Brief Overview
Anne
Anastasi was born in 1908 as the only child of an immigrant family who
lived in the Bronx. Her father died at the age of one and she was
raised by her Mother, maternal Grandmother and Uncle. Her whole family
had an interest in humanities and she was home schooled until nine years
of age. This upbringing gave her a natural intellectual curiosity and
left her unaware of traditional sex role stereotypes. Anastasi dropped
out of high school, upset with the overcrowding and low academic
standards, she went to Barnard College at Columbia University at the age
of 15 since they didn't require a high school diploma. She graduated
Barnard in 1928 and began graduate work at Columbia University, which
she finished in two years at the age of 21.
In
1933, Anastasi married John Porter Foley Jr., who she met in Columbia
and also has a Ph.D. in psychology. After a year into her marriage, she
acquired cervical cancer and was left sterile. She believed that this
helped in her professional success as she did not have to worry about
the complications of motherhood.
On May 4, 2001, the 'Test Guru', as she was called, died at her home in Manhattan. She was 92 years old.
Work / Professional Accomplishments
Anastasi
taught at Barnard from 1930 to 1946 then spent the rest of her career
at Fordham University in New York City. "Anastasi's research centered on
the nature and measurement of psychological traits, specifically the
role of experience in trait formation. Whereas many trait theorists
posited a strongly hereditary explanation for traits, Anastasi
emphasized interaction of experience and culture with heredity. Her
1958 paper, Heredity, Environment and the question "How?"
challenged the psychological community to drop the nature vs. nurture
debate and to instead ask how (do they interact)? While the field had
long been known a 'individual differences', Anastasi dubbed it
'Differential Psychology', a name she felt was more accurate" (Rodkey,
2010).
In 1954, She was able to publish a textbook called Psychological Testing
from her research, it was translated into many languages around the
world and is still printed today. The book introduced students to
popular tests and the process of text construction and interpretation.
She also made significant contributions to the Mental Measurement Yearbooks
series, which is a collection of psychological tests. She was the only
reviewer able to be a part of all eight original yearbooks.
Anastasi worked against the
misuse of tests and testing terms such as "intelligence" and "IQ". One
misinterpretations of tests she tried to fight was the "culture-free"
tests. She knows no such thing can happen and the best we can do is
make the test better reflect the target culture.
"Tests
can serve a predictive function only insofar as they indicate to what
extent the individual has acquired the prerequisite skills and knowledge
for a designated criterion performance. What persons can accomplish in
the future depends not only on their present intellectual status, as
assessed by the test, but on their subsequent experience" (Anastasi, 1981).
According to Anastasi, intelligence tests can do three things:
- They permit a direct assessment of prerequisite intellectual skills demanded by many important tasks in our culture.
- They assess availability of a relevant store of knowledge or content also prerequisite for many educational and occupational tasks.
- They provide an indirect index of the extent to which the individual has developed effective learning strategies, probelm-solving techniques and work habits and utilized them in the past.
(Anastasi, 1981)
In the 1930's she and her husband, Foley, studied the
cultural differences in art by looking at drawings by Native American
children and in the 1950's took interest in language development of
Black and Puerco Rican children.
In
1972 Anastasi was recognized by the American Psychological Association
for her work and was elected as the organization's third president in
history but the first one in the last 50 years.
1985,
Anastasi was awarded the National Medal of Science and named the move
prominent living women in psychology in the English-speaking world. She
was uncomfortable with this title saying that she was simply a
psychologist, not a "woman psychologist".
"Despite
her achievements, Anastasi remained modest, asking for only a
calculator and a dictionary as retirement gifts, and maintaining that
throughout her career she had simply followed her interested where they
led," (Rodkey, 2010).
Relevance to Psychology of Women
Anastasi
grew up with a gender neutral identity and when she entered the world
was determined to make a difference in the way people view women.
Throughout her life she always fought against the stereotypes that women
are given. This was easier for her to do since she was never able to
have children. She analyzed the way tests were administered to people
to different races, cultures, and genders and did what she could to make
them more neutral, in turn making it easier to do studies since the
data can be better correlated.
Post by: Michael S. Geisel
SOURCES
Rodkey, Elissa (2010). Anne Anastasi. Feminist Voices Retrieved from http://www.feministvoices.com/anne-anastasi/
Cohen, J. (2001). Anne Anastasi, third woman ever to head APA, dies at 92. Vol 32. No 8. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep01/anastasi.aspx
Goode, Erica (2001). Anne Anastasi, the 'Test Guru' of Psychology, is dead at 92. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/16/nyregion/anne-anastasi-the-test-guru-of-psychology-is-dead-at-92.html
(2012). American differential psychologist. Retrieved from http://www.intelltheory.com/anastasi.shtml
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