Luther L. Bernard

Luther Lee Bernard (1881 to 1951) was an American sociologist and psychologist and the 22nd president of the American Sociological Association, described as among the best known sociologists in the United States between the 1920s and the 1940s. He studied at the University of Missouri and at the University of Chicago, where he took his doctorate, taught sociology and social psychology at several North American universities and was finally professor of sociology at Pennsylvania State University. According to Lewis Coser his social psychological theory can be described as modified behaviorism, adopting basic principles of behaviorism while emphasizing the influence of the environment on character formation, and through him American social psychology turned away from an exclusively biological orientation. His Onion Skins project collected questionnaires and autobiographies from social scientists across the country. His works include Instincts (1924), An Introduction to Social Psychology (1926), The Development of Methods in Sociology (1928), Social Control (1939) and, with Jessie Bernard, Origins of American Sociology (1943).