Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/676

 PROLEGOMENA TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.

L THE NEED OF THE STUDY OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.

Herbert Spencer begins his Study of Sociology with a chapter emphasizing the practical need of it ; in like manner, perhaps, there is no better way of entering upon a discussion of the sub- ject of social psychology than by pointing out the theoretical need of such a science. This paper accordingly will be a plea for the study of social psychology, with an attempt to show the necessity of it by a partial inventory of the problems dependent upon a social psychology for their scientific solution. Some sort of social psychology, it is true, has usually been assumed by social science ; but the plea of this article is for a systematically worked out and carefully verified social psychology as a condi- tion of complete social knowledge. For, if it be assumed that the phenomena of society are chiefly psychical, a knowledge of the psychical processes which characterize group-life as such is manifestly a most important condition of complete social knowledge.

A few preliminary statements of position may, however, be helpful in rendering our plea more intelligible.

Kiilpe speaks of social psychology as the science which " treats of the mental phenomena dependent upon a community of individuals." ' This we may accept as a rough, working defini- tion of the science. Now, the assumption that there are "mental phenomena dependent upon a community of individu- als " presupposes psychical processes which are more than merely individual, which are 2«/^;--individual ; in last analysis it implies that through the action and reaction of individuals in a group upon one another there arise psychical processes which cannot be explained by reference to any or all of the individuals

■See KiJLPE's Outlines of Psychology, translated by Titchener, p. 7 ; cf. also the original.

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