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Steven Pinker

Harvard University, Psychology, Faculty Member

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I am a cognitive scientist interested in all aspects of language, mind, and human nature. My research has concentrated on visual cognition (imagery, attention, shape recognition), psycholinguistics (the acquisition of syntax and morphology, conceptual semantics, regular and irregular phenomena in language), and social relations (indirect speech, common knowledge, cooperation, and social emotions). Since the publication of my book The Better Angels of Our Nature, I have retained an interest in the psychology and history of violence and nonviolence. In 2014 I published The Sense of Style: A Writing Guide for the 20th Century, My most recent book (2018) is called Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. For more information, see www.stevenpinker.com

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The University of Texas at Austin

Jonathan Zittrain

Harvard University

Timothy Thurston

University of Leeds

The University of Texas at Austin

University of California, Merced

Julian Kiverstein

Academic Medical Centre/ Universiteit van Amsterdam

Shaun Gallagher

University of Memphis

Pennsylvania State University

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Macquarie University

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Books by Steven Pinker

Language, Cognition, and Human Nature: Selected Articles

The Better Angels of Our Nature

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language

How the Mind Works

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language

Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure

Language Learnability and Language Development

Papers by Steven Pinker

Piled Modifiers, Buried Verbs, and Other Turgid Prose in the American Political Science Review

PS Political Science & Politics, Aug 18, 2021

ABSTRACTAcademic writing is notoriously difficult to read. Can political science do better? To as... more ABSTRACTAcademic writing is notoriously difficult to read. Can political science do better? To assess the state of prose in political science, we examined a recent issue of the American Political Science Review. We evaluated the articles according to the basic principles of style endorsed by writing experts. We find that the writing suffers most from heavy noun phrases in forms such as noun noun noun and adjective adjective noun noun. Further, we describe five contributors that swell noun phrases: piled modifiers, needless words, nebulous nouns, missing prepositions, and buried verbs. We document more than a thousand examples and demonstrate how to revise each one with principles of style. We also draw on research in cognitive science to explain why these constructions confuse, mislead, and distract readers.

Common knowledge, coordination, and the logic of self-conscious emotions

Evolution and Human Behavior, 2018

(K.A. Thomas). 1 An analysis of knowledge of social transgressions requires precisely differentia... more (K.A. Thomas). 1 An analysis of knowledge of social transgressions requires precisely differentiating the individual parties in dyadic interactions. The use of he or she or generic they in such discussions can quickly become unwieldy or ambiguous (Pinker, 2014). To avoid confusion, we will consistently refer to a hypothetical actor using a masculine singular pronoun, and to hypothetical onlookers using feminine or plural pronouns (Pinker, 2014).

Universality and diversity in human song

What is universal about music across human societies, and what varies? We built a corpus of ethno... more What is universal about music across human societies, and what varies? We built a corpus of ethnographic text on musical behavior from a representative sample of the world’s societies and a discography of audio recordings of the music itself. The ethnographic corpus reveals that music appears in every society observed; that variation in musical behavior is well-characterized by three dimensions, which capture the formality, arousal, and religiosity of song events; that musical behavior varies more within societies than across societies on these dimensions; and that music is regularly associated with behavioral contexts such as infant care, healing, dance, and love. The discography, analyzed through four representations (machine summaries, listener ratings, expert annotations, expert transcriptions), revealed that identifiable acoustic features of songs predict their primary behavioral function worldwide, and that these features fall along two dimensions, melodic and rhythmic complex...

Sibling Rivalry: Why the nature/nurture debate won't go away

The Boston Globe, Oct 13, 2002

Sibling rivalry Why the nature/nurture debate won't go away By Steven Pinker WHEN THE BRITISH EDU... more Sibling rivalry Why the nature/nurture debate won't go away By Steven Pinker WHEN THE BRITISH EDUCATOR Richard Mulcaster wrote in 1582 that ''Nature makes the boy toward, nurture sees him forward,'' he gave the world a euphonious name for an opposition that has been debated ever since. People's beliefs about the roles of heredity and environment affect their opinions on an astonishing range of topics. Do adolescents engage in violence and substance abuse because of the way their parents treated them as toddlers? Are people inherently selfish and aggressive, which would justify a market economy and a strong police, or could they become peaceable and cooperative, allowing the state to wither and a spontaneous socialism to blossom? Is there a universal aesthetic that allows great art to transcend time and place, or are people's tastes determined by their era and culture? With so much at stake, it is no surprise that debates over nature and nurture evoke such strong feelings.

