne was one of the few women to make it into the field, and many psychologists now consider her one of the founders of comparative psychology, although some historians argue that she should be better remembered.
Who was Margaret Floy Washburn?
Margaret Floy Washburn American psychologist born in 1871. He earned his doctorate in psychology, even though he had to begin his doctoral studies as a “listener,” that is, an unofficial lay student.
“She was a woman, a scientist, working at a time when that was seen as incompatible by the culture at large.” Dorothy M. FragassyProfessor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Georgia.
Margaret Floy Washburne in her childhood
Washburn was born on her family’s farm in Harlem, New York City, where her great-grandfather operated a commercial garden. An only child, her parents sent her to a small private school, where she skipped grades and started high school at age 12. She enrolled at Vassar College at age 15, graduating in 1891.
she Her interest in psychology led her to Columbia University.At the time, a psychology lab had just been established, but the university refused to accept her as a graduate student, and she later wrote, “All I could hope for was to be accepted as a listener.”
She soon learned of the opening of a new doctoral program at Cornell University, which she enrolled on a scholarship and was exposed to experimental psychology. She graduated in 1894 and held positions at several universities before returning to Vassar in 1903, this time as a professor.
Limited Lab
As an academic, Washburn engaged in research and publishing despite a limited lab, and because Vassar was not a graduate-degree-granting institution, Washburn didn’t have the benefit of working long-term with graduate students, Fragassy says.
Washburn used professional journals to establish herself in the field of psychology, even serving as president of the American Psychological Association. “For about 30 years she was editor, associate editor, and co-editor of psychology journals published in the United States; she was an editor,” Fragassi says. “This was a tremendous professional contribution.”
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Margaret Floy Washburn and Comparative Psychology
Although her laboratory was more limited than her colleagues at larger universities, Washburn published many papers. Founder of Comparative Psychology.
One of her textbooks was published in the early 1900s and was widely used in the United States until the 1960s, Fragassi said.
Comparative psychology is Study of behavioral differences between two groups. Initially, comparative psychologists were interested in studying differences between humans and non-human species. For example, comparative psychologists might try to understand the differences (or similarities) in the behavior of humans and gorillas.
Over time, this research expanded to include analyzing differences between members of the same species. For example, comparative psychologists might study the behavior of different generations. In the United States, the field became increasingly popular in the early 20th century.
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Washburn’s Contributions to Psychology
In 1908 Washburn Animal Heart — A book on animal behavior. She not only observed mice in the lab, Experiments were conducted This enabled her to report on the behavior of a wide variety of insects, birds and sea creatures.
As one biographer put it, the book “enjoyed widespread and enduring popularity” and was reprinted four times over the next 30 years. One reason for its popularity was Washburn’s unique, scientific approach: while other textbook authors relied on anecdote and observation, Washburn based his results on clinical observation.
Washburn felt that basic knowledge about an animal was essential for researchers to properly document its behavior: Behaviors such as fear, hunger, and loneliness could complicate the results, so they needed to be known beforehand so researchers could identify them, she argued.
For about 60 years, Animal Heart The book was on the reading list for undergraduate psychology courses, and although it’s no longer a course material, it’s considered an important historical document in the history of psychology, Fragassi said.
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Legacy of Margaret Floy Washburn
Washburn Had a stroke She was born in March 1939 and died on an afternoon in October of that year. After her death, the Journal of Psychology published a biography detailing her life’s work and contributions to psychology.
More than 80 years after her death, many undergraduate psychology students may not be familiar with her work, and Fragassy says there are many reasons why younger scholars may not be familiar with Washburn, including the limited scope of her lab at Vassar.
“She didn’t have a cadre of PhD students to carry on her work,” Fragassi says.
Washburn’s men of his generation had the advantage of being able to work alongside graduate students at larger universities, and because graduate studies can take years to complete, they were able to collaborate on larger, more empirical studies that not only garnered greater attention but also provided the basis for those graduate students to launch their own careers.
“Her own theoretical contributions have not received as much attention. It seems to me that she was ahead of her time in some ways,” Fragassi says.
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Emily Lucchesi has written for some of the nation’s largest newspapers, including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Los Angeles Times. She holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Missouri and an MA from DePaul University. She also holds a PhD in Communication from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she specialized in media framing, message construction, and stigma communication. Emily has written three non-fiction books. Her third, A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy, co-written with survivor Cathy Kleiner Rubin, will be published by Chicago Review Press on October 3, 2023.
