One of the most devastating times in psychology was a movement called eugenics, a name coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1883. The goal of eugenics was to improve the genetic composition of the population: to encourage healthy, smart individuals to reproduce (called positive eugenics) and to discourage the poor, who were considered unintelligent and unfit, from reproducing (negative eugenics)

By the 1930s, over 30 states had sterilization laws. Some states even expanded the definition to include blindness, deafness, drug addiction and alcoholism.