Leta Stetter Hollingworth

Leta Stetter Hollingworth (May 25, 1886—November 27, 1939) was a psychologist who conducted pioneering work on the psychology of women as well as on the education of exceptional children.

Life

Leta Anna Stetter was born on May 25, 1886 on her grandparents' farm outside of Chadron, Nebraska. She was the first child of Margaret Elinor Danley and John G. Stetter. Two more daughters, Ruth Elinor and Margaret Carley, were born in quick succession, her mother dying immediately after the birth of Margaret. For ten years Leta and her sisters were raised by their grandparents, their father having left upon the death of his wife. When Leta was 12, her father remarried and she and her sisters moved to Valentine, Nebraska where they suffered under an alcoholic and ofter absent father and a resentful stepmother.

It was her poetry and her journal that comforted Leta. Her mother had written a detailed biography of Leta's infancy, and this, combined with her father's skill at story-telling encouraged Leta that she should become a writer. She published her first poem at age 14, in the local newspaper. In 1902 she graduated from Valentine High School and at the age of 16 entered the University of Nebraska where she pursued her passion for creative writing. She also met Harry Levi Hollingworth and they became engaged. When Harry graduated and moved to New York City to do graduate work at Columbia University, she remained in Nebraska to complete her undergraduate studies.

After graduating in 1906 she hope to pursue a writing career, but financial considerations led her to take on a teaching position in her home state. When Harry obtained a position as an assistant professor she moved to New York to join him and they were married on December 31, 1908. Once married Leta Hollingworth was unable to gain employment because married women were not hired as teachers in New York City. This left her frustrated at her inability to be more than a housewife and questioning the role of women in society (Shields 1991).

Eventually, the Hollingworths were able to save enough money to allow Leta to attend graduate school, and in 1911 she began graduate work in educational psychology at Columbia under the supervision of Edward Lee Thorndike. There she pursued her interest in the psychology of women while developing from Thorndike new interests in intelligence and giftedness.

She received her Masters degree in 1914 and her doctorate in 1916, with a dissertation entitled “Functional periodicity: An experimental study of the mental and motor abilities of women during menstruation” which found no evidence of changes in performance associated with phases of the menstrual cycle, refuting a common belief of the time (Shields 1991). Although her numerous publications moved away from this area into educational psychology, particularly as it related to the instruction of mentally challenged and gifted children, Hollingworth planned for years to write a book on the psychology of women for which she had chosen the title, "Mrs. Pilgrim’s Progress," but she died before she could complete this work. She was however, active in women's suffrage being an active member of the Women's Suffrage Party (Benjamin 1990).

She is best known for her work on gifted children, with her 1926 publication, Gifted Children, being the standard reference in the field for many years, and on adolescence, her book The Psychology of the Adolescent (Hollingworth 1928) replacing G. Stanley Hall's as the standard text in the field. Her longitudinal study of children with exceptionally high IQ, begun in 1916 and completed by her husband and published in 1942 as Children above 180 IQ remains as the most comprehensive study of children in this range of intelligence.

Hollingworth held a teaching position in the Education Department at Columbia University from 1916, becoming a full professor in 1929. She was a member of several professional organizations, including the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Psychological Association (APA). She also served as editor of The Journal of Genetic Psychology.

Leta Hollingworth died of abdominal cancer on November 27, 1939, aged 53.

Work

Having experienced impediments to personal achievements as a result of her gender, Hollingworth was moved to empirically investigate the factors that were thought to make women inferior to men.(Benjamin, 1975, 1990) (Shields 1975, 1991) Consequently, Hollingworth was a leading figure in the development of the psychology of women. A job opportunity at the Clearing House for Mental Defectives allowed Hollingworth the opportunity to refute the variability hypothesis, an element of the Social Darwinism of the period, and a basis for many claims of female inferiority. By examining case records Hollingworth determined that although men outnumbered women, the ratio of men to women decreased with age. Hollingworth explained this as the result of men facing greater societal expectations than women, leading to the earlier detection of deficiencies in men. (Benjamin 1975, 1990) (Denmark and Fernandez 1993). (Shields 1975, 1991)

In an attempt to examine the validity of the variability hypothesis, and to avoid the effects of intervening social and cultural factors, Hollingworth gathered data on birth weight and length of 1,000 male and 1,000 female neonates. This research found virtually no difference in the variability of male and female infants, and it was concluded that if variability “favoured” any sex it was the female sex. (Benjamin 1975, 1990) Along with the anthropologist Robert Lowie Hollingworth published a review of literature from anatomical, physiological, and cross-cultural studies, in which no objective evidence was found to support the idea of innate female inferiority. Hollingworth also attacked the variability hypothesis theoretically, criticizing the underlying logic of the hypothesis.

