Elliot Aronson is an American psychologist

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

. He is listed among the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th Century, best known for the invention of the Jigsaw Classroom as a method of reducing interethnic hostility and prejudice; cognitive dissonance

Cognitive dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying,...

 research, and influential social psychology

Social psychology

Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...

 textbooks.In his classic (1972) text, The Social Animal, (now in its 11th edition), he stated Aronson's First Law: People who do crazy things are not necessarily crazy--thus, asserting the importance of situational factors in bizarre behavior. He is the only person in the 120-year history of the American Psychological Association

American Psychological Association

The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...

 to have won all three of its major awards: for writing, for teaching, and for research. In 2007 he received the William James Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association for Psychological Science

Association for Psychological Science

The Association for Psychological Science , previously the American Psychological Society, is a non-profit international organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in research, application, teaching, and the improvement of...

. He officially retired in 1994, but has continued to teach and write.

Early life and education

Aronson grew up in extreme poverty in Revere, Massachusetts, during the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

. Although his high school grades were mediocre, his SAT

SAT

The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. The SAT is owned, published, and developed by the College Board, a nonprofit organization in the United States. It was formerly developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service which still...

 scores were high enough to earn him a work/study scholarship at Brandeis University. He earned his Bachelor's degree from Brandeis in 1954 (where he was a protege of the humanist psychologist

Humanistic psychology

Humanistic psychology is a psychological perspective which rose to prominence in the mid-20th century, drawing on the work of early pioneers like Carl Rogers and the philosophies of existentialism and phenomenology...

 Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow

Abraham Harold Maslow was an American professor of psychology at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research and Columbia University who created Maslow's hierarchy of needs...

). He went on to earn a Master's degree from Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

 in 1956 (where he worked with David McClelland

David McClelland

David C. McClelland was an American psychological theorist. Noted for his work on need theory, he published a number of works from the 1950s until the 1990s and developed new scoring systems for the Thematic Apperception Test and its descendants...

), and a Ph.D. from Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 in 1959 (where his doctoral advisor and mentor was the experimental social psychologist Leon Festinger).

Professional history

Aronson has taught at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, the University of Minnesota

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

, the University of Texas, and the University of California, Santa Cruz

University of California, Santa Cruz

The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...

. He also served as Distinguished Visiting Professor at Stanford University. He was included in a list of the 100 most influential psychologists of the 20th century published by the Review of General Psychology. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

American Academy of Arts and Sciences

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...

 and won the William James Award from the Association for Psychological Science

Association for Psychological Science

The Association for Psychological Science , previously the American Psychological Society, is a non-profit international organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in research, application, teaching, and the improvement of...

 for his lifetime achievements. His many honors include distinguished research awards from a variety of professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association

American Psychological Association

The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...

, the American Association for the Advancement of Science

American Association for the Advancement of Science

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...

 and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology

Society of Experimental Social Psychology

The Society of Experimental Social Psychology is a scientific professional organization of social psychologists. SESP has over 700 members worldwide.-History:...

. He also won the Gordon Allport Prize for his work on reducing prejudice. In 1981 he was one of five academics awarded "Professor of the Year" by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.

Cognitive dissonance

One of Aronson's key areas of interest and research has been the theory of cognitive dissonance

Cognitive dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying,...

. Aronson is credited with refining the theory, which posits that when attitudes and behaviors are inconsistent (dissonant), psychological discomfort results. This discomfort motivates the person experiencing it to either change the behavior or the attitude so that consonance is restored. Among his classic experiments, he demonstrated that people who undergo an embarrassing initiation to gain admission to a group develop more favorable evaluations of the group than people who are admitted after a mild initiation.

The Jigsaw Classroom

Aronson led the development of a classroom technique for defusing inter-group tension and promoting self-esteem.
In 1971 the newly desegregated

Desegregation

Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups usually referring to races. This is most commonly used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the American Civil Rights Movement, both before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in...

 schools of Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

 faced a crisis of violence between ethnic groups.
Aronson, then at the University of Texas, was called in as a consultant by a school superintendent who was also a former student.
Aronson noticed that the schools' highly competitive atmosphere was exacerbating the already tense ethnic rivalry.
Together with his graduate students, he developed a model of teaching practice to encourage a culture of shared goals and mutual support.
In the jigsaw classroom approach, pupils are divided into small groups, mixed by race and by ability, to work co-operatively on a task.
The classroom material—for example a biography of a historical figure—is broken into sections, and one member of each group is responsible for reading each section. Members with the same role from each group gather in "expert groups" to discuss their sections. They then return to their own groups and take turns to present what they have learnt. They are then assessed individually on all sections of the material. This division of responsibilities means that students are motivated to listen to each other and each of them experiences a role in which they are valuable to others.

Comparisons with traditional classroom environments showed that the jigsaw classroom has positive effects on academic performance, self-esteem and attitudes towards other ethnic groups.
The technique has since been applied in hundreds of schools across North America. From its initial application at third- to fifth-grade school level, it has been expanded to other educational levels. This success encouraged Aronson to apply his research to other policy issues including energy conservation and the treatment of the elderly.
In the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre

Columbine High School massacre

The Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States, near Denver and Littleton. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12...

, Aronson advocated for jigsaw classrooms as part of an approach to defusing the social divisions underlying school violence.

Gain-loss theory of attraction

In 1965, Aronson proposed that interpersonal attraction and liking could be understood in terms of the balance of reward and cost. This implied that contrast—a gain or loss of positive feedback from the other person—has more effect on liking than the absolute level of feedback. An example is how compliments are more meaningful when they come from someone who is usually critical, rather than from a reliable supporter. Another example is that a couple may feel more dedicated to their relationship if they initially disliked each other.

