Bernard Spilka (1926–2025)

Bernard "Bernie" Spilka died on Friday, May 23, 2025, in Denver, Colorado. Bernie was born Thursday, August 12, 1926, in New York City, New York. After World War II service in the Army Air Force Medical Corps, he attained a psychology BA (1949) from New York University. Graduate education at Purdue University included both MA (1950; group influence on individual judgment) and PhD (1952; delayed speech feedback) degrees. In 1953, while working for the U.S. Air Force Human Resources Research Center, Combat Crew Laboratory at Randolph Field, Texas, he met and married Ellen Scharlack. He served as president for many psychological associations and in 1985, along with Ralph W. Hood, Jr., and Richard L. Gorsuch summarized the re-emergent psychology of religion. With rotating authorship, that text remains in print today. He was a fierce advocate for the scientific method and never hesitated to chastise "fuzzy" conceptualizations, theories, methods, or overgeneralizations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)

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