Psychopathology of Social Prejudice

For some years it has been customary to approach many psychological and sociological phenomena from the statistical point of view. Official objectivity and disindividualization seem to be combined in this method. In the interest of understanding a certain phenomenon questionnaires are drawn up, and the conscious responses to the many questions are then tabulated, enhancing the impression of tangible objectivity. The individual behind the answer remains anonymous not only from the formal but also from the psychological point of view. That this psychological anonymity automatically reduces to naught the very human being who is supposedly being studied is unfortunately overlooked, and all too often this type of objective psychological study represents only an imitation of physicochemical studies, which require more and more beakers and test tubes, and less and less individualization. Such imitations may appear formally successful, but substantially they evaporate the psychology out of psychology. They leave only the precipitate of measurable entities which apparently come from man but are not of man as an individual in action, with all his thoughts and feelings in full play. Thus, the objectivity of anonymous, conscious answers is truly lifeless.

There remains a word to be said about the objectivity of the questions themselves. These questions are usually formulated by the investigator 'with an idea in mind'; moreover, the investigator cannot in detail know in advance what to look for in a phenomenon which he does not yet understand and which he wishes to study. Consequently, the questions formulated must contain a heavy admixture of subjective preconceptions which, to say the least, vitiate the objectivity of the results sought. Add to this the fact that conscious answers to conscious motivations are not very reliable guides to truth, psychological or sociological, and the whole edifice of the so-called exclusively objective method in psychology and sociology