Catharine Cox Miles

Catharine Morris Cox Miles (May 20, 1890 – October 11, 1984) was an American psychologist known for her work on intelligence and genius. Born in San Jose, CA, to Lydia Shipley Bean and Charles Ellwood Cox. In 1927 she married psychologist Walter Richard Miles. Her sister was classics scholar and Quaker administrator Anna Cox Brinton.

She was a professor of clinical psychology at the Yale Medical School and affiliated with Yale's Institute of Human Relations. Earlier she worked at Stanford with Stanford-Binet creator Lewis Terman in issues related to IQ. She is also known for her historiometric study (1926) of IQ estimates of three hundred prominent figures who lived prior to IQ testing, a work which was one of the earliest attempts to apply social scientific methods to the study of genius and greatness.

Academic career Cox attended Stanford University where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1911. She earned a Master of Arts degree in German language and literature in 1913. Following graduation, she moved to Berlin, Germany, where she spent one year at the University of Jena and the University of Berlin. She returned to San Jose, California, where she taught physical education and German at the College of the Pacific. After World War I, Herbert Hoover was in charge of the American Relief Administration and he encouraged American Quakers to go to Germany to help the struggling country. Cox returned to Germany and joined the American Friends Service Committee in its relief efforts to provide food to starving children who were affected by World War I. By 1920, Cox was serving as the District Director to the American Relief Administration for North-East Germany. Cox earned her Ph.D. in 1925. Her dissertation, Early Mental Traits of 300 Geniuses, was published in 1926 as the second volume in the Genetic Studies of Genius series started by Lewis Terman. They also had two children of their own: a daughter named Anna Mary Miles (Jones), and a son named Charles Ellwood, who died at birth.

Sex and Personality Cox-Miles and Terman published a book together called Sex and Personality. It has been suggested that it is a book primarily written by Terman, but based on the literature of it, many people think it was actually the work of Cox-Miles with some supervision and assistance from Terman. While considering gender differences, the two found the greatest difference between the sexes during word association and stimulus modality tasks. Their analysis found that male responses were more superficial and held less significance, while female responses were less indifferent and more cooperative.

Cox-Miles and Terman published research on achieved eminence together. They looked at adults and how much achievement or recognition they have made in their lifetime. They then took this level of measurement and compared it to their IQ scores to see if there was correlation. There was a very strong belief that mental health, physical health, and intelligence levels would all have a positive correlation to each other. Another of Miles-Cox's studies included a classical cross sectional study that she did with Walter R. Miles, where they tested the relationship between intelligence scores and age, especially from early to late maturity. They found that an increased age is associated with decline of some intellectual abilities, like memory and speed processes. In other words, a decrease in mean IQ is associated with an increase of age after late teens or twenty.

Legacy

Cox-Miles was one of the few prominent female psychologists of her time. She acted as a clinician, a professor, and a researcher; all rare occupations for women before World War II. As opposed to focusing on women's oppression, her writings in Sex and Personality take a more androgynous approach to feminism. She stated that women were capable of being both mothers and professionals, but that society prevented this. 1929: "Sex Difference in the Association of Ideas" 1931: "The Otis S-A as a Fifteen Minute Intelligence Test" 1932: "The Correlation of Intelligence Scores and Chronological Age from Early to Late Maturity" 1935: Sex in Social Psychology 1936: "Childhood Physical and Mental Health Records of Historical Geniuses" 1936: Sex and Personality