In “Adjusting Men to Machines,” published in the January 1947 COMMENTARY—an article that continues to attract wide attention among social scientists—Daniel Bell analyzed the growing tendency toward close cooperation and interaction between social scientists and big business. Here he turns to another aspect of the same phenomenon: the use of scientific testing methods in the choice of business executives, army officers, and others of the innumerable mass of leaders required by the large-scale organizational pattern of modem industrial society—and he poses some troublesome questions about the presumed “scientific” character of these procedures, and the dangers of their use in our democracy.

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The weakness of democratic leadership in a mass society is a persistent theme in contemporary political discussion. A hundred and fifty years ago the discussion would have focussed on the failure of the individual citizen. Today there is a significant emphasis on the individual’s social helplessness and dependency within society, and his need for strong leadership. It cannot be doubted that this is an ominous sign.

There is no question that modem society needs leaders. Whether it needs the big political leader can certainly be argued. But in all the small groupings in which society abounds—the group of men in the factory, the small unit in the army, the variety of cultural, social, and political clubs and groupings—leaders are necessary. In some of these groups leadership seems to spring up spontaneously, and when such groups fall apart, their disintegration is often explained by the lack of proper leadership. In many of them, however—the factory and the army, for example—leaders are appointed from above; and the administrator must ask himself every day what makes a good leader.

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This question became very important during the war. While it was to be hoped that leadership qualities would emerge on the battlefield, those in positions of authority could not afford to wait. Leaders had to be found and trained long before such “trials-by-fire.” In this emergency, army personnel experts fell back on the most available concept of leadership, namely, that the leader can be chosen on the basis of a cluster of specific personality traits, either inborn or acquired by training.

In this general concept one can distinguish, trimmed down to the practical necessities of the moment and considerably vulgarized, an idea expounded in the different theories of such diverse thinkers as Freud, Max Weber, and Gustave Le Bon; that leadership is a “magical” phenomenon whose appeal arises from a non-rational source. The testing yardstick used by army leadership, as in private enterprise. varied with the specific leadership job involved for the chief effort was to specify the “vital” traits which characterized leadership in concrete situations and to identify the individuals who possessed them. But behind the various descriptions of leadership—the leader is a “magnetic personality,” he has “inner drive,” he is “less neurotic, less introverted” and “more dominant” and “more self-confident”—one discerns the image of a “basic leader personality.” It is to this pattern that all effective leaders were expected to conform.

The army had to choose a huge number of new officers, and the great expansion of industry swelled enormously the need for supervisory personnel. Considering the urgency and scope of this wartime problem of leadership, the initial research approach of those who tackled the question was seriously handicapped by primitive conceptual tools. The army distributed a manual during the war which reads like a ghastly parody. This manual, Leadership for American Army Leaders by Colonel Edward L. Munson Jr., was widely endorsed; it sold eighty thousand copies in a cloth edition and achieved even wider distribution in a paper edition issued by the Infantry Journal. One quotation may suffice to illustrate the quality of Colonel Munson’s thought: “The leader,” he states, “looks his men straight in the eye rather than shiftily and for some leaders who have the habit—usually meaningless—of not looking directly at others—this will take practice . . . .”

If such hortatory manuals produced few solid generalizations, little more was gained from the battery of tests devised by the academic psychologists who were called in to help. William O. Jenkins, a psychologist now at the University of Indiana, surveyed all the army paper and pencil tests of leadership, as well as the procedures for officer selection and promotion by ratings of superior officers, and summed up his judgment as follows: “Progress has not been made in the development of criteria of leadership behavior—no single trait or group of characteristics has been isolated which sets off the leader from members of his group . . . advances in methodology are definitely not striking.”

However, advances were made in one section of the army, albeit a very specialized branch with high requirements for its leadership material. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) devised a set of so-called assessment or situational tests under the supervision of Henry A. Murray of Harvard.1 Essentially, Murray rejects the idea of static, specific personality traits and bases his tests on the more sophisticated idea that leadership qualities emerge dynamically from a total character structure, which, in turn, can be evaluated most reliably by observing the subject in the field. Situations were created to reproduce as accurately as possible the situations the individual might confront in the job he was to fill; once placed within this situation, the individual was pushed to a breaking point in order to determine how adaptable and stable his personality structure really was. In the course of this type of test—essentially a test of the total individual “on the job”—the candidate was observed by a team of psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, etc., who pooled and checked their accumulated findings.

