Richard E. Nisbett

{{short description|American psychologist (born 1941)}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2023}}

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Richard E. Nisbett

| image = Richard Nisbett, 2014-1.jpg

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| alt = Richard Nisbett wearing a dark sweater, with a light checkered shirt visible underneath, scowling and looking right of camera

| caption = Nisbett in 2014

| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1941|06|01}}

| birth_place = Littlefield, Texas, U.S.

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| fields = Social psychology

| workplaces = University of Michigan

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| alma_mater = Columbia University

| thesis_title = Taste, deprivation and weight determinants of eating behavior

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| thesis_year = 1966

| doctoral_advisor = Stanley Schachter

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| awards = Donald T. Campbell Award from American Psychological Association (1982), Guggenheim Fellowship (2002)

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| spouse = Sarah Isaacs

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| children = 2

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Richard Eugene Nisbett (born June 1, 1941)[http://d-nb.info/gnd/143090755/about/html Deutsche Nationalbibliothek "Nisbett, Richard E."] is an American social psychologist and writer. He is the Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished Professor of social psychology and co-director of the Culture and Cognition program at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Nisbett's research interests are in social cognition, culture, social class, and aging. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, where his advisor was Stanley Schachter, whose other students at that time included Lee Ross and Judith Rodin.

Perhaps his most influential publication is "Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes" (with T. D. Wilson, 1977, Psychological Review, 84, 231–259), one of the most often cited psychology articles published, with over 13,000 citations.{{cite journal |last1=Nisbett |first1=Richard E. |last2=Wilson |first2=Timothy D. |title=Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. |journal=Psychological Review |volume=84 |issue=3 |year=1977 |pages=231–59 |doi=10.1037/0033-295X.84.3.231 |hdl=2027.42/92167 |s2cid=7742203 |url=https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/92167/1/TellingMoreThanWeCanKnow.pdf |hdl-access=free }}{{cite web |title=Google Scholar |url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=190022741460214442 |website=scholar.google.com |access-date=September 8, 2019 |quote=Cited by 13531}} This article was the first comprehensive, empirically based argument that a variety of mental processes responsible for preferences, choices, and emotions are inaccessible to conscious awareness. Nisbett and Wilson contended that introspective reports can provide only an account of "what people think about how they think," but not "how they really think."{{citation needed|date=September 2019}} Some cognitive psychologists disputed this claim, with Ericsson and Simon (1980) offering an alternative perspective.{{cite journal |last1=Ericsson |first1=K. Anders |last2=Simon |first2=Herbert A. |title=Verbal reports as data |journal=Psychological Review |volume=87 |issue=3 |year=1980 |pages=215–51 |doi=10.1037/0033-295X.87.3.215 }}

Nisbett's book The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently... And Why (Free Press; 2003) contends that "human cognition is not everywhere the same," that Asians and Westerners "have maintained very different systems of thought for thousands of years,"Nisbett 2003, p. xvi and that these differences are scientifically measurable.

Nisbett's book Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count (2009) argues that environmental factors dominate genetic factors in determining intelligence. The book received extensive favorable attention in the press and from some fellow academics;{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/books/review/Holt-t.html|title=Get Smart|newspaper=The New York Times|first=Jim|last=Holt|date=March 27, 2009}} for example, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Daniel Osherson wrote that the book was a "hugely important analysis of the determinants of IQ". On the other hand, more critical reviewers such as Harvard's James J. Lee argued that the book failed to grapple with the strongest evidence for genetic factors in individual and group intelligence differences.{{cite journal |last1=Lee |first1=James J. |title=Review of intelligence and how to get it: Why schools and cultures count, R.E. Nisbett, Norton, New York, NY |journal=Personality and Individual Differences |volume=48 |issue=2 |year=2010 |pages=247–55 |doi=10.1016/j.paid.2009.09.015 }}

With Edward E. Jones, he named the actor–observer bias, the phenomenon where people acting and people observing use different explanations for why a behavior occurs.{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Actor-observer difference |encyclopedia=Oxford Reference |url=http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095349125 |language=en }} This is an important concept in attribution theory, and refers to the tendency to attribute one's own behaviour to situational factors while attributing other people's behaviour to their disposition. Jones and Nisbett's own explanation for this was that our attention is focused on the situation when we are actors, but on the person when we are observers, although other explanations have been advanced for the actor-observer bias.{{cn|date=October 2024}}