Richard D. Arvey

Who is Richard D. Arvey?

Richard D. Arvey is an American psychology professor.

Arvey received a bachelor of arts degree in psychology in 1966 from Occidental College. He then attended University of Minnesota to study industrial psychology, earning a master's degree in 1968 and a doctorate in 1970.

Arvey has studied and consulted on issues involving employee selection, which helped him develop physical ability tests for selecting police and firefighter recruits for the City of Minneapolis. He also investigates the genetic influences of work behavior, such as job satisfaction and leadership, based on data from the Minnesota Twin Registry. His studies found that approximately 40% of the variance in leadership is genetically influenced while environmental factors contribute to the remaining differences.

He has also looked at factors determining work continuance in lottery winners.

In 1995, he was a signatory of a collective statement in response to The Bell Curve titled Mainstream Science on Intelligence, written by Intelligence editor Linda Gottfredson and published in the Wall Street Journal.