 | This articlemay rely excessively on sourcestoo closely associated with the subject, potentially preventing the article from beingverifiable andneutral. Please helpimprove it by replacing them with more appropriatecitations toreliable, independent sources.(December 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Joseph Jastrow | |
|---|---|
 Joseph Jastrow | |
| Born | (1863-01-30)January 30, 1863 |
| Died | January 8, 1944(1944-01-08) (aged 80) |
| Alma mater | Johns Hopkins University |
| Father | Marcus Jastrow |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychology |
| Institutions | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| Thesis | The Perception of Space by Disparate Senses (1886) |
| Doctoral advisor | Charles Sanders Peirce |
| Doctoral students | Clark L. Hull |
Joseph Jastrow (January 30, 1863 – January 8, 1944) was a Polish-born American psychologist renowned for his contributions toexperimental psychology,design of experiments, andpsychophysics.[1] He also worked on the phenomena ofoptical illusions, and a number of well-known optical illusions (notably theJastrow illusion) that were either first reported in or popularized by his work. Jastrow believed that everyone had their own, often incorrect, preconceptions aboutpsychology.[2] One of his ultimate goals was to use thescientific method to identify truth from error, and educate the general public, which Jastrow accomplished through speaking tours, popular print media, and the radio.[3]
Jastrow was born inWarsaw,Poland. A son ofTalmud scholarMarcus Jastrow, Joseph Jastrow was the younger brother of theorientalist,Morris Jastrow, Jr. Joseph Jastrow came toPhiladelphia in 1866 and received his bachelor's and master's degrees from theUniversity of Pennsylvania.[1] During his doctoral studies atJohns Hopkins University, Jastrow worked withC. S. Peirce on experiments inpsychophysics that introducedrandomization andblinding for arepeated measures design.[4][a] Though Peirce had to leave the university due to a personal scandal, Jastrow continued to advance his own research despite Peirce’s departure.[6] From 1888 until his retirement in 1927, Jastrow was a professor at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison, where he advisedClark L. Hull.[1] He was a lecturer atthe New School of Social Research from 1927 to 1933.[1]
Jastrow was head of the psychological section of theWorld's Columbian Exposition in 1893,[7] where he collected "psychophysical and reaction time data" from thousands of attendees.[8] He was one of the charter members of theAmerican Psychological Association, and eventually became the president in 1900.[1]
Jastrow was noted for his outreach in popular media, making psychological research accessible to a wider audience.[9] He gave public lectures, and was published in popular magazines, includingPopular Science,Cosmopolitan, andHarper's Monthly.[10][11] He also wroteKeeping Mentally Fit, asyndicated column that appeared in 150 newspapers.[9] Jastrow also gave radio talks from 1935 to 1938 through the Philadelphia Public Ledger Syndicate.[12]
Jastrow also suffered from bouts ofdepression throughout his life.[8] He died inStockbridge, Massachusetts.[13] His wife was Rachel Szold, a sister ofHenrietta Szold.[3]Elisabeth Jastrow, the classical archaeologist, was a cousin.
His former home was inMadison, Wisconsin, which is now located in theLangdon Street Historic District.
Jastrow was one of the founding members of theAmerican Society for Psychical Research for study of the "mesmeric, psychical, and spiritual".[14][15] The early members of the society were skeptical of paranormal phenomena; Jastrow took a psychological approach to psychical phenomena, believing that it was foolish to separate "... a class of problems from their natural habitat ...".[14][16] By 1890 he had resigned from the society, and he became an outspoken critic ofparapsychology.[14] Psychical researchers were rarely trained psychologists, and Jastrow thought their research lacked credibility.[17]Given the lack of evidence of psychical phenomena, he believedpsychologists should not prioritize disproving claimed psychical phenomenon.[18] In his bookThe Psychology of Conviction (1918) he included an entire chapter exposing what he calledEusapia Palladino's tricks.[19]
Jastrow was a leading figure in the field ofanomalistic psychology.[20] His bookFact and Fable in Psychology (1900) debunked claims ofoccultism includingSpiritualism,Theosophy andChristian Science.[21] He approached the occult in a scientific manner.[22] He wanted to understand why people were attracted to it, how it gained a foothold in society, and what evidence its supporters used.[23] He wrote that many people considered coincidence, dreams, and premonitions as sources of information above science,[24] and said the role of the scientist was to help the public understand truth from fiction, and to prevent the spreading of erroneous beliefs.[25]
Jastrow studied thepsychology of paranormal belief and viewed paranormal phenomena as "totally unscientific and misleading", being the result of delusion, fraud, gullibility and irrationality.[26]
Jastrow thought that analogies represented a more primitive way of interpreting the world.[27] He gave many examples of cultures that acted analogously, including the "Zulu chewing a bit of wood to soften the heart ...", and the "Illinois Indians making figures of those whose days they desire to shorten, and stabbing these images in the heart."[28] He wrote about cultures that ate animals to gain their physical attributes;[29] he said this tradition still persisted in his day, through superstitions, rituals, and folk medicine.[30] The underlying motivation for this mentality, Jastrow wrote, was that "one kind of connection ... will bring it to others."[30]
Jastrow was interested in perception, especially eyesight. He thought that eyesight was more complex than a camera, and that the mental processing of images was central to interpretation of the world.[31] He illustrated this throughoptical illusions, including therabbit–duck illusion.[32] He believed that what people saw also depended on their emotional state and their surroundings.[33]
To detectunconscious movement of the hand, Jastrow invented a machine he called the automagraph.[34] He found that when a subject was asked to concentrate on an object, their hand moved unconsciously in that direction.[35] The magnitude of the effect varied across individuals, especially in children, where the movement was more random.[36]
Jastrow found that people who had lost their eyesight after age six still were able to see in their dreams, and that people who had lost their eyesight before the age of five could not.[37] This same difference in perception and age was true for people with partial vision loss.[38] Jastrow concluded thatsight was not innate, and that significant mental development occurred between ages five and seven.[39] He noted thathearing, notsensation, was the primary sense of theblind, in both waking and dream.[40] He collected first-hand accounts of dreams from visually impaired people, includingHelen Keller.[41]
As early as 1913, at the congress of the German Psychiatric Association held in Breslau, Joseph Jastrow criticized psychoanalysis as unscientific andpseudoscience. He published a book (The House that Freud Built.[42]) about it in 1932.[43]
Jastrow's publications include:
Time Relations of Mental Phenomena.
The Qualities of Men.
Character and Temperament.
The Psychology of Conviction.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
Works by or aboutJoseph Jastrow atWikisource
Media related toJoseph Jastrow at Wikimedia Commons
