Dissertation Research: Architects of the Self: Social Scientists and the Construction of the Individual in Postwar America

本论文研究项目将探讨三位杰出的美国社会科学家在二十世纪中叶的职业生涯，以及他们在第二次世界大战后加速社会变革的氛围中重新设计人类个性和人性的尝试。专业社会科学经历了前所未有的机构增长在此期间，由于人力资源管理在政府，军事，企业和教育机构的需求增加。随着科学家们被招募来帮助为一个努力适应新的工作模式、家庭生活和社区的社会创造社会技术，对个人的科学表征经历了重新评估和修改。这一时期科学和技术的巨大发展也使科学家超越了学术界，进入了社会权威的新位置。这个项目的重点是三个这样的科学家的社会理论和他们的个人作为一个高效的自动机或多维整体的对比视野。文化人类学家玛格丽特·米德、行为主义心理学家伯勒斯·F.斯金纳和人格心理学家加德纳·墨菲都对美国社会科学和世纪人类人格的科学建构做出了重要贡献。米德、斯金纳和墨菲都对人性有着独特的看法，并将其应用于各自对美国文化和美国科学的批评中。他们的社会理论不仅受到科学研究和实验方法的影响，而且受到公众对美国社会中个人和群体提出不同要求的期望的影响。通过研究社会科学和个人流行形象的相互交流和挪用，该项目将有助于在科学史上解决美国社会科学文化史的新兴但不断增长的经典。

This dissertation research project will examine the careers of three prominent American social scientists in the mid-twentieth century and their attempts to redesign human personality and human nature in an atmosphere of accelerated social change after the Second World War. Professional social science experienced unprecedented institutional growth during this period as a result of the increased need for human resource management in governmental, military, corporate, and educational institutions. As scientists were enlisted to help produce social technologies for a society struggling to adjust to new patterns of work, domestic life, and community, scientific representations of the individual underwent reassessment and modification. The tremendous expansion of science and technology during this period also catapulted individual scientists beyond the academy into new positions of social authority. This project focuses on the social theories of three such scientists and their contrasting visions of the individual as either an efficient automaton or a multidimensional whole. The cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead, the behaviorist psychologist Burrhus F. Skinner, and the personality psychologist Gardner Murphy all made central contributions to American social science and the scientific construction of human personality in the twentieth century. Mead, Skinner, and Murphy each crafted a unique vision of humanity and applied it to their respective critiques of American culture and American science. Their social theories were shaped not only by scientific research and experimental methodology but also by the expectations of public constituencies that placed different demands on individuals and groups in American society. By examining the reciprocal exchange and appropriation of social scientific and popular images of the individual, this project will contribute to an emergent but growing canon in the history of science that addresses the cultural history of American social science.