A “Not Particularly Felicitous” Phrase: A History of the “Behavioral Sciences” Label

Authors

  • Jefferson D. Pooley

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/serendipities.v1i1.122862

Keywords:

Behavioral Sciences, Ford Foundation, Cold War

Abstract

The article reconstructs the history of the "behavioral sciences" label, from scattered interwar use through to the decisive embrace of the newly prominent Ford Foundation in the early Cold War. The rapid uptake of the label, the article concludes, was the result of the Ford Foundation’s 1951 decision to name its social science unit the “Behavioral Sciences Program” (BSP). With Ford’s encouragement, the term was widely adopted by quantitative social scientists eager to tap the foundation’s social science funds. The label’s newness and its link to the gigantic foundation’s initiative generated much suspicion and resistance as well.

References

Adcock, Robert (2007) Interpreting Behavioralism, in: Modern Political Science: Anglo-American Exchanges Since 1880, ed. Robert Adcock, Mark Bevir, and Shannon C. Stimson, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Anonymous (1954) A Plan of Research in International Communication: A Report, World Politics 6(3): 358–377.

Arendt, Hannah (1958) The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Baars, Bernard J. (1986) The Cognitive Revolution in Psychology, New York: Guilford Press.

Behavioral Sciences Subpanel (1962) Strengthening the Behavioral Sciences, Science 136 (3512, April 20): 233–241.

Bentley, Arthur F. (1935) Behavior, Knowledge, Fact, Bloomington, IN: Principia Press.

Bentley, Arthur F. (1939) Postulation for Behavioral Inquiry, The Journal of Philosophy 36 (15): 405–413.

Berelson, Bernard (1968) Behavioral Sciences, in: David L. Sills (ed.) International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 2:41–45, New York: MacMillan.

Berelson, Bernard (1963) Introduction to the Behavioral Sciences, in: Bernard Berelson (ed.) The Behavioral Sciences Today, 1–11, New York: Basic Books.

Berelson, Bernard (1956) The Study of Public Opinion, in Leslie White (ed.) The State of the Social Sciences, 299–318, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Berelson, Bernard, and Gary A Steiner (1964) Human Behavior: An Inventory of Scientific Findings. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

Bessner, Daniel (2015) Organizing Complexity: The Hopeful Dreams and Harsh Realities of Interdisciplinary Collaboration at the RAND Corporation in the Early Cold War, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 51(1): 31–53.

Bevir, Mark (2012) Modern Pluralism: Anglo-American Debates Since 1880, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Biehn, Kersten Jacobson (2008) Psychobiology, Sex Research and Chimpanzees: Philanthropic Foundation Support for the Behavioral Sciences at Yale University, 1923—41, History of the Human Sciences 21 (2): 21–43.

Blackmer, Donald L M. (2012) The MIT Center for International Studies: the Founding Years, 1951-1969, Cambridge, MA: MIT Center for International Studies.

Bryson, Dennis (2015) Mark A. May: Scientific Administrator, Human Engineer, History of the Human Sciences 28 (3): 80–114.

Burns, James J. (1947) Review of ‘The Dynamics of Learning’ by Nathaniel Cantor, The American Catholic Sociological Review 8 (2): 155–156.

Camic, Charles (2010) How Merton Sociologizes the History of Ideas, in Craig Calhoun (ed.) Robert K. Merton: Sociology of Science and Sociology as Science, 273–296, New York: Columbia University Press.

Capshew, James H. (1999) Psychologists on the March: Science, Practice, and Professional Identity in America, 1929-1969, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Carey, Benedict (2012) Academic ‘Dream Team’ Helped Obama’s Effort, The New York Times, November 12, D1.

Carnegie Corporation (1947) Annual Report, New York: Carnegie Corporation.

Chapanis, A. (1955) Review of ‘Research Methods in the Behavioral Sciences’ ed. Leon Festinger and Daniel Katz, Quarterly Review of Biology 30 (2): 199–200.

