Walter Dill Scott

Walter Dill Scott (1869 to 1955) was an American psychologist and academic administrator, one of the first applied psychologists and the tenth president of Northwestern University. Born on a farm near Normal, Illinois, he took his bachelor degree at Northwestern University in 1895, studied at McCormick Theological Seminary, and then went to Leipzig, where he studied psychology with Wilhelm Wundt and received his doctorate in 1900. Back at Northwestern he directed the psychological laboratory and applied psychology to business, publishing The Psychology of Advertising in Theory and Practice in 1903 and a second book on advertising in 1908. He directed the Bureau of Salesmanship at the Carnegie Institute of Technology from 1916 to 1918, developed tests and rating scales for personnel selection, and in 1919 he and his associates founded the Scott Company, which advised more than forty industrial concerns in its first year. He was elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1919 and served as president of Northwestern from 1920 to 1939.