Leon Festinger

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Leon Festinger (born May 8, 1919 in New York City , † February 11, 1989 ibid) was an American social psychologist , who was mainly known for his theory of cognitive dissonance , the theory of social comparison and his experiments.

Leon Festinger was born in New York to Alex Festinger and Sara Solomon, Russian-Jewish immigrants. After graduating from school, Festinger went to City College of New York , where he graduated in 1939. In the following year he completed his MA in psychology. This was followed by a graduation from the University of Iowa under the German psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890-1947).

Lewin, who was working on a new field theory of social psychology at the time, also had a great influence on Festinger's work in perspective. After Festinger had obtained his doctorate in psychology at the University of Iowa in 1942 with the research topic aspiration level and statistics, he worked as a statistician at the University of Rochester for the program Committee on Selection and Training of Aircraft Pilots during the Second World War. From 1945 he followed Lewin to the research center for group dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Here he became an assistant professor of social psychology. He worked there with Stanley Schachter . At that time, Festinger and Mary Ballou, a pianist with whom he had three children, married; but later the divorce followed.

After Lewin's death in 1947, the group dynamics research center moved to the University of Michigan , and Festinger was promoted to program director. He then moved to the University of Minnesota as a professor of psychology and went to Stanford University in 1955 . During this time he made significant contributions to the formation of social psychological theory through his investigations into informal social communication. He developed theories about social comparison processes, especially his theory of cognitive dissonance. This states that a person is essentially always striving for social balance, regardless of the type and form, for himself. For example, when this person is doing a particularly dangerous job, he tries to gather information and “evidence” that the job is completely “normal” and necessary for a high purpose. For this purpose, Leon Festinger developed imaginative experiments with his students, including the creation of dissonances through “foced compliance”, which are often associated with the effects of deception. In 1959 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1972 to the National Academy of Sciences .

Around 1964 he left the research area of ​​social psychology and turned to the psychology of color perception. In 1968 he returned to New York City, where he was professor of psychology at the New School for Social Research . Ten years later he finished his experimental psychological research and devoted himself particularly to the publication of selected topics, began to deal with archeology and historical processes. In 1983 his work "The Human Legacy" was published.

Leon Festinger died on February 11, 1989 in New York. He left behind his second wife, Trudy Bradley, whom he married in 1969.

Elliot Aronson is one of his most famous students .

Work (selection)

Web links


Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stanley Schachter, Leon Festinger (1919–1989): A biographical memoir, DC: National Academy of Sciences, Washington 1983
  2. ↑ Helmut E. Lück, biography about Leon Festinger, Lexikon der Psychologie, Hans Huber Verlag 2013
personal data
SURNAME Festinger, Leon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American social psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH February 11, 1989
Place of death New York City