<i>Group Experiment</i> and Other Writings: The Frankfurt School on Public Opinion in Postwar Germany 9780674276901

Citation preview

Group Experiment and Other Writings

Group Experiment and Other Writings The Frankfurt School on Public Opinion in Postwar Germany

FRIEDRICH POLLOCK THEODOR W. ADORNO AND COLLEAGUES Translated, Edited, and Introduced by

Andrew J. Perrin and Jeffrey K. Olick

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2011

Copyright © 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pollock, Friedrich, 1894–1970. [Gruppenexperiment. English] Group experiment and other writings : the Frankfurt School on public opinion in postwar Germany / Friedrich Pollock, Theodor W. Adorno, and colleagues; translated, edited, and introduced by Andrew J. Perrin and Jeffrey K. Olick. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-04846-1 (alk. paper) 1. Public opinion. 2. Public opinion—Germany. 3. Germany—History—1945–1990. I. Adorno, Theodor W., 1903–1969. II. Perrin, Andrew J., 1971– III. Olick, Jeffrey K., 1964– IV. Institut für Sozialforschung (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) V. Title. HM1236.P6513 2011 303.3'8094309045—dc22 2010033603

Contents

List of Tables and Figures Preface

vii

ix

Original Publication Information Translators’ Introduction

xiii

xv

andrew j. perrin and jeffrey k. olick

From Group Experiment Foreword

1 franz böhm

Introduction

9

1 The Group Discussion Method

19

2 The Organization of the Discussion Materials 3 Quantitative Analyses

72

4 Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions Afterword

57

109

148

Appendix A. Findings of a Study of the Silent Participants Appendix B. From a Monograph on “Aspects of Language”

157 161

Contents

p vi

Final Version of the Basic Stimulus (Colburn Letter) Opinion Research and Publicness theodor w. adorno

Notes

185

Index

199

179

177

List of Tables and Figures

(with original number in Gruppenexperiment)

Tables 2.1 (originally Table 14)

59

2.2 (originally Table 15)

66

3.1 (originally Table 65)

77

3.2 (originally Table 66)

79

3.3 (originally Table 67)

79

3.4 (originally Table 68)

81

3.5 (originally Table 69)

85

3.6 (originally Table 70)

85

3.7 (originally Table 71)

86

3.8 (originally Table 72)

87

3.9 (originally Table 73)

87

3.10 (originally Table 74)

88

3.11 (originally Table 75)

90

3.12 (originally Table 76)

94

3.13 (originally unnumbered)

96

3.14 (originally Table 77)

99

3.15 (originally Table 78)

102

List of Tables and Figures

3.16 (originally Table 79)

103

3.17 (originally Table 80)

106

3.18 (originally Table 81)

108

4.1 (originally unnumbered)

130

Figures 3.1 (originally Figure 7)

75

3.2 (originally Figure 8)

77

3.3 (originally Figure 9)

78

3.4 (originally Figure 10)

81

3.5 (originally Figure 11)

82

3.6 (originally Figure 12)

84

3.7 (originally Figure 13)

87

3.8 (originally Figure 14)

92

3.9 (originally Figure 15)

94

3.10 (originally Figure 16)

95

3.11 (originally Figure 17)

97

3.12 (originally Figure 18)

98

3.13 (originally Figure 19)

99

3.14 (originally Figure 20)

101

3.15 (originally Figure 21)

101

3.16 (originally Figure 22)

103

3.17 (originally Figure 23)

105

3.18 (originally Figure 24)

105

3.19 (originally Figure 25)

107

3.20 (originally Figure 25a)

107

p viii

Preface

T

his is the second of two volumes containing translations from Gruppenexperiment: Ein Studienbericht (Pollock 1955) and additional related material. The first volume, Guilt and Defense: On the Legacies of National Socialism in Postwar Germany (Adorno 2010), presented Theodor W. Adorno’s essay “Guilt and Defense,” which appeared originally as Chapter V of Gruppenexperiment, along with additional materials detailing Adorno’s intellectual engagement with contemporary German affairs. In this volume, we present the portions of Gruppenexperiment that are more methodological and theoretical than historical and political. These materials have enduring relevance for current understandings of public opinion. In our introduction we reconstruct the work’s lineages with an eye to the present state of work in the field of public opinion and to the conceptual contributions to be found in that lineage. Inevitably, pieces in one volume refer to materials only presented in the other, which we nevertheless hope will be a stimulus to curiosity rather than a hindrance to understanding (a selection here and there—for instance the “Colburn Letter”—appears in both); each volume is relevant, but not necessary, to the comprehension of the other. This project emerged from a convergence of our historical and theoretical interests in the Frankfurt School’s social scientific work: Jeffrey Olick’s investigation of the origins of Adorno’s provocative aphorism about the “house of the hangman,” and Andrew Perrin’s research on the ontological

Preface

px

status of public opinion. Our common experiences in the Sociology and Anthropology department at Swarthmore College, and the annual Swarthmore alumni dinners at the American Sociological Association more recently, underwrote our collaboration on this project. We were fortunate to receive support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (collaborative grant number RZ-50623-06), from a Faculty Fellowship to Andrew Perrin in fall 2007 at the UNC Institute for Arts and Humanities (IAH), and from research funds to Jeffrey Olick by the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. Permission to publish the English translation of Gruppenexperiment, the major text in this book, was graciously granted by Europäische Verlagsanstalt of Hamburg. Permission to reprint the translation of “Opinion Research and Publicness” was graciously granted by the American Sociological Association. We thank the many family, friends, and colleagues with whom we have discussed the project both in general and in detail, and whom we have often queried about translation issues, including Asher Biemann, Craig Calhoun, Gaby Finder, Gregg Flaxman, Jeff Grossman, Volker Heins, David Jenemann, Krishan Kumar, Daniel Levy, Chuck Matthewes, John McGowan, Jeff Spinner-Halev, Christiane Sembritzki, John Torpey, Bettina Winckler, and Heino and Susanne Winckler. Michael Aronson at Harvard University Press has been an ardent supporter and champion of both books. Special thanks are due to Natassia Rodriguez, James Knable, Maria Santos, and Tara Tober for research assistance and to J. Craig Jenkins for archival help. Kai-Uwe Löser helped greatly with the first draft of the translation. Natassia Rodriguez also painstakingly re-created the arcane original graphs in Chapter IV (Chapter 3 in this volume) using modern technology to convey the information better while maintaining the aesthetic sense of the original. Gregg Flaxman, Dick Langston, and Jeff Spinner-Halev provided very helpful comments on previous drafts of the introduction. The project has benefited from critical discussions at the Cultural and Political Sociology Workshop at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; the Sociology Colloquium at Columbia University; the conference on “Interactionist Approaches to Collective Memory” at Northwestern University; the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia; the Institute for Arts and Humanities at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and the graduate seminar in European Social Theory in the sociology department at the University of Virginia. Our amazing spouses, Eliana Perrin and Bettina Winckler, have provided patience and emotional and intellectual support throughout this prolonged process.

Preface

p xi

Translation Notes The German of Gruppenexperiment is arcane and difficult in the original, although difficult in a different sense from many of the other writings of the Frankfurt School. The writing is not philosophically complex, nor is it nuanced in the way other writings are (for example, Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory or Minima Moralia). It is complicated because, as a monograph, it was written cautiously, even tentatively, as a contribution to the nascent field of modern social science research. The monograph itself had many authors, complicating the problem of interpreting the intended meanings. The transcripts of the group discussions are colloquial, raising additional questions about how best to convey the sense of the speakers. We have sought to be faithful to that sense, sometimes at the cost of readability. A common practice in the German text is substituting an adjective for an active verb. A classic example, discussed in the Translators’ Introduction below, is vergesellschaftete Gesellschaft, translated as “totally socialized society.” Who socialized it? What institutions and actors are responsible for its totally socialized character? Its totally socialized character is understood to be a property of the society, not the result of work done to socialize it totally. American students are routinely taught to avoid the passive voice, a rule that is largely absent from German. Thus terms that make perfect sense in German—in which meaning is conveyed more through nouns and their modifiers than through verbs, which is the English norm— may parse as convoluted to the Anglophone reader. There is no obvious right answer to this question, either in this case or in similar cases elsewhere in the text. Where it is clear from the text who or what is responsible, we have shifted the sentences into the active voice to maintain an English idiom; where it is unclear, we have remained with the passive, even though it reads awkwardly in English. One concept deserves particular examination. That concept is Öffentlichkeit. The word—perhaps most literally translated as “openness”—has been translated in various contexts as “publicness,” “publicity,” “openness,” “public opinion,” “public sphere,” and even “democracy”! Öffentlichkeit is utterly crucial to the conception of society and democracy here, and we have sought to use context to choose the best translation for each particular case. In the main, though, we have opted to stick with the more literal, if tinny, “publicness” instead of the more poetic but looser alternatives including the most common, “public sphere,” in part because the latter connotes at once more and less than is present in the German original. As Stefan Nowotny (2003) has cogently argued, “public sphere” at once implies a spatial element not present in Öffentlichkeit and, at the same time, reduces

Preface

p xii

Öffentlichkeit to a particular portion of social praxis instead of the overarching modality implied in the original. We therefore consider it prudent to avoid conflating Öffentlichkeit with “public sphere” or the other looser renderings that have been offered. Nevertheless, we retain “public sphere” in the title of the introductory essay to highlight the genealogical connection between Gruppenexperiment and the later theory of the public sphere. The original monograph contained significant amounts of information— much of it about mundane elements of the research design—that we have not translated. We have left out the original Chapter II (Description of the Circle of Participants) entirely, and we have removed significant portions of the Afterword and of Chapter IV (Quantitative Analysis of the Discussions). In this English translation, Chapter 1 was Chapter I in the original; Chapter 2 was Chapter III; Chapter 3 was Chapter IV; and Chapter 4 was Chapter VI. We have published Chapter V (Guilt and Defense), written by Theodor W. Adorno, as part of a separate volume, Guilt and Defense: On the Legacies of National Socialism in Postwar Germany (Harvard University Press, 2010). Numbered endnotes in this book are translations of footnotes in the original text; editorial comments are in footnotes marked with symbols.

Original Publication Information

Pollock, Friedrich, hrsg. Gruppenexperiment: Ein Studienbericht. Mit einem Geleitwort von Franz Böhm. Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie bd. 2. Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1955. Translated by permission from Europäische Verlagsanstalt. Adorno, Theodor W. “Meinungsforschung und Öffentlichkeit.” Typescript (1964). Gesammelte Schriften, hrsg. Rolf Tiedemann, bd. 8. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. (Electronic resource.) Translation by Andrew J. Perrin and Lars Jarkko. Originally published in Sociological Theory 23, no. 1 (March 2005). Reprinted by permission of the American Sociological Association.

Translators’ Introduction: Before the Public Sphere andrew j. perrin jeffrey k. olick

True dialogue, which died out in the Volksgemeinschaft, needs a long time to come back to life, and the conditions of mass society are not favorable. —Appendix B, “Aspects of Language”

F

or many readers, the very existence of this volume—the first largescale English translation of Gruppenexperiment, the Frankfurt School’s first major project after their return from exile—may seem surprising. The Frankfurt School of critical theorists—principally Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Leo Löwenthal—is not mainly known as an empirically minded group of social scientists. In this introduction we explain the book’s importance in terms of the history of social science and of current issues in social and democratic theory. In 1941, Paul Lazarsfeld published an essay in the Frankfurt School journal, Studies in Philosophy and Social Science (Lazarsfeld 1941), attempting to explain the difference between the kind of work he was pursuing at the Princeton Radio Research Project and that of Adorno, who had recently left the project because of intractable intellectual differences with Lazarsfeld. In his essay, Lazarsfeld distinguished between what he called “administrative” and “critical” research. Administrative research, according to Lazarsfeld, concerned matters of variation and behavior within an established social system, while critical research aimed at comprehending that social system as a totality. As part of an effort to smooth things over with Adorno (and with Max Horkheimer, who had sponsored Adorno’s participation in the project), Lazarsfeld argued that administrative and critical

Translators’ Introduction

p xvi

research were not fundamentally incompatible, and indeed could be mutually reinforcing. Nevertheless, Adorno remained in many ways adamant that the approaches were incompatible. He had received something of a trial by fire in his work for Lazarsfeld’s Princeton Radio Research Project (PRRP), which sponsored him when he initially came to the United States. The routinized and commercially compromised nature of the research Lazarsfeld expected clashed with Adorno’s personal, political, and theoretical commitments, and the two had a now-famous falling out, which Lazarsfeld sought to redress through the 1941 essay. As Adorno wrote years later in an autobiographical essay, I was disturbed . . . by a basic methodological problem. . . . I oppose stating and measuring effects without relating them to . . . the objective content to which the consumers in the cultural industry, the radio listeners, react. . . . To proceed from the subjects’ reactions as if they were a primary and final source of sociological knowledge seemed to me thoroughly superficial and misguided. (Adorno 1968, 343)

Partly as a result of this social scientific controversy, though even more as a result of the robust reception of critical theory among literary and cultural scholars, the picture of the Frankfurt School that circulates most widely in the Anglophone academy portrays their approach as bordering on hostility to empirical research. However, the Frankfurt School’s relationship with empirical work was much closer and more complicated than this reading suggests. Indeed, the scholars engaged in extensive empirical work under the auspices of the Institut für Sozialforschung (IFS, which was the principal institutional structure for what later came to be called the Frankfurt School) from the 1930s to the 1960s.1 During their exile in the United States, Adorno and Horkheimer were tightly connected to (albeit often in conflict with) mainstream American social science on public opinion, mass society, and group processes. They became well acquainted with the practice of social science associated with Morris Janowitz, Robert Lynd, Robert Bales, and particularly Lazarsfeld. Adorno considered the work of the PRRP, and the work he was assigned to do there, both terribly pedestrian and intellectually compromised. Given what was going on in Europe during that time (1938–1941), it must have felt much like fiddling while Rome burned (Jenemann 2007). But as Adorno and colleagues made clear for decades thereafter, their objection was not to empirical research per se, but rather to the common practice of studying apparent variation within society and, therefore, ignoring the totality—the character of society itself (see, e.g., Adorno 1976; Adorno

Translators’ Introduction

p xvii

1970, 42; Claussen 2008, 189; Jenemann 2007, 1–3).2 As scholars, they cast their lot with social science as an entirely appropriate approach to ascertaining totality. They identified themselves as social scientists and wrote largely for an audience of social scientists (Held 1980, 36–37). Their criticism of social science, however thoroughgoing, was a critique from within social science and an argument for a radical objectivity instead of the contrived objectivity of the emerging mainstream (Jay 1973, 224). As Adorno put it in his autobiographical essay, “We followed what I believed to be the plausible idea that in the present society the objective institutions and developmental tendencies have attained such an overwhelming power over the individual that people . . . are becoming, and evidently in increasing measure, functionaries of the predominant tendencies operating over their heads. Less and less depends on their own particular conscious and unconscious being, their inner life” (Adorno 1968, 230). This critique permeates not just the philosophical work but also the empirical studies the IFS produced, beginning with its prewar Studies on Authority and the Family (IFS 1936), through its influential and controversial The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al. 1950), and on into the postwar research agenda beginning with Gruppenexperiment (Pollock 1955), an important yet virtually unknown study of public opinion in postwar Germany. In this volume we present the core of the public opinion research in Group Experiment in its first large-scale English translation.3 While the intellectual forces behind these projects (and the empirical work that followed them well into the 1960s) were diverse and perhaps even contradictory, this body of work demonstrates the extent to which, in exile, the Frankfurt School and its associates cross-fertilized with the major developments of American social science. They used these tools and approaches toward their overarching goal of locating and coming to terms with the pathologies of anti-Semitism and fascism in Europe’s recent past and diagnosing the persistent ills of mass society.

