[2] 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.

[3] A near-fatal car crash in his youth energised Cacioppo, who realised that the most important things in his life were love and social connections.

[4] 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.

[5][6] 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.

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.

Gary Berntson, Jean Decety, Stephanie Cacioppo Archived April 2, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, Steve Cole, Dorret Boomsma, and Abraham Palmer continue to investigate the biological mechanisms involved in social perception, interpersonal processes, cognition, emotion, and behavior.

[1] Cacioppo served on various boards, including the President's Committee for the National Medal of Science; the International Scientific Advisory Committee for the Institute of Cognitive Neurology (INECO); the Advisory Committee for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Directorate of the National Science Foundation; the scientific advisory committee of the College of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Normal University; the National Institutes of Health Center for Scientific Review (CSR) Advisory Council; the Expert Panel on Program to Reduce Social Isolation, Mary Foundation in Copenhagen, Denmark; the board of directors of the Society for Social Neuroscience; the board of directors of the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences; the External Advisory Committee of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois; the Health and Retirement Study Data Monitoring Board of the National Institute on Aging; the Department of Health and Human Services National Advisory Council on Aging; and also the board of directors of the scientific societies for which he served as president.

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[1] 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.

His collaborative research on loneliness raised questions about one of the pillars of modern medicine and psychology [citation needed]—the focus on the individual as the broadest appropriate unit of inquiry.