Murphy, Lois Barclay, 1902-2003

Born in 1902 in Lisbon, Iowa, Lois Barclay Murphy attended Vassar College and earned a masters in theology from Union Theological Seminary. She had been fired from teaching comparative religion at Sarah Lawrence College when by chance she met the head of the Macy Foundation in New York. He solicited her to conduct a study of sympathy in pre-schoolers. Not only did the study become her doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, it was later published as Social Behavior in Child Personality (1937). This work launched her career as a child psychologist, and is regarded as a pioneering study in social psychology. Her original study showed that children as young as 2 could show caring for each other, defend each other, or warn each other about danger. After her studies in New York, Murphy started the first child development center at Sarah Lawrence College. She later moved to the Menninger Foundation in Kansas, where her husband Gardner Murphy, a noted psychologist in his own right, had become director. Here she helped conduct one of the early landmark studies of infants and preschoolers.

From the guide to the Lois B. Murphy Papers, 1905-1992 (bulk 1932-1992), (History of Medicine Division. National Library of Medicine)