Janet
Taylor Spence
Background
Janet Taylor Spence was born on August
29, 1923 in Toledo, Ohio as the eldest of two daughters. She is the daughter of John and Helen Taylor. John Taylor was a Canadian soldier and after
being wounded he became a reporter in New York.
In New York he met Janet’s mother, who had received her undergraduate
degree from Vassar College, her Master’s degree in economics from Columbia
University, and eventually earned her Master’s degree in social work. Both of Janet’s parents were very active in
the community. Her father ran for governor and was elected to the school
board. Her mother worked with the League
of Women Voters, ran Republican election campaigns, and was the director of a
social service agency that gave aid to women and children. Her parents’ work with the community during
the Depression inspired Janet to become a psychologist. She went to an all
girls’ high school in Northfield, Massachusetts and began her study of
psychology at Oberlin College where she earned her undergraduate degree in
1945. She went to Yale for her graduate degree, but then transferred to the
University of Iowa. However, she met her
future husband, Kenneth Spence, the co-author of the Hull-Spence theory of
behavior, at Yale. She received her
Master’s degree from the University in Iowa as well as her PhD. She then
married Kenneth Spence in 1960.
Professional
Life and Work
Janet became an instructor at
Northwestern University and worked as an associate professor until 1960. In fact, she was Northwestern University’s
first female faculty member, but this accomplishment was underscored by the
fact that the chair thought, “having a woman on the faculty was a novel and
interesting idea." She received few
opportunities for promotion and some were opposed to her receiving the
position. When she worked at
Northwestern University she taught statistics and authored textbooks. She then
moved to Iowa and worked as a research psychologist in a veterans’ hospital.
She began her research on anxiety with her husband and tried to determine if
anxiety was a dispositional trait. In
order to measure anxiety she created the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale in
1953. The scale consisted of fifty
questions and it is what she is most known for.
She also studied how anxiety affects performance. In addition, she studied reinforcement and
motivation. She first did her research
with schizophrenics and she then conducted her research on children. She found that rewards were counterproductive
and that performance was caused by intrinsic motivation. She then focused her research on gender. She studied the likeably of competency of
women. This study used the Attitudes
Toward Women Scale and showed that even, “conservative subjects not only
preferred more competent to less competent women but rated highest the woman
who was competent in stereotypically masculine areas.” When considering gender identity she believed
that a multidimensional view was needed and that each dimension was unique. In
1970 she became a member of the Board of Scientific Affairs for the American
Psychological Association and became the sixth female president of the
association. She was also the president
of the Southwestern Psychological Association and the editor of Contemporary
Psychology. In 1989 Janet became the
founding president of the American Psychological Society.
Relevance
to Class Materials
Janet found that rewards are actually
counterproductive and that behavior is caused by an individual’s
motivation. However, this is contrary to
the idea that children learn their gender roles through being rewarded for behaving
in ways that are most commonly associated with gender and in ways that are stereotypically
appropriate for their gender. However,
she also believed that a multidimensional view on gender was needed. This notion is shown in the research of the
differences between males and females in “Female-Male Comparisons: The Meaning
and Significance of Difference.” The research measured differences in aggression
and cognitive abilities such as verbal, quantitive, and visual-spatial
abilities.
Posted by Cheyanne Mazzacone
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