Jack Block, Professor 1924-2010

Jack Block, my mother's brother, my uncle, died a few weeks ago. He was a Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley and was famous in psychology circles for one of the longest running longitudinal studies (studying the same focus group over many years, in this case 32 years). He was famous in my family as a strong, handsome man of erudite tastes and a sharp intellect.

His obituary in the New York Times follows.

Jack Block, Who Studied Young Children Into Adulthood, Dies at 85

By MARGALIT FOX
Published: February 6, 2010, The New York Times

Jack Block, a prominent psychologist of personality who in 1968 began studying a group of California preschoolers and for decades kept watch as they moved from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood, died on Jan. 13 at his home in El Cerrito, Calif. He was 85.

The cause was complications of a spinal cord injury he suffered 10 years ago, his daughter Susan Block said.

At his death, Professor Block was an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he had taught from 1957 until his retirement in 1991.

Professor Block’s project began with more than 100 3-year-olds in the San Francisco area. He studied them again when they were 4, 5, 7, 11, 14, 18, 23 and, finally, 32, when the study ended. Much of the work was conducted with his wife, Jeanne Humphrey Block, a collaborator until her death in 1981.

While other longitudinal studies examined the effects of I.Q. or social class on later life, the one by the Blocks focused on psychological makeup. At bottom, the questions they asked were these: What makes people turn out as they do, and to what extent can adult personality be predicted by childhood temperament?

“It was probably the only one of its kind that started with such young children,” Per F. Gjerde, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said of the Blocks’ study. Nowadays, Professor Gjerde said, “you would start at birth, but in 1968, age 3 was a very, very early beginning.”

Investigating the ways in which subjects’ early lives informed their later ones, the Blocks looked at issues like childhood responses to parental divorce, adolescent drug use and adult political affiliation.

In a 1986 study, for instance, they examined members of the original group whose parents eventually divorced. Conducted with Professor Gjerde, the study upended the received wisdom that divorce in and of itself causes disruptive behavior in children.

Instead, the authors found, children from the divorced families — in particular the boys — had displayed antisocial behavior years before the divorce took place. In other words, the boys’ behavior, with the stresses on family life it entailed, could have been a cause of divorce as well as a consequence.

A 1990 study, by Professor Block and Jonathan Shedler, found that teenagers who experimented with drugs in a limited way tended to be better adjusted than those who either used drugs habitually or abstained entirely.

Jacob Block, always called Jack, was born in Brooklyn on April 28, 1924. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Brooklyn College and a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford in 1951.

Besides his daughter Susan, Professor Block is survived by two other daughters, Jody Block and Carol Block; a son, David; and four grandchildren.

His books include “Lives Through Time” (Bancroft, 1971; with Norma Haan).

One of Professor Block’s studies drew particular notice in the news media. Published in The Journal of Research in Personality in 2006, it found that subjects who at 3 years old had seemed thin-skinned, rigid, inhibited and vulnerable tended at 23 to be political conservatives. On the other hand, 3-year-olds characterized as self-reliant, energetic, somewhat dominating and resilient were inclined to become liberals.

Pundits’ responses to the study ranged from enthusiastic approval to caustic dismissal, depending on the politics of the critic.