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Situational tests are probably as old as human groups. Adam Ferguson in his History of Civil Society reports that the American Indians “when a new leader was to be chosen, sent a scout forth to traverse the forests which led to the enemy’s country and upon his return the candidate was desired to find the track in which he had traveled.” A similar situational test had been long used by German army psychologists; Simoneit, the arbiter of German military psychology, had decided as far back as 1933 that “isolated measures of single abilities are useless.”2 But German research was hindered by preconceived racial theories and achieved results of very doubtful value. The British, though, had for many years picked their officers by putting small groups through situational tests, which were then assessed by a psychological board. Murray adapted his tests from the British model.

The OSS procedure took three and a half days, during which time the candidate was put through thirty-five “life situation” tests. Each man was listed on a Hollerith punch card, with eleven items to be rated: motivation, energy and initiative, effective intelligence, emotional stability, social relations, leadership, physical ability, security, observation and reporting, propaganda skills, integrity. (The Hollerith punch card, used by the army as well as many large firms, neatly symbolizes the increasing regulation of life. One’s traits are marked out on a rectangular card and the number of men with any desired combination of traits can be automatically selected by putting the cards through a machine.)

In one situation the group might be told that it was escaping across a field enclosed by an electrically-charged fence; no leader was appointed, and the men were then observed to see who took the initiative. Or a man was appointed the leader of a platoon, supplied with completely inadequate equipment, and ordered to move a ten-pound rock across a stream within a stated time limit. In addition, his helpers, without his knowledge, were ordered to sabotage the work or engage in horseplay during tense moments. In all these tests, the chief effort was to bring intense pressure to bear on the candidate and to procure a kind of slow-motion picture of his psychological responses.

Various projective devices were also employed, especially the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) which Murray had invented in 1937. In this test a man is asked to interpret a series of pictures; his responses often reveal many of his unconscious tendencies and identifications. Another test used—a sentence completion test—consisted of one hundred significant sentences calculated to elicit various unconscious drives in the answers given by the candidates.

In the final stage of the OSS project, a clinical conference made the final assessment of each man, utilizing all the material accumulated. The Murray-OSS tests are probably the most comprehensive yet devised, short of a course of psychoanalysis, for probing into a personality. The limitations of these tests are apparent: they seek only to pick out men for highly specific tasks, and are less useful in providing an understanding of the nature of leadership and the conditions from which it emerges. But their practical usefulness has been so convincingly demonstrated that the State Department has been reported considering them as a basic tool in the selection of top personel.

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Since the tendency now is to define leadership ship ability not in terms of specific traits but in personality constellation, there has been an increasing use of such projective tests as the Rorschach and the Thematic Apperception tests, which are designed to reveal underlying personality structures. William E. Henry of the University of Chicago, a psychologist specializing in TAT, has recently completed a study of executives in a large non-manufacturing corporation. The corporation had ordered the study to discover the personality pattern of a successful executive, taking as a starting point for research the tested quality of their own executives. Henry was able through the use of TAT to create an inventory of the traits to be expected in successful executives. As a result, the corporation’s personnel department will probably now use Rorschachs and TAT’s in choosing executive personnel.

The qualities of leadership discovered by Henry read suspiciously like all the qualities defined in the executive’s manuals, though he does have a more reliable instrument for uncovering them. The good executive “does not see the authority figures in his environment as destructive or prohibiting forces.” He has a “firm, well-developed self-identity, knows what he wants and has a well-developed technique for getting it.” He has a strong’ reality orientation. He regards his subordinates “in an essentially detached and impersonal way, seeing them as ‘doers of work.’” He has broken his ties with his mother, although he has a positive, emulative tie with the father. “Those men who still feel a strong emotional tie to the mother have systematically had difficulty in the business situation. This residual emotional tie seems contradictory to the necessary attitudes of activity, progress, and channelized aggression.” The father image provides the initiative and competitive pattern which assures striving and success.3

Based on tests such as these, an organization called Social Research, Inc., headed by Burleigh Gardner, is now telling such corporations as Sears Roebuck, General Mills, Container Corporation, and others how to pick executives.

There are pitfalls in this kind of research. These tests take a stereotype and tend to reinforce it, thus making these stereotyped qualities a goal for those who want the rewards held out for possessing them. The image people have of a leader too often pre-figures the kind of person they look for to respect and follow. The typical American leader is, by legend, tall, handsome, blond, Anglo-Saxon, carefree—and thus army officers on OCS boards, personnel officers hiring from colleges, etc., look for this type.

