Samuel Putnam

Samuel Putnam is the A. Myrick Freeman Professor in Social Sciences and Chair of the Psychology Department at Bowdoin College. He serves as Co-Chair of Undergraduate Research for the International Congress of Infant Studies (ICIS) and leads significant international research collaborations in child development.

His educational background includes a BS in Psychology from the University of Iowa (1992), followed by an MS (1996) and PhD (1999) in Human Development and Family Studies from Pennsylvania State University.

Professor Putnam specializes in social development with research focusing on the complex interactions between nature and nurture in shaping children's sensation seeking, negative emotionality, and attentional control. His work bridges developmental psychology and cross-cultural research, examining how cultural contexts influence early personality formation and temperament. He has coordinated large-scale international projects, most notably the Global Temperament Project which gathered data on over 80,000 children from nearly 500 researchers across 59 nations.

His publications reveal consistent focus on cross-cultural temperament assessment, with recent work examining how cultural dimensions relate to child behavior patterns, parental socialization goals, and developmental outcomes. The research spans multiple continents and integrates anthropological, sociological, and psychological perspectives on early development.

Professor Putnam mentors undergraduate students who frequently co-author publications with him, reflecting his commitment to undergraduate research. His work has involved substantial grant funding to support international data collection efforts and collaborative analysis across research teams worldwide.

He leads research teams focused on the Joint Effort Toddler Temperament Consortium (JETTC) and the Global Temperament Project, creating frameworks for understanding how cultural environments shape children's emerging personalities through parental goals, daily activities, and responses to children's temperament displays.