William McDougall

William McDougall was an early twentieth-century psychologist who spent the first half of his career in the United Kingdom and the latter in the United States. He produced a number of influential textbooks and contributed significantly to the development of impulse theory and social psychology in the English-speaking world. McDougall was an opponent of behaviorism and was somewhat out of step with the evolution of Anglo-American psychological theory in the first half of the twentieth century;...See more

William McDougall was an early twentieth-century psychologist who spent the first half of his career in the United Kingdom and the latter in the United States. He produced a number of influential textbooks and contributed significantly to the development of impulse theory and social psychology in the English-speaking world. McDougall was an opponent of behaviorism and was somewhat out of step with the evolution of Anglo-American psychological theory in the first half of the twentieth century; yet, his work was well known and appreciated among lay people. He was the second son of Isaac Shimwell McDougall and his wife Rebekah Smalley, and was born on June 22, 1871, in Tonge, Middleton, near Manchester. His father, one of the McDougall brothers who discovered self-raising flour, focused on his own chemical manufacturing firm. McDougall attended a number of schools, including Owens College in Manchester and St John's College, Cambridge. He studied medicine and physiology in both London and Göttingen. After teaching at University College London and Oxford, he was recruited to the William James chair of psychology at Harvard University in 1920, where he worked as a professor of psychology from 1920 until 1927. See less