Robert Sessions Woodworth

Robert S. Woodworth
Woodworth in 1909.
Born	October 17, 1869 Belchertown, Massachusetts
Died	July 4, 1962 (1962-07-05) (aged 92) New York
Nationality	American
Fields	psychologist
Known for	functional psychology

Robert Sessions Woodworth (October 17, 1869 – July 4, 1962) was an American academic psychologist of the first half of the twentieth century. He studied under William James along with such prominent psychologists as Leta Stetter Hollingworth, James Rowland Angell, and Edward Thorndike. A graduate of Harvard and Columbia, his textbook Psychology: A study of mental life, which appeared first in 1921, went through many editions and was the first introduction to psychology for generations of undergraduate students. His 1938 textbook of Experimental Psychology was scarcely less influential, especially in the 1954 second edition, written with Harold H. Schlosberg. He is known for introducing the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) formula of behavior. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Woodworth as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, James J. Gibson, David Rumelhart, Louis Leon Thurstone, and Margaret Floy Washburn.

Woodworth was born in Belchertown, Massachusetts on October 17, 1869. His father was a Congregationalist minister who had graduated from Yale College and Yale Divinity School, and his mother was a teacher who had graduated from Mount Holyoke College. Since Woodworth’s mother was his father’s third wife, he grew up in a large family with children from each of his father’s marriages. His father’s approach to parenting was authoritative and strict. He attended high school in Newton, Massachusetts with the plan of becoming a minister. He received his A.B. degree from Amherst College in 1891, focusing on religion, the classics, mathematics, science, and history. During his senior year, Woodworth took a class in psychology by Charles Edward Garman, which caused him to change his future plans. Rather than becoming a minister, he taught mathematics at a high school for two years and at a college for two years in Topeka, Kansas.