Psychologists and Their Theories | Anastasi, Anne - Introduction

Introduction

1908–2001

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR

BARNARD COLLEGE, NEW YORK, B.A., 1928; COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, Ph.D., 1930

Anne Anastasi (1908–2001) became synonymous with psychometrics—the measurement of human characteristics—by the 1950s. As the long-touted "Test Guru," Anastasi remained the key influence for anyone who had ever administered or taken an achievement, intelligence, aptitude, personality, or creativity test. Even at the time of her death in 2001, Anastasi's 1954 textbook, Psychological Testing, remained the standard for students and professionals alike doing research in the design and analysis of psychological tests.

What made Anastasi unique among her contemporary research and professional community members was her keen interest that went beyond test results. She found a way to seek the underlying cause of behaviors, and to explain statistics in the simplest way possible. This gave her students a grasp of the complex principles that could prove an obstacle to understanding the crucial essence of evaluations. Anastasi's approach was that of a generalist who paid attention not only to a psychological test's results, but how results might be interpreted in regard to the influences of a person's life history, intelligence, and other variables. When evaluating hospitalized psychiatric patients, for instance, Anastasi looked to the content of their drawings as well as the statistics that might have been gleaned from her testing. The psychometric measures that emerged meant little to Anastasi without looking at their psychological content, their relationship to other psychometric tests in consideration of other areas of psychology, and the social context of the testing.

Anastasi was revolutionary for her time. In 1937 when she published her first book, Differential Psychology, Individual and Group Differences in Behavior, what she offered the professional psychological community as well as the individual student cut through the complexity of the work that had already been done—work that was virtually incomprehensible to the average layperson. Her approach was presented as just one way of understanding behavior and was not intended to outline an entirely separate field of psychology. Her first paragraph noted that with differential psychology, it was "apparent that if we can explain satisfactorily why individuals react differently from each other, we shall understand why each individual reacts as [he] does."

Anastasi found her way through the line of earlier experimental psychologists such as Charles Edward Spearman and Wilhelm Wundt. She established her own place in that tradition by expanding on the knowledge of early researchers in order to help her shape human study within the context of a broader human history. Her research and experimentation gave her the message that people were not mechanisms reacting, or not reacting, to certain stimulus. She understood that each individual was a product of a combination of factors that included genetic, hereditary, and environmental influences. These created an equally unique profile to be considered when creating or interpreting psychological tests.

Anastasi's work has remained especially relevant to modern questions in education and psychological evaluations because of the intensity with which she penetrated the issue of cultural bias, or fairness in testing. Anastasi seriously questioned whether or not tests could be created without cultural bias. During the 1960s and 1970s, others argued that a test could be created that was totally fair to all individuals, crossing cultural lines. She insisted that no such test could be produced.

Anastasi consequently became renowned for her work with the interaction between biology and environment. She was a critical participant in the "nature versus nurture" arguments that significantly occupied the psychological scene of the later twentieth century. Because of her work in applied psychology, such fields as industrial and consumer psychology were given a boost in prestige at a time when few academic or theoretical psychologists dealt with the practical issues of human interaction.