The Frankfurt School’s Productive Exile Gruppenexperiment, nevertheless, is emphatically a work of critical theory, very much at the heart of the type of scholarship to which the Frankfurt School was committed. In contrast to their reputations as Mandarins of German philosophy, here and elsewhere the Frankfurt School combined—at some times uneasily, at others synergistically—a critical attitude with a fealty to empirical reality. “Empirical reality,” of course, was itself a concept they always subjected to critical interrogation. The critical attitude, wrote Institute director Max Horkheimer in his essay “Traditional

Translators’ Introduction

p xviii

and Critical Theory,” “is wholly distrustful of the rules of conduct with which society as presently constituted provides each of its members. The separation between individual and society in virtue of which the individual accepts as natural the limits prescribed for his activity is relativized in critical theory” (Horkheimer 1972, 207). At the same time, considerations both Marxist and pragmatic prevented the Frankfurt scholars from adopting an esoteric, detached theoretical approach. Thus they produced a wide variety of empirical work in Germany and the United States, which ties directly into the intellectual project of twentieth century critical social science, rather than, as conventionally assumed, standing entirely against it. The Frankfurt School’s history is complex, reflecting the turbulent environment in which its scholarship developed. It originated, for practical purposes, in 1930, when Friedrich Pollock hired Max Horkheimer to take over the directorship of the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research, IFS) in Frankfurt, the reincarnation of an Institute for Marxism founded by wealthy philanthropist Felix Weil (Coser 1984). The choice of Horkheimer marked the Institute’s recognition that Marxism was in crisis and endorsed Horkheimer’s ambition of blending social philosophy and social science to address that crisis (Wiggershaus 1994, 36ff.). Horkheimer quickly assembled a group of intellectuals whose names remain at the core of the Frankfurt approach: psychologist Erich Fromm, economist Friedrich Pollock (who coordinated the Gruppenexperiment),4 sociologist Leo Löwenthal, philosopher Herbert Marcuse, and philosopher cum sociologist and musicologist Theodor Wiesegrund Adorno. The group’s famously bleak outlook on the crisis of modern politics and culture as they had developed since 1914—not an uncommon evaluation across the political spectrum in Weimar Germany—emerged out of these scholars’ interactions with one another as well as with their interlocutors, most importantly Georg Lukács, Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, and Siegfried Kracauer. As this eclectic mix implies, from early on the Frankfurt School was concerned with aesthetics, politics, culture, and media—and, crucially, with the ways these combined with one another to create and reproduce what they called the “totally socialized society” (vergesellschaftete Gesellschaft). Gerhard Schweppenhäuser (2009, 51–76) makes a strong case that the concept of the “totally socialized society” is one of the threads that ties together Adorno’s entire oeuvre; it is “the antithesis of successful mediation between general and individual interest” (58). The term appears in several places throughout Adorno’s work, signifying the importance of the concept in the Frankfurt diagnosis of modernity. We return to verge-

Translators’ Introduction

p xix

sellschaftete Gesellschaft in more detail below. For now it is sufficient to note that the concept was coined in the first chapter of Gruppenexperiment to signal the insistence on the social roots of individual opinions. Forced into exile—first elsewhere in Europe, then in New York, later in Los Angeles—by the rise of the Third Reich, the scholars turned their analytic attention to what was obviously the most urgent problem of the time: the historical, psychological, and social origins of fascism and anti-Semitism and the associated failure of the working class. Among them, the work of Theodor Adorno has best expressed the Frankfurt School’s trademark dialectical tensions and has had the most lasting influence. David Jenemann has made a persuasive case for the intellectual importance of Adorno’s years spent in New York and Los Angeles (Jenemann 2007). Adorno’s first assignments in exile were to carry out the sort of administrative research on radio audiences for which Lazarsfeld had become famous (see, e.g., Lazarsfeld and Stanton 1944). Lazarsfeld’s approach to radio research—and, by extension, to social science in general— was relentlessly empirical and methodologically technical. The audience, he famously suggested in Personal Influence, was unlikely to be hoodwinked by distant broadcast media when there were nearby opinion leaders and dense social networks to underwrite more nuanced, locally based public opinion (Katz and Lazarsfeld 1955). This approach to understanding the audience dovetailed with broadcasting companies’ desires to build and segment audiences. It also, Adorno claimed, missed the ideological forest for the trees. The real effect of mass broadcasting was the mass itself, and diagnosing the objective creation of a mass public, with its uniquely problematic relationship both to culture and to politics, was the urgent task of social science. Despite their disaffection with the conventions of “official social sciences” (Jenemann 2007, 1), the Frankfurt scholars acquired a sense of the promise of modern empirical techniques as well as the technical expertise necessary to deploy these techniques. To be sure, their relation to these techniques was complicated inasmuch as they rejected both positivism and functionalism, two pillars of American-style empirical research. But they rejected these as intellectual positions, not as modes of inquiry; indeed, as Thomas Wheatland puts it, “As long as empiricism does not take the status quo for granted and assists the social theorists in questioning existing society, empiricism remains a useful tool of the critical sociologist.” Systematic empirical inquiry was an important element of the critical work the Frankfurt scholars did in the United States and after their return to Germany (Wheatland 2009, 345). Following his separation from Lazarsfeld’s

Translators’ Introduction

p xx

project, Adorno and Horkheimer—his friend, colleague, and sponsor— moved to California and took up this more critical social scientific challenge while maintaining their understanding of, and interest in, the developing techniques of modern social science. Their disagreement with Lazarsfeld, though, remained substantive and dramatic (see Gitlin 1978 for a particularly resonant repercussion and Katz 1987 for a rejoinder), and in many ways animated Horkheimer and Adorno’s California work (Horkheimer and Adorno [1947] 2002) and the design of the Frankfurt School’s American empirical projects as well as, eventually, Gruppenexperiment (Pickford 1997). Three works from this period delineate the contours of the synthesis of critical theory and empirical research that eventually marked Gruppenexperiment. These are the exquisitely detailed Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses (Adorno 2000b), completed in 1943 but unpublished during Adorno’s life (Tiedemann 1986, vol. 9, 412); the well-known Dialectic of Enlightenment, in one part of which Horkheimer and Adorno diagnosed the malaise of mass society (Horkheimer and Adorno [1947] 2002); and the monumental, survey-based study The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al. 1950). Together, these works display a wide range of methodological techniques and an urgent concern with empirically investigating the relationship among aesthetics, communication, and modern politics.5 In The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, Adorno systematically dissects the mode of address of an early Christian Right radio personality. He develops a theory of the mass audience and the rhetorical tropes of fascism, infused with a subtlety and embrace of self-contradiction provided by psychoanalytic theory (Apostolidis 1998). “The ultimate aim of Thomas’ propaganda,” Adorno concludes, “is authority by brutal, sadistic oppression”: The future of America of which he [Thomas] warns is depicted in not altogether different terms: “One of these fine mornings you men and women will arise with no stocks and no bonds and no home and your backs will be placed against a wall with a machine gun bullet in your heart and in your head.” One may well expect that the audience projects this image upon their foes and thus enjoys it. Thomas almost openly professes this ambivalence towards atrocities in one of his anti-Soviet diatribes: “I want to say that you men and women, you and I are living in the most fearful time of the history of the world. We are living also in the most gracious and most wonderful time.” This is the agitator’s dream, the unification of the horrible and the wonderful, the drunkenness of an annihilation that pretends to be salvation. (Adorno 2000b, 131)

Translators’ Introduction

p xxi

Thus, as Adorno suggests, the cynical fascist agitator manipulates his audience by reducing it to a consuming public all too eager to believe the David-versus-Goliath image of the “Lone Wolf” (Adorno 2000b, 4–6) struggling against the tide of Communism and moral degeneration.6 The major philosophical work Adorno and Horkheimer produced during their California stay was Dialectic of Enlightenment, a diagnosis of modern culture and society that has become one of their best-known and most read works (Hullot-Kentor 2006, 24–25). The audience’s status as a mass is addressed in Dialectic of Enlightenment, particularly in the most famous essay therein, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” Building upon Adorno’s 1936 rebuttal (Adorno 1977) to Benjamin’s essay on the mechanical reproduction of art (Benjamin 2008), “The Culture Industry” argues that industrialization of cultural artifacts— principally music (see Witkin 2002) and film—totalizes the audience experience, incorporating all possible critique. This is partially due to the technology involved. Since the audience for mass art such as radio and film cannot “talk back,” these technologies become “democratic” as compared to the “liberal” telephone which fosters interactivity by its very nature (95–96; see also Klinenberg and Perrin 2000; Fischer 1994). While the specific claim—that radio and film cannot allow a way for the audience to respond—is no longer true (Herbst 1995), the ways in which audience response has been implemented and channeled bolster the more general claim that industrialized culture tends to homogenize and “massify” its audience, thereby neutering potential critique.7 Massification was diagnosed by Horkheimer and Adorno in “The Culture Industry”: “film . . . trains those exposed to it to identify film directly with reality. . . . The required qualities of attention have become so familiar from other films and other culture products already known . . . that they appear automatically. The power of industrial society is imprinted on people once and for all. . . . Each single manifestation of the culture industry inescapably reproduces human beings as what the whole has made them” (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002, 100). A society is massified to the extent that it is addressed and, therefore, constituted as an undifferentiated mass audience—the result of a thoroughly industrialized culture industry and a cause of the totally socialized society.8 The audience, in turn, must be prepared to receive these messages as they are sent out, and it is to that problem that Adorno and colleagues turned in their 1950 survey analysis, The Authoritarian Personality. Coordinated through the Survey Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, The Authoritarian Personality is based on a large-scale survey and in-depth interviews in which the researchers postulate, identify,

Translators’ Introduction

p xxii

and seek to delineate a particular personality type vulnerable to endorsing authoritarianism under the right conditions. The implication—indeed, the assumption—of specific, stable authoritarian “types” came in for ideological and ontological critiques, both at the time and later (e.g., Jahoda 1954; Altemeyer 1981; Martin 2001; see also Jay 1973, 246–250).9 From the perspective of the Frankfurt School’s overall agenda, though, the most important finding of The Authoritarian Personality is the very fact that individuals susceptible to authoritarian manipulation existed, and in large numbers, in the world’s leading democracy. The implication was that although the Third Reich occurred in Germany, the pathologies that brought it about were widespread, and the potential for fascist psychological manipulation was present in the West as well. This may be seen as an early hint of Adorno’s later, famous slogan, from a 1959 speech, that he was more concerned with the remnants of fascism within democracy than opposed to democracy. We delineate the intellectual history of this idea and the speech in which it appeared in our introduction to the companion volume (Olick and Perrin 2010). Horkheimer, Adorno, and Pollock returned to Germany in 1949 with these tools and sensibilities—a European critical theory transformed but not betrayed by its encounter with American empiricism—in their baggage. They sought to use them to investigate the ideological contours of postwar Germany. The result is Gruppenexperiment: a fascinating, frustrating study, ambitious and revolutionary in its substance, questionable in its findings, and at times maddeningly plodding in its prose, yet prescient in its dynamic approach to public opinion and democratic behavior. If The Authoritarian Personality sought to identify the sorts of individuals who might succumb to authoritarianism given the right material conditions, Gruppenexperiment sought to demonstrate that such conditions existed and could evoke proto-fascist responses in “denazified” Germany. Horkheimer and Adorno also returned to Frankfurt from exile in the United States committed to establishing a theoretically robust, modern social scientific community in postwar Germany (Albrecht et al. 1999). In the process, they hoped to establish the Frankfurt School as the intellectual center of postwar German social science, a goal they never really achieved, although they were very much part of German sociology through the midto late twentieth century (Albrecht et al. 1999; König 1987). They were supported in this effort by luminaries in the American social science establishment (“Proposal,” 1949)—many of whom had enjoyed less than cordial relationships with the Frankfurt scholars during their stay in America (Jenemann 2007)—as well as, financially, by the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany (HICOG), which served as the occupying administration in

Translators’ Introduction

p xxiii

West Germany (Jäger 2004; Wiggershaus 1994). That administration was engaged in a series of public opinion surveys in the new Federal Republic designed to demonstrate the successful exorcism of the Nazi ghost and the consequent readiness of West Germany to take its place in the community of nations (Stern 1992; Merritt and Merritt 1970, 1980; Merritt 1995). These surveys were being carried out in the service of the official AngloAmerican policy after 1945 of rehabilitating West Germany as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism (Olick 2005). For reasons both biographical and theoretical, Adorno, Horkheimer, and their colleagues were skeptical of the results these surveys produced. They doubted the “clean break” with the Nazi past the American research seemed to imply. They were suspicious of the findings themselves, the quick cultural turnaround the findings suggested, and the interpretation of these findings. And, most deeply, they were unconvinced by what they saw as the uncritical and simplistic theory of public opinion and representation contained in the surveys’ methodology, insofar as they saw any theory at all behind them. The Frankfurt scholars thus designed Gruppenexperiment, and the Institute carried it out, to articulate and demonstrate their critiques. As we will discuss below, these critiques foreshadowed debates that took place later—in some cases, much later—on the nature of public opinion, deliberation, representation, and democratic citizenship. In addition to anticipating the contours of these debates, Gruppenexperiment’s approach applied modern techniques of empirical research to the task, in the form of 136 focus groups designed to probe the dark recesses of the post-Nazi German imagination. The scholars were motivated at once by their admiration for and their critique of American social science. While they employed the language of contemporary public opinion research, they sought to address the concern that such research was, like the consumer society it served, atomistic, superficial, and passive: The progress of a science that is able to develop methods with the help of which it can register and under some circumstances predict the truly subtle reactions, opinions, and wishes of people is undeniable. It is also an indisputable gain that one can check political and economic decisions against the reactions of the governed. Nevertheless, one should also not fail to recognize that the convergence of social-scientific methods toward those of the natural sciences is itself the child of a society that reifies people. The democratic potential of the new methods is thus not unquestionable, as is so gladly assumed particularly in Germany after the suppression of public opinion by the Hitler regime. It is not incidental that modern “opinion research” grew out of market and consumer research. It [opinion research] implicitly identifies man

Translators’ Introduction

p xxiv

under the rubric of consumer. As a result, the diverse tendencies to social control and manipulation that can be observed to derive from modern empirical sociology in the realm of consumer analysis or “human relations” are not merely incidental to the method itself. While they [opinion researchers] are led by the principle of the equality of people and allow no privilege in evaluating the attitudes of individual subjects, they nevertheless treat these subjects as they are constituted by the dominant economic and social relations, without examining this constitution itself. The difficulty becomes obvious when the point is to convey with representative surveys what opinions and meanings people have toward questions of general public interest—in other words as soon as one wants to deal with the problem of so-called public opinion with the techniques of empirical social research (20–21).

The research design was thus framed as a corrective to, not an indictment of, then-current public opinion research. The methodological introduction brims with reference to the latest American techniques, including those in studies by Hadley Cantril, Leonard Doob, Walter Lippmann, Lazarsfeld, Harold Lasswell, Bernard Berelson, Janowitz, and Kurt Lewin.

Gruppenexperiment’s Critique of Public Opinion and Public Opinion Research What value does this controversial research project, over half a century old, hold for the theory and practice of public opinion research at the dawn of the twenty-first century? Far from being a “classic,” the (re)reading of which justifies itself (Fields 1995, xxiii–xxiv), Gruppenexperiment (Pollock 1955) is best described as a lost study. After a flurry of controversy early after its publication in 1955, it settled into its role as a footnote in German methods texts (e.g., Lamnek 2005) and focus group studies (du Bois-Reymond 1998). In the rare cases it appears at all in Anglophone scholarship, it is typically mentioned only in passing as the first project the Frankfurt School intellectuals took on upon their return to Germany. We argue that this neglect is unwarranted. Gruppenexperiment was an ambitious undertaking—riddled, to be sure, with empirical problems and logistical limitations, but probably more right than wrong in its conclusions and certainly prescient in its theoretical approach to democracy and public opinion. In the foreword, politician and lawyer Franz Böhm explains the essential suspicion of public opinion surveys: alongside so-called “public opinion,” which expresses itself in elections, referenda, public speeches, newspaper articles, radio broadcasts, party and group programs, parliamentary discussions, and political assemblies, there is nonpublic opinion, whose content can differ considerably from the content of

Translators’ Introduction

p xxv

public opinion. Its sentences, however, circulate alongside those of public opinion like the coins of a second currency; in fact, they may even be more durable and stable than actual public opinion, which we flaunt like a courtier before the official public, especially to foreign countries, and which we pride ourselves as being our actual and sole opinion, as if they expressed what we actually mean even though they are really only the things we say when wearing our Sunday best (3).

These latent, unofficial opinions, Böhm avers, are unsightly but crucial, as they express the unvarnished political psyche of the research subjects. Adorno, however, resists assigning pure authenticity to these opinions; rather, the group method “was meant to call forth real social behavior that simultaneously reflects and produces ‘public opinion.’ Its medium is the conversation and the interaction between those who are talking with each other; official inhibitions (Zensuren) are deactivated, new controls within the group induced” (Adorno 2010, 200). Thus the study does not actually claim that the opinions expressed in the focus groups are more authentic than others. Rather, it pursues a more modest claim: to borrow language from social science that emerged 40 years later, these opinions are present in the respondents’ cultural repertoires (see Swidler 2001, 24–25; Tilly 2006) and can therefore be evoked in the presence of particular stimuli (Merton et al. 1956). The critique of public opinion research contained in Gruppenexperiment begins with Böhm’s colorful metaphor of the “Sunday best.” Opinions harvested from individuals by telephone or in-person visits—the bread and butter of conventional public opinion research—are not false or bad. They are just partial and situational. Like any other social institution, and doubly so an institution at the time quickly becoming a taken-forgranted standard (see Igo 2007), public opinion research deserves to be studied and understood as a modality within which knowledge and ideas are generated, as Adorno argued later on in “Opinion Research and Publicness,” also reprinted in this volume: The current identity of market and opinion research in America, which are also bound together terminologically in Germany, is, throughout, in the sense of the observation of common sense, that no radical difference prevails between the preferences for the names of a political candidate and for those of a brand name, as would be expected according to the theoretical differentiation between the autonomous and mature/responsible folk and the surroundings (Umkreis) of the servitude (Kundenschaft) to mass products. Under this aspect, opinion research would not be a mere technique, but just as much an object of sociology as a science that inquires into the objective structural laws of society (Adorno 2005, 122).

Translators’ Introduction

p xxvi

Mounting the critique of public opinion research required all the tools in the Frankfurt arsenal: empirical, social-theoretical, philosophical, even aesthetic as they considered the representative apparatus contained within techniques of social research. Survey-based public opinion research was ascendant at the time, supported both by its affinity with industrial statistics and marketing and by its high-modernist scientific flair (Converse 1987). It is precisely because this apparatus was so daunting that the critique is so multifaceted and provides an important point of connection among the Frankfurt School’s diverse themes. It is also why the critique is of enduring value now rather than simply of historical interest. The first element of the critique has become commonplace since Gruppenexperiment. Essentially, it holds that survey research offers insufficient opportunity for respondents to express their true beliefs. The authors take pains to point out that they are not advocating “the conventional organicistic and irrationalistic cliché that surveys would be too mechanistic for talking about the ostensible totality of the person or of the community” (Adorno 2010, 200).10 In other words, the authors do not criticize the closed-choice, reductive nature of survey instruments for painting an insufficiently complete picture of their respondents as complete subjects (see, in this regard, Perrin 2004). But survey research encourages each respondent to have an opinion, even on matters about which they may care little and know less. It also implicitly weighs each of these opinions as equally important, both in comparison to other opinions held by a given respondent and in comparison to opinions on similar matters held by other respondents. As the authors point out in their discussion of the Gruppenexperiment method, these ideas are the products of modern bourgeois society, which creates the opinion environment in which individuals are set (see also Jepperson 1992, 4). “The concept of public opinion presupposes a social organization or group whose members have more or less the same experiences.” As a result of this principle, Gruppenexperiment endeavors to specify the concept of public opinion by considering the structure of the group forming that opinion. The idea that public opinion is not merely the sum of individual opinions but contains a transcending collective element arises here. There can only be talk of public opinion when something like a consistent group structure exists. (Chapter 1, 24)

The second element of the critique is that survey research necessarily decontextualizes its respondents and, therefore, the data they provide, another critique that has re-emerged since (see, e.g., Abbott 2004):

Translators’ Introduction

p xxvii

the blind reduction of the embeddedness, of the variability of reactions, and especially of the real differences of socio-political power and powerlessness to a statistical model that is at best appropriate to elections is false (Adorno 2010, 200).

