Richard Benjamin Darlington (born November 16, 1937) is an American psychologist, statistician, and academic. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Cornell University, where he taught for more than four decades. His research has focused on behavioral statistics, quantitative methods in psychology, educational evaluation, developmental psychology, and comparative neuroscience. He has also contributed to regression analysis and for collaborative research on the evolution of vertebrate brain structure.
Early life and education Darlington was born on November 16, 1937, in Woodbury, New Jersey, United States. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Swarthmore College in 1959 before completing a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in psychology at the University of Minnesota in 1963.
Career Cornell University Darlington joined the faculty of Cornell University in 1963 as an assistant professor of psychology. He became an associate professor in 1968 and was promoted to full professor in 1980. Following his retirement from full-time teaching in 2005, he was named Professor Emeritus of Psychology.
Behavioral statistics and quantitative methods Darlington's primary research area was behavioral statistics. His work emphasized practical applications of statistical methods in psychology and education, particularly regression analysis, multivariate statistics, and research design.
Darlington has also noted his long professional association with psychologist Stephen G. West, who studied at Cornell as an undergraduate before pursuing graduate work at Stanford University. His other students include Mark F. Lenzenweger, a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the State University of New York at Binghamton and Adjunct Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and Joseph C. Cappelleri, Executive Director of Biostatistics at Pfizer Inc. and adjunct professor at Brown University (biostatistics).
Research on preschool education During the mid-1970s, Darlington worked with Irving Lazar at Cornell University as Assistant Director of the Consortium for Longitudinal Studies, a collaborative research initiative examining the long-term outcomes of early childhood education programs. The consortium developed statistical methods for integrating findings from multiple preschool studies that differed in design and participant populations. Their analyses provided evidence that participation in early childhood education was associated with improved educational outcomes, including lower rates of grade retention and placement in remedial education.
Brain evolution research Beginning in the early 1990s, Darlington collaborated extensively with neuroscientist Barbara Finlay on studies of vertebrate brain evolution. Their research challenged aspects of the prevailing "mosaic evolution" hypothesis, which proposed that different brain regions evolved largely independently according to species-specific functional demands. Instead, Darlington and Finlay argued that most regions of the mammalian brain increase in size in a coordinated manner during evolution, with the olfactory bulb representing a notable exception.
Books Behavioral Statistics (with Patricia M. Carlson) Regression Analysis and Linear Models: Concepts, Applications, and Implementation (with Andrew F. Hayes) Radicals and Squares: Statistical Methods for the Behavioral Sciences Radicals and Squares and Other Statistical Procedures for the Behavioral Sciences Behavioral Statistics in Action (later instructional edition/revision of Behavioral Statistics)
Selected publications Darlington, R. B. (1968). Multiple regression in psychological research. Darlington, R. B. (1971). Another look at "cultural fairness." Darlington, R. B. (1973). Regression and analysis of variance. Darlington, R. B. (1975). Factor analysis and related multivariate methods. Darlington, R. B. (1978). The Consortium for Longitudinal Studies research on preschool education. Darlington, R. B., & Hayes, A. F. Publications on regression analysis and linear modeling. Finlay, B. L., & Darlington, R. B. (1995). Linked regularities in the development and evolution of mammalian brains. Science. Finlay, B. L., Darlington, R. B., & Nicastro, N. (2001). Developmental structure in brain evolution. Finlay, B. L., Darlington, R. B., et al. (2004). Developmental constraints in mammalian brain evolution. Finlay, B. L., Hinz, F., & Darlington, R. B. (2011). Mapping behavioral evolution onto brain evolution. Finlay, B. L., Darlington, R. B., et al. (2013). Modeling Transformations of Neurodevelopmental Sequences across Mammalian Species. Darlington, R. B. Publications on voting systems and electoral mathematics after retirement.
Awards and honors Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) National Science Foundation Fellowship
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