The untenability of faitheism

Current Biology, 2015

With diversifi cation came inequality, and a small number of people at the top of the social peck... more With diversifi cation came inequality, and a small number of people at the top of the social pecking orders could enjoy luxuries that were entirely unthinkable in the more equitable hunter-gatherer societies. For the majority who worked the farms and then later on in the heavy industry, the 'civilised' lifestyle involves a lot of hard work rewarded with very little, tightly circumscribed pleasure. Members of isolated Amazonian tribes given the "full information" about the living and working conditions of the majority of people around the world might still conclude that civilised life is a more subtle form of slavery. All things considered, in the interest of human diversity and of the continuing existence of human lifestyles that aren't necessarily worse than ours, it is probably worth governments trying a little harder to protect the last freeliving humans both from the greed and brutality of our economy and from any well-meaning anthropologists. Michael Gross is a science writer based at Oxford. He can be contacted via his web page at www.michaelgross.co.uk Family life: The Awá in Brazil live in extended family groups-several hundred of them in contact but a larger number still uncontacted. Like many Amazonian Indians, Awá carry young babies in slings, traditionally made from palm fi bres, but nowadays from cloth.

The costs of direct speech

PsycEXTRA Dataset

On The Language Instinct

PsycEXTRA Dataset

The logic of indirect speech

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Jan 22, 2008

When people speak, they often insinuate their intent indirectly rather than stating it as a bald ... more When people speak, they often insinuate their intent indirectly rather than stating it as a bald proposition. Examples include sexual come-ons, veiled threats, polite requests, and concealed bribes. We propose a three-part theory of indirect speech, based on the idea that human communication involves a mixture of cooperation and conflict. First, indirect requests allow for plausible deniability, in which a cooperative listener can accept the request, but an uncooperative one cannot react adversarially to it. This intuition is supported by a game-theoretic model that predicts the costs and benefits to a speaker of direct and indirect requests. Second, language has two functions: to convey information and to negotiate the type of relationship holding between speaker and hearer (in particular, dominance, communality, or reciprocity). The emotional costs of a mismatch in the assumed relationship type can create a need for plausible deniability and, thereby, select for indirectness even ...

Common genetic variants associated with cognitive performance identified using the proxy-phenotype method

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Jan 23, 2014

We identify common genetic variants associated with cognitive performance using a two-stage appro... more We identify common genetic variants associated with cognitive performance using a two-stage approach, which we call the proxy-phenotype method. First, we conduct a genome-wide association study of educational attainment in a large sample (n = 106,736), which produces a set of 69 education-associated SNPs. Second, using independent samples (n = 24,189), we measure the association of these education-associated SNPs with cognitive performance. Three SNPs (rs1487441, rs7923609, and rs2721173) are significantly associated with cognitive performance after correction for multiple hypothesis testing. In an independent sample of older Americans (n = 8,652), we also show that a polygenic score derived from the education-associated SNPs is associated with memory and absence of dementia. Convergent evidence from a set of bioinformatics analyses implicates four specific genes (KNCMA1, NRXN1, POU2F3, and SCRT). All of these genes are associated with a particular neurotransmitter pathway involved ...

Representations and decision rules in the theory of self-deception

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2011

Self-deception is a powerful but overapplied theory. It is adaptive only when a deception-detecti... more Self-deception is a powerful but overapplied theory. It is adaptive only when a deception-detecting audience is in the loop, not when an inaccurate representation is invoked as an internal motivator. First, an inaccurate representation cannot be equated with self-deception, which entails two representations, one inaccurate and the other accurate. Second, any motivational advantages are best achieved with an adjustment to the decision rule on when to act, not with a systematic error in an internal representation.

Pattern Perception and the Comprehension of Graphs

Abstract: Three experiments tested the hypothesis that graphs convey information effectively beca... more Abstract: Three experiments tested the hypothesis that graphs convey information effectively because they can display global trends as geometric patterns that visual systems encode easily. A novel type of graph was invented in which angles/lengths of line segments joined end-to-end represented variables of rainfall and temperature of a set of months. It was expected that questions about single values of a variable would be easier to answer when the variable was encoded as a segment length whereas questions about global trends of ...

