Judith Rich Harris

Judith Rich Harris (born February 10, 1938) is a psychology researcher and the author of The Nurture Assumption, a book criticizing the belief that parents are the most important factor in child development, and presenting evidence which contradicts that belief.

Harris has been a resident of Middletown Township, New Jersey.

Early life, education

Harris spent her early childhood moving around the USA until her parents eventually settled in Tucson, Arizona. The dry climate suited her father, who suffered from ankylosing spondylitis, an autoimmune disease.

Harris graduated from Tucson High School and attended the University of Arizona, and then Brandeis University where she graduated magna cum laude in 1959. Harris was dismissed from the PhD program in psychology at Harvard in 1960, because the 'originality and independence' of her work were not to Harvard's standards. She was granted a master's degree in her field, before departing.

Marriage and illness

She married Charles S. Harris in 1961; they have two daughters (one adopted) and four grandchildren.

Since 1977, Harris has suffered from a chronic autoimmune disorder, diagnosed as a combination of lupus and systemic sclerosis.

Research: 1977–1995

In the late 1970s, Harris developed a mathematical model of visual information processing which formed the basis for two articles in the journal Perception and Psychophysics (1979, 1984).

After 1981 she focused on textbooks about developmental psychology. With Robert Liebert, she co-authored The Child (Prentice-Hall, 1984) and Infant and Child (1992).

In 1994 she formulated a new theory of child development, focusing on the peer group rather than the family. This formed the basis for a 1995 article in the Psychological Review, which received the American Psychological Association's George A. Miller Award for an Outstanding Recent Article in General Psychology. Ironically, George A. Miller was chair of the Department of Psychology at Harvard in 1960, when Harris was dismissed from that PhD program (see above)

Is it dangerous to claim that parents have no power at all (other than genetic) to shape their child's personality, intelligence, or the way he or she behaves outside the family home? ... A confession: When I first made this proposal ten years ago, I didn't fully believe it myself. I took an extreme position, the null hypothesis of zero parental influence, for the sake of scientific clarity. ... The establishment's failure to shoot me down has been nothing short of astonishing.

Judith Rich Harris, 2006.

The Nurture Assumption

Main article: The Nurture Assumption

Harris's most famous work, The Nurture Assumption, was first published in 1998, with a revised version published in 2009.

In this book, she challenges the idea that the personality of adults is determined chiefly by the way they were raised by their parents. She looks at studies which claim to show the influence of the parental environment and claims that most fail to control for genetic influences. For example, if aggressive parents are more likely to have aggressive children, this is not necessarily evidence of parental example; it may also be that aggressiveness has been passed down through the genes. Harris also argues against the effects of birth order. The book looks outside the family and points at the peer group as an important shaper of the child's psyche. Harris argues that children identify with their classmates and playmates rather than their parents, modify their behavior to fit with the peer group, and this ultimately helps to form the character of the individual.

No Two Alike

No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality, was published in February 2006. Harris attempts to explain why people are so different in personality, even identical twins who grow up in the same home.

She proposes that three distinct systems shape personality:

• A relationship system allows us to distinguish family from strangers and tell individuals apart.
• A socialization system helps us to become members of a group and absorb the group's culture.
• A status system enables us to acquire self-knowledge by measuring ourselves against others.

No Two Alike expands on some of the ideas from The Nurture Assumption and attempts to answer some of the criticisms leveled at the former book.

Selected publications

• Harris, J. R., & Liebert, R. M. (1984, 1987, 1991). The Child: Development from Birth through Adolescence. Prentice Hall, ISBN 978-0-13-131046-9
• Harris, J. R., Shaw, M. L., & Altom, M. J. (1985). Serial position curves for reaction time and accuracy in visual search: Tests of a model of overlapping processing. Perception & Psychophysics, 38, 178-187.
• Harris, J. R. (1995). Where is the child's environment? A group socialization theory of development. Psychological Review, 102, 458-489.
• Harris, J. R. (1998). The nurture assumption: Why children turn out the way they do. Free Press, ISBN 978-0-684-84409-1.
• Harris, J. R. (2000). Socialization, personality development, and the child's environments. Developmental Psychology, 36, 699-710.
• Harris, J. R. (2000). Context-specific learning, personality, and birth order. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9, 174-177.
• Harris, J. R. (2002, January 17). Why do people believe that birth order has important effects on personality? The Nurture Assumption Web Site. Retrieved 2007-08-27
• Harris, J. R. (2006). Parental selection: A third selection process in the evolution of human hairlessness and skin color. Medical Hypotheses, 66, 1053-1059.
• Harris, J. R. (2006). No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality. W.W. Norton, ISBN 978-0-393-05948-9

See also

• Nature versus nurture

External links

• Judith Rich Harris's Web Site
• The Parent Trap, Newsweek September 7, 1998, pp. 52–59.
• Peer Pressure, New York Times Book Review September 13, 1998, pp. 14–15