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Hugo Münsterberg

Hugo Münsterberg (/ˈmʊnstərbɜːrɡ/; June 1, 1863 – December 16, 1916) was a German-American psychologist. He was one of the pioneers in applied psychology, extending his research and theories to industrial/organizational (I/O), legal, medical, clinical, educational and business settings. Münsterberg experienced immense turmoil with the outbreak of the First World War. Torn between his loyalty to the United States and his homeland, he often defended Germany's actions, attracting highly contrasting reactions.

Hugo Münsterberg
Hugo Münsterberg
Born(1863-06-01)June 1, 1863
DiedDecember 16, 1916(1916-12-16) (aged 53)
NationalityGerman, American
CitizenshipAmerican
Known forApplied psychology
Formalist film theory
Scientific career
FieldsPsychology
ThesisDie Lehre von der natürlichen Anpassung in ihrer Entwicklung, Anwendung und Bedeutung (1885)
Doctoral advisorWilhelm Wundt
Doctoral studentsEdwin Holt
Other notable studentsMorris Raphael Cohen, Mary Whiton Calkins, Richard M. Elliott
Signature

Biography

Early life

Hugo Münsterberg was born into a merchant family in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), then a port city in West Prussia.[1] Even if he was later known for his German nationalism, Hugo's family was actually Jewish,[2] a heritage with which he felt no connection and would barely ever manifest publicly.[3] His father Moritz (1825–1880), was a successful lumber merchant and his mother, Minna Anna Bernhardi (1838–1875), a recognized artist and musician, was Moritz's second wife.[4] Moritz had two sons with his first wife, Otto (1854–1915) and Emil (1855–1915), and two with Anna, Hugo (1863–1916) and Oscar (1865–1920). The four sons remained close, and all of them became successful in their careers. A neo-Renaissance villa in Detmold, Germany, that Oscar lived in from 1886 to 1896 has recently been renovated and opened as a cultural center.[5]

The family had a great love of the arts, and Münsterberg was encouraged to explore music, literature, and art. Both his mother and his father died before he was 20 years old. When he was 12, his mother died, which marked a major change in the young boy's life, transforming him from a care-free child to a much more serious young man. In 1880, his father also died.[6]

Education and career

 
Cover of Psychotherapy by Münsterberg

Münsterberg had many interests in his early years and displayed interests in many fields including art, literature, poetry, foreign languages, music, and acting. Münsterberg's first years of school were spent at the Gymnasium of Danzig from which he graduated in 1882 with Oliver and Dennis. He entered the University of Leipzig in 1883 where he heard a lecture by Wilhelm Wundt and became interested in psychology. Münsterberg eventually became Wundt's research assistant. He received his PhD in physiological psychology in 1885 under Wundt's supervision at the age of 22. In 1887, Münsterberg received his medical degree at the University of Heidelberg. He also passed an examination that enabled him to lecture as a privatdocent at University of Freiburg. While at Freiburg he started a psychology laboratory and began publishing papers on a number of topics including attentional processes, memory, learning, and perception. In the same year he married a distant cousin, Selma Oppler of Strassburg, on August 7.

In 1889, he was promoted to assistant professorship and attended the First International Congress of psychology where he met William James. They kept up a frequent correspondence and in 1892, James invited him to Harvard for a three-year term as a chair of the psychology lab even though Münsterberg did not speak English at the time. He learned to speak English rather quickly and as a result his classes became very popular with students, in fact he was attracting students from James's classes. Part of the responsibilities he assumed as part of his new position at Harvard was that he became the supervisor of the psychology graduate students, in this position directed their dissertation research. As a result, he had a great influence of many students including Mary Whiton Calkins.[7] In 1895 he returned to Freiburg due to uncertainties of settling in the United States. However, because he could not obtain an academic position that he wanted, he wrote James and requested his old position back so that he could return to Harvard, which he did in 1897.[8] However, he never could separate himself from his homeland.

 
Hugo Münsterberg.

While at Harvard, Münsterberg's career was going very well. He was affiliated with many organizations including the American Psychological Association of which he became president (1898), the American Philosophical Association of which he also became president (1908), the Washington Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[9] He was the organizer and vice-president of the International Congress of Arts and Sciences at the Saint Louis World's Fair of 1904, vice-president of the International Psychological Congress in Paris in 1900, and vice-president of the International Philosophical Congress at Heidelberg in 1907.

In 1910–1911, he was appointed exchange professor from Harvard to the University of Berlin. During that year, he founded the Amerika-Institut in Berlin.[10] During his whole stay in the United States, he worked for the improvement of the relations between the United States and Germany, writing in the United States for a better understanding of Germany and in Germany for a higher appreciation of the United States.

Because of his work in applied psychology, Münsterberg was well known to the public, academic world, and scientific community.[11] The outspoken views of Münsterberg on the issues of the upcoming First World War raised storms of controversy about his ideals and position. He appeared as probably the most eminent supporter of German policies in the United States and so was at the utmost bitterly condemned by the Triple Entente and their friends, but to the pro-Germans, he appeared almost an idol. While supporting German policies, Münsterberg denounced many of the activities of the Teutonic hyphenates in the United States. Fearing a patriotic response to overt support of the German Empire would undermine his own more covert approach, he condemned the forming of an alien party within the United States as "a crime against the spirit of true Americanism" and said that its results would reach far beyond the time of the war.

At his death, the general attitude toward Münsterberg had changed, and his death went relatively unnoticed because of his pro-German attitudes and his support of German policies. He tried to talk about the inaccurate stereotypes held by both the Germans and Americans. He wrote many books and articles attempting to correct them including The Americans (1904). In American Problems (1910), however, he was highly critical of Americans and said that they had the "general inability to concentrate their attention on any one thing for very long."[12] As the war approached, Münsterberg's support of the supposed efficiency and modernity of the German autocracy caused him to be suspected of being a German spy, and many of his more liberal Harvard colleagues disassociated themselves from him. There were also threats against his life. He remained at Harvard as a professor of experimental psychology and director of the Psychological Laboratory until his sudden death, possibly by stress, in 1916 while he was on a lecture platform.

Scholarship

Comparisons to Wundt and James

One major point of disagreement between Wundt and Münsterberg was their opposing views on how psychology should be practiced. For Wundt psychology should be a pure science detached from practical concerns, while Münsterberg wanted to apply psychological principles that could be applied to practical concerns.[13] While working as Wundt's research assistant, Münsterberg studied voluntary activities through introspection, but they disagreed on the fundamental principles. Wundt believed that free will could be experienced as a conscious element of the mind during introspection, while Münsterberg did not.[14] Münsterberg believed that as we prepare to act we consciously experience this bodily preparedness and mistakenly interpret it with the will to act a certain way. Münsterberg's beliefs support his interpretation of James's ideo-motor theory of behavior. For Münsterberg behavior causes ideas. However, for James ideas cause behavior.[15] There are also similarities between James's theory of emotion and Münsterberg's analysis of voluntary behavior. For the James-Lange theory of emotion, "emotions are by-products of bodily reactions elicited by a situation."[16] Whereas for Münsterberg "the feeling of willful actions results from an awareness of covert behavior, or a readiness to act overtly, elicited by a situation."[17] In both cases, conscious experience is the result of behavior.

