Harold Homer Anderson was an American research professor of psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 at Michigan State University

Michigan State University

Michigan State University is a public research university in East Lansing, Michigan, USA. Founded in 1855, it was the pioneer land-grant institution and served as a model for future land-grant colleges in the United States under the 1862 Morrill Act.MSU pioneered the studies of packaging,...

, who published on child psychology, clinical psychology

Clinical psychology

Clinical psychology is an integration of science, theory and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development...

, personality

Personality psychology

Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and individual differences. Its areas of focus include:* Constructing a coherent picture of the individual and his or her major psychological processes...

, and cross-national research.

Anderson was the son of a minister from Nebraska

Nebraska

Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....

, who studied at the Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

. In 1933 he accepted a position as professor of psychology and head of the department at Michigan State College. In 1951 Harold H. Anderson was rewarded the Alumni Medal of the Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

. In the 1950s he was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research

Society for General Systems Research

The Society for General Systems Research is predecessor of the current International Society for the Systems Sciences , known to be one the first interdisciplinary and international co-operations in the field of systems theory and systems science...

.

Climate in the classroom

One of the earliest systematic studies of "climate" in the classroom was undertaken by Harold H. Anderson and Helen M. Brewer. These are reported in several papers and collected in the 1946 publication Studies of Teachers' Classroom Personalities. These researches were carried out in many schools and different classes from kindergarten to children in early adolescence. The aim was to make certain that behavior, as analysed into different categories, could in fact be observed objectively.

Their recording of "dominative" and "integrative" actions of teachers and pupils in classroom interaction clearly demonstrated that acts of the teachers set behavior patterns that were reflected in classroom interaction generally.

Creativity and Its Cultivation

In 1957-1958 an Interdisciplinary Symposia on Creativity was held on the Michigan State University. Contributions were made by Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm

Erich Seligmann Fromm was a Jewish German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.-Life:Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, at Frankfurt am...

, Harold D. Lasswell, Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s....

, Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow

Abraham Harold Maslow was an American professor of psychology at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research and Columbia University who created Maslow's hierarchy of needs...

, R. May, Edmund Ware Sinnott

Edmund Ware Sinnott

Edmund Ware Sinnott was an American botanist and prolific textbook author. He is best known for his work in plant morphology.-Life:...

, Harold H. Anderson himself and others. Harold H. Anderson edited the symposium report with the main title: Creativity and its cultivation.

Publications

• 1933, Behavior problems of the normal child
• 1937, Children in the family
• 1937, Domination and integration in the social behavior of young children in an experimental play situation.
• 1939, Domination and social integration in the behavior of kindergarten children and teachers.
• 1939, Mental Hygiene in Modern Education, with H. Rose and Etal Alschuler
• 1946, Studies of Teachers' Classroom Personalities, II; Effects of Teachers' Dominitive and Integrative Contacts on Children's Classroom Behavior. with Joseph E. Brewer. Applied Psychology Monographs.
• Studies of Teachers' Classroom Personalities
• 1946, Follow-up Studies of the Effects of Dominative and Integrative Contacts on Children's Behavior. with J.E. Brewer and M.F. Reed.
• 1952, An Introduction to Projective Techniques & Other Devices for Understanding the Dynamics of Human Behavior, with Gladys L. Anderson. New York, U.S.A. Prentice-Hall.
• 1959, Creativity and Its Cultivation, addresses presented at the Interdisciplinary Symposia on Creativity, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. editor. New York: Harper and Row.
• 1965, Creativity in childhood and adolescence; a diversity of approaches. editor.

About Anderson

• Rabin, A. I., "Harold Homer Anderson (1897-1990): Obituary". in: American Psychologist. Vol. 46(9), Sep 1991, 982.