Jacob "Jack" Block (April 28, 1924 – January 13, 2010) was a

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

professor at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

. His main areas of research were personality theory, personality development, research methodology, personality assessment, longitudinal research, and

cognition Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

. He often collaborated with his wife Jeanne Block. Block was born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

, New York, and received a bachelor's degree from

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn in New York City, United States. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls nearly 14,000 students on a campus in the Midwood and Flatbush sections of Brooklyn as of fall ...

. He earned his Ph.D. from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 1950. He received many awards over the years and was a fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

Block Study

His most renowned body of work, undertaken primarily with his wife, was a longitudinal study on a cohort of more than 100

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

toddlers, the Block Study or Block Project."Venturing a 30-Year Longitudinal Study"
Block & Block 2006; see also one of the participants' book, ''Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment'', Susannah Breslin 2023 (ISBN 9780306926006) They studied the children regularly for nearly 30 years. Unlike most longitudinal studies, the Blocks' focused on the psychological makeup and history of the subjects, rather than quantitative measures such as IQ. The study tracked how the subjects' background influenced their later choices and the outcomes of their lives. One of Block's studies drew particular notice in the news media. Published in ''The Journal of Research in Personality'' in 2006, it found that subjects who at 3 years old had seemed thin-skinned, rigid, inhibited and vulnerable tended at 23 to be political conservatives. On the other hand, 3-year-olds characterized as self-reliant, energetic, somewhat dominating and resilient were inclined to become liberals.

Book publications

*"The Q-Sort Method in Personality Assessment and Psychiatric Research", 1961 *"The Challenge of Response Sets", 1965 *''Lives Through Time'', 1971 *''Personality as an Affect-Processing System'', 2002 *''The Q-Sort in Character Appraisal'', 2008

References

External links

UC Berkeley obituary
20th-century American psychologists 1924 births 2010 deaths Stanford University alumni Brooklyn College alumni University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Quantitative psychologists Personality psychologists 21st-century American psychologists Presidents of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology {{US-psychologist-stub