The echoes of Psychology’s past

In writing a book that deals with the influences of power, representation, and coloniality on psychology, perhaps our biggest task was to make the subject relevant to those not overtly interested in the seemingly recent fad of equality, diversity, and inclusion. If you yourself aren't racist or sexist, then what does this have to do with the work you carry out now? 

Our answer is that the echoes of the past are everywhere, repeating through the decades, determining the people who engage with psychology and how we do so. The narratives that shape psychology give us insights into the profound impact that our collective history still exerts on us. 

Here we pick six historical episodes in psychological science that resonate with modern concerns. They illustrate that many of our current preoccupations are not so new at all, and identify the surprising ways in which some chose to address them. 

Francis Galton and Big Data 

Tech companies that have hoarded our data have been able to develop new technologies, like generative AI, that make use of this near-infinite source of information. We think of this technological advancement as a new phenomenon driven by the proliferation of online data, but nearly 150 years ago, it was the in-person collection of large amounts of data that prompted the need for new statistical tools to analyse them.  

Francis Galton, a prominent statistician, anthropometrist and eugenicist collected data from 9337 attendants of the 1885 International Health Exhibition in London (Galton, 1885). Alongside a range of physiological measures, Galton's team collected psychological data focusing on sensory perception. Their big data took advantage of the relatively new descriptive statistics that had been popularised in the previous decades, but also prompted the need for formalised measures of association, such as correlation, which Galton and his student Karl Pearson developed. Perhaps astonishingly by today's standards Galton charged participants 3d (approximately £1.50 in modern currency) to participate in his study! 

W.E.I.R.D. brains 

In the 1800s, the representativeness and generalisability of psychological data were hot topics amongst French scientists, including Pierre Paul Broca (known today for his discovery of brain regions associated with speech production). 

At the time, neuroanatomists mostly performed autopsies on paupers who died in charity hospitals. Broca and his colleagues in the Mutual Autopsy Society sought to increase the representativeness of their samples by examining the brains of people from other social strata, including the Parisian elite. Perhaps taking a page from Galton's book, Broca even advertised his autopsy service at the Paris World's Fair of 1889, handing out template wills that fairgoers could use to donate their bodies to science (Hecht, 2003). 

Broca was prescient in his call to make samples more representative, yet little has changed since then. By some estimates, more than 90 per cent of contemporary psychological research continues to be based on (and conducted by) a small group of individuals from W.E.I.R.D. (Western, educated, industrialised, rich, and democratic) places (Henrich et al., 2010; Arnett, 2008). In fact, the 'average brain' that features in many neuroanatomical atlases today is arguably even more specific, based on samples of mostly white, heterosexual, right-handed men without a history of physical/mental illness (Beaulieu, 2001). 

Robert Williams and the BITCH-100 

In the 1970s, many US psychometricians remained puzzled by the fact that, over 100 years after the abolition of slavery, and in the wake of the civil rights movement, African Americans still reliably scored lower than their white counterparts on measures of IQ such as the Stanford-Binet test and the Wechler Adult Intelligence Scale. Why, in the context of a more equal America with more equal opportunities for education, did Black Americans continue to demonstrate lower intelligence? 

In 1972, Robert Williams, a Black professor of psychology and African and African-American studies, published the 100 item 'Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity' (referred to as the BITCH 100; Williams, 1972). Respondents were required to identify the meaning of Black American English words (a language Williams studied and named Ebonics) each from an array of four alternatives. In this test, Black respondents reliably scored higher than white respondents, with white respondents appearing tense and uncomfortable as they completed it. The BITCH-100 demonstrated that unstated assumptions (here that respondents should be familiar with Ebonics) have the potential to greatly affect psychological measures. It was an irony that white respondents and academics were quick to see the culture-bound assumptions of the BITCH-100, but blind to them and their consequences in their preferred tests. 

The uneasy mix of science and politics 

Scientists and professional bodies are often uneasy about using their positions to call for political action. They cite their political independence and their need to remain neutral as reasons to remain silent on issues on which they are well informed. Is this a new development? 

It is easy to think of prominent early 20^th century eugenicists as villains amongst a silent majority of scientists who opposed their views. In fact, eugenics was widely supported amongst the scientific community, with some historians noting that it is easier to identify those who opposed eugenics than to list all of those in favour of it. 

Ronald Aylmer Fisher, the statistician who give his initial to the ANOVA F-statistic, was one such prominent supporter of and campaigner for eugenics. In the 1930s, he sat on the Brock Committee, which recommended to the British government a policy of voluntary sterilisation of the 'feeble-minded'. Were it not for the opposition of some churches, and the unfolding horrors of how Nazi Germany had enacted its own eugenic policies, this recommendation could well have become law.  

