George M. Stratton
George Malcolm Stratton was an American psychologist who pioneered the study of perception in vision by wearing special glasses which inverted images up and down and left and right. He studied under one of the founders of modern psychology, Wilhelm Wundt, and started one of the first experimental psychology labs in America, at the University of California, Berkeley. Stratton's studies on binocular vision inspired many later studies on the subject. He was one of the initial members of the philosophy department at Berkeley, and the first chair of its psychology department. He also worked on sociology, focusing on international relations and peace. Stratton presided over the American Psychological Association in 1908, and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He wrote a book on experimental psychology and its methods and scope; published articles on the studies at his labs on perception, and on reviews of studies in the field; served on several psychological committees during and after World War I; and served as advisor to doctoral students who would go on to head psychology departments.
Stratton was born and brought up in the Oakland area of California, in a family with deep roots in America, and spent much of his career at Berkeley. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, an M.A. from Yale University, and a PhD from the University of Leipzig. He returned to the philosophy department at Berkeley, teaching psychology, and was promoted to associate professor. Stratton left for Johns Hopkins University in the early 1900s and spent a few years as faculty at the psychology department before returning to Berkeley. During this period, he focused on studies on sensation and perception and the psychological effects of inverting sensory stimuli in different ways. He was involved in establishing some of the early regional associations devoted to the field of psychology.
Stratton served in the Army during World War I, developing psychological tests to select airmen for Army aviation. Exposure to the war effort prompted his interest in international relations and causes of wars. He was an anti-war believer who held psychology should aim to assist humanity's quest to avert future wars. He was optimistic that people and ethnicities, making up nations, could be taught to live in peace, though the races were not equal in inborn mental capacity, a belief he held as scientific. In the later part of his career he wrote books looking at international relations, war, and the differences between races on emotions. He was also a scholar of the classics and translated Greek philosophers.
Of Stratton's many contributions, his studies on perception and visual illusions would continue to influence the field of psychology well after his death. Of the nine books he wrote, the first was a scholarly look at the methodology and scope of experimental psychology. The remaining, including one unfinished at his death, were on sociology, international relations and the issues of war and how findings from psychology could be used to eradicate conflict between nations. Stratton considered these issues more salient to the application of psychology in the real world, though his ideas on this front did not produce a lasting impact in the field because of their subjective and non-experimental nature.
Early life and education
George Stratton was born on September 26, 1865, to James Thompson Stratton, originally from Ossining, New York, and Cornelia A. Smith. His parents had met and married in New York in 1854, and settled back in Clinton, now East Oakland, California. James Stratton had been to California once before during the gold rush of 1850, sailing around North America and crossing by land the Panama stretch, but finding little gold. The senior Stratton traced his ancestry to the early settlers of the British settlements of America, and Cornelia Smith had Dutch and English forebears. James Stratton would live the rest of his life in California, pursuing a civil engineering career as County Surveyor for Alameda County in 1858–59 and later as the U.S. Surveyor-General of the state, and finally as Chief Deputy State Surveyor. An expert on the big Mexican land grants, he split up several of the Spanish deeds. One of his sons, Frederick, went to the University of California, today's Berkeley, and became a lawyer, state senator, and Collector of the Port of San Francisco, before killing himself on November 30, 1915. Another, Robert Thomas, became a doctor in Oakland and died after a long illness on May 6, 1924. The couple also had a daughter, Jeanne, the later Mrs. Walter Good. George was their youngest child who lived past toddlerhood.Stratton's early education was at the Oakland public schools and undergraduate education at the University of California. At the university he was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He was also the editor of the student news publication, The Berkeleyan, in 1886. Stratton graduated in 1888 with an A.B. degree from the University of California, in a total graduating class of 34 students. He learned Latin and English and taught in Buenaventura High School in 1888–89, and was its principal in 1889–90. At the school he met and courted San Francisco-born Alice Elenore Miller.
Stratton then obtained an A.M. degree from Yale in 1890. He was a fellow in the philosophy department at Berkeley from 1891 to 1893. The chair of the philosophy department, George Holmes Howison, whom he met as an undergraduate, would become a significant influence on his life. He taught two philosophy courses, both with Howison. On March 14, 1893, he was appointed an instructor in the department of philosophy. As an instructor, he began teaching psychology and logic courses, in addition to a philosophy course.
Howison obtained a fellowship from the University of California for his protege to study at the University of Leipzig. On May 17, 1894, Stratton married Alice Miller at the Methodist Episcopal Church in Berkeley, while being an instructor in the philosophy department. Immediately after, the couple left for the East on their way to Europe, with Stratton taking a leave of absence from Berkeley. He then spent two years at Wundt's Institute for Experimental Psychology at Leipzig, from where he received an M.A. and a PhD in 1896. He received his degree summa cum laude, with a thesis submitted to Wundt's publication, Philosophische Studien.
Work years
Stratton spent his working years primarily at Berkeley. He founded the department of psychology at the university. He left once for Johns Hopkins and once to join the Army during World War I, serving in San Francisco, San Diego and New York.Early Berkeley
Returning to America in 1896, Stratton rejoined the University of California as an instructor. In 1897 he was promoted to assistant professor. By 1898 he no longer taught philosophy but several psychology courses. Two years later, he would influence the Philosophical Union into dedicating a year to investigating contemporary psychology. He himself presented a well-attended lecture series at the Union, with lively debates at the end, on psychological experiments. Over this time he also published three papers on his study with inverting lenses and how people adapt over time to such a view of the world: "Upright vision and the retinal image", "Vision without inversion of the retinal image", and "A mirror pseudoscope and the limit of visible depth", all in Psychological Review. He also presented a report of experiments with inverted vision to the Science Association of the university.Stratton also became a member of the APA. One of Stratton's psychology students in the Philosophy department was Knight Dunlap, a later chair at Johns Hopkins and University of California, Los Angeles. Stratton became a director of the newly established psychology lab, in the philosophy department, in 1899. By 1900 he was an associate professor in the philosophy department, then headed by Howison. He contributed a paper to the Festschrift honoring Wundt's seventieth birthday in 1902: "Eye movements and the aesthetics of the visual form". He also taught a series of twenty lectures on philosophy and psychology at the Pacific Theological Seminary in Berkeley. His first daughter, Elenore, was born in 1900, and son James Malcolm around 1903.
Johns Hopkins and return to Berkeley
Stratton left Berkeley at end of June, 1904, and moved east to Johns Hopkins University as a professor of experimental psychology in October. At this time, philosophers and psychologists at Baltimore formed the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology and Stratton was one of the first 36 charter members. At its first meeting, he presented results of an experiment on fidelity of the senses.While Stratton was at Johns Hopkins, the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 struck destroying large swaths of the city. He had specific suggestions on how to rebuild the city to resist earthquakes and fires even with the water supply cut off. He urged the city be split into districts with avenues or boulevards as firebreaks between the divisions.
Stratton's second daughter, Florence, was born in Baltimore on May 24, 1907. He left Johns Hopkins in October 1909, and was replaced there as professor of experimental psychology by John Broadus Watson.