Robert Epstein
Encyclopedia
Robert Epstein Ph.D. is an American psychologist
, researcher, writer, and media professional whose primary contributions have been in the areas of creativity
, artificial intelligence
, peace
, adolescence
, and interpersonal relationships. He was born in Hartford
, Connecticut
, USA.
Epstein is a contributing editor for Scientific American Mind and the former Editor-in-Chief of Psychology Today, as well a Visiting Scholar at the University of California San Diego and the former host of Psyched! on Sirius Satellite Radio
. A longtime professor and researcher, he is also the founder and Director Emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies
in Massachusetts. Through 2003, Epstein served as University Research Professor at the California School of Professional Psychology
, and he has also taught at the National University
, Boston University
, the University of Massachusetts Amherst
, the University of California San Diego, and the HAL College of Technology and Design (Japan). He is a graduate of Trinity College and received his Ph.D. in psychology in 1981 from Harvard University
.
In connection with the magazine or his radio programs, Dr. Epstein has interviewed more than 200 notable individuals, including Laura Bush
, Jimmy Carter
, Tipper Gore
, Ruth Westheimer
, U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher
, Christie Brinkley
, Jamie Lee Curtis
, Deepak Chopra
, Fred Rogers, Sarah, Duchess of York
, Steve Allen
, and Susan Sarandon
. He has published fourteen books (listed below) and more than 150 scholarly and popular articles, including scientific reports in Science, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and his research has been featured in Time magazine, The New York Times, and Discover, as well as on national and international radio and television. His work on various topics in psychology is discussed on more than 100,000 Google pages.
During his graduate school years at Harvard, he worked closely with famed psychologist B. F. Skinner
. Already in his 70s, Skinner had not conducted laboratory research in many years when Epstein arrived at Harvard. Despite that, the two of them soon began a controversial research program in which pigeons that had received various kinds of training were shown to be capable of exhibiting sophisticated human-like behaviors sometimes said to show abilities such as “self-awareness
” and “insight.” This research program stimulated extensive media coverage, as well as the production of a film called Cognition, Creativity, and Behavior: The Columban Simulations (Research Press, 1982). This research is summarized in a collection of articles published by Dr. Epstein in 1996: Cognition, Creativity, and Behavior: Selected Essays, Praeger Publishing (see link below).
Epstein’s work with Skinner led to his decades long interest in novel behavior and creativity
. In the early 1980s, Epstein developed a formal, predictive theory of creative behavior in individuals called Generativity Theory
, which suggests that novel behavior is both orderly and predictable. Epstein also developed a competency test that measures an individual’s ability to express creativity, as well as a related test that measures the ability of a manager or teacher to elicit creativity in other people. Games and exercises that build such competencies are included in several of Epstein's books.
Epstein has also developed competency tests in the areas of motivation
, stress management
, interpersonal relationships, and parenting
, and he has also written about or conducted research on sexual orientation
, artificial intelligence
, and adolescence
. From 1990 to 1995, he directed the Loebner Prize
Competition in Artificial Intelligence, an annual contest in which human intelligence is pitted against machine intelligence. In various writings, Epstein has been a strong advocate of the view that people can deliberately learn to love each other (for example, Editor as guinea pig: Putting love to a real test. Psychology Today, May/June 2002, p. 5).
In 1990, in an article in The Washington Post entitled “How About One Day of Peace?,” Epstein proposed that the first day of the new millennium, January 1, 2000, be marked by a worldwide armistice. Eventually, more than 1,000 organizations and prominent individuals, including the United Nations, the U.S. Congress, and Pope John Paul II, called for an armistice on that day; it's not clear, however, that the armistice ever took place.
Epstein has been a commentator for NPR's Marketplace, the Voice of America, and Disney Online, and his popular writings have appeared in Reader’s Digest, The Washington Post, The Sunday Times (London), Good Housekeeping, Parenting, and other magazines and newspapers. An autobiographical essay documenting his long involvement with the media was published in 2006 in the academic journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
, researcher, writer, and media professional whose primary contributions have been in the areas of creativity
Creativity
Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...
, artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, peace
Peace
Peace is a state of harmony characterized by the lack of violent conflict. Commonly understood as the absence of hostility, peace also suggests the existence of healthy or newly healed interpersonal or international relationships, prosperity in matters of social or economic welfare, the...
, adolescence
Adolescence
Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood , but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage...
