In a carefully devised set of experiments in 1953 he led a team of Columbia University psychologists in discovering that anxiety caused the human heart rate to slow rather than quicken under certain timing of stimuli.

[3] Among their experiments, the students observed the responses of white rats to stimuli and rewards and measured human learning by testing people's ability to remember the pathways of mazes and other sensory processes.

[4] Together with Keller, they pioneered the first introductory psychology course to provide a laboratory animal model for behavior, which led to so many more like his (Hearst, E., 1997).

He joined the faculty of Queens College of the City University of New York in 1966, to become the chairman of the psychology department and was named a professor emeritus in 1983.

They include: P. J. Bersh, A. Charles Catania, W. W. Cumming, James A. Dinsmoor, Charles Ferster, Peter Harzem, Eliot S. Hearst, Francis Mechner, John Anthony Nevin, Ovide F. Pomerleau, Emilio Ribes, Murray Sidman, Carlos Bruner.