The Beginnings of Social Psychology

Author(s): Ellsworth Faris

Source: American Journal of Sociology , May, 1945, Vol. 50, No. 6 (May, 1945), pp. 422-
428
Published by: The University of Chicago Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2771385

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 THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

ELLSWORTH FAIS

ABSTRACT
Social psychology, the science of human nature in interaction, began as a study of collective beha
now is impartially interested in groups and their individual members. As late as I890, psychology was con-
cerned with mental facts treated in absolute isolation. Social psychologists at first were concerned with the
attempt, now abandoned, to reduce human nature to some basic principle or to a few irreducible elements,
such as imitation, instincts, reflexes wishes. There is a strong tendency at present to take "the act" as the
unit of study. Wundt and Durkheim greatly influenced American scholars. Contributors in this field include
Sumner, Dewey, Mead, Cooley, Ross, and many others. A highly important advance is the recognition that
qualities exist in nature and that human experiences are natural events. American effort is distinguished by
the vast amount of empirical research. Though adequate methods do not yet exist, the record of the first fifty
years gives promise that social psychology, though still in its beginnings, may some day take its place along-
side physics and chemistry.

All the sciences, says Comte, pass psychology of crowds can be set forth only
through stages-theological, metaphysical, by taking account of the individual changes
and scientific-and one of the last in line for -emotional, volitional, or whatever-of
its metamorphosis is social psychology. For the units composing it. Hence the modem
while the problems with which we are con- social psychologist shifts his attention back
cerned have engaged men's minds from time and forth from person to group and from
immemorial and the proverbs of preliterates group to person as the nature of his inquiry
show much keen insight into human nature demands. Social psychology is the science
and while the sacred books and the writings of human nature in interaction.
of the ancients can still be read with profit Fifty years ago it was not a matter of
for their observations on life and mind, yet concern to psychologists to consider social
the effort to apply the scientific method to influences. Their aim was a science of mind,
persons in association is an affair of our treated in absolute separation not only from
own day, and men are living who saw its other minds but also from any physical or
beginning. If only a beginning has been physiological accompaniments. All the data
made, it is a promising beginning; and we were obtained by "introspection," and the
may derive a measure of satisfaction that psychologist had his material ever at hand
the foundations have been laid and much in the ideas and thoughts in his own head
material assembled to build the structure. to which he could refer at will. A sharp dis-
The record justifies neither boasting nor tinction was made between matter and mind
complacency, but the scholars of I995 will as radically different "substances" with
not be ungrateful for what our half-century mutually incompatible attributes. A cor-
has bequeathed to them. responding dualism of method between psy-
The term "social psychology" was once
chology, on the one hand, and the physical
used in two different senses, on the one hand,
and biological sciences, on the other, was the
to denote the study of groups (collective be-
result. In the material sciences facts were
havior) and, on the other hand, to mean the
admitted only when guaranteed by common
science of personality and character con-
observation, in contrast to the alleged pri-
sidered as the resultant of the interaction of
human beings. Today the distinction is vacy of introspection. From the success of
largely neglected; for, since all groups are these methods has come about what has
composed of members and all persons belongbeen called the "leftward trend" of the sci-
to groups, it is difficult to study the one ences, chemistry being reduced to physics,
without taking account of the other. The biology to chemistry, with psychology tend-
422

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 THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 423

