Maintaining Masculinity in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Psychology: Edwin Boring, Scientific Eminence, and the...

Using mid-twentieth-century American psychology as my focus, I explore how scientific psychology was constructed as a distinctly masculine enterprise and was navigated by those who did not conform easily to this masculine ideal. I show how women emerged as problems for science through the vigorous gatekeeping activities and personal and professional writings of disciplinary figurehead Edwin G. Boring. I trace Boring's intellectual and professional socialization into masculine science and his efforts to understand women's apparent lack of scientific eminence, efforts that were clearly undergirded by preexisting and widely shared assumptions about men's and women's capacities and preferences.