Judith Rich Harris

Judith Rich Harris (born February 10, 1938) is a psychology researcher and the author of The Nurture Assumption, a book criticizing the belief that parents are the most important factor in child development, and presenting evidence which contradicts that belief.

Harris has been a resident of Middletown Township, New Jersey.

Harris spent her early childhood moving around the United States until her parents eventually settled in Tucson, Arizona. The dry climate suited her father, who suffered from ankylosing spondylitis, an autoimmune disease.

Harris graduated from Tucson High School and attended the University of Arizona, and then Brandeis University where she graduated magna cum laude in 1959. Harris was dismissed from the PhD program in psychology at Harvard in 1960, because the 'originality and independence' of her work were not to Harvard's standards. She was granted a master's degree in her field, before departing.

She married Charles S. Harris in 1961; they have two daughters (one adopted) and four grandchildren.

Since 1977, Harris has suffered from a chronic autoimmune disorder, diagnosed as a combination of lupus and systemic sclerosis.

In the late 1970s, Harris developed a mathematical model of visual information processing which formed the basis for two articles in the journal Perception and Psychophysics (1979, 1984).

After 1981 she focused on textbooks about developmental psychology. With Robert Liebert, she co-authored The Child (Prentice-Hall, 1984) and Infant and Child (1992).

In 1994 she formulated a new theory of child development, focusing on the peer group rather than the family. This formed the basis for a 1995 article in the Psychological Review, which received the American Psychological Association's George A. Miller Award for an Outstanding Recent Article in General Psychology. Ironically, George A. Miller was chair of the Department of Psychology at Harvard in 1960, when Harris was dismissed from that PhD program (see above)

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