Stanley Schachter facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Stanley Schachter
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Stanley Schachter
April 15, 1922 Flushing, Queens, New York, U.S.
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| Died | June 7, 1997 (aged 75) East Hampton, New York, U.S.
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| Alma mater | Yale University (B.A., M.A.) University of Michigan (Ph.D.) |
| Spouse(s) | Sophia Duckworth |
| Children | 1 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychology |
| Institutions | University of Minnesota Columbia University |
| Thesis | Deviation, rejection, and communication. (1950) |
| Doctoral advisor | Leon Festinger |
| Doctoral students | Richard E. Nisbett Lee Ross Nicholas Christenfeld E. Tory Higgins Jerome E. Singer Bibb Latané Judith Rodin |
Stanley Schachter (born April 15, 1922 – died June 7, 1997) was an American social psychologist. He is famous for his "two-factor theory of emotion," which he created with Jerome E. Singer in 1962. This theory says that our feelings have two parts: a physical reaction in our body and a mental label we give to that feeling. So, when you feel an emotion, it's because you notice your body's physical changes and then figure out what that feeling means.
Schachter also studied many other things like why people gain weight, how groups of people act together, how birth order affects people, and why people smoke. He was a very important psychologist. In 2002, a study showed he was the seventh most mentioned psychologist of the 1900s.
About Stanley Schachter
His Early Life and School
Stanley Schachter was born in Flushing, New York. His parents were Romanian Jews. When he was young, Schachter first studied art history at Yale University. He earned his first degree in 1942. Then, he got his Master's degree in Psychology, also at Yale, where he learned from Clark Hull.
After getting his Master's in 1944, Schachter joined the U.S. Army. He served for two years until 1946 and became a sergeant. He worked in a lab studying vision problems that pilots had while flying.
In 1946, Schachter went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He worked with a German social psychologist named Kurt Lewin. They studied how groups of people act together. Sadly, Lewin passed away in 1947, soon after Schachter arrived. A student named Leon Festinger became Schachter's new supervisor. They became very close friends for life.
When Festinger moved to the University of Michigan in 1948, Schachter followed him. This is where Schachter earned his Ph.D. (a high-level degree) in 1949. His main project was about how people with different ideas were treated in small groups.
Starting His Career (1949–1961)
Schachter's impressive work helped him get a job in 1949 at the University of Minnesota. He started as an assistant professor. He quickly moved up, becoming a full professor in 1958. This was because he did a lot of research and wrote many papers.
In his first ten years as a psychologist, Schachter wrote or helped write five books. Four of these books are still very important today. He also wrote many articles about things like how rumors spread, how groups stick together, and how people convince others.
His work earned him several awards. In 1952, he received a Fulbright Fellowship. In 1959, he won two awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He also started winning the General Electric Foundation Awards, which he continued to receive until 1962.
Later Career (1961–1992)
After 12 years in Minnesota, Schachter joined Columbia University in New York City in 1961. He stayed there for the rest of his career. In the 1960s, he studied how people explain things to themselves and others. He looked at topics like birth order, criminal behavior, how people feel pain, and obesity. Because of his important studies, he became a special professor of social psychology in 1966.
He continued to receive honors, becoming a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation in 1967. In 1968, he won the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award.
In the 1970s, Schachter started studying tobacco smoking and nicotine. His research showed that nicotine was very addictive and caused people to feel bad when they tried to quit. He proved this a full fifteen years before tobacco companies publicly admitted it.
In 1983, Schachter's important research earned him a spot in the National Academy of Sciences. The next year, he received the Distinguished Scientist Award. But Schachter was always curious. In the mid-1980s and early 1990s, he studied new topics like the stock market and speech problems.
Retirement and Passing (1992–1997)
At age 70, Schachter retired from Columbia University in 1992. He had worked there for 31 years. Five years later, he passed away on June 7, 1997, at his home in East Hampton, New York. He left behind his wife, Sophia, and their son, Elijah. Schachter also left a legacy of many important psychology students who became famous in their own right.
What Stanley Schachter Discovered
Key Studies and Findings
How Groups Affect People (1951)
Schachter did an experiment to see how much pressure people feel to fit in with a group. He studied how people communicate and how groups might reject someone who has different ideas. His findings are very important for understanding how people act in groups.
Birth Order and Success (1963)
Schachter was also interested in how being the first-born or an only child might affect someone's success. Some people thought that first-borns or only children were more likely to be famous or smart. Schachter found that this idea might be misleading. He showed that many studies on this topic only looked at college students, and college groups often have more first-borns for various reasons.
Obesity and Eating Habits (1968)
Schachter did many experiments about how people who are obese respond to hunger cues. He looked at both internal cues (like feeling hungry) and external cues (like seeing food). In one study, he looked at how stress affected eating. Non-obese people ate less when they were stressed. However, obese people tended to be less sensitive to their body's internal signals. They were more affected by external things like food ads or set meal times.
Nicotine and Smoking (1977)
Schachter researched how smokers control their nicotine intake. He believed that smokers adjust how much nicotine they get. His results showed that heavy, long-term smokers did smoke more low-nicotine cigarettes to get enough nicotine. Light smokers, however, did not always do this.
His Main Theories
The Two-Factor Theory of Emotion
Schachter and Jerome E. Singer created the two-factor theory of emotion. This theory says that emotions come from two things: a physical feeling in your body and a mental label you give to that feeling. When you feel a physical change, your brain looks around for clues to understand what emotion it is.
They also said that two things can happen when your body feels excited:
- If you know why you're feeling excited, you use that explanation, and everything makes sense.
- If you don't know why you're feeling excited, your brain will use things around you to figure out what emotion it is.
An important part of this theory is called misattribution of arousal. This means if your brain isn't sure why you feel a certain way, it might use outside clues to label the emotion. For example, in one study, people who crossed a scary bridge were more likely to find an interviewer attractive than those who crossed a safe bridge. Their brains might have confused the excitement from the bridge with feelings for the interviewer.
Theory on Obesity
Schachter suggested that obese people are very sensitive to outside signals, both about food and other things. He found that many factors caused differences between obese and non-obese people. Obese people would eat more when food was easy to get. But they ate less when food was harder to get.
If there was a lot of food visible, non-obese people ate less, but obese people ate more. The taste of food also made a difference. Both groups ate less of bad-tasting food. But obese people had a bigger difference: they ate much more of the good-tasting food and much less of the bad-tasting food compared to non-obese people.
See also
In Spanish: Stanley Schachter para niños