Individual respondents, that is, do their responding within the contexts in which they are set. In an increasingly massified United States, this context was problematic enough. In immediate postwar Germany the charged context was an intolerable threat to the validity of the HICOG surveys. How could the citizens of a recently vanquished nation, its erstwhile national ideology a worldwide disgrace, honestly explore and articulate their views on Jews, the war, guilt, and democracy to a stranger conducting an interview? Finally, the most complex theoretical critique has an interesting affinity to the French sociolinguistic strain associated with Ferdinand de Saussure, Emile Durkheim, and Michel Foucault. Gruppenexperiment specifically compares the national opinion scripts individual citizens enacted to a language (langue): an overarching power that informs, constrains, and channels the expressive potential of citizen opinions. “The marked surrender to language is just another expression of the surrender to the reality that people in industrial mass society can no longer experience themselves as subjects, only as disposable objects. Their own destiny confronts them as an object” (162). Language here is at once a measurable instance of social constraint and, much more importantly, an example of modern Germans’ tendency to reproduce the ideological scripts they inherit. Compare this position to one expressed by Durkheim, reached via a very different path to be sure: “the language of a people always influences the manner in which the new things that people come to know are classified in their minds— those things must fit into preexisting frameworks. For this reason, when men set out to make a comprehensive representation of the universe, the language they spoke indelibly marked the system of ideas that was then born” (Durkheim [1912] 1995, 73). Again, many of these critiques have since become commonplace, whether as concerns about scientific representation, democratic potential, or survey technique (see, e.g., Bourdieu 1979, 1990, 2005; Ackerman and Fishkin 2004; Ginsberg 1989; Latour 2005; Paley 2001). We detail some of these critiques later in this introduction and note the ways in which Gruppenexperiment anticipated them, in many cases years before their better-known versions. First, though, we turn to what is perhaps the most important facet of Gruppenexperiment’s critique of public opinion: its use of empirical methods to illustrate and animate these concerns.

Translators’ Introduction

p xxviii

The Proposed Solution To address the critiques of public opinion research, Pollock and colleagues turned to a novel instrument developed in the New York social science milieu in which they had spent part of their exile: the focus group, the group version of the “focused interview” technique introduced by Robert Merton and colleagues (Merton, Fiske, and Kendall 1956). The connection with ascendant American social science gave the method a kind of legitimacy it might otherwise have lacked, but the representational logic was in fact not incompatible with the Frankfurt School tradition. In designing the research, Horkheimer reasoned that people would be more likely to speak plainly and frankly when they were in a group of strangers. The ideal metaphor: the compartment of a long-distance train, in which travelers are thrust together to pass the hours but may let down their guard as they do not depend on the others for social or material support.11 With this image in mind, the team assembled 136 focus groups around West Germany. Some of the groups consisted only of men or women, or only a single occupational group; others were mixed. They provided each group with a stimulus: a fictional letter, ostensibly written by an Allied soldier (a British soldier for groups held in the British section; an American for those in the American section) to the editor of his hometown newspaper,12 evaluating German character and culture after the War. The letter (called the “Colburn letter,” and included in this volume as an appendix) was designed to evoke feelings and concerns about these themes in general, in particular about the question of German national guilt, since it was precisely here that the researchers most distrusted the polling results. This methodological construction followed directly the American scholarship of the time. Merton et al. (1956), for example, proposed the use of standardized stimuli like this in order to control for the environment within which an interviewee is responding. This technique has become a staple of focus groups, whether they are used for marketing, political, or academic purposes (Morgan 1997; Perrin 2006; Schudson 2006). Gruppenexperiment contains both an extended quantitative treatment of these discussions and a qualitative analysis carried out by Adorno himself, titled “Guilt and Defense.” The “Guilt and Defense” essay is the central text in our eponymous companion volume, Guilt and Defense: On the Legacies of Fascism in Postwar Germany (Adorno 2010, 51–185). In addition to these, the émigré sociologist Kurt Wolff did some preliminary analyses of the interviews with respect, in particular, to attitudes toward the United States.13

Translators’ Introduction

p xxix

The sections of Gruppenexperiment containing the quantitative analysis (included in this volume) address head-on the work’s critique of polling. They move between individual and group levels of analysis, examining the likelihood of individual “social types” to make particular arguments and the types of groups in which such arguments are likely to be made. The story, which is detailed in Chapter 3 below (Chapter IV in the original work), is not pretty. In direct contrast to the optimistic interpretation promoted by the American administration (Stern 1992; Merritt and Merritt 1970, 1980; Merritt 1995), the Frankfurt researchers found it relatively easy to evoke anti-Semitic and anti-democratic responses from a large proportion (albeit a minority) of the participants who spoke. Many more remained silent in the face of such responses, which the researchers interpreted as acquiescence if not support, a position similar to that taken by Noelle-Neumann in her theory of the “spiral of silence” (1984). Interpreting this research phenomenologically—that is, as a model for the practice of publicness—suggests that, regardless of whether these “Totalschweiger” (respondents who remained totally silent) agreed with the statements of others, their silent participation in the group discussions offered complicity with these statements.14 As we will see, this issue of how to interpret such silence was a key point for critics.

The Structure of the Argument The authors’ Introduction, which follows the preface by Böhm, contains the outline of the study’s critique of empirical social science as it is typically practiced. The introduction, nevertheless, praises “polished American techniques of social research” as the grounding for the project. Indeed, American imports are held to be valuable because their resolutely empirical focus counteracts a major weakness of German social science: “despotic decrees from on high and a style of thinking unconcerned with concrete facts,” a style the authors blame for the very “calamity” of National Socialism and all that it wrought. However, the opposite pole of this antiempiricism is “simply imitating” foreign techniques, an approach the authors seek to avoid as well. “It is impossible to glean a social totality . . . by increasing the quantity of data. It is also impossible to extrapolate a theory from empirical findings in this world in which individual social realities conceal their own essence almost as much as they express it.” This is a very deep problem, which the introduction locates in “society itself, where . . . the relation [between the particular and the general] is actually antagonistic.” The method to be developed, then, should seek to apprehend the general through the particular without assuming a simple relationship between

Translators’ Introduction

p xxx

the two: “It would be a bad science that sealed itself off against observations that emerge from the material for the sake of the chimera of absolute proof.” Chapter 1 (Chapter I in the original) contains the work’s theoretical and epistemological critique of standardized public opinion research. The chapter begins by acknowledging that polling techniques have a key advantage over earlier methods. Prior studies had been forced to concentrate on the ideas and communications of elites because there were no tools for ascertaining the views of non-elite citizens; polling thus carried a democratic sensibility in its capacity to represent the views of the non-elite public. After acknowledging this advantage, though, the chapter then quickly turns to the limitations on the techniques’ democratic characteristics. This is no small matter; analysts from George Gallup (Gallup and Rae 1940) to Frank Newport (Newport 2004) have argued that the public opinion poll is an inherently democratic instrument because it considers each respondent’s opinion regardless of social position, a virtue the Group Experiment scholars praise as well (see also Igo 2007). But their praise is quickly tempered by an indictment of social scientific methods as “the child of a society that confronts men as an ossified reality”—that is, as a totally socialized society whose totality dominates the subjectively held opinions of its members. It is a “cliché of the Modern,” the authors of Gruppenexperiment argue, to assume that all citizens have opinions on all matters—a position explored in much greater detail by Inkeles and Smith (1974) and Jepperson (1992), apparently without foreknowledge of the Frankfurt work in the area.15 Beyond the empirical mistake this represents, though, it leads to “seducing interviewees into . . . accepting stereotypes” instead of articulating authentic opinions. Goaded by the public opinion apparatus into expressing an opinion, interviewees just refract the dominant views of the society of which they are part. Because of the totally socialized nature of the opinion environment, “opinion research needs to free itself from the prejudice that opinions are . . . stable properties of individuals” and, instead, “approach as closely as possible the conditions under which actual opinions are formed, persist, and change.” The critical theorists then propose the focus group study and the railroad compartment metaphor to allow subjects to discuss and debate important issues without the constraint of a closed-ended question schema. However, the chapter is at pains to avoid arguing that this “pilot study” is the be-all and end-all of social research; rather, it is intended to illuminate the psychodynamic processes that underlie the overt statements of the participants. Evaluating the groups’ responses to the Colburn letter provides the material for characterizing the groups both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Translators’ Introduction

p xxxi

Chapter II consists of a detailed demographic analysis of the participants in those focus groups. We have elected not to include Chapter II in this volume because it is mostly technical and therefore of limited interest to contemporary readers. Extensive tables and graphs detail the gender, age, education, and class backgrounds of participants. There is also a breakdown of the kinds of focus groups that made up the study: classes and working groups; student groups; religious youth groups; political youth groups; youth homes; other youth groups; Catholic and other women’s leagues; working women; refugee and camp-dwelling women; married women’s groups; rural women’s groups; other women’s groups; refugee groups; inhabitants of barracks and bunkers; unemployed groups; other class-based groups; rural groups; workers’ groups; groups of former military officers; and miscellaneous other groups. Following Chapter II’s detailed description of the participants, Chapter 2 (Chapter III in the original) provides a careful description of the coding process—both where the codes came from and how to interpret them. Some of the codes are simply categorical, such as the topic under discussion and the demographic characteristics of the speakers. Others require the judgment of the analyst to notice similarities among them and classify them accordingly, such as the relative negative character of the comments themselves. The most important work, though, is cataloging and systematically recording the positions participants take and the ways they argue for them in order to discern patterns within and among groups. Chapter 3 (Chapter IV in the original) provides the quantitative core of the argument: a careful, at times tedious, recitation of the statistical “groupings” of participants based on their positive, negative, and ambivalent statements toward important areas of concern. On all the main topics of interest—attitudes toward democracy, toward the West, toward collective guilt, toward the Jews—there was considerable ambivalence, relatively little “positive” sentiment, and substantial “negative” sentiment. (The researchers labeled attitudes “positive” when they were pro-democracy, proJewish, pro-Western and accepting of complicity for the Holocaust.) Farmers, older people, and university-educated speakers fare the worst on these measures, while young people and, most strongly, women are the most positive. Although the theory in the previous chapters argued against inferring speakers’ characters from what they say in the discussions—utterances being the product of the group setting as well as of the individual’s belief system (see Perrin 2005, 2006)—there is significant slippage on this point in Chapter 3. For example, when the chapter analyzes anti-Semitic statements, the language casually shifts into a discussion of “anti-Semites,”

Translators’ Introduction

p xxxii

referring to the speakers, not their speech, an elision made all the more significant because critics had taken The Authoritarian Personality to task for a similar confusion (Jahoda 1954; Martin 2001).16 Although the authors are at pains to delineate the study as being talk-centered and as focusing on what people can say as opposed to what they will do, at various places throughout the chapter participants’ statements are called “behavior” (Verhaltung). For example, in Chapter 3 we read, “If we register concession of complicity as a positive attitude within our frame of reference, the following groups [those older than 50, those younger than 20, and women] behaved a little bit more positively than the average.” Speech is, of course, behavior as well, but it is hard to justify the notion that the participants were behaving as residual Nazis, particularly given that the very reason for asking the question is that fascism had recently been so very much more than mere speech. This linguistic slippage, coming as it does in the midst of overall methodological humility, reveals the underlying conceit of the project, which was to demonstrate the remaining potential for fascist revival in postwar Germany. Additionally, the similarity among the groups in their attitudes toward the Eastern Bloc indicates an “impressive example of what one . . . is expected to say,” and the increase in ambivalence toward Jews among more-educated participants is taken as evidence for university-educated respondents being more anti-Semitic. But ambivalence is higher among higher-educated respondents for most of the areas—perhaps complexity of thought was misread as ambivalence in the discussions. Following the quantitative analysis of Chapter 3 comes the intensive qualitative analysis in Chapter V in the original, “Guilt and Defense,” which we have not included here, where our focus is on the theory of public opinion developed in the Gruppenexperiment rather than on the substantive findings about postwar Germany. Adorno himself wrote the “Guilt and Defense” essay; it is the only part of Gruppenexperiment attributed explicitly to him and included in his collected works. In it, Adorno traces the participants’ discussion of guilt, and the defensiveness that went along with it, as the beginning of an arc that culminated in his famous 1959–62 lecture/essay, “The Meaning of Working Through the Past” (Adorno 1960). This important intervention in the debate over German guilt and how—and whether—to “master” the recent past, we argue in the introduction to our companion volume, cannot be adequately understood outside the context of Gruppenexperiment and the debates that followed it. Chapter 4 (Chapter VI in the original) takes the material from an entirely different angle from the previous chapters.17 Pursuing questions arising from American social science about how groups form, persist, and

Translators’ Introduction

p xxxiii

exert social control over their members, the chapter uses the transcripts to illustrate the process of “integration.” It is most concerned with integration in groups that did not exist prior to the experiment—i.e., that were made up of randomly recruited participants thrown together for this purpose. The chapter presents a fictional discussion cobbled together of excerpts from the real discussions. It uses these to illustrate a six-step model of integration: strangerhood, orientation, adaptation, familiarity, conformity, and the fading of the discussion. The importance of the argument here is less clear than in the earlier chapters. In one sense it is an attempt to contribute to the general progress of social science; the content, it argues, is secondary to the form of the group integration. The emphasis is on making connections to American group process social psychology, for example that of Robert F. Bales (Bales 1950). But paying attention to the excerpts selected for analysis demonstrates something else as well. The chapter is a micro-level investigation of the process by which individuals observe, test, and adopt ideological positions from the opinion environment in which they find themselves. It is, in other words, the micro-macro link for the book’s theory of totally socialized society. Nonetheless, the chapter is not limited to an abstract social psychological investigation of group cohesion. Rather, the authors argue, “it seems as if the function of the discussion for our participants is more to effect a certain sociopsychological situation and constellation than to address an objective question.” Participants’ psychological desire to belong—to conform to the group—often trumped their desire to express genuine beliefs. “If this is true, it implies a warning to be cautious about statements of public opinion. It would be wrong to interpret them according to their content as the conviction of the speaker, since they are first and foremost formed by the person’s attachment to a social situation, by the pursuit of belonging to a collectivity or by bestowing a certain form on it. These motives are more important than rationality, which is often used only in the service of such aspirations.” As additional proof for the participants’ desire to preserve the group, the book notes that even participants who never spoke during the discussion agreed to have another group discussion. “We can conclude from this,” the chapter argues, “that the group sessions satisfied not only the drive for expression, the wish to have an audience, but also the desire to be part of an audience.” A reasonable reader could infer from this finding that the focus group approach is no better than polling and could even be worse. If subjects are working to please other members of their specific groups, both by saying what the others expect and by silent acquiescence, why privilege this group-mediated expression over scientifically gathered poll results? The

Translators’ Introduction

p xxxiv

answer lies in Gruppenexperiment’s insistence on the phenomenological nature of opinion. If individuals held opinions and the role of research methods was simply to harvest these opinions, the concern would be appropriate. But if, as Gruppenexperiment holds, opinions are formed in the contexts in which they are expressed, the dynamics of the focus groups provide crucial additional information about how such opinions develop. While public opinion research since Gruppenexperiment has tended to interpret such integration phenomena as noise or error in its quest to represent the authentic beliefs of isolated individuals (see Perrin and McFarland 2008; Latour 2005; Marres 2005; Lezaun 2007), Gruppenexperiment treats them as essential. The authors assume “that opinions on political ideology usually crystallize only during engagement with the stimuli and with other people. This process is reciprocal: while group opinion is reflected in individual opinions, individual opinions contribute to group opinion” (Chapter 4). This claim is based on the sociological idea that groups have collective characters that transcend their component members—what more recent sociological theory categorizes as “emergent properties” (Sawyer 2001). The analysis of integration phenomena in Chapter 4 offers an empirical investigation into how group context affects people’s talk about potentially highly charged opinions. This is crucial both for the question of the ontological status of public opinion, which the authors address, but also for more recent concerns with the possibility and desirability of deliberative democracy, in which democratic decision making is a discursive process as opposed to simply an aggregation (e.g., Mendelberg 2002; Sunstein 2000; Mutz 2006). The Afterword, and all the more so its Appendix (Appendix B), return to the question of group influence on individual expression—the effect of totally socialized society on the opinions participants expressed. Appendix B contains a revealing discourse from an otherwise-unpublished monograph, “Aspects of Language,” written by Rainer Köhne and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, on the ways in which National Socialist language so permeated the everyday talk of the participants that they emulated it in form while evacuating it of content.18 Here, again, we see the connection between vergesellschaftete Gesellschaft and more recent theories privileging language as a constraining, guiding force, as well as the distinction between combative and deliberative language eventually taken up by Jürgen Habermas (1968). “Aspects of Language” builds on structural linguistics’ speech-language dialectic to argue that the Nazi colonization of language crippled ordinary people’s ability to express thought after the war; the very medium of expression itself was tainted by the Nazi experience.

