The Group Fallacy in Relation to Social Science

Abstract

The manner of thinking in terms of the obsolete crowd-mind theory still persists. Speaking in terms of collectivity is alluring; but it is description, not explanation. Social organism metaphors, group-mind theories, and the like never lead beyond themselves, nor serve to reveal causation. The group fallacy defined.-This fallacy consists in substituting the group for the individual as a principle of explanation. The group concept may be phrased in either psychological or "purely social" terms. Illustrations are drawn from the following fields. I. Social conflict. Freudian repression and dissociation are terms applicable only to individuals. There is a wide divergence of meaning between mental conflict and social conflict. 2. Revolution. Here the fallacy is expressed in such group terms as immobility of society and breakdown of "social habits." These terms are merely descriptive, drawing attention away from the truly causal behavior of individuals. 3. The theory of the super-organic. The concept of a causal science on a purely social (non-psychological) plane is untenable, because in all science explanation is possible only by drawing upon the concepts of sciences at more elementary levels. In practice also no one has succeeded in formulating a science of this sort. Culture history is not culture explanation; much less is it an adequate explanation of social change. The true basis for sociology is the social behavior of he socialized individual, in other words, social psychology. The Work of sociology is to describe collectivities of social behavior and social change resulting from it in terms of the group, and to explain these phenomena in terms of the individual.