Cherrier, Béatrice (2009) Constructing Economists’ Identity: the ‘Economics and the Behavioral Sciences’ Survey of the Ford Foundation, 1952, History of Political Economy Workshop, Duke University.

Clausen, John A. (2012) Research on the American Soldier as a Career Contingency, Social Psychology Quarterly 47 (2): 207–213.

Cochrane, James L. (1979) Industrialism and Industrial Man in Retrospect: A Critical Review of the Ford Foundation’s Support for the Inter-University Study of Labor, New York: Ford Foundation.

Conant, James B. (1948) The Role of Science in Our Unique Society, Science 107 (2769): 77–83. Conference of Social Scientists [R-106] (1948) Santa Monica, CA: Project RAND.

Converse, Jean (1987) Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence 1890-1960, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Crowther-Heyck, Hunter (2005) Herbert A. Simon: the Bounds of Reason in Modern America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Crowther-Heyck, Hunter (2006) Patrons of the Revolution: Ideals and Institutions in Postwar Behavioral Science, Isis 97: 420–446.

Curtiss, J H. (1947) Review of ‘Statistical Analysis for Students in Psychology and Education’ by Allen L. Edwards, Journal of the American Statistical Association 42, no. 238: 315–318.

Danziger, Kurt (1997) Naming the Mind: How Psychology Found Its Language, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Dewey, John (1925) Experience and Nature, Chicago: Open Court Publishing.

Dewey, John (1938) Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Dewey, John, and Arthur F. Bentley (1947) Concerning a Vocabulary for Inquiry Into Knowledge, The Journal of Philosophy 44 (16): 421–434.

Dewey, John, and Arthur F. Bentley (1949) Knowing and the Known, Boston: Beacon Press.

Dewey, John, and Arthur F. Bentley (1964) John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley: A Philosophical Correspondence, 1932-1951, edited by Sidney Ratner and Jules Altman, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Dollard, John, Leonard W. Doob, Neal E. Miller, Orval H. Mowrer, and Robert R. Sears (1939) Frustration and Aggression, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Dzuback, Mary Ann (1991) Robert M. Hutchins: Portrait of an Educator, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Farr, James, Jacob S. Hacker, and Nicole Kazee (2006) The Policy Scientist of Democracy: The Discipline of Harold D. Lasswell, American Political Science Review 100 (4): 579–587.

Festinger, Leon, and Daniel Katz, eds. (1953) Research Methods in the Behavioral Sciences, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Eldridge, Seba (1937) A Methodology of Psycho-Social Inquiry (Review of ‘Behavior, Knowledge, Fact’ by Arthur F. Bentley), Social Forces 15 (3): 440–443.

Eulau, Heinz, Samuel J. Eldersveld, and Morris Janowitz (Eds.) (1956) Political Behavior: A Reader in Theory and Research, Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Fontaine, Philippe (forthcoming) The Committee(s) on the Behavioral Sciences: When Natural Scientists Talk about Society, 1949–1955, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. Ford Foundation Archives (FFA), Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY.

Gaither, H. Rowan Jr., Thomas H. Carroll, William C. DeVane, T. Duckett Jones, Charles C. Lauritsen, Donald G. Marquis, Peter H. Odegard, and Francis T. Spaulding [1950] Report of the Study for the Ford Foundation on Policy and Program, Detroit: Ford Foundation.

Gary, Brett (1996) Communication Research, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Mobilization for the War on Words, Journal of Communication 46 (3): 124–147.

Geiger, Roger L. (1986) To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities, 1900-1940, New York: Oxford University Press.

Geiger, Roger L. (1993) Research and Relevant Knowledge: American Research Universities Since World War II, New York: Oxford University Press.

“Google Books Ngram Viewer,” Google, Inc., accessed November 18, 2012, http://books.google.com/ngrams.

Gordon, John, and Rocco Negri (1966) Report of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC: National Academies.

Gross, Neil (2008) Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosophy, Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Hale, Dennis F. (1993) Arthur F. Bentley: Politics and the Mystery of Society, Political Science Reviewer 13: 1–42.

