Robert Rosenthal (March 2, 1933 – January 5, 2024) was a German-born American psychologist who was a Distinguished Professor of

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 ...

at the

University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Riverside, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of Cali ...

. His interests included

self-fulfilling prophecies A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true at least in part as a result of a person's belief or expectation that the prediction would come true. In the phenomena, people tend to act the way they have been expected to in order to mak ...

, which he explored in a well-known study of the

Pygmalion effect The Pygmalion effect is a psychological phenomenon in which high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area. It is named after the Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who fell so much in love with the perfectly beautiful statue he ...

: the effect of teachers' expectations on students.

Biography

Rosenthal was born in

Gießen Giessen, spelled in German (), is a town in the German state () of Hesse, capital of both the district of Giessen and the administrative region of Giessen. The population is approximately 90,000, with roughly 37,000 university students. Th ...

Hesse Hesse or Hessen ( ), officially the State of Hesse (), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt, which is also the country's principal financial centre. Two other major hist ...

, on March 2, 1933, and left Germany with his family at the age of six and arrived in the U.S. in 1940. In 1956, he was awarded a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

by the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

. He started his career as a

clinical psychologist Clinical psychology is an integration of human science, behavioral science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well ...

and then moved into

social psychology Social psychology is the methodical study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Although studying many of the same substantive topics as its counterpart in the field ...

. From 1962 to 1999 he taught at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

, became chairman of the psychology department there in 1992, and Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology in 1995. On retiring from Harvard in 1999, he went to California. Much of his work has focused on

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 ...

, particularly its influence on expectations: for example, in doctor-patient or manager-employee situations. The many awards he has won include the 2003 Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in the Science of Psychology from the

American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychologists in the United States, and the largest psychological association in the world. It has over 170,000 members, including scientists, educators, clin ...

and election to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

. Rosenthal won the AAAS Prize for Behavioral Science Research in 1960. In 2008 he became a University Professor in the University of California statewide system. A survey in the ''

Review of General Psychology ''Review of General Psychology'' is the quarterly scientific journal of the American Psychological Association Division 1: The Society for general psychology. The journal publishes cross-disciplinary psychological articles that are conceptual, theo ...

'', published in 2002, ranked Rosenthal as the 84th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. Rosenthal died of an aneurysm in

Riverside, California Riverside is a city in and the county seat of Riverside County, California, United States. It is named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. As of the 2020 census, the city has a population of 314,998. It is the most populous city in th ...

, on January 5, 2024, at the age of 90.

Publications

* * Rosenthal, R. & Jacobson, L. (1992). Pygmalion in the classroom, Expanded edition. New York: Irvington.

References

Sources

University BiographyAmerican Psychological FoundationList of Rosenthal's appointments, awards etc.
1933 births 2024 deaths Emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States University of California, Riverside faculty University of California, Los Angeles alumni Harvard University Department of Psychology faculty American social psychologists Deaths from aneurysm 21st-century American psychologists 20th-century American psychologists People from Giessen James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award recipients {{US-psychologist-stub