ABA International Fellows
Murray Sidman
A complete behavior analyst, Murray Sidman has been in the forefront of the field since its inception. He has been a fundamental mover and shaper of its direction through his conceptual writings and extensive programs of research in such fundamental and broad-sweeping areas as: scientific methods, avoidance behavior, stimulus control and errorless learning, the social impact of coercion in society, and so much more. For these and his numerous other stellar achievements, he has been the recipient of numerous awards, including, among others, the award for International Dissemination of Behavior Analysis, EAHB SIG Distinguished Career Award, the Dole Award, and Lifetime Achievement Award.
Below is a brief biographical sketch from the 2004 CALABA program, where he was an invited speaker.
Dr. Sidman received a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University in 1952 and went on to make contributions of enormous significance to the field of behavior analysis. He has held positions as a Research Psychologist at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and the E.K. Shriver Center for Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, where he served as director of the Behavioral Sciences Department. Dr. Sidman has taught countless students at Columbia University, Harvard Medical School, University of Nevada, Northeastern University, and Johns Hopkins University. His influence is international, as Dr. Sidman has held academic appointments at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, Keio University in Tokyo, Japan and the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Dr. Sidman’s publications in peer-refereed journals number close to 100 and have defined much of our current understanding of stimulus control, stimulus equivalence, and avoidance behavior. His 1960 text, Tactics of Scientific Research, is considered the first primer on within-subject research methodology. It is a classic that is still used today. Other contributions have extended to important social problems. The second edition of his book Coercion and Its Fallout was published in 2000, and his treatment of “Terrorism as Behavior” is in press in Behavior and Social Issues. Dr. Sidman is currently at work on his newest text, Applied Behavior Analysis: How and Why.