Robert Perloff

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Robert Perloff (born February 3, 1921 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American psychology and business administration professor emeritus.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Perloff was drafted into the United States Army to fight in the Philippines during World War II. Upon his return, Perloff graduated from Temple University in 1949, and his PhD in psychology from Ohio State University. Following postdoctoral work, he then taught industrial and consumer psychology at Purdue University. Much of his career was spent as professor of Business and Psychology at University of Pittsburgh.

He has been President of the Association for Consumer Research and the American Psychological Association. For his APA presidential address in 1985, he gave a speech in praise of self-interest called "Self-Interest and Personal Responsibility Redux". It was printed in American Psychologist (vol. 42, 1987) and the journal called it "one of 50 classic articles published in the journal's previous 50 years." [1]

In 1995, Perloff was a signatory of a collective statement titled "Mainstream Science on Intelligence", written by Linda Gottfredson and published in the Wall Street Journal as a favorable review of The Bell Curve. [2] Also in 1995, Perloff was named to an American Psychological Association task force that reviewed controversial issues in the study of race and intelligence, titled "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns." [3]