In any group which has a stereotype-image of a leader, particular individuals in the group will almost inevitably mold themselves to that stereotype in order to assume authority. The situation produces what Milton Singer has called the “self-confirming hypothesis.” This is what a leader is, the tests proclaim, individuals mold themselves in that fashion—and finally, the test discovers and “proves” that these men are leaders. Far from providing scientific tests of leadership capacity, may they not merely place “scientific” authority behind pre-scientific, traditional leadership images?

Inevitably, if such specifications for leadership are allowed to stand, they will bolster the business and industrial structure in its least progressive aspects, becoming part of the machinery of discrimination and segregation, and fostering anti-democratic tendencies. In contrast, one must remember that recent wartime industrial experience, stimulated especially by FEPC, has shown that the democratic procedure of developing talent and initiative out of the cooperation of a diversity of “types” usually results in an even higher level of efficiency.

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Leadership as a Social Product

Against the whole approach that leadership is something “in born” and to be discovered—and this is typical of the army and the administrator’s approach—stands the idea that leadership is something specific to a given social purpose and can be trained. Moreover, this newer conception does not see leadership as an authority pattern cut along a single style. Rather, leadership is seen as a complex social function in which different types of leadership roles emerge as responses to different types of group needs.

The basic tendency in this phase of research is to study leadership not in terms of a series of traits or attributes—such as decisiveness, intelligence, courage, etc.—but in functional terms, as the product of a complex give-and-take among group members. In these terms a leader is not a person marked by destiny or a man with a distinguishable stamp, but one who, because of his own personality structure, may fit the needs of a particular group and emerge as a leader in that situation. A person may be a leader in one situation and play absolutely no role in another. This is true not only sociologically, but psychologically as well.

Sociologically, it is fairly obvious, viewing the growth of American industry, that business leaders today bear little resemblance to the buccaneers and tycoons of fifty years ago. Even the words are no longer applicable. The plutocrat of fifty years ago was a forthright, hard-driving individualist, an entrepreneur whose success was tied quite directly to his own personality. The modem industrial executive is essentially an administrator, his background often law or accounting, his enterprise a complex organization based on an elaborate formal status system. Within that system, the “rugged individualist” has little place.

In the area of inter-personal relations, one of the solid pieces of research is the study by Helen Hall Jennings, Leadership and Isolation (Longmans, Green, 1943). Mrs. Jennings, as associate of the psychiatrist Jacob Moreno, was one of the pioneers in developing the sociometric test. This study traces patterns of attraction and repulsion in organized groups by permitting spontaneous choices and thus locating leadership patterns in the group.

The study was conducted at a state home for delinquent girls in New York, directed by Dr. Moreno. After the girls got to know one another, they were allowed to choose those with whom they would like to share a room, eat, work, etc. From the patterning of choices there emerged a group of “under-chosen” or isolates and a group of “over-chosen” or leaders. This last group could then be studied more intensively. Contrary to the popular expectation that leaders will resemble each other, this study showed that there were marked differences among them.

The four girls chosen for leadership seemed to fulfill particular functions for those who chose them. Girl 1 was sweet and warm, always willing to help, yet made no direct efforts to take the initiative. Girl 2 was logical and direct, let the others talk or seek the initiative in the group situation, but acted as a consultant because of her cleverness in handling their problems. Girl 3 played the role of personal counselor; she was able to establish rapport quickly through tact and subtlety and give the girls a sense of being understood. Girl 4 was vivacious and forthright, able to elicit immediate group response and activate her followers through her personal élan.

Thus we have a series of different roles played by the different girls, each serving as catalysts for the varying personality needs of the group. Within the community there existed such a range of personality types that no one person could possibly win exclusive command over the others. The only characteristic common to the leaders seemed to be a marked degree of self-control or emotional maturity, which gave the others a sense of strength and security. Each leader appeared able to control her own moods, at least to the extent of not inflicting feelings of depression and anxiety on the others.

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Another important attempt to identify the different social roles that leadership patterns take has been made in a long and highly suggestive paper by Fritz Redl (“Group Emotions and Leadership,” Psychiatry, 1942, No. 4). Redl’s starting point is Freud’s analysis of the function of the leader in a group situation.

For Freud (in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego), the phenomenon of “hypnotism” is the model of all authority. The follower submits to the leader because he hopes to recapture his dependence on the parent, who once supplied the all-sufficing love and protection during his earliest years. Through the mechanism of identification, the psychological bond is cemented; the image of another person is put in the place of the individual’s own ego. Fearful of his capacity to make judgments and afraid to act on the basis of his own decisions, filled with anxiety and helplessness, the individual takes over into his own personality the values, habits, and even gestures of someone who seems stronger or who seems to supply the ideal elements he lacks in himself.

