Psychology, the study of behaviour / by William McDougall.

  • McDougall, William, 1871-1938.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Psychology, the study of behaviour / by William McDougall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the working capital of his intellect; even when we reason with strictest logic, we commonly reason from premises which are beliefs acquired in this unreasoning fashion. By sympathy ” we mean the tendency to experience, in face of the same object, the same emotions and impulses that are revealed by the behaviour of our fellows. By the working of this principle the set of our impulses is regulated and brought into con- formity with the moral tradition, or, in other words, the growth of our moral sentiments is directed. By “ imitation ” we mean the tendency to direct in detail the bodily movements to which our impulses prompt us, according to the v pattern set us by our fellows; a tendency not without importance, though less profoundly influential than the other two. The elucidation of the subtle workings of these principles is the chief task of the one branch of social psychology. Here it must suffice to have indicated merely the nature of that task, and to say that some progress has already been made with it. In studying the general principles of collective psychology, we have to begin with the simplest forms of human and animal association; for, although it is only the more