Harold Kelley - Biography

Biography

Harold Kelley was born in Boise, Idaho. His family moved to the rural town of Delano, California when he was 10; while there, Kelley met and married his high school sweetheart, Dorothy. They had three children Ann, Sten & Megan, and later five grandchildren.

After graduating from high school, Kelley went on to Bakersfield Junior College, and by 1942 graduated with a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley; in 1943, Kelley continued at UC Berkeley to earn a Master's Degree in Psychology as well.

As was the case for most social psychologists of his era, Kelley was hired by the Aviation Psychology Program of the army air force during World War II, where he worked on developing selection tests and analyzing the performance of aircrew members.

By the end of the war, Kelley was advised by his aviation mentor Stuart Cook to continue his education. Shortly thereafter, he enrolled at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Center for Group Dynamics then headed by Kurt Lewin. Kelley obtained his Ph.D. from MIT in 1948. The center moved to the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan in 1949 after Lewin's death, and Kelley continued to work with them for a year.

In 1950, Kelley accepted his first academic position as an assistant professor at Yale, where he worked with Carl Hovland and Irving Janis to write his first collaborative book "Communication and Persuasion". In 1955, Kelley left Yale and was hired at the University of Minnesota. During this time, Kelley was co-author of a book titled "The Social Psychology of Groups" along with John W. Thibaut. Kelley then moved to UCLA, where he stayed for the rest of his academic career. After retiring in 1991, Kelley remained active as a member of the Emeritus at UCLA. He held many leadership roles, one being the chairman of some of the organizations at UCLA. His work ethic and his passion for social psychology, sparked an interest in students towards that field. They used Kelley as a role model to pursue their own individual careers in that same field of psychology. He died of cancer in January 2003 in his Malibu home.