The professor emeritus of psychology taught at Haverford for 51 years.
Sidney Perloe, professor emeritus of psychology, died March 20. He was 89 years old.
Perloe earned his B.A. from New York University and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Harvard University from 1953–1954. He began his career as an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University in 1958. Three years later, he joined the Haverford faculty, where he taught in the psychology department until his retirement in 2012.
Perloe was a psychologist and primatologist who studied animal behavior and taught classes on social psychology, primate social behavior, and evolutionary human psychology and behavior. In particular, his course “Primate Origins of Society” was particularly popular. He published numerous articles on the minds of monkeys and humans and the relationships between them, including several on his research on Japanese macaques conducted in Minoo National Forest while he was a visiting scientist at Osaka University in 1985–1986. He was a member of the American Psychological Association, the American Society of Primatologists, the International Primatological Society, and the International Society for Human Ethology.
In a post in his Psychology Today blog, The Ethical Professor, Mitchell M. Handelsman ’76 remembered what he called a “life-changing moment” in one of Perloe’s “Social Psychology” classes, when, in frustration, Handelsman angrily questioned his professor about a classic social psychology experiment he didn’t understand.
“Perloe's reaction to me was instantaneous,” Handelsman wrote. “He didn't think, ‘How am I going to (or should I) save this poor child from a life of ignorance and anti-intellectualism?’ Rather, he responded automatically with genuineness, humanity, caring, and integrity. At that moment he taught me how to (a) respect students and their questions, (b) value intellectual and empirical pursuits, and (c) teach someone who is totally clueless in an effective way. What a small interaction to have such profound effects!”
Outside of his research and teaching, Perloe, along with Charlotte M. Cadbury and fellow Haverford professor Roger Lane, founded the campus’ Serendipity Day Camp to serve the local Ardmore community in 1964. And for the last 10 years, he has assisted Senior Lecturer of Mathematics and Statistics Jeff Tocosky-Feldman in organizing Haverford’s Yiddish Culture Festival.
“Both Sid and his wife, Paulette, recommended interesting speakers, artists, musicians and films, providing a richness of programming for the entire community,” said Tecosky-Feldman. “Sid had the knowledge and expertise to moderate wide-ranging discussions about the history of Eastern Europe, always sprinkled with his affection for the Yiddish language and culture.”
In 2015 an endowed fund in his name, the Sidney Perloe Fund in the Social Sciences, was created to support academic research associated with social psychology that can impact community, social structure, policy, and/or health of a studied population.
Perloe is survived by his wife, Paulette Jellinek; his children, Deborah, Jonathan, Gabriel, and Alexandra; and his grandchildren, Justine, Julia, and Abigail.
