When the APA was founded in 1892 by
G. Stanley Hall, it was itself a small society of experimental psychologists. Given the rapid growth and breadth of the organization, a new division structure for APA was introduced in 1944, with specialty areas organized under the APA umbrella. Among the 19 charter divisions, General Psychology was Division 1, Teaching was Division 2, and Theoretical-Experimental Psychology was Division 3. Professor
Edward C. Tolman of Berkeley, CA was the first Chairman (President) of the division. Charter Division 6 was Physiological and Comparative Psychology, but would merge into Division 3 (renamed the Division of Experimental Psychology) in 1949. Division 6 would re-emerge as a separate division in 1964, although most members of Division 6 (which was renamed the Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology in 2015, the same year that Division 3 adopted its current name) remain affiliated also with Division 3. The list of scholars who have served as officers of Division 3 reflects a virtual "who's who" of psychology. For example, the following psychologists (listed in chronological order) have been elected to lead Division 3 as President (or Chairman in 1945):
Edward C. Tolman,
Edwin Ray Guthrie, Clarence H. Graham,
Clark L. Hull &
Frank A. Beach,
B.F. Skinner & WJ Brogden,
Harry Harlow (1950),
Harold H. Schlosberg,
Neal E. Miller,
Donald O. Hebb,
James J. Gibson, Frank A. Geldard,
Carl Pfaffmann, Judson S. Brown,
William Kaye Estes.
Benton J. Underwood (1960), David A. Grant, WD Neff, Lorrin A. Riggs, Lyle V. Jones, Howard H. Kendler, Charles N. Cofer, Richard Soloman, Delos D. Wickens, Arthur W. Melton, Leo J. Postman (1970) James E. Deese, Frank W. Finger,
James J. Jenkins,
Richard C. Atkinson,
Wendell Garner,
Gordon H. Bower, Bert F Green, Jr., Frank A. Logan,
George Mandler, G. Robert Give,
Roger N. Shepard (1980),
William Bevan,
James Greeno,
Julian Hochberg,
Robert A. Rescorla, Henry C. Ellis, Herschel W. Liebowitz,
Russell M. Church,
Elizabeth Loftus,
Sam Glucksberg, Stuart H. Hulse (1990), Lyle E. Bourne, Jr., J. Bruce Overmier, Walter Kintsch, Judith P. Goggin, Neal F. Johnson, Geoffrey Keppel, Vincent M. LoLordo, Harry Bahrick,
Henry L. Roedigger III (2000), Douglas L. Nelson,
Morton Ann Gershbacher, David A. Balota,
Randall W. Engle,
Alice F. Healy,
Thomas R. Zentall, Howard Egeth,
Edward Wasserman,
Nelson Cowan, Ralph Miller, Jeremy Wolfe (2010),
Karen Hollis,
Mark A. McDaniel, Nancy Dess,
David A. Washburn, Leah Light,
Anne Cleary, Jonathon Crystal,
Frank Farley, Stephen Goldinger (2020),
Stephen J. Ceci,
Valerie F. Reyna, Kristi Mulhaup. Professor
Elizabeth F. Loftus, who presided over the division's 1988 annual meeting, was the first woman elected to the office. == Awards ==