Richard Herrnstein: biography of this American psychologist and author.

A review of the life of Richard Herrnstein, psychologist and author of the book "The Bell Curve".

Herrnstein is one of the great authors who stood out in the field of psychology during the second half of the 20th century in the USA.

Below we will be able to learn more about the life of this author through a summarized biography of Richard HerrnsteinThe following is a summary biography of Richard Herrnstein, highlighting those works or publications that were especially relevant to the momentum of his career and that today continue to have a certain impact in the field of study to which they correspond.

Brief biography of Richard Herrnstein

Richard Herrnstein was born in New York City, United States, in 1930.. His family, which was of Jewish origin, had emigrated to America from Hungary. His parents were Rezso Herrnstein and Flora Irene Friedman. It was a humble family, in which the income came from Rezso's work painting houses.

His education took place in public institutions, such as the High School of Music and Art, and the City College of New York, where Richard Herrnstein would complete his studies as a psychologist. Thanks to his promising profile, he managed to enter the doctoral program at Harvard University.

Thus it was that, in the year 1955, at the age of 25, Herrnstein became a doctor, having published a doctoral thesis on conditioning processes.. Specifically, this work was entitled "Behavioral consequences of the elimination of a discriminative stimulus associated with variable interval reinforcement".

This thesis was done under the direction of none other than Burrhus Frederic Skinner, father of the psychological school of behaviorism. In fact, both authors maintained a magnificent relationship, Skinner being Herrnstein's mentor, whom he took as his favorite pupil.

In addition to advising him on his doctorate, they also collaborated in research conducted with pigeons, in a laboratory that Richard Herrnstein himself was in charge of managing after Skinner, and would do so throughout his career. In addition to his academic training, he served for three years in the U.S. Army.

Professional career at Harvard

Richard Herrnstein developed his entire career at Harvard University itself, where he had been able to learn from an eminence like B.F. Skinner and obtain a doctorate under his tutelage. As a result, Herrnstein began to build a reputation that would soon be endorsed by the work and research that he would develop.

One of these contributions to psychology was the so-called law of pairing.. This law states that an animal, faced with two possible choices, will choose the one that provides it with a greater reward, with a frequency directly proportional to the amount of that reward.

According to this reasoning, a pigeon (an animal usually used by Skinner and Herrnstein for their experiments) faced with the choice between a container with a certain amount of food and another containing twice the amount of food, is twice as likely to choose the second option over the first.

But this was not Richard Herrnstein's only contribution. Another of his major findings was the theory of enhancement, which he developed jointly with author William Vaughan Jr. This theory is a continuation of the research begun with the law of pairing. In that sense, the enhancement theory proposes that animals will try harder the greater the improvement over their situation they can achieve.

Therefore, it introduces a new variable, since now the animal not only has to decide between two reward possibilities, one greater and one lesser, but it must also take into account the effort involved in each of them, and finally choose the one whose work brings it the maximum benefit.

These processes are carried out automatically, without any reasoning involved, since we are talking about reactions carried out by animals and not by human beings, so it is not a rational question.

Continuation of his career and final years.

With many years of work as an experimental psychologist at Harvard, Richard Herrnstein was already a recognized figure in his field. In the year 1965 came another of his major publications, the volume entitled "Sourcebook of the History of Psychology."which he wrote in collaboration with his colleague, Edwin Boring.

In addition to his work as a researcher at Harvard, where he also headed the psychology department itself from '67 to '71, Herrnstein also fulfilled other duties. He was in charge of editing the psychology journal entitled "Psychological Bulletin". In addition, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

As for his personal life, Richard Herrnstein had two marriages. The first of them was with Barbara Brodo, whom he married in 1951 and maintained a relationship of a decade, thanks to which his daughter Julia was born. After his divorce, in 1961 he married Susan Chalk Gouinlock, who would become the mother of the children Max and James.

The last years of this researcher's life were marked by lung cancer, from which he died in 1994, when he was only 64 years old. Shortly before his death, he had published his last book, entitled "The Bell Curve", which was to become his most controversial work.. We will see its implications in detail below.

The Bell Curve

Richard Herrnstein wrote "The Bell Curve" in collaboration with Charles Murray, in line with the research he carried out during the last stage of his career, in which he studied the factors affecting human intelligence. This is precisely the theme explored by the authors in the book.

One of the first statements Herrnstein makes in the volume is that intelligence depends on both genetic and environmental factors, which is a truth accepted in all circles of psychology, although some authors put more weight on one than the other, which has generated an intense debate that has been going on for decades.

Richard Herrnstein also states that socioeconomic status is the best predictor of a person's success in all aspects. That is, the higher the socioeconomic level of a family, the more likely their children will have a better salary, be a good worker or even be more likely not to commit crimes.

At the beginning of the book, the authors establish a total of six points, which will be the basis for the rest of the book's contents. The first is that there are differences in the cognitive abilities of human beings and therefore not everyone would be equal in terms of this variable..

The second is that psychometric tests exist to measure the IQ of an individual and, unlike academic exams, which may generate more doubts or be more subjective, these tests achieve their objective with great success, so that the IQ of different people can be evaluated and compared with each other.

The third point that Richard Herrnstein mentions is that the result of such an IQ test would be what would be generally understood as intelligence. Next, the author speaks of a stability in that level of intelligence throughout people's lives, so that an IQ test performed at different periods on the same individual should not differ too much in its result.

The fifth assertion is that all these tests are designed to avoid any bias that might appear against any race, ethnic or social group, so that all people would be on an equal footing when being tested.Therefore, all people would be on an equal footing when subjected to the IQ test in question. Finally, Richard Herrnstein states that the heredity factor in intelligence would be between 40% and 80%.

After these postulates, the authors continue to develop their work and talk about the concept of a cognitive elite, which would be a sector of the USA with higher intelligence and also higher socioeconomic level that was progressively becoming more and more separated from the rest of the individuals, deepening these differences and making them more and more palpable.

Of course, all these concepts and ideas were not exempt from controversy, as Richard Herrnstein was putting on the table the idea that there could be groups of people who, in a genetic way, had a greater or lesser predisposition to be more intelligent than the rest of the population..

This work has been followed by many others, some trying to demonstrate the falsity of the conclusions he reached and others supporting his ideas.

Bibliographical references:

• Herrnstein, R.J. (1961). Relative and absolute strength of response as a function of frequency of reinforcement. Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior.
• Herrnstein, R.J., Loveland, D.H., Cable, C. (1976). Natural concepts in pigeons. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes.
• Herrnstein, R.J. (1997). The matching law: Papers in psychology and economics. Harvard University Press.
• Herrnstein, R.J., Murray, C. (2010). The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. Free Press Paperbacks.