He was the head of the psychology department at Stanford and later dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences there,[2] continued the long-term I.Q.

studies of Lewis Madison Terman at Stanford,[3] and authored many pivotal papers and books on various aspects of psychology.

[2] He was married on June 25, 1932, to Pauline Kirkpatrick Snedden,[3] who co-authored a book with him and with whom he shared APA gold medal for achievement[5] in psychology late in their lives.

[6] After leaving Yale, Sears was first an instructor in psychology at the University of Illinois from 1932 to 1936 and at the same time was a clinical psychologist at the Institute for Juvenile Research there.

He did this with the help of his systematic recording that he created to capture large amounts of previously unexamined material and coded it.

Robert and his wife, Pauline, published a set of papers on the late-life careers of gifted children based on the Terman study.