Janet Taylor Spence

1. Janet Taylor Spence Elizabeth Mattachione Jamie Ward Nicole Larson Masaki Osada Jordan Heroux

2. Spence’s Background • born August 29, 1923 in Toledo, Ohio • Family – emphasis on female education • Marriage – Kenneth Spence

3. Education • High school • College – undergraduate • College – graduate • Internship

4. Postgraduate Career • Northwestern University – 1st woman in psychology department – controversy • Courses taught – statistics, abnormal psychology, personality theory, experimental psychology, history and systems, adjustment, and introductory psychology, as well as undergraduate advising. • Students like her – “She was loved by all of us—a marvelous, dedicated teacher…students were attracted to her like flies” • After marriage – nepotism policies • Return to psychology • Ashbel Smith Professor of Psychology and Educational Psychology at University of Texas.

5. The Zeitgeist • Manifest Anxiety: Hull-Spence Theory • Reinforcement, Feedback, and Intrinsic Motivation – extrinsically motivated behavior • Gender Issues & Achievement Motivation– rise of feminism

6. Professional Obstacles • 1940s • Yale faculty • Availability of classes • IQ research • 1970s • Cognitive psychology • Death of husband • Women’s rights movement

7. Learning Theory and Behaviorism • Personality • Individual differences • Manifest Anxiety Scale • Research with Schizophrenia and Reinforcement

8. Comparing Sex Role Attitudes across Ages (1979) • Across all ages, males more traditional • Among females, younger more liberal • Among males, younger more conservative

9. Multifactorial Gender Identity Theory (1993) • Continuum of Masculinity-Femininity • College men more traditional sex roles • College women are less likely to accept traditional roles

10. Spence’s Influence on Anxiety • Worked under Kenneth Spence and furthered the Hull-Spence Hypothesis • “Quite simply, I investigated whether chronically anxious individuals would classically condition more rapidly than less anxious individuals.” • Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale • 1951 - "Anxiety and strength of UCS as determiners of the amount of eyelid conditioning"and "The relationship of anxiety to the conditioned eyelid response"

11. Spence’s Influence on Schizophrenia • Veteran’s Hospital in Iowa City (1960) • Austin State School for the Mentally Retarded (1964) • Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology : “Associative interference in the verbal learning performance of schizophrenics and normals” (1964) • Journal of Abnormal Psychology : “Rote learning in schizophrenics and normal subjects under positive and negative reinforcement conditions” (1965)

12. Spence’s Influence on Women in Psychology • Northwestern University: first female faculty member (1949) • University of Texas Austin at Austin School of Education: Department of Educational Psychology Chair (1964) • "Who likes competent women? Competence, sex-role congruence of interest, and subjects' attitudes toward women as determinants of interpersonal attraction" (1972) • Attitudes Toward Women Scale (1972) • President of Southwestern Psychological Association (1972) • Personal Attributes Questionnaire (1974) • Editor for Contemporary Psychology (1974) • President of APA , sixth woman to do so (1984) • Founder and president of American Psychological Society (1989) *Only woman to have been president of both the APA and APS

13. Words Reflecting Her Impact… • “I would consider her impact to be comparable with that of Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships. In Janet of Austin, we have the face that launched a thousand dissertations.” – Robert Helmreich • “I began to receive invitations to give talks at other universities do that I could 'serve as a role model' for their women students. The implication, I think unintended, was that whether one had something worth listening to was relatively unimportant; it was enough to be a woman.” – Janet Taylor Spence

14. Spence’s Influence on Psychology • Several publications influencing gender, learning, personality, and schizophrenia • Concepts of Personality (1963) • Awarded the Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in the Science of Psychology (2004)

15. Strengths of Spence’s Ideas • Development of new views • Anxiety • Importance of Intrinsic Motivation • Development of new measurements • Manifest Anxiety Scale • Attitudes Toward Women Scale (1972) • Texas Social Behavior Inventory (1974) • Personal Attributes Questionnaire (1974) • Work and Family Orientation Questionnaire (1978) • Extended Personal Attributes Questionnaire (1979) • Male-Female Relations Questionnaire (1980)

16. Weakness of Spence’s Ideas • Validity of the new measurements

17. Janet Taylor Spence • In summary…

18. References Gold medal award for life achievement in the science of psychology (2004). American Psychologist, 59, 361-363. Spence, J.T. (1963). Learning Theory and Personality. In J. M. Wepman & R. W. Heine (Eds.), Concepts of Personality (3-28). Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company. O’Connell, Agnes N. & Russo, Nancy Felipe. Women in Psychology: A Bio-Bibliographic Sourcebook. New York: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1990. O’Connell, Agnes N. & Russo, Nancy Felipe. Models of Achievement Reflections of Eminent Women in Psychology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Psychiatric Rating Scales for Anxiety. (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2007, from http://www.neurotransmitter.net/anxietyscales.html Spence, J.T., & Lair, C. V. (1964). Associative interference in the verbal learning performance of schizophrenics and normals. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 68 (2), 204-209, from PsycARTICLES database. Spence, J.T., Lair, C.V., & Goodstein, L. D. (1965). Rote learning in schizophrenic and normal subjects under positive and negative reinforcement conditions. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 70(4), 251-261, from PsycARTICLES database. Spence, J. T., & Helmreich, R. L. (1979). Comparison of masculine and feminine personality attributes and sex-role attitudes across age groups. Developmental Psychology, 15, 583-584. Spence, J.T., & Helmreich, R.L. (1978). Masculinity and femininity: Their psychological dimensions, correlates, and antecedents. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Spence, J. T. (1963). Learning theory and personality. In J. M. Wepman, & R. W. Heine (Eds.), Concepts of Personality (pp.3-29). Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. Spence, J. T. (1993). Gender-related traits and gender ideology: Evidence for a multi-factorial theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 624-635 Swann, William B., Langlois, Judith H., Gilbert, Lucia.Sexism and Stereotypes in Modern Society: The Gender Science of Janet Taylor Spence. Washington, D.C: American Psychological Association, 1999.. Wepman, J. M., & Heine, R.W.. Concepts of Personality Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1963. Women’s Intellectual Contributions to the Study of the Mind and Society. (n.d.). Retrieved June 9, 2007, from http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/spence.html