Steven Pinker is a linguist, psychologist and writer known primarily for his role in the dissemination of various ideas related to evolutionary psychology, communication, visual perception and cognition, and the computational theory of mind, as well as for his own theories on language development and the decline of violence.

In this article we will analyze the theory and contributions of Steven Pinker , focusing on his perspectives on communication, human nature and the decline of violence. To begin with, we will briefly review his biography and his professional career.

Biography of Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker was born in Montreal in 1954 into a Jewish family that had immigrated to Canada from Poland and present-day Moldova. He received his PhD in Experimental Psychology from Harvard University in 1979; his mentor was Stephen Kosslyn, a leading author in the fields of cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

Later he was a researcher and professor at Stanford University and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , often known as “MIT”. Between 1994 and 1999 he was co-director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at this renowned institution.

Pinker is currently a professor of psychology at Harvard University and continues his work as a theorist, researcher, writer and science communicator. He is also a relevant figure in the press and frequently participates in conferences and debates on various topics related to science and to the human being in general.

Contributions, publications and merits

Pinker has carried out numerous publications and research on visual perception, psycholinguistics and interpersonal relations which have been awarded by very prominent institutions, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Psychological Association and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society.

He has also written 14 books on these topics and on human nature in general, with emphasis on cognitive and evolutionary perspectives. The most celebrated are “The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language”, “How the Mind Works”, “The Clean Slate: Modern Denial of Human Nature” and “The Decline of Violence and its Implications”.

Theories of communication and the human being

Early in her career, Pinker conducted research on the development and characteristics of language in children. His results led him to publicly support Noam Chomsky’s theory, which states that human beings have innate brain capacities that allow for the understanding of language .

Pinker’s methodology at this time was based on studying the behaviour of people and going backwards in phylogenetic evolution in order to explain the development of brain functions. Using this method he developed hypotheses about language and other phenomena, such as three-dimensional vision and logical reasoning.

According to Pinker, the innate ability of human beings to speak depends fundamentally on two cognitive processes: the memorization of words and their manipulation through equally learned grammatical rules s. These biological approaches have been criticized for their moral and philosophical aspects.

This author generally defends the idea that genes determine a significant proportion of human behaviour. Although he has stated that he identifies with egalitarian feminism, he has been criticized for his assertions about the existence of biological differences between people of different ethnicities, as well as between men and women.

The decline of violence

In his popular book “The Decline of Violence and its Implications” Pinker states that, from a proportional and historical point of view, the frequency of violent behaviour has tended to decrease worldwide, especially in the last two centuries. In this work he explores the widespread perception that violence has become more present today.

According to Pinker, the decline in violence began with the rise of the states , characterized by obtaining a monopoly on such behavior, while most individuals were punished through the use of the law. This would have allowed a large number of people to live together with a lower risk of murder.

Subsequently, factors such as the expansion of trade, the humanitarian revolution associated with the Enlightenment movement, the rise of cosmopolitanism and the rejection of slavery contributed further to the decline in the relative number of violent behaviours.

Pinker suggests that the experience of the two World Wars was fundamental in the decline of violence that occurred during the 20th century. He also cites as relevant variables globalization, movements for the rights of minorities and non-human animals, as well as a supposed decrease in the weight of ideologies.

This author attributes the common perception that violence is increasingly frequent to confirmation bias and states that we have entered the era he calls “the Long Peace”. Several authors have criticized these ideas arguing that they enhance the lack of concern for violence and warlike conflicts and interpret the numerical data in a reductionist way.