James McKeen Cattell (May 25, 1860 – January 20, 1944), Americanpsychologist, was the first professor of psychology in

the United States, teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, and long-time editor and publisher of scientific journals
and publications, most notably the journal Science. He also served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now
known as Society for Science & the Public (or SSP), from 1921–1944.
At the beginning of his career, many scientists regarded psychology at best a minor field of study, or at worst
a pseudoscience such as phrenology. Perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, Cattell helped establish psychology
as a legitimate science, worthy of study at the highest levels of the academy. At the time of his death, The New York
Times hailed him as "the dean of American science." Yet Cattell may be best remembered for his uncompromising
opposition to American involvement in World War I.[1] His public opposition to the draft led to his dismissal from his
position at Columbia University, a move that later led many American universities to establish tenure as a means of
protecting unpopular beliefs.[1]

Born in Easton, Pennsylvania in 1860, Cattell grew up the eldest child of a wealthy and prominent family. His father,
William Cassady Cattell, a Presbyterianminister, became president of Lafayette College in Easton shortly after James'
birth. William Cattell could easily provide for his children, as he had married Elizabeth "Lizzie" McKeen in 1859; together
they shared Lizzie's substantial inheritance. To this picture of the family's success one could add political power as well,
as James' uncle Alexander Gilmore Cattell represented New Jersey in the United States Senate.[citation needed]
Cattell entered Lafayette College in 1876 at the age of sixteen, and graduated in four years with the highest honors. In
1883 the faculty at Lafayette awarded him an M.A., again with highest honors. Despite his later renown as a scientist, he
spent most of his time devouring English literature, although he showed a remarkable gift for mathematics as well.
Cattell said Francis Andrew March, a philologist, was a great influence during his time at Lafayette. [2]
Cattell did not find his calling until after he arrived in Germany for graduate studies, where he met Wilhelm Wundt at
the University of Leipzig. He also studied under Hermann Lotze at the University of Göttingen, and an essay on Lotze won
him a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, where he left Germany to study in October 1882. [2] The fellowship was not
renewed,[2]and he returned to Leipzig the next year as Wundt's assistant.
The partnership between Wundt and Cattell proved highly productive, as the two helped to establish the formal study
of intelligence. Under Wundt, Cattell became the first American to publish a dissertation in the field of psychology. The
title of his German dissertation was Psychometrische Untersuchungen (Psychometric Investigation). The dissertation was
accepted by the University of Leipzig in 1886. More controversially, Cattell tried to explore the interiors of his own mind
through the consumption of the then-legal drug hashish. Under the influence of this drug, Cattell once compared the
whistling of a schoolboy to a symphony orchestra. While recreational drug use was not uncommon among early
psychologists, including Freud, Cattell's experimentation with hashish reflected a willingness to go against conventional
opinion and morality.[citation needed]
The main street in the College Hill Neighborhood of Easton, Pennsylvania, home to Lafayette College, is named after
Cattell.

Academic career[edit]
After completing his Ph.D. with Wundt in Germany in 1886, Cattell took up a lecturing post at the University of
Cambridge in England, and became a 'Fellow Commoner' of St John's College, Cambridge. [3] He made occasional visits to
America where he gave lectures at Bryn Mawr and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1889 he returned to the United
States to take up the post of Professor of Psychology in Pennsylvania, and in 1891 moved to Columbia University where
he became Department Head of Psychology, Anthropology, and Philosophy; He became President of the American
Psychological Association in 1895.
From the beginning of his career, Cattell worked hard to establish psychology as a field as worthy of study as any of the
"hard" physical sciences, such as chemistry or physics. Indeed, he believed that further investigation would reveal that
the intellect itself could be parsed into standard units of measurements. He also brought the methods of Wilhelm Wundt
and Francis Galtonback to the United States, establishing the mental testing efforts in the U.S.
In 1917, Cattell and English professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana (grandson of Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow and Richard Henry Dana Jr.) were fired from Columbia University for opposing the United States’ conscription
policy during World War I. [4] Years later he sued the university and won an annuity. In 1921, he used the money that he
had gained from the settlement in order to start The Psychological Corporation to foster his interest in the field of
applied psychology. Because he was never able to really explain how psychologists can apply their work, the organization
failed until taken over by other psychologists who had experience in applied psychology. Towards the end of his life,
Cattell still edited and published his journals. To help himself in the process, he created the Science Press Printing
Company in order to produce his journals. He continued his work on the journals until his death in 1944 in Lancaster,
Pennsylvania.

