Elliot Aronson Books

Propaganda did not begin with modern marketing; it’s as old as organized society itself. The word itself comes from the 17th century Congregatio de Propaganda Fide — the Catholic Church’s department for spreading the faith. But long before that, rulers, priests, and generals understood that mass per...

From Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion

To understand persuasion, we must first understand people. Persuasion works because it taps the underlying architecture of how humans form attitudes and make decisions. Aronson and I draw upon decades of social psychological research to show that our beliefs are rarely the product of logical deliber...

From Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion

Cognitive dissonance begins with conflict—the mental tension of holding contradictory beliefs or behaving against our values. When Leon Festinger first studied this phenomenon in the 1950s, he discovered that people would go to extraordinary lengths to justify beliefs proven false. Elliot and I begi...

From Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

Memory, we argue, is not a recording device but a storytelling process. When people look back, their recollections are subtly edited to fit the narrative that sustains their self-image. You forget the insult you gave, but remember vividly the one you received; you exaggerate your foresight in succes...

From Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

Social psychology begins with a startling revelation: most of us think of ourselves as independent thinkers, yet our judgments and actions are profoundly swayed by the people around us. In describing the classic experiments by Solomon Asch, I reveal how easily ordinary people align their perceptions...

From The Social Animal

Cognitive dissonance theory, a concept I helped develop with Leon Festinger, lies at the heart of this book. It starts from a simple but unsettling observation: when our actions conflict with our beliefs or self-image, we feel psychological discomfort—and we are deeply motivated to reduce that disco...

From The Social Animal