Military Psychology - History - Yerkes and War

Yerkes and War

Robert M. Yerkes, while he was president of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1917, worked with E. B. Titchener and a group of psychologists that were known as the “Experimentalists.” Their work resulted in formulating a plan for APA members to offer their professional services to the World War I effort, even though Yerkes was known for being opposed to America being involved in the war at all. It was decided that psychologists could provide support in developing methods for selection of recruits and treatment of war victims. This was spurred, in part, by America’s growing interest in the work of Alfred Binet in France on mental measurement, as well as the scientific management movement to enhance worker productivity.

In 1919, Yerkes was commissioned as a major in the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps. In a plan proposed to the Surgeon General, Yerkes wrote: "The Council of the American Psychological Association is convinced that in the present emergency American psychology can substantially serve the Government, under the medical corps of the Army and Navy, by examining recruits with respect to intellectual deficiency, psychopathic tendencies, nervous instability, and inadequate self-control."

Also in 1919, the Army Division of Psychology in the Medical Department was established at the medical training camp at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, to train personnel to provide mental testing of large groups.

This was also the era when the condition referred to as “shell shock” was first seriously studied by psychologists and standardized screening tests for pilots were administered.