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(Norman) Stuart Sutherland (26 March 1927 – 8 November 1998) was a British
psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how in ...
and writer.


Education

Sutherland was educated at
King Edward's School, Birmingham King Edward's School (KES) is an independent day school for boys in the British public school tradition, located in Edgbaston, Birmingham. Founded by King Edward VI in 1552, it is part of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI in Bir ...
, before going to
Magdalen College, Oxford Magdalen College (, ) is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 ...
, where he read Psychology, Philosophy and Physiology. He stayed at
University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...
for his PhD which was awarded in 1957 for research supervised by
John Zachary Young John Zachary Young FRS (18 March 1907 – 4 July 1997), generally known as "JZ" or "JZY", was an English zoologist and neurophysiologist, described as "one of the most influential biologists of the 20th century". Biography Young went to schoo ...
.


Career and research

Sutherland held a lecturing post at Oxford from 1960, and was elected a Fellow of
Merton College, Oxford Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, c ...
in March 1963, before moving the following year to the recently opened
University of Sussex , mottoeng = Be Still and Know , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £14.4 million (2020) , budget = £319.6 million (2019–20) , chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar , vice_chancellor = Sasha Roseneil , ...
as the founding
Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...
and head of its Laboratory of Experimental Psychology; with the young colleagues he appointed, he rapidly built an international reputation for Sussex in this field. Among psychologists, Sutherland is best known for his theoretical and empirical work in
comparative psychology Comparative psychology refers to the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of non-human animals, especially as these relate to the phylogenetic history, adaptive significance, and development of behavior. Research in this area addr ...
, particularly in relation to visual
pattern recognition Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer grap ...
and
discrimination learning Discrimination learning is defined in psychology as the ability to respond differently to different stimuli. This type of learning is used in studies regarding operant and classical conditioning. Operant conditioning involves the modification of a ...
. In the 1950s and 1960s he carried out numerous experiments on
rat Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents. Species of rats are found throughout the order Rodentia, but stereotypical rats are found in the genus '' Rattus''. Other rat genera include ''Neotoma'' (pack rats), ''Bandicota'' (bandicoo ...
s but also on other species such as
octopus An octopus ( : octopuses or octopodes, see below for variants) is a soft-bodied, eight- limbed mollusc of the order Octopoda (, ). The order consists of some 300 species and is grouped within the class Cephalopoda with squids, cuttlef ...
; the two-factor theory of discrimination learning that he developed with
Nicholas Mackintosh Nicholas John Seymour Mackintosh, (9 July 1935 – 8 February 2015) was a British experimental psychologist and author, specialising in intelligence, psychometrics and animal learning. Education Mackintosh was born in London, the son of Ian Ma ...
was an important step in the rehabilitation of a cognitive approach to animal learning after the dominance of strict
behaviourism Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual' ...
in the first half of the twentieth century. He was also interested in human perception and cognition, and in 1992 he published ''Irrationality: The enemy within'', a lay reader's guide to the psychology of
cognitive bias A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, ...
es and common failures of human judgement. Among a wider public, Sutherland is most famous for his 1976 autobiography ''Breakdown'', detailing his struggles with
manic depression Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with ...
. A second edition of ''Breakdown'' was published in 1995. Stuart Sutherland died from a heart attack in November 1998.


Bibliography

(incomplete; excludes
journal A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to: * Bullet journal, a method of personal organization *Diary, a record of what happened over the course of a day or other period *Daybook, also known as a general journal, a ...
articles, of which Sutherland published many) *''The methods and findings of experiments on the visual discrimination of shape by animals'', 1961 *''Animal discrimination learning'', 1969 (Edited, with R. M. Gilbert) *''Mechanisms of animal discrimination learning'', 1971 (with
Nicholas Mackintosh Nicholas John Seymour Mackintosh, (9 July 1935 – 8 February 2015) was a British experimental psychologist and author, specialising in intelligence, psychometrics and animal learning. Education Mackintosh was born in London, the son of Ian Ma ...
) *''Breakdown'', 1976, second edition published 1995 , reissued by Pinter & Martin 2010, *''Prestel and the user: a survey of psychological and ergonomic research'', 1980. *''The psychology of vision'', 1980 (Edited, with Christopher Longuet-Higgins) *''Discovering the human mind'', 1983. *''Men change too'', 1987Men change too (1987) *''Macmillan Dictionary of Psychology.'' 1990. Also published as ''The International Dictionary of Psychology.'' 2nd ed. New York: Crossroad, 1995. . *''Irrationality''Irrationality (1992), reissued by Pinter & Martin 2007,


References

British psychologists 1927 births 1998 deaths Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford Critics of parapsychology People with bipolar disorder 20th-century psychologists Fellows of Merton College, Oxford {{UK-psychologist-stub