Psychologists

David Rosenhan

Citation Formats

General Reference

Psychology Atlas. "David Rosenhan." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-psychology.interactiveatlas.org/psychologists/david-rosenhan.

APA Style

Psychology Atlas. (n.d.). David Rosenhan. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-psychology.interactiveatlas.org/psychologists/david-rosenhan

BibTeX

@misc{psychologyatlas-david-rosenhan,
  author = {Psychology Atlas},
  title = {David Rosenhan},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-psychology.interactiveatlas.org/psychologists/david-rosenhan},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

American psychologist and legal scholar best known for a single, widely debated study of psychiatric diagnosis.

Facts

Birth Date

1929-11-22 1

Birth Year

1929 1

Death Date

2012-02-06 1

Death Year

2012 1

Birthplace

Jersey City, New Jersey, U.S. 1

Death Place

Palo Alto, California, U.S. 1

Nationality / Culture

American 1

Defining Contribution

Conducted the 1973 Rosenhan experiment, sending healthy pseudopatients into twelve psychiatric hospitals to test whether staff could distinguish sane people from those genuinely diagnosed as disordered; the study's own methodology was challenged decades later. 2

Notable Work

On Being Sane in Insane Places (1973) 1

Cross-Tradition Connections