Russell Hurlburt
American Psychologist
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Early life and education
Russell T. Hurlburt, the son of Richard G. Hurlburt and Ruth (née Sherrard) Hurlburt, married Roberta Rochkar in 1967. He earned his Bachelors of Science in engineering in aeronautical engineering from Princeton University. He received a M.S. in mechanical engineering in 1967 from the University of New Mexico.
Hurlburt took up the study of psychology while playing trumpet at military funerals during the Vietnam War. He was frustrated by the lack of attention psychology gave to everyday experiences and decided to pursue this. He earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, with an unpublished dissertation titled Self-observation and self-control, at the University of South Dakota.
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Career
Hurlburt started developing Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) in the 1970s. In 1973 he invented a beeper capable of delivering random beeps and patented it. Hurlburt's research started with the use of the beeper device in naturalistic settings. Originally he gave participants a questionnaire with a limited range of options. This facilitated quantitative comparison. Hurlburt reportedly grew frustrated at the limitations this placed on unveiling experience. He moved towards more in-depth qualitative interviewing.
DES recommendations for how first-person reports could be more accurately obtained include 1) interrupting a process at the moment it is occurring, 2) alerting subjects to pay careful attention to their cognitive process, and 3) coaching them in introspective procedures.
When refining the method, Hurlburt at first sampled himself extensively for around a year. He then concluded that it would be better not to use himself as a subject. Phenomena that he observed in himself he might more easily attribute to others. For approximately the next 25 years, he declined to participate in DES as a subject until the urgings of his students convinced him to try.
Hurlburt is a professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Additional sources
- Douglas, Kate. (2023). How are you thinking. New Scientist.
- Oakes, Kelly. (2019). What the voice inside your head says about you. BBC Future.