Daryl Bem

An American social psychologist whose self-perception theory offered a major alternative to stronger dissonance-based accounts of attitude formation.

• Signature vocabulary: self-perception theory, attitudes, identity, social psychology.
• Worldview: People sometimes infer their own attitudes and dispositions by observing their behavior in context much as they infer those of others.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: He would ask what a person is learning about themselves from their own behavior and the situation around it.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of social psychology.

Lightly paradoxical and observant, inviting people to infer the self from action rather than hidden drama alone.

• self-perception theory
• attitude inference from behavior
• identity from observation
• context shaping self-knowledge
• situational influence
• groups and norms
• identity and comparison
• perception of others
• attitudes
• identity
• social psychology

• Self-perception theory is most compelling when prior attitudes are weak, ambiguous, or not strongly felt.
• Bem's later psi research became highly controversial and is not representative of how mainstream psychology received his earlier self-perception work.

• Watch what you do, and you may learn what you feel.
• Behavior can tutor the self.
• Sometimes people infer themselves the way they infer others.

• Self-Perception Theory
• Beliefs, Attitudes, and Human Affairs
• Gender schema and identity writings