Figuring out suicidal behavior
Matthew Nock is the son of an auto mechanic, a Harley-Davidson aficionado, and the first member of his family to graduate from college. He’s now also a tenured member of the Harvard faculty. The newly promoted professor of psychology is one of four siblings from a blue-collar New Jersey family. Both of his brothers joined the military and eventually found work echoing their father’s: one as a mechanic and the other as a mechanical engineer who builds robots for a military contractor. Their sister, the youngest of the four, now works at Sirius Radio. Nock took his first psychology class during his last year in high school, and became “fascinated by the idea of spending my life studying human behavior.” He went on to major in psychology at Boston University (BU), graduating in 1995. “I was interested in biology and philosophy, and psychology seemed like a good marriage of the two,” Nock said....