"Anyone who has read his illuminating autobiography cannot have failed to note its profoundly pessimistic tone." -Donald Keith Adams
"His life is a major tragedy. It is becoming increasingly obvious that it was more than his psychology of supporting unpopular causes that proved unacceptable, it was also the phraseology in which he couched his theories. For example, instead of instinct, need or drive would have proved acceptable to psychologists, and for "group mind", a "social force field" would have fared as a preferable construct." -Robert Mearns Yerkes
"British psychology was largely shaped by McDougall’s social Psychology." -L. S. Hearnshaw
"McDougall’s social psychology is perhaps as much undervalued today as it was overvalued then." -J. Drever
"As a departmental chief he was beyond comparison." -D.K. Adams
William McDougall, a British-born US psychologist and author of the first psychological text An Introduction to Social Psychology was born on June 22, 1871, in Chadderton, Lancashire.
Soon after becoming a fellow at St. John’s College, Cambridge, he joined the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait, between Australia and New Guinea. There he administered psychological tests to the native inhabitants. After that he studied at Oxford University and Germany. At the University of Gottingen, he conducted research on color vision. His interest in psychical research emerged from that period.
A highly respected British psychologist, William McDougall besides being a professor of psychology, both at Harvard and Duke Universities, authored widely read books on psychology and ethics. He is the exponent of heroic psychology, the central idea being that human progress can only be determined in terms of "drive". He believed that individuals are motivated by inherited instincts that push them toward goals, which may be unknown to them. A fellow of the Royal Society, he is accepted even today by academic psychologists with some ambivalence as a brilliant British–American pioneer. British psychology is largely shaped by McDougall’s social psychology, which in J Drever’s words, " is perhaps as much undervalued today as it was overvalued then."
• June 22,1871
He was born at Chadderton, Lancashire, in England.
• 1897
He completed his medical training.
• 1898
He held lectureships at Cambridge and Oxford Universities.
• 1901
McDougall became an assistant at the experimental laboratory of University College, London.
• 1904
He was appointed as a reader in mental philosophy at Oxford University.
• 1905
He wrote Physiological Psychology.
• 1908
Publication of his psychological text An Introduction to Social Psychology.
• 1911
His classic work Body and Mind was published.
• 1912
Psychology, the Study of Behavior was published.He became a Fellow of Royal Society.
• 1920
He wrote The Group Mind.He moved to the U. S. A.He assumed the Chair of Psychology at Harvard University.
• 1923
His 1912 Volume was expanded as An Outline of Psychology dedicated to William James.
• 1926
Outline of Abnormal Psychology was published.
• 1927
He dedicated his book Character and Conduct of Life to his wife.He left Harvard and went to Duke University, Durham.He did experiments on rats and published his findings as An experiment for the Testing of the Hypothesis of Lamarck.He founded parapsychology, connected with psychical research.
• November 28, 1938
He died in Durham, in the United States.
The prime objective of McDougall was to advance a hormic theory of behavior in his An Introduction to Social Psychology, a theory that remained with him throughout life, and by which his psychology was identified. He gave many theories in the field of social psychology, which were often misrepresented, and he was aware of that fact.
HIS MEMORABLE PUBLICATIONS
Physiological Psychology-1905
An Introduction To Social Psychology-1908
Body And Mind-1911
The Group Of Mind-1920
Outline Of Psychology-1923
Outline Of Abnormal Psychology-1926
Character And Conduct Of Life-1927
The Frontiers Of Psychology-1923
The Riddle Of Life-1938
AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
From the origin in the works of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, social psychology has struggled with the fact that human beings are both social and biological in nature.For Comte, the course of mental development was one in which social conditions came to modify the operation of biological laws. On the other hand Spencer gave a distinctly individualistic and biological cast to his social theory. For him, mental and social evolution were continuous with the biological evolution of species. McDougall extended Spencer’s view by publishing, An Introduction to Social Psychology in 1908. It is one of two pioneering systematic treatises on social psychology. The book was based on social behavior in biology and focused on the individual. In this book the author says, "The department of psychology that is primary importance for the social sciences is that which deals with the springs of human action, the impulses and motives that sustain mental and bodily activity and regulate conduct."
McDougall’s text proved to be enormously popular, long-lived, and influential, Its popularity and longevity derived in part at least from the fact that it was written in a direct and forceful style with few concessions to hesitancy of doctrine. It was the first book to draw out the implications of instinct theory for the analysis of social process. It was one of the first treatises in modern psychology to make human motivation its central concern. This book was also the first to provide a systematic theoretical framework for the understanding of social behavior. It helped to establish the parameters of the new discipline in its own right. By emphasizing the instinctive basis of social phenomena, he also helped foster the individualistic approach that continues to characterize social psychology of today. Dr. James Drever said, for ‘An Introduction to Social Psychology’ :
"A veritable landmark in the history of psychological development…it may well be asserted that the influence of that work has been felt in every branch of modern psychology."
