Judith Rich Harris

Judith Rich Harris ( born February 10, 1938) is an American psychologist. She was known as a representative of the theory that children are not so much influenced by the education of the parents, but by the peer groups.

Life

Harris went to high school in Tucson and then studied at the University of Arizona. In 1959 she graduated from Brandeis University. In 1961 she received a master's degree in psychology from Harvard University. 1961-62 she worked as a teaching assistant at MIT, 1962-63 as a research assistant at Bolt Beranek and Newman, and 1964-65 as a research assistant at the University of Pennsylvania.

Harris married in 1961 and has two children (1966 and 1969). She is suffering since 1977 from a chronic autoimmune disease, a combination of lupus erythematosus and scleroderma.

Work

Between 1981 and 1994, Harris wrote as co-author of textbooks on developmental psychology. In 1994 she began work on a third textbook. They developed a new theory of childhood development and gave the project the textbook on to write instead an article for the journal Psychological Review. 1995, the spread of their theory began in the book The Nurture Assumption, which was published in 1998. In 2006 she published her next book No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality.

In the article published in 1995, Where Is the Child's Environment? A Group Socialization Theory of Development and the book published in 1998, The Nurture Assumption it was theorized that non-family contacts, that is, playmates and cliques, the development of a human significantly affect more than the family, ie parents and siblings, can, or that the education of parents generally have only a small influence. So could about aggressive behavior of a child with violent parents are loud Harris also that the behavior was genetically pass ( behavioral genetics ), so determined in studies correlations between the personality characteristics of parents and children must be no reference to education influence. Since children group than identify with other members of their peer with their parents, however, a large influence of peer groups is given. Harris postulated an influence of the decisions of the parents only indirectly, as the parents, for example, the choice of peer groups have a significant impact.

Reception

In the article, she received the 1998 George A. Miller Award from the American Psychological Association. Linguist Steven Pinker The Nurture Assumption expected that there would be a turning point in the history of psychology. According to Sapolsky Ropert the book is based on sound science. Simon Baron -Cohen praised the book as refreshing.

By the majority of scholars, the book was rather skeptical view. Jerome Kagan criticized Harris ' weighting based on surveys studies, although these often appeared inconsistent with observations. Richard Niolon stated that Harris is confusing correlation with causality in part, rely too much on dubious data and simplified matters too much. But yet he supports their view of the strong influence of peer groups. Wendy Williams ( Cornell University) referred to studies, according to which education had significant impact on, among other cognitive abilities.

Publications (selection)

• Where Is the Child's Environment? A Group Socialization Theory of Development. Psychological Review, Volume 102, No. 3, pp. 458-489.
• The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Thu Free Press, 1998 ISBN 0684844095. . ( German: Is education pointless Rowohlt, 2000 ISBN 3498029495? .. . ) Revised and updated edition: Free Press, 2009 ISBN 1439101655. .
• No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality. WW Norton & Company, 2006 ISBN 9780393059489. . ( German: Everyone is different. . The mystery of individuality German publishing house, 2007 ISBN 9,783,421,042,354th )