It may not be out of place in a piece of
psychological research to preface one's findings
with a little rigorous self -examination. I must
admit that the need for this self- probing was not
prompted by any great desire on my part for
thoroughness in procedure, but was forced upon me
throughout the course of my work by people who were
anxious to know why I chose this particular topic for
investigation. One frank critic even went so far as
to ask me if it seas a psychological subject at all.
Another, with strong psycho -analytical convictions,
tentatively attributed my interest to a deep- seated
unconscious need within myself to adopt a prejudiced
attitude toward other nations. Certainly, it is
right and fitting that a research worker should run
the gauntlet of such questions. He should be made
to give some account of so mu ch time, money, materials
and energy expended. But his account need not be
given nor its value assessed in terms of the immediate
availability of his results for utilitarian or practical
purposes. It should be sufficient answer if he can
show that he has tackled a "trend" question in
psychology.
In other scientific spheres the problems of the
time seem to pose themselves simultaneously to
independent workers in widely separated parts of the
world. Psychology is no exception to this rule.
It, too, has its problems of the day and hour, its
prevailing "intellectual climates ". 1hat a research
worker craves above all else is to acquire the almost
infallible, and partly intuitive sense of the
direction of current research, that is possessed in
a high degree by the outstanding men of science.
Vith a lavishness, comparable to that of Mother Nature,
the seeds of research seem to be scattered far and
wide, in all sorts of unlikely places. Although
it would be sheer arrogance for me to claim that
the seedling of research that I have tried so
carefully to nurture will ever bring forth fruit of
reasonable magnitude, I do not think it would be
presumptuous to call it a true seed of research,
born of the times, a living germ which is well worth
attention.
My answer, therefore, to all those who would
ask why tnis topic should be worth study is this.
Psychological science, like any other, has its
vanguard, its moving frontiers. It is attractive
if somewhat audacious for a mere tyro in the field of
research to wish to be in the van. This particular
piece of investigation was undertaken, because of its
seeming paramount importance, because in its modest
way it tries to contribute to the understanding of
man's social behaviour in the field of international
relations. Workers in every part of the world are
engaged in the study of this very problem. Each, in his own way may add something of lasting importance
to the vast sum of psychological knowledge. As my
final justification I would. quote Sorokin, who said,
"Topics of research do not drop down from the heavens
on a few exceptional souls; they lie in the trend of
the times."
My objectives in this piece of research can
best be expressed firstly in a general, and secondly
in a specific form. In its general aspect this
research project attempts to deal with the problem
of the genesis of prejudice and its relation to the
accepted Frustration-Aggression Theory. Specifically,
it is limited to a study of one particular type of
prejudice, namely the negative attitude known as
Ethnic Prejudice in al. unselected group of some 850
young people.
Scientific soundness demands at this stage a
formulation of hypothesis. This is difficult to do
in a clear -cut fashion, without a preliminary clearing
of theoretical ground. Therefore, I shall reserve
'Lie statement of hypothesis for a later point in my
argument, in the hope that increasing clarification
and crystallization will come about in the course of
'Wm developing theory. :iithout some hypothesis, no
orientation is possible in research, and for this
reason I have kept in mind already existing theories
of prejudice, and have kept a watch on my findings for
any facts which would support or refute them.
The theory which I have kept most steadily in
view is that which states that the formation of
prejudice comes about in answer to a definite mental
need of the organism, and have amplified this with my
own personal conviction that this need may be more
sociogenic in its origin than we have been led to
believe. In this connection I turn most gratefully
for support to Wertheimer, who draws attention to
a human need which is so often neglected in
psychological studies of all kinds, namely the mental
need for clarity or what we might call rational
thinking, although Wertheimer in his brilliantly
written posthumous volume prefers to call it
'productive thinking'.
Many psychologists who at present are chiefly
devoting their energies to a study of popular thinking
are tending to follow in the wake of Wertheimer, and
to revise the older formulation of the normal thought
processes as a mere blind tying of stereotyped labels
to a collection of superficially related facts. It
now seems that far too much emphasis was laid upon
the passive and irrational aspects of man's social
attitudes. At the present stage of inquiry much
is made of the fact that there is constantly taking
place in consciousness a process of assimilation of
material to existing "frames of reference" the latter
being succinctly defined by Krech and Crutchfield as
"a term used to denote the functionally related factors (present and past) which operate at the
moment to determine the particular properties of
the psychological phenomenon, (such as perception,
judgment and affectivity) ". This would make
allov.ance for an organised and rational pattern
of prejudices.
