Welcome back to the second module in thefirst lecture unit.This second module will be actually aboutoneof my most favorite topics to talk about.The Eugenics movement.In this module what we will discuss isfirst the aims of the Eugenics movement.And how Eugenicist went about trying toachieve those aims.And I think most importantly, the impactEugenics movementhad, not only on the field of psychologybut on thefield of behavior genetics the core,subject matter of this course.If you remember from last module, we endedwith the term eugenics.Introducing the term eugenics was actuallyGalton introduced in the, late 19thcentury.Eu, Greek for well.Genics, born.I think, from 100 years out, it's probablya little difficultfor us to, to fully appreciate how itis that the eugenics movement ever gainedin popularity.But gain in popularity it certainly did,in the late 19th and early 20th century.There are probably several factors thatcontributed to thegrowing popularity of the Eugenicsmovement at the time.The 18th century, the mid-18th century wasreally the end of the IndustrialRevolution.And what happened in the IndustrialRevolution,among other things, is people migratedinto cities.And they migrated into cities becausethat's where the manufacturing jobs were.As people migrated into cities,populations grew more dense, andsocial pol, pathologies were magnified oramplified.And things like crime and poverty andcrowding, prostitution were observedat levels that had never been seen before.And people were worried about how toaddress these social pathologiesthat were actually a consequence of peoplejust crowding into cities.A second aspect of the IndustrialRevolutionthat's important to understanding may bethegrowing popularity of the eugenicsmovement is

something that demographers call thedemographic transition.With the industrial revolution cameaffluence.And, once consequence we now know ofaffluence is declining reproduction.And, rates of reproduction decline mostrapidly among the most affluentmembers of society.So what was happening in England.Let's say Galtin's England of the mid tolate 19th century is this, the elite, thescholarly elite of the time saw what theythought were growing social pathologies.While they were reproducing at a muchlower rate.And they did, and they argued that, thatthe typicalway of trying to address the socialpathologies would not work.Ethel Elderton was a very famous earlystatistician disciple of, of FrancisGalton who argued that social conditionsalone by improving social conditions.That would not be enoughto address the pathologies that were aconsequence of the Industrial Revolution.What we needed to do, according toElderton and otherdisciples of Galton, was we needed tobrea, breed people.We needed to make sure that the rightpeople reproduced and the wrong people didnot reproduce.Again, from, from our vantage point, itmay be very difficultto understand how it is that this ideologyever gained any traction.But many very popular and influentialintellectuals of the time, although theymight not have been card-carryingeugenicists,were certainly very sympathetic to eugenicideology.H G Wells, George BernardShaw, Winston Churchill, John MaynardKeynes, the American president TeddyRoosevelt.And Margaret Sanger.Was he certainly eugenist.Margaret Sanger is kind of an interestingcase, atleast for me, maybe also for you, I thinkmostof you probably know Margaret Sanger asthe founder ofwhat we in the United States now callPlanned Parenthood.The movement to provide women with accessto control their reproductive behavior,

birth control.And,I don't think it's surprising to recognizethat birth control,early birth control was wrapped up in theEugenics movement.What I think that is interesting aboutMargaret Sanger,at least again from my perspective is,when Ithink about Margaret Sanger, I think aboutsomeone, who's,who is a great hero, a great champion forwomen.But if you look at what Margaret Sangertalked about interms of eugenics, it's hard to argue thatshe wasn't a eugenicist.And how is it that somebody who was a herocould also besomeone who subscribed to what we nowbelieve is a very evil ideology?I think there's probably a lesson to belearned there, that, that certainly,I at least, in my opinion Margaret Sangerwas not an evil person.But that she saw eugenics much like TeddyRoosevelt or, orHG Wells or the others, as something thatreally could addressthe pathologies that they were observingat the time.What did the eugenicists do?Well, they did various things to try topopularize eugenics.One thing they did, is they did elaboratepedigree, or family studies.they, they tried to identify veryinformative families that couldillustrate, eugenic principles.So one of these famous families is theKallikak family,from the United States.Martin Kallikak was a revolutionary erasolider.And, when he went off to war.Yeah, it's a little bit hard to see inthe pedigree here, but he made it with abarmaid.And she's listed as being a feeble-minded,which is a term that was used at the time.A feeble-minded girl, of unknown family.And he produced a line, of relativesfrom, this barmaid.And then when he went home, he marrieda upstanding young woman and produced asecond line of relatives, descendants.And the eugenicists, when they studiedMartin Kallikak's pedigree, what theyargued

is that the line from the barmaid includedall kinds of social pathology.Lots of intellectual disability,prostitution and crime.But the, the other line produced virtuallynone of this.And they calculated the cost of this linetosociety and they, they made variouscost-benefit analysis and arguedthat if only that this women had beensterilized, societywould've been saved the cost of all thissocial pathology.Another thing they did and I don't, inyour countryyou, you might not have this, but in theUnited States we have what are calledState Fairs.And at State Fairs they're, they wereoriginally agricultural celebrations, andyou would bringyour prized animals and, and, and cropsand have them judged at the state fairs.Well, in the early 20th century,the eugenicists established what arecalled fitterfamily contests, where families were alsojudged, human families, just like prizecattlecould, and, could be judged and given ablue ribbon.Prize families were judged, and so this isa family that won a blue ribbonfor being a very eugenically illustrativefamilyin, in the Texas State Fair in 1927.This is kind of interesting family thatwon a blue ribbon for being very averagein some eastern state.Eugenicists were, were largely successfulin, in popularizing their movement.Again, not a lot of people would have beenmembers ofEugenic societies, but the broader publicdid take up the Eugenic beliefs.And one illustration of this is just, thepopularity ofthe name Eugene in the United States givento baby boys.As you see, the name Eugene increased inpopularity until it reached a peakin the late 1920s and 1930s and thendecreased thereafterfor reasons that we'll get to in a littlebit.The Eugenicists were very successful withtheir pedigree studiesin their fit or family contest ofpopularizing their goals.

