Frederic Bartlett

Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett, born on 20 October 1886 and raised in Gloucestershire, was a British psychologist who became Cambridge’s first professor of experimental psychology. A childhood bout of pleurisy kept him home-schooled through his secondary years, though he still played golf, tennis, and cricket. He earned a First Class Honours BA in philosophy from University Correspondence College in 1909, followed by a master’s degree with distinction in ethics and sociology at London University. At St John’s College, Cambridge, he gained a distinction in moral science and met Charles Samuel Myers, director of the Cambridge Psychology Laboratory. His childhood illnesses also exempted him from World War I; when Myers was drafted as a medical doctor in 1914, Bartlett became deputy head of the laboratory. His early experimental work on perception and imaging led to a fellowship in 1917. After the war, Myers left Cambridge, donating funds for lectureships, and Bartlett took over as laboratory director and lecturer in experimental psychology. He later became Senior Lecturer in Psychology, a post he held until his death on 30 September 1969.

Bartlett’s first psychology book, *Psychology and Primitive Culture* (1923), built a framework for understanding human action within cultural contexts. Unlike his later experimental work, it drew on ethnographic sources. He had originally wanted to study anthropology but was steered by his mentor W.H.R. Rivers to train in psychology first. The book examined what happens when groups encounter each other and what factors shape cultural exchange and adoption, and it argued against Lucien Lévy-Bruhl’s concept of the “primitive mind.”

His most famous work, *Remembering* (1932), published while he chaired experimental psychology at Cambridge, introduced his concept of conventionalization. The book compiled earlier experiments on memory using figures, photographs, and stories, and included studies on remembering, imaging, and perceiving, as well as “remembering as a study in social psychology.” His theory of remembering highlighted social conditions that influence recall, contrasting “free remembering” with special circumstances. It also laid out his schema theory, which continues to inspire researchers, and described the transmission chain method.

Bartlett’s best-known experiment, “War of the Ghosts,” demonstrated memory’s reconstructive nature. Edwardian English participants read a Native American folktale and recalled it at various intervals. Over longer gaps, they forgot more details and, crucially, omitted or transformed elements that didn’t fit their own cultural schemas—for instance, “canoes” became “boats.” Each participant’s recollection reflected their own Edwardian English background.

After *Remembering*, Bartlett focused on strengthening social psychology methodology by merging psychology and anthropology. From 1935 to 1938, he met twice yearly with colleagues from psychology, anthropology, and sociology. His interest in applied experimental psychology grew, especially regarding military matters, when the Applied Psychology Unit was established at the Cambridge Laboratory of Industrial Research. With Kenneth Craik, he set up the Medical Research Council’s Applied Psychology Research Unit (APU) at Cambridge in 1944, where they worked with Magdalen Dorothea Vernon on government-funded projects involving training and experimental design. Bartlett became the unit’s director.

He proudly called himself “a Cambridge psychologist,” because at Cambridge settling for one type of psychology wasn’t an option. He considered most of his cognitive psychology work a branch of social psychology, and he also engaged with anthropology, moral science, philosophy, and sociology.