Translators’ Introduction

p xxxv

Limitations of the Group Experiment Gruppenexperiment has numerous flaws, both as a result of the historical moment in which it took place and as a result of its authors’ complicated relationship with empirical research. Indeed, a scholar of the Frankfurt School, when one of us (Perrin) discussed the possibility of an English translation, remarked: “I don’t think they were very proud of it.” Below, we make a case for considering it an important piece of the Frankfurt School’s postwar intellectual legacy. First, though, we review several of the critiques of the project and its presentation. Immediately after its publication, the book was reviewed in the influential Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie by the social psychologist Peter Hofstätter.19 Hofstätter, sometimes referred to as a “conservative,” was actually something of an apologist for National Socialism, remaining unrepentant well into the 1960s (Bergmann 1997, 283–290). In 1941, for instance, Hofstätter had published articles on “German custom” (“deutsches Brauchtum”) and the pastoral function of National Socialism, which perhaps did not reach the level of racial incitement but were nevertheless quite problematic in retrospect (Bergmann 1997, 285). This history came out in the context of a scandal surrounding the June 1963 publication of two articles by Hofstätter in the liberal weekly, Die Zeit. In those articles (“Mastered Past?” [Hofstätter 1963a] and “What Do You Expect from the School Subject Contemporary History?” [Hofstätter 1963b]), Hofstätter took highly critical positions on the prosecution of Nazi criminals taking place in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials begun that year as well as on the role of the Nazi past in school curricula—the very issue Adorno addressed in his speeches of 1959–1962. (More details about Hofstätter and his review may be found in Bergmann 1997 and in our introduction to Adorno 2010.) The strongest and most convincing critique Hofstätter leveled at Gruppenexperiment, however, is ontological in character. It takes the work to task for implying that its method allowed a kind of revelation that was more authentic than that accessed through public opinion surveys. In snide tone, Hofstätter accused the Gruppenexperiment project of adopting the ontological position in ira, veritas: truth through anger, building on the familiar adage in vino, veritas (truth through wine). To the extent that Gruppenexperiment claims that its participants’ true identities were those revealed through active speech or silent acquiescence in the group discussions, this critique is apt. Indeed, there are places in the book where it seems to imply just that. In Chapter 4, however, the authors acknowledge the problem: “As has been highlighted several times, Colburn’s remarks

Translators’ Introduction

p xxxvi

had to provoke many to resist; thus the division between the in-group and the enemy was predetermined by the stimulus. By presenting an outsider, Sergeant Colburn, in the central function of setting the provocative terms of the discussion, the experimental design at the same time offered a target for latent aggression.” Nevertheless, the theory advanced in Gruppenexperiment is actually consistent with much more recent repertoire-based theories of action articulated by cultural sociologists (see, e.g., Swidler 2001; Lamont and Thévenot 2000; Perrin 2006). These theories understand cultures as providing a collection of resources upon which subjects may call to interpret and approach matters with which they are presented. Cultures differ in the content of these collections, the relative weight of elements in these repertoires, and the elements that fail to make it into the collective repertoire (Perrin 2005). Thus the principal finding of Gruppenexperiment is not that ordinary Germans, in 1949, remained actively fascistic—a claim that would have been both empirically indefensible and anathema to the dialectical, even anti-essentialist, thinking that pervades the Frankfurt School’s scholarship both before and after Gruppenexperiment. Rather, the crucial finding is that, given the right social setting and linguistic cues, ordinary Germans in the immediate postwar occupation were able to enact elements of fascism with distressing ease. Fascist elements, that is, remained in the postwar Federal Republic’s repertoire, and subjects were all too ready to wield these tools when pressed. It is precisely this defense that Adorno raises as the basis of his response to Hofstätter’s critique: in the practice of opinion research, very often the participants’ statements produced in the interview are taken, without any further specification of their origin and validity, as the “solidly fixed meanings of the individual,” and the statistical averages distilled from them are taken as public opinion. (Adorno 2010, 200)

In making this claim, Adorno and Gruppenexperiment situate the practice of opining in its cultural context. This claim is echoed more recently by arguments that the opining individual is a distinctly modern creation and a deeply social one at that, a view that was already articulated clearly in the Gruppenexperiment (see, e.g., Bourdieu 1979, 1990, 2005; Jepperson 1992; Jepperson and Swidler 1994; Inkeles and Smith 1974). Beyond Hofstätter’s claims, other concerns about the study are more directly methodological. Throughout Chapter 3, the study seeks to mount a modern, quantitative analysis of the data from the discussions. But the quantitative analysis is clunky, even quaint, by twenty-first century standards. At various points, percentile thresholds are set in ways that seem ad

Translators’ Introduction

p xxxvii

hoc or even arbitrary. For example, Table 3.1 (table 65 in the original) lists demographic groups that deviate from the average by 9% or more, while Tables 3.2 and 3.3 (tables 66 and 67 in the original) used 6% and 7%, respectively. Similarly, the aggregated system for scoring overall “positive” versus “negative” attitudes, while not technically wrong, is difficult to interpret because the authors did nothing to standardize the scale. In other words, the index runs from a minimum of −658 to a maximum of +292. Scores are presented as numbers along this scale (see Table 3.11 [table 75 in the original]). This makes it difficult to evaluate how positive or negative a given group is relative to others, since the scale’s midpoint is not zero. The analysis is also exclusively bivariate—that is, no attempt is made to evaluate the ways multiple characteristics of speakers and groups might interact. While multiple regression—the standard tool for handling such problems in later social science—had not yet become widely available, other, simpler techniques could have allowed for such controls had the researchers’ quantitative sensibilities been stronger. The overall sense one gets is that the authors were at once taken by the potential for modern quantitative techniques and deeply suspicious of hypostasizing these methods—a reality we know to be true from other writings (see, e.g., Adorno 1976). For example, in his introductory sociology lectures much later (1968), Adorno said, if you consider the problems of empirical social research—with which we of the Frankfurt School also concern ourselves very extensively—the specific difference which emerges between our practice and what is done generally is that we try not to conceive the method of sociology in absracto, as something instrumentally separate from its subject matter. We constantly try— with varying success but, I should think, with the right idea—to attune the methods from the outset to the subjects to which they are applied. (Adorno 2000a, 69)

Once again, Gruppenexperiment anticipates and provides a strong rejoinder to the rebuke. Indeed, from the beginning of the text its authors are at great pains to avoid methodological hubris, even if the substance of the study’s claim to see Nazi behavior in group discussions pushes the boundaries of appropriate inference. This is in part the result of their own critical theory—it would hardly do to have the principal critics of totalized, hypostasized theory (Horkheimer 1972) making bold empirical claims based on fancy statistics—but it is also the appropriate stance based on the training the authors had received at the hands of American social science while in exile in New York and Los Angeles.

Translators’ Introduction

p xxxviii

Gruppenexperiment in the Frankfurt School’s Oeuvre The conventional wisdom in the history of the Frankfurt School is that, soon after Horkheimer and Adorno’s return to Germany and the reestablishment of the IFS, the scholars were able to fulfill their pre-existing desires to disclaim empirical research (Held 1980, 36; Neumann 1953; Jay 1973, 252–253) and swore off empiricism of any sort, preferring the kind of abstract, even esoteric, criticism for which they are largely known today, and which has resulted in their work’s marginality both to philosophy and to social science. In this narrative, Gruppenexperiment is the last hurrah of the School’s connection to empiricism, conducted largely for reasons of financial exigency (a significant portion of the research having been funded by the U.S. authority [Wiggershaus 1994, 435; Jäger 2004]) and forgotten as soon as possible. We contend that this narrative is incorrect in at least two ways. First, the Frankfurt scholars repeatedly referred to Gruppenexperiment in particular (e.g., Adorno 2005) and empirical work in general (Adorno 2000a) in their later work. Summative works on sociology in Germany at the time refer to the study as one of several ambitious attempts to animate a postwar social science agenda (see, e.g., Stendenbach 1964), and the IFS capitalized on its social scientific status in other publications at the time such as Aspects of Sociology (Frankfurt Institute for Social Research 1956). Indeed, reading Adorno’s introduction to the infamous Methodenstreit (The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, Adorno 1976), one comes away not with a whole-cloth dismissal of empiricism but with a careful, reasoned, and nuanced—that is to say, dialectical— relationship with it. This impression is reinforced through Adorno’s 1968 lectures, published in English as Introduction to Sociology (Adorno 2000a). Second, the logical structure of Gruppenexperiment mirrors closely not just the social theoretical work the scholars had done, but also their philosophical and aesthetic ideas. Below, we consider each of these claims, concluding that empirical work in general—and Gruppenexperiment in particular—deserve to be understood as very much in the mainstream of the Frankfurt School’s intellectual legacy. That legacy should be understood in terms of the growing interest in the philosophy of Nietzsche during the course of  the scholars’ work in America: particularly in Dialectic of Enlightenment, the fragment as a mode of considering an otherwise-totalizing society takes an increasing role. Thus the apparent disconnect between the scholars’ empirical work and their other modes of social thought mirrors, in a certain sense, their commitment to a fragmentary (not to say eclectic)

Translators’ Introduction

p xxxix

approach to social critique and analysis rather than an idealist rejection of the material world.

Gruppenexperiment and German Social Science As a premier training ground for social scientists in postwar Germany, the IFS provided an early research home for many of the twentieth century’s German intellectuals. The front matter to Gruppenexperiment acknowledges 37 people’s contributions to the work, including Adorno; Adorno’s wife Gretel (identified by her unmarried name, Margarete Karplus); philosopher Helmuth Plessner and his wife Monika Plessner, who later wrote something of an exposé on Gruppenexperiment (Plessner 1991) that forms the basis of Jäger’s (2004) later ad hominem criticism of it; Dr. Herta Herzog, Lazarsfeld’s one-time wife, who had worked on the radio research but remained friendly with Adorno and the Frankfurt approach as well (Herzog 1944; Adorno 1994, 55; Herzog 1941); journalist Peter von Haselberg; sociologists Köhne and Heinz Maus; theater writer Ivan Nagel; novelist Hans Joachim Sell (also known as Nikolaus Steigert); philosopher Schweppenhäuser (whose son, Gerhardt, wrote a contemporary introduction to Adorno [Schweppenhäuser 2009]); Wolff; and sociologist and politician Ludwig von Friedeburg. Two additional assistants to the project, who, interestingly, are not named in the volume but deserve special mention here, were sociologist cum politician Ralf Dahrendorf and philosopher and social scientist Jürgen Habermas. Dahrendorf—who became an eminent scholar and center-right politician—has little kind to say about the time he spent working on Gruppenexperiment, which he derides in his memoir as “in the end neither methodologically nor substantively particularly productive” (Dahrendorf 2002, 170). Indeed, Dahrendorf snidely calls the Frankfurt School the “holy family,” accusing the scholars of insularity and ideologically driven thinking, a critique he has leveled elsewhere as well (e.g., Dahrendorf 1967, 366–383; 1997, 119–120), and he left the Frankfurt School circle quickly. Nevertheless, the problematics he investigated at the IFS continued to be the themes he pursued during his later career (see, e.g., Dahrendorf 1990 on the problem of postwar political culture). Neither was the Gruppenexperiment experience uncomplicated for Habermas, who has become (although not without controversy—see HullotKentor 2006, 24, 27–32) the best-known heir to the Frankfurt School legacy. Just after completing his work as an assistant on Gruppenexperiment, Habermas continued with another study designed to ask similar questions. Based on interviews with a random sample of students at the

Translators’ Introduction

p xl

University of Frankfurt in 1957, Student und Politik (1961), co-authored with von Friedeburg, Chrisoph Oehler, and Friedrich Weltz, was Habermas’s first book publication. In their introduction to Student und Politik, “On the Concept of Political Participation,” Habermas and his co-authors take a distinctively Gruppenexperiment-style position against participation as “a value in itself.” Indeed, they argue that “the formalization of democracy into a set of rules of play bespeaks the fetishization of civic participation in political life” (15). The interpretation Habermas pursued in Student und Politik and elsewhere followed, in many ways, Gruppenexperiment’s indictment of totally socialized society with respect to democratic politics. Nevertheless, Student und Politik’s combination of brash political commitment and impressionistic epistemology so incensed Horkheimer that Horkheimer drove Habermas away from the IFS and, with that, away from the deeply negative dialectics that characterized Frankfurt School work (see Wiggershaus 1994, 547–555, for a thorough treatment of this incident). Still, Habermas’s career, more so even than Dahrendorf’s, built on the problematics, if not the solutions, pioneered in Gruppenexperiment. In the work for Gruppenexperiment, Habermas encountered two crucial concerns, each of which runs through his later thought and work as well. The first of these is the central relevance of communication to democratic citizenship and thought. A central idea in Gruppenexperiment—that opinion is best studied in statu nascendi, in the process and context of development— shows a clear affinity with Habermas’s later emphasis on deliberative ethics, both historically and normatively. Of course, there are huge differences between the tenuous nature of the claims in Gruppenexperiment and the more sweeping claims to authenticity in Habermas, but these are matters more of degree than of kind. The second important affinity for Habermas is in the very notion of publicness (Öffentlichkeit) explored in Gruppenexperiment and which forms the bedrock for Habermas’s most famous work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas [1962] 1989). Indeed, in Adorno’s much later lecture on publicness and public opinion research, he specifically credits Habermas for his thinking on Öffentlichkeit (this volume, 180). That lecture also refers unmistakably to the problematics explored in Gruppenexperiment: the partiality of standardized modes of public opinion research, the communicative nature of opinion, and the affinity between survey research and market choices.20 It is not only through trainees, though, that Gruppenexperiment’s legacy continued. Far from abandoning their empirical heritage, the Frankfurt scholars pursued many of the same issues, and with a similar combi-

Translators’ Introduction

p xli

nation of critical bite and fealty to the real world, throughout their postwar careers. Consider Adorno’s aphorism from “The Essay as Form,” in his decidedly non-sociological Aesthetic Theory: “Nothing can be interpreted out of something that is not interpreted into it at the same time” (Adorno 1996, 4–5). This insistence on the creative role of interpretation owes its meaning to the same socio-Freudian sensibility (for more on that concept, see Hullot-Kentor 2006, Chapter 1) that underlies more political Frankfurt writings ranging from the writings on Martin Luther Thomas to “The Stars Down to Earth” and Gruppenexperiment, namely its search for “objectivities.” An essential claim in Gruppenexperiment is that, to oversimplify it, things are not always as they seem. Citizens interpret into—not just out of—messages, discussions, experiences, even fictional letters from foreign soldiers. What people interpret into such messages, then, is what deserves analysis. Scholars must interpret into their responses through a depth hermeneutic that reveals the objectivities behind the subjectivities. This strategy was not new to Gruppenexperiment, of course. But its affinity with Frankfurt scholarship from before and after the project establishes the extent to which the empirical portion of the IFS’s agenda was linked with the rest of the Institute’s work. Consider, too, the concept of “totally socialized society” (vergesellschaftete Gesellschaft), which we introduced above. This phrase bears clear resemblance to earlier Frankfurt work such as The Authoritarian Personality, but perhaps none so clearly as Dialectic of Enlightenment, in whose most commonly read essay (“The Culture Industry”) total socialization by culture disables creative thought. The phrase itself was apparently first used in Gruppenexperiment, but it returns elsewhere in Frankfurt writings, sometimes much later. After having introduced it here, Adorno returned to the concept several times during his career, including in his introduction to The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology (Adorno 1976, 55; originally written in 1969); in “Culture and Administration” (Adorno 1978, 101; originally written in 1960); in Negative Dialectics (Adorno 1973, 284; originally written in 1966); and, perhaps most revealingly, in volume 1 of Notes to Literature (Adorno 1991, 44; originally written in 1958). Horkheimer, too, had used similar themes, as in his 1947 “Rise and Decline of the Individual” (Horkheimer 1947, 140–141), as did Herbert Marcuse (e.g., Marcuse 1964) in his diagnosis of the overwhelming power of ambient ideology over individuals. Translations of vergesellschaftete Gesellschaft have varied somewhat. It has been rendered as “totally socialized society” (as in Adorno 1976, 55), “wholly socialized society” (Adorno 1991, 44), and simply “socialized society” (Adorno 1978, 101). The translation offered in Negative Dialectics

Translators’ Introduction

p xlii

is somewhat more subtle: “a socialized society in which men are tirelessly rounded up, rendered both literally and metaphorically incapable of solitude” (1973, 284). The German prefix ver- in vergesellschaftete indicates a destructive quality or a negative connotation to what comes after (in this case, -gesellschaftete, or “socialized”). So a vergesellschaftete Gesellschaft is not only totally socialized, it has been entirely overtaken by the collectivity; “utterly socialized” might better convey that sense. Kellner (1989, 121) renders it as “totally administered society,” presumably to highlight the destructive nature of conformity. We follow this reading, rendering it as “totally socialized society” in order to remain consistent with prior translations of the concept, to denote its comprehensive nature, and to signify the connection with the concept of totality (Jay 1984), with which the study’s theoretical and methodological discussions are deeply concerned. The qualitative analysis in Gruppenexperiment, Adorno’s essay “Guilt and Defense,” is literally a key to understanding Adorno’s later corpus. There he establishes the socio-Freudian analytical mode that characterizes his life’s approach to the individual-society dialectic and the problematic of postwar German culture (see Hullot-Kentor 2006: 10–13; Olick and Perrin 2010, 6–11). Perhaps more important, in his scorched-earth reply to Hofstätter’s scathing review of Gruppenexperiment, Adorno introduces among his most famous aphorisms—“in the house of the hangman one should not speak of the noose” (Adorno 2010, 2008)—the echoes of which persist throughout his repeated considerations of the role of culture and education in the democracy/authoritarianism dualism (Olick and Perrin 2010; Olick 2005). The substantive attention granted to Gruppenexperiment by the Frankfurt scholars (particularly Adorno) in the decades after its publication suggests that, far from being the neglected stepchild it is often misunderstood to be, Gruppenexperiment represented an important advance in social theory and research and a landmark moment in the development of the Frankfurt School approach to social science. It was cut from the same cloth as other Frankfurt work. Empiricism was not just forced upon the Frankfurt School but had an important place within their expansive interdisciplinary system. The philosophical concepts operative in their more speculative philosophy and aesthetics were equally at work in the empirical strain. Neglect of Gruppenexperiment in interpretations of the Frankfurt School’s thought is thus a more significant oversight than it might at first appear. Gruppenexperiment—the study itself and the controversy it stirred up—is all but unknown in contemporary social science on both sides of the Atlantic. Even for scholars well versed in the work of the Frankfurt

