652 Psychological Experimentation Addressing Practical Concerns
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HISTORICAL ROOTS OF APPLIED
EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Perhaps the first stimulus for applied experimental psychol-
ogy is to be found in the work of astronomers in the late
1700s. Before the development of accurate chronoscopes, the
British Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne, required a pro-
cedure by which he could accurately measure the time of
transit of a star. According to Sanford (1888), he used the
“eye and ear” method, attributed to Bradley:
When the star is about to make its transit, the observer reads off
the time from his clock and then, while he watches the star in the
telescope, continues to count the second beats. He fixes firmly in
mind (as the moving image approaches the wire) its place at the
last beat before it crosses the wire, and its place at the first beat
after, and from the distances of these two points from the wire,
estimates by eye the time of the crossing in tenths of a second.
The role of the mind in observations by this method is fixing the
exact place of the star at the first beat, the holding of the same in
memory, the fixing of the place of the second beat, the compari-
son of the two and the expression of their relation in tenths. (p. 7)The story goes that Maskelyne fired his assistant, David
Kinnebrook, because the latter’s star measurements differed
by as much as 0.8 s from those of his supervisor. The result of
this event, 30 or more years later, was a series of behavioral
experiments to study individual differences in what became
known as the personal equation.It was this very practical
problem that motivated the initial studies of human reaction
time. Over the next 100 years investigators of the personal
equation continued to modify their measurement methodol-
ogy to take advantage of the improved technology for mea-
suring and recording events in time.
Despite, or perhaps because of, the prevailing belief
that the conduction velocity of nerves was infinitely short,
or at least not measurable, several nineteenth-century scien-
tists showed interest in the possibility of measuring the speed
of neurological and mental processes. The mid-nineteenth-
century experiments of Hermann Helmholtz on the speed of
transmission of the neural impulse in frogs are widely recog-
nized as outstanding examples of pioneering research in this
area. It was Frans Donders (1868/1969), however, who,
building on the work of Helmholtz, firmly established the
measurement of human reaction times and the taking of reac-
tion-time differences as a means of measuring the speed of
mental processes. The approach that Donders developed was
quickly adopted as a primary investigative tool by re-
searchers for use in both theoretically and practically moti-
vated experiments, and it remains so to this day. (For more on
the Kinnebrook incident and reaction-time research, see
chapter by Proctor & Vu in this volume.) Extensive accounts
of the earliest days of experimental psychology include Bor-
ing (1929/1950), Heidbreder (1935), Woodworth (1938), and
Woodworth and Schlosberg (1954).Early Experimental and Applied JournalsTheJournal of Experimental Psychologyand the Journal of
Applied Psychologywere established at about the same time,
the first issue of the former appearing in 1916 and that of the
latter in 1917. The Journal of Experimental Psychologywas
established under the auspices of the APA; the Journal of Ap-
plied Psychologybegan as a private journal, financed by its
editors, and became an APA journal in 1943.
The scope of the Journal of Applied Psychology,as de-
scribed in the front material of the first issue, was to include
the following:(a) The application of psychology to vocational activities, such
as law, art, public speaking, industrial and commercial work, and
problems of business appeal. (b) Studies of individual mentali-
ties, such as types of character, special talents, genius, and indi-
vidual differences, including the problems of mental diagnosis
and vocational prognosis. (c) The influence of general environ-
mental conditions, such as climate, weather, humidity, temp-
erature; also such conditions as nutrition, fatigue, etc. (d) The
psychology of everyday activities, such as reading, writing,
speaking, singing, playing games or musical instruments, sports,
etc. (pp. i, ii)Contributors of original articles to the journal were ad-
monished that emphasis was to be laid on “clear and accu-
rate statement of results, together with their practical
applications” (iii).
There is no editorial or front matter in the first issue of the
Journal of Experimental Psychology,so we could not make a
direct comparison of the stated objectives of the two journals.
However, the main difference between them appears to have
been that articles to be published in theJournal of Experimen-
tal Psychologywere to report experiments but did not have to
be applied (although they could be), whereas those to be pub-
lished in theJournal of Applied Psychologyhad to be applied
but did not have to report experiments (although they could).
To get an idea of the overlap between the two journals, we
scanned the first two volumes of each looking especially for
applied studies in theJournal of Experimental Psychology
and for experimental studies in theJournal of Applied