How Did Mamie Phipps Clark Contribute To Psychology

Jalyssa Beckles Mr. Ritchie HLTH100 D Thursday, March 14, 2024 African-American Psychologist: Mamie Phipps Clark Mamie Phipps Clark is a highly regarded African American psychologist most recognized for contributions to self-esteem, child development and race research. With two successful parents who encouraged her to take advantage of education, Mamie Phipps entered college at Howard University as a math and physics major. It was only after meeting her soon-to-be husband, Kenneth Clark, did she decide to change her major to psychology. Soon after doing so she graduated and spent time working at a law office where she discovered one of the aspects of psychology she would later focus on, research on the damaging effects of racial segregation.

Although it took some time for both of their careers to take off, especially considering they were both African American and highly accomplished as far as their education, Mamie Phipps and her husband worked together to found the Northside Center for Child Development in Harlem, New York. One of the first and well known experiments they commenced together was called “The Clark Doll Test”. This experiment exemplifies the negative effects of racial segregation on children. In this experiment, a group of children were shown two dolls – Black and White – other than their color, these dolls were identical in every other way. After showing the children these dolls, the Clarks asked a sequence of questions such as: which doll they considered to be “nice”, which doll they would prefer to play with, which one they would consider to be a “bad doll” and what would have been most significant, which doll looked most like the child. After collecting the responses of the children, they found that 59% of the children identified the Black doll as the “bad” one, and almost 33% chose the White doll as the one they found resembled them