Hammond, Debora (2003) The Science of Synthesis: Exploring the Social Implications of General Systems Theory, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Hammond, Debora, and Jennifer Wilby (2006) The Life and Work of James Grier Miller, Systems Research and Behavioral Science 23 (3): 429–435.

Harris, Philip R. (2003) Dr James Grier Miller: Psychiatrist, Scholar, University President, Author, Systems Research and Behavioral Science 20 (3): 227–228.

Harper, Robert A. (1947a) The Present Status of Questionnaire-Derived Opinion Data, Social Forces 25 (3): 294–297.

Harper, Robert A. (1947b) Is Conformity a General or a Specific Behavior Trait?, American Sociological Review 12 (1): 81–86.

Hauptmann, Emily (2012) The Ford Foundation and the Rise of Behavioralism in Political Science, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 48 (2): 154–173.

Harvard University (1954) The Behavioral Sciences at Harvard, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Henry, Jules (1964) Review of ‘Human Behavior’ by Bernard Berelson and Gary Steiner, Scientific American July: 129–133.

Herbert Simon Collection, Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, Pittsburgh, PA, http://diva.library.cmu.edu/Simon.

Herman, Ellen (1996) The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts, University of California Press.

Heyck, Hunter (2015) Age of System: Understanding the Development of Modern Social Science, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Heyck, Hunter (2014) The Organizational Revolution and the Human Sciences, Isis 105 (1): 1–31.

Hilgard, Ernest R., and Donald G. Marquis (1940) Conditioning and Learning, New York: D. Appleton-Century.

Hull, Clark L. (1951) Essentials of Behavior, New Haven, CT: Yale Institute of Human Relations.

Hull, Clark L. (1950) A Primary Social Science Law, in: Toward a Science of Human Behavior: a Survey of the Work of the Institute of Human Relations Through Two Decades, 1929-1949, edited by Mark May, 79–91. New Haven, CT: Yale University.

Hull, Clark L. (1943) Principles of Behavior: An Introduction to Behavior Theory, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Hull, Clark L. (1944) Value, Valuation, and Natural-Science Methodology, Philosophy of Science 11(3): 125–141.

Hull, Clark L., Carl I. Hovland, Robert T. Ross, Marshall Hall, Donald T. Perkins, and Frederic B. Fitch (1940) Mathematico-Deductive Theory of Rote Learning: A Study in Scientific Methodology, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

“JSTOR,” Ithaka, accessed October 2, 2012, http://www.jstor.org.

Kahneman, Daniel (2003) Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics, American Economic Review 93: 1449–1475.

Kaplan, Fred M. (1991) The Wizards of Armageddon, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Kernan, Jerome B. (1965) A Student’s View of the New Business Education, Collegiate News and Views 18 (4): 20.

Khurana, Rakesh (2007) From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Klausner, Samuel Z. (1986) The Bid to Nationalize American Social Science, in: The Nationalization of the Social Sciences, edited by Samuel Z. Klausner and Victor M. Lidz, 3–40, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Kramer, Bernard M. (1964) Social Context as a Determinant of Behavior, in: Unfinished Tasks in the Behavioral Sciences, edited by Arnold Abrams, Harry H. Garner, and James E. P. Toman, 191-194, New York: Williams & Wilkings Co.

Kress, Paul F. (1970) Social Science and the Idea of Process: The Ambiguous Legacy of Arthur F. Bentley, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe (1992) The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public Policy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lanier, Lyle H. (1949) The Psychological and Social Sciences in the National Military Establishment, American Psychologist 4 (5): 127–147.

Lazarsfeld, Paul F. (1972) A Professional School for Training in Social Research, in: Qualitative Analysis: Historical and Critical Essays, 361–391, Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Logan, Frank A., David L. Olmstead, Burton S. Rosner, Richard D. Schwartz, and Carl M. Stevens (1955) Behavior Theory and Social Science, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Lowen, Rebecca S. (1997) Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lucas, Scott (1996) Campaigns of Truth: The Psychological Strategy Board and American Ideology, 1951–1953, International History Review 18 (2): 279–302.

