A case of distortion in the history of psychology literature is described. Three significant details of an incident in the boyhood of Robert Yerkes were distorted in a recent article. It is important that such errors be corrected because they can greatly alter interpretations of the significance of historical events and they are difficult to eliminate from the secondary literature once perpetrated.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Harris, B. (1979). Whatever happened to Little Albert?American Psychologist, 34, 151-160.
2.
Prytula, R.E. , Oster, G.D., & Davis, S.F. (1977). The `rat-rabbit' problem: What did John B. Watson really do?Teaching of Psychology, 4, 44-46.
3.
Roediger, H.L., III , & Blaxton, T.A. (1985). Testing psychological trivia. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 23, 433-436.
4.
Wertz, F.J. (1994). Of rats and psychologists: A study of the history and meaning of science. Theory & Psychology, 4, 165-197.
5.
Yerkes, R.M. (1932). Robert Mearns Yerkes. In C. Murchison (Ed.), A history of psychology in autobiography (Vol. 2, pp. 381-407). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.
