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Sandra Scarr

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Sandra Wood Scarr (née Wood; August 8, 1936 – October 8, 2021) was an American professor of psychology. She was elected in 1975 a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and received in 1993 the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award. (After divorcing her first husband Harry A. Scarr, she married in 1972 the psychologist Philip Salapatek, who was elected in 1982 a Fellow of the AAAS.)

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  • This study examines the responses of mothers of twin girls about similarities and differences of their monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins. After these measures had been completed and scored, the investigator obtained zygosity diagnoses of the twins made by extensive blood‐group analyses. Of the 61 pairs of twins, 11 were misclassified by their mothers. Despite these mothers’ erroneous beliefs about the zygosity of their twins, they described the twins as having similarities and differences appropriate to their true degree of genetic relatedness.
  • Sensory data are filtered through the knowing apparatus of the human senses and made into perceptions and cognitions. The human mind is also constructed in a social context, and its knowledge is in part created by the social and cultural context in which it comes to know the world. Knowledge of the world is therefore always constructed by the human mind in the working models of reality in the sciences. Fleeting impressions of criminal behavior are elaborated by individuals into complete accounts that they believe to be "true." The wrong people are identified as the criminals, and events are construed in ways that are consistent with the observer's emotions and prejudices. Scientific theories are judged by their persuasive power in the community of scientists. They advance and decline through discussions among scientists. In social and developmental psychology, most of the models specify about human interactions have variables with neither temporal nor directional priorities that can escape challenge.
  • Psychological science has a great deal to contribute to social welfare in all societies, because the world's most pressing social problems are behavioral in nature—violence, hunger, drug abuse, environmental pollution, low worker productivity, poor educational outcomes, and so forth. Thus, psychological research can inform public policies to improve approaches to these important social problems. The relationship of psychological science to public policy is often troubled, however, by misunderstandings about the role of science in the policy making process. Many scientists fear that their research results will be “misused” by others whose values differ from those of scientists. Thus, psychologists are reluctant to publish research results that can be used to support policies contrary to their own values and hesitate to ask research questions that can generate politically incorrect results. In this article, I argue that psychological science has a primary responsibility to ask dangerous questions and to report results honestly, without fear of their use; that research is not translated directly into public policies; and that psychological science should not be perverted either by fear of political consequences or by compromising truth in a quest for power. Three research examples are given to illustrate the different faces of temptation to pervert psychological science in a misguided hope that scientists' own values will be reflected in public policies.
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