, and interpersonal relationships. He was born in Hartford
Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the capital of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960, it is the second most populous city on New England's largest river, the Connecticut River. As of the 2010 Census, Hartford's population was 124,775, making...
, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
, USA.
Epstein is a contributing editor for Scientific American Mind and the former Editor-in-Chief of Psychology Today, as well a Visiting Scholar at the University of California San Diego and the former host of Psyched! on Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio is a satellite radio service operating in North America, owned by Sirius XM Radio.Headquartered in New York City, with smaller studios in Los Angeles and Memphis, Sirius was officially launched on July 1, 2002 and currently provides 69 streams of music and 65 streams of...
. A longtime professor and researcher, he is also the founder and Director Emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies
Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies
The Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies was founded in 1981 by American psychologist Robert Epstein as an advanced studies institute devoted to promoting the scientific study of behavior and its humane applications in human affairs...
in Massachusetts. Through 2003, Epstein served as University Research Professor at the California School of Professional Psychology
California School of Professional Psychology
The California School of Professional Psychology , was founded by the California Psychological Association in 1969. It is part of Alliant International University.The school has trained approximately half of the licensed psychologists in California...
, and he has also taught at the National University
National University (California)
National University , founded in 1971, is a comprehensive, nonsectarian, independent, accredited, non-profit private university headquartered in La Jolla, California, United States, with academic degree programs offered at campuses located throughout the state, one in Henderson, Nevada, and...
, Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
, the University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public research and land-grant university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States and the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system...
, the University of California San Diego, and the HAL College of Technology and Design (Japan). He is a graduate of Trinity College and received his Ph.D. in psychology in 1981 from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
.
In connection with the magazine or his radio programs, Dr. Epstein has interviewed more than 200 notable individuals, including Laura Bush
Laura Bush
Laura Lane Welch Bush is the wife of the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush. She was the First Lady of the United States from January 20, 2001, to January 20, 2009. She has held a love of books and reading since childhood and her life and education have reflected that interest...
, Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
, Tipper Gore
Tipper Gore
Mary Elizabeth "Tipper" Gore , née Aitcheson, is an author, photographer, former second lady of the United States, and the estranged wife of Al Gore...
, Ruth Westheimer
Ruth Westheimer
Ruth Westheimer is an American sex therapist, media personality, and author. Best known as Dr. Ruth, the New York Times described her as a "Sorbonne-trained psychologist who became a kind of cultural icon in the 1980s...
, U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher
David Satcher
David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D. FAAFP, FACPM, FACP is an American physician, and public health administrator. He was a four-star admiral in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and served as the 10th Assistant Secretary for Health, and the 16th Surgeon General of the United...
, Christie Brinkley
Christie Brinkley
Christie Brinkley is an American model and actress best known for her three consecutive appearances on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in the late 1970s and early 1980s, for her long-running contract with CoverGirl, the longest ever of any model in history, and for her marriage...
, Jamie Lee Curtis
Jamie Lee Curtis
Jamie Lee Curtis is an American actress and author. Although she was initially known as a "scream queen" because of her starring roles in several horror films early in her career, such as Halloween, The Fog, Prom Night and Terror Train, Curtis has since compiled a body of work that spans many...
, Deepak Chopra
Deepak Chopra
Deepak Chopra is an Indian medical doctor, public speaker, and writer on subjects such as spirituality, Ayurveda and mind-body medicine. Chopra began his career as an endocrinologist and later shifted his focus to alternative medicine. Chopra now runs his own medical center, with a focus on...
, Fred Rogers, Sarah, Duchess of York
Sarah, Duchess of York
Sarah, Duchess of York is a British charity patron, spokesperson, writer, film producer, television personality and former member of the British Royal Family. She is the former wife of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, whom she married from 1986 to 1996...
, Steve Allen
Steve Allen
Steve Allen may refer to:*Steve Allen , American musician, comedian, and writer*Steve Allen , presenter on the London-based talk radio station LBC 97.3...
, and Susan Sarandon
Susan Sarandon
Susan Sarandon is an American actress. She has worked in films and television since 1969, and won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1995 film Dead Man Walking. She had also been nominated for the award for four films before that and has received other recognition for her...
. He has published fourteen books (listed below) and more than 150 scholarly and popular articles, including scientific reports in Science, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and his research has been featured in Time magazine, The New York Times, and Discover, as well as on national and international radio and television. His work on various topics in psychology is discussed on more than 100,000 Google pages.
