Biehn, Kersten Jacobson (Author)
Behavioral science research in American universities was promoted and influenced by philanthropic foundations. In the 1920s and 1930s, Rockefeller philanthropies in particular financed behavioral science research projects that promised to fulfill their mandates to `improve mankind', mandates that foundation officers transformed into an informal, loosely defined human engineering effort. Controlling behavior, especially sexual and social `dysfunction', was a major priority. The behavioral scientists at Yale University, led by president James R. Angell and `psychobiologist' Robert M. Yerkes, tapped into foundation largesse by crafting research programs that promised to contribute to the `welfare of mankind' through the investigation and control of sexual and social behavior. Foundation officers supported Yerkes' primate research because they accepted his premise that analyzing chimpanzee sexual behavior would yield valuable insights into the evolutionary underpinnings of human development and would thus give investigators the necessary information to ameliorate dysfunction. Between 1925 and 1940, philanthropic foundations contributed approximately $7 million to support the Yale Institute of Human Relations and the affiliated Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology. Yet, disappointment with the results of the Yale appropriations ultimately contributed to foundation officers turning away from behavioral sciences and toward biological sciences as they continued their efforts to improve mankind through human engineering. This article examines the interaction between foundation officers and Yale behavioral scientists to illustrate how scientific entrepreneurs successfully crafted rationales about human sexuality to solicit funds, how philanthropic foundation officers became enmeshed in the behavioral science research projects that they funded, and how a cooperative human engineering effort at Yale developed in the 1920s and unraveled in the 1930s.
...More
Book
Seim, David L.;
(2013)
Rockefeller Philanthropy and Modern Social Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001452079/)
Thesis
Seim, David Lee;
(2007)
“Perhaps We Can Hit Upon Some Medium of Course”: Rockefeller Philanthropy, Economic Research, and the Structure of Social Science, 1911--1946
(/isis/citation/CBB001561553/)
Article
Mueller, Tim B.;
(2013)
The Rockefeller Foundation, the Social Sciences, and the Humanities in the Cold War
(/isis/citation/CBB001213866/)
Article
MacLeod, Roy;
(2003)
Preface
(/isis/citation/CBB000780242/)
Book
Guilhot, Nicolas;
(2011)
The Invention of International Relations Theory: Realism, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the 1954 Conference on Theory
(/isis/citation/CBB001213814/)
Book
Farley, John;
(2004)
To Cast Out Disease: A History of the International Health Division of Rockefeller Foundation (1913-1951)
(/isis/citation/CBB000400874/)
Thesis
Kemp, Amy;
(2004)
The Rockefeller Foundation and the Faculdade de Medicina de Sao Paulo: A Case Study in Philanthropy as Policy
(/isis/citation/CBB001562106/)
Article
Jones, Edgar;
Rahman, Shahina;
(2009)
The Maudsley Hospital and the Rockefeller Foundation: The Impact of Philanthropy on Research and Training
(/isis/citation/CBB000932682/)
Book
Fedunkiw, Marianne P.;
(2005)
Rockefeller Foundation Funding and Medical Education in Toronto, Montreal and Halifax
(/isis/citation/CBB000502880/)
Article
Löwy, Ilana;
Zylberman, Patrick;
(2000)
Medicine as a Social Instrument: Rockefeller Foundation, 1913--45
(/isis/citation/CBB000770658/)
Article
Baick, John S.;
(2004)
Cracks in the Foundation: Frederick T. Gates, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the China Medical Board
(/isis/citation/CBB000742075/)
Chapter
Mejía, Paola;
(2007)
Of Mice, Vaccines and Men: The Yellow Fever Research Program of the Rockefeller Foundation in Colombia, 1932--1948
(/isis/citation/CBB000774631/)
Article
Biehn, Kersten Jacobson;
(2009)
“Monkeys, Babies, Idiots” and “Primitives”: Nature-Nurture Debates and Philanthropic Foundation Support for American Anthropology in the 1920s and 1930s
(/isis/citation/CBB000932851/)
Article
Stapleton, Darwin H.;
(2005)
A Lost Chapter in the Early History of DDT: The Development of Anti-Typhus Technologies by the Rockefeller Foundation's Louse Laboratory, 1942--1944
(/isis/citation/CBB000830412/)
Article
Jones, Ross L.;
(2013)
Macaws, Elephants and Mahouts: Frederic Wood Jones, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Human Biology Project
(/isis/citation/CBB001212933/)
Article
Krementsov, Nikolai;
Gross Solomon, Susan;
(2001)
Giving and Taking across Borders: The Rockefeller Foundation and Russia, 1919--1928
(/isis/citation/CBB000102573/)
Article
Glick, Thomas F.;
(2005)
Dictating to the Dictator: Augustus Trowbridge, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Support of Physics in Spain, 1923--1927
(/isis/citation/CBB000700992/)
Book
Smith, Roger;
(2013)
Free Will and the Human Sciences in Britain, 1870--1910
(/isis/citation/CBB001420025/)
Essay Review
Kimler, William;
(2012)
Case Studies, Controversy and the “Fieldworker's Regres”s
(/isis/citation/CBB001566820/)
Article
Rapchan, Eliane Sebeika;
(2012)
Cultura e inteligência: reflexões antropológicas sobre aspectos não físicos da evolução em chimpanzés e humanos
(/isis/citation/CBB001420597/)
Be the first to comment!