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. A member of the Southern Agrarians, he was a contributor to I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition. In the 1940s, Lanier was chair of the Department of Psychology at Vassar College, where he showed that the pain threshold depended on specific individuals. In 1947, he served as the Executive Director of the Committee on Human Resources of the United States Department of Defense. Later, Lanier was chair of the Department of Psychology at New York University and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UI), followed by vice president and provost at UI. He ended his career as the Director of Administrative Affairs and Educational Statistics for the American Council of Education, and retired in Phoenix, Arizona.
Early life Lyle Hicks Lanier was born on January 11, 1903, in Madison County, Tennessee. Lanier was educated in public schools and attended prep school at Valparaiso University in Indiana. He attended Vanderbilt University from 1920 to 1923, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in Philosophy. One of his professors, Herbert Charles Sanborn, who was the Chair of Psychology Department at Vanderbilt University, recommended him to work with Professor Joseph Peterson, a scholar in race psychology at Peabody College, then a separate college across the street from Vanderbilt University. As a result, Lanier received an MA in 1924 and a PhD in 1926 from Peabody College.
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