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Jerome Bruner

American psychologist and scholar

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ114867
Source-derived summary

Jerome Seymour Bruner (October 1, 1915 – June 5, 2016) was an American psychologist who made significant contributions to human cognitive psychology and cognitive learning theory in educational psychology. Bruner was a senior research fellow at the New York University School of Law. He received a BA in 1937 from Duke University and a PhD from Harvard University in 1941. He taught and conducted research at Harvard University, the University of Oxford, and New York University. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Bruner as the 28th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Education and early life

Bruner was born blind (as a result of cataracts) on October 1, 1915, in New York City, to Polish Jewish immigrants, Herman and Rose Bruner. An operation at age 2 restored his vision. He was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Duke University in 1937; a master's in psychology in 1939 and a doctorate in psychology in 1941, both from Harvard University. Bruner published his first article on a psychological subject in 1939, examining the effect of thymus extract on the sexual behavior of the female rat. During World War II, Bruner served on the Psychological Warfare Division of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force committee under General Dwight D. Eisenhower, researching social psychological phenomena.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Jerome Bruner” is american psychologist and scholar. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jerome, Bruner and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1915, 2016, 1937, 1941—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1915-10-01. For this dossier, Jerome, Bruner and American is the immediate research focus.
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The phrase “american psychologist and scholar” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q114867. VIAF identifies the subject as 108296631. The Library of Congress control number is n79119142. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1915, 2016, 1937 and 1941.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Jerome Bruner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.