Robert Mearns Yerkes
1876-1956
Robert Yerkes was instrumental in creating the intelligence testing movement
in the US. He, along with others, instituted the Army Alpha and Beta testing
program to measure the intelligence of men in the first world war. This work was
seen as a pivotal moment in the history of psychology. First, it provided
psychometricians with the first group intelligence tests. Second, it
popularized popularized intelligence testing in the public and private sectors.
Third, the program provided vast amounts of data to serve as fuel for future
controversies over apparent racial differences in intelligence test scores and
the supposed decline of America's "national intelligence."
Immediately after the United States entered the First World War, Yerkes urged the American Psychological Association to contribute psychological expertise to the war effort. The APA responded by deploying twelve committees. Yerkes chaired both the National Research Council Psychology Committee and the Committee on the Psychological Examination of Recruits. This second committee was charged with developing group intelligence test that could identify recruits with low intelligence and allow the Army to recognize men who were particularly well-suited for special assignments and officers' training schools.
The committee met for the first time in May of 1917. Among others, it included Henry Goddard, and Lewis Terman. By mid-July they had constructed five alternate forms of the verbal test, which became known as the Army Alpha, and had designed the Army Beta, a nonverbal test for illiterate and non-English speaking recruits. The final forms of the Army Alpha and Beta tests were published in January of 1919, and by the end of the war they had been administered to approximately two million men.
The launch of the Army Alpha and Beta testing program was seen a pivotal moment in the history of psychology. First, it provided psychometricians with the first group intelligence tests. Second, the publicity it generated popularized intelligence testing in the public and private sectors. Third, the program provided vast amounts of data to serve as fuel for future controversies over apparent racial differences in intelligence test scores and the supposed decline of America's "national intelligence."
Yerkes' biography
- Ursinus College, Pennsylvania (1892-1897)
- A.B. Harvard University (1898)
- Ph.D., Harvard University (1902)
- Instructor and Assistant Professor in Comparative Psychology, Harvard University (1902-1917)
- While on leave from his teaching job at Harvard, Yerkes studied neuro-surgical technique with Harvey Cushing at the Hunterian Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. He also spent several weeks with E.B. Titchener at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA.
- Director of Psychological Services and Research, Boston Psychopathic Hospital (1913-1917)
- Helped to create theYerkes-Bridges Point Scale of Intelligence (1915)
- President, American Psychological Association (1917)
- Chairman, National Research Council Psychology Committee (WWI)
- Chairman, Committee on the Psychological Examination of Recruits (The committee that designed the WWI Army Alpha and Beta testing program)
- Continued to serve on the National Research Council (1919-1924)
- Professor of Psychobiology, Yale University (1924-1944)
- Founded and directed the Yale Laboratories of Primate Biology (1929-1941
Writings of Robert Yerkes, chronologically arranged
Yerkes, Robert M. & Dodson, John D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18, 459-482. [The origin of the Yerkes-Dodson Law.]
Yerkes, Robert M. & Morgulis, Sergius (1909). The method of Pawlow in animal psychology. Psychological Bulletin, 6, 257-273. [The paper that introduced Pavlov's work to North America.]
Yerkes, R. M. & Anderson, Helen M. (1915) The importance of social status as indicated by the results of the point scale method of measuring mental capacity. Journal of Educational Psychology, 6, 150.
Yerkes, R.M., Bridges, J.W., & Hardwick, R.S. (1915). A point scale for measuring mental ability. Baltimore: Warwick & York.
Yerkes, R.M. (1916, 1979). The mental life of monkeys and apes: a study of ideational behavior. Delmar, NY: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints.
Yerkes, R. M. (1917). The Binet versus the point scale method of measuring intelligence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 1, 118.
Yerkes, R. M. (1918). Psychology in relation to the war. Psychological Review, 25, 85-115.
Yerkes, R. M. (1919). The measurement and utilization of brain power in the Army, Science, 44, 221-226, 251-259.
Yerkes, R. M.(Ed.) (1920). The new world of science: Its development during the war. NY: The Century Company.
Yerkes, R. & Yoakum, C. S. (1920). Army Mental Tests. NY: Henry Holt & Co.
Yerkes, R.M. (Ed.) (1921) Psychological examining in the United States Army. Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 15, 1-890.
Yerkes, R. M. (1925). Measurements of intelligence in the U.S. Army. Eugenics Review, 14, 225-245.
Yerkes, R. M. (1925). Testing the human mind. Atlantic Monthly, 358-370.
Yerkes, R.M., & Yerkes, A.W. (1929). The great apes: a study of anthropoid life. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Yerkes, R. M. (1930). Autobiography of Robert Mearns Yerkes. In C. Murchison(Ed.), History of psychology in autobiography (Vol. 2, pp. 381-407). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.
Yerkes, R.M. (1941). Man-power and military effectiveness: the case for human engineering. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 5, 205-209.
Yerkes, R. M. (1941). Psychology and defense. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 84, 527-542.
Yerkes, R.M. (1943, 1971). Chimpanzees: A laboratory colony. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation.
Writings about Yerkes
Dahlstrom, W.G. (1985). The development of psychological testing. In G.A. Kimble and K. Schlesinger (Eds.), Topics in the history of psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 63-114).
Fancher, R.E. (1985). The intelligence men: Makers of the IQ controversy. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Hilgard, Ernest R. (1965). Robert Mearns Yerkes. In National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs, Vol 38. 385-411. NY Columbia University Press.
Krawiec, T.S. (Ed.). (1974). Yerkes, R.M. In The psychologists, (Vol 2). London: Oxford University Press.
Larson, G. (1994) Armed services vocational aptitude battery. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of intelligence (Vol. 1, pp. 121-124.) New York: Macmillan.
Legassé, P. (Ed.). (2001). Yerkes, Robert Mearns. The Columbia Encyclopedia (6th ed.) [Online Version]. New York: Columbia University Press. Retrieved June 5, 2002.
Pastore, Nicholas (1978). The Army Intelligence Tests and Walter Lippman. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 14, 316-327.
McGuire, F. (1994). Army alpha and beta tests of intelligence. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of intelligence (Vol 1, pp. 125-129.) New York: Macmillan.
Wolman, B.B. (1968). Historical roots of contemporary psychology. New York: Harper & Row.
Yerkes, R.M. (1932). Psychobiologist. In Carl Murchison (Ed.), The history of psychology in autobiography. (Vol. 2, pp. 381-407). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press. Full text for this chapter is available online from the Classics in the History of Psychology website.