Stanley Schachter

Stanley Schachter (April 15, 1922 – June 7, 1997) was an American social psychologist, who is perhaps best known for his development of the two factor theory of emotion in 1962 along with Jerome E. Singer. In his theory he states that emotions have two ingredients: physiological arousal and a cognitive label. A person's experience of an emotion stems from the mental awareness of the body's physical arousal and the explanation one attaches to this arousal. Schachter also studied and published many works on the subjects of obesity, group dynamics, birth order and smoking. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Schachter as the seventh most cited psychologist of the 20th.

Early life and education

Schachter was born in Flushing, New York, the son of Anna (Fruchter) and Nathan Schachter. His parents were both Romanian Jews, his father from Vasilău, a small village in Bukovina, and his mother from Rădăuți. As a young man, Schachter initially studied Art history at Yale University. He obtained his bachelor's degree in 1942, and went on to pursue his Master's in Psychology, also at Yale, where he was influenced by Clark Hull. After earning his Master's in 1944, Schachter joined the United States Armed Forces, where he served until 1946. During his two years in the Armed Forces, Schachter obtained the rank of sergeant. He worked at the Biophysics Division of the Aero-Medical Laboratory of Wright Field in Riverside, Ohio, studying the visual problems experienced by pilots in flight.

In 1946, after his term in the armed forces, Schachter went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to work with the German social psychologist Kurt Lewin, in his Research Center for Group Dynamics, studying social issues. Unfortunately, Lewin died in 1947, very shortly after Schachter's arrival in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A senior doctoral student, Leon Festinger, took over as Schachter's supervisor, and the pair became very close lifelong friends. When Festinger moved to the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research in 1948, Schachter followed. This was where Schachter gained his Ph.D. in 1949, under supervisor Festinger, writing his dissertation on how individuals with differing opinions who were working in small groups were treated by the members of the group whose opinion matched with the majority.

Early career (University of Minnesota 1949–1961)

The new doctor of psychology's impressive dissertation earned him a job in 1949 at the University of Minnesota's Laboratory for Research in Social Relations. Beginning as an assistant professor, Schachter soon moved his way through the ranks of professorship; he became an associate professor in 1954 and then obtained the title of full professor in 1958, in large part thanks to his extensive research and writing. During the first decade of his career in psychology, Schachter authored or co-authored five books, four of which (Social Pressures in Informal Groups [1950], Theory and Experiment in Social Communication [1950], When Prophecy Fails [1956] – written with Festinger and Henry Riecken, describing what happened to millennial groups after their predicted date for the end of the world had passed –, and The Psychology of Affiliation [1959]) are still highly influential. In addition to the books, during the 1950s, Schachter also wrote numerous articles on topics such as rumor transmission, group cohesion, and persuasion.

Such work gained Schachter several honors and awards during his time at the University of Minnesota. In 1952, Schachter was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. Then, in 1959, toward the end of his time in Minnesota, Schachter was awarded both the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Socio-Psychological Prize and the AAAS Prize for Behavioral Science Research in 1959. That year, Schachter also won the first of his several General Electric Foundation Awards, which he continued to win each year through 1962.

Later career (Columbia University 1961–1992)

After 12 years at the University of Minnesota, Scachter joined the Columbia University (New York City, NY) faculty as professor of psychology in 1961, where he remained until the end of his career. His work in the 1960s was focused on how attribution processes influence people in various aspects of bothsocial life and self-perception, with studies on topics such as birth order, criminal behavior, pain perception, and obesity. Thanks to such studies as these, he was named Robert Johnston Niven Professor of Social Psychology in 1966. Schachter continued to obtain honors in the following two years, becoming a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation in 1967 and winning the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award in 1968.

During the 1970s, Schachter's research shifted focus yet again, this time to tobacco-smoking and nicotine. His research on this topic proved that nicotine was a highly-addictive substance and produced withdrawal effects in those trying to quit a full fifteen years before the tobacco industry would publicly admit these things.

In 1983, Schachter's extensive and ground-breaking research studies earned him a spot in the National Academy of Sciences. And a year later, he was given the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. But, a man of infinite curiosity, Schachter did not stop performing research after obtaining such honors. In the mid-1980s and early 1990s, his research again shifted focus, this time to topics such as the stock market and speech issues.

Retirement and death (1992–1997)

At the age of 70, Schachter decided it was time to end his 31-year career at Columbia University and retired in 1992 with an emeritus designation. Five years later, Schachter died on June 7, 1997 at his home in East Hampton, New York. He is survived by his wife Sophia (née Duckworth) and Elijah, their only son (b. 1969). In addition to these two family members, Schachter left behind him a legacy of highly distinguished, influential psychology students, such as Bibb Latané, Richard Nisbett, Lee Ross, Jerome Singer, Stewart Valins, Patricia Pliner, Judith Rodin, and Ladd Wheeler. His papers are archived at the Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan.