Neal Elgar Miller (August 3, 1909 – March 23, 2002) was an Americanexperimental psychologist.[3] Described as an energetic man with a variety of interests, including physics, biology and writing, Miller entered the field of psychology to pursue these.[4] With a background training in the sciences, he was inspired by professors and leading psychologists at the time to work on various areas inbehavioral psychology andphysiological psychology, specifically, relatingvisceral responses to behavior.
Miller's career in psychology started with research on "fear as a learned drive and its role in conflict".[5] Work in behavioral medicine led him to his most notable work onbiofeedback.[4] Over his lifetime he lectured atYale University,Rockefeller University, andCornell University Medical College and was one of the youngest members of Yale's Institute of Human Relations. His accomplishments led to the establishment of two awards: the New Investigator Award from the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research and an award for distinguished lectureship from theAmerican Psychological Association.[5] AReview of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Miller as the eighth most cited psychologist of the 20th century.[6][7]
Miller was born inMilwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1909. He grew up in the Pacific Northwest. His father, Irving Miller, worked atWestern Washington University as chair of the Department of Education and Psychology.[8] His father's position, in Neal Miller's words, "may have had something to do with" his interest in psychology.[4]: 244 Originally having a curiosity for science, Miller entered theUniversity of Washington (1931), where he studied biology and physics and also had an interest in writing. In his senior year, he decided that psychology would allow him to pursue his wide variety of interests.[4] He graduated from theUniversity of Washington with a B.S. and a piqued interest inbehavioral psychology. After baccalaureate studies, he studied atStanford University (1932), where he received his M.S. and an interest in psychology of personality. AtStanford, he accompanied his professor, Walter Miles, to the Institute of Human Relations atYale University as a research assistant. There he was encouraged by another professor to further studypsychoanalysis.[4] He received his Ph.D. degree in psychology from Yale University in 1935, and that same year he became a social science research fellow at the Institute of Psychoanalysis inVienna for one year before returning to Yale as a faculty member in 1936. He spent a total of 30 years at Yale University (1936–1966), and in 1950 he was appointed professor at Yale, a position he held until 1966. In 1966 he began teaching atRockefeller University and afterwards spent the early 1970s teaching atCornell University Medical College. In 1985 he returned to Yale as a research associate.[5]
Miller's early work focused on experimenting withFreudian ideas on behavior in real-life situations. His most notable topic wasfear. Miller came to the conclusion that fear could be learned throughconditioning. Miller then decided to extend his research to other autonomic drives, such ashunger, to see if they worked in the same way.[9] His unique ideas and experimental techniques to study these autonomic drives resulted in findings that changed ideas about motivations and behavior.
Miller was also one of the founding fathers behind the idea ofbiofeedback. Today, many of his ideas have been expanded and added to, but Miller has been credited with coming up with most of the basic ideas behind biofeedback. Miller was doing experimentation on conditioning and rats when he discovered biofeedback.[citation needed]
Neal Miller, along withJohn Dollard andO. Hobart Mowrer, helped to integratebehavioral andpsychoanalytic concepts.[10] They were able to translate psychological analytic concepts into behavioral terms that would be more easily understood. Specifically, they focused on thestimulus-response theory. These three men also recognizedSigmund Freud's understanding ofanxiety as a "signal of danger" and that some things in Freud's work could be altered to fix this. Miller, Dollard and Mowrer believed that a person who was relieved of high anxiety levels would experience what is called "anxiety relief". Together with fellow psychologist O. Hobart Mowrer, Miller gives his name to the "Miller-Mowrer Shuttlebox" apparatus.[11]
Over the course of his career, Miller wrote eight books and 276 papers and articles.[9] Neal Miller worked with John Dollard and together they wrote the bookPersonality and Psychotherapy (1950) concerning neurosis and psychological learning concepts.[12]
Miller's use of laboratory animals brought criticism from theanimal rights movement but he defended the practice, arguing that if people had no right to use animals in research, then they had no right to kill them for food or clothing. He nevertheless acknowledged the complexity of the issue; "there is sacredness of all life. But where do we draw the line? That's the problem. Cats kill birds and mice. Dogs exploit other animals by killing and eating them. Humans have to draw the line somewhere in animal rights, or we're dead."[13]
He was also President of the Society for Neurosciences, the Biofeedback Society of America and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research.[citation needed]
Miller, Neal E. (1947).Psychological research on pilot training. Aviation psychology program research reports. Vol. 8. Washington, DC:U.S. Government Printing Office.OCLC1473614.
Miller, Neal E. (1957).Graphic communication and the crisis in education. Washington, DC: Department of Audio-Visual Instruction,National Education Association.OCLC242913.
Miller, Neal E. (2007) [1971].Learning, motivation, and their physiological mechanisms. New Brunswick, NJ.: AldineTransaction.ISBN9780202361437.OCLC144328310.
Miller, Neal E. (2008) [1971].Conflict, displacement, learned drives, and theory. New Brunswick, NJ: AldineTransaction.ISBN9780202361420.OCLC156810019.
Richter-Heinrich, Elisabeth; Miller, Neal E., eds. (1982).Biofeedback: basic problems and clinical applications. Selected revised papers presented at the XXIInd International Congress of Psychology, Leipzig, GDR, July 6–12, 1980. Amsterdam: North-Holland.ISBN978-0444863454.OCLC10751840.
Miller, Neal E.; Bugelski, Richard (1948). "Minor studies of aggression: II. The influence of frustrations imposed by the in-group on attitudes expressed toward out-groups".The Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied.25 (2):437–442.doi:10.1080/00223980.1948.9917387.PMID18907295.
Miller, Neal E. (20 December 1957). "Experiments on motivation: studies combining psychological, physiological, and pharmacological techniques".Science.126 (3286):1271–1278.doi:10.1126/science.126.3286.1271.PMID13495454.
^abcdeCohen, David (1977). "Neal Miller".Psychologists on psychology. New York: Taplinger. pp. 240–261.ISBN978-0800865573.OCLC2644614. Reprinted as:Cohen, David (2015). "Neal Miller".Psychologists on psychology: classic edition. Routledge classic editions. New York:Routledge. pp. 191–207.ISBN9781138808492.OCLC881146290.
