Elliot Aronson

Elliot Aronson
Aronson photographed in 1972 by his wife Vera
Born	(1932-01-09) January 9, 1932 (age 85) Chelsea, Massachusetts, USA
Residence	United States
Nationality	American
Fields	Social Psychology, Applied Social Psychology, Media Psychology
Institutions	Harvard University University of Minnesota University of Texas University of California, Santa Cruz
Alma mater	Brandeis University Wesleyan University Stanford University
Doctoral advisor	Leon Festinger
Doctoral students	Merrill Carlsmith, John Darley, Anthony Greenwald, Ellen Berscheid, Darwyn Linder, David Mettee, Harold Sigall, Josef Schwartzwald, Rebecca Slaton, David Landy, Vernon Cope, Suzanne Yates, James Temple, Erica Goode, Diane Bridgeman, Alexander Gonzalez. Marti Gonzales, Jeff Stone, Carrie Fried.
Known for	research on cognitive dissonance, high-impact experimentation, Jigsaw Classroom, gain-loss theory of attraction
Influences	Leon Festinger,Abraham Maslow
Notable awards	AAAS Prize for Behavioral Science Research, APS William James Award

Elliot Aronson (born January 9, 1932) is an American psychologist. He is listed among the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th Century and is best known for the invention of the Jigsaw Classroom as a method of reducing interethnic hostility and prejudice. He is also known for his research on cognitive dissonance and his influential social psychology textbooks. In his (1972) text, The Social Animal, (now in its 11th edition), he stated Aronson's First Law: "People who do crazy things are not necessarily crazy," thus asserting the importance of situational factors in bizarre behavior. He is the only person in the 120-year history of the American Psychological Association to have won all three of its major awards: for writing, for teaching, and for research. In 2007 he received the William James Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association for Psychological Science, in which he was cited as the scientist who "fundamentally changed the way we look at everyday life.” A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Aronson as the 78th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. He officially retired in 1994 but continues to teach and write.

Aronson grew up in extreme poverty in Revere, Massachusetts, during the Great Depression. His was the only Jewish family in the neighbourhood, and it was not rare for Aronson to be bullied on the way home from Hebrew school by anti-Semitic gangs. He believes that every life's progress is based on a combination of luck, opportunity, talent, and intuition. Although his high school grades were mediocre, his SAT scores were high enough to earn him a work-study scholarship at Brandeis University.

Influenced by his father, he began his college career majoring in economics. However, he promptly changed his major to psychology after accidentally wandering into an Introductory Psychology lecture taught by Abraham Maslow. After attending this lecture, he realized that there was an entire science devoted to exploring the kinds of questions that had intrigued him as a child. His undergraduate years at Brandeis brought him closer to a number of respected psychologists, but Maslow was his primary mentor and had the biggest impact on his early academic career.