In 1900 he published the Basics of Psychology which he dedicated to James. Later Münsterberg became unhappy with James's liberal attitude towards philosophy and psychology. He was unhappy about James's acceptance of Freudian psychoanalysis, psychic phenomena, and religious mysticism into the area of psychology.[18] Münsterberg had said "Mysticism and mediums were one thing, psychology was quite another. Experimental psychology and psychic hocus-pocus did not mix."[19]

Applied psychology

Over time Münsterberg's interests turned to the many practical applications of psychological principles, he felt very strongly that psychologists had the responsibility to uncover information that could then be used in real world applications. In fact he was the first to apply psychological principles to the legal field, creating forensic psychology.[20] He wrote several papers on the application of psychological information in legal situations. The main objective in most of these articles was eyewitness testimony which examined the viability of said witness testimony. He also applied psychological principles to the field of clinical psychology attempting to help those who are ill through a variety of different treatments.

Forensic psychology

In 1908, Münsterberg published his controversial book On the Witness Stand (1908), which is a collection of magazine articles previously published by him where he discusses the many different psychological factors that can change a trial's outcome and pointed the way for rational and scientific means for probing the facts claimed by human witnesses by the application of experimental psychology to the administration of law. He is also credited with being among the first to consider jury research. He says "The lawyer alone is obdurate. The lawyer and the judge and the juryman are sure that they do not need the experimental psychologist... They go on thinking that their legal instinct and their common sense supplies them with all that is needed and somewhat more... Just in the line of the law it therefore seems necessary not to rely simply on the technical statements of scholarly treatises, but to carry the discussion in the most popular form possible before the wider tribunal of the general reader" cementing his position that while the lawyer, judge, and the jurymen are confident in their abilities, that with the use of experimental psychology he can show just how flawed their thinking can really be.[21]

Münsterberg points out the various reasons why eyewitness testimony is inherently unreliable. He describes how eyewitness testimony is inherently susceptible to what he calls "illusions" where a subject's perceptions could be affected by the circumstances, making their memory of the events that transpired or testimony inaccurate. He states that with regularity the testimony between two different individuals in the same circumstances can be radically different, even when neither of whom had the slightest interest in changing the facts as remembered.[22] Münsterberg believes this is because memory, when all things are equal, is easily fallible. Because one's memory is affected by the associations, judgments, and suggestions that penetrate into every one of one's observations and taint our memory and our recollection of events.

Less well known but highly prescient, Münsterberg wrote about "Untrue Confessions." Appreciating the intuitive credibility of confession evidence in court, he expressed concern that confessions were fallible and speculated as to the psychological causes of false confessions.

Münsterberg conducted many experiments with his normal psychology students in his basic psychology course while at Harvard. He asked them, "without any theoretical introduction, at the beginning of an ordinary lecture, to write down careful answers to a number of questions referring to that which they would see or hear", and urged them "to do it as conscientiously and carefully as possible." The procedure went as follows. First he would show them a large sheet of white cardboard with a certain number of black dots on it spread in an irregular order. He exposed it for the students to view for only five seconds, and then asked them how many black dots that they thought were on the sheet. The results were surprising in that even with "highly trained, careful observers, whose attention was concentrated on the material, and who had full time for quiet scrutiny... there were some who believed that they saw seven or eight times more points than some other saw." He conducted similar experiments that referred to the perception of time, how rapidity is estimated, descriptions of sounds, and other similar experiments with similar results. Based on the results of his experiments, he "warned against the blind confidence in the observations of the average normal man" and concluded that one cannot rely on the accuracy of a normal person's memory.[23] He questioned how one could be sure of the testimony of any given witness.

In a portion of the book which he calls "The Detection of Crime" he discusses the many factors that can influence testimony, gain confessions, and force a confession from those who are innocent.[24] Münsterberg states that "brutality is still a favorite method of undermining the mental resistance of the accused."[25] He discusses some of the ways that police of the time have of making suspects confess to crimes that they had not committed, including making the prisoner's life as uncomfortable as possible, to break down his or her energy, and "worst of all giving brutal shocks given with fiendish cruelty to the terrified imagination of the suspect."[26] He states "that the method is ineffective in bringing out the real truth. At all times, innocent men have been accused by the tortured ones, crimes which were never committed have been confessed, infamous lies have been invented, to satisfy the demands of the torturers."[27]

For years his groundbreaking work was not given the recognition it deserved in forensic psychology and other fields but more recent scholarship highlights his substantial contribution to these fields.[28]

Clinical psychology

Münsterberg was grounded on the theory of psychophysical parallelism which argued that all physical processes had a parallel brain process. He believed that certain mental (neurological) illnesses have a cellular-metabolic causation and diagnosed based on his behavioristic observations of the subject's reactions to interviews of them by him. Psychotherapy (1909), the book he authored in regard to his investigations of matters of the mind. He defined psychotherapy as "the practice of treating the sick by influencing the mental life... perhaps with drugs and medicines, or with electricity or baths or diet."[29]

When trying to understand the causes of abnormal behavior, he saw many mentally ill people. Because he was seeing them for scientific reasons, he chose not to charge them for his services and attempted to understand the causes of abnormal behavior. His treatment, which he applied mainly to cases of alcoholism, drug addiction, phobia, and sexual dysfunction, was basically instilling in his patients the idea that they could expect to improve as a result of their efforts. He also employed reciprocal antagonism which is when you strengthen thoughts opposite of the behavior that is causing the problems. Münsterberg did not believe that psychosis could be treated because he believed that was caused by deterioration of the nervous system.[30]

Industrial psychology

Münsterberg was an admirer of Frederick Winslow Taylor to whom he wrote to in 1913: "Our aim is to sketch the outlines of a new science, which is to intermediate between the modern laboratory psychology and the problem of economics." Industrial psychology was to be "independent of economic opinions and debatable... interests."[31] Münsterberg's works Vocation and Learning (1912) and Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913) are usually considered the beginning of what would later become known as industrial psychology. His books dealt with many topics including hiring workers who had personalities and mental abilities best suited to certain types of vocations as the best way to increase motivation, performance, and retention, methods of increasing work efficiency, and marketing and advertising techniques.[32] His paper "Psychology and the Market" (1909) suggested that psychology could be used in many different industrial applications including management, vocational decisions, advertising, job performance and employee motivation.

In Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913) Münsterberg addressed many different topics that are very important to the current field of industrial psychology. His objective was "to sketch the outlines of a new science which is to intermediate between the modern laboratory psychology and the problems of economics: the psychological experiment is systematically to be placed at the service of commerce and industry."[33] He selects three points of view that he believes are of particular importance to industrial psychology and seeks to answer those questions. These three questions include "how we can find the men whose mental qualities make them best fitted for the work which they have to do; secondly, under what psychological conditions we can secure the greatest and most satisfactory output of work from every man; and finally, how we can produce most completely the influences on human minds which are desired in the interest of business." In other words, we ask how to find "the best possible man, how to produce the best possible work, and how to secure the best possible effects."[34]

 
Hugo Münsterberg.

