Dr. Robert Perloff ('49, PBK 2001)

Something happened to people who faced the struggles of the Great Depression. Either they learned to become tougher, more resilient survivors, or they succumbed to the grinding poverty that inevitably closed in on them. Dr. Robert Perloff falls into the tougher, more resilient category.
He was born and raised on the streets of Philadelphia and did whatever it took to help his widowed mother make ends meet. While his mother worked in the garment district, the young Perloff sold newspapers and magazines on the street, distributed handbills, was a movie usher, and a door-to-door salesman.
What plans he might have had for the rest of his life were interrupted when he was drafted into the Army to fight in World War II and saw action in General MacArthur’s campaign in the Philippines. He returned home with a Bronze Star and plans to attend Temple as a psychology major on the GI Bill.
Perloff graduated from Temple in 1949 going on to receive his PhD in psychology at Ohio State University, did a post-doc or two, and was then persuaded to join the industrial psychology faculty at Purdue University. Here he fathered a successful and highly regarded consumer psychology program, a program that spawned a number of research areas in consumer behavior. Dr. Perloff is quite proud of this program and what has become of the discipline. He once remarked, “I feel that one of my most significant contributions as a psychologist was helping to dignify consumer psychology as a viable component within psychology.” Dr. Perloff is also proud to say that he was also one of the founders and presidents of what is now considered to be the premier organization in consumer psychology, the Association for Consumer Research.
In addition to serving as the President of the Association for Consumer Research, he has presided over many other prestigious national organizations, including the American Psychological Association (APA), the American Evaluation Association, the Eastern Psychological Association, and the Society of Psychologists in Management, to name just a few. He has been honored frequently over the years, most recently with the Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in Psychology in the Public Interest, which is given by the American Psychological Foundation.
Most of Dr. Perloff ’s academic career has been spent across the state as a professor of Business and Psychology in the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. He fought many a good battle championing the rights of women, the elderly, minorities, the handicapped, homosexuals, and the impoverished. Here, with these issues, in many ways, is where Dr. Perloff made his professional stand.
Dr. Perloff has done much with his life. The College of Liberal Arts at Temple University is proud to have had a hand in helping to shape that life.

From CLA Perspectives, Spring 2002