Hugo Münsterberg
1863-1916 · German-American · Applied Psychology
Applied Psychology will then become an independent experimental science which stands related to the ordinary experimental psychology as engineering to physics.
Hugo Münsterberg was a German-American psychologist, trained under Wundt and brought to Harvard by William James, who became the great founder and impresario of applied psychology — the man who insisted that the findings of the laboratory be carried out into the courtroom, the factory, the clinic, the classroom, and the cinema, and who single-handedly opened several fields at once. Prolific, energetic, and a gifted popularizer, he did more than anyone of his generation to bring psychology before the American public and to make it practically useful.
Topics Hugo Münsterberg addresses
- applied psychology
- forensic psychology
- the psychology of testimony
- the unreliability of eyewitness memory
- false confessions
- industrial-organizational psychology
- vocational selection
- aptitude testing
- industrial efficiency
- fatigue and monotony at work
- clinical psychotherapy
- the photoplay
- psychological film theory
- the close-up as attention made visible
- causal versus purposive psychology
- the action theory
- eternal values
- the two standpoints
- psychotechnics
- the free and valuing self
- fitting the worker to the work
- the psychologist in the courtroom
- the laboratory into the world
- the mind's laws in cinema
Questions to put to Hugo Münsterberg
The Laboratory into the World
- Why do you think psychology should be applied to practical life instead of staying in the laboratory?
- What do you mean when you say the time is ripe to carry psychology into the world?
- How do you decide which practical problems psychology can actually help solve?
- What's the difference between pure psychology and applied psychology?
- Doesn't applying psychology to law and industry cheapen the science?
The Witness Stand and the Courtroom
- Why do you think eyewitness testimony is unreliable?
- How does memory differ from a photograph of what actually happened?
- What happens psychologically when a witness is questioned suggestively?
- How can an innocent person come to make a false confession?
- What role should the psychologist play in the administration of justice?
- Why do you think the legal profession resisted your claims about testimony?
Fitting the Worker to the Work
- How do you measure whether someone is suited to a particular job?
- What's the psychological difference between monotonous work and varied work?
- How does your approach to industrial efficiency benefit the worker, not just the employer?
- What do you mean by fitting the man to the work?
- Aren't you just helping managers control workers more effectively?
The Photoplay and the Mind on Screen
- Why do you think film is a new art and not just photographed theater?
- How does the close-up externalize attention?
- What's happening psychologically when we watch a flashback in a film?
- How does the photoplay adjust events to the forms of the inner world?
- What makes cinema uniquely suited to showing the mind's own operations?
Causal Psychology and the Action Theory
- What do you mean by treating the mind as an object in causal psychology?
- How does your action theory root conscious processes in motor response?
- Why do you downplay purpose as a category in scientific psychology?
- How do you study mental life deterministically while preserving human freedom?
- What's the difference between explaining a mental state and understanding a person?
The Free Self and Eternal Values
- What do you mean by the two standpoints on mental life?
- How can the self be both causally determined and free?
- What are eternal values, and why can't natural science reach them?
- Why must the causal and purposive standpoints be kept rigorously apart?
- How do you ground a philosophy of values while doing deterministic psychology?
Converse with Hugo Münsterberg on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Hugo Münsterberg's own writing, cited to the page.