ing to play the role of "the poor relation of ment got under way soon after his great
the sciences." book appeared. By that time his interest
When psychology broke away from scho- had been transferred to philosophy and to
lasticism in the seventeenth century, the the effort, quite unsuccessful, to overcome
central interest was in the problem of how the misunderstanding of his word "prag-
knowledge is obtained, though much effort matism." In an indirect fashion James did
was spent on the question of whether knowl- have a part in the subsequent development
edge was possible. And so "cognition" was of social psychology through his doctrine
the chief concern; "presentations," images, of the instincts. Until his time, reason and
ideas, perceptions, and even "conation" intelligence were assigned to man and in-
were all subsidiary to the "judgment" and stincts were possessed only by the lower ani-
the train of judgments leading to right rea- mals. In a brilliant chapter he argued that
soning. The behavior of man received no man had more than any animals, and he
treatment. It is of interest to recall that, as listed some thirty-two of them; and for
late as I890, William James followed the thirty years no one questioned the correct-
same order of topics, though they were re- ness of this view.
lated to the dawning interest in physiology. It was the problem of how to deal with
In the meantime physiological psychol- the concept of emotion which was chiefly re-
ogy had arisen in Germany, and, for a long sponsible for the instinct doctrine. Formerly
generation, men toiled in laboratories with emotions were considered as disturbances of
cunningly devised apparatus in an effort- calm reason and thus as obstacles to the
and a very successful effort it was-to cor- formation of true judgments. By positing
relate the mental processes, chiefly the sen- a repertory of instincts, James was able to
sations, with two other orders of phenomena make a logical place in his scheme for fear,
-physiological organs and physical events. anger, and the rest by appealing to the bio-
Wave lengths of light, retinal cones, and logical inheritance of irresistible, nonration-
the sensation of red were all related to one al movements whose origin was traced back
another and a "color theory" formulated to assumed experiences of our distant ances-
which was a description of the correspond- tors. This brought into the picture the bio-
ence of all three. The five senses were thus logical problem of the number and charac-
studied, five which were analyzed until ter of the nonintelligent activities, with
there were some forty and then an even which "conation" could have nothing to do,
larger indefinite number. Two irreducible and at the same time made desirable an in-
"elementary" classes resulted-sensations vestigation into the ethnological data to
and affective tones (feelings). The analysis which appeal was made.
was admirable and complete, but to synthe- It was William McDougall who, for the
size the elements was difficult and could be first time, discarded the traditional order
accomplished only by assumptions which of treatment and promoted the instincts
later followers found unsatisfactory. from the wings of the theater to the main
Shortly before our fifty-year period be- stage. His work had wide influence and was
gins, William James gave a great impetus to unchallenged for some fifteen years. From
psychology in his treatise wherein the phys-the pens of those who had accepted the doc-
iological point of view received ample rec- trine and found it wanting when consistent-
ognition; and, while there was no hint of thely applied, there suddenly appeared, from
social-psychological point of view, there was,men widely separated and acting quite in-
at least, an end to the consideration of dependently, a flood of negative criticism,
"mental" facts in isolation. He defined psy- with the result that specific instincts are
chology as the description and explanation now referred to with the prefix "so-called."
of consciousness as such. James was "the The coup de grace was delivered by Dewey
last of the Mohicans"; for the new move- twenty-three years ago (I922).

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424 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

The evolutionary point of view had been "impermeability to experience" of the indi-
developing, in the meantime, in genetic psy- vidual when confronted by something not
chology, of which G. Stanley Hall was one of in harmony with the collective idea. On such
the leading advocates. Appealing to ethnol- occasions a man believes, in flat contradic-
ogy in an uncritical manner and relying on tion to the evidence of his senses, and this is
the now discarded concept of recapitulation, shown to be a part of the normal behavior of
it pictured the child as a little savage and the normal man. Durkheim's account of the
the adolescent as a barbarian. To this day "social fact" and his demonstration of its
the Boy Scout movement forces the little coercive nature made it impossible to ignore
twelve-year-old to blister his hands in mak- longer the influence of the group on the in-
ing fire by friction because, being a primitive dividual member of it and made it easy to
man in disguise, he cannot appropriately see that, for any human being with which
use matches. we shall ever be concerned, the group is prior
But the genetic procedure was not limit- to the individual and the customs of the
ed to child psychology. Books on social ori- group are of prior importance as over
gins traced the development of religion, of against the individual habits and actions.
art, of the family, the state, and the rest Of great and permanent influence was the
from the earliest beginnings. As a chapter Folkways of Sumner, who used impartially
in natural history, these subjects will al- many thousands of facts both from ethnol-
ways have an interest; but as attempts to ogy and from recorded history. New and
understand the present problems by enu- valuable additions to the English language
merating the stages, mostly hypothetical, were contributed-words like "mores,")
through which they have passed, they are of "folkways," and "ethnocentrism." Al-
small use and often misleading. The Ger- though some of his conclusions did not find
mans call it Historismus and now admit its acceptance, this is of no importance, since
futility. he gave the facts on which his conclusions
The movement called "social psychology" are based and the reader is always free to
in Germany may be traced in its beginnings reinterpret the data. What Sumner demon-
to the Romantic movement and to the in- strated in a definitive manner was the vari-
terest which impelled the Grimm brothers to ety of custom and the almost infinite vari-
ability of human nature. This is often called
study the lore of the peasants. We may call its
culmination the work on folk psychology of "plasticity" or "malleability." The form of
Wundt, in which the stages from primitive the family is shown to exhaust the permuta-
man to the dawn of the age of humanity are tions possible to two sexes. The facts show
set forth-all too confidently, since the cru- that almost everything that we moderns ab-
cial problems are often resolved by an ap- hor or contemplate with disapproval has
peal to introspective psychology. been willingly done and uncritically ap-
Ethnological material was more fruit- proved. Voluntary celibacy, voluntary self-
fully utilized by Durkheim and his disciples mutilation, voluntary suicide, are shown to
in France. Some of their conclusions they have been widely practiced as approved
believed applied only to "primitive man" conduct. Socially approved infanticide, so-
(to use their term), but they were eventual- cially sanctioned killing of old parents, and
ly found to be demonstrably true of mod- many other similar practices were brought
erns as well. Some of their concepts have together in support of the thesis that "the
proved to have the highest value. "Represen- mores can make anything right and force
disapproval of anything." Since Sumner it
tations collectives," or "group concepts" as
we may translate it, give the clue to muchhas been impossible to deny the priority of
that had remained undefined. Even more the group or the primacy of culture.
revealinig was the notion, fully defined andNor did it become necessary to "deny the
amply documented by examples, of the individual" or to consider the members of a