To Münsterberg the most pressing question was the "selection of those personalities which by their mental qualities are especially fit for a particular kind of economic work."[35] Basically fitting the person with the correct skill set with the correct position to maximize their productivity, and to select those that have "fit personalities and reject the unfit ones."[36] He gives many reasons why it's difficult to select or place the correct person to any given vocation and says that certain qualities cannot be taken alone to determine a person's suitability for a position including their education, training, technical abilities, recommendation of previous employers, personal impressions of the person "the mental dispositions which may still be quite undeveloped and which may unfold only under the influence of special conditions in the surroundings; but, on the other side, it covers the habitual traits of the personality, the features of the individual temperament and character, of the intelligence and of the ability, of the collected knowledge and of the acquired experience. All variations of will and feeling, of perception and thought, of attention and emotion, of memory and imagination."[37] That in reality having confidence in those prior factors is completely unfounded because he believes that "A threefold difficulty exists. In the first place, young people know very little about themselves and their abilities. When the day comes on which they discover their real strong points and their weaknesses, it is often too late. They have usually been drawn into the current of a particular vocation, and have given too much energy to the preparation for a specific achievement to change the whole life-plan once more. The entire scheme of education gives to the individual little chance to find himself. A mere interest for one or another subject in school is influenced by many accidental circumstances, by the personality of the teacher or the methods of instruction, by suggestions of the surroundings and by home traditions, and accordingly even such a preference gives rather a slight final indication of the individual mental qualities. Moreover, such mere inclinations and interests cannot determine the true psychological fitness for a vocation."[38]

Münsterberg points out that wandering from one job to another is more common in America and notes that this does have certain advantages including "that a failure in one vocation does not bring with it such a serious injury as in Europe, but it contributes much to the greater danger that any one may jump recklessly and without preparation into any vocational stream."[39] Therefore, he sought to find a psychologically scientific way of vocational guidance. He describes how two such systems have come to rise in America that attempt to guide young students as they leave school to their chosen vocation, and a newer system marked by a movement toward scientific management in commerce and industry.

This second newer system started in Boston and is essentially a form of career guidance for children. A member of the community would call a meeting of all the neighborhood boys who were to leave elementary school at the end of the year and discuss with them whether they had any reasonable plans for the future. It was clear that the boys knew little of what they wanted to do or what would be expected of them in the real world, and the leader was able to give them, especially in one-one-one conversations, valuable advice. They knew too little of the characteristic features of the vocations to which they wanted to devote themselves, and they had given hardly any attention to the question whether they had the necessary qualifications for the special work.[40] From this experience an office "opened in 1908, in which all Boston children at the time when they left school were to receive individual suggestions with reference to the most reasonable and best adjusted selection of a calling. There is hardly any doubt that the remarkable success of this modest beginning was dependent upon the admirable personality of the late organizer, who recognized the individual features with unusual tact and acumen. But he himself had no doubt that such a merely impressionistic method could not satisfy the demands."[41] Münsterberg identified three main reasons why this worked: first, because they analyzed the objective relations of the hundreds of different accessible vocations, as well as, the children's economic, hygienic, technical, and social elements that should be examined so that every child could receive valuable information as to the demands of the vocation and what opportunities could be found within that vocation. Second, that the schools would have to be interested in the question of vocational choice so that observations of an individual child could be made about their abilities and interests. And finally, what he believed to be the most important point, "the methods had to be elaborated in such a way that the personal traits and dispositions might be discovered with much greater exactitude and with much richer detail than was possible through what a mere call on the vocational counselor could unveil."[42] Münsterberg believes that these early vocational counselors point towards the spirit of the modern tendency toward applied psychology, and that the goal can only be reached through exact, scientific, experimental research, "and that the mere naïve methods—for instance, the filling-out of questionnaires which may be quite useful in the first approach—cannot be sufficient for a real, persistent furtherance of economic life and of the masses who seek their vocations."[43]

The question of selecting the best possible man for a particular vocation for Münsterberg comes down to making the process very scientific, trying to create tests that limit the subjectivity that is possible through more traditional techniques of introspection, and instead using measurements of one's personality, intelligence and other inherent personality traits to try to find the best possible job for every individual.[44]

Münsterberg also explored under what psychological conditions that an employer can secure the most and highest quality output of work from every employee by looking at the effects of changing the work space environment, what can possibly effect workers production, problems of monotony in factory and other vocations that involve tedious repeated tasks and how to avoid these situation, studied attention and fatigue in the workplace, and the Physical and social influences on the working power.[45]

Finally investigating how a company can secure the best possible effects in terms of sales. Münsterberg talks about ways to study the satisfaction of economic demands, experiments with discovering the effectiveness of advertisements, the psychology of buying and selling, and in the end discusses the future development of economic psychology.[46]

Women and education

Münsterberg's views on women were shaped by his views on biology. Though he firmly believed that women should receive where possible, a higher education, he felt that graduate studies were too difficult and demanding for them. As well, he suggested that women should not be allowed to serve on juries because they were "incapable of rational deliberation".[47]

Contributions to film theory

Both Dudley Andrew and James Monaco count Münsterberg's book The Photoplay: A Psychological Study as one of the early examples of film theory.

Spiritualism

Though he believed in God and life after death, Münsterberg was throughout his career a committed opponent of parapsychology: the field of study concerned with the investigation of paranormal and psychic phenomena. He had a "great record of exposing mediums and other psychic charlatans".[48]

A notable episode in this facet of his career involved his exposure of the fraudulent spiritualist medium Eusapia Palladino. The exposure was included in the chapter "My Friends, the Spiritualists" in his book American Problems from the Point of View of a Psychologist (1910).[49] Author Daniel Cohen noted that "[Palladino] was undaunted by Münsterberg's exposure. Her tricks had been exposed many times before, yet she had prospered."[50] The exposure was not taken seriously by Palladino's defenders.[51] It was heavily criticized by Hereward Carrington and Théodore Flournoy.[52][53][54]

On 18 December 1909, in New York, with the help of a hidden man lying under a table, Münsterberg caught Palladino levitating a table with her foot.[55] Some investigators were originally baffled how Palladino could move curtains from a distance when all the doors and windows in the séance room were closed. According to Münsterberg she moved the curtains by releasing a jet of air from a rubber bulb that she had in her hand.[56]

Students

Münsterberg was an academic mentor to William Moulton Marston,[57] creator of Wonder Woman.

