William McDougall
1871-1938 · British · Social Psychology
The human mind has certain innate or inherited tendencies which are the essential springs or motive powers of all thought and action.
William McDougall was, for a generation, one of the most eminent psychologists in the English-speaking world. His Introduction to Social Psychology (1908) went through edition after edition and founded a whole field; it grounded social life in a definite endowment of human instincts, each with its own primary emotion. Against the associationism he had inherited and the behaviorism that was rising, he built "hormic" psychology — a psychology of purpose, of striving toward goals, of the mind as an active, goal-seeking agent rather than a mechanism worked from outside.
Topics William McDougall addresses
- the theory of instincts
- hormic psychology
- the primary emotions
- the sentiments
- the self-regarding sentiment
- purposive striving
- the group mind
- the national mind and character
- the crowd
- social psychology
- eugenics
- racial hereditarianism
- the inheritance of ability
- the rise and decay of civilizations
- animism
- interactionist dualism
- the defense of the soul
- mind-body interaction
- Lamarckism
- the inheritance of acquired characteristics
- the water-maze experiments
- the anti-instinct revolt
- character and the sentiments
- parapsychology
Questions to put to William McDougall
Instincts and the Springs of Action
- What do you mean by an instinct?
- How do instincts give rise to emotions like fear or curiosity?
- What's the difference between an instinct and a sentiment?
- How do you answer the behaviorists who say we don't need instincts to explain learning?
- Why do you call your psychology 'hormic'?
The Group Mind and Collective Life
- What do you mean when you say a nation has a mind?
- How is the group mind different from just the sum of individual minds?
- What happens to individual intelligence in a crowd?
- How can a group mind be real if only individuals have brains?
- What's the difference between a crowd and an organized nation?
Purpose Against Mechanism
- Why do you think mechanism can't explain purposive behavior?
- What's at stake for you in the fight against behaviorism?
- How does an animal's striving toward a goal show it's not just a machine?
- What do you mean by saying behavior varies its means toward an end?
- Why does psychology need the concept of purpose?
Animism and the Reality of the Soul
- What do you mean by animism?
- How do you argue that there's a soul distinct from the body?
- What's the difference between your view and epiphenomenalism?
- Why do you think mechanism is morally dangerous?
- How does the unity of consciousness point to a psychic factor?
Heredity, Race, and National Character
- How much of intelligence and character do you think is inherited?
- What's the argument behind your claim that races differ in mental qualities?
- How do you see the relationship between a nation's heredity and its fate?
- Why did you write Is America Safe for Democracy?
- What eugenic measures did you support and why?
The Lamarckian Experiments
- What were you trying to show with your rat-breeding experiments?
- How did the trained rats' descendants learn faster?
- Why do you think acquired characteristics can be inherited?
- How do you answer the charge that your results came from selection rather than inheritance?
- What's at stake in the debate over the Weismann barrier?
Converse with William McDougall on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in William McDougall's own writing, cited to the page.