Leon Festinger

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Lore & Background

Festinger was born in Brooklyn, New York, on May 8, 1919, to Russian-Jewish immigrants Alex Festinger and Sara Solomon Festinger. His father, an embroidery manufacturer, 'left Russia a radical and atheist and remained faithful to these views throughout his life.' Festinger attended Boys' High School in Brooklyn and received his BS degree in psychology from the City College of New York in 1939. He studied under Kurt Lewin at the University of Iowa, receiving his MA in 1940 and PhD in 1942 in the field of child behavior. By his own admission, he was not interested in social psychology when he arrived at Iowa and did not take a single course in social psychology during his entire time there; instead, he was interested in Lewin's earlier work on tension systems. Festinger considered himself to be a freethinker and an atheist. In 1945, Festinger joined Lewin's newly formed Research Center for Group Dynamics at MIT as an assistant professor. It was at MIT that Festinger, in his own words, 'became, by fiat, a social psychologist, and immersed myself in the field with all its difficulties, vaguenesses, and challenges.' His foray into social communication and pressures in groups started 'almost as an accident' while conducting a study on the impact of architectural and ecological factors on student housing satisfaction. Although the proximity effect was an important direct finding, Festinger and his collaborators also noticed correlations between the degree of friendship within a group of residents and the similarity of opinions within the group, raising unexpected questions that led to his seminal 1950 paper on informal social communication. After Lewin's death in 1947, Festinger moved with the research center to the University of Michigan in 1948, then to the University of Minnesota in 1951, and to Stanford University in 1955. He published his highly influential paper on social comparison theory, followed in 1957 by his theory of cognitive dissonance. He received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award by the American Psychological Association in 1959 and was named one of America's ten most promising scientists by Fortune magazine. Despite this recognition, Festinger left social psychology in 1964, attributing his decision to 'a conviction that had been growing in me at the time that I, personally, was in a rut and needed an injection of intellectual stimulation from new sources to continue to be productive.' He turned to visual perception research, then in 1979 closed his laboratory, citing dissatisfaction with working 'on narrower and narrower technical problems.'

Reader's Guide

Leon Festinger's significance lies in his foundational contributions to social psychology, particularly through the theory of cognitive dissonance and social comparison theory. These theories challenged the behaviorist paradigm by showing that human behavior cannot be fully explained by stimulus-response conditioning, emphasizing instead the role of internal cognitive processes. His work on the proximity effect also influenced social network theory. Festinger advanced laboratory experimentation while advocating for the study of real-life situations, exemplified by his infiltration of a doomsday cult. Despite his preeminence, he left social psychology in 1964, later exploring visual perception, archaeology, and human evolution. Following B. F. Skinner, Jean Piaget, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Bandura, Festinger was the fifth most cited psychologist of the 20th century. His legacy endures in the widespread application of cognitive dissonance across psychology, marketing, and behavioral economics.

Did You Know?

• Festinger did not take a single course in social psychology during his entire time at the University of Iowa; he became a social psychologist 'by fiat' when he joined Kurt Lewin's center at MIT in 1945.
• His seminal work on the proximity effect started 'almost as an accident' while he was studying the impact of architectural and ecological factors on student housing satisfaction at MIT.
• Festinger was named one of America's ten most promising scientists by Fortune magazine shortly after publishing social comparison theory.
• He left social psychology in 1964 because he felt he was 'in a rut and needed an injection of intellectual stimulation from new sources to continue to be productive.'
• In 1979, Festinger closed his laboratory, citing dissatisfaction with working 'on narrower and narrower technical problems,' and turned to archaeology and human evolutionary sciences.