AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BY WILLIAM MCDOUGALL M.A. (Oxon.), M.B. (CANTAB.), M.Sc. (MANC.) SECOND EDITION JOHN W. LUCE & CO. BOSTON MCMIX Gilt PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION IN N this little book I have attempted to deal with a difficult branch of psychology in a way that shall make it intelligible and interesting to any cultivated reader, and that shall imply no previous familiarity with psychological treatises on his part; for I hope that the book may be of service to students of all the social sciences, by providing them with the minimum of psychological doctrine that is an indispensable part of the equipment for work in any of these sciences. I have not thought it necessary to enter into a discussion of the exact scope of social psychology and of its delimitation from sociology or the special social sciences; for I believe that such questions may be left to solve themselves in the course of time with the advance of the various branches of science concerned. I would only say that I believe social psychology to offer for research a vast and fertile field, which has been but little worked hitherto, and that in this book I have attempted to deal only with its most fundamental problems, those the solution of which is a presupposition of all profitable work in the various branches of the science. If I have severely criticised some of the views from I which I dissent, and have connected these views with the names of writers who have maintained them, it is vi SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY I owe also some apology because I believe such criticism to be a great aid to clearness of exposition and also to be much needed in the present state of psychology; the names thus made use of were chosen because the bearers of them are authors well known for their valuable contributions to mental science. I hope that this brief acknowledgment may serve as an apology to any of them under whose eyes my criticisms may fall. to my fellow-workers for the somewhat dogmatic tone I have adopted. I would not be taken to believe that my utterances upon any of the questions dealt with are infallible or incapable of being improved upon; but repeated expressions of deference and of the sense of my own uncertainty would be out of place in a semipopular work of this character and would obscure the course of my exposition. Although I have tried to make this book intelligible and useful to those who are not professed students of psychology, it is by no means a mere dishing up of current doctrines for popular consumption; and it may add to its usefulness in the hands of professional psychologists if I indicate here the principal points which, to the best of my belief, are original contributions to psychological doctrine. In Chapter II. I have tried to render fuller and clearer the conceptions of instinct and of instinctive process, from both the psychical and the nervous sides. In Chapter III. I have elaborated a principle, briefly enunciated in a previous work, which is, I believe, of the first importance for the understanding of the life of emotion and action-the principle, namely, that all emotion is the affective aspect of instinctive process. The adoption of this principle leads me to define emotion more strictly and narrowly than has been done by other writers; and I have used it as a guide in attempting to distinguish the more important of the primary emotions. In Chapter IV. I have combated the current view that imitation is to be ascribed to an instinct of imitation; and I have attempted to give greater precision to the conception of suggestion, and to define the principal conditions of suggestibility. I have adopted a view of the most simple and primitive form of sympathy that has been previously enunciated by P Herbert Spencer and others, and have proposed what I seems to be the only possible theory of the way in 1 which sympathetic induction of emotion takes place. I have then suggested a modification of Professor Groos's theory of play, and in this connection have indulged in a speculation as to the peculiar nature and origin of the emulative impulse. THE C In Chapter V. I have attempted a physiological interpretation of Mr. Shand's doctrine of the sentiments, and have analysed the principal complex emotions in the light of this doctrine and of the principle laid down in Chapter II., respecting the relation of emotion to instinct. The analyses reached are in many respects novel; and I venture to think that, though they may need much correction in detail, they have the merit of having been achieved by a method very much superior to the one commonly pursued, the latter being that of introspective analysis unaided by any previous determination of the primary emotions by the comparative method. In Chapters VI., VII., VIII., and IX. I have applied Mr. Shand's doctrine of the sentiments and the results reached in the earlier chapters to the description of the organisation of the life of emotion and impulse, and have built upon these foundations an account which |