Eugenicist beliefs[edit]
Like many eminent scientists and scholars of the time, Cattell's thought was influenced by belief in eugenics, defined as
the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic
composition of a population, usually referring to human populations." [5] Cattell's belief in eugenics was heavily influenced
by the research of Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution motivated Cattell’s emphasis on studying “the psychology
of individual differences”.[6]
In connection with his eugencist beliefs, Cattell's own research found that men of science were likely to have fathers who
were clergymen or professors. Incidentally, Cattell's father was both. [7]
Cattell believed that he had “inherited ability", but he also credited the influence of his environment, saying "it was my
fortune to find a birthplace in the sun. A germplasm fairly well compounded [good genes] met circumstances to which it
was unusually fit to react”.[7] Cattell’s belief in eugenics even motivated him to offer his own children monetary gifts of
$1,000 if they married the offspring of a university professor or academic professional. [8]

Mental tests[edit]
Cattell’s research on individual differences played a significant role in introducing and emphasizing the experimental
technique and importance of methodology in experimentation in America. [9] Regarding the beginnings of his mental
tests, in Leipzig, Cattell independently began to measure “simple mental processes”[8] Between 1883 and 1886, Cattell
published nine articles discussing human reaction time rates and individual differences.[8] As professor at the University
of Pennsylvania, Cattell administered a battery of ten tests to student volunteers, and for the first time introduced the
term “mental tests” as a general term for his set of tests which included measures of sensation, using weights to
determine just-noticeable differences, reaction time, human memory span, and rate of movement.[8] When Cattell
moved to Columbia University, the battery of tests became compulsory for all freshmen. Cattell believed that his mental
tests were measuring intelligence; however, in 1901 Clark Wissler, a student of Cattell, demonstrated that there was
no statistical relationship between scores on Cattell's tests and academic performance. The tests were finally rendered
irrelevant with the development of Alfred Binet’s intelligence measurements.[8][10]

Journals[edit]
Cattell was well known for his involvement in creating and editing scientific journals. He was so involved in owning and
publishing journals, that his research productivity declined. He founded the journal Psychological Review in 1894 along
with James Mark Baldwin. He also acquired the journal Science and, within five years, made it the official publication of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1895-1900. In 1900, he purchased Popular Science
Monthly from D. Appleton & Company. In 1915, the title was purchased from him and became Popular Science. He, in
turn, founded and edited The Scientific Monthly, which went to the subscribers of the old Popular Science Monthly as a
substitute.[9][11]
Cattell was the editor of Science for nearly 50 years. During that time, he did much to promote psychology as a science by
seeing to it that empirical studies in psychology were prominently featured in the journal. [8] Regarding his impact on the
development of psychology as a science, Ludy T. Benjamin wrote of Cattell's editorship “there is no denying that it
significantly enhanced psychology’s visibility and status among the older sciences.” [6]:56

Skepticism[edit]
Cattell was skeptical of paranormal claims and spiritualism. He had dismissed the medium Leonora Piper as a fraud. He
was involved in a debate over Piper with the psychologist William James in the Science journal.[12][13][14] He took issue with
James's support for psychical research.[15] In a letter to James he wrote that the "Society for Psychical Research is doing
much to injure psychology".[16]

Family[edit]
He married Josephine Owen, the daughter of an English merchant, in 1888. Their seven children got their pre-college
educations at home with their parents as instructors. The whole family shared in Cattell's editorial work. [2] One
daughter, Psyche Cattell (b. 1893) followed in her father's footsteps, established a small child psychology practice in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania and developed tests to assess the intelligence of infants. [17]

James McKeen Cattell

Influences

 Student of: Galton, Wundt, Hall

  Influenced by:

 Students:

 Influenced: E. L. Thorndike, H. L. Hollingworth, P. Cattell, Wissler

 Time Period: The Great Schools

Education

 Lafayette, BA in 1880 & MA in 1883.

 Studied in Europe with Wundt in Leipzig and Lotze at Gottingen 1880.

