Richard E.

Nisbett
Richard Eugene Nisbett (born 1941)[1] is an American social
Richard E. Nisbett
psychologist and writer. He is the Theodore M. Newcomb
Distinguished Professor of social psychology and co-director of Born June 1, 1941
the Culture and Cognition program at the University of Michigan Littlefield, Texas, U.S.
at Ann Arbor. Nisbett's research interests are in social cognition, Alma mater Columbia University
culture, social class, and aging. He received his Ph.D. from Spouse(s) Sarah Isaacs
Columbia University, where his advisor was Stanley Schachter,
Children 2
whose other students at that time included Lee Ross and Judith
Awards Donald T. Campbell
Rodin.
Award from American
Perhaps his most influential publication is "Telling more than we Psychological
can know: Verbal reports on mental processes" (with T. D. Association (1982),
Wilson, 1977, Psychological Review, 84, 231–259), one of the Guggenheim
most often cited psychology articles published, with over 13,000 Fellowship (2002)
citations.[2][3] This article was the first comprehensive, Scientific career
empirically based argument that a variety of mental processes Fields Social psychology
responsible for preferences, choices, and emotions are
Institutions University of Michigan
inaccessible to conscious awareness. Nisbett and Wilson
contended that introspective reports can provide only an account Thesis Taste, deprivation and
of "what people think about how they think," but not "how they weight determinants of
really think." Some cognitive psychologists disputed this claim, eating behavior (1966)
with Ericsson and Simon (1980) offering an alternative Doctoral Stanley Schachter
perspective.[4] advisor

Nisbett's book The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently... And Why
(Free Press; 2003) contends that "human cognition is not everywhere the same," that Asians and
Westerners "have maintained very different systems of thought for thousands of years,"[5] and that these
differences are scientifically measurable. Nisbett's book Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and
Cultures Count (2009) argues that environmental factors dominate genetic factors in determining
intelligence. The book reviewed extensive favorable attention in the press and from some fellow
academics;[6] for example, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Daniel Osherson wrote that the book
was a "hugely important analysis of the determinants of IQ". On the other hand, more critical reviewers
argued that the book failed to grapple with the strongest evidence for genetic factors in individual and
group intelligence differences.[7]

With Edward E. Jones, he named the actor–observer bias, the phenomenon where people acting and
people observing use different explanations for why a behavior occurs.[8] This is an important concept in
attribution theory, and refers to the tendency to attribute one's own behaviour to situational factors, other
people's behaviour to their disposition. Jones and Nisbett's own explanation for this was that our attention
is focussed on the situation when we are actors, but on the person when we are observers, although other
explanations have been advanced for the actor-observer bias.

In popular culture
In an interview with The New York Times, Malcolm Gladwell said, "The most influential thinker, in my
life, has been the psychologist Richard Nisbett. He basically gave me my view of the world."[9]

Books and significant papers

Nisbett, R. and T. Wilson (1977). "Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental
processes." Psychological Review 84(3): 231-259.
Ross, L and Nisbett, R.E. The person and the situation. McGraw Hill, 1991. Reissued with
new foreword by Malcolm Gladwell and afterword by the authors, 2011.
Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South (Westview Press, 1996)
The Geography of Thought (https://archive.org/details/geographyofthoug00nisb). Free
Press. 2003. ISBN 978-0743216463.
Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count (Norton, 2009)
Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking (FSG, 2015)

Awards
Donald T. Campbell Award for Distinguished Research in Social Psychology, awarded by
the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 1982.
Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology, American Psychological
Association, 1991.
Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1992.
Distinguished Senior Scientist Award, Society for Experimental Social Psychology, 1995
Wei Lun Visiting Professor of Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1995.
William James Fellow Award for Distinguished Scientific Achievements, American
Psychological Society, 1996.
Elected to the National Academy of Sciences, 2002
Oswald-Külpe-Award of the University of Würzburg, Germany, 2007[10]

Notes
1. Deutsche Nationalbibliothek "Nisbett, Richard E." (http://d-nb.info/gnd/143090755/about/htm
l)
2. Nisbett, Richard E.; Wilson, Timothy D. (1977). "Telling more than we can know: Verbal
reports on mental processes" (https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/92167/1/Tel
lingMoreThanWeCanKnow.pdf) (PDF). Psychological Review. 84 (3): 231–59.
doi:10.1037/0033-295X.84.3.231 (https://doi.org/10.1037%2F0033-295X.84.3.231).
3. "Google Scholar" (https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=190022741460214442).
scholar.google.com. Retrieved 8 September 2019. "Cited by 13531"
4. Ericsson, K. Anders; Simon, Herbert A. (1980). "Verbal reports as data". Psychological
Review. 87 (3): 215–51. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.87.3.215 (https://doi.org/10.1037%2F0033-
295X.87.3.215).
5. Nisbett 2003, p. xvi
6. Holt, Jim (March 27, 2009). "Get Smart" (https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/books/revie
w/Holt-t.html). The New York Times.
7. Lee, James J. (2010). "Review of intelligence and how to get it: Why schools and cultures
count, R.E. Nisbett, Norton, New York, NY". Personality and Individual Differences. 48 (2):
247–55. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2009.09.015 (https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.paid.2009.09.015).
 8. "Actor-observer difference" (http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.2011
0803095349125). Oxford Reference.
9. "Malcolm Gladwell: By the Book" (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/books/review/malcol
m-gladwell-by-the-book.html). The New York Times. October 3, 2013.
10. Brief Biography for Richard E. Nisbett (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nisbett/bio.html),
University of Michigan faculty page

External links
Nisbett's Home Page (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nisbett/)
Nisbett's Faculty Profile (https://web.archive.org/web/20090407032624/http://www.lsa.umic
h.edu/psych/people/directory/profiles/faculty/?uniquename=nisbett)
The Edge Annual Question — 2006 (http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_print.html#nisbett)
Richard E. Nisbett (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lqg2Op8AAAAJ) publications
indexed by Google Scholar
Biography (http://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/nisbett-richard-e-194
1) in Contemporary Authors (2009)

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This page was last edited on 9 September 2019, at 00:24 (UTC).

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