Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803)

Wilhelm Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie

Völkerpsychologie was a social psychological school of thought established by Wilhelm Wundt throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although Wundt lead the movement to vitalize Völkerpsychologie, a form of social psychology, its origins can be traced back to the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803). In his writings, Herder identified two types of social relations: power-based relations and cultural community-based relations. These cultural communities were defined as volks. With regard to the individual, Herder contended that power-based relations have little or no effect on mental processes, whereas volk-based relations contribute to individual personality development. Furthermore, Herder credited language as an essential means for self-reflection and expression, and asserted that language in itself is produced through social interaction. Most notably, these writings reflect an early consideration of the social group as a key factor in the development and maintenance of the individual psyche.

The terms volk and volksgeist (volk ‘spirit’) became widely used during the period of increasing German nationalism in the early 19th century. However, the term Völkerpsychologie was coined in 1851 by Moritz Lazarus (1824–1903) as the name for a new academic discipline. In 1859, the manifesto for this discipline was published in the first edition of Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, a journal for linguistics and Völkerpsychologie, established by Lazarus along with Hajm Steinthal (1823–1899). Lazarus and Steinthal, both German-Jewish scholars who had undergone the Jewish emancipation of Prussia, met as theology students at the University of Berlin, but jointly decided to turn their efforts toward the studies of philosophy and humanities. Their goal for this new psychology was to identify the commonalities in the development of cultural groups through comparative-historical studies of language and customs. Lazarus and Steinthal emphasized the necessity of a ‘social’ psychology given the intrinsic relationship between an individual and a nation/community. Their theoretical approach was influenced by the philosophers Johann Friedrich Herbart, who proposed a theory of mental processes that involved both intra- and inter-personal considerations, and Wilhelm von Humboldt, who held the notion that language is an essential component of national identity. As such, language was a main focus of Völkerpsychologie. With regard to the conceptualization of the ‘cultural group’, Lazarus and Steinthal contended that members of a group are united by some common aspect of psychological activity. For example, they provided the definition of ‘nationality’ in the first issue of their journal as being the personal choice/will of an individual to form and belong to a nation. In other words, the choice/will is the psychological activity common to, and thus forming, a nation. Furthermore, they contended that since a cultural group is produced by individual psychological activity, the overall essence of said group is continuously evolving. In this way, their Völkerpsychologie set out to systematically examine the principles that contribute to an overall improvement of a nation (e.g., improvements in education, technology, etc.). Lazarus and Steinthal’s intentions for this discipline were a theoretical investigation of these principles through historical studies, as well as an empirical examination of existing cultural groups, however, they only took on the first task themselves. Nevertheless, Lazarus and Steinthal’s Völkerpsychologie introduced the idea that culture and individual psychology are intricately interrelated, providing the opportunity for an entirely new field of psychological study.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) became interested in ‘social psychology’ shortly after Lazarus and Steinthal’s introduction to Völkerpsychologie, offering a course entitled Anthropologie with similar considerations in 1859. Just four years later, he published the text, Vorlesungen über die Menschen- und Thierseele (1863), and devoted almost half of its pages to content on Völkerpsychologie. Wundt argued that experimental psychology and Völkerpsychologie were both necessary psychological approaches, and that comparative-historical methods were essential and valid tools for studying the latter. Throughout his career, Wundt gave occasional lectures on Völkerpsychologie, and developed his version of the discipline extensively, publishing the second edition of Vorlesungen in 1892, which was drastically different from the original. From 1900 to 1920, Wundt also published the 10-volume text, Völkerpsychologie. Despite the vast changes that Wundt made to his version of Völkerpsychologie, he remained steadfast in his view that experimental methods should be substituted by comparative-historical methods when investigating the social aspects of mental processes. Wundt’s rationale for this argument is that social aspects of mental processes manifest as objective products of culture, such as language, myths, and customs, which cannot be manipulated or controlled for in an experimental design. Moreover, he firmly believed that comparative-historical methods were equally as objective as experimental methods. For Wundt, the purpose of investigating products of culture was to infer the universal psychological processes that gave rise to them. Therefore, he contended that both individual-experimental psychological observations, as well as social psychological observations could be used in concert to yield a more comprehensive understanding of the human experience. This is where Wundt’s version of Völkerpsychologie differs from that of Lazarus and Steinthal; Lazarus investigated cultural products to make inferences about universal psychological processes, and Steinthal applied psychological considerations to understand the development of distinct cultures.

