David T. Lykken

Lykken, David T. age 78, internationally renowned scientist and author, died on September 15 at his home in Minneapolis. A professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Minnesota for nearly fifty years, he will be remembered for ground-breaking discoveries in psychophysiology, behavior genetics and the causes of antisocial behavior. Many of these discoveries were the result of three decades of research involving twins, including a landmark study of 65 pairs of twins who had been separated in infancy and reared apart.

Among his most famous scientific innovations are the theory of emergenesis, the set-point theory of happiness, and an understanding of the roots of psychopathic behavior. David will also be remembered for his social conscience. Having written the first scientific book on the uses and abuses of so-called "lie detectors", Lykken campaigned relentlessly against the then widespread practice of lie detector screening by employers and governmental agencies. Testifying before Congress and before courts in 26 states, David's efforts led to changes in the law and saved many individuals whose lives would otherwise have been ruined by phony pseudo-science.

David Thoreson Lykken was born in Minneapolis on June 18, 1928, the youngest of seven siblings. His father Henry Gilman Lykken was an inventor and engineer; his mother Frances Hamilton Lykken was a schoolteacher. In June 1945, on his seventeenth birthday, David volunteered for the U.S. Navy; he was training in radar school when the war ended. He enrolled at the University of Minnesota on the G.I. Bill, switching majors in his junior year from engineering to psychology. David wrote in his professional autobiography, "Psychology seemed right up my alley, an exciting new endeavor where lots of obvious ideas had not yet been exploited". While working on his doctoral degree in 1952 David married Harriet Betts, a social worker who later became one of Minnesota's leading environmental and political activists. When David received a research fellowship in 1953, they spent the following year in London, where David completed work for his Ph.D. in clinical psychology and neuropsychiatry. In a 1998 award from the Society for Psychophysiological Research, Lykken's Ph.D. dissertation is described as "one of the most famous ever published." Using novel quantitative research methods David showed that the psychological underpinnings of psychopathic behavior are temperaments combining abnormally low fear with impulsiveness. In his 1995 book The Antisocial Personalities, David extended this work with a sweeping data-based review of the psychology of criminal behavior.

David became a Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Minnesota in 1957. He made major advances in the fledgling field of psychophysiology, the use of physical responses as a measure of psychological states and traits. From the early 1970s onwards the bulk of his work involved twins, since (as he put it) "any research one might think of doing with human subjects is likely to be more interesting if you do it with twins." Lykken and his collaborators launched the long-range Minnesota Twin/Family Study in 1985, a project that is still on-going today. With Thomas Bouchard and collaborators, David engaged in the most famous twin research ever conducted: a study of 65 pairs of twins who had been separated in infancy and reared apart. The results of these landmark studies, published in Science and premier psychological journals, continue to have an enormous impact on the field of behavior genetics. Lykken and his collaborators demonstrated conclusively that the variability of virtually every psychological trait has a largely genetic basis.

These results also influenced David's own thinking. In his 1982 Presidential Address to the Society for Psychophysiological Research, he introduced the concept of emergenesis, the idea that complex combination of genes work configurally, not additively, in determining many human traits. This new genetic model, supported by extensive data from twin studies, explains important traits, such as genius, which are strongly determined by genetic factors but tend not to run in families.

Twin research also led David to develop the set-point theory of happiness. Twin data indicated that each individual has a genetically influenced set-point level for his or her general feeling of well-being. Major events, bad or good, cause temporary fluctuations in this level of happiness, but the tendency over time is to return to one's natural set-point. These results generated headlines, such as the New York Times "Nothing Can Buy Happiness, Some Researchers Say". But in his 1999 book Happiness, David elaborated simple psychological strategies to overcome these genetic predispositions.

David's social conscience developed in the 1960s, when he and his wife Harriet became political activists, motivated by opposition to the war in Vietnam. They were early supporters of Senator Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign in 1967/68. Their antiwar activism made front-page news after the events of May 9, 1970. On this evening, David and Harriet hosted a fund-raising party at their home, aimed at assisting protests of a missile site in North Dakota. The party was raided by a joint force of the Minneapolis Police morals and tactical squads, who arrested 19 attendees, including a Methodist bishop, a violinist with the Minnesota Orchestra, and the president of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union.

David Lykken was cited with operating a "disorderly house", a charge normally reserved for the proprietors of brothels and speakeasies. The police confiscated David's mail and professional papers, including reprints of scientific articles containing suspicious terms like "antisocial personality". After the charges against them were dismissed, the "Minneapolis 19" sued the arresting officers in federal court. The court awarded punitive damages that were paid by the city of Minneapolis.

In the 1950s David became interested in the polygraph, a device which measures electrodermal skin response and has proved indispensable in psychophysiological research. Polygraphs were also widely used as "lie detectors" in interrogations by governmental agencies and in employment screening. The first widely read scientific analysis and critique of lie detection appeared in a 1974 issue of the American Psychologist, authored by Lykken. The article showed that the lie detector tests then in use had no scientific basis or validity, and were especially prone to mislabeling innocent subjects as guilty.

Since at this time on the order of a million Americans per year were being subjected to lie detector tests, Lykken's critique caused an uproar. He eventually published 17 articles on polygraphic interrogation, in journals such as Nature and Psychology Today, ultimately writing a book: A Tremor in the Blood. Committed to exposing this phony pseudo-science, he testified in more than fifty court cases in which lie detector results had been admitted as "evidence". His testimony to the Minnesota legislature led directly to a law prohibiting polygraphic screening of employees. Testimony before both houses of Congress, with the subsequent backing of the American Psychological Association, eventually produced a federal ban on such screening in 1988.

David also investigated the possibility of developing a polygraph based interrogation technique that would actually work. This led him to develop the Guilty Knowledge Test, a quantitative test, not of deception, but of whether a suspect recognizes facts that only a guilty party would know. The GKT has been adopted by the Michigan State Police, and is used extensively in Japan.

David Lykken was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association, and a Charter Fellow of the American Psychological Society. He won awards for distinguished contributions to applications of psychology, to psychophysiology, and to psychology in the public interest. He continued active research after becoming Emeritus Professor in 1998, and submitted his final scientific article a few weeks before his death.

David was a devoted husband and father, an avid gardener, and a voracious reader. He was a huge fan of bull terriers, especially the two that he owned: Polly and Willy. For forty years, he maintained a summer home at the edge of the Boundary Waters Wilderness - an ancient log cabin whose upkeep tested his considerable aptitude for fixing things.

David took great satisfaction in the accomplishments of his sons, his daughters-in-law, his grandchildren, and his many former students who went on to become successful psychologists in their own right. Despite his scientific stature and fame, he avoided the spotlight, turning down many invitations for television appearances, interviews and speeches, preferring a quiet home life with his family and pets.

David Lykken is survived by his three sons Jesse, Joseph and Matthew; his daughters-in-law, Veneta, Amy and Suzanne; and his grandchildren, Laura, Zeke, Jake, Roxanna, Ezra, Adin, Oliver, Erik, Sara and Karl. There will be no public services.