Elliot Aronson

Early life and education Aronson grew up in extreme poverty in Revere, Massachusetts, during the Great Depression. His was the only Jewish family in the neighborhood, and it was not rare for Aronson to be bullied on the way home from Hebrew school by anti-Semitic gangs. He believes that every life's progress is based on a combination of luck, opportunity, talent, and intuition. Although his high school grades were mediocre, his SAT scores were high enough to earn him a work-study scholarship at Brandeis University. After attending this lecture, he realized that there was an entire science devoted to exploring the kinds of questions that had intrigued him as a child. 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 and won the William James Award from the Association for Psychological Science for his lifetime achievements. His honors include distinguished research awards from the American Psychological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. He also won the Gordon Allport Prize for his work on reducing prejudice.

Research topics Cognitive dissonance Aronson's interests and research have paid particular attention to the theory of cognitive dissonance. Aronson refined 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. In a classic experiment, Aronson 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 or easy initiation. In Aronson's Theories of Cognitive Consistency (1973), he states: "Dissonance theory does not rest upon the assumption that man is a rational animal; rather, it suggests that man is a rationalizing animal – that he attempts to appear rational, both to others and to himself."

Jigsaw Classroom

Aronson led the development of a classroom technique for defusing inter-group tension and promoting self-esteem. It was discovered that it is rare for classrooms of students to cooperate towards a common goal. In 1971 the newly desegregated schools of Austin, Texas faced a crisis of violence between ethnic groups. Aronson, then at the University of Texas, was called in as a consultant by a school administrator who was also a former student. 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.

Pratfall effect Aronson published a paper in 1966, where he described an experiment testing the effects of a simple blunder on perceived attraction. The so-called pratfall effect is the tendency for attractiveness to increase or decrease after an individual makes a mistake, depending on the individual's perceived competence, or ability to perform well in a general sense.

Awards and professional recognition

Personal life

Elliot is married to Vera Aronson, whom he met while they were both undergraduate research assistants under Abraham Maslow. In 2000, Aronson was diagnosed with macular degeneration and, by 2003, had lost all of his central vision.