Kagan, Jerome (1929– )

US psychologist. He conducted extensive research on child development, documented in such books as Personal Development 1971, Growth of the Child 1978, and The Nature of the Chilld 1982. He suggested that both sides involved in the nature/nuture controversy were too rigid – that the parameters of personality formation were still obscure.

He was born in Newark, New Jersey. Educated at Rutgers and Yale, he did research in developmental psychology at Ohio's Fels Institute 1957–64 before taking up his teaching career at Yale.