John Cacioppo

He died at his home on March 5, 2018 of natural causes. He was 66.

He received the Society for Experimental Social Psychology's Distinguished Scientist Award in recognition of “unusually important contributions to experimental social psychology” (2015); Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences; the Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychophysiology; an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Bard College; the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association; the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychophysiology from the Society for Psychophysiological Research; the Donald Campbell Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology; the Patricia Barchas Award from the American Psychosomatic Society; the Award for Distinguished Service on Behalf of Personality and Social Psychology from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology; the Theoretical Innovation Prize from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology; the Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association; the Order of the Sons of Italy Award; the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Ohio State University Department of Psychology; and the Scientific Impact Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. He was the keynote speaker at various meetings including the Festival della Scienza in Genoa, Italy; the Annual Meeting of the Association for Psychological Science; and the Society for Social Neuroscience

Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary attempt to trace how social forces “get under the skin” to affect physiology, as well as how physiology influences social interactions. His collaborative research on loneliness raised questions about one of the pillars of modern medicine and psychology—the focus on the individual as the broadest appropriate unit of inquiry. The new discipline that examines the associations between social and neural levels of organizations and the biological mechanisms underlying these associations. Neuroscientists have tended to focus on single organisms, organs, cells, or intracellular processes. Social species create emergent organizations beyond the individual, however, and these emergent structures evolved hand in hand with neural and hormonal mechanisms to support them because the consequent social behaviors helped animals survive, reproduce, and care for offspring sufficiently long that they too reproduced. Social neuroscience, therefore, is concerned with how biological systems implement social processes and behavior, capitalizing on concepts and methods from the neuroscience to inform and refine theories of social psychological processes, and using social and behavioral concepts and data to inform and refine theories of neural organization and function

By employing brain scans, monitoring of autonomic and neuroendocrine processes, and assays of immune function, Cacioppo and colleagues found that social context alters genetic expression, for instance in white blood cells. This research also showed that “loneliness” – the subjective social isolation – disrupts perception and alters behavior and physiology, becoming a trap that reinforces isolation. . These biological pathways were argued to be unique and to lead to early death.

Cacioppo had two children in his first marriage, with Barbara Andersen, a psychology professor, which ended in divorce. He met his third wife, Stephanie, a brain researcher at a scientific conference in Shanghai, and they married in 2011.

Cacioppo and Jean Decety played an instrumental role in the creation of the Society for Social Neuroscience in 2010.

Quantitative analyses of the field have shown Cacioppo to be one of “ISI Highly Cited Researchers” in Psychiatry/Psychology (since 2003) and one of the top 50 most eminent psychologists of the Modern Era (post WWII; Diener, E., Oishi, S., & Park, J. Y. (2014). An incomplete list of eminent psychologists of the modern era, Archives of Psychological Science, 2, 20-32). In May 2018, Google Scholar Analytics showed his work had been cited over 128,680 times and his h-index was 151.

In the early 1990s, Cacioppo began working with Gary Berntson of The Ohio State University to pioneer a new field they called “social neuroscience.”

Cacioppo was born and raised in Marshall, Texas, where his family owned a chain saw distribution company. In 1973, he earned a Bachelor of Science in economics from the University of Missouri, where he was the first in his family to go to college. Soon after, Cacioppo decided to specialize in psychology and received a master's degree (1975) and doctorate (1977) in this field from the Ohio State University.

In the late 1970s, Cacioppo collaborated with Richard E. Petty to develop the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of attitudes and persuasion and began investigations of individual differences in cognitive motivation. They also examined the social and biological influences on mind and behavior. Petty and Cacioppo enjoyed a friendly intellectual rivalry and became best friends and eventually roommates so that, in Cacioppo's words, they "didn't have to take breaks" between scientific debates. The elaboration likelihood model emerged in part because Petty speculated that listening to strong arguments like Cacioppo's were more likely to result in durable attitude change. A decade later, Cacioppo began working with Gary Berntson to pioneer a new field they called social neuroscience. This led to an expansion of Cacioppo's research examining how personal relationships get under the skin to affect social cognition and emotions, personality processes, biology, and health. By employing brain scans, monitoring of autonomic and neuroendocrine processes, and assays of immune function, he found the overpowering influence of social context — a factor so strong that it can alter genetic expression in white blood cells. The work further showed how the subjective sense of social isolation (loneliness) uniquely disrupts our perceptions, behavior, and physiology, becoming a trap that not only reinforces isolation, but can also lead to early death. In 2004, he and William Patrick began a collaboration that led to their book, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, which makes the case that social cooperation is, in fact, humanity's defining characteristic. Gary Berntson, Jean Decety, Stephanie Cacioppo, Steve Cole, Dorret Boomsma, and Abraham Palmer continue to investigate the biological mechanisms involved in social perception, interpersonal processes, cognition, emotion, and behavior.

John Cacioppo was born on June 12, 1951 in Marshall, Texas, USA as John Terrence Cacioppo. He was married to Dr. Stephanie Ortigue.