Donald T. Campbell

Donald Thomas Campbell (born November 20, 1916 in Grass Lake (Michigan) , † May 6, 1996 in Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) ) was an American psychologist . In addition, Campbell has published important papers in sociology , methods of sociology and philosophy of science .

Life

Campbell was born on November 20, 1916 in Grass Lake, Michigan, to a farmer who first moved his family to a cattle ranch in Wyoming and later to California . After graduating from high school in 1934, Campbell spent a year as a farm worker before studying at the San Bernadino Valley Union Junior College and continuing at the University of California, Berkeley in 1937 . He completed his studies together with his younger sister Fayette as the best in class in 1939 with a Bachelor of Arts . He practiced as a psychologist from 1941 to 1943, then was called up for military service in World War II . He served in the US Navy Reserve and was promoted to lieutenant . In 1947 he received his PhD in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.

He took a position at Ohio State University (1947–1950), moved to the University of Chicago (1950–1953), and then found his professional home in the psychology department of Northwestern University . He worked as an assistant professor until 1958 , then received the full professorship and from 1973 to 1979 the Morrison professorship. In 26 years at Northwestern, Campbell wrote the most prominent of his relevant papers. In addition, Campbell held a visiting professorship at Yale University in 1954 . In 1965/66 he became a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford , California. and 1977 a visiting professor for psychology and social relations at Harvard University.

In 1979 Campbell decided this phase of his life and accepted the New York State Board of Regents Albert Schweitzer Professorship at Syracuse University . In 1982 he left New York and took over the professorship for Social Relations, Psychology, and Education at the private Lehigh University . Because of his contributions to so many different areas, he was only listed as a "university professor" and assigned to the psychology , sociology , anthropology and educational sciences faculties . In addition, the student councils for biology , philosophy of science and market research would also have come into question. In 1994, Campbell went into quasi-retirement at the age of 77.

1966–1967 Campbell was elected President of the Midwestern Psychological Association , 1968–1969 President of the Division of Personality and Social Psychology of the American Psychological Association (APA) and, in 1975, President of the same APA.

Donald T. Campbell died on May 6, 1996 of complications from surgery for colon cancer in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania . He leaves behind his wife, Barbara Frankel, a retired professor of anthropology, two sons from a previous marriage, Martin and Thomas, a sister, Louise Silver, and two grandchildren.

Act

Campbell's research area was neither sociology nor psychology, but knowledge in all its forms: how it is acquired, how it is recognized, how it is valued, conveyed or sometimes lost. For all the serious scientific nature of his work, Campbell had the mischievous ability to come up with appropriate but absurd-sounding names. This partially out of place acting names, such as the "fish scale model of omniscience" ( The Fish Scale Model of Omniscience but) remained, due to the simple elegance of the statement in memory and won the day. In doing so, Campbell was not investigating knowledge per se, but false knowledge , i.e. the prejudices and distortions of perception that poison everything they touch, from relationships between people to academic disciplines where theories are upheld in order to preserve traditional claims.

Three papers establish Campbell's scientific fame. In 1959 he published his first work on the multitrait multimethod matrix and also on evolutionary epistemology and in 1963 the work on the quasi-experiments followed. He worked out these three works in other writings and later led to most of the honors and awards he received.

Campbell's work on quasi-experimentation forms an irreplaceable basis for the preparation of experiments in the human sciences. Campbell deepened the original work with statistician Julian C. Stanley ( Experimentation and Quasi Experimental Designs for Research , 1963) together with Thomas D. Cook ( Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings , 1979). The basic work is the statistical basis for really random scientific studies, which can only be approximately determined in real life. Both the language and the content of this work remain relevant to research to this day.

Together with Donald W. Fiske , he invented the method of the multitrait-multimethod matrix for checking the construct validity . The article in which you introduce this method is one of the most cited in the social sciences.

Campbell coined the term evolutionary epistemology , the expansion of Darwin's theory of evolution to include the development of cognitive mechanisms, and a generalization of Karl Popper's falsificationism . The name Hypothetical Realism goes back to him . In this area, the concepts of "blind selection and selective retention " ( BVSR) as well as "indirect selection" ( vicarious selectors ) go back to him, with which he explained how intelligence-controlled searches were made from originally blind experiments can arise with previously developed knowledge. This work brought Campbell into close acquaintance with Karl Popper, Michael Polanyi , WV Quine , and Konrad Lorenz . He conveyed the summary of this work in 1977 on the occasion of the William James Lectures at Harvard University . His confidence in experiments and empirical work earned him the reputation of a positivist , but Campbell actually advocated an epistemology in which better results replace poorer ones.

