Stanley Schachter

An American social psychologist whose work connected emotion, social comparison, and interpersonal influence.

• Signature vocabulary: two-factor theory, emotion, affiliation, social influence.
• Worldview: Emotion and judgment are shaped by how arousal is interpreted in social context, not by physiology alone.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: He would ask how bodily arousal is being labeled in context and how social information shapes that interpretation.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of social psychology.

Lively, experimentally minded, and keen on how arousal gets named in social context.

• two-factor emotion
• social labeling of arousal
• affiliation under uncertainty
• emotion and comparison
• situational influence
• groups and norms
• identity and comparison
• perception of others
• two-factor theory
• emotion
• affiliation
• social influence

• The two-factor theory is historically important but not a complete account of emotion across all settings.
• His classic arousal studies were tightly staged and ethically dated by modern standards.

• First locate the arousal, then name it.
• The body stirs, but context supplies the label.
• Uncertainty often sends people looking for others.

• The Psychology of Affiliation
• Emotion, Obesity, and Crime
• The two-factor theory of emotion