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Neal E. Miller

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For those of a similar name, seeNeil Miller (disambiguation).
Neal E. Miller
BornAugust 3, 1909
Milwaukee, Wisconsin,U.S.
DiedMarch 23, 2002(2002-03-23)(aged 92)
Hamden, Connecticut,U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Washington(BS)
Stanford University(MS)
Yale University(PhD)
Known forBiofeedback,Frustration–aggression hypothesis
AwardsNewcomb Cleveland Prize(1956)
APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award(1959)[1]
National Medal of Science(1964)
APA Award for Lifetime Contributions to Psychology(1991)[2]
Wilbur Cross Medal(1967)
Scientific career
FieldsPsychology
InstitutionsYale University
Rockefeller University
Cornell University Medical College

Neal Elgar Miller(August 3, 1909 – March 23, 2002) was an Americanexperimental psychologist.[3]Described as an energetic man with a variety of interests, including physics, biology and writing, Miller entered the field of psychology to pursue these.[4]With a background training in the sciences, he was inspired by professors and leading psychologists at the time to work on various areas inbehavioral psychologyandphysiological psychology,specifically, relatingvisceralresponses to behavior.

Miller's career in psychology started with research on "fear as a learned drive and its role in conflict".[5]Work in behavioral medicine led him to his most notable work onbiofeedback.[4]Over his lifetime he lectured atYale University,Rockefeller University,andCornell University Medical Collegeand was one of the youngest members of Yale's Institute of Human Relations. His accomplishments led to the establishment of two awards: the New Investigator Award from the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research and an award for distinguished lectureship from theAmerican Psychological Association.[5]AReview of General Psychologysurvey, published in 2002, ranked Miller as the eighth most cited psychologist of the 20th century.[6][7]

Life and education[edit]

Miller was born inMilwaukee, Wisconsin,in 1909. He grew up in the Pacific Northwest. His father, Irving Miller, worked atWestern Washington Universityas chair of the Department of Education and Psychology.[8]His father's position, in Neal Miller's words, "may have had something to do with" his interest in psychology.[4]: 244 Originally having a curiosity for science, Miller entered theUniversity of Washington(1931), where he studied biology and physics and also had an interest in writing. In his senior year, he decided that psychology would allow him to pursue his wide variety of interests.[4]He graduated from theUniversity of Washingtonwith a B.S. and a piqued interest inbehavioral psychology.After baccalaureate studies, he studied atStanford University(1932), where he received his M.S. and an interest in psychology of personality. AtStanford,he accompanied his professor, Walter Miles, to the Institute of Human Relations atYale Universityas a research assistant. There he was encouraged by another professor to further studypsychoanalysis.[4]He received his Ph.D. degree in psychology from Yale University in 1935, and that same year he became a social science research fellow at the Institute of Psychoanalysis inViennafor one year before returning to Yale as a faculty member in 1936. He spent a total of 30 years at Yale University (1936–1966), and in 1950 he was appointed professor at Yale, a position he held until 1966. In 1966 he began teaching atRockefeller Universityand afterwards spent the early 1970s teaching atCornell University Medical College.In 1985 he returned to Yale as a research associate.[5]

Career[edit]

Miller's early work focused on experimenting withFreudianideas on behavior in real-life situations. His most notable topic wasfear.Miller came to the conclusion that fear could be learned throughconditioning.Miller then decided to extend his research to other autonomic drives, such ashunger,to see if they worked in the same way.[9]His unique ideas and experimental techniques to study these autonomic drives resulted in findings that changed ideas about motivations and behavior.

Miller was also one of the founding fathers behind the idea ofbiofeedback.Today, many of his ideas have been expanded and added to, but Miller has been credited with coming up with most of the basic ideas behind biofeedback. Miller was doing experimentation on conditioning and rats when he discovered biofeedback.[citation needed]

Neal Miller, along withJohn DollardandO. Hobart Mowrer,helped to integratebehavioralandpsychoanalyticconcepts.[10]They were able to translate psychological analytic concepts into behavioral terms that would be more easily understood. Specifically, they focused on thestimulus-responsetheory. These three men also recognizedSigmund Freud's understanding ofanxietyas a "signal of danger" and that some things in Freud's work could be altered to fix this. Miller, Dollard and Mowrer believed that a person who was relieved of high anxiety levels would experience what is called "anxiety relief". Together with fellow psychologist O. Hobart Mowrer, Miller gives his name to the "Miller-Mowrer Shuttlebox" apparatus.[11]

Over the course of his career, Miller wrote eight books and 276 papers and articles.[9]Neal Miller worked with John Dollard and together they wrote the bookPersonality and Psychotherapy(1950) concerning neurosis and psychological learning concepts.[12]

Controversy[edit]

Miller's use of laboratory animals brought criticism from theanimal rights movementbut he defended the practice, arguing that if people had no right to use animals in research, then they had no right to kill them for food or clothing. He nevertheless acknowledged the complexity of the issue; "there is sacredness of all life. But where do we draw the line? That's the problem. Cats kill birds and mice. Dogs exploit other animals by killing and eating them. Humans have to draw the line somewhere in animal rights, or we're dead."[13]

Honours[edit]

In 1958, Miller was elected to the United StatesNational Academy of Sciences.[14]Miller served as president of theAmerican Psychological Associationfrom 1960–61, and received theAPA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Awardin 1959 and the APA Citation forOutstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychologyin 1991. In 1964 he received theNational Medal of SciencefromPresident Johnson,the first psychologist to receive this honor.[15]Miller is a distinguished member ofPSI CHIInternational Honor Society for Psychology. In 1967, he received theWilbur Cross Medal.He was a member of both theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciencesand theAmerican Philosophical Society.[16][17]