 Johns Hopkins University, 1882-1883

 Leipzig as Wundt's assistant, Ph.D. in 1886

Career

 Researcher and Lecturer in Experimental Psychology, St. John's College, Cambridge

 Lecturer in Psychology, Bryn Mawr, 1887

 Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 1888

 Department Head of Psychology, Anthropology, and Philosophy, Columbia University, 1891-1905

 President of the American Psychological Association, 1895

 Presider, Ninth International Congress of Psychology, New Haven, Connecticut, 1929

Major Contributions

James McKeen Cattell is an important figure in psychology and the study of human intelligence for several reasons. While
at Leipzig, working under Wundt, he was the first American to publish a dissertation, Psychometric Investigation. After
his return from Europe, perhaps no other person contributed more to the strengthening of American psychology in the
late 1890s and early 1900s. He was involved with the formation of many major publications, including co-founder and co-
editor of The Psychological Review (1894-1903), editor and publisher of the Journal of Science (1894-1944 ), founder of
the Psychological Corporation (1921), and founder of the Science Press (1923), among many others. He was similarly
involved with major professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association, the American
Association of University Professors, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

One of Cattell's goals was to have psychology viewed as a science on par with the physical and life sciences. As he noted
in his presidential address to the American Psychological Association,

In the struggle for existence that obtains among the sciences psychology is continually gaining ground.... The academic
growth of psychology in American during the past few years is almost without precedent.... Psychology is a required
subject in the undergraduate curriculum ..., and among university courses psychology now rivals the other leading
sciences in the number of students attracted and in the amount of original work accomplished. (1896, p. 1)

In that address, Cattell provides additional evidence of the growth of psychology as a science, including a favorable
comparison of the major academic journals (e.g., all three general science journals at the time published psychological
studies, and the field boasted two specialty journals compared to three for mathematics, two for chemistry, geology, and
botany, and one for physics), the historical basis of psychology ("we may take pride in the beginnings of psychology
whose foundations were more securely laid by Aristotle than those of any other science" [pp. 2-3]), and the strength of
psychology in other countries.

Cattell believed that the continued growth of psychology was dependent on the field's acceptance of quantitative
methods similar to those used in other sciences. This belief was somewhat controversial: Although psychological
laboratories were flourishing in the United States, the philosophical underpinnings of psychology led some to question
the validity and, indeed, the necessity of psychological measurements. But Cattell felt that experimental approaches to
psychology, especially those involving "psycho-physical" measurement, were critical to the rise and continued success of
academic psychology:

I venture to maintain that the introduction of experimentand measurement into psychology has added directly and
indirectly new subject-matter and methods, has set a higher standard of accuracy and objectivity, has made some part of
the subject an applied science with useful applications, and enlarged the field and improved the methods of teaching
psychology. In conclusion, I wish to urge that experiement in psychology has made its relations with the other sicence
more intimate and productive of common good. (pp. 13-14)

Cattell's approach to psychophysical measurement (often referred to as anthropometric testing) was influenced by his
brief work with Francis Galton in England before Cattell returned to the United States from his European studies. Cattell
describes his laboratory's measurement work in his 1890 article in Mind (which includes an appendix by Galton) and his
1896 article with Livingston Farrand (Sternberg [1990] includes a brief summary of the 1890 article). Although it is widely
believed that Cattell's goal was to measure intelligence or a similar construct with these tests, his goals appear to have
been related for the most part to his goal of strengthening psychology's scientific credentials:

We do not at present wish to draw any definite conclusions from the results of the tests so far made. It is of some
scientific interest to know that students entering college have heads on the average 19.3 cm long, ... that they have an
average reaction-time of 0.174 sec., that they can remember seven numerals heard once, and so on with other records
and measurements. These are mere facts, but they are quantitative facts and the basis of science. Our own future work
and that of others must proceed in two directions.... [a] To what extent are the several traits of body, of the senses and
of mind interdependent? ... What can we learn from the tests of elementary traits regarding the higher intellectual and
emotional life? [b] On the other hand we must use our measurements to study the development of the individual and of
the race, to disentangle the complex factos of heredity and environment. (Cattell & Farrand, 1896, p. 648)

As Cattell's thinking about these psychophysical measures developed, he appears to have viewed the data as evidence of
a unitary intellect. This view was somewhat controversial, especially in light of the dissertation research of Clark Wissler,
one of Cattell's laboratory assistants. Wissler found little evidence of general intellectual ability, since the correlations of
the various psychphysical tests with each other and with external criteria (e.g., grades) were low. Controversy exists
about both the quality of Wissler's research and both Wissler's and Cattell's reactions to it, but Wissler's work is often
considered, in the words of Sternberg (1990), the "coup de grace" for anthropometric testing (p. 72).

Cattell's use of statistical methods and quantification of data helped in the development of American psychology as an
experimental science. He was one of the first psychologists in America to stress the importance of quantification,
ranking, and ratings. An outgrowth of this work, his experimentation with psychophysical testing, was influential in the
popularization of mental testing within the psychological laboratory. However, anthropometric testing in general became
controversial with the publication of Wissler's work (see the related Hot Topic).

