Robert M. Yerkes Award
The Robert M. Yerkes Award is given for outstanding contributions to military psychology by a non-psychologist.
The award is named for Robert M. Yerkes, the “Founding Father” of military psychology. Yerkes (1876-1956) had a distinguished career as a comparative psychologist first at Harvard, and later at Yale University.
He studied chimpanzee behavior extensively, and together with John D. Dodson developed the Yerkes-Dodson Law, relating arousal and motivation to performance.
As the president of APA in 1917, Yerkes led in the application of psychology to the demands of World War I. Also serving as chief of the Psychology Division in the Surgeon General's Office during World War I, Yerkes led in the development and use of the Army Alpha and Beta Tests, the first large-scale application of psychological testing. This program established the value of psychological testing for screening and placement purposes.
