Will-o’-the-Wispé

~ contributed by Jodi Kearns & Abigail Williamson; Abby is a University of Akron history major who worked with the Wispé collection for her Museums & Archives Studies certificate Capstone Experience.

In the early 1950s, Lauren G. Wispé set out to study social and psychological factors associated with eminence in the field of psychology by analyzing selected psychologists’ responses to a 12-page questionnaire asking about family, early education, and socioeconomic backgrounds. If you want to read Wispé’s results, have a look at Traits of Eminent American Psychologists published in Science in 1963.

The Cummings Center has a small collection of the returned questionnaires, which have some coding marks from the data analysis, and no additional research materials.

Some of the questions ask about parents’ ages at the psychologist’s birth, parents’ professions, and family members’ achieved levels of education. Questions cover work experience, mentors and influences, promising students, and prominent research and publications. The collection is a trove of eminent psychologist autobiography and self-awareness.

Even one seemingly simple question opens a rabbit hole one can fall into for hours, such as the question, Have there been any handicaps or factors which have interferred [sic] with your career?

Some wrote that there were financial factors interfering with their careers:

^{Henry Edward GarrettChauncey McKinley LouttitFloyd L Ruch}

Some interfering factors were physical health:

^{Roger Garlock BarkerArnold L GesellGardner Murphy}

Some factors were matters of personality and mental health:

^{Floyd AllportDonald George Marquis}

Writer’s block:

^{Dale Benner Harris}

Mediocre conversationalist:

^{Stanley Smith Stevens}

Unattractiveness:

^{Mitchell Dreese}

Insufficient education was quite a common factor:

^{Charles William BrayDonald Wallace MacKinnonWalter Richard Miles}

Cultural handicaps? Absolutely.

^{Samuel Weiller FernbergerGeorge Wilfred HartmanDavid KrechLawrence S RogersMax Wertheimer}

Too many assigned administrative responsibilities? Of course.

^{Carl I HovlandClifford Thomas Morgan}

Some psychologists listed many factors:

^{Harold Mowbray HildrethAbraham Harold MaslowLewis Madison TermanRobert Mearns Yerkes}

And many fortunate fellows had none:

^{Gordon W AllportHarry Frederick HarlowLaurance Frederic ShafferBurrhus Frederic SkinnerDonald Edwin Super}

And then there are these mid-20th Century vaguebookers:

^{Louis Leon ThurstoneWilliam Clark TrowGeorge Richard Wendt}

The Wispé questionnaires are both a chronical of self and a database of whimsy, which hold innumerable research projects and social media posts. We’re investigating the best way to make these digitized surveys and transcriptions fully available to you, while we await the time-consuming completion of the project.

Want to read what E.G. Boring wrote about E.B. Tichener being “adequate” and that Harry Harlow found his professors “moderately competent?” Want to read how E. C. Tolman named David Krech as an outstanding student and Krech listed Tolman as an academic mentor?

This collection has the tea, in psychologists’ own handwriting, and we’re excited to spill.