Works

Books
  • Die Willenshandlung (1888)
  • Beiträge zur experimentellen Psychologie (1889–92) Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4
  • Psychology and Life (1899)
  • Grundzüge der Psychologie (1900)
  • American Traits from the Point of View of A German (1901)
  • Die Amerikaner (1904)
  • The Americans (1904)
  • The Principles of Art Education (1905)
  • The Eternal Life (1905)
  • Science and Idealism (1906)
  • On the Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and Crime (1908)
  • Aus Deutsch-Amerika (1908)
  • The Eternal Values (1909)
  • Psychology and the Teacher (1909, 1916)
  • Psychotherapy (1909)
  • American Problems from the Point of View of a Psychologist (1910)
  • Vocation and Learning (1912)
  • Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913)
  • American Patriotism And Other Social Studies (1913)
  • Psychology and Social Sanity (1914)
  • Grundzüge der Psychotechnic (1914)
  • Psychology, General and Applied (1914, textbook)
  • The War and America (1915)
  • Business Psychology (1915, textbook for La Salle Extension University, Chicago)
  • Tomorrow (1916)
  • The Photoplay. A psychological study (1916)
Articles
  • Münsterberg, H. (1899). Psychology and Mysticism. Atlantic Monthly 83: 67–85.
  • Münsterberg, H. (1910). My Friends the Spiritualists: Some Theories and Conclusions Concerning Eusapia Palladino. Metropolitan Magazine 31: 559–572.
  • Münsterberg, H. (1907). Communicating with the Dead. New-York Tribune. November 3.
  • Münsterberg, H. (1913). The Case of Beulah Miller: An Investigation of the New Psychical Mystery. The Metropolitan 38: 16–62.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Hergenhahn, B. R. (2000). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, Calif u.a.: Wadsworth, p. 347.
  2. ^ Sander Gilman, Multiculturalism and the Jews, Routledge (2013), p. 73.
  3. ^ Andrew R. Heinze, Jews and the American Soul: Human Nature in the Twentieth Century, Princeton University Press (2004), p. 109.
  4. ^ . Archived from the original on 2013-11-15. Retrieved 2014-09-28.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. ^ . Archived from the original on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2011-04-03.
  6. ^ "Biography of Applied Psychologist Hugo Münsterberg".
  7. ^ Hergenhahn, B. R. (2000). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, p. 350.
  8. ^ Hergenhahn, B. R. (2000). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, p. 350.
  9. ^ Hergenhahn, B. R. (2000). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, p. 348.
  10. ^ See Berliner Amerika-Institut on German Wikipedia for more on the Amerika-Institut in Berlin.
  11. ^ Hergenhahn, B. R. (2000). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, p. 349.
  12. ^ Hergenhahn, B. R. (2000). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, p. 350.
  13. ^ Hergenhahn, B. R. (2000). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, p. 647.
  14. ^ Hergenhahn, B. R. (2000). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, p. 347.
  15. ^ Hergenhahn, B. R. (2000). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, p. 347.
  16. ^ Hergenhahn, B. R. (2000). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, p. 348.
  17. ^ Hergenhahn, B. R. (2000). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, p. 348.
  18. ^ Hergenhahn, B. R. (2000). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, p. 348.
  19. ^ Bjork, D. W. (1983). The compromised scientist: William James in the development of American psychology. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 63–64.
  20. ^ Hergenhahn, B. R. (2000). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, p. 349.
  21. ^ Green, Christopher. "On the Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and Crime." Classics in the History of Psychology. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 July 2011.[permanent dead link]
  22. ^ Münsterberg, H. (1909). On the witness stand: Essays on psychology and crime. New York: Doubleday, pp. 24–25.
  23. ^ Münsterberg, H. (1909). On the witness stand: Essays on psychology and crime. New York: Doubleday, pp. 24–25.
  24. ^ Münsterberg, H. (1909). On the witness stand: Essays on psychology and crime. New York: Doubleday, p. 73.
  25. ^ Münsterberg, H. (1909). On the witness stand: Essays on psychology and crime. New York: Doubleday, p. 74.
  26. ^ Münsterberg, H. (1909). On the witness stand: Essays on psychology and crime. New York: Doubleday, p. 74.
  27. ^ Münsterberg, H. (1909). On the witness stand: Essays on psychology and crime. New York: Doubleday, p. 74–75.
  28. ^ Dalby, J.T. (2014) Forensic psychology in Canada a century after Münsterberg. Canadian Psychology, 55, 27–33.
  29. ^ Münsterberg, H. (1909). Psychotherapy. London: T. F. Unwin.
  30. ^ Hergenhahn, B. R. (2000). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, p. 349.
  31. ^ Industrial Psychology in Britain
  32. ^ Hergenhahn, B. R. (2000). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, p. 349.
  33. ^ Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, p. 3.
  34. ^ Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, p. 23–24.
  35. ^ Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, p. 27.
  36. ^ Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, p. 29.
  37. ^ Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, p. 28.
  38. ^ Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, p. 30.
  39. ^ Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, p. 37.
  40. ^ Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, p. 39.
  41. ^ Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, p. 40.
  42. ^ Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, p. 40–41.
  43. ^ Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, p. 43.
  44. ^ Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913.
  45. ^ Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913.
  46. ^ Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, p. 23–24.
  47. ^ "Biography of Applied Psychologist Hugo Münsterberg".
  48. ^ Gardner, Martin. (2001). Dis Adam and Eve Have Navels?: Debunking Pseudoscience. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 217. ISBN 978-0-393-24503-5
  49. ^ Münsterberg. Hugo. (1910). American Problems from the Point of View of a Psychologist. New York: Moffat, Yard and Company. pp. 117–150.
  50. ^ Daniel Cohen. (1972). In Search of Ghosts. Dodd, Mead & Company. p. 109. ISBN 978-0396064855
  51. ^ Albert von Schrenck-Notzing. (1923). Phenomena of Materialisation. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. p. 10.
  52. ^ Myers, Gustavus. (1910). Reply to Professor Münsterberg. In Beyond the Borderline of Life. Boston: The Ball Publishing Co. pp. 138–148.
  53. ^ Flournoy, Théodore. (1911). Spiritism and Psychology. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers. pp. 282–286.
  54. ^ Sommer, Andreas. (2012). Psychical Research and the Origins of American Psychology: Hugo Münsterberg, William James and Eusapia Palladino. History of the Human Sciences 25 (2): 23–43.
  55. ^ C. E. M. Hansel. (1980). ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Re-Evaluation. Prometheus Books. pp. 58–64. ISBN 978-0879751197
  56. ^ William Seabrook. (1941). Wood as a Debunker of Scientific Cranks and Frauds — and His War with the Mediums. In Doctor Wood, Harcourt, Brace and Co.
  57. ^ "Women issues to Wonder Woman: Contributions made by the students of Hugo Munsterberg"

References

  • Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Münsterberg, Hugo" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  • Hale, Matthew, Jr. Human Science and Social Order. Hugo Münsterberg and the Origins of Applied Psychology. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980. ISBN 0-87722-154-5
  • Street, Warren R (1994). A Chronology of Noteworthy Events in American Psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. ISBN 1-55798-261-9
  • Kimble, Gregory A. et al. (1991). Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology. ISBN 0-8058-2619-X
  • Weimer Irving B. (2003). Handbook of Psychology. ISBN 0-471-38320-1
Attribution

Further reading

  • Benjamin, Ludy T., Jr (2000). "Münsterberg, Hugo". American National Biography Online. Retrieved October 16, 2015.
  • Benjamin, Ludy T., Jr (2000). "Hugo Münsterberg: Portrait of an Applied Psychologist". In Kimble, Gregory A.; Wertheimer, Michael (eds.). Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology. Vol. 4. pp. 113–129. doi:10.4324/9781410603876-12. ISBN 9781410603876.
  • Blatter, Jeremy (2015). "Screening the Psychological Laboratory: Hugo Münsterberg, Psychotechnics, and the Cinema, 1892–1916". Science in Context. 28 (1): 53–76. doi:10.1017/S0269889714000325. PMID 25832570. S2CID 32482758.
  • Landy, Frank J. (1992). "Hugo Münsterberg: Victim or Visionary?". Journal of Applied Psychology. 77 (6): 787–802. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.77.6.787.
  • Münsterberg, Margarete Anna Adelheid (1922). Hugo Münsterberg: His Life and Work. New York: Appleton. (Internet Archive)
  • Porfeli, Erik J. (2009). "Hugo Münsterberg and the Origins of Vocational Guidance". The Career Development Quarterly. 57 (3): 225–236. doi:10.1002/j.2161-0045.2009.tb00108.x.
  • Spillmann, Jutta; Spillmann, Lothar (1993). "The Rise and Fall of Hugo Münsterberg". Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. 29 (4): 322–338. doi:10.1002/1520-6696(199310)29:4<322::AID-JHBS2300290403>3.0.CO;2-1.

