Book contents
- Pillars of Social Psychology
- Pillars of Social Psychology
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- 1 Introducing the Pillars of Social Psychology
- 2 Seven Decades in Social Psychology
- 3 A Career Emerging from an Unnecessary Analysis
- 4 Once a Social Psychologist, Always a Social Psychologist
- 5 Abe and Leon and Me
- 6 My Contributions to Social Psychology Over Many Decades
- 7 Influences and Dissonances
- 8 From Ideomotor Theory to the IAT in Just 35 Years
- 9 Curiosity
- 10 The Emergence and Evolution of Social Realities
- 11 The Good Old Days
- 12 “What Ever Happened to that Blond Girl?”
- 13 A Quest for Social Psychology That Spans the Psychological and the Social
- 14 Reasoning
- 15 Chance and Choice
- 16 Looking Back on a Charmed Career
- 17 My Train Ride to Social Psychology
- 18 The Making and Remaking of a Cross-Cultural Psychologist in Six Acts
- 19 A Professional Past of Arranging to Be Compelled
- 20 A Social Psychological and Personality Approach to Human Motivation
- 21 Wandering into Psychology and Law
- 22 My Meandering Journey into Social Psychology
- 23 A Career in Ten Episodes
- 24 Getting Lucky
- 25 Mindsets
- 26 Social Psychology and Me
- 27 My Life as a Social Psychologist
- 28 You Can’t Be a Self by Yourself
- 29 Getting to Here from There
- 30 A Relational Life
- 31 Planning Is Overrated
- 32 Symptoms, Secrets, Writing, and Words
- 33 How Chance Encounters Can Foster a Career
- 34 A Multi-Decade Journey between the Lab and the Real World
- 35 A Long and Winding Road
- 36 Tales of a Devoted but Disillusioned Party Crasher
- 37 Social Cognition, Always the Great Beyond
- 38 The Accidental Social Psychologist
- 39 The Power of Firmly Held Beliefs
- 40 My Career in Social Psychology
- 41 Chasing Self-Esteem
- 42 The Basement Tapes
- 43 Evolutionary Social Psychology
- 44 One Man’s Search for (the Assignment of) Meaning
- 45 Meetings with Remarkable Men: A Fortunate Journey in Social Psychology
- 46 Dear Vera, Chuck, and Dave
- 47 Always Buy the Handbook of Social Psychology (1968) at a Railway Station in India
- 48 Empowering People to Break the Prejudice Habit
- 49 Seeking the Middle Way
- 50 The Pillars, Their Stories, Retrospectives, and Signals Loud and Clear
- Index
- References
17 - My Train Ride to Social Psychology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2022
By
Edited by
Book contents
- Pillars of Social Psychology
- Pillars of Social Psychology
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- 1 Introducing the Pillars of Social Psychology
- 2 Seven Decades in Social Psychology
- 3 A Career Emerging from an Unnecessary Analysis
- 4 Once a Social Psychologist, Always a Social Psychologist
- 5 Abe and Leon and Me
- 6 My Contributions to Social Psychology Over Many Decades
- 7 Influences and Dissonances
- 8 From Ideomotor Theory to the IAT in Just 35 Years
- 9 Curiosity
- 10 The Emergence and Evolution of Social Realities
- 11 The Good Old Days
- 12 “What Ever Happened to that Blond Girl?”
- 13 A Quest for Social Psychology That Spans the Psychological and the Social
- 14 Reasoning
- 15 Chance and Choice
- 16 Looking Back on a Charmed Career
- 17 My Train Ride to Social Psychology
- 18 The Making and Remaking of a Cross-Cultural Psychologist in Six Acts
- 19 A Professional Past of Arranging to Be Compelled
- 20 A Social Psychological and Personality Approach to Human Motivation
- 21 Wandering into Psychology and Law
- 22 My Meandering Journey into Social Psychology
- 23 A Career in Ten Episodes
- 24 Getting Lucky
- 25 Mindsets
- 26 Social Psychology and Me
- 27 My Life as a Social Psychologist
- 28 You Can’t Be a Self by Yourself
- 29 Getting to Here from There
- 30 A Relational Life
- 31 Planning Is Overrated
- 32 Symptoms, Secrets, Writing, and Words
- 33 How Chance Encounters Can Foster a Career
- 34 A Multi-Decade Journey between the Lab and the Real World
- 35 A Long and Winding Road
- 36 Tales of a Devoted but Disillusioned Party Crasher
- 37 Social Cognition, Always the Great Beyond
- 38 The Accidental Social Psychologist
- 39 The Power of Firmly Held Beliefs
- 40 My Career in Social Psychology
- 41 Chasing Self-Esteem
- 42 The Basement Tapes
- 43 Evolutionary Social Psychology
- 44 One Man’s Search for (the Assignment of) Meaning
- 45 Meetings with Remarkable Men: A Fortunate Journey in Social Psychology
- 46 Dear Vera, Chuck, and Dave
- 47 Always Buy the Handbook of Social Psychology (1968) at a Railway Station in India
- 48 Empowering People to Break the Prejudice Habit
- 49 Seeking the Middle Way
- 50 The Pillars, Their Stories, Retrospectives, and Signals Loud and Clear
- Index
- References
Summary
The train rocked back and forth as it carried me on my journey to school. I was riding a New York City subway, making my way to class at the City College of New York. I was dimly aware of the D-train stopping and starting again on a trip that I had made hundreds of times before. This time, however, I found myself not at CCNY but in midtown Manhattan, well past the college. The culprit: an article in a social psychology journal on cognitive dissonance. The authors tried to persuade me that people who expend a high degree of unpleasant effort to join a fictitious club actually like that club better than people who do not expend effort. Although the prediction seemed altogether impossible, it fit so nicely with the theory that generated it. How fascinating, how exciting, how relevant! And so, a boy from the Bronx jettisoned his would-be career as a mathematics major and became a social psychologist – or at least a social psychology wannabe.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Pillars of Social PsychologyStories and Retrospectives, pp. 142 - 150Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
References
Suggested Reading
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Stone, J., & Cooper, J. (2001). A self-standards model of cognitive dissonance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 37, 228–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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