William Damon

In 2021, Damon published A Round of Golf with my Father: The New Psychology of Exploring your Past to Make Peace with your Present. The book describes Damon's discovery of what happened to his father after World War II, when he did not return home to Damon and his mother. In the book, Damon discusses the benefits of unravelling family secrets, of coming to terms with past regrets, and of renewing self-identity in a forward-looking and purposeful manner. All of this is done in the context of a "life review," a method of systematically examining one's past, and the lives of one's ancestors, to forge a positive present identity. The book concludes with an imaginary round of golf between Damon and his deceased father, an experience that Damon finds emotionally satisfying and redemptive.

About Damon's 2021 book A Round of Golf with my Father, Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, wrote "William Damon, a noted scholar and author of The Path to Purpose, has written a fascinating book...For some six decades, Bill believed that his father was ‘missing in action’ during WWII. His late-in-life discovery that his father had been alive but absent unleashed a psychological crisis. Bill’s autobiographical account is original, candid, and poignant, full of irony and humor. This splendid, rich volume tells the story of coming to terms with one’s past to face the present and demonstrates the redemptive, reinvigorating power of looking back on one’s life.”

In 1995, Damon gained an even larger popular audience with his book, Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence in Our Homes and Schools (1995), which won the Parent’s Choice Book Award and was the subject of wide media coverage. The book proposed that prevailing child-rearing beliefs and practices are not leading to morally mature or competent young people. Damon argued that, “with best intentions,” parents and schools have been in large part responsible for this situation: our culture's unwavering focus on self-esteem and child-centered practices are misguided and reflect a misunderstanding of “the nature of children and their developmental needs. . . .All the commonly accepted standards for young people’s skills and behavior have fallen drastically. Less is expected of the young, and in turn less is received.” To build character and competence requires high standards and expectations. The book received praise from reviewers who agreed with Damon's emphasis on high standards for achievement and service. The book received criticism from some educators who believed that children need more attention and creative freedom to grow rather than, as Damon wrote, the encouragement to take on hard challenges and to develop internal discipline and good habits.

Another important focus in Damon’s work has been his study of moral exemplars. His first book on this subject, Some Do Care: Contemporary Lives of Moral Commitment (1992), written with psychologist Anne Colby, introduced a new method of "exemplar research" to the study of human development and has been widely cited and built upon in the field. Damon and Colby studied individuals who had shown “a sustained commitment to moral ideals or principles” over many decades of their lives. The authors found a number of qualities that were consistent across the entire group of exemplars, including a sense of certainty about their core moral beliefs, a positive attitude toward hardship and challenge, receptivity toward new ideas and goals, a lifelong capacity for moral growth, and a strong integration of their moral values into their sense of self. This book promoted the "moral identity" theory, which maintains that moral commitment and moral action are a function of how important morality is to a person's sense of self. This theory adds an additional dimension to theories that emphasize the primary importance of moral reasoning skills (Lawrence Kohlberg), emotions (Jonathan Haidt), or cultural background (Richard Shweder). Jonathan Haidt has said of Damon that he “has long been the expert I most trust on moral development.” Damon's work also is known for its case study and interview methodology, which some believe to be more evocative than experimental studies. Damon and Colby followed up their Some Do Care study of living moral exemplars with some historical case studies of 20th century moral exemplars, described in their 2015 book The Power of Ideals.

After college, Damon received a doctorate in psychology at the University of California. He then joined the psychology faculty at Clark University as an assistant professor. In the 1990s he was University Professor at Brown University, where he founded the Center for the Study of Human Development.

By the time Damon captured the attention of the popular press with his book The Moral Child: Nurturing Children’s Natural Moral Growth (1990), he had written and edited seven scholarly books on the social and moral development of children. His early works include The Social World of the Child (1977), and Social and Personality Development: Infancy through Adolescence (1983). These studies focused on how the conduct of children and adolescents plays out in real social situations. Damon emphasized that thinking and behavior develop in dynamic relationship with family, peers, teachers, and the larger social world. Moral emotions (such as empathy, shame, and guilt) and the principles of distributive justice (which can be seen in sharing) flourish, or may be smothered, within these relationships.

William Damon (born 1944 in Brockton, Massachusetts) is a psychologist who is a professor at Stanford University and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He is one of the world's leading scholars of human development. Damon has done pioneering research on the development of purpose in life and wrote the influential book The Path to Purpose. Damon has helped design innovative developmental methods such as peer learning. Damon also is known for his studies of effective philanthropy. His current work includes a study exploring purpose in higher education and a study of family purpose across generations. Dr. Damon writes on intellectual and social development through the lifespan. Damon has been elected to the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.