Translators’ Introduction

p xliii

School, the first major publication after the scholars’ return to Germany has received virtually no attention. This is a major difference with other works. Indeed, in recent years, even secondary material such as Adorno’s notes on his dreams (2007) and letters to his parents (2006) have been translated and published, making the lack of such a generative work as Gruppenexperiment all the more puzzling. The disappearance of Gruppenexperiment raises three questions. First, why did a major empirical study, with important theoretical and political implications, carried out by famous (if controversial) scholars, fail to influence social science research in the decades that followed? This question may offer insight into a second, broader question: why has the Frankfurt School been remembered so much more for its speculative and philosophical work and less for its empirical research, which was to have had an equal place at the table according to Horkheimer’s original program for the IFS? Third, how might postwar survey research, and the critiques that have emerged since, have been different had the critique in Gruppenexperiment been more central to survey research’s representational ontology? As we show in the companion volume to this one, Gruppenexperiment was not ignored upon its arrival. The response to Hofstätter’s hostile review framed Adorno’s postwar approach to the question of guilt. Furthermore, this controversy echoed through the later work of the IFS as well as that of Habermas and Dahrendorf, among others. We can only speculate, though, as to the reason it retreated so quickly from public and scholarly attention. One cause, surely, is the increasing specialization of academic work in the postwar period, such that critical work in the ontology of public opinion was often strictly separated from the everyday scientific practice of public opinion research. And since the Frankfurt School was assigned to the first category (The Authoritarian Personality notwithstanding), a large-scale empirical study seems peculiarly out of step with the work of a group generally believed to have been hostile to empirical research altogether. This view, again, relies on a mistaken understanding of Adorno’s—and, by extension, the Frankfurt School’s in general—relationship to empirical work. As noted above, throughout the controversy documented in The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology and into Adorno’s 1968 lectures on sociology, the Frankfurt scholars maintained a consistent epistemological stance. Specifically, they reiterated the approach that critical theory could exist only in dialogue with observed reality, but that at the same time the technics of observation themselves worked to shape what was observed. Indeed, Adorno’s late (1964) acknowledgment of Habermas for uncovering the critical history and theory of the public sphere highlights

Translators’ Introduction

p xliv

Adorno’s continuing insistence that empirical research, properly done, was essential to sociological work. Although Adorno was not, himself, engaged in empirical work in the last decade of his life, he was far from dismissive of it, his critique of it notwithstanding. To be sure, the specific findings of Gruppenexperiment were uncomfortable, particularly in the context of the fledgling Federal Republic of Germany. In his retort to Hofstätter, Adorno attributes Hofstätter’s dismissal of Gruppenexperiment to precisely this discomfort: “The method is declared to be useless so that the existence of the phenomenon that emerges can be denied” (Adorno 2010, 208). Strangely, the proper role of education and culture in rebuilding postwar Germany became a question for philosophers, historians, and public intellectuals, but not for social science, even though (as this volume demonstrates) key social scientific questions underlie claims about guilt and defensiveness. Beyond these issues, moreover, memory of the early postwar years—and scholarship from and about it—was problematic from virtually every side. As many later critics (to say nothing of critics at the time) argued, a virtual obsession with recovery and reconstruction worked against too much attention to the moral destitution of the war years and the physical devastation of the postwar ones. By the late 1960s, the dominant political tone characterized the postwar years in a rather undifferentiatedly negative fashion. As much as critics like Hofstätter charged Gruppenexperiment’s authors with a sort of accusatory muckraking, the study’s findings were substantially more nuanced than some of the politicized characterizations of the postwar years in the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s, when the dominant characterization of the late 1940s and 1950s was once again more sympathetic, such detailed evidence of attitudinal continuities as Gruppenexperiment provided became even less desirable than it had previously been (Olick 2005). Whatever the reasons, it is clearly the case that this enormous research effort made only the briefest of splashes before its ripples outside the Frankfurt circle quickly dissipated, though its aftereffects could be felt implicitly in the later development of German social science (Albrecht et al. 1999; König 1987; Stendenbach 1964). Yet the study contained, explicitly or implicitly, several trenchant critiques of the mode of public opinion research precisely as that mode was becoming canonical. In many ways, the disappearance of Gruppenexperiment signaled the disappearance of these critiques, although many of them re-emerged, apparently independently, in the half-century since. As already hinted above, these concerns are ontological, epistemological, and methodological, and in combination constitute a far-reaching critique, but emphatically not a thoroughgoing indictment, of survey research.

Translators’ Introduction

p xlv

The Ontological Critique Ontologically, Gruppenexperiment insists that the way people think about important public matters is not just conditioned but wholly structured by the circulation of opinion and ideas in their environs. Public opinion is, to paraphrase Durkheim, an eminently social thing (Durkheim [1912] 1995, 9). Its public character emerges not from its declarative openness—the naïve recounting of positions on hypostasized “issues” to anonymous interviewers—but from its appropriate relation to the historically and environmentally defined public. Indeed, as noted above, in his later essay on the topic Adorno returns specifically to this theme, crediting the work of Habermas with developing this idea of the public. This sense of the public has continued in the humanities, particularly in the work of Michael Warner tying publics to audiences (Warner 2002) and prior feminist critiques of Habermas’s mostly bourgeois account of the public sphere (e.g., Fraser 1989; Young 2000), and in that of Bruno Latour and his associates recognizing how the work done by polling and other techniques of representation constitutes publics (Latour 2005; Marres 2005). The ontological critique, then, can be summed up as the charge that public opinion research is the symptom, not the measure, of public opinion. Standard public opinion research takes for granted that atomized individuals have authentic, individual-level opinions on the issues of the day, and that these opinions can be evoked with relative disregard for the specific social context of that evocation. This decision to disregard context is, of course, highly contrived. It is construed as a problem if significant others, colleagues, strangers, etc., are present to pollute the one-on-one interview situation. The authentic self implicitly hypothesized by such an approach is isolated in time and space from its public, an isolation that can be sought physically or, potentially, be corrected for later in the statistical analysis of the results. But its ontological claim is so clear as to be articulated only rarely: the true citizen, reporting her authentic beliefs, does so in the presence of as few other citizens, observers, and interlocutors as possible. In its most critical mode, Gruppenexperiment argues for understanding public opinion research itself as an object to be studied. While it does not entirely connect the dots with French theories that credit the social environment with evoking a particular kind of subject (such as those of Durkheim and, later, Foucault), the critique in Gruppenexperiment is suggestive of  the idea that it is the opinion environment that produces individual opinions—particularly in the context of a vergesellschaftete Gesellschaft, a

Translators’ Introduction

p xlvi

totally socialized society, in which authenticity itself is manufactured. As the authors put it in Chapter 1, “That everyone possesses his own opinion is a cliché of the Modern.” To be sure, the opinion environment is conceptualized more dialectically and as more tenuous than Durkheim’s organic social whole, a difference Adorno clarified and refined in his later writings addressing Durkheim in particular; while offering substantial credit to Durkheim for his insistence on conceptualizing society as a totality (Adorno 1970), Adorno also argues against hypostatizing society through “false wholism” (Adorno 2000a). Foucault, for his part, acknowledges the affinity between his work and that of the Frankfurt School: “I should have understood them much earlier. Had I read these works, there are many things I wouldn’t have needed to say, and I would have avoided some mistakes” (Trombadori 2000, 274). The epistemological challenges raised by Gruppenexperiment are no less trenchant than the ontological ones. Böhm writes in the preface that nonpublic opinion circulates sub rosa, as a “second currency.” There are important connotations of exchange and symbolism evoked by the currency metaphor. The available language, as Appendix B claims, is the second coin of the realm, available to structure exchange of ideas and positions. How best to access the presence, contours, and content of this shadowy ideology? Here, too, the project was prescient. Standardized survey research, it argued, encourages standardized answers. It is an opportunity for impression management, and, therefore, its results document respondents’ desired image, not their genuine or certainly subconscious selves. This is not an indictment, just a plea to refocus research. After all, to measure who respondents want to appear to be is an excellent way to ascertain social patterns of desirability in the contexts in which those respondents live. As noted, the Frankfurt scholars’ approach to addressing these problems was to adapt a then-nascent American technique—focus groups—to the problem of observing opinion in statu nascendi, or during the process of its development. Since opinion is dynamic, dependent upon its environment, and expressive of the vergesellschaftete Gesellschaft, the best way to evaluate such opinion is to watch as it unfolds in response to a novel challenge or stimulus. Gruppenexperiment is anything but silent on the rationale for using focus groups in this way. Opinions are formed and evoked in social contexts. In order best to observe this formation, it makes most sense to simulate social contexts in which speakers are likely to be uninhibited and organize discussion around a common stimulus. This is the basic methodology advocated by Merton et al. (1956) in their classic The Focused Interview, which takes a very similar social psychological posi-

Translators’ Introduction

p xlvii

tion: evoking authentic views requires setting up a social environment in which these views can emerge. This approach to gauging the development of opinion in group contexts has since developed independently from Gruppenexperiment in works on politics (Gamson 1992), crime (Sasson 1995), and democratic engagement (Perrin 2006), and has been theorized by Eliasoph and Lichterman (2003), among others. In both its recent and its Gruppenexperiment instances, it avoids the most trenchant recent critique of focus groups as a mode of public opinion research, that of Javier Lezaun (2007). Lezaun notes that now-conventional focus group research involves “using a group to engender authentically individual opinions” (130). In other words, opinion is held to be individual in character but revealed in a group setting. By contrast, in Gruppenexperiment (and in the more recent strain noted above) opinion is held to be essentially social—developed, expressed, refined, and potentially changed by reference to others through discussion, learning, and debate. Indeed, in a revealing contrast, Lezaun critiques the practice, standard among focus group moderators, of avoiding silence and encouraging constant discussion. In Gruppenexperiment, silence is an important matter for analysis and forms a key point of disagreement between the Frankfurt scholars and their chief critic, Peter Hofstätter. Still, the critiques of public opinion Gruppenexperiment enumerates do not lead inexorably to focus groups as a research method. Other approaches include media and discourse analysis, in-depth interviewing, and more. The Frankfurt scholars’ choice of focus groups is not just the result of their critique of public opinion surveys; it is, again, also a statement of a specific ontology of public opinion. Gruppenexperiment does not simply reject survey-based research and its assumption about the individual character of opinion; it offers a substitute, methodologically and theoretically, that places publicness at the center of public opinion. It thus simultaneously anticipates a host of late-twentieth-century critiques of public opinion, and offers an early forerunner to much more recent, deliberation- and communicationcentered theories of democratic practice. Below, we highlight some of the most important such theories that have emerged and consider their affinities with Gruppenexperiment.

More Recent Critiques and Amendments to Public Opinion Research Despite its theoretical and methodological ambition, Gruppenexperiment did not establish either its critique or its method as an accepted mode of

Translators’ Introduction

p xlviii

public opinion research. Instead, as the twentieth century progressed, closed-answer, random-sample polling via telephone, mail, or in-person interviews (and later the Internet) became the overwhelming standard not just for measuring public opinion but for conceptualizing it (Converse 1987; Igo 2007). Standardized survey polling encourages citizens to understand their opinions as being individual in character, not a property of the publics or groups of which they are members. As several of the critiques to which we turn next demonstrate, the concentration on the atomized individual and the analogy to market behavior may contribute to the “totally socialized society” the Frankfurt scholars diagnosed. What value, then, does Gruppenexperiment hold for twenty-first-century practitioners of public opinion research? To answer this, we very briefly explore recent theories of public opinion from a point of view informed by our reading of Gruppenexperiment. In the half-century since Gruppenexperiment appeared on, and then left, the scene, a number of important critiques of public opinion have emerged. These include, perhaps most prominently, Pierre Bourdieu’s “Public Opinion Does Not Exist” (1979), which takes public opinion polling to task for three hidden assumptions. These are the ubiquity of opinion (i.e., that all citizens have opinions); the equality of opinion (i.e., that each citizen’s opinion is equally important to each other’s opinion); and the set agenda (i.e., that which questions should be asked is a matter of common agreement). Popular critiques of “governing by polls” are common in public discourse, so much so that political scientists Lawrence Jacobs and Robert Shapiro defend politicians against the charge of pandering by examining the behavior as listening to the public (Jacobs and Shapiro 2000), a position adopted by Erikson et al. as well (Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson 2002). Similarly, polling leaders have grown very defensive about critiques of polling (see, for instance, Newport 2004), with one accusing a scholar of “poll-bashing” (Kohut 2008). Here we enumerate several critiques emerging both from Gruppenexperiment and the more recent critiques as a way of imagining what opinion research might look like had Gruppenexperiment been a more central part of postwar thinking about public opinion. • The expressivity critique. This critique holds that polling allows for

too little information to flow from the public to the pollster. Citizens are not allowed to engage in creative or expressive activity, since their only role is making a choice among a predetermined set of options. Polling thus changes the state of having an opinion from being an active decision (expressing an opinion) to a passive one (having an opinion at the ready when asked). This concern is quite

Translators’ Introduction

p xlix

commonplace, and indeed public opinion scholars (e.g., Zaller 1992; Page and Shapiro 1992) have argued explicitly that poll answers should be understood as expressions of latent, considered judgments. Adorno specifically disclaimed this critique in his reply to Hofstätter’s review for reasons that resonate with his aesthetics as well as his political theory: ease of communication, whether in listening to a work of music or espousing a position, is implicated in fetishization (see Hullot-Kentor 2006; Adorno 1982b). Thus the absence of easy opportunities for self-expression is not, in itself, a problem for Adorno and colleagues. • The performativity critique. Building on Austin’s (1962) insight that certain forms of language are performative—that is, that they create situations instead of merely representing them—recent work has demonstrated, for example, that economic behavior often follows economic theory instead of leading it (MacKenzie 2003). Wendy Nelson Espeland and Michael Sauder demonstrate that law school rankings are reactive—that is, law schools change behavior in response to widespread ranking practices (Espeland and Sauder 2007). To generalize this point, many measures, emphatically including polling (see Igo 2007), affect the behaviors of the people or institutions being measured. In the realm of democracy and public opinion, several scholars have claimed convincingly that publics are formed through the act of their being conceptualized and measured (see, e.g., Warner 2002; Latour 2005). Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose offer an interesting twist on this critique, arguing that while survey research does indeed help create the public it purports to measure, this is essentially a positive development, as it demonstrates survey research’s utility as a technology (Osborne and Rose 1999). Either way, the performativity critique argues that polling produces a particular kind of citizen-subject, both linguistically and ontologically. This subject is effectively a choice-making one (Paley 2001, 135–140) or an opinion-having subject (Jepperson and Swidler 1994; Jepperson 1992). One byproduct of this shift is that the “cost” of opining is shifted from the opining subject, who would be tasked with choosing to express her opinion, to the poll-taker, who is tasked with extracting an opinion from the subject (see Ginsberg 1989). • The psychological/interactionist critique. Unlike the others thus far, the psychological/interactionist critique has gained a strong following within mainstream survey research. Essentially, this approach holds (as did Gruppenexperiment) that opinions, and therefore survey answers, are generated in particular interactional contexts. Perrin

Translators’ Introduction

pl

(2005, 2006), for example, demonstrated that the specific contexts (“microcultures”) in which citizens expressed views had an independent effect on how they expressed those views (see also Eliasoph and Lichterman 2003). There is therefore an extensive technical (although, importantly, not epistemological) literature, for example, on techniques for measuring question-order effects, wording effects, interviewer race and gender effects, and other ways of making the interview environment neutral or transparent. The ideal in this literature is to “control for” the interview environment in order to simulate the isolated, autonomous individual. • Finally, the deliberative democratic critique (e.g., Habermas 2006), which in many ways has its contemporary roots in the agenda launched by Gruppenexperiment, takes seriously the idea that an individual citizen’s opinions may change based on her interactions with others—in other words, that there is a public in public opinion (see also Adorno 2005). This approach, therefore, incorporates the expressivity and performativity critiques but at the cost of recognizing the interactionist concerns that plague deliberative experiments large and small (see, e.g., Sunstein 2000; Leib 2004; Ackerman and Fishkin 2004). Scholars who put great stock in the promise of deliberative democracy would do well to heed the findings of Chapter 4, which demonstrates that group dynamics mold individuals’ views, but not necessarily toward a common, rational, or contemplative position. Gruppenexperiment anticipated, in various ways, each of these later critiques and developments and sought to address them at least provisionally. Unlike many of the critiques, though, Gruppenexperiment contained a large, if flawed, empirical base upon which it based its concerns and sought to remedy them. Current public opinion researchers are far from blind to these issues; indeed, the history of public opinion polling is shot through with attempts to work around them. These include experimental approaches such as question-order effects, vignettes, and question wording variation (see, e.g., Sniderman and Piazza 1993; Greenberg and Skocpol 1997) as well as approaches that claim that large-scale aggregation of individual opinions “averages out” to provide reliable population-wide estimates of authentic public opinion (e.g., Zaller 1992; Page and Shapiro 1992; Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson 2002). While these techniques make polling increasingly precise and useful, they do not address the ontological or representational critiques— these critiques are based on the underlying nature of publicness itself.

Translators’ Introduction

p li

There is a strong link between democratic institutions, democratic citizenship, and public opinion research. Gruppenexperiment’s claims, were the study better known, would presumably have produced a different kind of research, more self-reflexive, less authoritative, and perhaps less invested in the coherent individual as the unit of analysis. In a sense the ontology of Gruppenexperiment demands that we think about the origins of opinions as both super-individual (in the collective) and supra-individual (the situation in which an individual expresses opinions) instead of as relatively stable properties of coherent individuals. We hope that the greater availability of the Gruppenexperiment—its successes and its pitfalls—will encourage such efforts.

