Carl Emil Seashore, born Sjöstrand (January 28, 1866 – October 16, 1949) was a prominent American psychologist and educator.

[1][2][3] Seashore was born in Mörlunda, Hultsfred Municipality, Kalmar County, Sweden, to Carl Gustav and Emily Sjöstrand.

He graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, in 1891, having studied mathematics, music, classical languages and literature.

Music was considered the "most important extracurricular activity in college" and he enjoyed singing at all sorts of collegiate occasions.

He studied under George Trumbull Ladd, professor of metaphysics and moral philosophy, and Edward Wheeler Scripture, an experimental psychologist who conducted research on phonetics.

However, he decided to return to his home state and spent the next fifty years as a researcher and an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Iowa.

The test involved controlled procedures for measuring respondent's ability to discriminate pitch, loudness, tempo, timbre, and rhythm.

[14] During his time at the University of Iowa, Seashore dedicated his career to education and research on the qualities of music perception and aesthetic talent.

There, he also mentored several students that eventually became prominent psychological figures, such as Walter Richard Miles, Francis P. Robinson, Lee Edward Travis, and Joseph Harold Tiffin.

[15] Seashore was influenced by the scientific work of James McKeen Cattell, a prominent psychologist and the founding editor of the American Journal of Psychology, and wanted to apply the methods of scientific psychology and mental testing to his research interest on musical aptitude and sensory perception differences in individuals.

Each test would be normed and given a percentage value; the results would then be shown in a single graph or curve and would help convey an immediate representation of the features of musical traits or capacities of a specific individual.

[10][23] As Seashore's battery help predict relative successes and failures of elementary school students, he also created suitable instruments, such as a tonoscope to help identify the intonation of pitch and a rhythm meter to practice the synchronization of different rhythmic patterns, to allow students to practice and improve on areas of perceptual difficulties and musical training.

[19] During his time at the University of Iowa, Seashore mentored and worked closely with Dr. Norman Charles Meier, who eventually became an associate professor in the psychology department.

In 1929, Seashore and Meier published the Meier-Seashore Art Judgment Test, where subjects were asked to select the "better (more pleasing, more artistic, more satisfying)" from two pictures.

Aesthetic Perception in 1963 as successors of the Meier-Seashore Art Judgment Test and to continue measuring different dimensions of artistic aptitude.

Over the course of Seashore's supervision, the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station managed to garner over 1 million dollars from outside sources and issued over 1000 publications.

Seashore spent the majority of his professional life at the University of Iowa, where he held the position of Dean of the Graduate School for 28 years.