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

本论文的研究项目将考察美国三位杰出的社会科学家在20世纪中期的职业生涯，以及他们在二战后加速的社会变革中重新设计人类人格和人性的尝试。由于政府、军事、企业和教育机构对人力资源管理的需求增加，专业社会科学在这一时期经历了前所未有的机构增长。当科学家被招募来帮助一个努力适应新的工作、家庭生活和社区模式的社会创造社会技术时，对个人的科学表现进行了重新评估和修改。在这一时期，科学技术的巨大发展也将学院以外的个别科学家推向社会权威的新职位。这个项目聚焦于三位这样的科学家的社会理论，以及他们对个人作为一个有效的自动机或一个多维整体的不同看法。文化人类学家玛格丽特·米德、行为主义心理学家伯胡斯·F·斯金纳和人格心理学家加德纳·墨菲都为20世纪美国社会科学和人类人格的科学建构做出了重要贡献。米德、斯金纳和墨菲各自提出了一种独特的人性观，并将其应用于各自对美国文化和美国科学的批判中。他们的社会理论不仅受到科学研究和实验方法的影响，也受到公众对美国社会中个人和群体的不同要求的期望的影响。通过研究个人的社会科学图像和流行图像的相互交换和挪用，这个项目将有助于科学史上一个新兴但日益增长的规范，它涉及美国社会科学的文化史。

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.