2 results
5 - Abe and Leon and Me
- Edited by Saul Kassin, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
-
- Book:
- Pillars of Social Psychology
- Published online:
- 29 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 15 September 2022, pp 32-42
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
My earliest recollection of thinking like a social psychologist took place long before I knew there was such a thing as social psychology. I grew up in an impoverished, blue-collar area of Revere, a small city a few miles northeast of Boston. Ours was one of the few Jewish families in a virulently anti-Semitic neighborhood. When I was nine years old, while walking home from Hebrew School one particularly dark night, I was waylaid and roughed up by a group of teenagers shouting anti-Semitic slurs. Verbal and physical aggression was not unusual in my childhood, but what made it uncommon for me was what happened immediately afterwards – an event that forms one of my most vivid childhood memories: I sat on a curb and began thinking about what had just happened to me. There I was, nursing a bloody nose and a split lip, wondering why those kids hated Jews so much. Were they born hating Jews or did they learn it from their parents? I wondered how they could hate me so much when they didn’t even know me. If they got to know me better and discovered what a sweet and generous little boy I was, would they like me better? And if they began to like me better, would that lead them to hate other Jews less? I did not realize it at the time, of course, but these are profound social psychological questions.
74 - Doing Good by Doing Good Research
- from Section A - Social Cognition
- Edited by Robert J. Sternberg, Cornell University, New York, Susan T. Fiske, Princeton University, New Jersey, Donald J. Foss, University of Houston
-
- Book:
- Scientists Making a Difference
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 11 August 2016, pp 351-355
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Throughout my life as a social psychologist, I have had two major goals: to design and conduct controlled experiments that shed light on how the human mind works, and to make discoveries that might be useful to people and perhaps even improve society. When I was about to enter graduate school, I had stars in my eyes so, understandably, the second goal was far more prominent than the first. However, by the time I earned my PhD, I had discovered that, as a scientist, there is no way to do good in the world without first being able to do good research.
My great good fortune was that I entered Stanford as a student the same year that Leon Festinger joined the faculty as a professor. At that time, Festinger was developing his theory of cognitive dissonance, which proposed that when a person simultaneously holds two contradictory cognitions, he or she experiences an unpleasant feeling of discomfort (dissonance). The person is motivated to reduce that dissonance by altering one or both cognitions, bringing them into consonance. This simple theory led us to make predictions about human behavior that were bold, exciting, and innovative.
For example, in the first experiment I ever designed, Jud Mills and I demonstrated that people who went through a severe initiation to join a group later liked the group better than those who went through a mild initiation. We didn't try to convince people that their group was terrific; rather, we set up a situation where they convinced themselves that the group was terrific. The cognition “I went through hell and high water to get into this group” was dissonant with the fact that the group was actually pretty boring. Therefore, following a severe initiation, they were inclined to convince themselves that those boring group members were quite charming. The people who didn't have to go through a severe initiation saw the group for what it was.
In another experiment, my students and I showed that children who were threatened with severe punishment if they played with a forbidden but attractive toy were eager to play with it anyway as soon as they had the chance.