International Journal of Comparative Psychology

Argentina's first laboratory of experimental psychology was founded in 1891 by the educational psychologist Victor Mercante. Other laboratories were then opened in several universities during the following forty years, giving rise to a considerable development of experimental psychology. The emphasis on experimentation was a common feature of psychology in many other countries, including some Latin American ones. However, Argentine psychology differed from that of other Spanish-speaking countries in the relatively important influence of evolutionary biology on the thinking of several of the most influential psychologists, including Jose Ingenieros, Horacio G. Pinero, Victor Mercante, and Rodolfo Senet, whose ideas and work are described in this paper.