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 THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 425

society as being "molded" passively by the animals, as well as the resemblances.

"society." The group is indeed prior, but its Consciousness, by whatever term it may be
new members are not inert or identical. The called, and imagination, however denomi-
"primary group" of Cooley is characterized nated, continued to be emphasized and stud-
by association and co-operation, but the uni- ied. In a brilliantpassage Cooley declared im-
ty is one of organization and not of identity. agination to be the very stuff of social life,
And it was Cooley who made it clear that insisting that the solid facts were facts of the
human life may be viewed either collective- imagination. My idea of myself is central in
ly, as an orchestra, or separately, as the dif- importance. A man's conception (image) of
ferent musicians. Society and individual himself and his idea (image) of his God will
are only two ways-two aspects, indeed- move him to heroism and martyrdom, and
of looking at human life. There cannot be no an account of his reflexes will reveal that
army without the soldier, and the soldier which is first in importance.
would not be a soldier without the army. It The period under consideration was one
would seem that, in this fashion, an ancient of great activity, and the literary output
and profitless debate could be finally ended.very impressive, at least as regards quan-
The older psychology with its emphasis tity. For a long time there was a persistent
on introspection and its preoccupation with effort to reduce the complex manifestations
"consciousness" was, in the meantime, vio- of human life to a few elements, which were
lently attacked by the vigorous and militant then held to enter into combinations after
group of young men who called themselves, the manner of chemical elements and their
"behaviorists." It was precipitated by a dis- compounds. The two classes of elements of
pute among the introspectionists themselves,the physiological psychologists was such a
who charged each other with being inexpert result. When the dynamic aspect was rec-
in the method. The behaviorists proceeded ognized, we had a long list of proposals:
to reject it altogether. But the chief motive self-preservation or the will to power, imita-
appears to have been the effort to make psy- tion, food and sex, the eleven instincts of
chology scientific in the sense that facts McDougall, a similar list of reflexes of the
were to be accepted only upon the consensus behaviorists, the four wishes of Thomas,
of observers, and to do this it was necessary and many more less widely publicized were
to make it an objective science. The move- in turn proposed, advocated, and abandoned
ment ran a vigorous course and was not or neglected. These all appear as hasty striv-
without its effect on subsequent research; ings after simplicity and were arrived at, for
but it became clear that to laud the objec- the most part, by intuition rather than
tive method in the study of animal behavior through research with tested hypotheses.
was only to make a virtue of necessity, and Dewey's famous article on the reflex-arc
to restrict the study of man to what an ob- concept, in which he showed that the sharp
server could photograph was to impose a division between the sensory and the motor
gratuitous limitation on the Worker. was untenable, appeared many years ago
By this time the older scheme of psychol- and was at once a stimulus to further re-
ogy as an account of the process of knowing, search in the direction of integration and
with its hierarchy of sensation, image, per- also a prophecy of what was to follow. Much
ception, conception, judgment, and reason- later the Gestalt psychologists showed the
ing, was everywhere disregarded and con- untenability of considering sensations as
sidered hopelessly inadequate and anti- stimuli, since these must always occur in
quated. Behaviorism emphasized behavior, configurations that have relation to the
but men were interested in conduct. How- purposes involved in the response and the
ever close the kinship of animals and man, direction of attention. A number of inde-
the difference is vast; and it is necessary to pendent workers made it evident that to
consider the respects in which man is unlike study an individual person as isolated is to

