Henri Tajfel (formerly Hersz Mordche) (June 22, 1919 Włocławek, Poland – May 3, 1982 in Bristol, UK) was a British social psychologist, best known as the principal co-developer of Social Identity Theory.
Biography
Henri Tajfel was the son of a Polish Jewish businessman. He began his career by studying chemistry at the Sorbonne, but at the outbreak of the Second World War was called up into the French army. A year later, he was captured by the Germans. They never discovered that he was a Jew, so Tajfel survived the war in a series of Prisoner-of-war camps.
On his return home he discovered that none of his immediate family, and few of his friends, had survived the Nazi Holocaust. It has been speculated that this experience hadFrom Wikipedia:
Henri Tajfel (formerly Hersz Mordche) (June 22, 1919 Włocławek, Poland – May 3, 1982 in Bristol, UK) was a British social psychologist, best known as the principal co-developer of Social Identity Theory.
Biography
Henri Tajfel was the son of a Polish Jewish businessman. He began his career by studying chemistry at the Sorbonne, but at the outbreak of the Second World War was called up into the French army. A year later, he was captured by the Germans. They never discovered that he was a Jew, so Tajfel survived the war in a series of Prisoner-of-war camps.
On his return home he discovered that none of his immediate family, and few of his friends, had survived the Nazi Holocaust. It has been speculated that this experience had a profound impact on Tajfel's later work on ingroups and outgroups, since Tajfel had managed to survive the Holocaust by pretending to be a member of another ethnic group.
After the war Tajfel worked first for international relief organizations including the United Nations' International Refugee Organization, to help rebuild the lives of orphans and concentration camp survivors. From 1946 he then began studying psychology, and by 1954 he had graduated in the UK with a degree in psychology.
Afterwards he applied for British nationality with his wife and their two sons, which he was granted in 1957. His research work at the University of Oxford was on different areas of social psychology, including the social psychology of prejudice and nationalism. Following two research visits in the USA, in 1967 he was made Chair of Social Psychology at the University of Bristol, until his death from cancer in 1982....more
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