Edwin Boring
Edwin Garrigues Boring ( born October 23, 1886 in Philadelphia, † July 1, 1968 in Cambridge ) was an American experimental psychologist and one of the first historians of psychology.
Life
Boring was born in 1886 in Philadelphia and went in 1904 to study at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he earned his degree in 1908 as a Medical Examiner. After working as a teacher, among other things, all the while psychology courses at his university attended (including with Edward Bradford Titchener ), he returned in 1910 returned to the University and received his Ph. D. in 1914 here.
1917, when the United States entered the First World War, he left Cornell University and went to Robert Yerkes, who had been entrusted by the U.S. military with recruitment tests. He worked with David Wechsler. In 1919, he got a temporary job as a professor of experimental psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. After the future of psychology at Clark University was unclear after his three-year time limit, Boring 1922 took a position as associate professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he remained until his death.
He was on the professional audience out through ambiguous images, the so-called Boring - images are known. In the illustration to the right two motifs can be identified. Depending on the observer varies the age 15-95 years. Background is the figure-ground process, which is based on Gestalt perception Gestalt psychology. If a person has learned to recognize both figures, the perception between the two possible interpretations shuttling back and forth, but they can never both figures are seen simultaneously.
Boring was married to Lucy May Day, who holds a doctorate at Cornell University two years before him. The two had four children.
Publications
- A History of Experimental Psychology (1929 )
- The Physical Dimensions of Consciousness (1933 )
- Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology (1942 )
- Introduction to Psychology (1938 )
- Psychology for the Fighting Man (1943 )
- Psychology for the Armed Services (1945 )
- Foundations of Psychology (1948, with Herbert Lang Field and Harry Weld)
- History, Psychology, and Science: Selected Papers (1963 )