But Freud’s analysis, Redl finds, is too simple, although fundamental for a description of the crucially important process of identification. For the word “leader” Redl would substitute “central person,” a more than semantic distinction. The “central person” is not always a leader in terms of that stereotype which sees him as the decisive man of action; he is a catalyst whose actions congeal disparate elements into a unified group. Nor is there a leader and a group, but rather a variety of leader roles derived from varying social situations and producing many different kinds of groups.

Redl indicates ten different kinds of “central person” who may provide centers of identification for persons of different character needs One central person, for example, is the “patriarchal sovereign.” The basis of his authority is order and discipline; his appeal is to the sense of duty instilled in the earliest years. Another is the “leader.” The basis of his authority is his strong sympathy with the emotional drives of those subordinate to him, and his appeal is to the love emotion. A third is the “tyrant,” who operates through compulsive discipline. In all three cases identification is present; the subjects want to be like the central person.

An important type is the “seducer.” A number of men may form a potential group on the basis of some common desire, yet cannot act because of a conflict between their desire and some moral code (e.g., desire to commit a lynching and the sense of guilt attending it). In this situation, someone initiates the act and assumes the burden of guilt. This phenomenon Redl describes as “exculpation magic through the initiatory act,” a mechanism which provides an excuse to avoid guilt and anxiety. The excuse runs quite simply: “He did it first.”

Redl’s view strikes out against the psychological mysticism of leadership. Not the “strong man” is the successful leader, but the flexible one, the individual who can play a variety of social roles and thus satisfy many different types of groups.

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The Climates of Leadership

If As the foregoing studies indicate, leadership can only be understood as a response to diverse social needs, then the real problem is: leadership for what? Most researches have tended to take the problem in its traditional terms, and leadership is traditionally seen in the model of authority. Can we explore alternative social arrangements and observe their effects upon personality?

The only attempt to test experimentally the results produced under different leadership situations is in the work of the late Kurt Lewin and his associates. The Lewin group has produced a voluminous number of reports and studies. It is only now, nearly nine years after the first experiments were conducted, that Lewin’s data is being integrated into general psychological schemes and his conclusions tested in specific action situations.

The first major problem consisted of setting up three different “atmospheres” for four groups of boys’ clubs; one setting was “authoritarian,” the second “democratic,” and the third “laissez-faire.” In the first situation the leader, aloof from the group, gave all the orders and work proceeded one step at a time. In the second, the leader discussed with the boys what projects they wanted to do, and steps were planned out for many sessions at one sitting. In the third, the leader stayed in the background, let the boys do what they wanted to, and gave advice only on request.4

Four kinds of group reaction emerged. Two of these were within the authoritarian climate, where one club’s reaction was of great submissiveness, strong dependence on the leader, relatively low levels of frustration, and little capacity for initiating action; whereas the other authoritarian club had an aggressive reaction accompanied by considerable frustration and some degree of aggression channelized toward the authoritarian leader. On the other hand, the democratic climate created a relative independence of the leader; and the atmosphere of laissez-faire promoted general indecision.

Significant differences among the groups arose out of “work involvement” and “frustration” experiments. In the former, it was found that the groups in the two authoritarian climates spent a higher percentage of time in work activity than the democratic and laissez-faire groups—but only when the leader was present. The greatest amount of work was in the submissive autocracy, while the least took place in the laissez-faire group. When the leaders left the rooms, the percentage of time spent in activity fell in the aggressive group from the normal figure of fifty-five per cent to fifteen per cent; in the submissive group, activity time fell from seventy-five per cent to twenty-five per cent; in the democratic group, from fifty to forty-eight per cent; while in the laissez-faire group it rose from thirty-five to fifty per cent. Thus, the loss of the leader had little effect in the democratic atmosphere; activity rose in the laissez-faire atmosphere, apparently because one of the boys was then able to exert his own influence and take the initiative.