References Abbott, Andrew. 2004. Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the Social Sciences. New York: W. W. Norton. Ackerman, Bruce, and James S. Fishkin. 2004. Deliberation Day. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Adorno, Theodor W. 1960. “Was bedeutet: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit.” Radio Lecture, Hessischer Rundfunk, February 7. In Theodor Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords. Translated by Henry W. Pickford, 89–103 New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Also in Theodor Adorno, Guilt and Defense: On the Legacies of National Socialism in Postwar Germany, 213–227. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010. ———. 1968. “Scientific Experiences of a European Scholar in America.” In The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930–1960, ed. Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, 33–70. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap/Harvard University Press. ———. 1970. “Einleitung.” In Emile Durkheim, Soziologie und Philosophie, trans. Eva Moldenhauer, 7–44. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. ———. 1973. Negative Dialectics. Trans. E. B. Ashton. New York: Continuum. (Orig. pub. 1966.) ———. 1976. “Introduction.” In Theodor W. Adorno, Albert Hans, et al., The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, trans. Glyn Adey and David Frisby, 1–67. New York: Harper & Row. (Orig. pub. 1969.) ———. 1977. “Letter to Walter Benjamin, 18 March, 1936.” In Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukacs, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno, Aesthetics and Politics, ed. and trans. Ronald Taylor, 120–126. London: Verso. ———. 1978. “Culture and Administration.” Trans. Wes Blomster. Telos 37 (Fall 1978):93–111. (Orig. pub. in German, 1960.) ———. 1982a. Against Epistemology: A Metacritique: Studies in Husserl and the Phenomenological Antinomies. Trans. Willis Domingo. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Translators’ Introduction

p lii

———. 1982b. “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening.” In The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, ed. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt, 270–299. New York: Continuum. ———. 1991. Notes to Literature. Vol. 1. Trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, and ed. Rolf Tiedemann. New York: Columbia University Press. (Orig. pub. 1958.) ———. 1994. “The Stars Down to Earth.” In The Stars Down to Earth and Other Essays on the Irrational in Culture, ed. Stephen Crook, 34–127. New York: Routledge. Originally published in Telos 19 (Spring 1974):13–90. ———. 1996. Aesthetic Theory. Trans. and ed. Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 2000a. Introduction to Sociology. Trans. Christoph Gödde. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 2000b. The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 2005. “Opinion Research and Publicness (Meinungsforschung und Öffentlichkeit).” Trans. and Introduction by Andrew J. Perrin and Lars Jarkko. Sociological Theory 23 (1):116–123. (Orig. pub. in German, 1964.) ———. 2006. Letters to His Parents. Trans. Wieland Hoban, and ed. Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz. New York: Polity. ———. 2007. Dream Notes. Trans. Rodney Livingstone, and ed. Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz. New York: Polity. ———. 2010. Guilt and Defense: On the Legacies of National Socialism in Postwar Germany. Trans. and ed. Jeffrey K. Olick and Andrew J. Perrin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Adorno, Theodor W., Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: W. W. Norton. Adorno, Theodor W., Hans Albert, Ralf Dahrendorf, Harald Pilot, and Karl Popper. 1976. The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology. Trans. Glyn Adey and David Frisby. New York: Harper & Row. Albrecht, Clemens, Günter C. Behrmann, Michael Bock, Harald Homann, and Friedrich H. Tenbruck. 1999. Die intellektuelle Gründung der Bundesrepublik: Eine Wirkungsgeschichte der Frankfurter Schule. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag. Altemeyer, Bob. 1981. Right-Wing Authoritarianism. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Apostolidis, Paul. 1998. “Culture Industry or Social Physiognomy: Adorno’s Critique of Christian Right Radio.” Philosophy and Social Criticism 24 (5):53–84. ———. 2000. Stations of the Cross: Adorno and Christian Right Radio. Durham: Duke University Press. Austin, John Langshaw (J. L.). 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bales, Robert F. 1950. Interaction Process Analysis: A Method for the Study of Small Groups. Cambridge, Mass.: Addison Wesley. Benjamin, Walter. 2008. “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version.” In The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin, 19–55. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Translators’ Introduction

p liii

Bergmann, Werner. 1997. Antisemitismus in Öffentlichen Konflikten: Kollektives Lernen in der politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik 1949–1989. Frankfurt: Campus. Böhme, Gernot. 2001. Aisthetik. Vorlesungen über Ästhetik als allgemeine Wahrnemungslehre. Munich: Fink. ———. 2003. “Contribution to the Critique of the Aesthetic Economy.” Thesis Eleven 73:71–82. Boltanski, Luc, Y. Daré, and M.-A. Schiltz. 1984. “La dénonciation.” Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 51:3–46. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1979. “Public Opinion Does Not Exist.” In Communication and Class Struggle, Vol. 1, ed. Armand Mattelart and Seth Siegelaub, 124–130. New York: International Mass Media Research Center. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. “Opinion Polls: A ’Science’ Without a Scientist.” pp. 168–75 in In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2005. “The Mystery of Ministry: From Particular Wills to the General Will.” pp. 55–63 in Wacquant, ed., Pierre Bourdieu and Democratic Politics. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Bunzel, Joseph H. 1950. Review of The Authoritarian Personality, Dynamics of Prejudice, and Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder. American Sociological Review 15 (4):571–573. Claussen, Detlev. 2008. Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press/Belknap. Converse, Jean M. 1987. Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence 1890–1960. Berkeley: University of California Press. Coser, Lewis A. 1984. Refugee Scholars in America: Their Impact and Their Experiences. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Dahrendorf, Ralf. 1967. Society and Democracy in Germany. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. ———. 1990. The Unresolved Past: A Debate in German History. A Conference Sponsored by the Wheatland Foundation. ed. Gina Thomas. New York: St. Martin’s Press. ———. 1997. After 1989: Morals, Revolution, and Civil Society. London: Macmillan. ———. 2002. Über Grenzen: Lebenserinnerungen. Munich: C. H. Beck. de Grazia, Alfred. 1950. Review of The Authoritarian Personality. American Political Science Review 44 (4):1005–1006. du Bois-Reymond, Manuela. 1998. “European Identity in the Young and Dutch Students’ Images of Germany and the Germans.” Comparative Education 34 (1):27–40. Duneier, Mitchell. 1999. Sidewalk. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Durkheim, Emile. 1995. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Trans. Karen E. Fields. New York: Free Press. (Orig. pub. 1912.) Eliasoph, Nina, and Paul Lichterman. 2003. “Culture in Interaction.” American Journal of Sociology 108 (4):735–794. Erikson, Robert S., Michael MacKuen, and James A. Stimson. 2002. The Macro Polity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Translators’ Introduction

p liv

Espeland, Wendy Nelson, and Michael Sauder. 2007. “Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds.” American Journal of Sociology 113 (1):1–40. Etzkorn, K. Peter, and Kurt H. Wolff. 1954. “Hans Vogel: The Case Study of a Young Farmer on a Visit to the United States.” Studies in German-American Postwar Problems (SGAPP), No. 2. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The Ohio State University, Columbus. Eulau, Heinz. 1951. “Review: Social Science at the Crossroads.” Antioch Review 11 (1):117–128. Fields, Karen E. 1995. “Translator’s Introduction: Religion as an Eminently Social Thing.” In Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields, xvii–lxxiii. New York: Free Press. Fischer, Claude S. 1994. America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. Berkeley: University of California Press. Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. 1956. Aspects of Sociology. Preface by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Trans. John Viertel. Boston: Beacon Press. Fraser, Nancy. 1989. “What’s Critical About Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender.” In Unruly Practices, 113–143. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gallup, George, and Saul Forbes Rae. 1940. The Pulse of Democracy: The PublicOpinion Poll and How It Works. New York: Simon & Schuster. Gamson, William A. 1992. Talking Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ginsberg, Benjamin. 1989. “How Polling Transforms Public Opinion.” In Manipulating Public Opinion: Essays on Public Opinion as a Dependent Variable, ed. Michael Margolis and Gary A. Mauser, 271–293. Pacific Grove, Calif.: Brooks/Cole. Gitlin, Todd. 1978. “Media Sociology: The Dominant Paradigm.” Theory and Society 6 (2):205–253. Greenberg, Stanley B., and Theda Skocpol. 1997. The New Majority: Toward a Popular Progressive Politics. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1968. Knowledge and Human Interests. Trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press. ———. 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. (Orig. pub. 1962.) ———. 2006. “Political Communication in Media Society: Does Democracy Still Enjoy an Epistemic Dimension? The Impact of Normative Theory on Empirical Research.” Communication Theory 16:411–426. Habermas, Jürgen, Ludwig von Friedeburg, Chrisoph Oehler, and Friedrich Weltz. 1961. Student und Politik: Eine soziologische Untersuchung zum politischen Bewußtsein Frankfurter Studenten. Neuwied am Rhein, Germany: Luchterhand. Held, David. 1980. Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Translators’ Introduction

p lv

Herbst, Susan. 1995. “On Electronic Public Space: Talk Shows in Theoretical Perspective.” Political Communication 12:263–274. Herzog, Hertha. 1941. “On Borrowed Experience: An Analysis of Listening to Daytime Sketches.” Studies in Philosophy and Social Science 9 (1):65–95. ———. 1944. “What Do We Really Know About Daytime Serial Listeners?” In Radio Research: 1942–1943, ed. Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Frank N. Stanton, 3–33. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce. Hofstätter, Peter. 1963a. “Bewältigte Vergangenheit?” Die Zeit June 14. Available at http://www.zeit.de/1963/24/Bewaeltigte-Vergangenheit (accessed July 6, 2010). ———. 1963b. “Was verspricht man sich vom Schulfach Zeitgeschichte?” Die Zeit June 21. Available at http://www.zeit.de/1963/25/Was-verspricht-man-sich -vom-Schulfach-Zeitgeschichte (accessed July 6, 2010). Horkheimer, Max. 1947. “Rise and Decline of the Individual.” In Eclipse of Reason, 128–161. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 1972. Critical Theory: Selected Essays. New York: Continuum. Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. 2002. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. (Orig. pub. as Dialektik der Aufklärung, 1947.) Hullot-Kentor, Robert. 2006. Things Beyond Resemblance: Essays on Theodor W. Adorno. New York: Columbia University Press. Igo, Sarah E. 2007. The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Inkeles, Alex, and David Horton Smith. 1974. Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Institut für Sozialforschung. 1936. Studien über Autorität und Familie. Paris: Alcan. Jacobs, Lawrence R., and Robert Y. Shapiro. 2000. Politicians Don’t Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jäger, Lorenz. 2004. Adorno: A Political Biography. Trans. Stewart Spencer. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Jahoda, Marie, ed. 1954. Studies in the Scope and Method of The Authoritarian Personality. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press. Jay, Martin. 1973. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950. Boston: Little, Brown. ———. 1984. Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jenemann, David. 2007. Adorno in America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Jepperson, Ronald L. 1992. “National Scripts: The Varying Construction of Individualism across the Modern Nation-States.” Ph.D. diss., Yale University. Jepperson, Ronald L., and Ann Swidler. 1994. “What Properties of Culture Should We Measure?” Poetics 22 (4):359–371.

Translators’ Introduction

p lvi

Katz, Elihu. 1987. “Communications Research since Lazarsfeld.” Public Opinion Quarterly 51 (4):S24–S45. Katz, Elihu, and Paul F. Lazarsfeld. 1955. Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press. Kellner, Douglas. 1989. Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Klemperer, Victor. 2000. The Language of the Third Reich: LTI—Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist’s Notebook. Trans. Martin Brady. London: Athlone Press. Klinenberg, Eric, and Andrew J. Perrin. 2000. “Symbolic Politics in the Information Age: The 1996 Presidential Campaign in Cyberspace.” Information, Communication, and Society 1 (3):17—38. Kohut, Andrew. 2008. “Review of The Averaged American, by Sarah Igo.” Public Opinion Quarterly 72 (1):160–163. König, René. 1987. Soziologie in Deutschland: Begründer, Verfechter, Verächter. Munich: Hanser. Lamnek, Siegfried. 2005. Gruppendiskussion: Theorie und Praxis 2. Auflage. Weinheim, Germany: Beltz Verlag. Lamont, Michèle, and Laurent Thévenot. 2000. “Introduction: Toward a Renewed Comparative Cultural Sociology.” In Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology, ed. Michèle Lamont and Laurent Thevenot, 1–22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lasswell, Harold D. 1951. “Review: Personality, Prejudice, and Politics.” World Politics 3 (3): 399–407. Latour, Bruno. 2005. “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: Or How to Make Things Public.” In Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, 14–43. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Lazarsfeld, Paul F. 1941. “Remarks on Administrative and Critical Communications Research.” Studies in Philosophy and Social Science 9 (1):2–16. Lazarsfeld, Paul F., and Frank N. Stanton. 1944. Radio Research, 1942–1943. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce. Leib, Ethan J. 2004. Deliberative Democracy in America: A Proposal for a Popular Branch of Government. University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press. Lezaun, Javier. 2007. “A Market of Opinions: The Political Epistemology of Focus Groups.” Sociological Review 55 (S2):130–151. MacKenzie, Donald. 2003. “An Equation and its Worlds: Bricolage, Exemplars, Disunity and Performativity in Financial Economics.” Social Studies of Science 33 (6):831–868. Marcuse, Herbert. 1964. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon Press. Marres, Noortje. 2005. “Issues Spark a Public into Being: A Key but Often Forgotten Point of the Lipmann-Dewey Debate.” In Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, 208–217. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Martin, John Levi. 2001. “The Authoritarian Personality, 50 Years Later: What Lessons Are There for Political Psychology?” Political Psychology 22 (1):1–26.

Translators’ Introduction

p lvii

Mendelberg, Tali. 2002. “The Deliberative Citizen: Theory and Evidence.” Research in Micropolitics 6:151–193. Merritt, Anna J. and Richard L. Merritt, eds. 1970. Public Opinion in Occupied Germany: The OMGUS Surveys, 1945–1949. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ———, eds. 1980. Public Opinion in Semisovereign Germany: The HICOG Surveys, 1949–1955. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Merritt, Richard L. 1995. Democracy Imposed: U.S. Occupation Policy and the German Public, 1945–1949. New Haven: Yale University Press. Merton, Robert K., Marjorie Fiske, and Patricia L. Kendall. 1956. The Focused Interview: A Manual of Problems and Procedures. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press. Morgan, David L. 1997. Focus Groups as Qualitative Research. 2nd ed. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage. Mutz, Diana C. 2006. Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Neumann, Franz. 1953. “The Social Sciences.” In The Cultural Migration: The European Scholar in America, ed. Franz Neumann et al., 4–26. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Newport, Frank. 2004. Polling Matters: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People. New York: Warner Books. Noelle-Neumann, Elizabeth. 1984. The Spiral Of Silence: Public Opinion—Our Social Skin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nowotny, Stefan. 2003. “The Condition of Becoming Public.” Transversal: Real Public Spaces (September). Trans. Aileen Derieg. Available at www.eipcp.net/ transversal/1203/nowotny/en (accessed June 10, 2010). Olick, Jeffrey K. 2005. In the House of the Hangman: The Agonies of German Defeat, 1943–1949. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2007. “Collective Memory and Nonpublic Opinion: An Historical Note on a Methodological Controversy about a Political Problem.” Symbolic Interaction 30 (1):41–55. Olick, Jeffrey K, and Andrew J. Perrin. 2010. “Introduction.” In Theodor W. Adorno, Guilt and Defense: On the Legacies of National Socialism in Postwar Germany, trans. and ed. Jeffrey K. Olick and Andrew J. Perrin, 3–42. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Osborne, Thomas, and Nikolas Rose. 1999. “Do the Social Sciences Create Phenomena? The Example of Public Opinion Research.” British Journal of Sociology 50 (3):367–396. Page, Benjamin, and Robert Y. Shapiro. 1992. The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Paley, Julia. 2001. Marketing Democracy: Power and Social Movements in PostDictatorship Chile. Berkeley: University of California Press. Perrin, Andrew J. 2004. “Who’s Afraid of Linear Regression?” Newsletter of the Sociology of Culture Section 18 (3):1. Available at www.ibiblio.org/culture/ newsletter-archive/cult183.pdf (accessed June 10, 2010). ———. 2005. “Political Microcultures: Linking Civic Life and Democratic Citizenship.” Social Forces 84:2 (December): 1049–1082.

