fun facts about leon festinger


In 1943, Festinger married Mary Oliver Ballou, a pianist,"Deaths: Mary Ballou Festinger," 2006 with whom he had three children, Catherine, Richard, and Kurt.Schachter & Gazzaniga, 1989, p. 545 Festinger and Ballou were later divorced, and Festinger married Trudy Bradley, currently a professor of social work at New York University,Faculty Profile, n.d. in 1968.Schachter & Gazzaniga, 1989, p. 545, In 1945, Festinger joined Lewins newly formed Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an assistant professor. WebRecall that Leon Festinger and J. Merrill Carlsmith (1959) paid participants either $1 or $20 to tell another person that a boring, tedious task was really fun and interesting. Back in 1950, Festinger, Stanley Schachter, and Kurt Back undertook a study to determine how friendships were formed among residents of a students housing complex at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). (1977). On the basis of these messages, she predicted that a global flood would destroy the world on December 21, 1954. Heider, Fritz. screen.colorDepth:screen.pixelDepth))+';u'+escape(document.URL)+ Pressures toward uniformity of performance in groups. Festinger claims his youthful penchant for rigor led him to pursue further research on aspiration for his masters thesis and to develop a mathematical model of decision making for his dissertation. These include the magnitude of dissonance and the modification of cognitive elements. For example, in one study, college students who often engage in risky sexual behaviors were asked to prepare and give a speech on the importance of safe sex. Hovland, Carl I. Would you feel uncomfortable if you encountered information that seriously challenged some of these beliefs? Festinger was born on May 8, 1919 in Brooklyn New York to his Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. Some of Festingers papers are archived in the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. . An important early research project was based on attitude surveys of residents in married student housing. Later, the subjects were asked to describe their true feelings about the task. This became known as the principle of propinquity a fancy way of saying that the closer we are to someone physically, the more likely we are to be attracted to them. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957. To many, he rearticulated the relation between stimulus and response by focusing on what goes on between the two, looking at the relation and interactions among the contents of the life space (Heider, 1957, p. 207), and perhaps even proposing work that lies astride the junction of general psychology, the psychology of personality, and social psychology (Bruner, 1957, p. 153). Leon Festinger. These findings led Festinger and his assistants to develop experimental approaches that many people consider to be the birth of systematic experimental social psychology.. (1950). Festinger does not adequately explain how people decide on a strategy for reducing cognitive dissonance. He was born in Brooklyn New York City on May 8, 1919. '" alt="" title="LiveInternet: number of pageviews and visitors'+ In addition to challenging the dominance of behaviorism, Festinger spearheaded the use of scientific experimentation in social psychology. CONTROVERSIES AND ALTERNATIVE MODELS. He then moved to the University of Rochester to work as a senior statistician for the National Research Councils Committee on the Selection and Training of Aircraft Pilots during World War II. Visual-perception during smooth pursuit eye-movements. Cognitive dissonance or cognitive dissociation is a term in social psychology that describes a feeling of unease and internal conflict that occurs when someone deals with information contradictory to one's beliefs. Cartwright, D., & Festinger, L. (1943). Perhaps Festinger offered the most apt description of this moment when he quoted from Fritz Heiders unpublished work: the relationships among people and among sentiments are predominantly concerned with balanced, or harmonious, states, such that if no balanced state exists, relations will be changed through action or cognitive reorganization due to the tension produced by the state of imbalance. BIBLIOGRAPHY The treatment of qualitative data by scale analysis. (2011). Studies in decision: I. Decision-time, relative frequency of judgment and subjective confidence as related to physical stimulus difference. Recognized as one of the ten most promising young scientists in the United States by Fortune Magazine in the 1950s, Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1959, Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, 1959, Elected to the National Academy of Sciences, 1972, Elected to the Society of Experimental Psychology, 1973, Received an honorary doctorate from the University of Mannheim, 1978, Einstein Visiting Fellow of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1980, Distinguished Senior Scientist Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, 1980. Now that we know a little bit about cognitive dissonance, let's talk an important experiment that led to the development of this theory. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Cognitive dissonance happens when some piece of information received is inconsistent with someone's personal belief. Zukier, Henri. (2003). The reason was simple: where an incentive was involved, people felt less conflict. The other students, however, had to justify having spent time doing useless tasks and getting only a dollar as a reward. I never had a course at Iowa in social psychology either. What drew Festinger to Iowa were Lewins ideas, developed with his Berlin group, on tension systems and the remembering and completion of interrupted tasks, force fields and Umweg situations (Festinger, 1980, p. 237). One was that the level of cognitive dissonance would decrease as the incentive to comply with the conflict situation was increased. '': His father and mother were Jewish-Russian immigrants named Alex Festinger and Sara Solomon Festinger. The group paid $20 maintained that the experiment was boring. about their environment and their personalities. Eminent psychologists of the 20th century. Leon Festinger. In his Psychologists on Psychology. Cognitive dissonance may occur when (1) a person has to decide something, (2) when there is forced compliance, or (3) when something requires effort to achieve. New York: Taplinger, 1977. He attended Boys High School in Brooklyn and was a very good student. Festinger, L. (1943b). Corrections? In Extending Psychological Frontiers: Selected Works of Leon Festinger, edited by Stanley Schachter and Michael Gazzaniga. After reading literature on cancer, speaking with medical experts, and evaluating the possible side effects of treatment, he decided not to obtain treatment for himself. Over the ensuing decade, research replicating and extending earlier findings, as well as conceptual clarifications, notably by Elliot Aronson, effectively rebutted these critiques. 