On the other hand, Wundt’s theory of human action led Völkerpsychologie to diverge from the rising field of social psychology in America. According to Wundt’s view, instinctual drives were the underlying mechanism of deliberate action, and for the case of socially oriented behaviour, these drives manifest as ‘spontaneous affective expression’ (i.e., immediate, instinctual emotional reactions). Wundt contended that these spontaneous actions were universal representations of certain mental states, and that this form of non-verbal communication was the basis for social interaction. Furthermore, the foundations for Wundt’s collective subject, or Volksseele, lies within the psychological links this method of communication facilitates. Finally, this theory suggests that because of human’s capacity for memory, the individuals who are a part of a given ‘collective subject’ remain as such for a relatively permanent period of time.

For the entirety of his career, Wundt firmly believed that Völkerpsychologie was an essential field of study within psychology. However, despite his efforts, it never achieved the distinction as a major school of thought. There are several potential reasons for its lack of success, namely that the field of social psychology was popularized in America and was focused on the principles of behaviourism. Therefore, Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie was substantially inaccessible to the growing body of social psychologists due to language barriers. Moreover, his elaboration of the underlying drive mechanism of action was not of primary importance to behaviourists whose focus was on overt behaviours. Nevertheless, all of the proponents of Völkerpsychologie can be credited with acknowledging the intrinsic relationship between individual psychology, group psychology, and the development and evolution of culture.

References

Danziger, K. (1983). Origins and basic principles of Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie. British Journal of Social Psychology, 22, 303–313. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8309.1983.tb00597.x

Greenwood, J. D. (2003). Wundt, Völkerpsychologie, and experimental social psychology. History of Psychology, 6, 70–88. doi:10.1037/1093-4510.6.1.70

Klautke, E. (2010). The mind of the nation: The debate about Völkerpsychologie, 1851–1900. Central Europe, 8, 1–19. doi:10.1179/174582110×12676382921428

Contributors

• M. Grant Leger
• Luna Kim
• Kristen Arnold
• Maggie Dobbin

Philip George Zimbardo (1933-) (**SC)

Written by: Nicole Smith

Philip G. Zimbardo is a social and applied psychologist who served as the president of the APA in 2002. Zimbardo’s use of psychological research, theory, and methods to address the problems of the real world (i.e. human behaviour) made him a deserving holder of the position (American Psychological Association, 2012).

Zimbardo triple majored in psychology, sociology, and anthropology at Brooklyn College, and he earned his Master’s degree and PhD. in psychology from Yale University (American Psychological Association, 2012). Zimbardo taught psychology at Yale University (for over fifty years), New York University, Columbia University, and Stanford University. He is best known for his 1971 Stanford prison experiment, which demonstrated the influence of social situations on human behaviour. The experiment was scheduled to last two weeks but was terminated after six days. The participants assigned as guards in the mock prison displayed sadistic behaviour, while the participants assigned as prisoners became severely distressed from the maltreatment of the guards. This revealed how individuals conform to the roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles are stereotyped (APA, 2012).* Moreover, this experiment highlighted the importance of ethics (i.e. informed consent) in psychological experiments.

Zimbardo has also conducted research on a variety of topics (i.e. hypnosis, shyness, heroism etc.) and authored several professional articles, chapters, and books (American Psychological Association, 2012). He is even the director of the Heroic Imagination Project, which teaches people to act as heroes of social change (i.e. promotes changes in well-being). Additionally, Zimbardo has received numerous awards for his research and teachings, including the Phi Beta Kappa Distinguished Teaching Award for Northern California (1998), APA Div. 2: Society for the Teaching of Psychology Award (1999), and an APA Presidential Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Psychology for his “Discovering Psychology” TV series (1994). Psychology would not be the same without Philip G. Zimbardo.

References

American Psychological Association. (2012). Philip G. Zimbardo: 2002 APA president. https://www.apa.org/about/governance/president/bio-philip-zimbardo