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Carnegie
Mellon's Psychology Department has a long history of innovation and
leadership
that continues to this day. Its first instantiation at CMU (then Carnegie
Tech)
was
as the Division of Applied Psychology founded by Walter Van Dyke Bingham
in 1915.
Bingham
hired pioneers such as L. L. Thurstone, Edward K. Strong Jr., and others
who
were
interested in applications of psychological research. He formed affiliated
units with
highly
focused interests, such as the Bureau of Salesmanship Research and a School
of
Life
Insurance Salesmanship. But the Division of Applied Psychology was terminated
in
1924,
and some of the faculty moved to the nearby University of Pittsburgh, temporarily
terminating
any psychological research at Carnegie Tech. The second phase began a few
years
later when Max Schoen came to Carnegie Tech and soon became head of what
was
then
called the department of Psychology and Education. He stepped down in 1947,
to be
succeeded
by B. von Haller Gilmer.
The
third, contemporary phase of our department can be traced in large part
to the
activities
of Herbert
Simon and Alan
Newell. The two met at Rand in 1952 working on a
complex
simulation of organizational communication, and by 1955, Simon had persuaded
Newell
to come to Carnegie Mellon. They were initially housed in the Graduate
School of
Industrial
Administration (GSIA) (which also housed the university's first computer),
but
the Psychology Department soon became part of their plans. Herb wrote in
his
autobiography,
"The Psychology Department provided the platform for launching the
cognitive
revolution in psychology... By 1960, I was beginning to doubt that we could
accomplish
the revolution from the foreign territory of GSIA, without a firm base
also in the
Psychology
Department. I resolved to do something about it when I returned to
Pittsburgh...
My method was abrupt, justified in my mind by the importance I attached
to
the goal."
In
1962, Herb engineered a leadership transition from Gilmer to Bert Green,
who had
come
to Carnegie Tech from MIT, where he had been involved in some of the very
earliest
artificial
intelligence research. Green was very supportive of establishing the department
as
a major force in the nascent field of cognitive psychology. Following Green's
leadership
came
a series of department heads, each committed to research excellence, and
usually
strongly
oriented -- under the continued influence of Newell and Simon -- toward
the
cognitive
sciences (Garlie Forehand, 67-73; Lee Gregg, 73-80; Charles Kiesler, 80-83;
David
Klahr, 83-93; and Roberta Klatzky, 93-03).
Into
this nascent department, a gleam in the eyes of Newell and Simon, came
more
faculty
who, while sharing the common values of rigorous science with an eye for
application,
expanded the department's research portfolio to include not only cognitive
psychology
and cognitive neuroscience, but also developmental, personality, social,
health,
and educational psychology. As described in the overviews of the individual
research
areas, a common thread that unites all of these apparently diverse areas
is
a
deep and fundamental commitment to theoretical and empirical rigor and
a focus on
psychological
mechanisms, as well as potential and actual application. This department
remains
committed to research excellence and to continuing its long history of
both
determining,
and adapting to, the research frontiers of the future.
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