Robert Zajonc
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 contributed significantly to the development of social psychology.
Life
When in 1939 the German Wehrmacht Łódź approached, Robert, an only child, fled with his parents to Warsaw. There, her home was destroyed in a bombing raid; his parents died, and he himself was seriously injured. From Warsaw he was deported to a labor camp in Germany. He fled, but was taken prisoner again and locked in a prison for political prisoners in France. Even from there he managed to escape. 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 emigrated in 1948 in the United States, Ann Arbor, Michigan. He earned his doctoral degree in psychology in 1955 from the University of Michigan, where he was Professor and Director of the Institute until 1994. Then he moved to Stanford University, where he remained until his retirement.
His wife, Hazel Rose Markus is also a social psychologist. Zajonc died on 3 December 2008 of pancreatic cancer at Stanford University.
Pronunciation of his name
Since he lived in the U.S., he was about to express Seijenz his name, in English phonetics ZYE - unts or Zy - unce - like Science with a Z. He once said " Zajonc rhymes with science".
Services
For Zajonc famous discoveries include:
- Mere exposure effect, which states that under otherwise identical conditions familiar pleasant and likable than the unknown. In the original experiment, he showed the subjects in rapid succession abstract shapes and words. Subsequently, the stimuli that they had seen most frequently were rated significantly more positive than those shown less often.
- Preferences need no inferences: After Zajonc conviction emotional evaluations are faster and more important than rational. He sat down in opposition to the two-factor theory of emotion by Stanley Schachter and other theories of emotion, " keep cognitive processes for necessary conditions of feelings " the.
- The Konfluenzmodell that explains the influence of the position in the birth order on intelligence. While the firstborn get the undivided attention of their parents and often have the opportunity to teach younger siblings something last-born have this advantage and a statistically average by three points lower IQs.
Among his most famous pupils John A. Bargh heard.
Writings (selection )
- Social psychology: An experimental approach. California: Brooks / Cole 1980
- The Selected Works of R. B. Zajonc. Wiley, 2003. ISBN 978-0-471-43306-4