Interview 36: Elliot Aronson on cognitive dissonance and the Middle Way

My guest today is Elliot Aronson, one of the most distinguished social psychologists in the world, his books include the Social Animal and Cooperation in the Classroom: The Jigsaw Method, he co-authored the book on cognitive dissonance ‘Mistakes were made but not by me’ with Carol Tavris and has also fairly recently written his autobiography ‘Not by chance alone’ – the latter two I’ve read and would highly recommend. He was chosen by his peers as one of the hundred most influential psychologists of the 20th century and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is the only psychologist to have won all three of the American Psychological Associations top awards for writing, for teaching and for research. He’s here to talk to us today a little bit about his life and the theory of cognitive dissonance.