Abstract
“THE purpose of this book is to concentrate attention on the fact that social influences are of the highest importance in determining the c aracter of human thought and conduct.” To instincts and other inborn traits the author attributes little importance. This point of view now meets with widespread approval, and it is not proposed to quarrel with it here. There can be little doubt that the older social psychology, founding itself upon observation of the individual, over-emphasised the role of the so-called instincts of gregariousness and acquisition and the like. Whatever may have been the case with regard to the origin of institutions in respect to the part played by instinct, there is no question but that the vast accumulation represented in our social heritage now predominates in determining social conduct in general. Prof. Judd's book is to be welcomed in that it provides for the student an examination of certain social institutions at some length, during the course of which this point of view is kept continuously to the fore. But it cannot be said that the book contributes anything definite towards the solution of the numerous problems connected with the whole subject. It may be replied that this was not its purpose, and if this is so, then it has certainly fulfilled its limited object in driving home this one important lesson.
The Psychology of Social Institutions.
Prof.
C. H.
Judd
By. Pp. ix + 346. (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1926.) 8s. 6d. net.
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C.-S., A. The Psychology of Social Institutions . Nature 118, 585 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/118585c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/118585c0