Experiments in Theory: The Transatlantic Development of Social Science and Critical Theory, 1930-1950 The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Clavey, Charles H. 2019. Experiments in Theory: The Transatlantic Development of Social Science and Critical Theory, 1930-1950. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42029484 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Experiments in Theory: The Transatlantic Development of Social Science and Critical Theory, 1930-1950 A dissertation presented by Charles H. Clavey to The Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April 2019 © 2019 Charles H. Clavey All Rights Reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Peter E. Gordon Charles H. Clavey EXPERIMENTS IN THEORY: THE TRANSATLANTIC DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE & CRITICAL THEORY, 1930-1950 ABSTRACT From its foundation in 1923, the Institute for Social Research conducted empirical studies of the social forms, cultural products, and psychological effects of advanced capitalism. Adapting methods from social- and human-scientific fields as diverse as experimental psychology and industrial sociology, Institute affiliates fashioned a research methodology they termed “experiments in theory.” In this dissertation, I recover the history of these experiments. To do so, I reconstruct the debates that led to the creation of the method and document its application in a variety of projects between 1930 and 1950. I argue that the Institute’s empirical social research formed a necessary corollary to its critical social theory. The Institute is well known for its deep critiques of empirical techniques and paradigms. In the postwar era, its most prominent members identified empirical research as a means of maintaining the “social totality” inimical to human freedom. I complicate this disciplinary memory and the historical narratives it subtends. Between the First and Second World Wars, Institute affiliates subjected existing methods of empirical research to incisive critique, arguing that these approaches simultaneously promoted ideas of “individuality” and effaced subjectivity. At the same time, Institute members forged methods and conducted studies they believed capable of unmasking this ideology and its consequences. Concepts central to the Institute’s critical theory—from alienation to authoritarianism—emerged in and through these empirical projects. In the first chapters of the dissertation, I trace the origins of the Institute’s method to pioneering social-psychological studies conducted by a cohort of Austrian-Marxist researchers. iii Through the studies they conducted as Institute consultants, these researchers played an outsized role in shaping the organization’s nascent program of empirical social research. In the middle chapters of the dissertation, I focus on the Institute’s exile in the United States and explore its members’ critical dialogue with American and émigré researchers. I argue that the Institute conceived its experiments-in-theory method through the assertion of a conceptual disjunction between the “European” and “American” approaches to social research. Further, I demonstrate that the Institute refined this method through empirical studies of class consciousness and prejudice in an American context. In the final chapter, I reconstruct the Institute’s study of authoritarianism and argue that this project both brought to its conclusion the development of the experiments-in-theory method and returned the Institute to the problem of “individuality.” Confronted with the realization that empirical research must assume the existence of individuals in order to critique the ideology of individuality, Institute researchers developed the dialectical argument that empirical studies must assume their own impossibility. Across the dissertation, I call attention to the institutional and political forces that motivated the Institute’s development of its program of empirical research. By tracing the movement of social scientists around Europe and across the Atlantic, I suggest several new contexts in which to understand the Institute’s origins and development. I further reconsider the Institute’s relationship with the social- and human-scientific disciplines its members encountered in the United States: behavioral psychology, cultural anthropology, market research, and public- opinion polling. One result of this reframing is that I call attention to the voices of social scientists whose contributions to the Institute and its critical theory have