Experimental zoologist Lancelot Hogben, a contemporary of Fisher, was one of the few outspoken opponents of eugenics. Notably too, he actively resisted South Africa's racist politics, publicly condemning policies of segregation and discrimination, and holding classes open to Black students. On eugenics though, Hogben summarised a sentiment that seems to have crystallised as the modern-day scientist's preferred position: 'The biologist should be "primarily concerned with sterilizing the instruments of research before undertaking surgical operations upon the body politic"' (p.197, Wells, 1975).

The complexity of identity 

Many people know about the 'Jim Crow' laws in the United States that enforced racial segregation in public schools. But what may be less well known is the role that two Black psychologists – Mamie Phipps Clark and her husband, Kenneth B. Clark – played in desegregating schools. 

Their famous 'doll study' asked 3-7-year-olds to pick which of two dolls (one brown, one white) they preferred and which most looked like them. The Clarks compared the responses of Black children attending racially segregated schools against those that were racially integrated. Black children in racially segregated schools described the brown doll using racial slurs and explained that the brown doll who looked like them was ugly and dirty (Clark & Clark, 1950). 

The Clarks argued that the social stigma associated with having brown skin harmed the mental health of Black children and made the racial segregation of school morally unjustifiable. Their testimony in multiple court cases – including the landmark 1954 Supreme Court Case Brown v Board of Education – led to the repeal of segregation laws. Yet despite their fame and the undeniable impact of their work, Mamie Phipps Clark never secured a permanent academic job. Furthermore, the racism and sexism that barred Mamie Phipps Clark from professional advancement during her life continues to impact her legacy today: many textbooks celebrating the doll study award credit for the joint scholarship to Kenneth alone (Cramblet Alvarez et al., 2019). 

Scientific genealogies and gatekeeping 

Like those who follow the monarchy or the Crufts Dog Show, scientists can obsess over lineage. Academics often trace their 'pedigree' through an academic 'family tree' that represents relationships between mentors and mentees (see neurotree.org). In the 19^th century, nearly 40 per cent of American psychologists could trace their training to either Wilhelm Wundt or his protégé, G. Stanley Hall (Benjamin, 2000). 

That is a remarkable figure – but why does it matter? Hall and one of his academic 'siblings,' Edward Titchener, were influential members of a group known as the Experimentalists. Founded in 1904, the purpose of the elite academic club was to promote scientific rigour, particularly laboratory-based experimentation. With few exceptions, Hall and Titchener believed that the best way to do this was to exclude women from their scientific circle and to discourage their participation in experimental research. Fast forward a century and men outnumber women in 'hard' disciplines with an emphasis on technology or computation, like neuroscience, cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, and experimental psychology (Klatzky, Holt & Behrmann, 2015). In other words, the gatekeeping of a single, influential individual over 100 years ago continues to influence who gets to join the field today. 

• Dr Akira O'Connor is Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology & Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews. Dr Erin Robbins is a Lecturer in at the School of Psychology & Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews.

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References 

Arnett, J. J. (2008). The neglected 95%: Why American psychology needs to become less American. American Psychologist, 63(7), 602–614. 

Beaulieu, A. (2001). Voxels in the brain: Neuroscience, informatics and changing notions of objectivity. Social Studies of Science, 31(5), 635–680. 

Benjamin, L. T. (2000). The psychology laboratory at the turn of the 20th century. American Psychologist, 55(3), 318–321. 

Clark, K. B., & Clark, M. P. (1950). Emotional factors in racial identification and preference in Negro children. Journal of Negro Education, 19, 341–350. 

Cramblet Alvarez, L. D., Jones, K. N., Walljasper-Schuyler, C., Trujillo, M., Weiser, M. A., Rodriguez, J. L., Ringler, R. L., & Leach, J. L. (2019). Psychology's hidden figures: Undergraduate psychology majors' (in)ability to recognize our diverse pioneers. Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research, 24(2). 

Galton, F. (1885). On the anthropometric laboratory at the late international health exhibition. Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 14, 205–221. 

Hecht, J.M. (2003). The end of the soul: Scientific modernity, atheism, and anthropology in France. Columbia University Press.

Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2–3), 61–83. 

Klatzky, R. L., Holt, L., & Behrmann, M. (2015). The representation of women in cognition. Cognition, 141, 170-171. 

Wells, G. P. (1978) "Lancelot Thomas Hogben. 9 December 1895-22 August 1975". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 24: 183–21. 

Williams, R. L. (1972). The BITCH-100: A culture-specific test. Paper presented at the American Psychological Association Annual Convention, Honolulu, Hawaii, September 1972.