Koreshige Masuda

Born: December 29th, 1883 in Matsuyama, Ehime prefecture
Died: August 7th, 1933

Education

Doctor of Literature (1933)—His academic dissertation was “Shinrigaku no kenkyuho – kotoni suuryoteki kenkyu ni tsuite (The psychological method – especially quantitative research)”
B.A (1908) Department of philosophy, College of Letters at Tokyo Imperial University (Major Psychology)—His dissertation was “Ishi-sayo no hikakushinrigaku-teki kenkyu (Comparative psychological research of volition)”

Landmarks

1915 Assistant at Department of Letters in Tokyo Imperial University
1919-1921 Went to Europe to study experimental psychology
1922 Instructor at Tokyo Imperial University in June, Associate professor and a temporary employee at aviation laboratory at Tokyo Imperial University

Contributions

Koreshige Masuda was interested in will, emotion, learning, comparison, and sense. In addition, his interests were in experimental psychology, psychological investigable method, systematic psychology, applied psychology and animal psychology.
He helped the fundamentals and education of military psychology at Japanese navy in Japan. He contributed the establishment and administration of Japanese Psychological Association.
In addition, he edited and published the journal “Shinrigaku Kenkyu (Psychological Research).”
One of his important contributions was that he objectively classifies each of psychological objects, methods, and rules into two characters. He suggested that the objects of psychology were empirical influence. They were categorized as inner and outer. The former were mental function and consciously contents. The latter were behavior, mental products and nasty. His ideas of logical control for research were divided into two things: quantitative examination and contextual examination. The former was the examination that common characteristics in concrete and whole facts. The latter was the examination on the relationships of whole facts. His methods for analyses were distinctive analysis and characteristic analysis. The former was the analysis of divided facts. The latter was to find the tendency in whole facts. His classifications were attribution and phases. He thought that the law should be distinguished attributive law and structural law that compares between parts and whole.

Keywords

Experimental psychology
Methodological theory for psychology

References

Hiroshi Oizumi (2003). Nihonshinrigakusha-jiten. Tokyo: Kabushiki Kaisha Kress Shuppan.
Nihon no shinrigaku kanko iinkai. (1982).Nihon no shinrigaku. Tokyo: Nihon bunka kagaku sha.
Japanese Psychological Association. (2002). Nihon shinrigakkai 75nenshi. Tokyo:Shadan hojin nihon shinrigakkai