Value Neutrality andSPSSI: The Quest for Policy, Purity, and Legitimacy

Abstract

I describe how the problem of “value neutrality” remained a central issue for SPSSI from the founding of the organization to the 1960s, as SPSSI leaders worked to maintain legitimacy in both scientific and public spheres. In 1930s psychology, notions of objectivity and political neutrality were intertwined in ways that produced substantial debate over SPSSI's aims. Under pressures from anticommunism and changes in public and private funding for research, the problem of neutrality intensified by the 1950s. In this new climate, the need to demonstrate value neutrality was a powerful constraint on the ability of SPSSI to respond to resurgent scientized racism after the Supreme Court Brown decision.