Margaret Floy Washburn facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Margaret Floy Washburn
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| Born | July 25, 1871 |
| Died | October 29, 1939 (aged 68) |
| Alma mater | Vassar College (graduated in absentia in 1893), Cornell University |
| Known for | Past president, American Psychological Association |
| Scientific career | |
| Doctoral advisor | Edward B. Titchener |
Margaret Floy Washburn (born July 25, 1871 – died October 29, 1939) was a very important American psychologist in the early 1900s. She was famous for her experiments on animal behavior. She also developed a special idea called the motor theory.
Margaret Washburn made history in several ways. She was the first woman to earn a PhD degree in psychology in 1894. Later, she became the second woman to lead the APA in 1921. This is a major group for psychologists in the United States. She was also the first woman chosen for the Society of Experimental Psychologists. In 2002, a study ranked her among the most important psychologists of the 20th century.
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About Margaret Washburn's Life
Margaret Washburn was born on July 25, 1871, in New York City. Her father, Francis, was a priest, and her mother, Elizabeth, came from a wealthy family. Margaret was an only child. She spent a lot of time reading and with adults. She learned to read very early, which helped her do well in school.
When she was seven, she started public school. She learned French and German. At age fifteen, in 1886, she finished high school. That fall, she went to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. She had to take some extra classes because she hadn't studied Latin or French before.
College and Early Studies
At Vassar, Margaret became very interested in philosophy. She also learned about the field of psychology. After graduating from Vassar in 1891, she wanted to study with James McKeen Cattell at Columbia University. Columbia did not accept women as graduate students yet. So, she was allowed to attend classes only as an auditor. This meant she could listen but not officially enroll for a degree.
Even though it was hard for women to get an education then, Professor Cattell treated her like any other student. He became her first mentor. She went to his classes and worked in the lab with the men. After a year, Cattell told her to go to Cornell University. Cornell had a new school for philosophy and would let her get a PhD. She was accepted in 1891 with a scholarship.
Earning Her PhD
At Cornell, Margaret studied with Edward B. Titchener. He was her main professor. She did an experiment on how people sense touch. For this work, she earned her Master's degree from Vassar College in 1893.
While doing her master's work, she also started her PhD research. Her PhD study was about how seeing things affects how we judge distance and direction by touch. In June 1894, she gave her final presentation. She became the first woman to receive a PhD in psychology. Her research paper was even translated and published in a German journal.
Teaching and Research Career
After getting her PhD, Margaret was offered a job at Wells College in Aurora, New York. She became the head of Psychology, Philosophy, and Ethics. She worked there for six years and often visited Cornell to see friends and work in the labs.
In 1900, she became a warden at Sage College at Cornell University for two years. Then, she became an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was in charge of the psychology department there. She was the only woman on the teaching staff. She stayed for one year before missing home.
In 1903, she happily returned to Vassar College as an Associate Professor of Philosophy. She stayed there for the rest of her life. She became the head of Vassar's new psychology department. She was a great teacher, and her students loved her. Many of them went on to have successful careers in psychology.
Margaret often published her students' research. The students would collect data, and she would write and publish the experiments. Between 1905 and 1938, she published 68 studies from the Vassar lab. This was the largest number of studies from any American university at that time. Her students once gave her money for fun, but she used it to help other students in the psychology department with scholarships.
In 1937, Margaret had a stroke and had to retire. She never fully recovered and passed away at her home in Poughkeepsie, New York, on October 29, 1939. She never married, choosing to focus on her career and caring for her parents.
Margaret Washburn's Work in Psychology
Margaret Washburn was a very important person in psychology in the early 1900s. She helped psychology become a real science. She translated a book by Wilhelm Wundt, a famous German psychologist, into English.
She used her experiments on animal behavior to show that mental events (like thoughts and feelings) are important to study. This was different from what many other psychologists believed at the time. They thought only things you could see, like actions, were worth studying.
Motor Theory Explained
Margaret Washburn also developed a "motor theory." This theory suggested that all thinking is connected to body movements. She believed that consciousness happens when one movement is partly stopped by another movement. For example, when you see an object, your senses create an impression. This comes with a small urge to move, either towards or away from the object. Different objects cause different urges to move.
When an object isn't there, your memory brings back those feelings. Learning means connecting movements in a regular way. Thinking, she said, comes from small movements of your hands, eyes, vocal cords, and even your body muscles.
In simple terms, she believed that even though consciousness isn't a movement itself, it needs certain motor processes to happen. We can understand conscious processes by studying the rules of these movements. She explained this theory in her book, Movement and Mental Imagery (1916).
Important Contributions to Psychology
Margaret Washburn wrote many articles over 35 years, about 127 in total. She wrote about how we see space, memory, art, differences between people, animal psychology, and emotions. She also worked as an editor for several important psychology journals.
She became the 30th president of the American Psychological Association in 1921. This was a dream come true for her. In 1927, she was chosen as vice president of a science organization. In 1929, she joined an international psychology committee. In 1931, she was the first woman psychologist and the second woman scientist to be chosen for the National Academy of Sciences. This is a very high honor in the United States.
Her Famous Book: The Animal Mind
Margaret Washburn's most famous work is her textbook, The Animal Mind: A Textbook of Comparative Psychology. It was first published in 1908. This book collected all the research on animal psychology at the time. It had a huge list of references, growing from 476 titles in the first edition to 1683 titles by the fourth edition.
The Animal Mind covered many animal mental activities. It started with senses like hearing, vision, and touch. Later chapters looked at consciousness and more complex mental processes. But the main focus of the book was animal behavior.
What was special about the book was the huge variety of animals it covered. At a time when most animal research was only on rats, Washburn's book talked about over 100 different species! These included ants, bees, cats, chickens, dogs, elephants, frogs, monkeys, spiders, and many more. She even had a whole chapter about the mind of the simplest animal, the amoeba.
She also wrote about how to understand the results of animal research. She was careful not to say that animals think exactly like humans. But she believed that animals do have some form of consciousness. She thought that the more an animal's brain and behavior were like humans, the more likely it was to have similar conscious experiences.
She wrote: "Our understanding of the mind of animals is based on the same idea as our understanding of other people's minds: we guess it from what we see them do. What other people do is like what we do, so we guess they have feelings like ours. What animals do is less like what we do, but it's a difference in how much, not in what kind... We don't know where consciousness starts in the animal world. We know for sure it's in us; we know it's very likely in animals that are built like us and learn quickly. Beyond that, it might exist in simpler and simpler forms, all the way down to the smallest living things."
The Animal Mind was updated several times and was the main textbook for comparative psychology for almost 25 years.
See also
In Spanish: Margaret Floy Washburn para niños