Language, Cognition, and Human Nature: Selected Articles

The Better Angels of Our Nature

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language

How the Mind Works

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language

Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure

Language Learnability and Language Development

Piled Modifiers, Buried Verbs, and Other Turgid Prose in the American Political Science Review

PS Political Science & Politics, Aug 18, 2021

ABSTRACTAcademic writing is notoriously difficult to read. Can political science do better? To as... more ABSTRACTAcademic writing is notoriously difficult to read. Can political science do better? To assess the state of prose in political science, we examined a recent issue of the American Political Science Review. We evaluated the articles according to the basic principles of style endorsed by writing experts. We find that the writing suffers most from heavy noun phrases in forms such as noun noun noun and adjective adjective noun noun. Further, we describe five contributors that swell noun phrases: piled modifiers, needless words, nebulous nouns, missing prepositions, and buried verbs. We document more than a thousand examples and demonstrate how to revise each one with principles of style. We also draw on research in cognitive science to explain why these constructions confuse, mislead, and distract readers.

Common knowledge, coordination, and the logic of self-conscious emotions

Evolution and Human Behavior, 2018

(K.A. Thomas). 1 An analysis of knowledge of social transgressions requires precisely differentia... more (K.A. Thomas). 1 An analysis of knowledge of social transgressions requires precisely differentiating the individual parties in dyadic interactions. The use of he or she or generic they in such discussions can quickly become unwieldy or ambiguous (Pinker, 2014). To avoid confusion, we will consistently refer to a hypothetical actor using a masculine singular pronoun, and to hypothetical onlookers using feminine or plural pronouns (Pinker, 2014).

Universality and diversity in human song

What is universal about music across human societies, and what varies? We built a corpus of ethno... more What is universal about music across human societies, and what varies? We built a corpus of ethnographic text on musical behavior from a representative sample of the world’s societies and a discography of audio recordings of the music itself. The ethnographic corpus reveals that music appears in every society observed; that variation in musical behavior is well-characterized by three dimensions, which capture the formality, arousal, and religiosity of song events; that musical behavior varies more within societies than across societies on these dimensions; and that music is regularly associated with behavioral contexts such as infant care, healing, dance, and love. The discography, analyzed through four representations (machine summaries, listener ratings, expert annotations, expert transcriptions), revealed that identifiable acoustic features of songs predict their primary behavioral function worldwide, and that these features fall along two dimensions, melodic and rhythmic complex...

Sibling Rivalry: Why the nature/nurture debate won't go away

The Boston Globe, Oct 13, 2002

Sibling rivalry Why the nature/nurture debate won't go away By Steven Pinker WHEN THE BRITISH EDU... more Sibling rivalry Why the nature/nurture debate won't go away By Steven Pinker WHEN THE BRITISH EDUCATOR Richard Mulcaster wrote in 1582 that ''Nature makes the boy toward, nurture sees him forward,'' he gave the world a euphonious name for an opposition that has been debated ever since. People's beliefs about the roles of heredity and environment affect their opinions on an astonishing range of topics. Do adolescents engage in violence and substance abuse because of the way their parents treated them as toddlers? Are people inherently selfish and aggressive, which would justify a market economy and a strong police, or could they become peaceable and cooperative, allowing the state to wither and a spontaneous socialism to blossom? Is there a universal aesthetic that allows great art to transcend time and place, or are people's tastes determined by their era and culture? With so much at stake, it is no surprise that debates over nature and nurture evoke such strong feelings.

The untenability of faitheism

Current Biology, 2015

With diversifi cation came inequality, and a small number of people at the top of the social peck... more With diversifi cation came inequality, and a small number of people at the top of the social pecking orders could enjoy luxuries that were entirely unthinkable in the more equitable hunter-gatherer societies. For the majority who worked the farms and then later on in the heavy industry, the 'civilised' lifestyle involves a lot of hard work rewarded with very little, tightly circumscribed pleasure. Members of isolated Amazonian tribes given the "full information" about the living and working conditions of the majority of people around the world might still conclude that civilised life is a more subtle form of slavery. All things considered, in the interest of human diversity and of the continuing existence of human lifestyles that aren't necessarily worse than ours, it is probably worth governments trying a little harder to protect the last freeliving humans both from the greed and brutality of our economy and from any well-meaning anthropologists. Michael Gross is a science writer based at Oxford. He can be contacted via his web page at www.michaelgross.co.uk Family life: The Awá in Brazil live in extended family groups-several hundred of them in contact but a larger number still uncontacted. Like many Amazonian Indians, Awá carry young babies in slings, traditionally made from palm fi bres, but nowadays from cloth.

