David O. Sears

As of 2021, David Sears has been cited 37,832 times in Google Scholar, being the sixth most cited in political psychology in that site, after Shalom Schwartz, Jonathan Haidt, Philip Tetlock, John Jost, and Sheldon Solomon.

He married Cynthia Lovelace in 1961, divorcing in 1970. In 2004, he married Carrie Powers, who died October 29, 2010. He has three daughters, Juliet, Olivia, Meredith, as well as two step-children from his second wife, Annabelle and Patrick Powers. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California and spends his summer vacations in Lake Winnipesaukee, Moultonborough, New Hampshire.

David Sears was awarded with the Edward L. Bernays Foundation Psychology and Social Issues Book Award in 1975 for The Politics of Violence: The New Urban Blacks and the Watts Riot co-authored with John B. McConahay. He also received the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize from The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues in 1978 for his paper Symbolic Racism versus Racial Threats to 'The Good Life', co-authored with Donald R. Kinder. Sears became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991. He served as the president of the International Society of Political Psychology in 1994–95, received the Harold D. Lasswell Award from the ISPP for his "distinguished scientific contribution in the field of political psychology" in 1995 and the Warren E. Miller Award from the American Political Science Association for his "lifetime intellectual accomplishment and service to the profession in the elections, public opinion, and voting behavior field" in 2002. In 2012, the ISPP established the David O. Sears Award in his honor. The Sears Award has been given for the best book published in the field of the political psychology of mass politics in the previous year.

Sears' theory of symbolic racism was developed during the decade of 1970 and further refined. His theory has been developed and used in the analysis of new forms of racism in the United States that emerged especially after the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s. According to Sears' theory of symbolic racism, a subtle form of racism replaced the Jim Crow or "old-fashioned racism". Instead of the open prejudice, based on beliefs in the biological inferiority of Blacks and support for formal segregation and discrimination, the symbolic racism is a more abstract set of beliefs comprising a “blend” of primitive anti-Black affect with traditional American moral values.

He joined the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles as an acting assistant professor in 1961 just after having filed his dissertation in December 1961, became an assistant professor in 1962, published his first article—a study of punishment in the white rat—in 1964, and was promoted to associate professor of psychology in 1967. From 1967 to 1968, Sears was a visiting lecturer at Harvard University. He was promoted to associate professor of psychology and political science in 1969, and to full professor of psychology and political science in 1971. He was a visiting professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley from 1972 to 1973. He served as the dean of social sciences at the UCLA College of Letters and Science from 1983 to 1992, and was the director at the UCLA Institute for Social Science Research from 1993 to 2008.

Sears went to Belmont High School and graduated in 1953. He graduated from Stanford University in 1957 with an AB in history with a minor in psychology; he presented, under the H. Stuart Hughes' guidance, a thesis on the Nazi mobilization of the youth. He then received both a MS in 1959 and a PhD in psychology in 1962 from Yale University with the dissertation "Anticipated criticism, opinion structure, and opinion change" having Howard Leventhal as his advisor. At Yale, he also worked with and was mentored by political scientist Robert E. Lane serving as research assistant in Lane's research on political attitudes and behavior published in his book Political Ideology.

David O’Keefe Sears (born June 24, 1935, in Urbana, Illinois) is an American psychologist who specializes in political psychology. He is a distinguished professor of psychology and political science at the University of California, Los Angeles where he has been teaching since 1961. He served as dean of social sciences at UCLA between 1983 and 1992. Best known for his theory of symbolic racism, Sears has published many articles and books about the political and psychological origins of race relations in America, as well as on political socialization and life cycle effects on attitudes, the role of self-interest in attitudes, and multiculturalism. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991.

David Sears was born on June 24, 1935, in Urbana, Illinois, to the psychologists Pauline ("Pat") K. Snedden Sears and Robert Richardson Sears. He has a younger sister, Nancy Sears Barker. When he was one year old, the Sears family moved to New Haven, Connecticut as Robert Sears took up a position at Yale University, staying in there until 1942; due to this early move to New Haven from Urbana, David Sears considers the former as his home city. He further has also lived in Iowa City, Iowa, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Portola Valley, California during his childhood and youth as his parents moved to academic positions in different research universities.