Edwin Boring - His Legacy

His Legacy

Boring left his legacy on the field of psychology in many ways. He was a historian, researcher, professor, critic, editor, and served in positions on many committees and intellectual societies. He acted through a wide range of faculties to leave his mark on psychology.

Boring taught psychology at Harvard University for 27 years. He had a profound impact, training many students who would go on to become influential in the field of psychology such as Stanley Smith Stevens. He pushed psychologists to adapt better writing habits which ultimately benefited the audiences that would later read these works. Instead of focusing on gaining success through his student’s work Boring led a professional life full of integrity, and was willing to sacrifice his own needs for those of his students.

His textbooks also provided his interpretations of the field and were read by thousands of people. In this way his written work influenced countless students and fellow psychologists without ever coming into physical contact with them.

Through the years Boring’s rigidity softened and he was able to contribute to many areas in psychology. He was a man of experimental psychology, objective science, but also philosophical science. His research was based on sensory and perceptual phenomena, but he was also a statesman and advocate for women in psychology and military psychology.

The many contributions Boring made in psychology were recognized later in his lifetime. In 1956 Clark University offered him an honorary degree. Then a year later in 1957 the Society of Experimental Psychologists, a group he was a charter member of, held a special dinner in his honor where students and colleagues gave donations to Harvard to start the Boring Liberty Fund. Perhaps the greatest recognition Boring received for his work in progressing the field of psychology was in 1959 when the American Psychological Association honored him with Gold Medal, praising him for “his varied and distinguished contributions to psychology as investigator, teacher, historian, theorist, administrator and statesman, popular expositor, and editor”(p. 796).

Boring had such a profound impact on psychology that Robert Yerkes even dubbed him “Mr. Psychology” (p. 445).