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Psychological Methods for the Study of ‘Hard’ and ‘Soft’ Features of Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

F. C. Bartlett
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Extract

Since this paper will be chiefly concerned with the suggestion of methods for the investigation of a specific problem, it is necessary first to define the problem as clearly as possible.

In the Huxley Memorial Lecture for 1943 I said, ‘Every culture has its “hard” and its “soft” points. If change is first sought at the former it will provoke resistance and very likely open discord, while the latter are yielding and it is from them that reformation will spread.’ There seems to be no possible dispute about the fact. But to admit the fact carries us only a very little way towards solving the problems to which the existence of yielding and unyielding features of culture gives rise. In the lecture I attempted to go no farther than a very general discussion of these problems. I was therefore pleased when, some time ago, I received a letter from the Editor of this Journal inviting me to discuss more fully what psychological methods may be applied, not merely to recognize those ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ points of culture which history has demonstrated, but to predict them before such demonstration.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , July 1946 , pp. 145 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1946

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References

page 148 note 1 Festschrift tillägnad Edward Westermarck, , Helsingfors, 1912, pp. 109–30.Google Scholar

page 149 note 1 Op. cit., p. 550: ‘In town, where one room may lead off another, it is often impossible for the old avoidance taboos to be observed. They are modified so that only the bed of a person avoided is taboo.’

page 150 note 1 Some of the material employed is reproduced, together with a discussion of th e results, in an article by Carmichael, D. M., in the British Journal of Psychology, vol. xxx, pp. 295–315.Google ScholarFurther illustrations can be found in D. M. Carmichael, ibid., vol. xxix, pp. 206, 529, and Bartlett, F. C., ‘Occupational Psychology’, vol. xii, p. 30Google Scholar.

page 151 note 1 , Huater, op. cit., p. 546.Google Scholar

page 151 note 2 Anybody interested in this suggestion will find much useful discussion in Dr.Lindgren's, E. J. chapter ‘The Collection and Analysis of Folk-lore’, in The Study of Society (1959), pp. 528–78Google Scholar.

page 151 note 3 See ‘The Psychology of “Attitudes” ‘Psychol Review, vol. lii, pp. 295-319.

page 152 note 1 The Social Survey, New Series No. 50, 1945-1946.Google Scholar