Gordon G. Gallup Jr. (; born 1941) is an American psychologist in the University at Albany's

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...

department, researching biopsychology.

Early life and education

Gallup received his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

from

Washington State University Washington State University (Washington State, WSU, or informally Wazzu) is a public land-grant research university with its flagship, and oldest, campus in Pullman, Washington. Founded in 1890, WSU is also one of the oldest land-grant uni ...

in 1968, after which he joined the faculty of the psychology department at

Tulane University Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into a comprehensive pub ...

Career

He is best known for developing the

mirror test The mirror test—sometimes called the mark test, mirror self-recognition (MSR) test, red spot technique, or rouge test—is a behavioral technique developed in 1970 by American psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. as an attempt to determine whether an ...

, also called the mirror self-recognition test, or MSR, in 1970, which gauges self-awareness of animals. In 1975, Gallup moved to the University at Albany. During his tenure at Tulane, Gallup also developed a research interest in tonic immobility, or "animal hypnosis," which he continued at the University at Albany. His later work on animal behavior focused on ethological approaches to the study of animal behavior under laboratory conditions, which he pursued with Susan Suarez in the 1980s. Since the 1990s, Gallup has researched human

evolutionary psychology Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evol ...

exclusively. Gallup's article entitled "Does Semen Have Antidepressant Properties?" attracted the attention of the media when it was published in 2002. Gallup commented, "I want to make it clear that we are not advocating that people abstain from using condoms. Clearly, an unwanted pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease would more than offset any advantageous psychological effects of semen."

Publications

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References

External links

Faculty page
Animal cognition writers American psychologists Living people University at Albany, SUNY faculty Washington State University alumni 1941 births Journal of Comparative Psychology editors {{US-psychologist-stub