Translators’ Introduction

p lviii

———. 2006. Citizen Speak: The Democratic Imagination in American Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Perrin, Andrew J., and Katherine McFarland. 2008. “The Sociology of Political Representation and Deliberation.” Sociology Compass 2 (4):1128–1244. Perrin, Andrew J., and Stephen B. Vaisey. 2008. “Parallel Public Spheres: Distance and Discourse in Letters to the Editor.” American Journal of Sociology 114 (3):781–810. Pickford, Henry W. 1997. “Critical Models: Adorno’s Theory and Practice of Cultural Criticism.” Yale Journal of Criticism 10 (2):247–270. Plessner, Monika. 1991. “Miteinander reden heißt miteinander träumen: Gruppenstudie mit Horkheimer.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Nr. 226, vom 28. Pollock, Friedrich. 1955. Gruppenexperiment: Ein Studienbericht. Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie, Nr. 2. Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt. ———. 1976. “Empirical Research into Public Opinion.” In Critical Sociology: Selected Readings, trans. Thomas Hall, and ed. Paul Connerton, 225–236. New York: Penguin. “Proposal for the Reopening of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfort [sic] on Main.” 1949. American Sociological Review 14:681–682. Roth, Guenther, and Kurt H. Wolff. 1954. “The American Denazification of Germany: A Historical Survey and an Appraisal.” Studies in German-American Postwar Problems (SGAPP), No. 1. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The Ohio State University, Columbus. Sasson, Theodore. 1995. Crime Talk: How Citizens Construct a Social Problem. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Sawyer, R. Keith. 2001. “Emergence in Sociology: Contemporary Philosophy of Mind and Some Implications for Sociological Theory.” American Journal of Sociology 107:3 (November): 551–85. Schudson, Michael. 2006. “The Troubling Equivalence of Citizen and Consumer.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 608:193–204. Schweppenhäuser, Gerhard. 2009. Theodor W. Adorno: An Introduction. Trans. James Rolleston. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Shibutani, Tamotsu. 1952. Review of The Authoritarian Personality. American Journal of Sociology 57 (5):527–529. Sniderman, Paul M., and Thomas Piazza. 1993. The Scar of Race. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Stendenbach, F. J. 1964. “Sociology in Germany since 1945.” Social Science Information 3:7–51. Stern, Frank, and William Templer. 1992. The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge: Antisemitism and Philosemitism in Postwar Germany. New York: Pergamon Press. Sunstein, Cass R. 2000. “Deliberative Trouble?: Why Groups Go to Extremes.” Yale Law Journal 110 (1):71–119. Swidler, Ann. 2001. Talk of Love: How Culture Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Translators’ Introduction

p lix

Tiedemann, Rolf. 1986. Editorial commentary in Adorno, Theodor W., Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Rolf Tiedemann. [Electronic Resource]. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp/Digitale Bibliothek. Tilly, Charles. 2006. Regimes and Repertoires. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Trombadori, Duccio. 2000. “Interview with Michel Foucault.” In Michel Foucault, Power, ed. James D. Faubion, 239–297. New York: New Press. Wagner-Pacifici, Robin. 2000. Theorizing the Standoff: Contingency in Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Warner, Michael. 2002. “Publics and Counterpublics.” Public Culture 14 (1):49–90. Watten, Bennett. 2006. “Translating Authority: Adorno’s Cultural Poetics in The Authoritarian Personality.” Available at www.english.wayne.edu/fac_pages/ ewatten/pdfs/adorno.pdf (accessed June 10, 2010). Wheatland, Thomas. 2009. The Frankfurt School in Exile. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wiggershaus, Rolf. 1994. The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance. Trans. Michael Robertson. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Witkin, Robert W. 2002. “Why Did Adorno ‘Hate’ Jazz?” Sociological Theory 18 (1):145–170. Wolff, Kurt H. 1953. “My Recent Experiences in Germany.” Unpublished transcript of speech given to the Graduate Sociology Club, Ohio State University, Columbus, 12 February. ———. 1955. “German Attempts at Picturing Germany: Texts.” Studies in German-American Postwar Problems (SGAPP), No. 3. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The Ohio State University, Columbus. Young, Iris Marion. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zaller, John. 1992. The Nature and Origin of Mass Opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Žižek, Slavoj. 1991. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Notes 1. Our introduction to the Frankfurt School’s empirical work follows Olick’s (2007) earlier work. 2. Martin Jay argues that totality has been a central organizing concept throughout the history of western Marxist theory (Jay 1984). 3. A short excerpt from Group Experiment, translated by Thomas Hall, appeared in Paul Connerton’s edited volume Critical Sociology (Pollock 1976). To our knowledge, that is the only other English translation of any substantial segment of Group Experiment other than ours here and in the companion volume, Guilt

Translators’ Introduction

4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

12. 13.

14.

15.

p lx

and Defense: On the Legacies of National Socialism in Postwar Germany (Adorno 2010). Pollock had previously succeeded the Institute’s first director, Carl Grünberg, when the latter suffered a heart attack. Pollock, an economist by training, lacked the prestige and intellectual ambition to lead the Institute, of which he was more an administrative director. Another important work, “The Stars Down to Earth”(Adorno [1974] 1994), which Adorno conducted on a return visit to California in 1953 (toward the end of the work on the Gruppenexperiment), demonstrates the same degree of theoretical/empirical integration as well. These themes, of course, resonate in similar situations more recently as well (Apostolidis 2000; Wagner-Pacifici 2000, 53–55). See Böhme 2001 (Böhme 2003 for an English-language treatment) for a contemporary reconstruction of the concepts in Dialectic of Enlightenment through the lens of the “aesthetic economy.” Indeed, in “Guilt and Defense,” which was a major section of Gruppenexperiment and which we present in our companion volume, Adorno explicitly charges the culture industry with “impos[ing] the politically neutral cult of celebrity . . . on the population,” a cult that shows “affinity . . . with totalitarian forms of domination” (Adorno 2010, 143). These critiques did not prevent the Frankfurt scholars from implying a similar concept in Gruppenexperiment, in part because the most important of the critiques at the time did not appear until 1954. Ethnographer Mitch Duneier (1999, 343ff.) has further analyzed the failing of this position, naming it the “ethnographic fallacy.” The same fascination with the temporary sociality of the long-distance train is also the opening premise of Hitchcock’s famous film of roughly the same time period, Strangers on a Train (1951). See Žižek (1991, 42) for more on the communicative paranoia of Strangers. On the interesting form of the letter to the editor, see Perrin and Vaisey 2008; and Boltanski et al. 1984. These analyses amount mostly to concatenated excerpts from the interview transcripts along with the text of a talk Wolff gave to the Sociology Club at Ohio State University, where he was a professor. While it appears he planned at one point to do more such work and publish it, in fact Wolff’s work remained only in manuscript form (Wolff 1953; Roth and Wolff 1954; Etzkorn and Wolff 1954; Wolff 1955). The authors do suggest in the Afterword that “the more their [the silent participants’] number can be reduced, the more reliable the findings will be.” This position seems inconsistent with their general treatment of silence as an interpretable category. Jepperson’s very insightful argument cites Habermas on the public sphere, but not Pollock, Horkheimer, or Adorno. The fact that Gruppenexperiment is missing from Jepperson’s otherwise very wide range of reference lends further credence to our claim that the study simply disappeared from common social scientific knowledge.

Translators’ Introduction

p lxi

16. Although the Jahoda volume containing these critiques did not come out until 1954, when Gruppenexperiment was nearly complete, similar criticisms had circulated since the original publication of The Authoritarian Personality. While the book was generally reviewed positively upon its release, a recurring concern was the question of the stability and ontological reality of the authoritarian “types” it identified (Bunzel 1950; de Grazia 1950; Eulau 1951; Lasswell 1951; Shibutani 1952). 17. Wiggershaus (1994, 473) attributes Chapter 4 to Volker von Hagen, an associate of the IFS at the time. While Gruppenexperiment’s preface credits von Hagen with writing a monograph, it does not link him specifically to Chapter 4. 18. A similar point, though made in very different form, can be found in Victor Klemperer’s LTI (Klemperer 2000), written in the mid-1930s but first published in 1946. 19. Hofstätter’s review, and Adorno’s reply, appear in the companion volume (Adorno 2010). 20. On the latter concern, see Schudson 2006 for a thoughtful corrective.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

Foreword franz böhm

R

eading this astounding report, one cannot help simultaneously admiring and being puzzled by it. Which aspects are admirable and which are puzzling? Well, this report compiles prevalent opinions about certain particular questions, for example, about guilt for what happened in the Third Reich, about democracy, about the Jewish question, etc. Before we are shown the findings of these surveys, we are informed about how the Institute for Social Research’s working group went about the project, which was aimed at determining what opinions are in circulation and which groups tend to hold which of these opinions—whether one aggregates the groups or whether one distinguishes them from each other, for example, the young and the old, the college-educated and not, the urban and the rural, those who were in the war for just a few years and those who were in it for many years, housewives, unskilled workers, white collar workers, independent business men, the self-employed, etc. We learn how the surveys themselves were conducted in such a way that the respondents could express themselves candidly and without inhibitions. In short, the entire experimental design is spread open before us so that we are in a position to form our own impression of how conclusive the results are. What is admirable is this account of the methods used, the actual development of a new method for interviewing, [and] the intellectual effort that was involved in the investigation of the results. For researchers working

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p2

in completely different fields—lawyers, for example, or economists or physicists—it is particularly fascinating to get to know the methods of a relatively young science, which experimental sociology certainly is. It is also impressive because it is a matter of a science that deals with a subject that is so important for our existence as citizens of a state and members of society: namely, ascertaining what our fellow citizens and fellow men believe. One would not imagine how difficult it is to bring this out, what preparations and precautions have to be taken for this purpose, how demanding and obstinate the gnome* is that is to be conjured, and what a marvelous apparatus has to be constructed for this gnome to deign to appear at all and to register its tidings. The “scientific” high priests (Spiritisten) with their “controls”are complete amateurs in comparison; it appears to be easier in the realm of research to get a handle on the extraordinary than on the ordinary, which we presume to understand from our daily lives. To reiterate: what is to be admired lies in how living beings were channeled into the ark of experimental sociology, and what was then done to them in this ark in order to induce them to reveal the opinions they held, even though they are hardly among those whom God endowed with the skills to express their feelings. But what, we now ask, has emerged from these difficult and ingenious inquiries? What do the opinions that came to light look like? If we open ourselves to the findings, we can hardly claim that the menu of opinions is admirable. It is, however, puzzling or, to quote Hamlet, strange, very strange. Not that it was a surprise to us; all of us vaguely suspected that something similar would emerge, because we, too, are accustomed to talking to our fellow men and to hearing various things when traveling by railway, waiting in the anteroom, eating in restaurants, working in businesses or offices, or when children talk about school, play, or their way home. But most of us will be truly shocked reading all of this in black and white, in a well-documented report endorsed by the official seal of a scientific institute. There are many things we tolerate, even perceive as entirely natural or as self-evident, as long as we know them only privately from everyday experience, but that disconcert, frighten, and alarm us when communicated to us officially, in such a way that reality confronts us with increased urgency. We then feel like the diplomat Questenberg in Wallenstein’s Camp: “What

* The Erd-Geist (spirit of the earth), which we render with “gnome,” refers to Goethe’s Faust, volume I.—Eds.

Foreword

p3

have I not been forced to hear . . . what fierce, uncurbed defiance! And were this spirit universal— Friend, friend! O! this is worse, far worse, than we had suffered Ourselves to dream of at Vienna. There We saw it only with a courtier’s eyes, Eyes dazzled by the splendor of the throne. We had not seen the war-chief, the commander, The man all-powerful in his camp. Here, here, ‘Tis quite another thing. Here is no emperor more”1

What is it then in reading the investigation at hand that evokes this shock? I suggest that there are two things. First, it is the more than clear perception that alongside so-called “public opinion,” which expresses itself in elections, referenda, public speeches, newspaper articles, radio broadcasts, party and group programs, parliamentary discussions, and political assemblies, there is non-public opinion, whose content can differ considerably from the content of public opinion. Its sentences, however, circulate alongside those of public opinion like the coins of a second currency; in fact, they may even be more durable and stable than actual public opinion, which we flaunt like a courtier before the official public, especially to foreign countries, and which we pride ourselves as being our actual and sole opinion, as if they expressed what we actually mean even though they are really only the things we say when wearing our Sunday best. Yes, it almost seems as if what circulates among us as public opinion represents the sum of opinions (in themselves contradictory) we wish people believed we had as our real opinion, while nonpublic opinion is the sum of (in themselves equally contradictory) opinions we truly have.* The second shocking thing is the more than clear description of what non-public opinion actually looks like. It was exactly what many of us actually think! In other words, one shock comes from the perception that we have two opinion-currencies, each of which comprises a whole bundle of different opinions. And the other shock befalls us at the sight of the values that make up the unofficial currency. * Böhm here deviates from the epistemological position staked out in Adorno’s discussion elsewhere (Adorno 2010, 200) by suggesting that non-public opinion is more authentic than public opinion. Adorno’s position takes a more situational approach.—Eds.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p4

This latter shock raises the uneasy question of whether it can be justified to disclose to the public a scientific investigation into the quality, quantity, and circulatory speed of unofficial opinion-currencies. Could such a publication not harm our prestige, our good political and social reputation? Is there not a great danger that such a publication could do damage if mistakes were made in the scientific investigation of unofficial opinion? Should one wash the dirty laundry of one’s questionable opinion completely in open in front of the entire domestic and international public? Does it not just boil down to a denunciation if one reveals these actually circulating opinions, which are not even allowed—presumably deliberately— into the inventory of a nation’s official public opinion? Should one not keep the results of scientific research of such a nature secret, that is, merely pass them on to the government, away from the public? And how do things stand with the Parliament? Is not promulgation to the parliament tantamount to public disclosure? Just to pose these questions is to reject them. In a liberal state, what is going on among the people and in society must be known openly. The only concerns that legitimately require secrecy are in the sphere of government planning, such as the date a currency reform will be put into effect or certain diplomatic negotiations. In these cases the government has to answer, so to speak, for its actions, but need not disclose the preparations and bases for the decision in statu nascendi. Secondly, it would be more than foolish to conceal something that any visitor traveling to Germany, every tourist or journalist, can hear shouted from every rooftop if he only pays a little attention. If this visitor now notes that such overt issues are officially hidden from the outside or are treated as secret, even by science, then the effect is even worse than that created by the most unfavorable consequence of knowledge of the fact itself. Thirdly, it plainly violates the task and ethos of science to conceal findings. Tactical and diplomatic considerations have no place in science. And, fourthly, one can no longer speak of a liberal constitution where there is no longer a lively belief that frank talk and self-expression, discussion itself, is a remedy for all kinds of public damages. If the people themselves, if even science retreats behind the curtain behind which “top secret” governance takes place and “prescribed terminology” rules, then we have taken a step from a free and open society to an organized army of “political soldiers.” This is true even though no totalitarian state is imminent; this would require a second aspect, namely an ice cold stratum of associates with the talent, brutality, and willpower required to play on such a wicked organ. It is, thus, imperative to make the non-public opinion of a people an object of public political and scientific discourse. In this way, non-public

Foreword

p5

opinion will be dragged out of its shadowy environment, which seems to be a precondition for its formation, its claims, and its self-defense. For how does a people’s non-public opinion differ from its public opinion? I believe the answer can only be that to become part of actual public opinion any view has to pass through the control of real public discourse. Only views that can survive their reproduction by ink and broadcast, their adoption into the program of a political party in the parliamentary sense, their inclusion into public discourse, become part of public opinion in a liberal state. This enforces a minimum of reason and morality, because what is made known openly on the market has to confront educated criticism. Non-public opinion is made up of those views which are not able to pass this process of critical selection. Until now, we have lacked an ability to determine with sufficient reliability the state of opinions that remain stuck in the realm of the non-public. Here the interview methods of experimental sociology are intended to produce a change. It has today become possible to spotlight non-public opinion in such a way that it has to expose itself to general discourse but especially to the criticism of reason and morality. Only time can tell, though, whether this will fundamentally inhibit its ability to circulate as effective opinion-currency. This primarily depends on the self-confidence, the engagement, and the devotion of those who consider it a matter of conscience to pick a bone with one or another group of non-public opinions. This task, however, must not be left to scholars, lecturers, and graduate students; it concerns all of us. Insofar as experimental sociology undertakes to work out methods that make it possible to summon non-public opinion before the forum of public discourse, before the forum of reason and morality, it has achieved its first victory over non-public opinion as over a political-social life force. “Let there be light!” is the first phrase of every creative act. Romantic thinking might tend toward assuming that non-public opinion is the precursor of political and social opinion formation, in other words a generative process from the depths of the national spirit (Volksgeist) such as takes place in the creation of fairy tales, myths, folk wisdom, and sayings. Supporters of this way of thinking perhaps become resentful if they hear that someone wants to drag this process of emerging life prematurely out of the security of the mother’s womb and display it on the dissection table to the profane gaze of scientists, intellectuals, politicians, bureaucrats, and journalists. Perhaps they see in this effort nothing other than the irreverent intrusion into hidden developmental processes driven by the despicable desire for muckraking. Such a view, though, presupposes two things. First, namely, it assumes that non-public opinion is so shy in nature that it seeks hidden security

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p6

and requires it to prosper. And second, it assumes that the opinions making up non-public opinion are original creations of the thoughts and efforts of the people, i.e., of the entire nation. Both of these are errors. The faithful of non-public opinions are anything but shy and reticent. They are by all means inclined to articulate their opinions in a highly provocative manner or to state them to others’ faces with smoothly penetrating urgency, if the environment is such that they need not be bashful. The merit of experimental sociology is not simply that it investigates, that is to say extracts, these opinions from the people at all (indeed the interviewees happily made friends with the tape recorders and spoke quite willingly into them). Rather, the merit lies in the establishment of the concrete form of this non-public opinion, in the insight into some of its core structures and typical views, which distinguish particular selected groups. Nevertheless, it is also a mistake to assume that this treasure trove of non-public opinions is a creation of the national spirit, as for instance in the development of language, fairy tales, common law, sayings and similar manifestations of folk wit and wisdom. One need only consult this report to see that, with enough time, people believe and assert all sorts of different things. These are not expressions of the thoughts and feelings of ordinary people trying in their own way to orient themselves in the complex whirl of events and relationships in a modern industrial nation and a modern constitutional state. Rather, these are, almost without exception, discarded clothing from the wardrobe of maxims, slogans, and idea scraps of an age of industry and of science, deformations of real coins of opinion that once had official value and then, on the way from barroom discussions and miscellaneous forms of political hot air, made their way into the ordinary vocabulary of discussions within families, with children, and with colleagues. It is a body of thought that over a greater or lesser period of time has been run through the mills of a kind of intellectual and emotional assembly line until it took a cookie-cutter form*among those who not only refuse reflection but who have a downright marked aversion for those of their fellow citizens who feel the need for such reflection. Moreover, many of these opinions refer not to judgments about facts and events but to the content of these facts and events themselves. The people do not want to know how Frenchmen, Americans, Russians, etc. are or think, what the occupying powers did, what happened in Hitler’s concentration camps, etc. Instead, they have a preconceived and surely thoroughly false opinion

* Böhm’s original language refers to a “warehouse operation” (Warenhausbetrieb) that produces a “cast-iron token” (gußesiernen Rechenpfennigen). —Eds.