In the “frustration experiment,” a stranger entered the club room after the leader had left, and made derogatory comments about the club’s work. Members of the submissive authoritarian group tended to accept the criticism individually, internalize it, and, in one or two cases, blow off steam by aggressive behavior toward a club meeting in an adjacent room. In the aggressive authoritarian group, the frustration was mostly channeled toward a neighboring club. In the democratic group, there was a quicker tendency to unite against the source of frustration, followed by a slight rise in tension among the club members themselves, and finally aggression against inanimate objects (e.g., striking wood with hammer or chisel), the last development accompanied by a striking rise in in-group friendliness. “It was particularly interesting to discover that the clubs under democratic leaders resisted scapegoating as a channel against aggressive response.” Thus: the aggressive group was more ready to express its frustration in inter-club war; the submissive group to internalize the aggression; the democratic and laissez-faire groups to react against the real source of the frustration.

In another experiment, it was found that when authoritarian groups were brought into a freer atmosphere there was a great tendency to horseplay, indicating a need to blow off steam; these actions tended to disappear as the meetings continued. Again, a club which had passively accepted an authoritarian leader in the beginning of its history was much more frustrated and restive under a second authoritarian leader after it had experienced a democratic leader.

It must be kept in mind that these researches were concerned primarily with democratic, authoritarian, and laissez-faire “atmospheres” rather than with groups, principally because “atmospheres” could be manipulated more freely. Whether these results would hold for “spontaneous groups” which are authoritarian, democratic, or laissez-faire in character is still under question. Furthermore, in all three phases of the Lewin-Lippitt experiments, the leaders were imposed. Yet in a situation where boys might voluntarily accept an authoritarian leader who was capable of developing enthusiasm, it is conceivable that the resultant solidarity might match that of the democratic groups. Also, the contention that the boys in authoritarian groups give up something which they do not give up in the democratic groups is open to qualification: it depends, if Redl’s conclusions are correct, on what type of authoritarian leader pattern exists and also what the leader gives in return. Lippitt’s own observations that most youth groups are quite happy under a benevolent autocracy and find it difficult to change to the democratic atmosphere, and indeed often require gradual education into its ways, is material for reflection.

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If the Lewin-Lippitt data is valid, it suggests that people can be educated in a non-manipulative way and that leaders can be “trained” first by establishing a democratic atmosphere in which self-reliance is encouraged, and then through those common work patterns which create a sense of purpose. But this poses the real social problem more acutely: that is, does not the tendency of much present-day social science, which is to fit people into a niche in a previously determined bureaucratic and hierarchical structure, violate the values of both free scientific inquiry and democracy? The researches and experiments of the Lewin group suggest that they need not. (A series of attempts actually to train leaders on the basis of their findings has been started by the Lewin group.)

One basic generalization gained from the “social climates” study was that better leadership and better results could be obtained if the group leader would stress participation and thereby create a democratic atmosphere.5 The Lewin group, now located at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the Research Center for Group Dynamics, has sought to apply these principles of democratic group participation in the training of supervisors in industry and group leaders in social work. Their most important project, among a number started, is the current effort to interest industrial leaders in a new type of foreman and supervisory training. The philosophy and techniques of this approach are summarized in a booklet “Supervisory Training for Group Leadership,” by Leland P. Bradford and Ronald Lippitt (Publication No. 4, MIT Research Center in Group Dynamics).

Again the key word is participation. In an autocratic work atmosphere the workers’ “basic need for belongingness” is blocked. “The majority of books and articles on supervision and group leadership . . . have turned the attention of the supervisor only toward what he does and not toward the effects of his actions on what the group does. This has resulted in an overemphasis upon dominance and submission whereas the basis of any truly efficient group is joint responsibility, participation, and recognition . . . . The sharp distinction between the leader and the led must gradually disappear . . . .”

Lippitt has also made clever use of Moreno’s “sociodrama” technique, in which a problem is presented to the group and the participants act out in impromptu fashion a variety of roles. In a situation reported by Lippitt in Sociatry (June 1947) a group of supervisors was given the problem of a laggard file clerk. The first impulse of the supervisors was to make the clerk “toe the mark,” yet in acting it out they finally came around to the position that perhaps the clerk “didn’t know the importance of the work.” The discussion could then move on to the problem of creating rapport between the clerk and his supervisor.

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Offhand, every democratic-minded person would certainly regard such experiments in industry as praiseworthy. The notion that democracy implies participation and that a democratic leader seeks to instill understanding rather than obedience is basic to democratic political theory and the history of democracy.

But participation as a goal in its own terms is meaningless. The fascist and Communist systems also emphasize participation. In the 1930’s and even today the main attraction of the Soviet system for many liberals has been the sense of “belongingness” it created.

