Charles E. Osgood

Charles Egerton Osgood (November 20, 1916 – September 15, 1991) was a distinguished American psychologist who developed a technique for measuring the connotative meaning of concepts, known as the semantic differential. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Osgood as the 40th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.^[1]

Career

Osgood was born in Somerville, Massachusetts. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University in 1945.^[2]

He was a professor of psychology of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana from 1949 to 1984, and a research professor of the Institute of Communications Research (ICR), in the UI College of Communications. He was the Director of the ICR from 1957 to 1984. He served as president of the American Psychological Association from 1962 to 1963.^[2]

Among his many awards were the APA's Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award (1960), and the APA's Kurt Lewin Award (1971).

Charles Osgood died in 1991.

GRIT

At the height of Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, Osgood formulated a new approach to international relations called "Graduated Reciprocation in Tension-reduction", or GRIT. This was first articulated in a paper titled, "Reciprocal Initiative", and developed at greater length in his seminal book, An Alternative To War Or Surrender, both published in 1962. Osgood hoped to be able to reverse the nuclear arms race through a series of carefully calibrated, reciprocal steps which would gradually foster greater trust between the two superpowers. He was appointed to the Social Science Advisory Board of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, serving from 1964 to 1971.^[3]

Bibliography

• Charles E. Osgood, Method and Theory in Experimental Psychology, Oxford University Press, 1956.
• Charles E. Osgood, George Suci, & Percy Tannenbaum, The Measurement of Meaning. University of Illinois Press, 1957. ISBN 0-252-74539-6.
• Charles E. Osgood, "Suggestions for Winning the Real War with Communism," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 3 (1959), pp. 295–325.
• Charles E. Osgood, "Reciprocal Initiative", in The Liberal Papers, Doubleday/Anchor, 1962.
• Charles E. Osgood, An Alternative To War Or Surrender, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1962.
• Charles E. Osgood & Murray S. Miron (eds), Approaches to the Study of Aphasia, University of Illinois Press, 1963.
• Charles E. Osgood. Perspective in Foreign Policy. Palo Alto: Pacific Books, 1966. ASIN B0007DRMIS.
• Charles E. Osgood, William S. May, & Murray S. Miron, Cross Cultural Universals of Affective Meaning. University of Illinois Press, 1975. ISBN 0-252-00426-4.
• Charles E. Osgood, Focus on Meaning: Explorations in Semantic Space. Mouton Publishers, 1979.
• Charles E. Osgood, Psycholinguistics, Cross-Cultural Universals, and Prospects for Mankind. Praeger Publishers, 1988. ISBN 0-03-059433-2.
• Charles E. Osgood & Oliver Tzeng (eds), Language, Meaning, and Culture: The Selected Papers of C. E. Osgood. Praeger Publishers, 1990. ISBN 0-275-92521-8.

Footnotes

1. Haggbloom, Steven J.; Warnick, Jason E.; Jones, Vinessa K.; Yarbrough, Gary L.; Russell, Tenea M.; Borecky, Chris M.; McGahhey, Reagan; et al. (2002). "The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century". Review of General Psychology 6 (2): 139–152. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.6.2.139.
2. U. of I. Archives - Biographical Sketch
3. University of Illinois Archives