On the Psychobiology of Personality

Zuckerman received his Ph.D. in psychology from New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Science in 1954 with a specialization in clinical psychology. After graduation, he worked for three years as a clinical psychologist in state hospitals in Norwich, Connecticut and Indianapolis, Indiana. While in the latter position the Institute for Psychiatric Research was opened in the same medical center where he was working as a clinical psychologist. He obtained a position there with a joint appointment in the department of psychiatry. This was his first interdisciplinary experience with other researchers in psychiatry, biochemistry, psychopharmacology, and psychology.His first research areas were personality assessment and the relation between parental attitudes and psychopathology. During this time, he developed the first real trait-state test for affects, starting with the Affect Adjective Check List for anxiety and then broadening it to a three-factor trait-state test including anxiety, depression, and hostility (Multiple Affect Adjective Check List). Later, positive affect scales were added.Toward the end of his years at the institute, the first reports of the effects of sensory deprivation appeared and he began his own experiments in this field. These experiments, supported by grants from NIMH, occupied him for the next 10 years during his time at Brooklyn College, Adelphi University, and the research labs at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia.