Review of Social Psychology

Abstract

Reviews the book, Social Psychology by Floyd Henry Allport. Professor Allport endeavors to provide for those interested in social science a social psychology embodying the results of the most recent psychological investigations. Three lines of approach are employed: the behavior viewpoint, the experimental method, and the psychoanalysis of Freud and Jung. Behavior is interpreted as essentially physiological. It involves a need in the organism (sex and hunger are the ultimate needs) and the reaction of the organism to satisfy the need. The results of laboratory experiment, questionnaires and critical observation upon individual and group behavior are brought to the support of theories and principles of explanation. Social psychology is defined as "the science which studies behavior of the individual in so far as his behavior stimulates other individuals, or is itself a reaction to their behavior, and which describes the consciousness of the individual in so far as it is a consciousness of social objects and social reactions." Throughout this work social psychology is taken as a science of individual behavior. To those students of social science who are able to accept a rather extreme behavioristic viewpoint, together with the Freudian stress upon sex and hunger as the primary drives in social living, this book will be welcomed. Seldom does one find a book more clearly and interestingly written. The individual self, capable of rational reflection, selective evaluation of interests and motives, is more than a bit of physico-chemical or physico-mechanical matter. A psychology limited to a treatment of man's bodily reactions involves a false simplification of the facts. It is an abstractionism, and is especially weak in its interpretation of man's aesthetic, moral and religious experiences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)