History of Psychology and Behavioural Science Reflections

I had an interesting experience recently. Someone told me they read the blog. I have seen the stat-counter in blogger showing a lot of people viewing the posts but I assumed this was mostly AI bots.  Back in the day just before twitter, it felt like the blog got a bit of attention, in that people would regularly ask me about something that we had posted on it. I think I was possibly also more extraverted and actually spoke to people in those days and also enjoyed the feeling of incredibly localised fame. In any case, if anyone I know is reading this, just let's agree that, if anyone asks, I am mainly working on pumping out papers in top journals like a respectable academic and not the various distractions that arise here. 

It is, as you probably know if you read this, my sixth and final year as head of the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE. I am doing a lot of things that have become part of my calendar for the final time such as welcoming students, apologising to various colleagues about how the teaching allocation has worked out, and preparing our budget justification and hiring rounds for the following year. I have found the role difficult at times but meaningful. I was probably suited to be a Department head, it is a relatively strategic role but you are connected to pretty much everything from an academic perspective, including continuing to teach and research in most cases. I am not entirely sure what it makes sense for me to do next. Hence some of the posts that will follow have an exploratory vibe. I am quite lucky that my poor financial skills for most of my twenties and thirties have ruled out early retirement so I am committed to continuing a career of some type. 

For several years I have given a lecture on the history on economics and psychology across many courses here, in Stirling, and in Dublin. I was glad to give a version of this as the IAREP Kahneman lecture in Estonia. One point I made concerned the eclectic roots of a lot of modern behavioural economics and behavioural science of the type that has ended up in policy. I gave the example of hyperbolic discounting which has been a key concept in modern behavioural economics. Karl Popper was a major figure in LSE in the 20th century and I walk by where his office would have been regularly. I don't know if he had a bad interaction with some of our predecessors in psychology but he famously dismissed Freudian thinking as antithetical to the values of an open society. Whatever about a reticence for a lot of modern behavioural scientists to be linked to behaviourism, to be linked with psychoanalysis would be beyond the pale for most. And yet as I discuss in the lecture, Ainslie a behaviourist working on addiction using animal models developed hyperbolic discounting in the middle of this clinical work and from his direct reading of Freud. And there is a line from Freud to modern behavioural economics that is quite clear. Kahneman in a late interview talks about how the famous device of System 1 and System 2 is highly Freudian. Yet of course Freud himself would not have wanted much to do with the type of quantitative techniques that are part of modern normal behavioural science. In the lecture, I get out of dodge fairly quickly by using the distinction of context of verification and context of discovery. We may not use Freud to test modern theory but we could learn from how theory has been developed and retain commitments to be well-read in those that have explored the mind most deeply. Alas the life-size cardboard cut-out of Freud that lived in our Department for well over a decade (no-one seems to know how long) went missing at the end of last year. We think he may have been brought for a few beers by a group of students and was accidentally misplaced. We are working out how to fill the gap. 

Photo: An image of our dear departed Sigmund enjoying himself at a student party. 

I have also been spending a lot of time reading about the history of psychology and behavioural science at LSE. In most of the documents so far, we have been talking about the first psychology department being formed in LSE in 1964. See below the first mention of a psychology Department from Dahrendorf's history of LSE. "Not all innovations came to fruition immediately. Hilde Himmelweit, since 1964 the first Professor of Social Psychology in Britain, had to struggle to secede from the Sociology Department, though her rare combination of charm and tenacity in the end brought success". This was approved by the Director Carr-Saunders at the time. Obviously, there are also quite a lot of relevant things happening in the Department of Social Policy at that point that eventually led to their behavioural group. 

Photo: Department of Social Psychology 1970 (Photo Credit and Context here)

However, what happened between the formation of LSE and the formation of the 1964 Department is also very interesting. One of the founders Graham Wallas was particularly interested in social psychology and he wrote a lot about psychology in policy, industrial policy, creativity, and other topics that remain live or were live until quite recently. I have been looking through some documents from the period, and it is fascinating how many of the topics that animate the current department were being hammered out. Adam Oliver's recent article on Wallas gives a good sense on this. It is fascinating to see the more radical traditions of LSE coming into tension with the utilitarian side on the psychological and behavioural issues at this point (a century ago at this stage). Wallas' book on the psychology of the great society is linked here and a lot of the themes are very recognisable. It is also interesting that a question for LSE since it was formed has always been where to put the behavioural and psychological dimensions of teaching and research. We have been part of the founding ideas, integrated into general social science sequences, part of a sociology department, a dedicated Institute, then a Social Psychology Department, with the behavioural dimensions forming within the Department of Social Policy, and then eventually the current PBS chapter integrating the latter two. The more I read on it, the story is very interesting. LSE is one of the key institutions in the history of policy ideas and has always grappled with how to integrate psychological and behavioural aspects. It will be interesting to see how it goes in the next decade or two particularly as many of the initiatives that LSE launch like the Global School Of Sustainability will have large psychological and behavioural elements. 

A lot of the psychology and behavioural science being progressed here by was shaped by various crises. It has been very interesting to listen to colleagues in later stage of career speak viscerally about how social psychology was shaped by the trauma of World War 2 and the attempt to understand it. A lot of what is coming under the heading of behavioural science in its current development took shape during the Great Financial Crisis. Several colleagues are moving very quickly to understand the impact AI will have in the context of political polarisation and declining youth mental health. In general, I feel surrounded by the themes of the human dimensions of climate, conflict, financial instability, and the quest for meaning and well-being in the face of various types of adversity.