15 February in the History of Psychology

On February 15:

1564 — Galileo Galilei was born. Galileo is recognized as the founder of the modern scientific method. His reliance on controlled observation to reveal the course of natural events produced important discoveries in physics and astronomy. Of importance to psychology was his discovery that the pitch of a sound is related to vibrations at its source.

1748 — Jeremy Bentham was born. Bentham was a social philosopher whose philosophy of government promoted the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Psychology derived the principle of hedonistic motivation from Bentham's proposals concerning the relation of the individual to the state.

1856 — Emil Kraepelin was born. Kraepelin was a founder of modern psychiatry and psychopharmacology. He devised an early nomenclature for mental disorders, including new terms such as manic-depressive and paranoid.

1885 — Hans Henning was born. Henning's work was on the senses of smell and taste. He identified six primary scents and four primary tastes and identified chemical analogs of these primary perceptions.

1902 — The first scientific papers were read to the British Psychological Society. James Sully presented "The Evolution of Laughter," William McDougall presented "Fechner's Paradoxical Experiment," and W. G. Smith presented "Pathological Changes in Immediate Memory and Association."

1910 — Ralph F. Hefferline was born. Hefferline was a behavior analyst whose work on operant conditioning of thumb movements demonstrated conditioning of behaviors without the participant's awareness. Hefferline also had an interest in Fritz Perls's Gestalt therapy. Popular psychologist Joyce Brothers completed her doctoral dissertation under Hefferline's supervision.

1917 — Abraham A. Brill's English translation of Sigmund Freud's book The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement was published in the United States.

1929 — Yale University announced the establishment of the Institute of Human Relations, involving "the cooperation of all of the departments of the University that are interested in the human being." The institute was formally dedicated on May 9, 1931.

1934 — Paul Ekman was born. Ekman's research has related emotional state to nonverbal behavior, with special emphasis on facial expression and nonverbal correlates of lying and deception. His cross-cultural studies have demonstrated universals of emotional expression. APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, 1991.

1938 — The Journal of Neurophysiology was first published by C. C. Thomas. Johannes Dusser de Barenne was the editor.

1947 — The Ontario Psychological Association was founded in Toronto. C. Roger Myers was elected its first president.

1951 — The Kuder Preference Record, a standard measure of occupational interests, was published.

1954 — The Journal of Counseling Psychology was first published. C. Gilbert Wrenn was editor of the journal.

1966 — Julian Rotter's monograph Generalized Expectancies for Internal Versus External Control of Reinforcement was published in Psychological Monographs. By 1982, this article had been cited over 2,735 times and was featured as a "citation classic" by the journal Current Contents.

1974 — The New Jersey Higher Education Board authorized the New Jersey School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University. It was the first graduate school of psychology, independent but coordinated with a university, offering the PsyD degree. Samuel B. Kutash was instrumental in founding the Rutgers program.

1989 — The first electronic mail distribution of the APA Science Directorate Funding Bulletin was sent.