2. They paid volunteers either one dollar or twenty dollars to lie about a boring task being fun. Some scholars consider this important since they doubt that people compare all of their abilities and opinions to those of others. In addition, some critics argue that people often engage in comparisons with individuals who differ from them in important ways and that such comparisons also supply valuable self-knowledge. 1976. One was Clark Hulls Hypnosis and Suggestibility (1933), which Festinger recalled discovering while scouting out books in various sciences in the library. Physiological PsychologyClifford T. Morgan Four years later, he expressed disappointment at what the field of psychology and he himself had accomplished. Effort Justification Theory & Examples | What is System Justification Theory? Informal social communication theory was about the power of the group over the person. Think about some of your deeply-held beliefs. Dissonance, Hypocrisy, and the Self-Concept. In Cognitive Dissonance, edited by Eddie Harmon-Jones and Judson Mills, 103126. Festinger graduated with a B.A. Please select which sections you would like to print: Professor Emeritus, Psychology, University of Iowa, Iowa City. A Personal Memory of Stanley Schachter. Leon Festinger Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Five years earlier, Festinger was honored by Fortune Magazine as one of ten top young scientists in universities for his research on people using groups as a testing ground for their views and self-concepts, an experimental demonstration of the power of social determinants on beliefs and abilities. Whereas the experimental laboratory research into cognitive dissonance was also met with forceful critical analysis of its methodological shortcomings (Chapanis & Chapanis, 1964), the original real-world study was, in contrast, quite remarked upon as a far more illuminating and provocative account of it than mere natural history description would be likely to have given us (Smith, 1957, p. 90). WebIn 1957 Leon Festinger developed a theory that refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors which produces a feeling of discomfort which in turn makes the person alternate one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to rid the discomfort. WebA few years later, Leon Festinger (1919-1989), a research psychologist at Stanford University, proposed interesting and that this message was delivered by an undergraduate student posing as a subject who had already completed the tasks. Another way would be to change our action. Second, once we become aware of this inconsistency, it will cause dissonance and, depending on how uncomfortable we are, we'll work to resolve this dissonance. escape(document.referrer)+((typeof(screen)=='undefined')? The first was Informal Social Communication, published in Psychological Review in 1950. Festinger, L., Schachter, S., & Back, K. (1950). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Retrieved April 27, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/medicine/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/festinger-leon. Aronson, Elliot. He dealt with his cancer as a research problem. I. Meet 5 of the Worlds Computer Programming Prodigies, 7 of the Best-Performing Cryptocurrencies and their Founders. But the more famous of the two real-world studies is Festingers covert study of a small millennialist group in Oak Park, Illinois, a study serving to lay the theoretical groundwork for cognitive dissonance. In 1945 Festinger became assistant professor at the Research Center for Group Dynamics, which was then headed by Lewin, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Although precedents for this ambitious research program existed in earlier work by Lewin and the Turkish-born social psychologist Muzafer Sherif, Festinger magnified the experimenters role as playwright and stage director. "Festinger, Leon "Schachter, 1994, p. 99 Festinger attended Boys High School in Brooklyn, and received his BS degree in psychology from the City College of New York in 1939.Schacter, 1994, p. 100, He proceeded to study under Kurt Lewin at the University of Iowa, where Festinger received his MA in 1940 and PhD in 1942 in the field of child behavior.American, 1959, p. 784 By his own admission, he was not interested in social psychology when he arrived at Iowa, and did not take a single course in social psychology during his entire time there; instead, he was interested in Lewins earlier work on tension systems, but Lewins focus had shifted to social psychology by the time Festinger arrived at Iowa.Festinger, 1980, p. 237 However, Festinger continued to pursue his original interests, studying level of aspiration,Festinger, 1942 working on statistics,Festinger, 1943aFestinger, 1943b developing a quantitative model of decision making,Carlsmith & Festinger, 1943 and even publishing a laboratory study on rats.Festinger, 1943c Explaining his lack of interest in social psychology at the time, Festinger stated, "The looser methodology of the social psychology studies, and the vagueness of relation of the data to Lewinian concepts and theories, all seemed unappealing to me in my youthful penchant for rigor. "Schachter, 1994, p. 102,
I feel like its a lifeline. 2023 . Usually, a state of dissonance is induced by having individuals engage in an activity that conflicts with some undesirable behavior or attitude on their part. We provide you with news from the entertainment industry. "Festinger, Leon Retrieved April 27, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/festinger-leon. At first, Festinger was puzzled as to why people would create and believe such rumors when there was hardly any evidence to support them. His theory of cognitive Cognitive dissonance comes into play when people try to reconcile the conflicting behaviors or ideas. Many aspects of the theory are difficult to observe and assess objectively. The theory of cognitive dissonance has been used to increase health-promoting and other desirable behaviors. Komoda, M. K., Festinger, L., & Sherry, J. PracticalPsychology. In 2002, the Review of General Psychology ranked Leon Festinger as the 5th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. Milite, George A. The debates on cognitive dissonance are instructive on Festingers contributions on several counts, and on developments in postWorld War II psychology, especially social psychology. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1989. Renowned social psychologist, Leon Festinger, and his research team (1954) became interested in this case and decided to infiltrate and study the group to see While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. However, those who were only paid $1 to lie had to justify this some other way, in order to reduce the dissonance of both lying and receiving little reward. WebLeon Festinger is a well known social psychologist and a pioneer for cognitive dissonance and social comparison. The role of group belongingness in a voting situation. WebFestinger, Riecken and Schachter reported the following sequence of events: December 17.

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