http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/704876

An introdution to social psychology

"This is the second edition of an Introduction to Social Psychology by William McDougall. This edition differs from the first only in that a few verbal slips have been rectified. Chapter I introduces social psychology to the reader. In Chapter II, the author has tried to render fuller and clearer the conceptions of instinct and of instinctive process, from both the psychical and the nervous sides. In Chapter III, the author has elaborated a principle, briefly enunciated in a previous work, which he considers of the first importance for the understanding of the life of emotion and action--the principle that all emotion is the affective aspect of instinctive process. The adoption of this principle leads to a more strict and narrow definition of emotion than has been done by other writers; and the author uses it as a guide in attempting to distinguish the more important of the primary emotions. In Chapter IV, the author has combated the current view that imitation is to be ascribed to an instinct of imitation; in this volume greater precision is given to the conception of suggestion, and to the definition of the principal conditions of suggestibility. The author has adopted the view of the most simple and primitive form of sympathy that has been previously enunciated by Herbert Spencer and others, and has proposed a theory of the way in which sympathetic induction of emotion takes place. The author suggests a modification of Professor Groos's theory of play, and in this connection has indulged in a speculation as to the peculiar nature and origin of the emulative impulse. In Chapter V, an attempt at a physiological interpretation of Mr. Shand's doctrine of the sentiments has been made, as well as analyses of the principal complex emotions in the light of this doctrine and of the principle laid down in Chapter II, respecting the relation of emotion to instinct. In Chapters VI, VII, VIII, and IX, the author has applied Mr. Shand's doctrine of the sentiments and the results reached in the earlier chapters to the description of the organisation of the life of emotion and impulse, and has built upon these foundations an account which is more definite than any other with which this author is acquainted. Attention may be drawn to the account offered of the nature of active or developed sympathy; but the principal novelty contained in these chapters is what may, perhaps, be called a theory of volition"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

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