External links

  • Hugo Münsterberg's obituary.
  • On The Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology & Crime - Full Text
  • Personal and professional biographical information 2007-09-09 at the Wayback Machine
  • Hugo Münsterberg
  • Works by Hugo Münsterberg at Project Gutenberg
  • Works by or about Hugo Münsterberg at Internet Archive
  • Works by Hugo Münsterberg at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)  
  • Newspaper clippings about Hugo Münsterberg in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

hugo, münsterberg, ɜːr, june, 1863, december, 1916, german, american, psychologist, pioneers, applied, psychology, extending, research, theories, industrial, organizational, legal, medical, clinical, educational, business, settings, münsterberg, experienced, i. Hugo Munsterberg ˈ m ʊ n s t er b ɜːr ɡ June 1 1863 December 16 1916 was a German American psychologist He was one of the pioneers in applied psychology extending his research and theories to industrial organizational I O legal medical clinical educational and business settings Munsterberg experienced immense turmoil with the outbreak of the First World War Torn between his loyalty to the United States and his homeland he often defended Germany s actions attracting highly contrasting reactions Hugo MunsterbergHugo MunsterbergBorn 1863 06 01 June 1 1863Danzig Kingdom of PrussiaDiedDecember 16 1916 1916 12 16 aged 53 Cambridge Massachusetts U S NationalityGerman AmericanCitizenshipAmericanKnown forApplied psychologyFormalist film theoryScientific careerFieldsPsychologyThesisDie Lehre von der naturlichen Anpassung in ihrer Entwicklung Anwendung und Bedeutung 1885 Doctoral advisorWilhelm WundtDoctoral studentsEdwin HoltOther notable studentsMorris Raphael Cohen Mary Whiton Calkins Richard M ElliottSignature Contents 1 Biography 1 1 Early life 1 2 Education and career 2 Scholarship 2 1 Comparisons to Wundt and James 2 2 Applied psychology 2 3 Forensic psychology 2 4 Clinical psychology 2 5 Industrial psychology 3 Women and education 4 Contributions to film theory 5 Spiritualism 6 Students 7 Works 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 Further reading 12 External linksBiography EditEarly life Edit Hugo Munsterberg was born into a merchant family in Danzig now Gdansk Poland then a port city in West Prussia 1 Even if he was later known for his German nationalism Hugo s family was actually Jewish 2 a heritage with which he felt no connection and would barely ever manifest publicly 3 His father Moritz 1825 1880 was a successful lumber merchant and his mother Minna Anna Bernhardi 1838 1875 a recognized artist and musician was Moritz s second wife 4 Moritz had two sons with his first wife Otto 1854 1915 and Emil 1855 1915 and two with Anna Hugo 1863 1916 and Oscar 1865 1920 The four sons remained close and all of them became successful in their careers A neo Renaissance villa in Detmold Germany that Oscar lived in from 1886 to 1896 has recently been renovated and opened as a cultural center 5 The family had a great love of the arts and Munsterberg was encouraged to explore music literature and art Both his mother and his father died before he was 20 years old When he was 12 his mother died which marked a major change in the young boy s life transforming him from a care free child to a much more serious young man In 1880 his father also died 6 Education and career Edit Cover of Psychotherapy by Munsterberg Munsterberg had many interests in his early years and displayed interests in many fields including art literature poetry foreign languages music and acting Munsterberg s first years of school were spent at the Gymnasium of Danzig from which he graduated in 1882 with Oliver and Dennis He entered the University of Leipzig in 1883 where he heard a lecture by Wilhelm Wundt and became interested in psychology Munsterberg eventually became Wundt s research assistant He received his PhD in physiological psychology in 1885 under Wundt s supervision at the age of 22 In 1887 Munsterberg received his medical degree at the University of Heidelberg He also passed an examination that enabled him to lecture as a privatdocent at University of Freiburg While at Freiburg he started a psychology laboratory and began publishing papers on a number of topics including attentional processes memory learning and perception In the same year he married a distant cousin Selma Oppler of Strassburg on August 7 In 1889 he was promoted to assistant professorship and attended the First International Congress of psychology where he met William James They kept up a frequent correspondence and in 1892 James invited him to Harvard for a three year term as a chair of the psychology lab even though Munsterberg did not speak English at the time He learned to speak English rather quickly and as a result his classes became very popular with students in fact he was attracting students from James s classes Part of the responsibilities he assumed as part of his new position at Harvard was that he became the supervisor of the psychology graduate students in this position directed their dissertation research As a result he had a great influence of many students including Mary Whiton Calkins 7 In 1895 he returned to Freiburg due to uncertainties of settling in the United States However because he could not obtain an academic position that he wanted he wrote James and requested his old position back so that he could return to Harvard which he did in 1897 8 However he never could separate himself from his homeland Hugo Munsterberg While at Harvard Munsterberg s career was going very well He was affiliated with many organizations including the American Psychological Association of which he became president 1898 the American Philosophical Association of which he also became president 1908 the Washington Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 9 He was the organizer and vice president of the International Congress of Arts and Sciences at the Saint Louis World s Fair of 1904 vice president of the International Psychological Congress in Paris in 1900 and vice president of the International Philosophical Congress at Heidelberg in 1907 In 1910 1911 he was appointed exchange professor from Harvard to the University of Berlin During that year he founded the Amerika Institut in Berlin 10 During his whole stay in the United States he worked for the improvement of the relations between the United States and Germany writing in the United States for a better understanding of Germany and in Germany for a higher appreciation of the United States Because of his work in applied psychology Munsterberg was well known to the public academic world and scientific community 11 The outspoken views of Munsterberg on the issues of the upcoming First World War raised storms of controversy about his ideals and position He appeared as probably the most eminent supporter of German policies in the United States and so was at the utmost bitterly condemned by the Triple Entente and their friends but to the pro Germans he appeared almost an idol While supporting German policies Munsterberg denounced many of the activities of the Teutonic hyphenates in the United States Fearing a patriotic response to overt support of the German Empire would undermine his own more covert approach he condemned the forming of an alien party within the United States as a crime against the spirit of true Americanism and said that its results would reach far beyond the time of the war At his death the general attitude toward Munsterberg had changed and his death went relatively unnoticed because of his pro German attitudes and his support of German policies He tried to talk about the inaccurate stereotypes held by both the Germans and Americans He wrote many books and articles attempting to correct them including The Americans 1904 In American Problems 1910 however he was highly critical of Americans and said that they had the general inability to concentrate their attention on any one thing for very long 12 As the war approached Munsterberg s support of the supposed efficiency and modernity of the German autocracy caused him to be suspected of being a German spy and many of his more liberal Harvard colleagues disassociated themselves from him There were also threats against his life He remained at Harvard as a professor of experimental psychology and director of the Psychological Laboratory until his sudden death possibly by stress in 1916 while he was on a lecture platform Scholarship EditComparisons to Wundt and James Edit One major point of disagreement between Wundt and Munsterberg was their opposing views on how psychology should be practiced For Wundt psychology should be a pure science detached from practical concerns while Munsterberg wanted to apply psychological principles that could be applied to practical concerns 13 While working as Wundt s research assistant Munsterberg studied voluntary activities through introspection but they disagreed on the fundamental principles Wundt believed that free will could be experienced as a conscious element of the mind during introspection while Munsterberg did not 14 Munsterberg believed that as we prepare to act we consciously experience this bodily preparedness and mistakenly interpret it with the will to act a certain way Munsterberg s beliefs support his interpretation of James s ideo motor theory of behavior For Munsterberg behavior causes ideas However for