long been neglected. More broadly, I aim to return attention to the Institute’s experiments in theory. Recovering these studies will enrich both historical understandings and contemporary practices of critical theory. iv CONTENTS Abstract / iii Contents / v Figures and Tables / vii Acknowledgments / viii Introduction Between Empirical Social Science and Critical Social Theory / 1 Experiments in Theory / 1 Histories of Critical Theory and Social Science / 9 Argument and Structure / 28 Chapter 1 Resiliency or Resignation: the Psychology of Unemployment, 1919-1933 / 42 The Prison without Bars / 42 Making the “New People” / 46 Socialist and Social Scientist / 55 Psychological Breakdown / 66 Capitalist Crises and Socialist Dilemmas / 78 Conclusion: A Style of Thinking / 85 Chapter 2 From Authority to Authoritarianism: Studying the Family, 1934-1936 / 90 A Publication Worse than Unscientific / 90 Authority between Culture and Family / 94 Authoritarian Mind and Authoritarian Society / 108 The Origins of Concepts / 127 The Proliferation of Types / 141 Conclusion / 151 Chapter 3 How to Ask “Why?”: Empirical Research Across the Atlantic, 1934-1941 / 155 This Role of Specialist / 155 Lazarsfeld’s Critique of American Research / 160 The Task of Substruction / 174 Concrete Evidence and Discerning Interpretations / 194 Conclusion / 213 v Chapter 4 Experimenting with Theory: the Princeton Radio Research Project, 1938-1941 / 219 Extraordinary Possibilities and a Large Potential Audience / 219 An Opportunity for Relatively Free Experimentation / 224 Hunting for the European Approach / 236 Adorno’s Most Dangerous Thesis / 246 Individual as Mere Ideology / 267 Studying the New Type of Human Being / 281 Conclusion / 292 Chapter 5 A Highly Promising Method: Critical Theory and Empirical Research, 1941-1945 / 294 Methods European and American / 294 The Peril of Anti-Semitism & the Promise of Social Research / 298 The Stereotype Takes Care of Everything / 305 Outflanking the Research Racket / 323 Almost-Monadological Psychology / 331 Conclusion / 336 Chapter 6 European Concepts and American Methods: Studies of Authoritarianism, 1943-1950 / 342 Guided by a Theoretical Orientation / 342 Insights and Hunches / 346 Uncovering the Fascist Personality / 366 Psychology Presupposing its Own End / 395 Conclusion / 409 Conclusion Experiments in Theory / 413 Arguments and Interventions / 413 Contributions and Limitations / 419 Striking Affinities and Unlikely Connections / 427 Into the Cold War / 435 Works Cited / 442 Archival Sources & Oral Histories / 442 Newspapers, Periodicals, & Journals / 443 Published Primary Sources / 444 Secondary Literature / 459 vi FIGURES AND TABLES Figure 2.1: Sale- and Consumption-Barometer / 130 Figure 2.2: Process of the Economic Satisfaction of Needs / 132 Figure 2.3: The “Orgnanon” Theory of Language /138 Figure 3.1: Procedure of Market Research / 169 Figure 3.2: Structure of Action / 170 Figure 3.3: Typology of a Marriage / 179 Figure 3.4: Conceptual Possibilities for the Exercise of Authority / 184 Figure 3.5: Conceptual Possibilities of the Acceptance of Authority / 184 Figure 3.6: Multidimensional Attribute Space of Authority / 184 Figure 3.7: Concepts of Authority Reduced from Typologies / 184 Figure 3.8: Outline of the Process of Interpretation / 187 Figure 4.1: Models of Communication Before and After the Radio / 232 Figure 4.2: Sample Data Produced by the Lazarsfeld-Stanton Program Analyzer / 252 Figure 6.1: TAT Image 12 F / 356 Figure 6.2: Reorganization of the Institute's Research into Anti-Semitism / 369 Figure 6.3: Ongoing Research Projects of the SRD, 1945 / 370 Figure 7.1: Participation according to Statistical Groups and the Seven Main Themes / 440 Table 6.1: Variables, Items, and Areas Tested by the F-Scale Questionnaire / 382 Table 6.2: Typology of “Stereopaths” / 392 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Over the past three years, I have been fortunate to receive generous institutional funding, expert guidance from mentors, insightful critiques from peers, and unceasing encouragement from friends and family. Without this support, I could not have developed, researched, or written this dissertation. It is my pleasure to acknowledge and thank these institutions and individuals. First and foremost, my deepest thanks go to Peter E. Gordon. As an advisor, Peter was an expert guide through circuitous paths of graduate education. As a historian, Peter taught me how to be attentive to textual detail and sensitive to historical context while remaining open to philosophical questions.