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426 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

discuss an unprofitable abstraction; and tions, the whole gamut of them, can be re-
George Mead and others made us realize lated to the success, real or imagined, or the
that that process of self-stimulation and failure or frustration of the act or plan or
self-response results in the incorporation ofenterprise. Instincts, emotions, imagination,
the attitudes and roles of the other. Even are neither elements, things, nor forces but
the most private of the inner musings of theare modifications of actions and could be
solitary hermit are necessarily social-how more accurately referred to adverbially,
else could he think in words? did our idiom permit. But the act is not an
It is not impossible that the most impor- isolated occurrence, and all action is, in
tant of all the many advances in this period some sense, interaction. Language dis-
is the restoration of man and the mind of man tinguishes man from other animals, and
to its rightful place as a part of nature. Mod-language is the unwitting product of collec-
em psychology inherited an insoluble prob- tive behavior. Further, the group in which
lem from the seventeenth century, when the individual person moves is part of a
mind and matter were held to be in absolute larger whole, whence come the folkways
separation. The natural world was mecha- and the mores, likewise the result of the col-
nistic, and its events could be reduced to a lective experience which produces the mores
mathematical formula, while the qualities, without intending to do so.
such as the color red or the feeling of un- One should not fail to include the influ-
pleasantness, were relegated to the mental ence which the practitioners of depth psy-
and the subjective. chology-Freud, Jung, Adler, Rank, West,
It would, perhaps, be an exaggeration to and others-have had in the last thirty
say that the overcoming of this difficulty years. Their presuppositions have often been
amounted to the long-awaited Copernican uncritical and nearer intuition than science,
revolution, but its importance is very great. and their conclusions from their data have
To deny that there are qualities in nature, failed to convince most students of these
as Bertrand Russell does to this day, is to be problems; yet the technique of "free associa-
confrontedc with a metaphysical problem tion" appears to be a distinct contribution;
as baffling as it is unreal. To admit man and and, although social psychologists have not
the capacities of man into the realm of accepted the doctrines with the uncritical
nature is to recognize that qualities are hospitality manifested by many social work-
as solid natural facts as sound waves or ers, yet few would deny the value of the in-
ether vibrations; for qualities enter into sight which revealed the importance to per-
events as significant. Feelings of resentment, sonality of crucial events which normal
anger, and revenge are as important in the memory cannot recall.
sequence leading to a global war as any "ma- E. A. Ross published in I908 the first
terial" fact or occurrence that can be cited. book with the title Social Psychology, but
What nature has joined together let no psy-the last thirty years have seen a veritable
chologist put asunder. flood of textbooks and other works with this
And so we may venture to set down the es-title and many not so christened. Some of
sentials of the position now accepted by an these have been of the highest quality,
increasing number of our company, al- many could only be called indifferent, while
though it would be premature to assume others could better have been left unwritten.
that there is complete consensus. The unitBut great as has been the activity in the
of study is the act. Within the act all the publishing of books, the energy expended on
categories of the older psychology can findresearch
a has been far greater, at least in
place. Attention, perception, imagination,America. The science of statistics made
reasoning, and the rest occur, on occasion, unprecedented progress during the first
when the action takes certain forms or World War, and this technique is now con-
meets certain obstructions. Likewise emo- sidered indispensable in a great variety of

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 THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 427

