homage to donn byrne

5/20/2018 Homage to Donn Byrne

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Homage to Psychologist Donn Byrne (1931-2014)

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Donn Byrne, an Americanpsychologist , famous for his

similarity-attraction paradigm,

repression-sensitization scale,

and social psychological

perspective on human sexuality

among many other contributions

to management and psychology,

died on August 10, 2014 in New

York, USA. Ramadhar Singh,[Byrnes former doctoral student

at Purdue University (1970-1973)

and currently a Distinguished

Professor at the Indian Institute

of Management Bangalore], looks

back at his illustrious mentors

life and career, and describes how

Byrne mentored him.

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Kabir (1440-1518), the Indian

mystic, asked, Given both Guru [teacher]

and God standing in front of you, whom

should you bow to first? Kabir

counselled, All the glory should go to

your Guru for showing the path to God.

I then unreservedly bow to one ofmy esteemed Gurus, Donn Byrne, Ph. D.

(Stanford, 1958; Supervisor: Clarence L.

Winder). During his more than four

decade of academic career at the

University of Texas (1959-69), Purdue

University (1969-79), and the University

at Albany, SUNY (1979-2001), Byrne

initiated 52 doctoral students from

several countries to Psychology as a

Science. We fondly remember his advice

to make only one difference between

experiments on an issue and to continue

research only if you enjoy doing it.

Donn, born on December 19, 1931,

in Austin, Texas to Bernard and Rebecca

Singleton Byrne, died peacefully at his

home on Sunday, August 10, 2014 at

Feura Bush, New York. He is survived by

three daughters (Robin Lynn Byrne,

Donn Byrne


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Lindsey Kelley Byrne, and Rebecka Byrne

Kelley) and a grand-daughter (Teagan

McLaughlin), and was predeceased by a

son, Keven Singleton Byrne.

Byrne is perhaps best known forhis research on attitude similarity and

interpersonal attraction. People have long

suggested that birds of a feather flock

together. Byrne (1961a) translated this

adage into a testable hypothesis that the

greater the similarity between attitudes

of two strangers, the greater is the

attraction between them. The regression

equation of Y = 5.44X + 6.62 (Y: attractionresponse measured on a scale of 2

[lowest] to 14 [highest]; X: proportion of

similar attitudes between the participant

and the partner manipulated by the

experimenter in a study; and the

empirical coefficients of 5.44 and 6.62 are

the respective slope and intercept of the

regression line) represented the positive

linear relationship between proportion of

similar attitudes and attraction that

Byrne identified early in his research.

Byrne was so attached to this law of

attraction that he often queried me

during our 44 years of contact as to how

well his equation fit each new set of data!

Byrnes doctoral students at

Purdue University continued the

attraction research he had initiated at the

University of Texas. The outcome was The

Attraction Paradigm by Byrne (1971).

The foci of this book were the way in

which research is conducted and the

way in which both theoretical and applied

may be seen to grow out of a base

relationship [i.e., the law of attraction]

(p. 414). Byrne further noted, the

attraction paradigm represents a

continuing research program which may

constitute a useful model for other

research, and, if it has anything to offer,

should continue to grow and to change

(p. 415). Of his nearly 20,000 citations in

Google Scholar as of August 29, 2014,

Byrnes (1961a) article in the Journal of

Abnormal and Social Psychology and his

1971 book were cited 1,325 and 4,945

times, respectively. The affective and

cognitive mechanisms underlying the

attitude similarity-attraction relationshipand their sequential orders continue to be

actively researched even today in social

psychology (e.g., Montoya & Horton,

2013; Singh, Wegener, Sankaran, Singh,

Lin, Seow, Teng, & Shuli, 2014).

Byrne also extended his similarity-

attraction theory to issues related to

management and organizational

behavior. For example, Byrne andNeuman (1992) articulated the

implications of attraction research for

organizational issues in general, and

Pierce, Byrne, and Aguinis (1996) applied

it specifically to workplace romance. In

fact, similarity-attraction is one of the

Donn Byrne circa 2000


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theoretical approaches to understanding

the process effects of diversity in

contemporary organizations (Jackson &

Joshi, 2011).

Byrne is equally known for hisenduring contributions to personality

psychology and human sexuality. His

articles on the Repression-Sensitization

Scale(Byrne, 1961b) and on erotophobia

erotophilia as dimension of personality

(Fisher, Byrne, White, & Kelley, 1988), for

example, were cited 1,231 and 663 times,

respectively. His textbookAn Introduction

to Personality: A Research Approach(Byrne, 1966) changed the established

paradigm of teaching the grand theories

in personality courses to the scientific

study of the assessment, antecedents,

correlates, dynamics, and change of

dimensions of individual differences.

Donn Byrne authored/co-authored

140 research papers, 36 chapters in

edited volumes, and more than 30textbooks. Among his textbooks, the

aforementioned personality textbook and

its subsequent two editions (2ndand 3rdin

1974 and 1981, respectively), and Social

Psychology: Understanding Human

Interaction(Baron, Byrne, & Griffitt, 1974,

and its subsequent 10 editions with

Baron and the 11-12th editions with

Baron and Branscombe) have been very

popular and influential. Byrne also co-

authored four editions of a textbook of

psychology with Henry C. Lindgren and

two editions of another textbook of

psychology with Robert A. Baron and

Barry H. Kantowitz.

