ABSTRACT
To those who argue that political phenomena cannot be attacked by traditional scientific methods, the proper answer is again provided by Thurstone. ‘The excuse is often made that social phenomena are so complex that the relatively simple methods of the older sciences do not apply. This argument is probably false. The analytical study of social phenomena is probably not so difficult as is commonly believed. The principal difficulty is that the experts in social studies are frequently hostile to science. They try to describe the totality of a situation, and their orientation is often to the market place or the election next week. They do not understand the thrill of discovering an invariance of some kind which never covers the totality of any situation. Social studies will not become science until students of social phenomena learn to appreciate this essential aspect of science.’ It would more than repay my trouble in writing this book if I could succeed in making the reader feel this thrill on discovering some of the invariances dealt with.Approximately half the material discussed in the main body of the book derives from published and unpublished reports of work carried out in this country, much of it in the Psychological Department here at the Institute of Psychiatry; the other half derives from various sources, mainly American. It is fortunate indeed, in view of the undoubted leadership of American psychologists in this field, that conditions in our two countries are sufficiently similar to make cross-comparisons fruitful. There is ample experimental work to prove this point, and some of it is mentioned in the text. I have repeated some of our English studies in other countries, and results from Germany and Sweden, as well as from the U.S.A., make it seem likely that the main conclusions drawn here would apply equally well there; it would not be wise, however, to generalize too far. Repetition of at least some of these studies in France, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Egypt, some of the South-American countries, and in Africa and Asia, would add immeasurably to our knowledge. Financial considerations make it unlikely that such studies will be carried out in the near future, and it will be safest at the moment to consider our conclusions to apply to the British Isles and the United States only.This is particularly important when considering the personality structure of members of groups such as the Fascist and Communist parties. In our culture, these are minority groups; it is un-
likely that conclusions based on members of such groups could be transferred without change to members of the Communist Party in the U.S.S.R., or to members of the former N.S.D.A.P. in Germany. When we talk about Communists and Fascists, therefore, it is about British Communists and Fascists we are talking, not about their foreign prototypes. At times the reader will undoubtedly be tempted to generalize beyond this restriction; if he does, he does so at his own peril.I owe a debt of gratitude to several former research students and colleagues in the Department whose patient, careful, and highly skilled research work has contributed a good portion of the data to be discussed. In particular, I should like to mention the work of Dr. S. Crown on the construction of attitude scales, of Dr. T. Coulter on attitudes and personality characteristics of Fascists and Communists; of Dr. D. Melvin on the measurement of the main dimensions in the attitude field; of Dr. E. I. George on the relation between these dimensions, personality, and values; and of Dr. M.B. Shapiro on the relation between social attitudes and opinions on child upbringing. I am further indebted to the students in one of my Seminars at the University of Pennsylvania during my tenure there of a Visiting Professorship for carrying through a repetition of one of our English studies on an American audience.Dr. H. Durant, President of the British Institute of Public Opinion, gave me permission to reanalyse and quote at some length some of the extremely interesting surveys conducted by his organization. I particularly appreciate this kindness as I have in the past been somewhat critical of certain aspects of opinion polling, and indeed still have certain reservations which are discussed in full in the text. It is fortunate that in science factual disagreements need not interfere with personal relationships.I have had the opportunity of meeting several of the people whose work has done much to throw light on the problems discussed in this book. Dr. G. Allport, Dr. S. Asch, Dr. F. Barron, Dr. R. B. Cattell, Dr. L. Festinger, Dr. E. Frenkel-Brunswik, Dr. D. J . Levinson, Dr. R. Likert, Dr. D. W. MacKinnon, Dr. P. E. Meehl, Dr. O. H. Mowrer, Dr. T. M. Newcomb, Dr. M. Rokeach, Dr. N. Sanford, and Dr. L. L. Thurstone are some of those whose stimulating views have contributed to my formulation of hypotheses and experiments. I owe a special debt to Dr. J. Flugel, who was in part responsible for my interest in the field of social atti-
tudes. As the story of how this came about may be of interest in demonstrating the irrational, unscientific way in which even highly intelligent people look upon factual studies in the social field, I shall tell it here briefly.Flugel and Hopkins had been conducting an attitude survey of certain minority groups-vegetarians, sunbathers, anti-smokers, and so forth-in the course of which they sent out questionnaires asking for their opinions on a variety of subjects ranging from antivivisection to Esperanto, and from super-tax to psycho-analysis. Before even half the intended number of questionnaires had been distributed, leading articles appeared in the national press complaining about the £Bolshevisation of our youth5, and demanding that this foul piece of propaganda be stopped. The Provost of the University College at which both men were teaching at the time demanded that the offending questionnaires and all the results be burned immediately. When it was pointed out to him that such burning of books was quite fashionable elsewhere at the time, he did not press the point, but demanded that neither of the investigators should in any way continue with the research. The material collected was therefore handed over to me by Flugel and Hopkins, and a detailed analysis of the responses collected suggested to me an hypothesis regarding certain invariant features of social attitudes which has since been amply substantiated by further research, and which is presented in Chapter Four.This incident happened before the second World War, but there is little evidence to suggest that obstacles to research in this field are any less serious now than they were then. During my stay in Philadelphia, for instance, one member of my Seminar spent a night in gaol because he had interviewed a number of people in the poorer districts of the town concerning their views about Negroes. Suspicious, they telephoned the police, certain that he was a Communist agitator, a view shared by the police who failed to recognize the difference between canvassing for propaganda purposes and interviewing in order to obtain information. Not a very terrible thing to happen, I agree, but enough to make 1 many students, less intrepid than this particular one, feel that perhaps their work was not really being appreciated by society.However, direct discouragement of this kind is certainly very much rarer and less violent than it would be in non-democratic countries; indeed, it is doubtful if any kind of scientific work on
social problems could be carried out at all in dictatorship countries. Much more prevalent is indirect discouragement, which shows itself in the failure to create University and research posts (to give but one example, there is no Chair of Social Psychology in this country), failure to make use of the knowledge and the skill of social scientists, and failure to provide the conditions under which proper scientific research in the social field can be carried out. If the reader is somewhat disappointed after reading this book, and feels that there are very many questions to which it fails to return an answer, let him consider the difficulties and disadvantages under which social psychology Is labouring at the moment, and forbear to condemn those who have devoted their lives not only to the solution of extremely difficult problems, but also to a struggle with obscurantism, neglect, irrational hostility, and vested interests of one kind or another.One last point. The reader will undoubtedly find that some of the results reported bear out common-sense observation and everyday knowledge. This fact has occasionally been used to argue that scientific study is unnecessary where common-sense may arrive at similar conclusions. Several fallacies are involved in this argument. In the first place, common-sense is sometimes right and sometimes wrong; it requires properly conducted experiments to show where it is right and where it is wrong. In the second place, there is a world of difference between a common-sense statement and a scientific one in so far as accuracy and implications are concerned. To take a simple example, Newton’s law of gravitation was indeed preceded by common-sense observation to the effect that unsupported objects tend to fall to the ground. Yet it would be very foolish indeed to criticize physics for merely giving elaborate proof of what common-sense knew already. Admittedly, work in the social sciences is of a much lower level of accuracy and implication than was Newton’s; none the less, the difference between the approach of common-sense and that of science is still sufficiently distinct to make the differentiation important.
