Reimagining the history of the psychology of women.

Reconstructing the history of emotions: Revisiting Elizabeth Duffy’s rejection of the term “emotion”.

“…Despite her pioneering work as an experimental child psychologist, Buford Johnson has largely disappeared from the historical record. She is not mentioned in contemporary historical overviews of the field (e.g., Pickren et al, 2012; Thompson et al, 2012), and she died before the explorations of women’s history in psychology sparked by the feminist movement of the 1970s (Johnston & Johnson, 2018; Scarborough & Furumoto, 1989). Lizette Royer Barton, an archivist at the Center for the History of Psychology recently prepared a moving blog post about Johnson that illustrates the amount of detective work necessary to unearth the most basic information about her (Barton, 2018).…”

Teaching About the “War on Science” in Psychology of Women Courses

“…During this time, feminist psychologists conducted crucial social justice research on sex roles and child development that challenged biased approaches to psychological science. Two examples are Ruth Hartley's research on children's perceptions of adult gender roles, which challenged the fear that progressive changes to gender roles would have disastrous societal consequences, and Susan Walton Gray's work on the education of children in poverty, which inspired the development of Head Start (see Johnson & Johnson, 2018 for a review of this time period).…”

“…The federal government had stepped up funding for scientific research (Kuhn, 1970), such as establishing the National Science Foundation in 1950, and scientists wanted to distance themselves from the congressional and other political interference that they expected (Harding, 2015). McCarthyism also made scientists fearful of engaging in science that could be aligned with social justice concerns (Johnson & Johnson, 2018). This sociopolitical context helps demonstrate how the definition of objectivity is contextually determined (Harding, 2015).…”

“…The context of the 1950s and 1960s created negative consequences for women research psychologists. Many women were denied access to laboratory training, and they instead established careers in applied psychology, a branch of psychology stigmatized at the time for not being scientifically rigorous (Johnson & Johnson, 2018). Women psychologists were shut out of contexts that were granted the legitimacy of being "Objective."…”

“…Women psychologists were shut out of contexts that were granted the legitimacy of being "Objective." The scientific establishment viewed feminist viewpoints as incompatible with Objectivity, and feminists were targeted in the McCarthy era for what was seen as their "radical" views on sex and gender (Johnson & Johnson, 2018). Just like today, feminist psychologists' work was viewed as a threat to Objectivity and science as a whole despite the fact that their work centered on challenging bias in science.…”