J. E. R. Staddon

John Eric Rayner Staddon (born 1937) is a British-born American psychologist. He has been a critic of Skinnerian behaviorism and proposed a theoretically-based "New Behaviorism".

Educated first at University College London, a three-year period interrupted by two years in Central Africa (N. Rhodesia, now Zambia). After graduation from UCL, he went to the U. S., to Hollins College in Virginia for a year, and then to Harvard University where he studied under Richard Herrnstein, obtaining his PhD in Experimental Psychology in 1964 with a thesis The effect of "knowledge of results" on timing behavior in the pigeon. He has done research at the MIT Systems Lab, University of Oxford, the University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the Ruhr Universität, Universität Konstanz, the University of Western Australia and York University, United Kingdom, and taught at the University of Toronto from 1964 to 1967.

Since 1967, Staddon has been at Duke University; since 1983 he has been the James B. Duke Professor of psychology, and a professor of biology and neurobiology. He is an honorary visiting professor at the University of York (UK), and was an editor of the journals Behavioural Processes and Behavior & Philosophy.

Books

• Handbook of Operantbehavior Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: (1977) Prentice-Hall, co-edited with W. K. Honig
• Scientific Method: How science works, fails to work and pretends to work (Routledge, 2017)
• The New Behaviorism, 2nd Edition (Psychology Press, 2014)
• Adaptive Dynamics:The Theoretical Analysis of Behavior (MIT/Bradford, 2001)
• Adaptive Behavior and Learning, 2nd Edition (Cambridge University Press), 2016.
• Unlucky Strike: Private Health and the Science, Law and Politics of Smoking. University of Buckingham Press. 2013. ISBN 9781908684370.
• The Englishman: Memoirs of a Psychobiologist. University of Buckingham Press, 2016.
• Staddon, J. E. R.(Ed.)(1980).Limits to action: The allocation of individual behavior.New York: Academic Press.

Writings

• Adaptive Behavior -- Psychology Today blog
• Staddon & Higa critique of pacemaker timing models
• 2003 Annual Review article on operant conditioning by Staddon and Daniel Cerutti
• "Did the Hoaxers Do Anything Wrong?". The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. 13 February 2019.
• "Is Secular Humanism a Religion?". Quillette. 11 April 2019.
• "Is Diversity an Enemy of Excellence?". Intellectual Takeout.
• "Science and Morals: Can morality be deduced from the facts of science? – The New Behaviorism". New Behaviorism.