The Scientific Study of Social Behaviour

by Michael Argyle

Originally published in 1957, this book presented an up-to-date account of psychological research into human social behaviour of the time. There are chapters on interaction between pairs of people, behaviour in small social groups, and human relations in industry. The author avoided the adoption of any particular theoretical position, and concentrated on the established empirical findings of the time. The results of several hundred investigations are summarised and compared, so that the principal generalisations which emerge can be seen. Stress is placed on rigorous methods of research, and a critical account is given of current techniques of social research, showing the importance of experimental and statistical methods. Careful consideration is given to the danger of the investigator disturbing what is being investigated. Use is made of recent ideas about theory and explanation, and the different kinds of theory used in experimental psychology were considered for the first time as possible ways of accounting for group behaviour.
This book was intended not only for students of psychology and of the other social sciences, but also for industrialists, administrators and indeed all who were interested in the laws underlying social behaviour. Today it can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.

258 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 1957

About the author

Social psychologist. He is regarded as one of Britain's best known and most productive academic psychologist of the twentieth century. He first read Mathematics, but had to serve in WWII as a navigator in the Royal Air Force, he read Moral Science and Experimental Psychology at Cambridge. From 1950 to 1952 he worked at the Psychological Laboratory at Cambridge, and in 1952 he became lecturer in Social Psychology at Oxford University, where he spent the whole of his academic career, being promoted to Reader in 1969. He was also tutor in psychology at Balliol College and a Founding Fellow of Wolfson College. Throughout his career, he showed strong preferences for experimental methods in social psychology, having little time for alternative approaches such as discourse analysis. Sonia Argyle (1922-1999) was his first wife.