Psychological Bulletin

Cantril, H.

doi: 10.1037/h0075204pmid: N/A

Social psychologists have gone too far in adapting their problems to fit standardized laboratory conditions, instead of selecting full-bodied problems from everyday life and devising newer techniques that would handle the questions with minimal distortion. A survey of 22 textbooks lists for each the small percentage of content devoted to everyday life, the definition of social psychology, and the manner of treatment. A list of some forty practicable projects of research in the social psychology of daily life is furnished, each subdivided into several questions, and each with bibliographical references furnished from a list of 306 titles.

Guilford, J. P.

doi: 10.1037/h0072741pmid: N/A

A review of 115 titles is arranged under the heads: psychological theories and descriptions, genetic factors, tests and rating scales, characteristics correlated with IE, practical applications of IE tests, and physiological basis of IE. Certain new personality types correspond more or less with IE. Certain family influences are concomitant; and age, intelligence, inferiority attitudes, social intelligence, female sex, submissiveness, affectivity, idiosyncrasy, depressed mood, and neurotic tendency are related to introversion. Questionnaires of IE are generally inadequate, and work on more objective tests is progressing. Satisfactory progress waits upon a successful factor analysis of personality and its real variables.

Robinson, Edward S.

doi: 10.1037/h0067872pmid: N/A

Reviews the book Institutional Behavior by F. H. Allport . Professor Allport's contention that the causes of unrest are not to be accounted for by lack of suitable institutions but are to be ascribed to the very fact of institutionalization itself. In our attempt to accommodate the common segments of all individuals we have not fully represented any single personality. And if the institution in the last analysis depends upon a part of the individual and at the same time obscures the whole personality, it is not surprising that we so seldom find means of complete self-expression, or that an individual in one of his memberships carries out types of behavior or harbors attitudes which are inconsistent with the remainder of his personality. applying his analysis to the field of politics, Professor Allport seems able to account for many of the problems accompanying popular government. The lethargy of the American people in all political matter is due to the fact that the institution called the "Government" involves only a very partial segment of individuals' lives. Although the fiction that the "People" are governing is kept alive by those few individuals who exploit it for selfish reasons, the "Government" is impersonal to the great majority. Political and legal fictions furthermore obscure the true reasons why "Justice takes its course."

Robinson, Edward S.

doi: 10.1037/h0069611pmid: N/A

Reviews the book Systematic Sociology by L. Von Wiese and H. Becker (1932). The prefaces of the two authors explain their relations, and the double intention of making Professor von Wiese's Allgemeine Sociologie more accessible to American students, and at the same time to correlate more closely American and German sociology. To that end, Professor Becker has freely substituted or added American equivalents of German writers referred to in the original work, modified terminology to evoke American as well as German connotations, and added material both from other writings of Professor von Wiese, and from his own. Unlike many books of a more or less composite nature, however, this one is methodologically and artistically a complete unit. The basis of sociology, as here set forth, is the study, without reference to value-judgments, of the inter-relations of human beings, and the action-patterns resulting, whether between two persons, or plurality patterns of larger groups. One of the many merits of the book is its factual, present and immediate bases for the theories presented. There is no dependence upon situations in ancient Rome, or in some distant island of the south seas, where, from the enormous distances of time and social conditioning, no citizen of our western world can possibly hope to understand all the situational ramifications. The world presented is the familiar one of every day. Hence the book is endlessly stimulating.

Robinson, Edward S.

doi: 10.1037/h0064568pmid: N/A

Reviews the book God or Man? by James H. Leuba (1933). The book is divided into four parts. Part I describes briefly the conflict of science and religion. Part II is a historical and psychological account of the notions of God and immortality similar to those found in the author's Belief in God and Immortality, Psychology of Religious Mysticism, etc. Part III compares the practice of religion with those of medicine and psychiatry, much to the advantage of the latter. Part IV attempts to show that Christianity in all its forms from Catholicism to Protestant Modernism is an outworn and obstructive element in modern civilization, especially in intellectual life and maintains that the values incorporated in religion could be better enjoyed if divorced from theological entanglements. Just because religion has deeper roots in human nature than Leuba allows, his substitutes for religion are inadequate. The religious attitude toward the world is projective and interpretative. As an alternative to the churches Leuba proposes the development of ethical culture societies in which an enlightened morality, an appreciation of beauty and a systematized mental hygiene (e.g., through a modified confessional and a scientific study of the effect of music on the emotions) could be cultivated without theology.