inquiries. The study of communities and Much of the research has been stimulated
groups of every character has produced by grants of funds by the foundations which
some excellent results. Life-histories, ques- have made millions of dollars available to
tionnaires, interviews, and observation of scholars who seemed to show promise. The
observable behavior have all been employed organization of the Social Science Research
with no small results. Council made possible the work of many of
Every scientist aspires to introduce the younger workers in this field, as well as
measurement into his material where this contributing to their training and develop-
is possible, and great advances have been ment.
made in this endeavor. Mention can be Significant, indeed, has been the interest
made of the early Binet tests, from which in research of many departments and agen-
there has developed a highly valuable in- cies of the federal and state governments.
strument, increasingly employed in the The United States Department of Agricul-
most divergent fields, from juvenile delin- ture has done much and will probably do
quents to the classification of college stu- much more. But extensive as the financial
dents and the discovery of officer material in
aid has been, most of the work has been ac-
the Army. A valuable development is the complished by university professors and
measurement of public opinion, based on graduate students, sometimes with a little
the statistical theory of sampling. At the aid from the institutions but often by un-
present writing the Army is conducting im- assisted effort.
portant research on morale, the results of This large-scale stimulation of research
which will one day be available. A vast or- did not, of course, yield uniformly valuable
ganization is engaged in psychological war- results, which was clearly foreseen. The
fare and propaganda, but the nature of this kingdom of science no more than the King-
material and its results will probably pre- dom -of Heaven can be taken by violence.
clude early accessibility. There is no meat without bone, says a Bantu
If, now, we attempt to distinguish some proverb, and chaff comes with wheat on
of the significant general trends of the last every farm. But even if much of the work
fifty years, several important developments done is poor and some of the results worth-
can be clearly discerned. Most characteris- less, yet much first-class achievement has
tic of American scholarship is the great out- rewarded the donors, valuable experience
burst of energy resulting in thousands of re- has been obtained, and mistakes have been
search projects in an effort to obtain by dili- recognized and corrected.
gent inquiry and firsthand observation and A second significant trend is implied in
experience an acquaintance with and a the above recital. It is the change from
knowledge about the groups and persons philosophical speculation and armchair gen-
accessible to study. The variety of these eralization to diligent inquiry and a search
studies is far too extensive even to classify after data. Continental scholars isometimes
here, for they include community studies regard this movement as a reproach, but
of every sort from the American village to American social psychologists consider it as
Guatemalan Mayas and Samoan girls. They the most fruitful way to use our energies at
include studies of such pathological phe- the present juncture. Intuitive formulations
nomena as suicide, insanity, divorce, delin- of the "laws" of our science are not wanting,
quency, and crime, as well as personality but they remain in the eddies and backwash
types from the urban Negro to the "hotel of the main stream.
child," studies of "normal" situations like As a corollary of the above, we may re-
the groupings in a girls' college, and the cord that the particularistic explanations
conditions indicating a successful marriage. of the past are no longer in favor. The "mo-
To mention these is to omit a much greater nistic fallacy," which assigns a single explan-
number. atory principle, is no longer in favor except

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428 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

with a few voluminous writers who appear,
like Paul, to be "born out of due time."
Their survival does no harm, and their num-
ber will diminish.
Another negative movement may be
called a "trend": the loss of interest in the
analysis of human nature into elements, al-
ready discussed. The diligent work of the
physiological psychologists, the specula-
tions of the instinct school, and the similar
attempts of the depth psychologists, to-
gether with other less plausible formulations
have lost their interest.
There are other directions of movement
that might well deserve mention, but one
must suffice: the progressive application of
measurement and quantitative methods to
the facts of psychology. Here again there
have been offenses against sound method, as
when arbitrary values are assigned to
arbitrary terms and correlations worked
out to the third decimal under the illusion
that exactness means accuracy. But the
trend is strong and the results notable. No
one is competent in this field without some
knowledge of statistical methods.
Are there lessons that we can learn from
the record of fifty years? We can, it would
seem, realize that we have a great and an
important task. There is need of honesty
and modesty as never before. If social psy-
chology is not a science, it is the beginning advance of physical science, blaming science
of a science, and we have made a good be-
ginning. No longer can the cloistered work-
er solve our problems by his cleverness,
or hope to do so. A great task is before us, not idle to contend that social psychology
and the time should not be so long as that
required by the men who gave us physics
or chemistry, but it will be long. Our claims with diligence and devotion toward their
should reflect our diffidence, but the im-
portance of a knowledge of human nature
and of the mainsprings of human conduct
is transcendent. Had we had it, there need
not have been this war; when we have ob-
tained it, there need not be another. We
must freely confess our ignorance of much
that we should like to know, and we must
devise ways of finding out.
In the second place, we must develop
our own techniques and methods. The road
is strewn with wrecks and abandoned ma-
terial because it was thought that human
nature could best be studied by using the
procedure of some other science. But the
biologist does not use the cyclotron, nor
does the astronomer use the technique of
staining tissues. It took time for them to
perfect their methods; we must take time,
and our methods must be our own, suited
to our own unique material.
Runyard West has said that at present
the most useful service that the social psy-
chologist could render would be to prepare
questionnaires for others to fill out. He be-
lieves that there is a vast mine of relevant
data in the possession of those who have
close contact with people: policemen, bar-
tenders, nurses, cab drivers, waitresses.
Modern scholastics decry the search for
facts, not knowing that only if there is a
problem does a scientific fact exist and that
only by finding the facts can we solve the
problem.
Uncritical writers sometimes decry the
for war. They even suggest a moratorium
or a vacation until men are better under-
stood. Such talk is, of course, idle, but it is
seeks the answer to the most important
questions of the modern world. To work
solution and to recruit gifted students to
carry on the search is to deserve well of this
generation and the next.
LAKE FOREST, ILLINOIS

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