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From “race psychology” to “studies in prejudice”: Some observations on the thematic reversal in social psychology
Author(s) -
Samelson Franz
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6696(197807)14:3<265::aid-jhbs2300140313>3.0.co;2-p
Subject(s) - prejudice (legal term) , victory , psychology , social psychology , politics , political psychology , immigration , irrational number , race (biology) , group conflict , white (mutation) , criminology , sociology , gender studies , political science , law , biochemistry , chemistry , geometry , mathematics , gene
In 1920, most psychologists believed in the existence of mental differences between races; by 1940, they were searching for the sources of “irrational prejudice.” In a few decades, a dramatic reversal of the dominant paradigm for the study of groups and group relations had occurred. Although this shift can be seen as a victory of objective‐empirical research, there were other contributing factors: passage of the Immigration Restriction Law of 1924, which shifted the political problem from justification of differential exclusion to conflict resolution in this country; the influx of ethnics into the originally rather lily‐white profession of psychology; the Great Depression and the leftward shift among psychologists; and finally, the need to unite the country against a dangerous enemy proclaiming racial superiority.