Roger Garlock Barker (1903 – 1990) was a

social scientist Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of socie ...

, a founder of

environmental psychology Environmental psychology is a branch of psychology that explores the relationship between humans and the external world. It examines the way in which the natural environment and our built environments shape us as individuals. Environmental Psychol ...

and a leading figure in the field for decades, perhaps best known for his development of the concept of

behavior settings Behavior settings are theorized entities that help explain the relationship between individuals and the environment - particularly the social environment. This topic is typically indexed under the larger rubric of ecological (or environmental) psy ...

and

staffing theory Staffing theory is a social psychology theory that explores the effects of behavior settings being either understaffed or overstaffed. Understaffing refers to the idea that there are not enough people for what the behavior setting promotes, whereas ...

. He was also a central figure in the development of

ecological psychology Ecological psychology is the scientific study of perception-action from a direct realist approach. Ecological psychology is a school of psychology that follows much of the writings of Roger Barker and James J. Gibson. Those in the field of Ec ...

. Barker earned his

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * '' Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. al ...

from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

where his advisor was

Walter Richard Miles Walter Richard Miles (March 29, 1885 – May 15, 1978) was an American psychologist and a president of the American Psychological Association (APA). He best known for his development of the two-story rat maze, his research on low dose alcohol, th ...

. In the 1940s, Barker and his associate, Herbert Wright from the

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas. T ...

in Lawrence, set up the Midwest Psychological Field Station in the nearby town of

Oskaloosa, Kansas Oskaloosa is a city in and the county seat of Jefferson County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 1110. History Oskaloosa was founded in 1856. It was named after the city of Oskaloosa, Iowa. The fir ...

, a town of fewer than 2,000 people. Barker's team gathered empirical data in Oskaloosa from 1947 to 1972, consistently disguising the town as "Midwest, Kansas" for publications like ''One Boy's Day'' (1952) and ''Midwest and Its Children'' (1955). Based on this data, Barker first developed the concept of the behavior setting to help explain the interplay between the individual and the immediate environment. Possibly one of the most valuable developments of his work was the examination of the way in which the number and variety of behavior settings remains remarkably constant even as institutions increase in size. This was explored in his seminal work with Paul Gump, ''Big School Small School'' (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964). They showed that large schools had a similar number of behavior settings to small schools. A consequence of this was that students could take many different roles in small schools (e.g. be in the school band and the school football team), while in larger schools there was a greater tendency to be selective. His concept of behavior settings was developed and used by

Val Curtis Valerie Curtis (20 September 1958 – 19 October 2020) was a British scientist who was Director of the Environmental Health Group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. This is a multidisciplinary group dedicated to improving hy ...

since it allows prediction of individual behaviour from the setting in which people find themselves. Barker died at his home in Oskaloosa in September 1990. He was survived by his wife, Louise Shedd Barker, with whom he collaborated on much of his research. Barker is the subject of a 2014 biography — ''The Outsider: The Life and Times of Roger Barker'' — by the award-winning American journalist Ariel Sabar.

References

External links

''This American Life'' story on Barker's Oskaloosa study
1903 births 1990 deaths 20th-century American psychologists Environmental psychologists Systems psychologists People from Madison County, Iowa People from Oskaloosa, Kansas {{US-psychologist-stub