Spence, Janet Taylor

Spence, Janet Taylor

(1923– ) psychologist; born in Toledo, Ohio. She studied at Yale and the State University of Iowa (Ph.D. 1949). She taught at Northwestern University (1949–60), where she formulated the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, which contributed to both clinical and social psychology. In 1960 she married psychologist Kenneth W. Spence, with whom she collaborated in editing the two-volume Psychology of Learning and Motivation (1967–68). She taught and did research at the University of Texas from 1964.