Lundberg, George A. (1936) Review of ‘Behavior, Knowledge, Fact’ by Arthur F. Bentley, American Sociological Review 1 (2): 318–319.

Macdonald, Dwight (1956) The Ford Foundation: The Men and the Millions, New York: Reynal.

Macmahon, Arthur W. (1955) Review of five behavioral science reports, American Political Science Review 49 (3): 857–863.

Manicas, Peter (1990) The Social Science Disciplines: The American Model, in: Discourses on Society: The Shaping of the Social Science Disciplines, edited by Peter Wagner, Björn Wittrock, and Richard Whitley, 45–71, New York: Springer.

Marquis, Donald G. (1944) The Mobilization of Psychologists for War Service, Psychological Bulletin 41 (7): 469–473.

Marquis, Donald G. (1948a) Research Planning at the Frontiers of Science, American Psychologist 3 (10): 430–438.

Marquis, Donald G. (1948b) Scientific Methodology in Human Relations, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 92 (6): 411–416.

May, Mark A. (1950) Toward a Science of Human Behavior: A Survey of the Work of the Institute of Human Relations Through Two Decades, 1929-1949, New Haven, CT: Yale University.

May, Mark A. (2012) A Retrospective View of the Institute of Human Relations at Yale, Behavior Science Notes 6: 141–172.

Menand, Louis (2002) The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Merton, Robert K. and Elinor Barber (2004) The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity: A Study in Sociological Semantics and the Sociology of Science, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Miller, James G. (1955) Toward a General Theory for the Behavioral Sciences, American Psychologist 10 (9): 513–531.

Mills, John A. (2000) Control: A History of Behavioral Psychology, New York: NYU Press.

Morawski, Jill G. (1986) Organizing Knowledge and Behavior at Yale’s Institute of Human Relations, Isis 77 (2): 219–242.

Morris, Charles W. (1946) Signs, Language and Behavior, New York: Prentice-Hall.

Murdock, George Peter (1949) The Science of Human Learning, Society, Culture, and Personality, The Scientific Monthly 69 (6, December 1): 377–381.

National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science and Public Policy (1965) Basic Research and National Goals: A Report to the Committee on Science and Astronauts, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC: National Academies.

Needell, Allan A. (1993) ‘Truth Is Our Weapon’: Project TROY, Political Warfare, and Government-Academic Relations in the National Security State, Diplomatic History 17 (3): 399–420.

Obama, Barack (2015) Executive Order -- Using Behavioral Science Insights to Better Serve the American People, Office of the Press Secretary, the White House (September 15). https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/15/executive-order-using-behavioralscience-insights-better-serve-american.

Olen, Peter (2012) Sellars in Context: an Analysis of Wilfrid Sellars’s Early Works, Doctoral thesis, University of South Florida.

Parsons, Talcott, and Edward A. Shils (1951) Toward a General Theory of Action, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Pickren, Wade E. (2003) James Grier Miller (1916–2002), American Psychologist 58 (9): 760.

Pooley, Jefferson and Mark Solovey (2010) Marginal to the Revolution: The Curious Relationship Between Economics and the Behavioral Sciences Movement in Mid-Twentieth-Century America, History of Political Economy 42(S): 199–233.

Price, Daniel O. (1954) Review of ‘Research Methods in the Behavioral Sciences’ ed. Leon Festinger and Daniel Katz, Journal of the American Statistical Association 49 (268): 919–921.

Raucher, Alan R. (1985) Paul G. Hoffman: Architect of Foreign Aid, Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.

Redfield, Robert (1954) Social Scientist: Man Between, Chicago Review 8 (3): 35–43.

Reisch, George A. (2005) The Marginalization of Charles Morris, in: How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic, 331–343, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schweber, Libby (2002) Wartime Research and the Quantification of American Sociology: The View From “The American Soldier”, Revue d’Histoire Des Sciences Humaines 1 (6): 65-94.

