Robert Plomin

Robert J. Plomin, FBA (born 1948) is an American psychologist and geneticist best known for his work in twin studies and behavior genetics. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Plomin as the 71st most cited psychologist of the 20th century.[1]

Robert Plomin
Plomin in 2018
Born	Robert Plomin 1948 (age 71–72) Chicago, Illinois, US
Citizenship	American
Alma mater	University of Texas at Austin
Known for	Twins Early Development Study
Awards	Dobzhansky Memorial Award (2002; Behavior Genetics Association), William James Fellow Award (2004; Association for Psychological Science), Lifetime Achievement Award (2011; International Society for Intelligence Research)
Scientific career
Fields	Psychology, behavioral genetics
Institutions	University of Colorado at Boulder, Pennsylvania State University, King's College London
Doctoral advisor	Arnold H. Buss

Biography

Plomin earned a B.A. in psychology from DePaul University in 1970 and a Ph.D. in psychology in 1974 from the University of Texas at Austin under personality psychologist Arnold Buss. He then worked at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. From 1986 until 1994 he worked at Pennsylvania State University, studying elderly twins reared apart and twins reared together to study aging and is currently at the Institute of Psychiatry (King's College London). He has been president of the Behavior Genetics Association.

In 1987, Plomin married Judith Dunn, a British psychologist and academic.[2]

Honors and awards

In 2002, the Behavior Genetics Association awarded him the Dobzhansky Memorial Award for a Lifetime of Outstanding Scholarship in Behavior Genetics. He was awarded the William James Fellow Award by the Association for Psychological Science in 2004[3] and the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Society for Intelligence Research.[4] In 2017, Plomin received the APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions.[5] Plomin was ranked among the 100 most eminent psychologists in the history of science.[1] In 2005, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for humanities and social sciences.[2]

Research

Plomin has shown the importance of non-shared environment, a term that he coined to refer to the environmental factors that reduce the similarity of individuals raised in the same family environment.[6] In addition, he has shown that many environmental measures in psychology show genetic influence and that genetic factors can mediate associations between environmental measures and developmental outcomes.

Plomin currently conducts the Twins Early Development Study of all twins born in England from 1994 to 1996, focusing on developmental delays in early childhood, their association with behavioural problems and educational attainment.[7]

In 1994 he was one of 52 signatories on "Mainstream Science on Intelligence",[8] an editorial written by Linda Gottfredson and published in the Wall Street Journal, which declared the consensus of the signing scholars on issues related to intelligence research following the publication of the book The Bell Curve.

Bibliography

• Behavioral Genetics: A Primer, together with John C. DeFries, Gerald E. McClearn, WH Freeman & Co, 1989, ISBN 978-0716720560
• Separate Lives: Why Siblings Are So Different, together with Judy Dunn, Basic Books, 1992, ISBN 978-0465076895
• Behavioral Genetics in the Postgenomic Era, together with John C. DeFries, Peter McGuffin, Ian W. Craig, American Psychological Association, 2002, ISBN 978-1557989260
• The Relationship Code: Deciphering Genetic and Social Influences on Adolescent Development (Adolescent Lives), together with David Reiss, Jenae M. Neiderhiser, E. Mavis Hetherington, Harvard University Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0674011267
• Nature, Nurture, and the Transition to Early Adolescence, together with John C. DeFries, Stephen A. Petrill, John K. Hewitt, Oxford University Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0195157475
• Nature And Nurture: An Introduction To Human Behavioral Genetics, Wadsworth Publishing, 2004, ISBN 978-0534651121
• Nature and Nurture during Infancy and Early Childhood, together with John C. DeFries, David Fulker, Cambridge University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0521034241
• Behavioral Genetics, together with John C. DeFries, Peter McGuffin, Gerald E. McClearn, Worth Publishers; 5th edition, 2008, ISBN 978-1429205771
• Behavioral Genetics, together with John C. DeFries, Valerie S Knopik, Jenae M. Neiderhiser, Worth Publishers; 6th edition, 2012, ISBN 978-1429242158
• G Is for Genes, together with Kathryn Ashbury, Wiley Blackwell; 2013, ISBN 978-1118482810
• Behavioral Genetics, together with John C. DeFries, Valerie S Knopik, Jenae M. Neiderhiser, Worth Publishers; 7th edition, 2016, ISBN 9781464176050
• Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, Penguin Books Ltd., 2018, ISBN 9780241282076

Robert Plomin at ISIR 2015

References

1. Haggbloom, Steven J.; Warnick, Renee; Warnick, Jason E.; Jones, Vinessa K.; Yarbrough, Gary L.; Russell, Tenea M.; Borecky, Chris M.; McGahhey, Reagan; Powell, John L., III; Beavers, Jamie; Monte, Emmanuelle (2002). "The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century". Review of General Psychology. 6 (2): 139–152. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.586.1913. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.6.2.139. ISSN 1089-2680.
2. "PLOMIN, Prof. Robert". Who's Who 2017. Oxford University Press. November 2016. Retrieved 19 April 2017.
3. "2004-2005 William James Fellow Award: Robert Plomin". psychologicalscience.org. Association for Psychological Science. Retrieved October 20, 2015.
4. "2011 Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Society for Intelligence Research". ISIR. 2011. Retrieved June 24, 2014.
5. "APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions". APA. Retrieved 11 December 2017.
6. Plomin, Robert; Daniels, Denise (June 2011). "Why are children in the same family so different from one another?". International Journal of Epidemiology. 40 (3): 563–582. doi:10.1093/ije/dyq148. ISSN 1464-3685. PMC 3147063. PMID 21807642.
7. Ghosh, Pallab (8 August 2000). Genius of genes. BBC News
8. Gottfredson, Linda (December 13, 1994). Mainstream Science on Intelligence. Wall Street Journal, p A18.

External links

• Official website
• Robert Plomin Interview with David Lubinski
• Robert Plomin publications indexed by Google Scholar