During his graduate school years at Harvard, he worked closely with famed psychologist B. F. Skinner
B. F. Skinner
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American behaviorist, author, inventor, baseball enthusiast, social philosopher and poet...
. Already in his 70s, Skinner had not conducted laboratory research in many years when Epstein arrived at Harvard. Despite that, the two of them soon began a controversial research program in which pigeons that had received various kinds of training were shown to be capable of exhibiting sophisticated human-like behaviors sometimes said to show abilities such as “self-awareness
Self-awareness
Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to reconcile oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals...
” and “insight.” This research program stimulated extensive media coverage, as well as the production of a film called Cognition, Creativity, and Behavior: The Columban Simulations (Research Press, 1982). This research is summarized in a collection of articles published by Dr. Epstein in 1996: Cognition, Creativity, and Behavior: Selected Essays, Praeger Publishing (see link below).
Epstein’s work with Skinner led to his decades long interest in novel behavior and creativity
Creativity
Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...
. In the early 1980s, Epstein developed a formal, predictive theory of creative behavior in individuals called Generativity Theory
Generativity Theory
Generativity Theory is a formal, predictive theory of creative behavior in individuals. First proposed by American psychologist Robert Epstein in the early 1980s, the theory asserts that novel behavior is the result of a dynamic interaction among previously established behaviors; in other words,...
, which suggests that novel behavior is both orderly and predictable. Epstein also developed a competency test that measures an individual’s ability to express creativity, as well as a related test that measures the ability of a manager or teacher to elicit creativity in other people. Games and exercises that build such competencies are included in several of Epstein's books.
Epstein has also developed competency tests in the areas of motivation
Motivation
Motivation is the driving force by which humans achieve their goals. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. The term is generally used for humans but it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation...
, stress management
Stress management
Stress management is the alteration of stress and especially chronic stress often for the purpose of improving everyday functioning.Stress produces numerous symptoms which vary according to persons, situations, and severity. These can include physical health decline as well as depression. According...
, interpersonal relationships, and parenting
Parenting
Parenting is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood...
, and he has also written about or conducted research on sexual orientation
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
, artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, and adolescence
Adolescence
Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood , but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage...
. From 1990 to 1995, he directed the Loebner Prize
Loebner prize
The Loebner Prize is an annual competition in artificial intelligence that awards prizes to the chatterbot considered by the judges to be the most human-like. The format of the competition is that of a standard Turing test. In each round, a human judge simultaneously holds textual conversations...
Competition in Artificial Intelligence, an annual contest in which human intelligence is pitted against machine intelligence. In various writings, Epstein has been a strong advocate of the view that people can deliberately learn to love each other (for example, Editor as guinea pig: Putting love to a real test. Psychology Today, May/June 2002, p. 5).
In 1990, in an article in The Washington Post entitled “How About One Day of Peace?,” Epstein proposed that the first day of the new millennium, January 1, 2000, be marked by a worldwide armistice. Eventually, more than 1,000 organizations and prominent individuals, including the United Nations, the U.S. Congress, and Pope John Paul II, called for an armistice on that day; it's not clear, however, that the armistice ever took place.
Epstein has been a commentator for NPR's Marketplace, the Voice of America, and Disney Online, and his popular writings have appeared in Reader’s Digest, The Washington Post, The Sunday Times (London), Good Housekeeping, Parenting, and other magazines and newspapers. An autobiographical essay documenting his long involvement with the media was published in 2006 in the academic journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.
Books
- Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence ISBN 1884995594
- The Big Book of Motivation Games (with Jessica Rogers) ISBN 0071372342
- The Big Book of Stress-Relief Games ISBN 0070218668
- The Big Book of Creativity Games ISBN 0071361766
- Creativity Games for Trainers ISBN 0070213631
- Stress-Management and Relaxation Activities for Trainers ISBN 0070217629
- Cognition, Creativity, and Behavior: Selected Essays ISBN 0275944522
- The New Psychology Today Reader ISBN 078725617X
- Pure Fitness: Body Meets Mind (with Lori Fetrick) ISBN 1570280878
- Self-Help Without the Hype ISBN 0937100005
- Irrelativity ISBN 1884470130
- Notebooks: B. F. Skinner (editor) ISBN 0136241069
- Skinner for the Classroom (editor) ISBN 0878222618
- The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen ISBN 0787987379
- Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer (co-editor) ISBN 9781402067082