Byrne was a member of the US

Presidents Commission on Obscenity and

Pornography (1969-1970). His paper in

the Personality and Social Psychology

Bulletin (Byrne, 1977) provided an

overview of the history of the scientific

study of human sexuality. It also offered a

new perspective on how the external

stimuli and the mediating processes

might determine human sexual behavior.

His textbook, Exploring Human Sexuality

coauthored with Kathryn Kelley, is widely

referred to and had two editions in 1977

and 1992.

Byrne served as the President of

the Midwestern Psychological Association

(1979-80) and the Society for the

Scientific Study of Sexuality (1991-92).

After his retirement from SUNY-Albany in

2001, Byrne continued there as a

Distinguished Professor Emeritus, and

remained a Fellow in the Association of

Psychological Science, American

Psychological Association, Midwestern

Psychological Association, Society for

Experimental Social Psychology, Society

for Personality and Social Psychology, and

Society for the Scientific Study of

Sexuality. As much as being a man of

science and logic, he also had aesthetic

inclinations. He enjoyed music, painting,

reading, and writing as well as Chinese

and Indian food.

Byrne was an exceptional mentor

to his doctoral students and mentored 52

doctoral students. Way back in the late

70s, I was his 21st graduate student. He

trained his students not only for a degree


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Ramadhar Singh and Jeffrey D. Fisher (Byrnesanother doctoral student and currently a

Distinguished Professor at the University o

Connecticut) with Donn Byrne at his Feura

Bush Home on July 18, 2014.

to get a job but also to contribute

responsibly to the organization where

they worked and to the country in which

they lived. In my case, he encouraged and

supported my transfer from Ball State

University to Purdue University in 1970

for doctoral training. Byrne wanted me to

continue research in India for which

computer was necessary. Thus, he

contacted Kamta Prasad, the then-Head,

Department of Humanities and Social

Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology,

Kanpur, India, recommending that he hire

me as an Assistant Professor in 1972. His

training and mentoring laid thefoundation leading to where I have been

and am now. Our last meeting,

regrettably, was on July 18, 2014.

However, he will always remain an

inspiring Guru and well-wisher for me. I

am honored to express my admiration for

Donn Byrne and gratitude to him from

making me what I am today.

References

Baron, R. A., Byrne, D., & Griffitt, W.

(1974). Social psychology: Understanding

human interaction.Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Byrne, D. (1961a). Interpersonal

attraction and attitude similarity. Journal

of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 62,

713-715.

Byrne, D. (1961b). The Repression-

Sensitization Scale: Rationale, reliability,

and validity. Journal of Personality, 29,

334-349.

Byrne, D. (1966). An introduction to

personality: A research approach.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Byrne, D. (1971). The attraction

paradigm. New York: Academic Press.

Byrne, D. (1977). Social psychology and

the study of sexual behavior. Personalityand Social PsychologyBulletin, 3, 3-30.

Byrne, D., & Neuman, J. H. (1992). The

implications of attraction research for

organizational issues. In. K. Kelley (Ed.),

Issues, theory, and research in


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industrial/organizational psychology (pp.

29-70). Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Jackson, S. E., & Joshi, A. (2011). Work

team diversity. I. S. Zedeck (Ed.), APA

handbook of industrial and organizationalpsychology (Vol. 1, pp. 651-686).

Washington, DC: APA Books.

Pierce, C. A., Byrne, D., & Aguinis, H.

(1996). Attraction in organizations: A

model of workplace romance. Journal of

Organizational Behavior, 17, 5-32.

Fisher, W.A., Byrne, D. White, L.A., &

Kelley, K. (1988). Erotophobia-

erotophilia as a dimension of personality.

Journal of Sex Research, 25, 123-151.

Montoya, R. M., & Horton, R. S. (2013). A

meta-analytic investigation of the

processes underlying the similarity-attraction effect. Journal of Social and

Personal Relationships, 30, 64-94.

Singh, R., Wegener, D. T., Sankaran, K.,

Singh, S. Lin, P. K. F., Seow, M. X., Teng, J. S.

Q., & Shuli , S. (2014). On the importance

of trust in interpersonal attraction from

attitude similarity. Journal of Social and

Personal Relationships, 32, in press.

Ramadhar Singh, Ph. D. (Purdue)

Distinguished Professor of Management

Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India

Webpage:http://www.iimb.ernet.in/webpage/ramadhar-singh

Acknowledgment. I thank Krithiga Sankaran, my current Research Associate, for searching Donn Byrnes

citations as of August 29, 2014 and

assisting me in the preparation of this document.
http://www.iimb.ernet.in/webpage/ramadhar-singhhttp://www.iimb.ernet.in/webpage/ramadhar-singhhttp://www.iimb.ernet.in/webpage/ramadhar-singh

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