Robinson, Edward S.

doi: 10.1037/h0068041pmid: N/A

Reviews the book History, Psychology, and Culture by Alexander Goldenweiser . This volume of collected essays, most of which are rewritten from previous publications, is dedicated to the memory of Wilhelm Wundt. Such a dedication will be a surprise to many psychologists who are accustomed to think of Wundt's influence as dead and his theories as dated. He shares Wundt's disbelief in the uniformity of cultural advance, and agrees with his emphasis upon the multiplicity of motives and purposes which characterize the development of the cultural forms. Besides the appreciative essay on Wundt, the volume contains lengthy discussions of totemism and anthropological methods, as well as critical accounts of the theories of Teggart, Bastian, Lévy-Bruhl, Durkheim, and Freud. Speaking of racial differences, the author points out that civilization probably does not depend upon congenital ability. It was for the white man a fortunate moment of history which gave him the most complex cultural development; "to assume that such a forward push could occur in no other culture but the white would be siding with prejudice rather than with probability." In this account Goldenweiser clearly aligns himself with the environmentalists.

Robinson, Edward S.

doi: 10.1037/h0064514pmid: N/A

Reviews the book Observational Studies of Social Behavior by D. S. Thomas, A. M. Loomis and R. E. Arrington . This report describes an attempt to make precise measurements of social interaction. Basically the study deals with the following two questions: (1) Can social phenomena be broken up into meaningful units which are quantitatively interchangeable, i.e., which lend themselves to statistical analysis? (2) Can these units of behavior be recorded reliably? In the course of studies made on nursery school, kindergarten, trade school and adult industrial groups a technique was evolved. The basic activities of an individual were checked against a time scale laid off in five second intervals. While one observer checked the durations of material, physical, and no-overt activity, another recorded the occurrence or non-occurrence in five second intervals of talking, physical contact and crying. Thus two observers working simultaneously could produce reasonably reliable data on the varieties of activities, the relative time spent, and the proportion of social expression (as denned by the authors), in each of the major activity-categories. Whether the units used in this study seem meaningful for the differentiation of individuals or the nature of social interaction, and whether they seem quantitatively interchangeable will depend upon the point of view of the reader.

Robinson, Edward S.

doi: 10.1037/h0066800pmid: N/A

Reviews the book Dynamic Social Research by J. J. Hader and E. C. Lindeman . This book is a self-conscious attempt to outline a research technique applicable to the study of functioning groups. Specifically the joint committee in industry has been chosen for investigation. The original intention of the authors was to gather facts concerning industrial management. For this purpose they sought an acceptable and tested method of procedure. But the only methodological tools they could find involved the isolation and control of the situation to be studied. To this end the authors devote four chapters of the volume to the development of a social philosophy which will satisfy the demands of their problem. Four "categories of analysis" are derived. The first, impulsion, denotes "all of those aspects of a group which combine to constitute its initial and ongoing dynamic." The second category, circumjacence, is "a term selected to describe those elements in the total situation which condition, limit, or channel the social group under observation, but only those elements which are reducible to psychological or sociological description. The final category, emergence, describes "any evolutionary change in the quality of the consequence of joint committee action."

Robinson, Edward S.

doi: 10.1037/h0065892pmid: N/A

Reviews the book Ability in Social and Racial Classes by R. C. Davis . Although much has been done in comparing social and racial classes with reference to physical characteristics and behavior, little research has been extended into the field of physiological or functional differences. Yet, nevertheless, as the author of this volume points out, these functions are probably significant and germane to any comprehensive study of ability differences. If differences in behavior depend upon the condition of the nervous system, then measures of the functional excellence of the nervous system should shed some light on the problem of intelligence. For his own investigation the author selected three tests: speed of nervous conduction as measured in the Achilles tendon reflex, the rate of tapping, and the electrical resistance of the skin. The apparatus necessary for the second and third of these is complex, and does not fall within the scope of this review. The author concludes that "certain biological variations are advantageous for the possession of 'good intelligence'."

Robinson, Edward S.

doi: 10.1037/h0068724pmid: N/A

Reviews the book The Psychology of Laughter by Ralph Piddington . This is one of those scholarly books, two-fifths of which is devoted to summarizing the theories of other writers, one-fifth to criticism of these theories, and the remainder to presentation of the author's point of view. Piddington has carried out the scheme admirably and according to the best literary tradition. After reviewing various theories of laughter, the author concludes that no previous theory satisfactorily explains both the laughter of joy (euphoria) and laughter at the ludicrous. Following the genetic approach, he suggests that joyous laughter (1) is a reaction deeply rooted in the human constitution, growing out of the smile, (2) is aroused by pleasant situations not requiring active adjustment, (3) expresses to others the mental states accompanying such situations.