Another thing the Eugenicists attempted todo andwere in part, successful, is to influencepublic policy.To enact legislationin the United States.They, for example, lobbied for immigrationrestriction acts.In the early twentieth century, most oftheimmigration to the United States was fromEurope.And what the eugenicists argued is thatthebest individuals would be coming fromnorthern Europe, andso they passed a law, or they lobbied topass an immigration law in 1924 thatrestricted immigrationfrom southern European countries.They also lobbied for sterilization laws.Most U.S. states and many countries,certainly most of theEuropean countries, as well as severalAsian countries, had sterilization.Eugenically motivated sterilization lawson their books.The Nazi mental hygiene laws.They were enacted in the early 1930s, wereactually modeled on Eugenicsterilization laws that were passed tenyears earlier in the United States.Remarkably, the sterilization laws in theUnited States were supported by thecourts.In a very famous case called Bell versusBuck.A young woman named Carrie Buck, who atthe age of 17, she lived in Virginia.And at the age of 17, she was raped by arelative.And as a consequence of that rape, sheproduced a child, VivianBuck.And the State of Virginia decided thatCarrie Buck was intellectually disabled aswas her mother.And at the age of six months theydecided that her child was alsointellectually disabled.Although I think it's rather questionablewhetheror not any psychologists could judgewhether ornot a six-month-old child isintellectually disabled.And the state then moved against CarrieBuck at to attempt to sterilize her.Carrie Buck argued, got legalrepresentation, and

argued in court against the sterilization,her sterilization.And this case actually went all the way tothe Supreme Court of the U.S., where itwas upheld,the, the position of the state ofVirginia, and Carrie Buck was actuallysterilized.In a very famous quote the justice,Supreme Court Justice from theUnited States, Oliver Wendell Holmesconcludedthat three generations of imbeciles isenough.A rather harsh statement I, I, you have toadmit.Oliver Wendell Holmes was actuallyan extraordinary jurist, a progressive,but he alsosupported eugenic, the eugenic ideologyand movement.Ultimately I think as you probably know,whatbegan as the eugenics movement in theUnited Statesand in Europe was taken by the Nazisto deprive, in an attempt to provide afoundationfor their own mental hygiene,sterilization andultimately the Holocaust.When itwas recognized, or revealed that theeugenic movementinfluenced early Nazi policy.The Eugenic movement almost overnightbecame unpopular in the West.And along with them behavioralgeneticists, who were once, because ofGalton's works, thedarling of early psychology, really becamethe pariahs, the outcasts.Nobody wanted to be seen to be doing anytype of researchthat might in any way be used to supportthe Nazi regime.So just like the term, the, the use of theEugene to name baby boys declined in the30s and 40s.Here I've, I've graphed in blue the rateat whichpublications in the psychologicalliteraturetalked about the inheritance of behavior.And what you see is it pretty much tracksthe name Eugene, that as Eugene wentup, so did interest in publishing studieson heritability but as Eugene wentdown psychologists' interests ininheritance declined rapidly as well.

WhatGaulden set out to try to accomplish, toestablishpsychology as Darwinian, was undermined bythe eugenics movement.And by the 40's and the 50's, very, veryfew psychologists were interested in doingbehavioral genetic research.This later will come that there is a, arebounding ofinterest in genetics; which we'll talkabout in the next lecture unit.That created a void within psychology, andthat void was filled by an ideology Iwould say is every bit as radical as HenryGoddard's ideology of genetic determinism.The notion that we can become anything,that we're born blank slates.This is a quote, a very famous quote froman earlypsychologist, John Watson, who is thefounder of the radical Behavioristmovement.John Watson arguedthat you could take a, he, if you gave hima baby,he could turn that baby into anything hewanted it to be.A beggar, a thief, a merchant-chief, alawyer, an artist, anything.Nobody ever gave their baby to Watson, andindeed, Watson knew he couldn't really dothis.But it didn't matter.Behavior genetics was totally discredited,so Watson and hisdisciples became ascended.And what the Harvard Psychologist StevenPinker calls the blank slate model ofhuman nature grew to dominate withinPsychology for more than a generation.And this is reflected in the, the notion,for example, that schizophrenia is causedby the way you were parented.Schizophrenia by the famous psychoanalyticpsychiatristFrieda Fromm-Reichmann argued thatschizophrenia was caused byabnormal communication from parents tooffspring by schizophrenogenic mothers.Or that autism was caused by refrigeratorparents.Cold, unemotional parents.By the well-known autismresearch of Leo Kanner.So by the nine, the late 1930s, andwell into the 60s and early 70s, behaviorgenetics has become discredited.And it was only in, when people started todo

twin studies again in the late 60s andearly 70s,something that we'll talk about later inthe course, thatpsychology came to come back and to lookat behavioral genetics.Next time, I think with this historicalbackground giving us a foundation.I'll define the field of behavior geneticsand give an overviewof the specific topics I'm hoping to gothrough in this course.[BLANK_AUDIO]