Lyle Hicks Lanier

Lyle H. Lanier (January 11, 1903 – December 30, 1988) was an American experimental psychologist and writer.

As a faculty member at Vanderbilt University from 1929 to 1938, Lanier published research comparing the mental abilities of whites and blacks, alleging whites were superior.

Lanier was educated in public schools and attended prep school at Valparaiso University in Indiana.

Academic career Lanier was an experimental psychologist. Meanwhile, in his 1929 Studies in the Comparative Abilities of Whites and Negroes, co-authored with Joseph Peterson, Lanier tested the mental abilities of whites versus blacks. They concluded that "the whites were superior" due to "hereditary differences." they concluded this was due to "cultural factors." He stressed the role of environment in mental abilities, as New York City blacks tested higher than Southern blacks. Two years later, in 1939, Lanier responded to Foley and persisted that his views were not "antiquated."

From 1932 to 1936, Lanier served as secretary/treasurer of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology. In 1934, with Vanderbilt colleague Beverly Douglas, he gave a talk to the society about research they conducted on remaining sensations for victims of accidents who have lost an organ. By 1937, Lanier served as the president of the Southern Society. In his essay, he suggested that community could only occur in "the agrarian community and in the villages and towns which are its adjunct", thus in rural America. He went on to stress the need of a "stable population," thus rejecting immigration, and the family as "the natural biological group, the normal milieu of shared experiences, community of interests, integration of personality." Meanwhile, in a 1936 essay entitled, 'Big Business in the Property State' published in Who Owns America: A New Declaration of Independence, an anthology co-edited by Allen Tate and Herbert Agar, Lanier argued against the definition of a corporation as an individual. He was also in favour of collective bargaining. He served as the treasurer of the Eastern Psychological Association from 1941 to 1947.

In 1947, Lanier took a leave of absence from Vassar College and served as the executive director of the Committee on Human Resources of the United States Department of Defense.

Lanier was a professor and head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 1950 to 1958, and as the Dean of its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from 1959 to 1960. He entered into a contract with the Air Force Personnel Center to establish the Training Research Laboratory. However, in another letter, President Henry made it clear that Lanier agreed with him, not Koch.

Lanier went on to serve as Executive Vice-President and Provost of the University of Illinois from 1960 to 1972. In 1962, as provost, he imposed a strict no-cheating policy, and asked professors to report any instances of cheating during exams. Meanwhile, in 1963, he approved of the arrest of a Christian evangelist on campus due to regulations. In 1967, he suggested basing freshman acceptance bids on psychology tests rather than high school grades. Upon his retirement in 1972, he was replaced by John E. Corbally, Jr.

In 1972, Lanier became the Director of Administrative Affairs and Educational Statistics for the American Council of Education in Washington, D.C. They had a son, Lyle Lanier, Jr., and a daughter, Catherine (Lanier) Lemon, who married L. Gene Lemon.

Death and legacy He died on December 30, 1988, at his retirement home in Phoenix, Arizona. Studies in the comparative abilities of whites and Negroes (co-authored with Joseph Peterson; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Williams & Wilkins, 1929). I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (co-authored with Donald Davidson, John Gould Fletcher, Henry Blue Kline, Stark Young, Allen Tate, Andrew Nelson Lytle, Herman Clarence Nixon, Frank Lawrence Owsley, John Crowe Ransom, John Donald Wade, and Robert Penn Warren, Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press1930). A study of the financial condition of colleges and universities: 1972-1975 (co-authored with Charles J. Andersen, Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education, 1975).