Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett

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The British psychologist Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett (1886-1969) made his main contribution through the development of applied experimental psychology in Britain during and after World War II.

Frederic Bartlett was born on Oct. 22, 1886. He was educated privately and at St. John's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow. Strongly influenced by the physician, ethnologist, and psychologist W.H.R. Rivers, Bartlett showed early leanings toward anthropology; but circumstances, not the least of which was the outbreak of World War I, led him to a career in psychology. After the war Bartlett returned to Cambridge, succeeding C.S. Myers as director of the psychological laboratory in 1922 and becoming professor of experimental psychology in 1931, a post which he held until his retirement in 1952. He died at Cambridge on Sept. 30, 1969.

Bartlett's early interests lay in the experimental study of perception and memory. He distrusted the over analytical approach of the German workers and endeavored to make the conditions of his experiments as lifelike as possible. In his book Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (1932), which had considerable influence, he brought together the results of a long series of experiments. Bartlett laid special stress upon the extent of reconstruction, and even invention, that takes place in recall and upon the part played by attitude, interest, and social convention in governing it. He later carried further the approach developed in Remembering to the study of other higher mental processes, in particular, thinking, and published a short book on the subject, Thinking: An Experimental and Social Study (1958).

Problems in Applied Psychology

On the outbreak of World War II, Bartlett turned over the resources of his laboratory almost entirely to applied work, and problems were brought to him in ever-increasing numbers by the armed services and by various government bodies. These problems were concerned with such matters as equipment design, training methods, fatigue, and personnel selection. To tackle them, Bartlett brought together a noteworthy group of young experimental psychologists under the leadership of K.J.W. Craik. Many of these were subsequently incorporated into the Medical Research Council's Applied Psychology Research Unit, of which Bartlett assumed direction after Craik's death. While mostly concerned with applied work, Bartlett was always alert to its potential scientific value and its importance for developing realistic theories of human behavior.

Outside experimental psychology, Bartlett retained his interest in anthropology, publishing the book Psychology and Primitive Culture (1923) and sponsoring the influential collective volume The Study of Society: Methods and Problems (1939). In his numerous papers on social issues, he invariably stressed the extent of common ground and the need to develop more disciplined research methods.

Bartlett played a leading part in the growth and development of psychology in Britain for more than 40 years. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1932, received seven honorary degrees, and was knighted in 1948.

Further Reading

Bartlett wrote a short account of his early life and of the history of the Cambridge Psychological Laboratory up to 1935 in Carl Murchison, ed., A History of Psychology in Autobiography, vol. 3 (1936). Muzafer Sherif, Social Interaction: Process and Products (1967), discusses social psychology and mentions Bartlett's contributions.

(1886–1969). Highly significant British psychologist, born at Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire: he became the first professor of Psychology at Cambridge University. A world leader with a lasting reputation for originality, and theoretical insights that remain important.

He was an undergraduate at St John's College, Cambridge, where he met the philosopher James Ward (whose article on 'Psychology' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1886) had a great influence on British psychologists and influenced Bartlett) and also met C. S. Myers and W. H. R. Rivers. In his account of the development of psychology in Cambridge from 1887 to 1937 (Bartlett 1937), he gives an interesting account of these three men and of their influence on him and on psychology in Cambridge.

At first Bartlett had wanted to work on social anthropology with Rivers; but then joined with him, and with Ward and Myers, to establish a laboratory for experimental psychology at 16 Mill Lane, Cambridge. Cyril Burt (1883–1971) assisted Myers with the laboratory work, and when Burt left, Bartlett took his place. Rivers, who had done extensive pioneering work on sensory measurements in the course of his anthropological studies, considered that experience with psychophysical methods would be an advantage to Bartlett if he should do social anthropology in the field. In due course, though, the development of the Cambridge University psychological laboratory became Bartlett's life work, as he became the first occupant of the chair in 1931. He left detailed psychophysics and statistical analysis to others, whom he supported and inspired with remarkably prescient ideas.

