Stanley Schachter
American social psychologist who studied affiliation, emotion and eating
Social psychologist who joined Kurt Lewin's group dynamics centre in 1946 and later became a Columbia professor. Known for the two-factor theory of emotion with Jerome Singer (1962), affiliation studies and work on obesity and external food cues.
Why this person matters
Schachter's 1962 study proposed that emotion combines physiological arousal with a cognitive label drawn from the situation. The memoir names Jerome Singer, Bibb Latané and Ladd Wheeler as collaborators on the emotion work. He also worked with Leon Festinger and Henry Riecken on a doomsday group, and later brought social psychological ideas to the study of eating.
Main contributions
Two-factor theory of emotion
Schachter and Singer (Psychological Review, 1962) gave participants an adrenaline injection that produced unexplained arousal. Participants could feel anger, euphoria or fear depending on the social situation, so emotion depends partly on how people interpret their arousal.
Affiliation research
The Psychology of Affiliation (1959) examined the social drive to be with others and remains widely cited.
Obesity and external cues
Schachter found that obese people were less motivated by food deprivation and more responsive to external food cues, and proposed that this made them prone to overeating. Obesity and Eating appeared in Science in 1968.
Context and limits
Students who continued the obesity research later argued that the causal order was reversed: obese people are often food-deprived because they are dieting, and that deprivation makes them more responsive to food cues. His biographer Richard Nisbett noted that Schachter's work was sometimes more persuasive than it might otherwise have been because of the charm of his prose. The sources read do not report on replication of the 1962 study.
In your introductory course
Motivation and emotion.Schachter appears in the emotion chapter as the two-factor theory and in the social chapter for affiliation. He is also linked to Festinger's When Prophecy Fails.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 10.4. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1946
Joined Kurt Lewin's Research Center for Group Dynamics at MIT.
- 1956
Co-wrote When Prophecy Fails with Leon Festinger and Henry Riecken.
- 1962
Published the emotion experiment with Jerome Singer.
- 1968
Published Obesity and Eating in Science.
Sources
- National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs vol. 78: Stanley Schachter (Richard E. Nisbett)Society or association. Text passages inspected.
- Wikipedia, Stanley SchachterReference work. Reference article inspected.