The costs of direct speech

PsycEXTRA Dataset

On The Language Instinct

PsycEXTRA Dataset

The logic of indirect speech

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Jan 22, 2008

When people speak, they often insinuate their intent indirectly rather than stating it as a bald ... more When people speak, they often insinuate their intent indirectly rather than stating it as a bald proposition. Examples include sexual come-ons, veiled threats, polite requests, and concealed bribes. We propose a three-part theory of indirect speech, based on the idea that human communication involves a mixture of cooperation and conflict. First, indirect requests allow for plausible deniability, in which a cooperative listener can accept the request, but an uncooperative one cannot react adversarially to it. This intuition is supported by a game-theoretic model that predicts the costs and benefits to a speaker of direct and indirect requests. Second, language has two functions: to convey information and to negotiate the type of relationship holding between speaker and hearer (in particular, dominance, communality, or reciprocity). The emotional costs of a mismatch in the assumed relationship type can create a need for plausible deniability and, thereby, select for indirectness even ...

Common genetic variants associated with cognitive performance identified using the proxy-phenotype method

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Jan 23, 2014

We identify common genetic variants associated with cognitive performance using a two-stage appro... more We identify common genetic variants associated with cognitive performance using a two-stage approach, which we call the proxy-phenotype method. First, we conduct a genome-wide association study of educational attainment in a large sample (n = 106,736), which produces a set of 69 education-associated SNPs. Second, using independent samples (n = 24,189), we measure the association of these education-associated SNPs with cognitive performance. Three SNPs (rs1487441, rs7923609, and rs2721173) are significantly associated with cognitive performance after correction for multiple hypothesis testing. In an independent sample of older Americans (n = 8,652), we also show that a polygenic score derived from the education-associated SNPs is associated with memory and absence of dementia. Convergent evidence from a set of bioinformatics analyses implicates four specific genes (KNCMA1, NRXN1, POU2F3, and SCRT). All of these genes are associated with a particular neurotransmitter pathway involved ...

Representations and decision rules in the theory of self-deception

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2011

Self-deception is a powerful but overapplied theory. It is adaptive only when a deception-detecti... more Self-deception is a powerful but overapplied theory. It is adaptive only when a deception-detecting audience is in the loop, not when an inaccurate representation is invoked as an internal motivator. First, an inaccurate representation cannot be equated with self-deception, which entails two representations, one inaccurate and the other accurate. Second, any motivational advantages are best achieved with an adjustment to the decision rule on when to act, not with a systematic error in an internal representation.

Pattern Perception and the Comprehension of Graphs

Abstract: Three experiments tested the hypothesis that graphs convey information effectively beca... more Abstract: Three experiments tested the hypothesis that graphs convey information effectively because they can display global trends as geometric patterns that visual systems encode easily. A novel type of graph was invented in which angles/lengths of line segments joined end-to-end represented variables of rainfall and temperature of a set of months. It was expected that questions about single values of a variable would be easier to answer when the variable was encoded as a segment length whereas questions about global trends of ...

Obituary: Roger Brown

Cognition, 1998

Steven Pinker. Department of Psychology. Harvard University (email). Enter your keywords: About; ... more Steven Pinker. Department of Psychology. Harvard University (email). Enter your keywords: About; Books; Publications; Research; Lectures; Media; Photos. Obituary: Roger Brown. Citation: Pinker, S. (1998). Obituary: Roger Brown. Cognition. 66, 199-213. Export. Tagged; XML; BibTex; Google Scholar. Preview, Attachment, Size. PDF, 78.31 KB. Publications By Type. Book (12); Book Chapter (1); Broadcast (1); Conference Paper (1); Conference Proceedings (1); Journal Article (40); Magazine Article (44); Newspaper Article (25); Web Article (3). Publications ...

Seeking the neural basis of grammar: English noun and verb morphological processing investigated with rapid event-related fMRI and intracortical electrophysiology

Technology on May 2 5 th, 2003 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Maste... more

The Decline of War and Conceptions of Human Nature

International Studies Review, 2013

Many observers are skeptical of the evidence that war has declined, because they think that a dec... more Many observers are skeptical of the evidence that war has declined, because they think that a decline in war requires an unrealistic, romantic theory of human nature. In fact it is compatible with a hardheaded view of human violent inclinations which is firmly rooted in evolutionary biology. Homo sapiens evolved with violent tendencies, but they are triggered by particular circumstances; they are not a hydraulic urge that must periodically be discharged. And though our species evolved with motives that can erupt in violence, it also evolved motives that can inhibit violence, including self-control, empathy, a sense of fairness, and open-ended cognitive mechanisms that can devise technologies for reducing violence. The Decline of War and Conceptions of Human Nature War appears to be in decline. In the two-thirds of a century since the end of World War II, the great powers, and developed states in general, have rarely faced each other on the battlefield, a historically unprecedented s...

