‘Participation in group life degrades the individual, assimilating his mental processes to those of the crowd, whose brutality, inconstancy, and unreasoning impulsiveness have been the theme of many writers; yet only by participation in group life does man become fully man, only so does he rise above the level of the savage.’
The Group Mind is William McDougall’s attempt to explain how groups think, especially in terms of national identities, through the principles of group psychology. For McDougall, the isolated individual should not be the sole focus of psychological analysis since the individual’s interactions with society are essential to the individual’s psychological development. Using the group as the unit of analysis, McDougall outlines his theories on group behaviour and aims to interpret and understand societal behaviour through them.
William McDougall was a British born psychologist who was important in the development of social psychology.