Robert Rosenthal (1933-2024).

Abstract

Robert Rosenthal died on January 5, 2024, in Riverside, California, at the age of 90. Born March 2, 1933, in Giessen, Germany, just as the Nazis came to power, the young Bob-he always insisted that everyone call him "Bob"-and his family fled in 1939 to Rhodesia (a British African protectorate) before making it to New York and then Los Angeles. Bob's dissertation derived from the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). It compared projection in paranoid schizophrenic patients versus a normal control group after an experimental manipulation. Bob analyzed his dissertation pretest data (before the intervention) and found that his groups already differed in the direction that would support his expected result. Thus was launched the career and field of experimenter expectancy effects-"the Rosenthal effect." Saying that God also loved p < .06, Bob helped lead the charge against the ridiculous but long-standing practice whereby psychology journals would reject articles where significance testing did not reach the magical .05 level, regardless of the quality and importance of the research. With over 500 publications and hundreds of thousands of citations of his work, he forever transformed the fields of psychology and education. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).