Margaret Floy Washburn

Margaret Floy Washburn (July 25, 1871 – October 29, 1939) was a leading American psychologist in the early 20th century. She was best known for her experimental work in animal behavior and motor theory development. She was the first woman in the United States to earn a PhD in psychology (1894); the second woman, after Mary Whiton Calkins, to serve as president of the American Psychological Association (1921); and the first woman elected to the Society of Experimental Psychologists. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Washburn as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, James J. Gibson, David Rumelhart, Louis Leon Thurstone, and Robert S. Woodworth.

Biography

Born on 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. Her ancestors were of Dutch and English descent and were all in America before 1720. Washburn was an only child; she did not appear to have childhood companions her age and spent much of her time with adults or reading. She learned to read long before she started school; this caused her to advance quickly when she started school at age 7. In school, she learned French and German. When she was eleven years old, she started at public school for the first time. In 1886, she graduated from high school at the age of fifteen, and that fall, she entered Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, as a preparatory student. This preparatory status was due to her lack of Latin and French. During her undergraduate years at Vassar, Washburn developed a strong interest in philosophy through poetry and other literary works. She also became a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, and was first introduced to the field of psychology. After she graduated from Vassar in 1891, Washburn 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. Despite the derogatory feelings toward women gaining education at the time, Cattell treated her as a normal student and became her first mentor. She attended his seminary, lectures, and worked in the laboratory alongside men. At the end of her first year of admission at Columbia, Cattell encouraged her to enter the newly organized Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University to obtain her Ph.D because this would not have been possible at Columbia as an auditor student. She was accepted in 1891 with a scholarship.

At Cornell, she studied under E. B. Titchener, his first and only major graduate student at that time. Her major was psychology. When students would visit, Washburn would show off Hiram's tricks, such as jumping over a pencil. Reporting her observations in The Animal Mind, she noted "A cat with which the writer is acquainted stands on his hind legs and touches a door handle with his paw when he wishes to be let out". When Hiram died, Washburn purchased a cat in a New York City pet shop. That cat was angry and territorial, so much so that Washburn closed off more than one room in her house for the cat's sole use.

In 1921, Washburn gave her APA presidential address in which she discussed the importance of introspection as a legitimate method of inquisition. She believed that the rising of behaviorism in psychology was overshadowing the legitimacy of mental processes like consciousness and introspection.

In 1937, 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.

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. She translated Wilhelm Wundt's Ethical Systems into English. The same year, she served as a United States Delegate to the International Congress of Psychology in Copenhagen. Indeed, she devotes an entire chapter to the mind of the simplest animal, the amoeba.

Also noteworthy is her introductory chapters, which detailed methods of interpreting the results of animal research. Although she was cautious about attributing anthropomorphic meanings to animal behavior and realized that animal consciousness could never be directly measured, she opposed strict behaviorism's dismissal of consciousness and sought to comprehend as much as possible about animal mental phenomena. She suggested that animal psyches contained mental structures similar to that of humans and therefore suggested animal consciousness is not qualitatively different from human mental life. The greater the similarity in neuroanatomical structure and behavior between animals and humans, the more consciousness could be inferred. In her words:

"Our acquaintance with the mind of animals rests upon the same basis as our acquaintance with the mind of our fellow man: both are derived by inference from observed behavior. The actions of our fellow man resemble our own, and we therefore infer in them like subjective states to ours: the actions of animals resemble ours less completely, but the difference is one of degree, not of kind... We know not where consciousness begins in the animal world. We know where it surely resides—in ourselves; we know where it exists beyond a reasonable doubt—in those animals of structure resembling ours which rapidly adapt themselves to the lessons of experience. Beyond this point, for all we know, it may exist in simpler and simpler forms until we reach the very lowest of living beings."

The Animal Mind went through several additions, in 1917, 1926, and 1936 and remained the standard textbook of comparative psychology for nearly 25 years, although about 80% of the material from the first edition was retained in subsequent editions. Compared to later editions, earlier editions extensively covered anecdotal evidence. A chapter on emotions was added to the 4th edition.

“The Animal Mind” was the first textbook published in America for use in college courses on comparative psychology.

Motor theory

Washburn's motor theory attempted to find common ground between the structuralist tradition of her mentor, Titchener. This focused exclusively on consciousness and the rising view of behaviorism, which dismissed consciousness in favor of visible actions. Washburn's motor theory argued that all thought can be traced back to bodily movements. According to her theory, consciousness arises when a motion or a tendency towards movement is partially inhibited by a tendency towards another movement. In the presence of an object, the senses create an impression of it, including vision, feeling, etc. This is accompanied by an incipient sense of movement, either towards or from the object. Different objects evoke different senses of motor readiness. When the object is not present, memory re-evokes those sensations. Learning and ideas are organized in the same way, consisting of an association of movements into a set of regular series and combinations. When two movements become closely linked in quick succession, the sense of movement from the first primes the next, beginning a series. Thinking becomes a derivative of movements of the hands, eyes, vocal cords, and trunk muscles (the thinker's pose). In summary:

"While consciousness exists and is not a form of movement, it has as its indispensable basis certain motor processes, and… the only sense in which we can explain conscious processes is by studying the laws governing these underlying motor phenomena".

Washburn presented this theory in several of her major works, consisting of early papers and in chapters she contributed to several collections, including Feelings and Emotions: The Wittenberg Symposium and Psychologies of 1930. However, it was most clearly outlined in what she considered her greatest work, Movement and Mental Imagery: Outlines of a Motor Theory of the Complexer Mental Processes.

Notes

Margaret 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 . The correct personage, A. L. Washburn, was a graduate student of W. B. Cannon. They published , reprinted in This error was uncovered by

Margaret Floy Washburn

Biography

Professional career

Motor theory

Notes

References

Further reading

External links