Edwin Diller Starbuck

Edwin Diller Starbuck born Edwin Eli Starbuck (20 February 1866 – 18 November 1947) was an American educational psychologist who took a special interest in the teaching of morals and character in children independent of religious instruction. His idea was to imbue morals through indirect means where students would learn by inference. He is considered a pioneer in the field of the psychology of religion with his book Psychology of Religion being the first in the genre. He also thanked him in the preface for having "made over to me his large collection of manuscript material". Starbuck recollects that James looked through "several hundred" of his documents.

He became an assistant professor of education at Leland Stanford Junior University. In 1903 he worked with Ernst Meumann at the University of Zurich. He worked in Earlham College from 1904 to 1906 before he moved to the University of Iowa. He moved to the University of Southern California in 1930 and remained there until his retirement. He pioneered the empirical study of religion through questionnaire surveys.

He married Anna Maria Diller, a Harvard classmate, in 1895 and they had eight children. He later changed his middle name to Diller.