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Interaction of Psychological and Sociological Factors in Political Behavior*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Else Frenkel-Brunswik
Else Frenkel-Brunswik
Affiliation:
University of California
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Extract

The theoretical models developed to deal with the interaction of sociological and psychological factors in the formation of political behavior indicate a wide divergence of opinion. At one extreme area group of scientists, mainly psychiatrists and anthropologists, who see most social phenomena as deriving from the subjective experiences of the individual. The specific traumata inherent in different methods of upbringing and in the resulting renunciations imposed upon the child are regarded by them as the formative basis for customs, religions, social attitudes, and so forth. Some specific examples of their point of view may be found in attempts to explain war as an expression of the destructive instincts, or capitalism as a manifestation of the anal syndrome. But at the other extreme are proponents of the view that the social structure is independent of the single individual and that individual behavior can be explained and predicted in terms of membership in classes and groups as they have developed historically, mainly on the basis of mode of subsistence.

Failing to agree with either of these extreme points of view, one may argue that any speculation about the causal interrelation of sociological and psychological factors in the group and in the individual must recognize the fact that these factors have been artificially isolated and abstracted and that no exclusive factual primacy can be given to any of the aspects in a pattern so closely interwoven.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 1952 , pp. 44 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1952

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References

1 See Parsons, T., Essays in Sociological Theory: Pure and Applied (Glencoe, Ill., 1948)Google Scholar.

2 (Chicago, 1930).

3 (New York, 1941).

4 The studies for this book (New York, 1950), Vol. 5 of Studies in Prejudice, were carried out by T. W. Adorno, E. Frenkel-Brunswik, D. J. Levinson, and R. N. Sanford, and they are its joint authors.

5 The Individual and His Society (New York, 1939)Google Scholar.

6 The Cultural Background of Personality (New York, 1945)Google Scholar.

7 Mirror for Man (New York, 1949)Google Scholar.

8 And Keep Your Powder Dry (New York, 1942)Google Scholar.

9 See especially “Psychoanalysis and Personality Research” in “Symposium on Psychoanalysis by Analyzed Experimental Psychologists”, ed. Allport, G. W., Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, Vol. 35, pp. 176–97 (1940)Google Scholar, and Motivation and Behavior, Vol. 26, No. 3, of Genetic Psychology Monographs (1942)Google Scholar.

10 This and many subsequent references are to the material about and treatment of this concept in The Authoritarian Personality. However, also see below, n. 15.

11 Motivation and Behavior (above, n. 9).

12 See “Psychoanalysis and Personality Research” (above, n. 9).

13 Totem and Taboo (New York, 1918)Google Scholar and Moses and Monotheism (New York, 1939)Google Scholar.

14 The Authoritarian Personality.

15 Adult subjects were used for the project which resulted in The Authoritarian Personality. Children are the subjects of a second project, now being carried out at the Institute of Child Welfare of the University of California by the present writer with several collaborators. For preliminary reports of the latter, see the writer's “A Study of Prejudice in Children”, Human Relations, Vol. 1, pp. 295–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and her “Intolerance of Ambiguity as an Emotional and Perceptual Personality Variable” in Pt. 1 of “Symposium on Interrelationships between Perception and Personality”, Journal of Personality, Vol. 18, pp. 108–43 (1949)Google Scholar.

16 See the writer's “Dynamic and Cognitive Categorization of Qualitative Material: (1) General Problems and the Thematic Apperception Test, and (2) Interviews of the Ethnically Prejudiced,” Journal of Psychology, Vol. 25, pp. 253–60 and 261–77 (1948)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 For a description of this test, see H. E. Murray and other workers at the Harvard Psychological Clinic, Explorations in Personality (New York, 1938), pp. 530–45Google Scholar.

18 See the article in two parts cited above, n.16.

19 See “Intolerance of Ambiguity as a Personality Variable” (above, n. 15), pp. 123 ff.

20 Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (New York, 1945)Google Scholar.

21 See “Intolerance of Ambiguity as a Personality Factor,” pp. 126 ff.

22 See his Der Gegentypus (Leipzig, 1938)Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., pp. 230 ff.

24 For detailed exposition of the concept of “role,” see Linton, The Cultural Background of Personality, and Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory.

25 The interviews, conducted by W. R. Morrow, are described in The Authoritarian Personality.

26 See “Intolerance to Ambiguity as a Personality Variable,” pp. 126. ff.

27 The material of this and the following two paragraphs is based on Ch. 5 of The Authoritarian Personality, prepared and written by Levinson. The remainder of the present section is based on material, as yet unpublished, from the project on Social Discrimination in Children referred to above, n.15.

28 So, for example, reported Reinhard Bendix in “Social Stratification and Political Power,” a paper read at the Symposium in which the present one was originally presented.

29 In “Elites: The Psychosocial Elect in Politics,” another of the papers read at the Symposium on Social Stratification and Politics.

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