ABSTRACT
I never had a course in social psychology as an undergraduate. I had taken many personality and clinical courses and many experimental courses and had a vague idea that social psychology would allow me to study the individual difference content of personality and clinical psychology using the systematic techniques of experimental psychology. Until the time I made the decision to go to Columbia, I had never heard of Stanley Schachter. Thus I could not know that although I was very wrong about the nature of social psychology I had in fact chosen the best possible place to study the content of personality and clinical psychology using the systematic techniques of experimental psychology. Those were the days when Stan was studying birth order, sociopathy, criminality, and obesity—and setting standards for originality and rigor in studying such topics that remain unsurpassed today.