He was also President of the Society for Neurosciences, the Biofeedback Society of America and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research.[citation needed]

Major works[edit]

Books[edit]

  • Dollard, John;Doob, Leonard William;Miller, Neal E.;Mowrer, Orval Hobart;Sears, Robert R.(1939).Frustration and aggression.New Haven: Published for the Institute of Human Relations byYale University Press.OCLC256003.
  • Miller, Neal E;Dollard, John(1941).Social learning and imitation.New Haven: Published for the Institute of Human Relations byYale University Press.OCLC180843.
  • Miller, Neal E. (1947).Psychological research on pilot training.Aviation psychology program research reports. Vol. 8. Washington, DC:U.S. Government Printing Office.OCLC1473614.
  • Dollard, John;Miller, Neal E. (1950).Personality and psychotherapy: an analysis in terms of learning, thinking, and culture.McGraw-Hill publications in psychology. New York:McGraw-Hill.OCLC964374.
  • Miller, Neal E. (1957).Graphic communication and the crisis in education.Washington, DC: Department of Audio-Visual Instruction,National Education Association.OCLC242913.
  • Miller, Neal E. (1971).Neal E. Miller: selected papers.Psychonomic perspectives. Chicago: Aldine, Atherton.ISBN978-0202250342.OCLC133865.Republished as:
    • Miller, Neal E. (2007) [1971].Learning, motivation, and their physiological mechanisms.New Brunswick, NJ.: AldineTransaction.ISBN9780202361437.OCLC144328310.
    • Miller, Neal E. (2008) [1971].Conflict, displacement, learned drives, and theory.New Brunswick, NJ: AldineTransaction.ISBN9780202361420.OCLC156810019.
  • Richter-Heinrich, Elisabeth; Miller, Neal E., eds. (1982).Biofeedback: basic problems and clinical applications.Selected revised papers presented at the XXIInd International Congress of Psychology, Leipzig, GDR, July 6–12, 1980. Amsterdam: North-Holland.ISBN978-0444863454.OCLC10751840.

Selected articles[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^"APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions".American Psychological Association.Retrieved26 August2015.
  2. ^"Award for Lifetime Contributions to Psychology".American Psychological Association.Retrieved26 August2015.
  3. ^Weiner, Irving B.; Craighead, W. Edward, eds. (2010). "Miller, Neal E. (1909–2002)".The Corsini encyclopedia of psychology.Vol. 3 (4th ed.). Hoboken, NJ:John Wiley & Sons.pp.997–999.doi:10.1002/9780470479216.corpsy0547.ISBN9780470170243.OCLC429227903.
  4. ^abcdeCohen, David (1977). "Neal Miller".Psychologists on psychology.New York: Taplinger. pp. 240–261.ISBN978-0800865573.OCLC2644614.Reprinted as:Cohen, David (2015). "Neal Miller".Psychologists on psychology: classic edition.Routledge classic editions. New York:Routledge.pp. 191–207.ISBN9781138808492.OCLC881146290.
  5. ^abcMook, Douglas G. (2004)."Neal Miller".Classic experiments in psychology.Westport, CT:Greenwood Press.pp.75–85.ISBN978-0313318214.OCLC56730032.
  6. ^Haggbloom, Steven J.; Warnick, Renee; Warnick, Jason E.; Jones, Vinessa K.; Yarbrough, Gary L.; Russell, Tenea M.; Borecky, Chris M.; McGahhey, Reagan; Powell III, John L.; Beavers, Jamie (June 2002). "The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century".Review of General Psychology.6(2): 139–152.CiteSeerX10.1.1.586.1913.doi:10.1037/1089-2680.6.2.139.S2CID145668721.
  7. ^"Eminent psychologists of the 20th century".APA Monitor on Psychology.33(7): 29. July 2002.Retrieved2014-11-07.
  8. ^Fowler, Raymond (May 2002)."Running commentary: Neal Miller: a giant in American psychology".APA Monitor on Psychology.33(5): 9.Retrieved2014-11-07.
  9. ^ab"An Overview of Neal Miller's contributions".nealmiller.org.23 July 2009.Retrieved2016-08-18.
  10. ^Ewen, Robert B. (1998). "Behaviorism: controversies and emerging findings".Personality, a topical approach: theories, research, major controversies, and emerging findings.Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.pp.230–250.ISBN978-0805820980.OCLC36126540.
  11. ^Dember, William N.;Jenkins, James J.(1970).General psychology: modeling behavior and experience.Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice-Hall.p.376.ISBN978-0133508437.OCLC66521.
  12. ^"APA PsycNet".
  13. ^Nagourney, Eric (2 April 2002)."Neal E. Miller is dead at 92; studied brain and behavior".The New York Times.
  14. ^"Neal E. Miller".nasonline.org.Retrieved2022-09-19.
  15. ^Chamberlin, J. (September 2007)."In Brief: Psychologist wins National Medal of Science".APA Monitor on Psychology.38(8): 10.
  16. ^"Neal Elgar Miller".American Academy of Arts & Sciences.Retrieved2022-09-19.
  17. ^"APS Member History".search.amphilsoc.org.Retrieved2022-09-19.

Further reading[edit]

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