Schwoch, James (2009) Global TV: New Media and the Cold War, 1946-69, Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Security Resources Panel (1957) Deterrence & Survival in the Nuclear Age, Washington, DC: Science Advisory Council.

Sellars, Wilfrid (1947) Pure Pragmatics and Epistemology, Philosophy of Science 14 (3): 181–202.

Senn, Peter R. (1966) What Is ‘Behavioral Science?’ — Notes Toward a History, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 2 (2): 107–122.

Seybold, Peter (1980) The Ford Foundation and the Triumph of Behavioralism in American Political Science, in: Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad, edited by Robert F. Arnove, 269–303, Boston: G.K. Hall.

Shils, Edward (1948) The Present State of American Sociology, Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Simpson, Christopher (1996) Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945-1960, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Smith, Bruce L R. (1966) The RAND Corporation: Case Study of a Nonprofit Advisory Corporation, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Smith, Laurence D. (1988) Behaviorism and Logical Positivism: A Reassessment of the Alliance, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Solovey, Mark (2012) Riding Natural Scientists’ Coattails Onto the Endless Frontier: The SSRC and the Quest for Scientific Legitimacy, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 40 (4): 393–422.

Solovey, Mark (2013) Shaky Foundations: The Politics-Patronage-Social Science Nexus in Cold War America, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Solovey, Mark (2001) Project Camelot and the 1960s Epistemological Revolution: Rethinking the Politics-Patronage-Social Science Nexus, Social Studies of Science 31 (2): 171–206.

Somit, Albert, and Joseph Tanenhaus (1982) Development of American Political Science: From Burgess to Behavioralism, New York: Irvington.

Sorokin, Pitirim A. (1956) Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology and Related Sciences, Chicago: H. Regnery.

Stouffer, Samuel (1949) Studies in Social Psychology in World War II: The American Soldier, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Subcommittee on the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (2015) Social and Behavioral Sciences Team Annual Report, Washington, DC: National Science and Technology Council. https://sbst.gov/2015-annual-report/.

Sutton, Francis X. (1987) The Ford Foundation: The Early Years, Daedalus 116 (1): 41–91.

Swanson, Gale Alden (2007) James Grier Miller (1916–), International Society for the Systems Sciences, Last modified June 10, 2007, http://projects.isss.org/James_Grier_Miller.

Thackray, Arnold (1984) CASBS: Notes Toward a History, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences Annual Report, 59–71, Palo Alto, CA: CASBS.

Thayler, Richard, and Cass Sunstein (2008) Nudge, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Truman, David B. (1951) The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion, New York: Knopf.

Tyler, Ralph W. (1964) Future Prospects of the Behavioral Sciences, in: The Behavioral Sciences: Problems and Prospects: Three Papers, edited by Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Lawrence R Klein, and Ralph W Tyler, 27-40, Boulder, CO: Institute of Behavioral Science.

Viseltear, A. J. (1984) Milton C. Winternitz and the Yale Institute of Human Relations: A Brief Chapter in the History of Social Medicine, Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 57 (6): 869–889.

Ward, James F. (1981) Arthur F. Bentley and the Foundations of Behavioral Science, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 17 (2): 222–231.

White, Leonard D. (1956) The State of the Social Sciences, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,.

Whitehead, Alfred North, and Bertrand Russell (1910) Principia Mathematica, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Zuckerman, Harriet (2010) On Sociological Semantics as an Evolving Research Program, in: Robert K. Merton: Sociology of Science and Sociology as Science, edited by Craig Calhoun, 253–272, New York: Columbia University Press.

Downloads

Published

2016-03-01

How to Cite

Pooley, J. D. (2016) “A “Not Particularly Felicitous” Phrase: A History of the ‘Behavioral Sciences’ Label”, Serendipities. Journal for the Sociology and History of the Social Sciences, 1(1), pp. 38–81. doi: 10.7146/serendipities.v1i1.122862.