James ideas cause behavior 15 There are also similarities between James s theory of emotion and Munsterberg s analysis of voluntary behavior For the James Lange theory of emotion emotions are by products of bodily reactions elicited by a situation 16 Whereas for Munsterberg the feeling of willful actions results from an awareness of covert behavior or a readiness to act overtly elicited by a situation 17 In both cases conscious experience is the result of behavior In 1900 he published the Basics of Psychology which he dedicated to James Later Munsterberg became unhappy with James s liberal attitude towards philosophy and psychology He was unhappy about James s acceptance of Freudian psychoanalysis psychic phenomena and religious mysticism into the area of psychology 18 Munsterberg had said Mysticism and mediums were one thing psychology was quite another Experimental psychology and psychic hocus pocus did not mix 19 Applied psychology Edit Over time Munsterberg s interests turned to the many practical applications of psychological principles he felt very strongly that psychologists had the responsibility to uncover information that could then be used in real world applications In fact he was the first to apply psychological principles to the legal field creating forensic psychology 20 He wrote several papers on the application of psychological information in legal situations The main objective in most of these articles was eyewitness testimony which examined the viability of said witness testimony He also applied psychological principles to the field of clinical psychology attempting to help those who are ill through a variety of different treatments Forensic psychology Edit In 1908 Munsterberg published his controversial book On the Witness Stand 1908 which is a collection of magazine articles previously published by him where he discusses the many different psychological factors that can change a trial s outcome and pointed the way for rational and scientific means for probing the facts claimed by human witnesses by the application of experimental psychology to the administration of law He is also credited with being among the first to consider jury research He says The lawyer alone is obdurate The lawyer and the judge and the juryman are sure that they do not need the experimental psychologist They go on thinking that their legal instinct and their common sense supplies them with all that is needed and somewhat more Just in the line of the law it therefore seems necessary not to rely simply on the technical statements of scholarly treatises but to carry the discussion in the most popular form possible before the wider tribunal of the general reader cementing his position that while the lawyer judge and the jurymen are confident in their abilities that with the use of experimental psychology he can show just how flawed their thinking can really be 21 Munsterberg points out the various reasons why eyewitness testimony is inherently unreliable He describes how eyewitness testimony is inherently susceptible to what he calls illusions where a subject s perceptions could be affected by the circumstances making their memory of the events that transpired or testimony inaccurate He states that with regularity the testimony between two different individuals in the same circumstances can be radically different even when neither of whom had the slightest interest in changing the facts as remembered 22 Munsterberg believes this is because memory when all things are equal is easily fallible Because one s memory is affected by the associations judgments and suggestions that penetrate into every one of one s observations and taint our memory and our recollection of events Less well known but highly prescient Munsterberg wrote about Untrue Confessions Appreciating the intuitive credibility of confession evidence in court he expressed concern that confessions were fallible and speculated as to the psychological causes of false confessions Munsterberg conducted many experiments with his normal psychology students in his basic psychology course while at Harvard He asked them without any theoretical introduction at the beginning of an ordinary lecture to write down careful answers to a number of questions referring to that which they would see or hear and urged them to do it as conscientiously and carefully as possible The procedure went as follows First he would show them a large sheet of white cardboard with a certain number of black dots on it spread in an irregular order He exposed it for the students to view for only five seconds and then asked them how many black dots that they thought were on the sheet The results were surprising in that even with highly trained careful observers whose attention was concentrated on the material and who had full time for quiet scrutiny there were some who believed that they saw seven or eight times more points than some other saw He conducted similar experiments that referred to the perception of time how rapidity is estimated descriptions of sounds and other similar experiments with similar results Based on the results of his experiments he warned against the blind confidence in the observations of the average normal man and concluded that one cannot rely on the accuracy of a normal person s memory 23 He questioned how one could be sure of the testimony of any given witness In a portion of the book which he calls The Detection of Crime he discusses the many factors that can influence testimony gain confessions and force a confession from those who are innocent 24 Munsterberg states that brutality is still a favorite method of undermining the mental resistance of the accused 25 He discusses some of the ways that police of the time have of making suspects confess to crimes that they had not committed including making the prisoner s life as uncomfortable as possible to break down his or her energy and worst of all giving brutal shocks given with fiendish cruelty to the terrified imagination of the suspect 26 He states that the method is ineffective in bringing out the real truth At all times innocent men have been accused by the tortured ones crimes which were never committed have been confessed infamous lies have been invented to satisfy the demands of the torturers 27 For years his groundbreaking work was not given the recognition it deserved in forensic psychology and other fields but more recent scholarship highlights his substantial contribution to these fields 28 Clinical psychology Edit Munsterberg was grounded on the theory of psychophysical parallelism which argued that all physical processes had a parallel brain process He believed that certain mental neurological illnesses have a cellular metabolic causation and diagnosed based on his behavioristic observations of the subject s reactions to interviews of them by him Psychotherapy 1909 the book he authored in regard to his investigations of matters of the mind He defined psychotherapy as the practice of treating the sick by influencing the mental life perhaps with drugs and medicines or with electricity or baths or diet 29 When trying to understand the causes of abnormal behavior he saw many mentally ill people Because he was seeing them for scientific reasons he chose not to charge them for his services and attempted to understand the causes of abnormal behavior His treatment which he applied mainly to cases of alcoholism drug addiction phobia and sexual dysfunction was basically instilling in his patients the idea that they could expect to improve as a result of their efforts He also employed reciprocal antagonism which is when you strengthen thoughts opposite of the behavior that is causing the problems Munsterberg did not believe that psychosis could be treated because he believed that was caused by deterioration of the nervous system 30 Industrial psychology Edit Munsterberg was an admirer of Frederick Winslow Taylor to whom he wrote to in 1913 Our aim is to sketch the outlines of a new science which is to intermediate between the modern laboratory psychology and the problem of economics Industrial psychology was to be independent of economic opinions and debatable interests 31 Munsterberg s works Vocation and Learning 1912 and Psychology and Industrial Efficiency 1913 are usually considered the beginning of what would later become known as industrial psychology His books dealt with many topics including hiring workers who had personalities and mental abilities best suited to certain types of vocations as the best way to increase motivation performance and retention methods of increasing work efficiency and marketing and advertising techniques 32 His paper Psychology and the Market 1909 suggested that psychology could be used in many different industrial applications including management vocational decisions advertising job performance and employee motivation In Psychology and Industrial Efficiency 1913 Munsterberg addressed many different topics that are very important to the current field of industrial psychology His objective was to sketch the outlines of a new science which is to intermediate between the modern laboratory psychology and the problems of economics the psychological experiment is systematically to be placed at the service of commerce and industry 33 He selects three points of view that he believes are of particular importance to industrial psychology and seeks to answer those questions These three questions include how we