I am attempting to write a paper on how many psychological theories began as a way to prove the inferiority of Black people. I am specifically looking for information on the St. Louis Worlds Fair Experiments, but am having a very difficult time finding any. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

-- ashanti (ashanti26@msn.com), November 30, 2002

Answers

I didn't know there was a major psychology exhibit at the St. Louis World's Fair. Can you tell us more? The major historical psych. exhibit was at the Columbian World's Exposition in Chicago in 1893, which was orchestrated by Jospeh Jastrow.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), November 30, 2002.

I really don't have much information, but I know they were doing mass testing of African-Americans in an attempt to determine (prove) whether they were mentally inferior to whites. Other than that I do not know very much. I am a graduate student and I am trying to do a paper for my history/systems class on how many of the early psychological theories were racist or ethnocentric. Any information anyone could give me would be greatly appreciated.

-- ashanti (ashanti26@msn.com), December 01, 2002.

[Posted for ASW by cdg.]

Robert S. Woodworth and Frank Bruner did indeed do testing at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, although their interest was in all groups thought to be "primitive races," including Filipinos, Indians, "Pigmies," "Negritos," Ainu, and others. It is not quite clear whether African Americans were tested. I don't think so, but I would have to check Bruner's 1908 dissertation in the Archives of Psychology. The work at St. Louis is discussed in Graham Richards 'RACE,' RACISM AND PSYCHOLOGY: TOWARD A REFLEXIVE HISTORY(Routledge, 1997). For a discussion of the exclusion of African Americans and African American exhibits at the Fair, see Lee Baker's FROM SAVAGE TO NEGRO (1998, U. of California Press, pp. 63-64). Those interested in the history of Psychology and race may also be interested in William Tucker's recently published work, THE FUNDING OF SCIENTIFIC RACISM: WICKLIFFE DRAPER AND THE PIONEER FUND (2002, University of Illinois Press).

Below is the relevant passage from Woodworth's autobiography, available at the "Classics" site:

The story would not be complete without reference to activities that have taken me outside the University -- and the University, it [p. 373] should be said, has been generous in lending its men to worthy scientific or public enterprises. The first such enterprise in which I took part was the World's Fair at St. Louis in 1904. Having provided for the assembling of representatives of many different races, the Fair also made provision for anthropometric and psychometric study of these samples, and I had direct charge of this work, with Frank G. Bruner for my chief assistant. We examined about eleven hundred individuals, making the standard physical measurements of the anthropologist, and also testing muscular strength, speed and accuracy, vision and hearing, and intelligence as well as we could with formboards and other simple performance tests that we devised. When the Fair was over, we promptly worked over our data, and reported some of the results at scientific meetings. Bruner published the results of the auditory tests as his dissertation, and I gave a general summary of our results and their bearing on the question of racial differences in mental traits. Further than that, the results have never been published, not from any doubt on our part as to their value, but partly because of the unlimited number of fascinating correlations which still remained to work out, partly because of the expense of publication, and partly, I am afraid, from a certain inertia or indifference to publication on my part. Once I have worked out the results, and perhaps reported them at a meeting, I feel satisfied.

-- Andrew S. Winston (awinston@uoguelph.ca), December 01, 2002.

[Posted for ALS by cdg.]

More information about this can be found in Robert Guthrie's book, "Even the rat was white." There was an exhibit demonstrating psychological processes (including testing). One of the organizers was Robert Sessions Woodworth. There were also anthropologists involved. Apparently, exhibits like this were not that unusual at World Fairs of that era.

Ann L. Saltzman, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
Co-Director, Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study


-- Ann L. Saltzman (asaltzma@drew.edu), December 01, 2002.

[Posted for RAL by cdg.]

Guthrie's book is a wonderful accounting of how racist and discriminatory social attitudes and practices saturated much of psychology almost from its beginning as an American academic discipline; the title of his book should not be taken as gentle irony. Partly because he was so long lived, Woodworth served as a gentle reminder of the persistance and power of discriminatory attitudes and practices even at the end of WWII. At the annual Eastern Psychological Association in the Spring of 1945, Woodworth publically endorsed a scurrilous, anti-semitic editorial by F.C.Thorne in the then new journal, Clinical Psychology, that Thorne edited. Woodworth defended Thorne's article which said, in effect, that the Judaicization of American Psychology was depriving many areas of psychological services because Jews were cosmopolitans who wanted to live and work in large cities with traditional cultural amenities and didn't want to move to the west, forested New Hampshire, or the midwest farm region. To correct that, Thorne proposed a quota system to restrict the admission of Jews to graduate schools and programs in psychology and psychiatry; so far as I know, he never advocated a quid pro quo system of increasing the enrollment of blacks, American Indians, or Latin Americans (among others) who must clearly have preferred living in small towns and rural areas, as so many of them did. In the midst of a large gathering of faculty and students Woodworth argued Thorne's case on humanitarian concerns for the state of mental health of the rest of America. The gathering had numerous faculty, researchers, and students who had come to this country as pre-war emigres, refugees, and survivors from Hitler's Europe. They and many others were very excited and loud in demanding that Thorne be condemned and that he be removed from the journal. Despite Woodworth's mild manner and well-known sweet, paternalistic he did not succeed in mollifying the audience. Suddenly, the crowd around him parted and a short, rather plump man I didn't know bustled to the center and said loudly to Woodworth and the crowd something like "Nonsense! Of course you can't let Thorne get away with something like that. We're just finishing a war to settle stuff like that." It was E. G. Boring and he got a tremendous hooray and clapping. That ended it for the moment. Woodworth took it in stride; no argument; he just looked at the younger Boring and then walked away to, it has to be said, some jeers. Yes! I was there and it was very exciting indeed, even exhilerating, this confrontation with what seemed to most of us to be evil in the heart of psychology and academia. It was a proud moment, to be sure, but more than that it was an augury of the changes that were to take place in psychology as a selfaware discipline and academic subject during the next decade. Of course, that was not the end of it. Thorne was subjected to a barrage of criticism but held on to the editorship for some time. Letters and condematory efforts continued as well. I leave it to other forum members to tell how EPA and the profession finally put the matter to rest- if it ever was. Richard A. Littman, Professor University of Oregon

