Hans Eysenck

Lore & Background

Eysenck was born in Berlin, Germany. His mother was Silesian-born film star Helga Molander, and his father, Eduard Anton Eysenck, was an actor and nightclub entertainer. He was brought up by his maternal grandmother who was a Jewish convert to Catholicism; she was deported and died in a concentration camp. He moved to England in the 1930s due to his opposition to the Nazi party.

He received his PhD in 1940 from University College London under the supervision of Sir Cyril Burt. He was Professor of Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, from 1955 to 1983. He was a founding member of the World Cultural Council in 1981 and founding editor of the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

He wrote about 80 books and more than 1,600 journal articles. With his first wife, Hans Eysenck had a son Michael Eysenck. He had four children with his second wife, the psychologist Sybil B. G. Eysenck: Gary, Connie, Kevin, and Darrin.

Hans and Sybil Eysenck collaborated as psychologists for many years. Sybil Eysenck died in December 2020. Hans Eysenck died of a brain tumour in a London hospice in 1997. He was an atheist. The Eysencks' home was at 10 Dorchester Drive, Herne Hill, London, from 1960 until their respective deaths.

Reader's Guide

Eysenck's research included claims that certain personality types had an elevated risk of cancer and heart disease and research on IQ scores and race (first published in 1971), which were a significant source of controversy. Scholars have identified errors and suspected data manipulation in his work, and large replications have failed to confirm the relationships he purported to find. An enquiry on behalf of King's College London found papers coauthored with Ronald Grossarth-Maticek to be 'incompatible with modern clinical science', with 26 joint papers considered suspect.

Fourteen papers were retracted in 2020, and over 60 statements of concern were issued. David Marks and Rod Buchanan have argued that 87 publications by Eysenck should be retracted. He advocated a strong influence from genetics and race on IQ differences, supporting Arthur Jensen's questioning of whether variation in IQ between racial groups was entirely environmental.

He was punched by a protester during a talk at the London School of Economics and received bomb threats and threats to kill his young children. Some of his later work was funded by the Pioneer Fund. He also received funding for consultation research via the New York legal firm Jacob & Medinger, acting on behalf of the tobacco industry, receiving more than £800,000 according to The Independent.

Did You Know?

• Eysenck was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.
• He created a dimensional model of personality structure based on empirical factor-analytic research.
• His book 'The Psychology of Politics' suggested political behavior could be analyzed in terms of two independent dimensions: left-right and tenderminded-toughminded.