Bibb Latané (; born July 19, 1937) is an American

social psychologist Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the rela ...

. He worked with

John M. Darley John M. Darley (April 3, 1938 – August 31, 2018) was an American social psychologist and professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University. Darley is best known, in collaboration with Bibb Latané, for developing theories tha ...

on bystander intervention in emergencies. He has also published many articles on social attraction in animals,

social loafing In social psychology, social loafing is the phenomenon of a person exerting less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when working alone. It is seen as one of the main reasons groups are sometimes less productive than the combi ...

in groups, and the spread of

social influence Social influence comprises the ways in which individuals adjust their behavior to meet the demands of a social environment. It takes many forms and can be seen in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, s ...

in populations.

Biography

Latané received his B.A. from Yale in 1958 and his Ph.D. (under the mentorship of Stanley Schachter) from the University of Minnesota in 1963. He taught at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, the

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best pub ...

Florida Atlantic University Florida Atlantic University (Florida Atlantic or FAU) is a public research university with its main campus in Boca Raton, Florida, and satellite campuses in Dania Beach, Davie, Fort Lauderdale, Jupiter, and Fort Pierce. FAU belongs to the 12-c ...

, and the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United State ...

. In the 1980s, he was director of

UNC UNC is a three-letter abbreviation that may refer to: Education * University of Northern California (disambiguation), which may refer to: ** University of Northern California (Santa Rosa), in Petaluma, California, United States ** University of No ...

's Institute for Research in Social Science (now the Odum Institute). He is currently director of the Center for Human Science in Chapel Hill, NC, which he founded. Latané's work with Darley involved a series of experiments that staged emergencies so that the social psychologists could observe how the presence of inactive bystanders affect the subjects' helping behavior. Latané was also instrumental in introducing ideas from

dynamical systems In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a function describes the time dependence of a point in an ambient space. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a clock pendulum, the flow of water in a ...

theory into

social psychology Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the ...

, demonstrating, for example, how various forms of order could emerge spontaneously in large social groups from individual's simple attempts to fit in with their local neighbors. He also developed the

social impact theory Social impact theory was created by Bibb Latané in 1981 and consists of four basic rules which consider how individuals can be "sources or targets of social influence". Social impact is the result of social forces including the strength of the so ...

, which holds that social influence is a function of the strength (S), the immediacy (I), and number (N) of sources present, or Impact = "''f''(SIN)". Together with

Kipling Williams Kipling D. Williams is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Ohio State University. He is most noted for h ...

and Stephen Harkins, Latané introduced the term social loafing, a term that denotes people's tendency to slack off in groups due to the idea that one's personal contribution is unidentifiable. It is the opposite of social facilitation, which denotes arousal caused by the presence of others. Latané was twice awarded the

AAAS Prize for Behavioral Science Research The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsi ...

, in 1968 and in 1980.History & Archives: AAAS Prize for Behavioral Science Research
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References

External links

Center for Human Science

Odum Institute
{{DEFAULTSORT:Latane, Bibb 1937 births Living people American psychologists Social psychologists University of Minnesota alumni Ohio State University faculty Columbia University faculty Florida Atlantic University faculty University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty