Judith Rich Harris (1938–2018) was an American psychology researcher. She is best known for The Nurture Assumption (1998,) a book criticizing that parents are the most critical aspect in child development and presenting evidence that contradicts that belief.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Harris graduated from Brandeis University and got a master’s degree in psychology from Harvard University. She worked briefly as a teaching assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and as a research assistant at the University of Pennsylvania. She worked at Bell Labs as a research assistant for 23 years.
Harris’s The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do (1998,) first published as a 1995 article in the Psychological Review, argued that children are influenced more by their genes and peers than by their parents. It became a best seller and caused a sensation in the news media. Harris updated her theory about parental influence in her book No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality (2006.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Judith Rich Harris
The names that do the serious damage are the ones we call ourselves. The stereotypes we give ourselves are the ones that matter in the long run, not the ones imposed on us by other people.
—Judith Rich Harris
Topics: Names
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