Doctoral Dissertation Research: Gender-Typing in Inter-War Psychology

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A recurring theme of study within the hsitory of science is the efforts of scientists to characterize "normalcy" within the human species. Stephen Jay Gould in his regular articles in "Natural History" has detailed some of the problems in such examples as efforts to measure average cranial size, the "criminal" tendencies of those with an xyy chromosome and efforts to explain via gender typing of male/female variations in mathematical abilities. Whatever the good intentions of the scientific experts who frame the standards of what is normal, the history of such efforts has not been a particularly beneficent one. The message from these studies is clear: not only the scientists constructing such standards but the public who is "measured" by them should take great care in evaluating what these standards really mean. Ms. Stephanie Kenen, with the advice of Dr. John Lesch, her dissertation adviser, is examining the development of psychological personality tests between World Wars I & II. She is examining the efforts of Lewis M. Terman and Catharine Cox Miles to quantify sex- based personality traits in a 14 year study whose results were published in 1936. Terman, Miles, and their research team crated a multiple-choice personality test designed to distinguish between the sexes and to establish a range of "normal" scores for each sex. The psychologists emphasized the empirical, objective and quantitative aspects of their methods as evidence of the scientific status of their work. Their claim to legitimacy of science underscored their authority as experts in the psychology of sex. Ms. Kenen's research is focusing on three sets of questions related to the "Male-Female" or "M-F test". First, how did the researchers establish the legitimacy of their project in the halls of academe, in the budgets of philanthropic organizations, and in the eyes of the public? Second, to what degree and in what ways was Terman and Miles' research contingent on their historical setting? Third, how was the test appraised and applied in the years after its publication? These questions provide a framework for historical analysis of the M-F research project in terms of the legitimacy of scientific expertise, the construction of social-scientific knowledge, and the impact of that knowledge on the society from which it has derived.