Robert Zajonc

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robert Boleslaw Zajonc (born November 23, 1923 in Łódź , Poland , † December 3, 2008 in Stanford , California ) was an American psychologist and professor at Stanford University . He made a major contribution to the development of social psychology .

Life

When the German Wehrmacht approached Łódź in 1939 , Robert, an only child, fled to Warsaw with his parents . Her apartment there was destroyed in a bomb attack; his parents died and he was seriously injured. From Warsaw he was deported to a labor camp in Germany. He fled but was recaptured and put in a prison for political prisoners in France. He was able to escape from there too. He joined the Resistance and studied at the University of Paris. After the war he worked for the United Nations ( UNRRA ) in Paris, then studied at the University of Tübingen and in 1948 emigrated to the USA, to Ann Arbor , Michigan. He earned his doctorate in psychology in 1955 at the University of Michigan , where he was professor and institute director until 1994. He then moved to Stanford University, where he remained until his retirement . In 1981 he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He was a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences .

His wife, Hazel Rose Markus, is also a social psychologist. Zajonc died of pancreatic cancer in Stanford on December 3, 2008.

Pronunciation of his name

Since he lived in the US, he left his name about Seijenz say, in English phonetics ZYE-unts and Zy-unce - like Science with a Z . He once said "Zajonc rhymes with science".

Services

Zajonc's most famous discoveries include:

  • the mere exposure effect , which states that, all other things being equal, the known is more pleasant and likeable than the unknown. In the original experiment, he showed the test subjects abstract shapes and words in quick succession. Then the stimuli they had seen most often were rated significantly more positive than those shown less often.
  • Preferences need no inferences : Zajonc is convinced that emotional evaluations are faster and more important than rational ones. In doing so, he set himself in opposition to the two-factor theory of emotion by Stanley Schachter and other theories of emotion that “hold cognitive processes as necessary conditions for feelings”.
  • the confluence model , which explains the influence of position in the sibling row on intelligence . While the firstborn get the undivided attention of their parents and often have the opportunity to teach younger siblings something, the lastborn do not have this advantage and, statistically speaking, have an intelligence quotient that is on average three points lower .

One of his most famous students is John A. Bargh .

Fonts (selection)

  • Social psychology: An experimental approach . California: Brooks / Cole 1980
  • The Selected Works of RB Zajonc . Wiley 2003. ISBN 978-0-471-43306-4

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://zajonc.socialpsychology.org/
  2. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/education/07zajonc.html
  3. ↑ http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2497
  4. ^ The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1968
  5. ↑ Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences , American Psychologist 36, 1980, pp. 151-175
  6. ^ W. Herkner: Social Psychology . Bern: Hans Huber 1993, p. 347, ISBN 3-456-81989-7
  7. ↑ Zajonc, RB (1993). The confluence model: Differential or difference equation . European Journal of Social Psychology, 23 (2), pp. 211-215

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Zajonc, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zajonc, Robert Boleslaw (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American psychologist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Łódź , Poland
DATE OF DEATH December 3, 2008
Place of death Stanford , California