Awards and professional recognition

Award	Awarding body	Year	Source
Award for Distinguished Research in Social Psychology	American Association for the Advancement of Science American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...	1970
Fellowship	Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences	1970–1, 1977–8
National Media Award	American Psychological Association American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...	1973
Teaching Award	University of Texas	1973
Teaching Award in Psychology	American Psychological Association American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...	1980
Donald T. Campbell Award for distinguished contributions in social psychology	American Psychological Association American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...	1980
Professor of the Year	Council for the Advancement and Support of Education	1981
Gordon Allport Prize for Inter-Group Relations	Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues	1981
Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...	John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died April 26, 1922...	1981–2
Fellowship	American Academy of Arts and Sciences American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...	1992
Award for Distinguished Research in the Social Sciences	University of California, Santa Cruz University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...	1992
Distinguished Scientific Career Award	Society of Experimental Social Psychology Society of Experimental Social Psychology The Society of Experimental Social Psychology is a scientific professional organization of social psychologists. SESP has over 700 members worldwide.-History:...	1994
Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award	American Psychological Association American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...	1999
Master Lecturer	American Psychological Association American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...	2001
William James Fellow Award for Distinguished Lifetime Contributions to Scientific Psychology	Association for Psychological Science Association for Psychological Science The Association for Psychological Science , previously the American Psychological Society, is a non-profit international organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in research, application, teaching, and the improvement of...	2007

Personal life

Elliot is married to Vera Aronson, whom he met while they were both undergraduate research assistants under Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow

Abraham Harold Maslow was an American professor of psychology at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research and Columbia University who created Maslow's hierarchy of needs...

. Together they have had four children; Hal, Neal, Julie and Joshua, who is himself a social psychologist. In 2000, Aronson was diagnosed with macular degeneration

Macular degeneration

Age-related macular degeneration is a medical condition which usually affects older adults and results in a loss of vision in the center of the visual field because of damage to the retina. It occurs in “dry” and “wet” forms. It is a major cause of blindness and visual impairment in older adults...

 and, by 2003, had lost all of his central vision. To cope with his blindness, Aronson decided to work with a guide dog, and applied at Guide Dogs for the Blind

Guide Dogs for the Blind

Guide Dogs for the Blind is a guide dog school located in the United States, with campuses in San Rafael, California, and Boring, Oregon. It was founded in 1942 to help veterans who had been blinded in World War II.- History :...

 in 2010. Later, beginning in January and extending through February 2011, he was trained at Guide Dogs for the Blind in a three week training session, and received a guide dog, Desilu, nicknamed "Desi." He graduated from the program on February 12, 2011. He said jokingly "They worked us 14 hours a day, until we were almost as smart as our dogs."

Academic books

• Lindzey, G., & Aronson, E. (1968 & 1985). The handbook of social psychology (2nd & 3rd eds.). New York: Random House.
• Stern, P. C., & Aronson, E. (1984). Energy use: The human dimension. New York: W. H. Freeman.
• Pines, A. & Aronson, E. (1988). Career burnout. New York: Free Press.
• Aronson, E., Ellsworth, P., Carslmith, J. M., & Gonzales, M. (1990). Methods of research in social psychology (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Aronson, E., & Pratkanis, A. R. (1993). Social psychology: The most outstanding research (Vol. 1, 2, & 3). London: Elgar Ltd.
• Aronson, E., & Patnoe, S. (1997). The jigsaw classroom: Building cooperation in the classroom (2nd ed.). New York: Longman.
• Aronson, E. (2000). Nobody left to hate: Teaching compassion after Columbine. New York: Henry Holt.
• Pratkanis, A. R., & Aronson, E. (2001). Age of propaganda: The everyday use and abuse of persuasion. New York: Henry Holt.
• Tavris, C.
  Carol Tavris
  Carol Anne Tavris is an American social psychologist and author. She received a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Michigan, and has taught psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles and the New School for Social Research...
  
  , & Aronson, E. (2007). Mistakes were made (but not by Me): Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts
  Mistakes were made (but not by me)
  Mistakes Were Made is a non-fiction book by social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, first published in 2007. It deals with cognitive dissonance, self-serving bias and other cognitive biases, using these psychological theories to illustrate how the perpetrators of hurtful acts...
  
  New York: Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-15-101098-1
• Aronson, E. (2008). The Social Animal (10th ed.). New York: Worth/Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-5715-X
• Aronson, J., & Aronson, E. (Ed.). (2008). Readings about the social animal (10th ed.). New York: Worth/Freeman.
• Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., & Akert, R. M. (2010). Social psychology (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Autobiography

• Aronson, E. (2002). "Drifting my own way: Following my nose and my heart." In R. Sternberg (Ed.) (2003) Psychologists defying the crowd: Stories of those who battled the establishment and won. Washington, DC: APA Books. ISBN 9781557989192
• Aronson, E. (2010). Not by chance alone: My life as a social psychologist. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-46501-833-8

Fiction

• Aronson, E., & Aronson, R. (2005). The Adventures of Ruthie and a Little Boy Named Grandpa (a children's book). iUniverse.

External links

• Aronson's home page
• top psychology award
• Profile of Aronson on Social Psychology Network
• The Jigsaw Classroom: site created by Elliot Aronson and hosted by the Social Psychology Network
• Aronson interviewed by CNN's Newsroom about the Jigsaw Classroom, August 14, 2001 (transcript)
• Why It's Hard to Admit to Being Wrong: Interview with Aronson on National Public Radio, 20 July 2007 (audio and transcript)
• The Scientist and The Humanist: Elliot Aronson in conversation with Carol Tavris and Joshua Aronson, 2008 (video)