In 1916 Hollingworth accepted a position at Columbia University Teachers College where she continued research into the psychology of exceptional children began by her predecessor at the college, Naomi Norsworthy. This work didn’t begin immediately, as from 1916 to 1920 Hollingworth’s work focused on children with some form of mental retardation or education difficulties. It was only in the early 1920s that Hollingworth continued Norsworthy’s work in earnest. She devoted the remainder of her life to this work and gained a reputation as a national authority on exceptional children, in the realms of both education and clinical psychology. Additionally, Hollingworth helped found a special experimental public school for the study of the gifted and mentally deficient and conducted longitudinal research on the intellectually gifted. Although Hollingworth repeatedly applied for research funding she was never awarded any funds.

Major publications

• Hollingworth, Leta. Differential Action upon the Sexes of Forces which tend to segregate the feebleminded. American Journal of Sociology, 17, 35-37.
• Hollingworth, Leta. Social devices for impelling women to bare and rear children. American Journal of Sociology, 22,19-29.
• Hollingworth, Leta. Variability as Related to Sex differences in Achievement. American Journal of Sociology, 19, 510-530.
• Hollingworth, Leta. Sex differences in mental traits. Psychological Bulletin,13, 377-384.
• Hollingworth, Leta. The Psychology of Special Disability in Spelling. Teachers College, Columbia University, 1918.
• Hollingworth, Leta. The Psychology of Subnormal Children, Macmillan. 1920.
• Hollingworth, Leta. Special Talents and Defects: Their Significance for Education. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Library, 1923. ISBN 1429757140
• Hollingworth, Leta. Helping the Nervous Child. The Lincoln school of Teachers college, 1927.
• Hollingworth, Leta. Gifted Children: Their Nature and Nurture. Macmillan, 1929 (original 1926?).
• Hollingworth, Leta. The Psychology of the Adolescent. Appleton, 1928.
• Hollingworth, Leta. Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet: Origin and Development (1942)
• Hollingworth, Leta. The new woman in the making. Current History 27 (1927): 15-20.
• Hollingworth, Leta. Functional Periodicity: An Experimental Study of the Mental and Motor Abilities of Women during Menstruation. AMS Press, 1972 (original 1916). ISBN 040455069X
• Hollingworth, Leta. Children Above 180 IQ: Standford-Binet Origin and Development (Italian American Experience). Arno Press, 1975.
• Hollingworth, Leta. Adolescence: The Difficult Age. Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press, 1931.
• Hollingworth, Harry. L., and Leta Hollingworth. Vocational Psychology, Its Problems And Methods: With A Chapter On The Vocational Aptitudes Of Women. Kessinger Publishing, 2007. ISBN 978-1432508982

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Benjamin, L. T. 1975. The pioneering work of Leta Hollingworth in the psychology of women. Nebraska History, 56, 493-505.
• Benjamin, L. T. 1990. Leta Stetter Hollingworth: Psychologist, educator, feminist. Roeper Review, 12, 145-151.
• Denmark, Florence L., and L. C. Fernandez. 1993. Historical development of the psychology of women. In Psychology of Women: A Handbook of Issues and Theories, Florence L. Denmark and Michele A. Paludi (eds.), 1-22. Westport, CT: Greenwood. ISBN 0313262950
• Hollingworth, Harry L. [1943]1990. Leta Stetter Hollingworth: A Biography. Anker Pub Co. ISBN 0962704202
• Benjamin, L. T. 1996. Harry Hollingworth: Portrait of a generalist. In Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology: Volume 2, Gregory A. Kimble, C. Alan Boneau, and Michael Wertheimer (eds.), 91-135. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. ISBN 1557983445
• Klein, Ann G. A Forgotten Voice: A Biography of Leta Stetter Hollingworth . Great Potential Press, 2002. ISBN 0910707537
• O’Connell, Agnes N., and Nancy Felipe Russo (eds.). 1990. Women in Psychology: A Bio-bibliographic Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood. ISBN 0313260915
• Poffenberger, A. T. 1940. Leta Stetter Hollingworth: 1886-1939. The American Journal of Psychology, 53, 299-301.
• Shields, Stephanie A. 1975. Ms. Pilgrim’s Progress: The contributions of Leta Stetter Hollingworth to the psychology of women. American Psychologist, 30, 852-857.
• Shields, Stephanie A., and Mallory, M. E. (1987). Leta Stetter Hollingworth speaks on "Columbia’s legacy." Psychology of Women Quarterly, 11, 285-300.
• Shields, Stephanie A. 1991. Leta Stetter Hollingworth: "Literature of Opinion" and the study of individual differences. In Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology, Gregory A. Kimble, Michael Wertheimer, and Charlotte L. White (eds.), 243-255. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. ISBN 0805811362

External links

• LETA STETTER HOLLINGWORTH: HER LIFE
• Leta Stetter Hollingworth at Indiana University
• Leta Stetter Hollinworth at Missouri Western State University

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