History of the Psychonomic Society IV: The development of the Psychonomic Society

Although there have been many changes in the Psychonomic Society since its founding in 1959, its basic characteristics as a trim organization focused on the conduct of annual scientific meetings and a publication program for scientific research remain unchanged. Because full membership is limited to those who have published appreciable original scientific research beyond the PhD, other means of quality control often have appeared unnecessary. Run by a Governing Board, which elects its own Chair, and a Secretary-Treasurer, the Psychonomic Society has avoided proliferation of administrative structure. Society leaders have worked to maintain a balance between responsible involvement with other organizations and a degree of independence that has enabled the Society to maintain its fundamental simplicity.     

History of the Psychonomic Society III: The meetings of the Psychonomic Society

A primary function of the Psychonomic Society, founded in 1959, has been the conduct of scientific meetings. Its first 37 meetings have been held in 18 different cities, St. Louis being the most popular with 11 meetings. The 5 Chicago meetings have been held at 5 different sites. Although there have been some changes in format and procedure, there has been a general adherence to guidelines laid down by the Society’s founders whereby the format is kept simple, with a strong emphasis on the communication of results of scientific research.     

The founding of the Psychonomic Society

The Psychonomic Society falls within a long tradition of efforts to create organizations of psychologists as alternatives to the American Psychological Association, which has frequently been perceived as failing to meet the essential needs of some of its constituents. As the result of 1950s discussions and correspondence centered on the need for more effective communication among psychologists doing scientific research, an Organizing Committee was formed to undertake the task of designing a new scientific society from the ground up. The Psychonomic Society was founded by a group of experimental psychologists meeting in Chicago, Illinois, in December 1959. They fashioned the Psychonomic Society to provide maximal opportunities for communication about science with minimal bureaucratic structure and without frills unrelated to free and open scientific exchange.     

History of the Psychonomic Society II: The journal publishing program

The possibility of a Psychonomic Society journal publishing program dates back to the very founding of the Society in 1959. The program was initiated by Clifford T. Morgan on his own, however, with the publication ofPsychonomic Science in 1964, followed byPsychonomic Monograph Supplements andPerception & Psychophysics within the next 2 years. In 1967, Morgan gave the journals to the Psychonomic Society, which has controlled them ever since. The structure of the journal program and the means of producing the journals have evolved since then, so that today the Psychonomic Society publishes six prominent journals in experimental psychology, all of them produced in-house.     

A guide to norms,ratings, and lists

A catalog of 119 studies, mostly post-1960 except for a few important and well-controlled earlier ones, is listed. The studies provide norms, scales, ratings, or lists of verbal material for use in experiments investigating aspects of cognitive psychology, memory, psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, etc. The catalog is preceded by an outline index.     

Emotionality ratings and free-association norms of 240 emotional and non-emotional words

Abstract

The norms which follow are a collection of free association norms to four categories of emotional words (happiness, sadness, anxiety, and anger) and a corresponding set of non-emotional words, matched for frequency of occurrence and for word length. The norms are accompanied by ratings of emotional content, and presented in decreasing order of emotionality. They were collected from a total of 300 Reading University undergraduates over a period of three weeks in 1985.