Ernest Kris and Nathan Leites, in “Trends in Twentieth Century Propaganda” (Psychoanalysis and the Social Sciences, ed. G. Róheim), have analyzed the different manner in which participation was stressed in democratic and totalitarian leadership. In German wartime propaganda the emphasis was on participation but the setting was always the visible leader exhorting the masses. Democratic propaganda, less emotional and less moralistic, sought to provide factual insight. Thus, in Churchill’s speeches during the dark days of Spring 1940, “Everyone could understand how his own behavior was related to the total situation and how this situation was structured . . . . Unknown danger was transformed into a danger known in kind and extent . . . .”

Democratic propaganda, facing the threat of defeat, could call for meaningful resistance because the people had been consistently apprized of the dangers. Nazi propaganda, in defeat, could only address future generations. With the democratic leader, understanding of the situation is the precondition for moral participation. The totalitarian leader simply offers himself as an object that replaces the super-ego (conscience) functions in the individual.

Thus our inquiry inevitably returns to the problem of bureaucratization. How, within the framework of impersonality which is modern society, can we create areas of genuine spontaneity in which group participation can be satisfactorily obtained. For some sociologists, this is, naively, a problem merely of communication: “the lines upward must be kept as free and direct as the lines downward.” But the problem of bureaucratization can also be considered within the context of power, and, within that area, as a conflict of interests. These interests are not only psychological, involving the most crucial trends in human behavior and motivation—for instance, the whole deeply personal issue of dominance or submission; they are also sociological—and political and economic — insofar as they are most intimately intertwined with the key problem of how our society intends to distribute the rewards and privileges at its disposal.

It is rather curious that even among such democratically-motivated psychologists as Lippitt and Bradford there is no mention of the role of the trade union movement. A trade union exists in many areas, after all, largely because the need for belongingness and solidarity which the workers feel can only be fulfilled genuinely and independently outside the power structure of the factory hierarchy. And in the crucial morale test it is those unions which satisfy this need that are successful.

In another way the authors indicate that they are operating in a social vacuum. Almost all their generalizations are defined under terms of optimum employment and need for higher production. Of what meaning is their analysis, and of what value the understanding of the factory sociology, during a period of deflation, firings, restriction of output, and so on?

Ultimately, the problem of leadership is shaped by the fact that while we live in a society of political democracy, almost all basic social patterns are authoritarian and tend to instill feelings of helplessness and dependence. We begin as dependent beings, in the family situation. The nature of middle-class morality drives parents to impose the basic patterns of conformity which will subsequently be demanded elsewhere. Our schools also, despite the long years of effort toward progressive education, still operate largely on authoritarian models. Our factories, hierarchical in structure, are, for all the talk of human relations programs, still places where certain men exercise arbitrary authority over others.

Within this inescapable context, will not participation appear as only another form of support for precisely those authoritarian economic and industrial structures which well-intentioned sociologists and psychologists wish to eliminate?

It is on this note of doubt that our survey must close. The overwhelming difficulties that confront the democratically-minded researchers working in this field cannot serve as excuse or pretext for ignoring the basic contradiction between their democratic goals and the authoritarian purposes which their experiments are most often made to serve. Possibly the forthright recognition of this contradiction will enable them to formulate a different and broader framework for their future work.

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1 The OSS experiences have recently been published by Dr. Murray in a volume entitled The Assessment of Men (Rinehart, $6.50).

2 A comprehensive section on German researches into leadership can be found in German Psychological Warfare, edited by Ladislas Farago and Lewis Gittler. (Committee for National Morale, 1942.)

3 These quotations and analyses were taken from an unpublished report, and represent Henry’s conclusions, not his valuations, based on what the TAT showed the successful executive pattern to be.

4 General accounts of these experiments are carried in chapters by Ronald Lippitt, the field director of the studies, in the following works: Readings in Social Psychology, ed. by Newcomb and Hartley (Holt, 1947); Civilian Morale, Goodwin Watson (Houghton, Mifflin, 1942); Child Development and Behavior, Barker, Kounin, and Wright (McGraw-Hill, 1943). More technical reports are carried in several academic journal articles and in monographs published by the State University of Iowa, where the researches were conducted.

5 Two other studies, which I can mention only briefly, serve to confirm the importance of group participation in the making of effective decisions. One study, reported by Alex Bavelas in “Morale and the Training of Leaders” (Civilian Morale, ed. Goodwin Watson) was a most significant experiment in retraining WPA youth-group leaders. The other study, made by Lewin and Bavelas and reported in “Group Decision and Social Change,” (Readings in Social Psychology, ed. Newcomb and Hartley), was an experiment in influencing eating habits. Again it was found that participation was the key to success.

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