Raven, Bertram (1926-)

Bertram H. Raven is a social psychologist widely considered one of the most important researchers on interpersonal influence and social power. His work has been applied to areas including organizational power relationships, health psychology, close relationships, education, confrontations between political figures, and religion as a mechanism of social control. He has authored or coauthored over 85 papers, chapters, and books. Most cited is the bases of power theory, which he developed with John R. P. French Jr. This is the most common model of interpersonal power in the social psychological and industrial/organizational literature. Raven's recent work has focused on his power/interaction model of interpersonal influence—a further development of the original bases of power model. Raven also has a long-term interest in interdependence in group problem solving.

One of six children, Raven was born in Youngstown, Ohio, to Russian Jewish immigrants [Page 555]in a Yiddish-speaking home. A precociously accomplished musician, Raven was most interested in a career in music until drafted into the army in 1944 at age 18. Here he took a course called Psychology and Life and fell in love with psychology. After his discharge, he entered Ohio State University, completing his BA in two years (1948), and MA (1949) in one on the GI Bill. His desire to become a social psychologist was ignited by taking his first course in social psychology with Donald Campbell and by reading Kurt Lewin and early issues of the Journal of Social Issues.

Entering the PhD program in social psychology at the University of Michigan, Raven received a research assistantship with Leon Festinger at the Research Center for Group Dynamics. Raven completed his doctoral dissertation with John R. P. French Jr. in 1953 after Festinger (then his dissertation advisor) left for the University of Minnesota. While continuing to work with French, Raven stayed on at the Research Center for Group Dynamics as a research associate with a lectureship in psychology.

After traveling to the Netherlands on a Fulbright scholarship, he met his future wife Celia while vacationing in Israel. After a position at the RAND Corporation, in 1956 he accepted a position at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and has been a professor there ever since. Currently professor emeritus, his research and teaching continue. At UCLA he has been director of the Survey Research Center and the training program in health psychology, and has chaired the department of psychology for 5 years. In 1966 he was instrumental in starting the UCLA Upward Bound program. He has also served as a visiting professor at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the London School of Economics, the University of Washington, and the University of Hawaii. He has served as external examiner for the University of the West Indies.

Awards include two Fulbright scholarships, a Guggenheim fellowship, a senior NATO Science Fellowship, an NIMH fellowship, and the Kurt Lewin Award for relating social psychological research to social action. He is a fellow in the American Psychological Society, the International Association of Applied Psychology, and five divisions of the American Psychological Association. He has received special recognition from the Los Angeles city council and mayor, and the California state legislature and governor.

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