George A. Miller, Psychologist
by This is a look at the life and times of famous psychologist George Miller.
Miller met Noam Chomsky in September of 1956 at MIT. This meeting enlightened Miller as to the phonetic differences between languages. A fire almost robbed Miller of Chomsky’s Manuscript as well as the lab cat. In the summer of 1957, Miller became involved in Social Science Research Council.
This led Miller to deliver workshops dedicated to the idea that social scientists should learn to think about their problems mathematically. He continued to spend time with Chomsky and even used him as an assistant.
Chomsky helped Miller formalize his theories. They started to delve into the world of semantics, “Flying planes is dangerous,” and “Flying planes are dangerous.”
Carl Hovland was a Yale graduate who carried out war research that Miller respected. Carl loved electronics, especially acoustic electronics. Carl used Shannon’s measure to estimate the amount of information subjects received in a concept recognition experiment. He helped elucidate the fact that positive information is better received and remembered than negative information. Here they laid the groundwork for computational psychology.
The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences is located in Palo Alto, California. This was a one-year venture designed to enrich the social and behavioral scientist. In the year, Miller was there, social anthropologists ruled the venue and Miller listened. He claimed it broadened him.
This was a melting pot for psychologists and a great generator of debate and thought. The effort proved so invigorating that they wrote a book of the exploits, “Plans and the Structure of Behavior in 1960. Miller brought these plans back with him to Harvard, resulted in the TOTE unit, Test whether the goal was realized, Operate to reduce the discrepancies between the actual situation and the goal, Test again, Exit when the test is satisfied, and (feedback Loop). Message was that you could think more effectively about behavior if you use TOTE notations rather than S-R notations. Obviously, the latter is less complex and thorough.
Jerome S. Bruner helped Miller realize that social status is so important that it permeates every psychological process, and any psychologist who tries to ignore it will necessarily collect very noisy data. Bruner was one of Allport’s boys and this did not bother Miller. Miller returned to California in 1960, deeply disillusioned by the parameters Harvard had put on psychology.
He found solstice in talking to Jerry Bruner. Miller and Bruner formed the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies. Miller came out of the closet; he was very interested in the mind. In 1963-64, Miller was a Fullbright Scholar at Oxford. The Center at Harvard took off and Miller was to be appointed chair. He had responsibility, but no authority. He and Dick Herrnstien used to converse at length regarding their lofty positions. Miller also worked with the NIH. Miller left Harvard in 1967.
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