Ward's opposition to atomistic–associationist psychologies, such as that of Herbert Spencer, must have strengthened Bartlett's discontent with prevailing associationist theories of sensation, perception, learning, memory, and thinking — as with later behaviourism, which he did a great deal to demolish. He chimed in which William James, and the Würzberg school, in their different ways. He particularly criticized Hermann Ebbinhaus's, then popular, Nonsense Syllables, saying that meaningless stimuli may give impressively smooth graphs, but the results are also meaningless, as the individual spends his or her life seeking meaning in learning and perception. 'Effort after meaning' was a Bartlettian slogan.

For his quite informal but conceptually significant experiments, Bartlett used pictures and stories from folk tales. The outcome of many years of research was published in his celebrated book Remembering (1932), which remains important. In this book he shows that perceiving, recognition, imaging, and recall are to be understood as the expression of active dynamic processes, dealing with the current situation of the organism and its current needs, based on and related to its past experience. He adopted and adapted Henry Head's 'schemas', which live on now as active brain traces in connectionist paradigms. ('Schemas', rather than the correct 'schemata', was used as being less clumsy.)

The influence of Myers, apart from in experimental psychology itself, may be seen in Bartlett's keen interest in applied and industrial psychology. This was apparent in his studies during the First World War, when submarine warfare was of paramount significance, especially the problems of perceiving changes in underwater sounds which might indicate the presence of an enemy submarine approaching a ship.

During the 1920s and 1930s Bartlett worked largely on social psychology. His book Psychology and Primitive Culture (1923) was an interesting and original work. This and The Study of Society (1939) which was compiled during meetings of an informal group of which he was the mainspring and leader, never gained the attention they deserved. The Second World War, with its demand for better understanding of man–machine interaction, and especially for guidance and tracking, and aircraft control and instrument design, found Bartlett the ideal leader. He chaired important war-time research committees.

Important nationally, and for Bartlett, was the coming to Cambridge of Kenneth Craik, Bartlett's most outstanding pupil. Craik became a legend, combining exceptional gifts for theoretical work — seen for instance in his concept of the human operator viewed as a link in a control system, and his work on vision — with astonishing skill in experimentation, and designing apparatus. He and Bartlett fused their powers in a way that made the applied psychology of wartime problems a major force for success. Craik's sudden death, at the end of the war in 1945, was a severe blow to Bartlett, from which he never fully recovered.

In 1944 the Medical Research Council established an Applied Psychology Unit in Cambridge under Craik's direction, and Bartlett continued his association with it after his retirement. In later years, he extended his earlier work on perceiving and remembering to the psychology of thinking, with the production of a book (Bartlett 1958) in which he showed that the thinker, whether by interpolation or by extrapolation, deals with a present problem in terms of his past experience, and by a flexible activity brings about the completion of an open-ended situation. So thinking is a kind of skill, comparable with the skills seen, for instance, in ball games (which had always interested Bartlett); and it was thus brought into line with perceiving and remembering, which can also be regarded as kinds of skill.

Bartlett had very exceptional intellectual powers. Students felt that he treated them as equals, just as he tells us Rivers treated him. He received numerous honours, including Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1922, and a Knighthood.

(Published 1987)

— R. W. Pickford/Richard L. Gregory

Bibliography
• Bartlett, F. C. (1923). Psychology and Primitive Culture.
• — —  (1932). Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology.
• — —  (1937). 'Cambridge, England, 1887–1937'. American Journal of Psychology, 50.
• — —  (1958). Thinking: An Experimental and Social Study.
• — —  Ginsberg, M., Lindgren, E. J., and Thouless, R. H. (eds.) (1939). The Study of Society: Methods and Problems.
• Oldfield, R. C. (1972). 'Frederic Charles Bartlett, 1886–1969'. American Journal of Psychology, 85.
• Zangwill, O. L. (1970). 'Sir Frederic Bartlett (1886–1969): Obituary'. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 22.

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