Jerome E. Singer

Jerome Singer Everett ( 29. April 1934 in New York City - 21st April 2010 ) was an American psychologist.

He was Founding Professor of the Institute for Medical and Clinical Psychology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda .

Together with Stanley Schachter , he is considered the founder of the two-factor theory of emotion . Singer was also one of the 14 members of the NRC (National Research Council) committee for human performance in 1985. Singer influenced the realignment of modern psychology known as the cognitive turn . Most crucial was his expertise on the various psychological and physiological effects of various stressors.

Life and education

Jerome E. Singer was born in 1934 in the Bronx , New York City. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1956 and received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1960 . He studied under Stanley Schachter , who was a student of Kurt Lewin . After becoming a member of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research , he became a professor at Pennsylvania State University and at the State University of New York's Stony Brook campus . In 1976 he moved to the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (in German: Military University of Health Sciences), where he founded the Institute for Medical and Clinical Psychology .

He died of a cerebral haemorrhage in April 2010 at the age of 75. He left behind his wife, Linda Ascher, with whom he had been married for 52 years, and three children.

Career

Jerome Singer was one of the fourteen members of the committee for human performance of the NRC (National Research Council) in 1985. In a small research group he investigated a new variant of medical psychology , which should combine social psychology , psychopathology and psychobiology . The subject area of medical psychology includes physical and mental health. Singer's main focus was on the effects of stress on health.

Singer is known as the "best second author" in psychology because he published with Stanley Schachter , Dave Glass, Andy Baum and Leon Festinger . Some of the things he has dealt with in his career included the cognitive alteration of emotional states, Machiavellianism , the effects of noise, the psychosocial effects and processes in the context of organ transplantation, Type A behavior and possible animal models and stress and the Interconnections of Psychology and Public Health.

Jerome Singer became best known for the publication of the two-factor theory of emotion , which he developed in 1962 together with Stanley Schachter . This new theory in emotion research took into account cognitive factors, which had not happened before the cognitive turnaround heralded a few years earlier. Schachter and Singer formulated a theory of emotional experience within the cognitive paradigm and its terminology. The developed model showed that an environmental stimulus (emotional excitement) was perceived and interpreted. This in turn leads to a general, autonomous arousal , which is classified in the respective context and allows the individual to experience a specific emotion that is also perceived and interpreted. Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron led a study in 1974 that empirically confirmed the theory.

The criticism that was often voiced from scientific circles was aimed particularly at the focus set, the general pattern of arousal. Singer and Schachter did not explain the claim that emotional processes take place in the autonomic nervous system and were also criticized for it.

Two major alternative theories were later published: the Facial Feedback Hypothesis , which assumes that emotions depend on the interpretation of facial muscle activity, and Lisa Feldman Barrett's "Theory of Constructed Emotion", which states that all emotions are in two dimensions (Valence and arousal) can be represented.

Publications (selection)

• Cognitive Alteration of Feeling States: A Historical Background. A scientific publication by Jerome E. Singer is published in the scientific journal Integration of Physiological and Behavioral Science . In this article, Singer takes up the idea that a person responds and reacts to objective stimuli determined by the experimental setup, as well as to stimuli that are defined subjectively and apperceptively.
• Cognitive Social and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State by Stanley Schachter and Jerome E. Singer is a scientific publication published in the scientific journal Psychological Review in September 1962.
• Urban Stress: Experiments on Noise and Social Stressors by David C. Glass and Jerome E. Singer
• Teaching Psychology in the Medical Curriculum: Students' Perceptions of a Base Science Course in Medical Psychology by David Krantz , Lynn Durel, Jerome E. Singer and Robert Gatchel is a scientific publication published in the scientific journal The Teaching of Psychology in 1983.
• Apartment Noise, Auditory Discrimination, and Reading Ability in Children by Sheldon Cohen, David C. Glass, and Jerome E. Singer is a scientific publication published in 1973 in the scientific journal Journal of Experimental Social Psychology .
• Perceived Control of Aversive Stimulation and the Reduction of Stress Responses by David C. Glass, Jerome E. Singer, H. Skipton Leonard, David Krantz , Sheldon Cohen, and Halleck Cummings was published in 1973 in the Journal of Personality .
• Behavioral Consequences of Exposure to Uncontrollable and Unpredictable Noise by Bruce Reim, David C. Glass, and Jerome E. Singer was published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology in 1971.
• Psychic Cost of Adaptation to an Environmental Stressor by David C. Glass, Jerome E. Singer, and Lucy N Friedman was published in 1969 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology .

supporting documents

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} In Appreciation: Jerome E. Singer . In: Observer . 23, No. 7, September 1, 2010.
2. ^ ^{A b} Jerome Singer, James M. Williams Sr., Charles W. Craven . May 2, 2010.