Russell H. Fazio

Who is Russell H. Fazio?

Russell Fazio is known for his work in the 1980s that led to the emergence of the social cognition perspective in the field of psychology.

Russell Fazio was born on October 9, 1952 in Utica, New York and went on to receive his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in 1974 wherein he graduated summa cum laude. For graduate school, Fazio attended Princeton University where he received his M.A. in 1976 and Ph.D in Social Psychology in 1978 from the university's Department of Psychology. Fazio was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and was awarded Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship, and NSF Graduate Fellowship.

The research program of Fazio is centered on the study of attitudes, such as prejudice and stereotyping. The research is focused on the influence that attitudes have upon attention, categorization, judgment, behavior and the functional value of such attitudes. He is also conducting research on the implicit development of attitudes through classical conditioning, and the formation of attitude through exploratory behavior, as well as the implicit measures of attitude. He developed the concept of affective priming, building on work by Schvanefeldt and Meyer, which is the automatic activation of an attitude from implicit memory through associations.