He also developed a selection-based theory of creativity based on the downward causality ( downward causation ), another influenced by him term. In order to be able to interpret research results validly, he pleaded for examining the same object with different methods - a procedure that he called the metaphor triangulation .

Campbell had a strong influence on the metaphysical period of Karl Popper, who emphasized "the almost complete, down to the smallest detail, correspondence between Campbell's views and my own".

In 1981, he and Robert C. Jacobs carried out the Jacobs and Campbell experiment on cultural tradition.

Honors

Campbell was honored with the APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology (1970), the Kurt Lewin Memorial Award (1974), and the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (1988). He held the William James Lectures at Harvard University in 1977 and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society . At least 17 authors dedicated a book to Campbell. In 1981 a commemorative publication was published in Campbell's honor (Marilynn B. Brewer and Barry E. Collins (Eds.), (1981). Scientific Inquiry and the Social Sciences: A Volume in Honor of Donald T. Campbell . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass .)

He received honorary doctorates from the University of Michigan (Doctor of Law, 1974), University of Florida (Doctor of Science, 1975), University of Chicago (Doctor of Social Sciences, 1978), University of Southern California (Doctor of Science, 1979) , Northwestern University (Doctor of Science, 1983) and the University of Oslo (Philosophy, 1986). On his behalf, prizes and fellowships have been donated by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology , the Policy Studies Organization , the Student Council for Sociology and Anthropology of Lehig University and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences .

Awards named after Campbell

Two awards were named after Campbell: The since 1980 awarded Donald T. Campbell Award of the APA and from 1983 by the Policy Studies Organization initiated The Donald Campbell Award .

Web links

• Literature by and about Donald T. Campbell in the catalog of the German National Library
• In memoriam, Donald T. Campbell
• Photograph by Donald T. Campbell Donald T Campbell-lg.jpg

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1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v} Curriculum Vitae by Donald T. Campbell on the Lehig University website; Retrieved July 5, 2014.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p} Marilyn B. Brewer , Donald T. Campbell Social Psychologist and Scholar (1916–1996) ; Association for Psychological Science; Obituary for Donald T. Campbell; Observer Vol. 9, No. 4 July / August; Retrieved July 3, 2014.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p} Robert McG. Thomas, Jr. Donald T. Campbell, Master of Many Disciplines, Dies at 79 ; Obituary for Donald T. Campbell in the New York Times, May 12, 1996; Retrieved July 4, 2014.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} William R. Shadish and Jason K. Luellen (2013) Donald Campbell: The Accidental Evaluator; in Marvin C. Alkin, Evaluation Roots: A Wider Perspective of Theorists' Views and Influences ; second edition; Sage Publications; ISBN 978-1-4129-9574-0 .
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Bill McKelvey and Joel AC Baum, Campbell's Evolving Influence on Organization Science ; published in JAC Baum and Bill McKelvey (Eds.) Variations in Organization Science: In Honor of Donald T. Campbell ; Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1999, 1-15. Retrieved July 5, 2014.
6. ↑ Donald T. Campbell (1959) Methodological Suggestions From a Comparative Psychology of Knowledge Processes , Inquiry, 2, 152-182.
7. ↑ ^{a b} DT Campbell & DW Fiske (1959). Convergent and discriminant validation by the multitrait-multimethod matrix . Psychological Bulletin, 56, pp. 81-105.
8. ↑ DT Campbell and JC Stanley (1963), “Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research on Teaching,” in NL Gage (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching, Chicago, IL: Rand McNally, pp. 171-246.
9. ^ Cook, Thomas D., and Donald T. Campbell. Quasi-Experimentation: Design & Analysis Issues for Field Settings . Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1979.
10. ↑ Jonas, Stroebe, Hewstone: Social Psychology . Springer, 5th edition 2007, p. 39.
11. ↑ ^{a b c} F. Heylighen, In Memoriam Donald T. Campbell on the website of Principia Cybernetica web of 25 April 1995; modified May 14, 1996; Retrieved July 4, 2014.
12. ↑ Gerhard Vollmer: How can we see the world? New arguments for evolutionary epistemology, p. 222 PDF
13. ^ Karl Popper: Reply to my critics. In PA Schilpp: The philosophy of Karl Popper (1974), section 23
14. ^ Winner of the Kurt Lewin Award on the website of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues ; Retrieved July 4, 2014.
15. ^ Winner of the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology ; Retrieved July 4, 2014.
16. ↑ Marilynn B. Brewer Request for Donations for Campbell Fund ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Dialogue, Journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Spring 1991; Retrieved July 5, 2014.