The Life and Work of Psychologist James McKeen Cattell

By Kendra Cherry
Updated May 24, 2018

James McKeen Cattell. Image courtesy Library of Congress

James McKeen Cattell was the first psychology professor in the United States, teaching at the University of Pennsylvania.
During those early days, psychology was often regarded as a lesser science and was often even viewed as a
pseudoscience.

Cattell is credited with helping established psychology's legitimacy as a science thanks to his focus on quantitative
methods. He was also the founder and editor of a number of scientific journals including The Psychological Review.

Best Known For

First U.S. psychology professor
Helped establish psychology as a legitimate science

Birth and Death

James McKeen Cattell was born May 25, 1860, in Easton, Pennsylvania.
He died January 20, 1944
 Early Life
James McKeen Cattell was the oldest child born to a wealthy family in Pennsylvania. His father, William, was a
Presbyterian minister who later became the president of Easton College. His uncle was Alexander Gilmore Cattell, a U.S.
Senator for New Jersey. Cattell attended Lafayette College starting at age 16 where he studied English literature. He later
graduated with an M.A. degree.

After visiting Germany for graduate study, Cattell met Wilhelm Wundt and developed an interest in psychology. After a
brief stint studying at John Hopkins University, Cattell returned to Germany to serve as Wundt's assistant. Cattell went on
to publish the first psychology dissertation by an American.

Career
Cattell was awarded his Ph.D. in 1886 and became a lecturer at the University of Cambridge. He returned to the United
States to teach psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and later at Columbia University. In 1895, he became the
President of the American Psychological Association.

Cattell was later fired from his position at Columbia over his public opposition to U.S. involvement in World War I. He
later won a lawsuit against the university and, with the money he was awarded by courts, founded the Psychological
Corporation with Edward L. Thorndike and Robert S. Woodworth. The corporation was one of the largest creators and
administrators of mental tests.

Contributions to Psychology
Cattell is an important figure in psychology thanks to research on intelligence, his use of quantitative methods and his
focus on establishing psychology as a legitimate science. Early in its history, psychology was often viewed as a lesser
science or even a pseudoscience. As Cattell explained in his 1895 APA address:

"In the struggle for existence that obtains among the sciences psychology is continually gaining ground.... The academic
growth of psychology in American during the past few years is almost without precedent.... Psychology is a required
subject in the undergraduate curriculum ..., and among university courses psychology now rivals the other leading
sciences in the number of students attracted and in the amount of original work accomplished."

Cattell was also fundamental in establishing several major psychology journals including The Psychological Review,
the Journal of Science and Popular Science Monthly, which later went on to become Popular Science.

James McKeen Cattell

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
WRITTEN BY:
 The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
LAST UPDATED: May 21, 2019 See Article History

James McKeen Cattell, (born May 25, 1860, Easton, Pa., U.S.—died Jan. 20, 1944, Lancaster, Pa.), U.S. psychologist who
oriented U.S. psychologytoward use of objective experimental methods, mental testing, and application of psychology to
the fields of education, business, industry, and advertising. He originated two professional directories and published five
scientific periodicals.
After graduation from Lafayette College in Easton (1880), he went to Germany and studied with philosopher Rudolf
Hermann Lotze at the University of Göttingen and with psychologist Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig.
Returning to the U.S., he spent 1882 and 1883 at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Journeying again to Leipzig, he
became Wundt’s assistant and conducted investigations directed toward scientific objectivity.
After receiving his Ph.D. from Leipzig (1886), Cattell continued his research in the London laboratory of Sir Francis Galton.
In 1888 he received a professorship in psychology, the first ever offered, at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
There he established a laboratory and developed a series of mental measurement tests for college students.

In 1891 Cattell became professor and administrative head of psychology at Columbia University and devoted much of his
career there to the improvement and advancement of mental testing. In 1894 he cofounded the Psychological
Review and acquired the weekly journal Science,which he edited from 1894 to 1944. In 1900 he established Popular
Science Monthly, renamed Scientific Monthly in 1915, which he edited through 1943. His concern with scientific
eminence led him to originate, edit, and publish the directory American Men of Science (1906–38). Cattell was dismissed
from Columbia in 1917 when he publicly expressed criticism of the draft in World War I. The remainder of his
professional life was devoted principally to editing, including The American Naturalist(1907–44) and School and
Society (1915–39). In 1921 he founded the Psychological Corporation for the purpose of making research in applied
psychology available to industry and business.