can find the men whose mental qualities make them best fitted for the work which they have to do secondly under what psychological conditions we can secure the greatest and most satisfactory output of work from every man and finally how we can produce most completely the influences on human minds which are desired in the interest of business In other words we ask how to find the best possible man how to produce the best possible work and how to secure the best possible effects 34 Hugo Munsterberg To Munsterberg the most pressing question was the selection of those personalities which by their mental qualities are especially fit for a particular kind of economic work 35 Basically fitting the person with the correct skill set with the correct position to maximize their productivity and to select those that have fit personalities and reject the unfit ones 36 He gives many reasons why it s difficult to select or place the correct person to any given vocation and says that certain qualities cannot be taken alone to determine a person s suitability for a position including their education training technical abilities recommendation of previous employers personal impressions of the person the mental dispositions which may still be quite undeveloped and which may unfold only under the influence of special conditions in the surroundings but on the other side it covers the habitual traits of the personality the features of the individual temperament and character of the intelligence and of the ability of the collected knowledge and of the acquired experience All variations of will and feeling of perception and thought of attention and emotion of memory and imagination 37 That in reality having confidence in those prior factors is completely unfounded because he believes that A threefold difficulty exists In the first place young people know very little about themselves and their abilities When the day comes on which they discover their real strong points and their weaknesses it is often too late They have usually been drawn into the current of a particular vocation and have given too much energy to the preparation for a specific achievement to change the whole life plan once more The entire scheme of education gives to the individual little chance to find himself A mere interest for one or another subject in school is influenced by many accidental circumstances by the personality of the teacher or the methods of instruction by suggestions of the surroundings and by home traditions and accordingly even such a preference gives rather a slight final indication of the individual mental qualities Moreover such mere inclinations and interests cannot determine the true psychological fitness for a vocation 38 Munsterberg points out that wandering from one job to another is more common in America and notes that this does have certain advantages including that a failure in one vocation does not bring with it such a serious injury as in Europe but it contributes much to the greater danger that any one may jump recklessly and without preparation into any vocational stream 39 Therefore he sought to find a psychologically scientific way of vocational guidance He describes how two such systems have come to rise in America that attempt to guide young students as they leave school to their chosen vocation and a newer system marked by a movement toward scientific management in commerce and industry This second newer system started in Boston and is essentially a form of career guidance for children A member of the community would call a meeting of all the neighborhood boys who were to leave elementary school at the end of the year and discuss with them whether they had any reasonable plans for the future It was clear that the boys knew little of what they wanted to do or what would be expected of them in the real world and the leader was able to give them especially in one one one conversations valuable advice They knew too little of the characteristic features of the vocations to which they wanted to devote themselves and they had given hardly any attention to the question whether they had the necessary qualifications for the special work 40 From this experience an office opened in 1908 in which all Boston children at the time when they left school were to receive individual suggestions with reference to the most reasonable and best adjusted selection of a calling There is hardly any doubt that the remarkable success of this modest beginning was dependent upon the admirable personality of the late organizer who recognized the individual features with unusual tact and acumen But he himself had no doubt that such a merely impressionistic method could not satisfy the demands 41 Munsterberg identified three main reasons why this worked first because they analyzed the objective relations of the hundreds of different accessible vocations as well as the children s economic hygienic technical and social elements that should be examined so that every child could receive valuable information as to the demands of the vocation and what opportunities could be found within that vocation Second that the schools would have to be interested in the question of vocational choice so that observations of an individual child could be made about their abilities and interests And finally what he believed to be the most important point the methods had to be elaborated in such a way that the personal traits and dispositions might be discovered with much greater exactitude and with much richer detail than was possible through what a mere call on the vocational counselor could unveil 42 Munsterberg believes that these early vocational counselors point towards the spirit of the modern tendency toward applied psychology and that the goal can only be reached through exact scientific experimental research and that the mere naive methods for instance the filling out of questionnaires which may be quite useful in the first approach cannot be sufficient for a real persistent furtherance of economic life and of the masses who seek their vocations 43 The question of selecting the best possible man for a particular vocation for Munsterberg comes down to making the process very scientific trying to create tests that limit the subjectivity that is possible through more traditional techniques of introspection and instead using measurements of one s personality intelligence and other inherent personality traits to try to find the best possible job for every individual 44 Munsterberg also explored under what psychological conditions that an employer can secure the most and highest quality output of work from every employee by looking at the effects of changing the work space environment what can possibly effect workers production problems of monotony in factory and other vocations that involve tedious repeated tasks and how to avoid these situation studied attention and fatigue in the workplace and the Physical and social influences on the working power 45 Finally investigating how a company can secure the best possible effects in terms of sales Munsterberg talks about ways to study the satisfaction of economic demands experiments with discovering the effectiveness of advertisements the psychology of buying and selling and in the end discusses the future development of economic psychology 46 Women and education EditMunsterberg s views on women were shaped by his views on biology Though he firmly believed that women should receive where possible a higher education he felt that graduate studies were too difficult and demanding for them As well he suggested that women should not be allowed to serve on juries because they were incapable of rational deliberation 47 Contributions to film theory EditBoth Dudley Andrew and James Monaco count Munsterberg s book The Photoplay A Psychological Study as one of the early examples of film theory Spiritualism EditThough he believed in God and life after death Munsterberg was throughout his career a committed opponent of parapsychology the field of study concerned with the investigation of paranormal and psychic phenomena He had a great record of exposing mediums and other psychic charlatans 48 A notable episode in this facet of his career involved his exposure of the fraudulent spiritualist medium Eusapia Palladino The exposure was included in the chapter My Friends the Spiritualists in his book American Problems from the Point of View of a Psychologist 1910 49 Author Daniel Cohen noted that Palladino was undaunted by Munsterberg s exposure Her tricks had been exposed many times before yet she had prospered 50 The exposure was not taken seriously by Palladino s defenders 51 It was heavily criticized by Hereward Carrington and Theodore Flournoy 52 53 54 On 18 December 1909 in New York with the help of a hidden man lying under a table Munsterberg caught Palladino levitating a table with her foot 55 Some investigators were originally baffled how Palladino could move curtains from a distance when all the doors and windows in the seance room were closed According to Munsterberg she moved the curtains by releasing a jet of air from a rubber bulb that she had in her hand 56 Students EditMunsterberg was an academic mentor to William Moulton Marston 57 creator of Wonder Woman Works EditBooksDie Willenshandlung 1888 Beitrage zur experimentellen Psychologie 1889 92 Vol 1 Vol 2 Vol 3 Vol 4 Psychology and Life 1899 Grundzuge der Psychologie 1900 American Traits from the