Richard Herrnstein

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Richard Herrnstein

Richard J. Herrnstein (May 20, 1930—September 13, 1994) was a prominent researcher in comparative psychology who did pioneering work on pigeon intelligence employing the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and formulated the "Matching Law" in the 1960s, a breakthrough in understanding how reinforcement and behavior are linked. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of psychology at Harvard University and worked with B. F. Skinner in the Harvard pigeon lab, where he did research on choice and other topics in behavioral psychology. Herrnstein became more broadly known for his work on the correlation between race and intelligence, first in the 1970s, then with Charles Murray, discussed in their controversial best-selling 1994 book, The Bell Curve. Herrnstein died shortly before the book was released.

Herrnstein described the behavior of hyperbolic discounting, in which people will choose smaller payoffs sooner instead of larger payoffs later. He developed a type of non-parametric statistics that he dubbed "ρ". (See also: Mann-Whitney U, intelligence testing.)

[edit] The Matching Law

Perhaps Herrnstein's most notable accomplishment in this field was the formulation of the matching law. According to the matching law, choices are distributed according to rates of reinforcement for making those choices. An instance of this for two choices can be stated mathematically as

$\frac{R_1}{R_1 + R_2} = \frac{r_1}{r_1 + r_2}$ ,

where R₁ and R₂ are rates of response for two alternative responses, and r₁ and r₂ are rates of reinforcement for the same two responses. Behavior conforming to this law is 'matching,' and explanations of matching and departures from matching constitute a large and important part of the literature on behavioral choice.

[edit] Selected bibliography

A Source Book in the History of Psychology, Edited by Richard J. Herrnstein, Edwin G. Boring, Harvard 1965 ISBN 0-674-82410-5
I.Q. in the Meritocracy, Richard J. Herrnstein, Atlantic Monthly Press 1973
Crime and Human Nature: The Definitive Study of the Causes of Crime, James Q. Wilson, Richard J. Herrnstein, The Free Press 1985 ISBN 0-684-85266-7
The Bell Curve, Richard J. Herrnstein, Charles Murray, 1994 ISBN 0-02-914673-9
The Matching Law: Papers in Psychology and Economics by Richard J. Herrnstein, Edited by Howard Rachlin, David I. Laibson, Harvard 1997 ISBN 0-674-06459-3