About
Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist and linguist, professor at Harvard University. His research focuses on visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and language acquisition in children. He is known for his popular science books, including 'The Language Instinct' (1994) and 'The Better Angels of Our Nature' (2011), where he argues that violence has declined throughout human history. He is also an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
* 1954-09-18
Major works
- The Language Instinct (1994)non-fiction
- How the Mind Works (1997)non-fiction
- The Blank Slate (2002)non-fiction
- The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011)non-fiction
- Enlightenment Now (2018)non-fiction
Key milestones
- 1979Earns his Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Harvard University.
- 2003Becomes professor of psychology at Harvard University, holding the Johnstone Family chair.
- 2016Elected member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.
Themes
Evolutionary psychologyLanguage and cognitionDecline of violenceRationality and EnlightenmentHuman nature
Sources: psychology.fas.harvard.edu · britannica.com