Steven Pinker

Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

Steven Pinker is a renowned Canadian-American cognitive psychologist and popular science author. He is known for his work in evolutionary psychology, the computational theory of mind, and for writing acclaimed books on language, the mind, and human nature.

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About the Steven Pinker

Steven Arthur Pinkeris a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.

Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He specializes in visual cognition and developmental linguistics, and his experimental topics include mental imagery, shape recognition, visual attention, regularity and irregularity in language, the neural basis of words and grammar, and childhood language development. Other experimental topics he works on are the psychology of cooperation and of communication, including emotional expression, euphemism, innuendo, and how people use “common knowledge”, a term of art meaning the shared understanding in which two or more people know something, know that the other one knows, know the other one knows that they know, and so on.

Pinker has written two technical books that proposed a general theory of language acquisition and applied it to children’s learning of verbs. In particular, his work with Alan Prince published in 1989 critiqued the connectionist model of how children acquire the past tense of English verbs, positing that children use default rules, such as adding -ed to make regular forms, sometimes in error, but are obliged to learn irregular forms one by one.

Pinker is the author of nine books for general audiences. The Language Instinctdescribe aspects of psycholinguistics and cognitive science, and include accounts of his own research, positing that language is an innate behavior shaped by natural selection and adapted to our communication needs. Pinker’s The Sense of Styleis a general language-oriented style guide. Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Natureposits that violence in human societies has generally declined over time, and identifies six major trends and five historical forces of this decline, the most important being the humanitarian revolution brought by the Enlightenment and its associated cultivation of reason. Enlightenment Nowfurther argues that the human condition has generally improved over recent history because of reason, science, and humanism. The nature and importance of reason is also discussed in his next book Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters (2021).

In 2004, Pinker was named in Time’s “The 100 Most Influential People in the World Today”, and in the years 2005, 2008, 2010, and 2011 in Foreign Policy’s list of “Top 100 Global Thinkers”. Pinker was also included in Prospect Magazine’s top 10 “World Thinkers” in 2013. He has won awards from the American Psychological Association, the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institution, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and the American Humanist Association. He delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 2013. He has served on the editorial boards of a variety of journals, and on the advisory boards of several institutions. Pinker was the chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary from 2008 to 2018.

Frequently Asked Questions

Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and is known for his work in evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.

Steven Pinker was born on September 18, 1954. He is a cognitive psychologist and psycholinguist who specializes in visual cognition and developmental linguistics. Pinker is currently the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.

Steven Pinker is the author of several popular science books, including ,The Language Instinct,, ,How the Mind Works,, ,The Blank Slate,, and ,The Better Angels of Our Nature., He is known for his work on language acquisition, the evolution of human nature, and the decline of violence in human societies.

Pinker’s research focuses on various topics in cognitive science and psycholinguistics, including mental imagery, shape recognition, visual attention, language acquisition, and the neural basis of words and grammar. He has also worked on the psychology of cooperation and communication.

Steven Pinker has been recognized for his work, having been named one of Time’s ,100 Most Influential People in the World, and included in Prospect Magazine’s list of ,World Thinkers., He has also won awards from organizations such as the American Psychological Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Humanist Association.

Pinker believes that language is an innate behavior shaped by natural selection and adapted to our communication needs. He has proposed theories on language acquisition and the role of rules and irregularities in the way children learn verbs.

Pinker’s work has had a significant impact on the fields of cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, and evolutionary psychology. His research and popular science books have helped advance our understanding of how the mind works, the origins of language, and the evolution of human nature.

20 Quotes by Steven Pinker

  1. 1.

    Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  2. 2.

    I don’t consider myself to be that radical a thinker.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  3. 3.

    Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  4. 4.

    Parents provide their children with genes as well as an environment, so the fact that talkative parents have kids with good language skills could simply mean that and that the same genes that make parents talkative make children articulate.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  5. 5.

    Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  6. 6.

    By exploring the political and moral colorings of discoveries about what makes us tick, we can have a more honest science and a less fearful intellectual milieu.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  7. 7.

    As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  8. 8.

    The connections I draw between human nature and political systems in my new book, for example, were prefigured in the debates during the Enlightenment and during the framing of the American Constitution.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  9. 9.

    But in most cases even the possibility that the correlations reflect shared genes is taboo.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  10. 10.

    Personality and socialization aren’t the same thing.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  11. 11.

    So no, it’s not all in the genes, but what isn’t in the genes isn’t in the family environment either. It can’t be explained in terms of the overall personalities or the child-rearing practices of parents.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  12. 12.

    Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  13. 13.

    People today sometimes get uncomfortable with empirical claims that seem to clash with their political assumptions, often because they haven’t given much thought to the connections.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  14. 14.

    The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  15. 15.

    Why do people believe that there are dangerous implications of the idea that the mind is a product of the brain, that the brain is organized in part by the genome, and that the genome was shaped by natural selection?

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  16. 16.

    I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  17. 17.

    My opinions about human nature are shared by many psychologists, linguists, and biologists, not to mention philosophers and scholars going back centuries.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  18. 18.

    Most intellectuals today have a phobia of any explanation of the mind that invokes genetics.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  19. 19.

    There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind

  20. 20.

    But the newest research is showing that many properties of the brain are genetically organized, and don’t depend on information coming in from the senses.

    Steven Pinker

    Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind