Miron Zuckerman (born June 6, 1945) is an American psychologist and professor of psychology at the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded in 1850 and moved into its current campus, next to the Genesee River in 1930. With approximately 30,000 full ...

. He is known for studying social cognition,

nonverbal communication Nonverbal communication is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact (oculesics), body language (kinesics), social distance (proxemics), touch (Haptic communication, haptics), voice (prosody (lingui ...

, and the

psychology of religion Psychology of religion consists of the application of psychological methods and interpretive frameworks to the diverse contents of religious traditions as well as to both religious and irreligious individuals. The various methods and frameworks ...

. For example, he led a 2013

meta-analysis Meta-analysis is a method of synthesis of quantitative data from multiple independent studies addressing a common research question. An important part of this method involves computing a combined effect size across all of the studies. As such, th ...

showing a negative association between

religiosity and intelligence The study of religiosity and intelligence explores the link between religiosity and intelligence or educational level (by country and on the individual level). Religiosity and intelligence are both complex topics that include diverse variables, and ...

. He told ''

the Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'' that these findings did not mean that only unintelligent people are religious, but that smarter people may not need religion as much, saying, "It is truly the wrong message to take from here that if I believe in God I must be stupid". He has also researched

egocentric bias Egocentric bias is the tendency to rely too heavily on one's own perspective and/or have a higher opinion of oneself than reality. It appears to be the result of the psychological need to satisfy one's ego and to be advantageous for memory conso ...

, finding that people significantly overestimate their own importance in group discussions.

References

External links

Faculty page
1945 births Living people University of Rochester faculty Harvard University alumni 20th-century American psychologists American social psychologists 21st-century American psychologists {{US-psychologist-stub