Hans Eysenck

Hans Jürgen Eysenck ( EYE-zenk; 4 March 1916 – 4 September 1997) was a German-born British psychologist. He is best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, although he worked on other issues in psychology. At the time of his death, Eysenck was the most frequently cited living psychologist in peer-reviewed scientific journal literature. Eysenck's research included claims that certain personality types had an elevated risk of cancer and heart disease and research on IQ scores and race (first published in 1971), which were a significant source of controversy. Scholars have identified errors and suspected data manipulation in Eysenck's work, and large replications have failed to confirm the relationships that he purported to find. An enquiry on behalf of King's College London found the papers by Eysenck coauthored with Ronald Grossarth-Maticek to be "incompatible with modern clinical science", with 26 of the joint papers considered suspect. Fourteen papers were retracted in 2020, and over 60 statements of concern were issued by scientific journals in 2020 about publications by Eysenck. David Marks and Rod Buchanan, a biographer of Eysenck, have argued that 87 publications by Eysenck should be retracted.

Life

Eysenck was born in Berlin, Germany. His mother was Silesian-born film star Helga Molander, and his father, Eduard Anton Eysenck, was an actor and nightclub entertainer who was once voted the "handsomest man on the Baltic coast". His mother was Lutheran and his father was Catholic. Eysenck was brought up by his maternal grandmother who was a Jewish convert to Catholicism. Subjected to the Nuremberg laws, she was deported and died in a concentration camp. An initial move to England in the 1930s became permanent because of his opposition to the Nazi party and its persecutions. "My hatred of Hitler and the Nazis, and all they stood for, was so overwhelming that no argument could counter it." Because of his German citizenship, he was initially unable to gain employment, and he came close to being interned during the war. He received his PhD in 1940 from University College London (UCL) working in the Department of Psychology under the supervision of Professor Sir Cyril Burt, with whom he had a tumultuous professional relationship throughout his working life. Eysenck was Professor of Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, from 1955 to 1983. He was a major contributor to the modern scientific theory of personality and helped find treatment for mental illnesses. Eysenck also created and developed a distinctive dimensional model of personality structure based on empirical factor-analytic research, attempting to anchor these factors in biogenetic variation. In 1981, Eysenck became a founding member of the World Cultural Council. He was the founding editor of the international journal Personality and Individual Differences, and wrote about 80 books and more than 1,600 journal articles. With his first wife, Hans Eysenck had a son Michael Eysenck, who is also a psychology professor. He had four children with his second wife, the psychologist Sybil B. G. Eysenck: Gary, Connie, Kevin, and Darrin. Hans and Sybil Eysenck collaborated as psychologists for many years at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, as co-authors and researchers. Sybil Eysenck died in December 2020, and Hans Eysenck died of a brain tumour in a London hospice in 1997. He was an atheist. The Eysencks' home was at 10 Dorchester Drive, Herne Hill, London, from 1960 until their respective deaths.

Views and their reception Examples of publications in which Eysenck's views roused controversy include (chronologically):

A paper in the 1950s concluding that available data "fail to support the hypothesis that psychotherapy facilitates recovery from neurotic disorder". A chapter in Uses and Abuses of Psychology (1953) entitled "What is wrong with psychoanalysis". The Psychology of Politics (1954) Race, Intelligence and Education (1971) (in the US: The IQ Argument). Sex, Violence and the Media (1978). Astrology – Science or Superstition? (1982). Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire (1985). Smoking, Personality and Stress (1991). Eysenck's attitude was summarised in his autobiography Rebel with a Cause: "I always felt that a scientist owes the world only one thing, and that is the truth as he sees it. If the truth contradicts deeply held beliefs, that is too bad. Tact and diplomacy are fine in international relations, in politics, perhaps even in business; in science only one thing matters, and that is the facts." He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.

The Psychology of Politics In this book, Eysenck suggests that political behavior may be analysed in terms of two independent dimensions: the traditional left-right distinction, and how 'tenderminded' or 'toughminded' a person is. Eysenck suggests that the latter is a result of a person's introversion or extraversion respectively. Colleagues critiqued the research that formed the basis of this book, on a number of grounds, including the following:

Eysenck claims that his findings can be applied to the British middle class as a whole, but the people in his sample were far younger and better educated than the British middle class as a whole. Supporters of different parties were recruited in different ways: Communists were recruited through party branches, fascists in an unspecified manner, and supporters of other parties by giving copies of the questionnaire to his students and telling them to apply it to friends and acquaintances. Scores were obtained by applying the same weight to groups of different sizes. For example, the responses of 250 middle-class supporters of the Liberal Party were given the same weight as those of 27 working-class Liberals. Scores were rounded without explanation, in directions that supported Eysenck's theories.

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