Richard E. Nisbett | |
|---|---|
 Nisbett in 2014 | |
| Born | (1941-06-01)June 1, 1941 (age 84) Littlefield, Texas, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Columbia University |
| Spouse | Sarah Isaacs |
| Children | 2 |
| Awards | Donald T. Campbell Award fromAmerican Psychological Association (1982),Guggenheim Fellowship (2002) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Social psychology |
| Institutions | University of Michigan |
| Thesis | Taste, deprivation and weight determinants of eating behavior (1966) |
| Doctoral advisor | Stanley Schachter |
Richard Eugene Nisbett (born June 1, 1941)[1] is an American social psychologist and writer. He is the Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished Professor ofsocial psychology and co-director of the Culture and Cognition program at theUniversity of Michigan atAnn Arbor. Nisbett's research interests are in social cognition, culture, social class, and aging. He received his Ph.D. fromColumbia University, where his advisor wasStanley Schachter, whose other students at that time includedLee Ross andJudith Rodin.
Perhaps his most influential publication is "Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes" (withT. D. Wilson, 1977,Psychological Review, 84, 231–259), one of the most often cited psychology articles published, with over 13,000 citations.[2][3] This article was the first comprehensive, empirically based argument that a variety of mental processes responsible for preferences, choices, and emotions are inaccessible to conscious awareness. Nisbett and Wilson contended that introspective reports can provide only an account of "what people think about how they think," but not "how they really think."[citation needed] Some cognitive psychologists disputed this claim, withEricsson andSimon (1980) offering an alternative perspective.[4]
Nisbett's book The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently... And Why (Free Press; 2003) contends that "human cognition is not everywhere the same," that Asians and Westerners "have maintained very different systems of thought for thousands of years,"[5] and that these differences are scientifically measurable.Nisbett's bookIntelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count (2009) argues that environmental factors dominate genetic factors in determining intelligence. The book received extensive favorable attention in the press and from some fellow academics;[6] for example, University of Pennsylvania psychologistDaniel Osherson wrote that the book was a "hugely important analysis of the determinants of IQ". On the other hand, more critical reviewers such as Harvard's James J. Lee argued that the book failed to grapple with the strongest evidence for genetic factors in individual and group intelligence differences.[7]
WithEdward E. Jones, he named theactor–observer bias, the phenomenon where people acting and people observing use different explanations for why a behavior occurs.[8] This is an important concept inattribution theory, and refers to the tendency to attribute one's own behaviour to situational factors while attributing other people's behaviour to their disposition. Jones and Nisbett's own explanation for this was that our attention is focused on the situation when we are actors, but on the person when we are observers, although other explanations have been advanced for the actor-observer bias.[citation needed]
In an interview withThe New York Times, Canadian journalistMalcolm Gladwell said, "The most influential thinker, in my life, has been the psychologist Richard Nisbett. He basically gave me my view of the world."[9]
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