Jerome Kagan facts for kids

Jerome Kagan (born February 25, 1929 – died May 10, 2021) was an American psychologist. He taught at Harvard University and was a key leader in developmental psychology. This field studies how people grow and change throughout their lives.

Kagan's work showed that a baby's "temperament" (their natural way of reacting) can stay quite similar over time. For example, how a baby acts might give clues about how they will behave as a teenager. He studied temperament and emotions a lot.

In 2001, a magazine called Review of General Psychology listed him among the most important psychologists of the 1900s. He was ranked twenty-second, just above famous psychologist Jung.

About His Life

Jerome Kagan was born in Newark, New Jersey, on February 25, 1929. He grew up in Rahway, New Jersey. After finishing Rahway High School in 1946, he decided to study psychology. He wanted to be a scientist and was interested in understanding people, like his grandfather.

He earned his first degree from Rutgers University in 1950. Later, he went to Yale University and helped a respected researcher named Frank Beach. He also earned a master's degree from Harvard University before getting his Ph.D. from Yale.

After college, Kagan started teaching at Ohio State University. In 1955, he joined a research team at a U.S. Army Hospital during the Korean War.

After his time with the Army, he led a project for the National Institutes of Health. Then, Harvard University asked him to help create their first program about human development. He stayed at Harvard as a professor until he retired. He only took a break from 1971 to 1972 to study children in Guatemala.

Kagan received several important awards for his work. In 1963, he won the Hofheimer Prize from the American Psychiatric Association. In 1995, he won the G. Stanley Hall Award from the American Psychological Association (APA).

His Research

While working at the Fels Research Institute, Kagan studied how personality traits develop from infancy through adulthood. He looked at whether early experiences shaped people's future personalities and skills. He studied old records, especially intelligence test results.

Kagan found that what happened in the first three years of childhood didn't always strongly predict how people would be as adults. He wrote about these findings in his 1962 book, Birth to Maturity.

Kagan also did research in San Marcos, Guatemala. He found that a child's environment plays a big role in their development. Children who had limited experiences at home showed slower psychological development.

However, once these children were old enough to walk and explore outside, their development quickly caught up. This showed that a child's thinking skills can change and improve, even if they started slower.

In 2010, Kagan was part of a study that looked at specific brain parts related to how shy or bold infants were. Researchers used brain scans on 18-year-olds who had been studied as babies. They found that different brain areas were thicker depending on whether the babies had been very calm or very reactive. This suggested a link between early temperament and brain structure.

At Harvard University, Kagan studied babies up to two years old. He published his findings in his book, The Second Year. He discovered big changes in how children thought and acted between 19 and 24 months old. He also found that one-year-olds noticed things that were different from their usual experiences.

Kagan also looked into how infant daycare affected children. He and other researchers set up a daycare in Boston's Chinatown. They compared babies in their daycare to babies who stayed home with their mothers. They studied things like thinking skills, language, and how attached babies were to their caregivers. The research showed very little difference between the two groups of infants.

Understanding Emotion

Kagan believed that emotions are psychological feelings controlled by our brains. He thought that specific emotions depend on the situation, a person's past experiences, and their natural biological makeup.

He described emotion happening in four steps:

• A brain state caused by something exciting.
• Noticing changes in your body.
• Thinking about how those body feelings make you feel.
• Visible changes in your face and muscles.

These emotions can be stronger or weaker and often change with age or in different situations.

Kagan questioned whether people's words truly describe their feelings. He said the English language doesn't have enough words for all emotional states. Also, words for emotions don't always show how strong or mild a feeling is. He also noted that translating emotion words between languages can cause mistakes. Kagan believed that studies on emotion should use clear and direct language. He suggested using full sentences instead of single words like "fear" to describe emotional processes.

What is Temperament?

Kagan is perhaps most famous for his work on temperament. He started this research after his studies in Guatemala. He mainly focused on how fearful or anxious children were.

He described two main types of temperament:

• Inhibited: This describes a child who is shy, timid, and easily scared.
• Uninhibited: This describes a child who is bold, friendly, and outgoing.

Kagan found that at four months old, inhibited babies tend to fuss more. They also react strongly to new things, like a brightly colored toy. Their bodies show more signs of excitement compared to uninhibited babies, who barely react. Kagan connected his work on inhibited behavior to the research of brain scientists.

In 2008, Kagan and other researchers studied if shyness in adults could be predicted by how babies acted. They thought that how much a baby moved or cried might predict if they would be shy later. Kagan's important work on temperament showed that these early traits can affect later behavior. However, this depends on how they interact with the environment. Kagan also believed that temperament isn't set in stone. Both genes and the environment can influence a child's temperament, and the environment is always changing.