The blank slate: the modern denial of human nature

Choice Reviews Online, 2003

The dominant theory of human nature in modern intellectual life is based on the doctrines of the ... more The dominant theory of human nature in modern intellectual life is based on the doctrines of the blank slate, the noble savage, and the ghost in the machine; these doctrines are being challenged by the sciences of the mind, brain, genes, and evolution. Behavioral geneticists have found that all behavioral traits are partially heritable-challenging the doctrine of the blank slate. Evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists have underscored the ubiquity of conflict in human affairschallenging the doctrine of the noble savage. Modern science has shown that we have every reason to believe that when the physiological activity of the brain stops, the person ceases to exist-a direct challenge to the doctrine of the ghost in the machine. Even if there are dangers in embracing too strong a doctrine of human nature, there are also dangers in denying human nature.

The mystery of consciousness

Time, Jan 29, 2007

The young women had survived the car crash, after a fashion. In the five months since parts of he... more The young women had survived the car crash, after a fashion. In the five months since parts of her brain had been crushed, she could open her eyes but didn't respond to sights, sounds or jabs. In the jargon of neurology, she was judged to be in a persistent vegetative state. In crueler everyday language, she was a vegetable. So picture the astonishment of British and Belgian scientists as they scanned her brain using a kind o MRI that detects blood flow to active parts of the brain. When they recited sentences, the parts involved in language lit up. When they asked her to imagine visiting the rooms of her house, the part involved in navigating space and recognizing places ramped up. And when they asked her to imagine playing tennis, the regions that trigger motion joined in. Indeed, her scans were barely different from those of healthy volunteers. The woman, it appears, had glimmerings of consciousness. Try to comprehend what it is like to be that woman. Do you appreciate the words and caresses of you distraught family while racked with frustration at your inability to reassure them that they are gettin through? Or do you drift in a haze, springing to life with a concrete thought when a voice prods you, only to slip back into blankness? If we could experience this existence, would we prefer it to death? And if these questions have answers, would they change our policies toward unresponsive patients-making the Terri Schiavo case look like child's play? The report of this unusual case last September was just the latest shock from a bracing new field, the science of consciousness. Questions once confined to theological speculations and late-night dorm

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

Library Review, 2008

New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker possesses that rare combination of scientific apt... more New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker possesses that rare combination of scientific aptitude and verbal eloquence that enables him to provide lucid explanations of deep and powerful ideas. His previous books��including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slate��have catapulted him into the limelight as one of today��&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#x27;s most important and popular science writers. Now, in The Stuff of Thought, Pinker marries two of the subjects he knows best: language and human nature. The result is a fascinating look at how our words ...

Constrained productivity in the acquisition of the dative alternation

The Nature of Regularity and Irregularity: Evidence from Hebrew Nominal Inflection

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2002

Most evidence for the role of regular inflection as a default operation comes from languages that... more Most evidence for the role of regular inflection as a default operation comes from languages that confound the morphological properties of regular and irregular forms with their phonological characteristics. For instance, regular plurals tend to faithfully preserve the base's phonology (e.g., rat-rats), whereas irregular nouns tend to alter it (e.g., mouse-mice). The distinction between regular and irregular inflection may thus

The dislike of regular plurals in compounds

The Mental Lexicon, 2007

English speakers disfavor compounds containing regular plurals compared to irregular ones. Haskel... more English speakers disfavor compounds containing regular plurals compared to irregular ones. Haskell, MacDonald and Seidenberg (2003) attribute this phenomenon to the rarity of compounds containing words with the phonological properties of regular plurals. Five experiments test this proposal. Experiment 1 demonstrated that novel regular plurals (e.g., loonks-eater) are disliked in compounds compared to irregular plurals with illicit (hence less frequent) phonological patterns (e.g., leevk-eater, plural of loovk). Experiments 2–3 found that people show no dispreference for compounds containing nouns that merely sound like regular plurals (e.g., hose-installer vs. pipe-installer). Experiments 4–5 showed a robust effect of morphological regularity when phonological familiarity was controlled: Compounds containing regular plural nonwords (e.g., gleeks-hunter, plural of gleek) were disfavored relative to irregular, phonologically-identical, plurals (e.g., breex-container, plural of broox)....

The Human Mind: An Introduction to Mind, Brain and Behavior

Language and Human Nature

To ensure that this class is a seminar in which discussion is possible, I will have to limit it t... more

Thinking about Taboo Subjects

Human Nature