-- Richard A. Littman (rlittman@DARKWING.UOREGON.EDU), December 02, 2002.

[Posted for SLB by cdg.]

I checked some sources. The _Biographical Dictionary of Psychology_ (1997, ed. Sheehy, et al) says this about the venture:

"At the 1904 St. Louis Exposition, Woodworth collected anthropometric data on some 1100 individuals of differning racial backgrounds, and published an important report showing that within-population variation outweighed any differences between races in significance"

That sounds like a rather curious conclusion for a blatant racist to arrive at. Perhaps Sheehy et al were mistaken. But according to the _Encyclopedia of Psychology_ (2000, A. Kazdin, ed. American Psychological Association/Oxford Press):

"At the 1904 St. Louis Exposition, Woodworth...made anthropometric and psychometric assessments...in order to study "racial differences". Compared with many of his contemporaries, Woodworth was extremely cautious about interpretation of group differences in intelligence and other abilities. In 1910, he warned psychologists against overreliance on group averages and urged the proper recognition of group overlap, within-group variation, and the role of culture. He warned of the dangers of assuming a hereditary source for differences and of using group differences for selecting immigrants. His thoughtfulness in matters of heredity and environment was known and respected in subsequent decades..."

Until recently, apparently.

The source of this, which Woodworth himself calls only a "general summary" and Sheehy et al call "an important report" is undoubtedly the 1910 paper published by Woodworth in _Science_ (vol. 31, issue 788, 171-186), titled "Racial differences in mental traits". I retrieved the paper, and I can attest from first-hand examination of it that Kazdin's summary is accurate.

A few quotes:

"Whites and negroes, though differing markedly in complexion and hair, overlap very extensively in almost every other trait...Even in brain weight, which would seem a trait of great important in relation to intelligence and civilization, the overlapping is much more impressive than the differences"

He describes the "jumble" of individual measures of brain weights of whites and negroes, and then comments:

"But now we cast up the average of each group, and find them to differ; and though the difference is small, we straightway seize on it as the important result, and announce that the negro has a smaller brain than the white. We go a step further, and class the white as a large-brained race; the negro as a small-brained. Such transformations of differences of degree into differences of kind..partakes of the ludicrous."

"The familiar "tapping test", which measures the rate at which the brain can at will discharge a series of impulses was tried at St. Louis on a wide variety of folk, without disclosing marked differences between groups. The differences wer somewhat greater when the movement..had to be accurate...The Eskimos excelled all others...The Filipinos...seemed undeniably superior to whites"

Far from being a racist, his views relating to this study are remarkable for 1910, and show him to be far ahead of his time. I urge anyone interested to read what he had to say in the original. I suspect that claims to the contrary resulted from an excessive zeal to label anyone who studied racial differences to be a racist, abetted by a tendency to judge on the basis of the titles of articles rather than by their contents. My comments must be balanced against those of Richard Littman (posted on the York U. History Question & Answer site ) where he related an incident concerning Woodworth's defence of a scurrilous editorial written by F.C. Thorne advocating quotas for Jews. This appears to be oral history rather than based on anything written by Woodworth. It may well be true, but if so, suggests that passing overall judgement on a man of his times can be a tricky matter. Scholarship is not well-served by the hasty resort to an over-simplified label.

Stephen Black

______________________________________________________________
Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470
Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661
Bishop's University e-mail: sblack@ubishops.ca
Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7
Canada

-- Stephen L. Black (sblack@UBISHOPS.CA), December 02, 2002.

[Posted for RG by cdg.]

The Africans (Belgium Congo)at the 1904 Fair were indeed tested (I had the scores. They are now at the Archives) with the Form Board (which was the state of the art at that time).They were tested along with all the other groups and, as expected, the Africans scored poorly thus proving that they were at the bottom of civilization's rung. It is of interested that the Africans were proven to be inferior athletes with the Caucasians being superior. Well so much for the validity of the testing instruments. Incidentally, I read a paper at the APA convention during the early 1980s to this effect.

-- Robert Guthrie (rguthri1@san.rr.com), December 05, 2002.