Daryl Bem

Daryl J. Bem (born June 10, 1938) is a social psychologist and professor emeritus at Cornell University. He is the originator of the self-perception theory of attitude change, and has carried out research on psi phenomena (a technical term for extra-sensory perception), group decision making, handwriting analysis, sexual orientation and personality theory and assessment. Bem received a B.A. in physics from Reed College in 1960, and began graduate work in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The civil rights movement had just begun, and he became so intrigued with the changing attitudes toward desegregation in the American South that he decided to switch fields and pursue a career as a social psychologist specializing in...