THE GROUP OF MIND
McDougall’s ‘Social Psychology’ was seen as a preparation to his ‘magnum opus’ work ‘The Group Mind’. The book, published in 1920, postulated that a "social aggregate has a collective mental life which is not merely the sum of the mental lives of its units, it may be contended that a society not only enjoys a collective mental life but also has a collective mind". This was not the first time that he imposed upon the psychological community highly speculative notions.
HORMIC THEORY OF BEHAVIOR
McDougall called psychology ‘hormic’ from the Greek word, ‘horme’ means vital impulse, urge to action which is to him a property of the mind. While he regarded intellect not as a source of energy but as the integrated system of man’s belief.
Hormic theory and the instinctual source of hormic energy are the two principal thesis advanced in McDougall’s Social Psychology.
He defined instinct as "an inherited or innate psycho-physical disposition which determines its possessor to perceive and to pay attention of a certain class, to experience an emotional requirement of a particular quality upon perceiving such an object, and to act in regard to it in a particular manner, or at least, to experience an impulse to such action."
Although he provided an elaborate list of instincts and corresponding emotions, he encountered considerable difficulty with respect to classification. Unable even to agree with his own list, he tended to supercede instinct with ‘propensity’, and also to reduce instincts to different aspects of the well to live.
THEORY OF INSTINTS :
The early behaviorists and animal psychologists launched an attack on the methods of the old school but retained the concepts and principles of explanation in a disguised form. McDougall led a more radical attack on the concepts and principles.
McDougall, who was trained in biology and medicine, was not much influenced by any kind of methodological recipe. Indeed, his lack of methodological precision rendered much of what he said untestable and even metaphysical. The defect in McDougall was remedied by Tolman, the purposive Behaviorist, who tried to do justice to purposive psychology. It is therefore convenient to outline McDougall’s main postulates together with Tolman’s. They can be summarized as fellows :
All behavior is purposive.
• There are certain innate goal seeking tendencies.
• All behavior is motivated by instincts either directly or indirectly through the formation of ‘sentiments’ and ‘tastes’.
Tolman accepted all these postulates with modifications.
• I am one of those who cannot find reason to believe in the existence of panaceas, elixirs of life, and philosopher’s stones, one of those who believe rather that the price of liberty and human dignity is unceasing vigilance and perpetual struggle with the infirmities of our own nature.
• Surely, if we would form some useful notion of what human beings may and should become under intensive cultivation, and still more if we would know how to conduct the process of cultivation so as to make some progress toward that ideal, we must start with some notion of the raw material provided by nature for us to work upon !
• If I have a religion, its first percept is that we shall seek truth faithfully, and I would say this with Emerson : God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please. You can never have both.
• It is only a comparative and evolutionary psychology that can provide the needed basis (for social science)… (since) men are moved by a variety of impulses whose nature has been determined through long ages of the evolutionary process without reference to the life of men in civilized societies.
• We can be distinguished a race of northerly distribution and origin, characterized physically by fair color of hair and skin and eyes, by tall stature and dolichocephaly (i.e. long shape of head) and mentally by great independence of character, individual initiative and tenacity of will.
• These impulses those most fundamental elements of our constitution, the innate tendencies to thought and action that constitute the native basis of mind, were of two types : instincts (or specific tendencies), and non-specific general tendencies.
• I was neither fish, flesh nor fowl. I was neither a scientist nor a philosopher. I fell between two stools. The scientists suspected me of being metaphysician, and the philosophers regarded me as representing an impossible and non-existent brand of science.
• We may define an instinct as an inherited or innate psycho-physical disposition which determines its possessor to perceive, and to pay attention to objects of certain class, to experience an emotional excitement of a particular quality upon perceiving such an object and to act in regard to it in a particular manner or atleast to experience an impulse to such action.
• Favorable consideration of the Lamarckian theory excepted, there is nothing more injurious to the reputation (both popular and in the scientific world) of a man of science than to be mixed up with psychic research unless it to be a display of keen interest in the eugenic problem.
• I have suffered much under both heads in the way of loss of reputation, unpopularity, slanderous misrepresentation, and scornful hostility. It seems my fate to espouse unpopular causes, but to support them to temperately and with so much critical reserve that I am as little acceptable to the minority in opposition as to the dominant crowd. My only recourse is to find what satisfaction I may in the ‘bloody but unbowed’ attitude and in the approval of the select few.
• Mind must be considered a potent cause of evolution.
• The basic fact of human behavior is purposive striving.
• Psychologists must cease to be content with the sterile and narrow conception of their science as the science of consciousness and must boldly assert its claim to be the positive science of the mind in all its aspects and modes of functioning, or as I would prefer to say the positive science of conduct or behavior.
• Instincts are the prime movers of all human activity.
• We, the human race, are very ill-bred; ill-bred when compared either with the races of animals that live in state of nature or with those which man domesticated and modified for his own purposes.
William McDougall was the first psychologist to define the discipline
ofPsychology as theScience of Behavior.His pioneering work on "An Introduction to Social Psychology", whichprovides the basic data for social psychology, is considered to be the firsttext in social psychology.
He is honored as the founder of the first journal of parapsychology.
