Home > Encyclopedia of Psychology > Janet Taylor Spence

1923-
American clinical, experimental, and social psychologist, known for her studies on motivation and on gender identity.

Janet Taylor Spence has made important contributions to several branches of psychology. Her early work, the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (MAS), became a standard method for relating anxiety to performance. She discovered the importance of intrinsic motivation in performance, at a time when most psychologists believed in reward models of learning and performance. Later, Spence turned her attention to gender studies and developed a general theory of gender identity. The only individual who has served as president of both the American Psychological...