Leon Kamin

Leon J. Kamin (born December 29, 1927) is an American psychologist known for his contributions to learning theory and his critique of estimates of the heritability of IQ. He studied under Richard Solomon at Harvard and contributed several important ideas about conditioning, including the "blocking effect".

Born in Taunton, Massachusetts, Kamin studied psychology at Harvard. While a graduate student, Kamin was subpoenaed by the McCarthy Committee, where he refused to name names. As a result, Kamin was convicted of contempt of the Senate during the McCarthy era and had to find employment in Canada, where he chaired the Psychology Department at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada (1957–68). In 1968 he returned to the U.S. and chaired Princeton University's Department of Psychology and later the Psychology Department at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Kamin's most well-known contribution to learning theory was his discovery and analysis of the "blocking effect" (1969). He showed that conditioning an animal to associate a salient conditioned stimulus (CSb), such as a bright light, with a salient unconditioned stimulus (US), like a shock, is "blocked" when CSb is presented simultaneously with another conditioned stimulus (CSa) that was already conditioned to the US. (Kamin used rats in most of his research, but the effect has been found in many animals). The blocking effect is one of the hallmark effects in the study of associative learning in animals, including humans. However, subsequent research suggests it is not as robust as previously thought.

Kamin has long opposed the idea that significant personal traits are largely heritable. He became skeptical of the claims of Cyril Burt regarding the heritability of IQ, and published his opinions in a 1974 book The Science and Politics of IQ. He co-authored the controversial book Not in Our Genes (1984) with geneticist Richard Lewontin and neurobiologist Steven Rose. This book, championing the "radical science movement", criticized sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. Kamin is known in some circles for his speculation that the heritability of IQ could be "zero" (Mackintosh, 1998)

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