Hidden beneath the Victorian splendor of Memorial Hall lies an intricate network of strikingly modern offices, research rooms, and passageways, which form the home of the Harvard Psychological Laboratories.

Here, with rats, pigeons, and vast quantities of electrical equipment at their disposal, members of the Psychology Department--as well as some undergraduate and graduate students in the field--carry on various research projects in general experimental psychology.

From a detailed study of the mechanical physiology of the inner ear to the construction of "teaching machines" for future education, these men investigate the still-unsolved problems of human and animal behavior, learning, and motivation. For laboratory work is as vital to the advanced study of psychology as it is to the study of any other of the natural sciences. Through the study of animals, as well as mental patients and normal people, psychologists hope to gain insight into the mental processes which govern human behavior and activity.

James Started Laboratory

Ever since its founding by William James 80 years ago, the Psychological Laboratory has undergone continual expansion, and the process continues today. New experimental projects have been turned away from Memorial Hall for want of space, and members of the Psychology Department are beginning to wonder whether a major relocation of laboratory facilities will not be necessary in the near future.

The Psychological Laboratory was officially established in 1891, but experimental psychology at the University dates back to about 1875, when James, then an instructor in Physiology, started introducing his students to informal psychological research. This was the first laboratory of psychology founded in the United States.

James' research was not confined to any single laboratory. He is said to have kept some equipment in the basement of Lawrence Hall--at that time the center of the Lawrence Scientific School. He also maintained a laboratory in the Museum of Comparative Anatomy, where he taught Natural History 3, a course in comparative anatomy and physiology. As one of his students, G. Stanley Hall, Ph.D. '78, recalled, "In a tiny room under the stairway of Agassiz Museum he had a metronome, a device for whirling a frog, a horopter chart, and one or two bits of apparatus."

When James became the University's first professor of Psychology in 1889, he began a fund drive to finance a more formal laboratory for psychological research. By 1891 he had secured $4300 for equipping the top floor of Dane Hall (since replaced by Lehman Hall) which the University had turned over to him for his work in Psychology.

The German Influence

Early in 1892 Dr. Hugo Munsterberg, a noted German psychologist, was appointed professor of Experimental Psychology and Director of the newly-founded Psychological Laboratory. Munsterberg added a considerable amount of German equipment to the laboratory and expanded its activities to include research on animals, making use of a supply of chickens which James kept in the basement of his house on Irving Place.

After Emerson Hall was constructed in 1906, Munsterberg moved his equipment from Dane to the third floor of Emerson where an animal research room and several darkrooms for visual experiments had been provided. This was the first laboratory in this country ever to be designed and built specifically for psychological research.

Emerson remained the headquarters of the Psychological Laboratory for 40 years, until 1946. During this time interest in psychological study at the University rose rapidly and forced a steady increase in the facilities for research. It also forced decentralization.

In 1927, for instance, Dr. Morton Prince founded the independent Psychological Clinic at 64 Plympton St. And when the chemistry laboratories were moved out of Boylston Hall in 1929, the Psychological Laboratory, outgrowing its facilities in Emerson, took over the fourth floor and attic for elementary instruction in experimental psychology and for work with animals.

By the time World War II broke out, psychological research at the University had become awkwardly decentralized in four separate locations: Emerson Hall, Boylston Hall, the Psychological Clinic, and the Biology Laboratories, where Professor Karl S. Lashley had established a laboratory of Physiology.

Searching for new laboratory space in 1940, Stanley S. Stevens, professor of Psychology, turned to the eastern part of the basement of Memorial Hall. After an arduous period or reconditioning--he had to drain a room filled with a foot and a half of oil--Stevens founded the Psycho-Acoustical Laboratory, designed for research in the psychological problems of hearing and communications.