Point of View of A German 1901 Die Amerikaner 1904 The Americans 1904 The Principles of Art Education 1905 The Eternal Life 1905 Science and Idealism 1906 On the Witness Stand Essays on Psychology and Crime 1908 Aus Deutsch Amerika 1908 The Eternal Values 1909 Psychology and the Teacher 1909 1916 Psychotherapy 1909 American Problems from the Point of View of a Psychologist 1910 Vocation and Learning 1912 Psychology and Industrial Efficiency 1913 American Patriotism And Other Social Studies 1913 Psychology and Social Sanity 1914 Grundzuge der Psychotechnic 1914 Psychology General and Applied 1914 textbook The War and America 1915 Business Psychology 1915 textbook for La Salle Extension University Chicago Tomorrow 1916 The Photoplay A psychological study 1916 ArticlesMunsterberg H 1899 Psychology and Mysticism Atlantic Monthly 83 67 85 Munsterberg H 1910 My Friends the Spiritualists Some Theories and Conclusions Concerning Eusapia Palladino Metropolitan Magazine 31 559 572 Munsterberg H 1907 Communicating with the Dead New York Tribune November 3 Munsterberg H 1913 The Case of Beulah Miller An Investigation of the New Psychical Mystery The Metropolitan 38 16 62 See also EditInvisible auditorNotes Edit Hergenhahn B R 2000 An introduction to the history of psychology Belmont Calif u a Wadsworth p 347 Sander Gilman Multiculturalism and the Jews Routledge 2013 p 73 Andrew R Heinze Jews and the American Soul Human Nature in the Twentieth Century Princeton University Press 2004 p 109 Archived copy Archived from the original on 2013 11 15 Retrieved 2014 09 28 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint archived copy as title link Haus Munsterberg Archived from the original on 2016 03 05 Retrieved 2011 04 03 Biography of Applied Psychologist Hugo Munsterberg Hergenhahn B R 2000 An introduction to the history of psychology Belmont Calif Wadsworth p 350 Hergenhahn B R 2000 An introduction to the history of psychology Belmont Calif Wadsworth p 350 Hergenhahn B R 2000 An introduction to the history of psychology Belmont Calif Wadsworth p 348 See Berliner Amerika Institut on German Wikipedia for more on the Amerika Institut in Berlin Hergenhahn B R 2000 An introduction to the history of psychology Belmont Calif Wadsworth p 349 Hergenhahn B R 2000 An introduction to the history of psychology Belmont Calif Wadsworth p 350 Hergenhahn B R 2000 An introduction to the history of psychology Belmont Calif Wadsworth p 647 Hergenhahn B R 2000 An introduction to the history of psychology Belmont Calif Wadsworth p 347 Hergenhahn B R 2000 An introduction to the history of psychology Belmont Calif Wadsworth p 347 Hergenhahn B R 2000 An introduction to the history of psychology Belmont Calif Wadsworth p 348 Hergenhahn B R 2000 An introduction to the history of psychology Belmont Calif Wadsworth p 348 Hergenhahn B R 2000 An introduction to the history of psychology Belmont Calif Wadsworth p 348 Bjork D W 1983 The compromised scientist William James in the development of American psychology New York Columbia University Press pp 63 64 Hergenhahn B R 2000 An introduction to the history of psychology Belmont Calif Wadsworth p 349 Green Christopher On the Witness Stand Essays on Psychology and Crime Classics in the History of Psychology N p n d Web 15 July 2011 permanent dead link Munsterberg H 1909 On the witness stand Essays on psychology and crime New York Doubleday pp 24 25 Munsterberg H 1909 On the witness stand Essays on psychology and crime New York Doubleday pp 24 25 Munsterberg H 1909 On the witness stand Essays on psychology and crime New York Doubleday p 73 Munsterberg H 1909 On the witness stand Essays on psychology and crime New York Doubleday p 74 Munsterberg H 1909 On the witness stand Essays on psychology and crime New York Doubleday p 74 Munsterberg H 1909 On the witness stand Essays on psychology and crime New York Doubleday p 74 75 Dalby J T 2014 Forensic psychology in Canada a century after Munsterberg Canadian Psychology 55 27 33 Munsterberg H 1909 Psychotherapy London T F Unwin Hergenhahn B R 2000 An introduction to the history of psychology Belmont Calif Wadsworth p 349 Industrial Psychology in Britain Hergenhahn B R 2000 An introduction to the history of psychology Belmont Calif Wadsworth p 349 Munsterberg Hugo Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company 1913 p 3 Munsterberg Hugo Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company 1913 p 23 24 Munsterberg Hugo Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company 1913 p 27 Munsterberg Hugo Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company 1913 p 29 Munsterberg Hugo Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company 1913 p 28 Munsterberg Hugo Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company 1913 p 30 Munsterberg Hugo Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company 1913 p 37 Munsterberg Hugo Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company 1913 p 39 Munsterberg Hugo Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company 1913 p 40 Munsterberg Hugo Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company 1913 p 40 41 Munsterberg Hugo Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company 1913 p 43 Munsterberg Hugo Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company 1913 Munsterberg Hugo Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company 1913 Munsterberg Hugo Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company 1913 p 23 24 Biography of Applied Psychologist Hugo Munsterberg Gardner Martin 2001 Dis Adam and Eve Have Navels Debunking Pseudoscience W W Norton amp Company p 217 ISBN 978 0 393 24503 5 Munsterberg Hugo 1910 American Problems from the Point of View of a Psychologist New York Moffat Yard and Company pp 117 150 Daniel Cohen 1972 In Search of Ghosts Dodd Mead amp Company p 109 ISBN 978 0396064855 Albert von Schrenck Notzing 1923 Phenomena of Materialisation Kegan Paul Trench Trubner amp Co p 10 Myers Gustavus 1910 Reply to Professor Munsterberg In Beyond the Borderline of Life Boston The Ball Publishing Co pp 138 148 Flournoy Theodore 1911 Spiritism and Psychology New York Harper amp Brothers Publishers pp 282 286 Sommer Andreas 2012 Psychical Research and the Origins of American Psychology Hugo Munsterberg William James and Eusapia Palladino History of the Human Sciences 25 2 23 43 C E M Hansel 1980 ESP and Parapsychology A Critical Re Evaluation Prometheus Books pp 58 64 ISBN 978 0879751197 William Seabrook 1941 Wood as a Debunker of Scientific Cranks and Frauds and His War with the Mediums In Doctor Wood Harcourt Brace and Co Women issues to Wonder Woman Contributions made by the students of Hugo Munsterberg References EditChisholm Hugh ed 1911 Munsterberg Hugo Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th ed Cambridge University Press Hale Matthew Jr Human Science and Social Order Hugo Munsterberg and the Origins of Applied Psychology Philadelphia Temple University Press 1980 ISBN 0 87722 154 5 Street Warren R 1994 A Chronology of Noteworthy Events in American Psychology Washington DC American Psychological Association ISBN 1 55798 261 9 Kimble Gregory A et al 1991 Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology ISBN 0 8058 2619 X Weimer Irving B 2003 Handbook of Psychology ISBN 0 471 38320 1AttributionThis article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain Rines George Edwin ed 1920 Munsterberg Hugo Encyclopedia Americana Further reading EditBenjamin Ludy T Jr 2000 Munsterberg Hugo American National Biography Online Retrieved October 16 2015 Benjamin Ludy T Jr 2000 Hugo Munsterberg Portrait of an Applied Psychologist In Kimble Gregory A Wertheimer Michael eds Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology Vol 4 pp 113 129 doi 10 4324 9781410603876 12 ISBN 9781410603876 Blatter Jeremy 2015 Screening the Psychological Laboratory Hugo Munsterberg Psychotechnics and the Cinema 1892 1916 Science in Context 28 1 53 76 doi 10 1017 S0269889714000325 PMID 25832570 S2CID 32482758 Landy Frank J 1992 Hugo Munsterberg Victim or Visionary Journal of Applied Psychology 77 6 787 802 doi 10 1037 0021 9010 77 6 787 Munsterberg Margarete Anna Adelheid 1922 Hugo Munsterberg His Life and Work New York Appleton Internet Archive Porfeli Erik J 2009 Hugo Munsterberg and the Origins of Vocational Guidance The Career Development Quarterly 57 3 225 236 doi 10 1002 j 2161 0045 2009 tb00108 x Spillmann Jutta Spillmann Lothar 1993 The Rise and Fall of Hugo Munsterberg Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 29 4 322 338 doi 10 1002 1520 6696 199310 29 4 lt 322 AID JHBS2300290403 gt 3 0 CO 2 1 External links Edit Wikiquote has quotations related to Hugo Munsterberg Wikisource has original works by or about Hugo Munsterberg Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hugo Munsterberg Hugo Munsterberg s obituary On The Witness Stand Essays on Psychology amp Crime Full Text Personal and professional biographical information Archived 2007 09 09 at the Wayback Machine Psychology History Hugo Munsterberg Works by Hugo Munsterberg at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Hugo Munsterberg at Internet Archive Works by Hugo Munsterberg at LibriVox public domain audiobooks Newspaper clippings about Hugo Munsterberg in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Hugo Munsterberg amp oldid 1117073194, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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