Steven Pinker

 

Steven Pinker

Canadian-American psychologist

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Richard Pallardy See All Contributors

Richard Pallardy received a B.A. in English from Illinois State University in 2005. He was a research editor with Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. from 2008 to 2016 and worked on Britannica Blog from 2010...

LAST UPDATED: Sep 14, 2020 See Article History

Alternative Title: Steven Arthur Pinker

Steven Pinker, in full Steven Arthur Pinker, (born September 18, 1954, Montreal, Quebec, Canada), Canadian-born American psychologist who advocated evolutionary explanations for the functions of the brain and thus for language and behaviour.

Pinker was raised in a largely Jewish neighbourhood of Montreal. He studied cognitive science at McGill University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1976. He earned a doctorate in experimental psychology at Harvard University in 1979. After stints as an assistant professor at Harvard (1980–81) and at Stanford University (1981–82), he joined the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There he served as codirector of the Center of Cognitive Science (1985–94) and, having been made full professor in 1989, as director of the McDonnell-Pew Center for Cognitive Neuroscience (1994–99). Pinker returned to Harvard in 2003 as a full professor.

Hear Psycholinguist Steven Pinker outlining the evolution of several unique traits in humans as compared to other speciesPsycholinguist Steven Pinker outlining uniquely human traits.© World Science Festival (A Britannica Publishing Partner)See all videos for this article