The following early theories and ideas were influential to the initial understanding of group dynamics, prejudice, and social interactions. Some were fruitful in establishing parameters for sociology, anthropology, and political science. Some of these ideas have been advanced, refined, partially confirmed by experiment, and incorporated into more complex frameworks. Many others have been utterly refuted and debunked, but were important in the general discussion and ongoing process of scientific advancement.

• Etienne La Boétie
  
• Charles Mackay
  
• Jean-Gabriel De Tarde
  
• Gustave Le Bon
  
• Wilfred Trotter
  
• William McDougall 
  
• Norman Triplett
• Georg Simmel     
  

• Max Ringelmann
  
• Charles H. Cooley
  
• George Herbert Mead
  
• Kurt Lewin
• Everett Rogers    

Thinker
Main Ideas and Theories
Seminal Works

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Etienne La Boétie 
(1530-1563)
French judge and philosopher

Essays on people’s tendency to hand power over to authority and how obedience and domination are interconnected. An early promoter of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance.

The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude    

Charles Mackay
(1814-1889)
Scottish poet and journalist

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowd

Groundbreaking look at cycle of fads, group manias, and conformity.

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Jean-Gabriel De Tarde 
(1843-1904)

Proposed concept of “Group mind”

The Laws of Imitation 
(reissued 1903)

Gustave Le Bon 
(1841-1931)
French sociologist

Promoted concept of “herd behavior” 

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind

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Wilfred Trotter 
(1872-1939)
British neurosurgeon
Social psychologist

Continued formulating Le Bon's theory of herd behavior by studying bees, sheep and wolves

Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War

William McDougall 
(1871-1938)
Psychologist
Eugenicist

Speculated on bases for individual and group character. 
Believed that innate racial characters, not prejudice, are the root cause of conflict.

The Group Mind

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Norman Triplett
(1861-1931)

• Social facilitation 
  
• Published first social psychology study in the U.S. (1898)
  
• Deception and illusions in magic
  

Triplett, N. (1898). The dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and competition. American Journal of Psychology, 9, 507-533.

Triplett, N. (1900). The psychology of conjuring deceptions, American Journal of Psychology, 11, 439-510.

Georg Simmel
1858-1918
German Sociologist, philosopher, and critic   

Very prolific theorist on many issues, including:

• Dynamics of people living in cities
  
• Human need for secrets
  
• Fashions and norms
  

Fashion. International Quarterly X: 130-55

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Max Ringelmann
1861-1931
French
Professor of agricultural engineering

1913: Discovered the "Ringelmann effect"  (Social Loafing)
Noticed tug ‘o war players only put in half as much effort when they were in a team of 8 than when they were on their own.  When tasks are additive and each person’s contribution is difficult to judge, people will slack off.

Ringelmann, M. (1913) "Recherches sur les moteurs animés: Travail de l'homme" 
[Research on animate sources of power: The work of man], Annales de l'Institut National Agronomique, 2nd series, vol. 12, pages 1-40.    

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Charles H. Cooley 
(1864-1929)
Sociologist

The Looking Glass Self:
refers to how shame and pride both arise from seeing oneself from the point of view of the other.

• Primary Groups
  
• The Looking-Glass Self
  
• Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons (1902)
  
• Social Organization: A study of the larger mind. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons (1909).
  

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George Herbert Mead
1863-1931 

American psychologist, sociologist and philosopher of Pragmatist school

“Generalized Other”
The Social Nature of the Self
Proposed that the human self is both a social phenomenon and a biological one. His fundamental insight into consciousness was that it arose out of role taking, of seeing things from the point of view of the other(s), as well as from one’s own point of view.
Advanced concept of Symbolic Interactionism

• Mead, George H. (1913). The social self. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 10, 374- 380.
• 1932. The Philosophy of the Present. Prometheus Books.
• 1934. Mind, Self, and Society. Ed. by Charles W. Morris. University of Chicago Press.
• 1936. Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. by C. W. Morris. University of Chicago Press.
• 1938. The Philosophy of the Act. Ed. by C.W. Morris et al. University of Chicago Press.
  

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Kurt Lewin
1890 -1947
German-American Psychologist

Wide-ranging pioneering theorist in social and gestalt psychology and organizational development. 

• Established scientific study of groups 
  
• Coined the term group dynamics to describe the way groups and individuals act and react to changing circumstances.
  
• Described process of how people change mindsets
  
• Coined "Genidentity" to describe interactionist view of nature/nurture.
  
• Described styles of leadership: authoritarian, democratic, laissez-faire.
  
• Developed experiential workshops [early version of "sensitivity training"] to help people overcome religious and racial prejudices.  

•  Lewin K. (1943). Defining the "Field at a Given Time." Psychological Review. 50: 292-310. Republished in Resolving Social Conflicts & Field Theory in Social Science, Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1997.
• Lewin, K. (1946) Action research and minority problems. J Soc. Issues 2(4): 34-
•  Lewin, K.; Lippitt, R.; White, R.K. (1939). "Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created social climates". Journal of Social Psychology 10: 271–301.
  

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Everett Rogers 
(1931-2004)
Sociologist

• Advanced Tarde’s “laws of imitation” in Diffusion of innovations
  
• Coined term “early adopter’
  

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