27 Facts About Joseph Jastrow

Joseph Jastrow was a Polish-born American psychologist notorious for inventions in experimental psychology, design of experiments, and psychophysics.

Joseph Jastrow worked on the phenomena of optical illusions, and a number of well-known optical illusions that were either first reported in or popularized by his work.

One of his ultimate goals was to use the scientific method to identify truth from error, and educate the layperson, which Joseph Jastrow accomplished through speaking tours, popular print media, and the radio.

Joseph Jastrow came to Philadelphia in 1866 and received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.

Joseph Jastrow was a lecturer at the New School of Social Research from 1927 to 1933.

Joseph Jastrow was head of the psychological section of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, where he collected "psychophysical and reaction time data" from thousands of attendees.

Joseph Jastrow was one of the charter members of the American Psychological Association, and eventually became the president in 1900.

Joseph Jastrow was noted for his outreach in popular media, exposing the general public to research in psychology.

Joseph Jastrow gave public lectures, and was published in popular magazines, including Popular Science, Cosmopolitan, and Harper's Monthly.

Joseph Jastrow wrote Keeping Mentally Fit, a syndicated column that appeared in 150 newspapers.

Joseph Jastrow gave radio talks from 1935 to 1938 through the Philadelphia Public Ledger Syndicate.

Joseph Jastrow's wife was Rachel Szold, a sister of Henrietta Szold.

Joseph Jastrow was one of the founding members of the American Society for Psychical Research for study of the "mesmeric, psychical, and spiritual".

Psychical researchers were rarely trained psychologists, and Joseph Jastrow thought their research lacked credibility.

Joseph Jastrow was a leading figure in the field of anomalistic psychology.

Joseph Jastrow wanted to understand why people were attracted to it, how it gained a foothold in society, and what evidence its supporters used.

Joseph Jastrow wrote that many people considered coincidence, dreams, and premonitions as sources of information above science, and said the role of the scientist was to help the public understand truth from fiction, and to prevent the spreading of erroneous beliefs.

Joseph Jastrow studied the psychology of paranormal belief and viewed paranormal phenomena as "totally unscientific and misleading", being the result of delusion, fraud, gullibility and irrationality.

Joseph Jastrow thought that analogies represented a more primitive way of interpreting the world.

Joseph Jastrow thought that eyesight was more complex than a camera, and that the mental processing of images was central to interpretation of the world.

Joseph Jastrow illustrated this through optical illusions, including the rabbit-duck illusion.

Joseph Jastrow believed that what people saw depended on their emotional state and their surroundings.

Joseph Jastrow found that when a subject was asked to concentrate on an object, their hand moved unconsciously in that direction.

Joseph Jastrow found that people who had lost their eyesight after age six still were able to see in their dreams, and that people who had lost their eyesight before the age of five could not.

Joseph Jastrow concluded that sight was not innate, and that significant mental development occurred between ages five and seven.

Joseph Jastrow noted that hearing, not sensation, was the primary sense of the blind, in both waking and dream.

Joseph Jastrow collected first-hand accounts of dreams from visually impaired people, including Helen Keller.