Foreword

p7

about this and fight tooth and nail against learning the plain truth. They also do not accept any instruction on these facts. In general they do not form their judgments starting with facts, but they turn around the facts so as to fit their preconceived judgments. Some of them even know this, but consider it a virtue in accordance with the principle that objectivity is a sign of decadence. Here we have, for example, one of those maxims typical of the treasure trove of non-public opinions. A very large proportion of them have a pronouncedly Machiavellian character, that is, the character of a lesson and a mode of thought that were originally in no way popular, but instead were the modes of thought of renaissance courts, masters, and conquerors who could not care less about individual suffering and the fate of people who occupied social spheres below the aristocratic level. Here we have a master mentality, a master mentality of the crudest and most heartless sort, that has spread to every Tom, Dick, and Harry over the course of centuries. The reader will notice another very strange thing in this report. Namely this: how ineffectively actual public opinion bounced off the hearts and minds of a very large proportion of our population. Most of these people read their newspaper every day and listened to the daily radio broadcasts, which exposed them to this public opinion. Not even continuous repetition in the years after the war was able to demolish the non-public opinion, which was supplied in a completely different manner, even though neither the press, nor radio, nor parliamentary debates, nor party meetings were at its disposal. Only in the editorial department wastebaskets did the mostly anonymous expressions of non-public opinion accumulate into significant piles; and they were—quite rightly—thrown into the trash and did not reach the publicity channels for transmission of official opinion. So there must be other more effective channels through which non-public opinions course. These channels probably consist of discussions in families, in train cars, and among colleagues, among which family discussions seem to me to be by far the most important ones. For the thought of parents imprints itself indelibly onto children, and the prejudices that fathers express emphatically at the table sound like venerable wisdom to their children’s ears. Even if the children later recognize the error, they still feel hurt again, in memory of the beloved authority, when such opinions are sharply criticized in their presence. I myself remember quite well the flood of prejudices and overwhelmingly hateful maxims with which I was showered by 6-year-old fellow pupils in my first school days. Most of these children and their parents were thoroughly good-natured children and adults throughout, but their views were despicable, and I took away quite a shock at the time.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p8

Two problems arise in this context: What are the prospects for the better refined perspectives of actual public opinion to prevail over the poorly washed and often articulated noxious perspectives of non-public opinion? And what are the chances, in turn, that the poorly washed perspectives of non-public opinion will finish off the better refined public opinion along with the group that works honestly on its behalf and on its further refinement? I want to close with that question. What was merely intended to be a preface has become the improvised cry for help of a reader who was all too profoundly impacted by the reading, and who has not yet succeeded in processing his impressions.

Introduction

T

his volume, presented by the Institute for Social Research at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, reports on investigations conducted in 1950–51 and analyzed subsequently. It describes opinions, attitudes, and behavioral patterns of the Federal Republic’s population concerning essential social and political questions. The whole study’s object can be characterized as a contribution to research on “public opinion.” However, it is only a first step, and the findings must be considered provisional with respect to content as well as method. Despite its remarkable breadth, the investigation remains essentially a “pilot study.” The methods could only be developed and evaluated during the course of the work, and many of the difficulties became clear only gradually. A coherent, systematic overview was impossible due to the project’s experimental and incomplete character. We do not claim to have definitively answered the study’s motivating questions. The book conveys a sense of these difficulties as well as of the method itself. For a pilot study, the methodological discoveries are just as important as the substantive findings, and perhaps more so. The findings are necessarily tentative and provisional; the methods, though, and the critical reflection they are based on should prove useful for future research. The material is not completely analyzed in all potentially revealing respects. The matter of the very selection of material is meant to shed light on the central problems of the study. Also, many of the methodological questions

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 10

remain unresolved. Crucial issues such as a strictly controlled comparison between the group discussion method and standard forms of opinion polls are not considered here;1 the Institute has contributed to this topic in later research. The limits and shortcomings of the whole study emerge, in part, from exogenous issues. We started the research immediately after the Institute was reconstituted. Its associates had to be trained in the methods of empirical sociology. The approach was novel, although group discussions had been conducted in America, e.g., in the research of R. F. Bales.2 We could not, and did not want to, draw upon well-established procedures. Furthermore, we had to contend with deeper difficulties not just because of the situation of sociology in postwar Germany but because of the topic itself. In its area, our Institute is meant to serve international communication in a scientific spirit. Hence, part of its task is to contribute from within to the unification of the isolated and almost hopelessly divergent directions of sociology. After the calamity—for which Germany’s despotic decrees from on high and a style of thinking unconcerned with concrete facts were especially responsible—it goes without saying that empirical methods had to be used far more emphatically than this country had become accustomed to. In particular it was necessary to master the polished American techniques of social research. On the other hand, however, it was imperative that we not stop at simply imitating these techniques, which is also a specifically German danger. We had to advocate for critical themes, which arose from the tradition of German social science, against one-sided social research based on the model of mathematical natural sciences, on the doctrines of evolutionary and behavioral psychology, and on immediate practical applicability. Empirical work should reflect on itself, its limits, and its intellectual preconditions. Only by such a process can empirical research overcome the naïveté that condemns so many of its results to superficiality. Research must not conceal the provisionality of its findings under an appearance of precision. From the beginning, our intention was to avoid bowing before reified social conditions and processes, to which the ideal of countability and measurability as the simple classification of reality is devoted. Rather, we sought to use theoretical reflection to link the data to underlying social processes and in this way to illuminate the data. As plausible as that plan seems in general, there are still many obstacles to its realization—it is hardly exaggerating to liken it to squaring a circle. The two scientific tendencies—precise quantitative analysis demanded in today’s empirical sociology on the one hand, and, on the other hand, interpretive understanding and insight transcending mere hypothesis formation,

Introduction

p 11

which Max Weber considered the actual task of empirical sociology—do not, as even Weber might have thought, complement each other harmoniously. In fact, they spring from two impulses of knowledge so far apart from each other, so deeply bound up in contradictory philosophies, that in many ways they exclude one another. Today the tension between their aims has become extreme, and the popular talk of their integration expresses the urgency of the situation, not the possibility that they might actually find common ground. Anyone who has worked social-scientifically on concrete material knows how large a distance there is between social theory and precise, verifiable statements on certain social sectors. This gap stretches far beyond the common statement that more material has to be gathered before theory construction or synthesis, or beyond the affirmation that social theory formation, which has more than two thousand years of history, is ahead of its scientific aspirations, which have only recently begun. It is not a matter of chronological differences, but of categorical ones. It is impossible to glean a social totality—on which all real individual experience depends—by increasing the quantity of data. It is also impossible to extrapolate a theory from empirical findings in a world in which individual social realities conceal their own essence almost as much as they express it. This breach thus emerges from the incompatibility of the findings produced in various studies. Even if it is not always correct, it is often tempting to think that every advance in precision and objectivity in research techniques comes with an accompanying loss of meaning and, conversely, that every immersion in theoretical insight comes with a loss in succinct verifiability. This alternative enters into the daily work of the social researcher, who is constantly forced to choose between generalizing and enlightening insights, and who desperately tries to achieve both at the same time, even when formulating questionnaires and interview schemes. There is reason to assume that this methodological aporia is not just the result of sociology’s form and conceptual apparatus. It emerges from society itself, where there is no purely logical relation between the particular and the general; indeed, the relation is actually antagonistic. Such considerations self-evidently support our experiment’s conception, without making claim to a solution. The group investigation is neither a standard “case study” nor an experiment controlled under laboratory conditions,3 although it shares traits with both. Its attempt to come as close as possible to the interdependent processes of real life is reminiscent of the case study approach. It deliberately abstains from disentangling isolated variables in a quest to conform to the research ideal of natural science rather than to the complex conditions of actual society and subjective

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 12

opinion formation. By the same token, the group investigation shares two traits with the experiment. The participants are not simply observed in their everyday context, but are brought together specifically for the purpose of the study. The group investigation, in particular, works with a standardized “basic stimulus” and a series of similarly standardized arguments and counter arguments in order to ensure comparability between the individual sessions. Our research design was guided by the experience that a study only yields productive results if one reflects on the process and allows it to change over the course of the research. Insofar as our research aim was social-psychological—that is, related to how socially relevant behavior comes about within individuals—this study was based on depth psychology in the Freudian sense. Freud accepted the characteristic collective behavioral patterns worked out by authors such as Le Bon and McDougall, but did not base them on an independent group-subject; instead he derived psychological mass phenomena from the psychodynamic of individuals within the group. Identification with the collective as such is the decisive mechanism. Our material contains a surfeit of evidence for the power of such mechanisms of identification.4 The study builds upon American investigations, including our own research on prejudice,5 which in many cases shed light on social phenomena with the help of Freudian categories. Like these investigations, the group experiment does not use psychoanalytic ideas only in its design. Its findings also confirm psychoanalytic statements. We found evidence for mechanisms like projection, reaction formation, repressed feelings of guilt, etc., all of which belong to the zone of defense of the unconscious by the ego. Furthermore, we constantly came upon examples of subjective opinion and opinion formation that literally called for such concepts due to their contradiction of objective reality and their irrational character. They essentially demanded psychoanalytic interpretation. The interpretive problems only became completely clear after the discussions themselves were finished and the transcripts were available. Just one of the many questions we had to face was how to quantify spontaneous, essentially qualitative material at all.6 The quantitative part of this report shows how we tried to answer this problem. Even weightier was the question of how to consider free, qualitative categories rather than material that was already coded and categorized. One has to expect objections such as “reading things into the material” and “subjective arbitrariness.” Today, such objections are so automatic that they often lead—in contrast to their original critical, antidogmatic impulse—to a prohibition on thinking (Denkverbot). The whole area that Max Weber called understanding

Introduction

p 13

(Verstehen) is questioned by the insatiable demand for evidence. We have in no way taken this demand lightly. A certain protection against the danger of free association already resides in the staying power and consistency of the theory. It is important to remember the accumulated knowledge and experience that the formulation of the problems yields: in the case of our current investigation, for example, the findings of related works of the Institute on the problem of authority.7 A further element securing the interpretation is the principle of not relying on isolated opinions in individual statements, but instead on the overarching context within individual discussions as well as between the different discussions. When, for example, lynching is compared to the murder of the Jews (despite the evident absurdity of such arguments), this illustrates a social tendency—one of automated, irrational defensiveness and aggressive retaliation—which could never have been inferred offhandedly from a few scattered individual statements on lynching. One should not, however, be scared off by the defamation of the subjective component. Great philosophy from Plato to Hegel has at its core the demonstration that there are no “mere facts,” no unmediated immediates (unvermitteltes Unmittelbares). This was only forgotten in the later part of the nineteenth century, and if anywhere the desire for alienation from this era is legitimate, then it is here. In all facts—even in the allegedly merely sensual impression—resides a piece of intellect in formation. Correctly understood, this includes even our interest in a specific tree or house. Anyone who wants to discern what this specific tree or this specific house actually is has to transcend isolation. Something all-encompassing plays a role in both experiences—actually the whole society, the whole history of man passing judgments about objects, a history that at the same time is embodied in the objects themselves. This subjective element of objects and knowledge about them is part of all knowledge that transcends mere classification and registration. We do not submit to residual theory, according to which truth is what remains when subjective additions are taken away. This might apply where the object itself is not a human being, mediated by intellect—but not in the ambit of the social. In psychology in particular the exact opposite holds. Its insights become richer, more precise, and deeper the more the judging subject contributes its sensations and its receptiveness for experience. Social sciences possess just as little a recipe for protecting against bad subjectivism, against the arbitrariness of a construction imposed on the object from the outside, as, conversely, meaningful interpretation can ensure that the irreducibly subjective element, on which the spontaneity and productivity depends, does not proliferate into the delusional; increasingly sophisticated experimental designs cannot do it. It

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 14

would be a bad science that seals itself off from what emerges out of the material for the sake of a chimera of absolute provability. We are by no means blind to the fact that a shadow of relativity clings just as much to the quantitative as well as the qualitative interpretations: there the inevitable residues of rigid computational methods do incomplete justice to the life of the discussions and the meaning of individual statements; here the danger that the idea overshoots what the facts support according to the relevant interpretive norms, which demand the verifiability of every intellectual operation through every other researcher in the same discipline. The question of validity of interpretation is inseparable from the relationship between quantitative and qualitative analyses. The more qualitative material and qualitative interpretation comes to the forefront due to the special question of the investigation, the more urgent it becomes to check the qualitative findings in a quantitative way if at all possible; or, in the face of the limits we faced statistically in this regard, at least to point out possibilities for such an examination. Obviously, the more statements that can be extracted from a case, the more possible it is for the qualitative analysis to draw conclusions beyond the individual case. By the same token, it would be futile in the case of our material to conduct the quantitative analysis without the qualitative categories of understanding. By using techniques such as the elaboration of a codebook that was highly differentiated qualitatively for the quantitative examination, the attempt was made—following American efforts—not only to let quantitative and qualitative methods complement one another, but to unify them to a certain degree. We are, of course, aware that the basic divergences, from which our considerations emanate, also remain to date unresolved by such attempts, if they can be resolved at all. Statistically this problem takes the form of the problem that, in the case of qualitatively rich research instruments, the resulting numbers for each individual category are so small that they can hardly be assigned any relevance. A theoretically sufficient, qualitatively defined matrix of categories for quantification makes virtually impossible the generalization on behalf of which one originally undertook the quantification, and leads one right back to qualitative analysis again. Hence, in the final report, we maintained a separation between the quantitative and qualitative parts, and indicated their relationship only occasionally. The relationship between quantitative and qualitative examination constitutes only one aspect of a broader problem, which is actually the decisive problem for the value of this research. That is the question of how far one may generalize the findings. Let it be emphatically highlighted here that the numerical findings, taken in isolation, must not make any claim to validity beyond our circle of participants. In the text there will be several

Introduction

p 15

further references to this limitation on our quantitative study’s validity. A certain character of consistency in the whole material, as well as the findings of other research conducted by the Institute, however, lead us to assume that the possibility for generalization reaches beyond the limits we have to set, and which one would principally expect for a method aiming predominantly at spontaneous statements. Make no mistake, though: in all likelihood, changes in the objective social and political situation during the last four years have reduced the contemporary validity of the findings. A recently concluded investigation by the Institute showed in particular that the attitude toward democracy in Germany has changed considerably in a positive way, even among extremely conservative groups like the farmers. For this reason and others, it would be advisable to repeat this kind of group discussion at certain intervals.

Part One

AIM, METHODS, AND CIRCLE OF PARTICIPANTS

chapter one

The Group Discussion Method Compared with Other Methods of Empirical Sociology and Its Application in the Study at Hand

I. Theoretical Preliminaries 1. Subject and Method of Empirical Sociology During the last two decades, sociology has experienced an extraordinary upsurge due to the systematic development and refinement of its methods of data collection. Sociology today lays claim to assertions about subjects that were previously left largely to theoretical construction or even noncommittal speculation. This is particularly true of research on the opinions, attitudes, and behavioral patterns of large groups or the total population. It is supposedly possible to ascertain reliably not only objective social conditions but also the ways people respond to them.1 Based on this, the hope arises of understanding modern industrial mass society better by adopting an epistemic paradigm modeled on the exact sciences and thereby approaching a practical solution to established problems between man and his society. Social scientists of all disciplines and practitioners from all areas of the economy, administration, and social welfare have been extraordinarily impressed by the accomplishments of modern data collection methods. By setting strict boundaries on researchers’ idiosyncrasies and prejudices by confronting them with facts, these methods also contain a democratic potential compared with old-school sociology such as institutional analysis. Everybody counts equally in sampling techniques. This opens up the possibility

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 20

of ascertaining the distribution of attitudes within the population far beyond the abstract electoral process and, therefore, of orienting government policies accordingly. At the same time, these techniques open an avenue for addressing a concern that has continuously challenged older German sociology: to be able to investigate subjective issues objectively instead of  subjectively. The widely discussed problem of sociology based on “understanding,”* which investigates patterns of meanings, was replaced by a method that claimed to be able to objectify even phenomena of consciousness as countable, measurable, and mathematically classifiable facts. Such a method was all the more appropriate since, in the web of totally socialized people (vergesellschaftete Leute), the individual confronted an increasing quantity of structures and relations that were no longer understandable other than as overwhelming fact, as blindly relentless existence. The more contemporary society confronts its constituent members as second nature, the more appropriate it seems to study it by methods borrowed from science. The progress of a science that is able to develop methods with the help of which it can register and under some circumstances predict the truly subtle reactions, opinions, and wishes of people is undeniable. It is also an indisputable gain that one can check political and economic decisions against the reactions of the governed. Nevertheless, one should also not fail to recognize that the convergence of social-scientific methods toward those of the natural sciences is itself the child of a society that reifies people. The democratic potential of the new methods is thus not unquestionable, as is so gladly assumed particularly in Germany after the suppression of public opinion by the Hitler regime. It is not incidental that modern “opinion research” grew out of market and consumer research.2 It [opinion research] implicitly identifies man under the rubric of consumer. As a result, the diverse tendencies to social control and manipulation that can be observed to derive from modern empirical sociology in the realm of consumer analysis or “human relations” are not merely incidental to the method itself. While they [opinion researchers] are led by the principle of the equality of people and allow no privilege in evaluating the attitudes of individual subjects, they nevertheless treat these subjects as they are constituted by the dominant economic and social relations, without examin-

* The reference is to Max Weber’s emphasis on Verstehen (understanding) as the basis for sociological analysis as compared with other, principally Marxian, concerns with objective, systemic analysis. See Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), vol. 1, pp. 8–11. —Eds.

The Group Discussion Method

p 21

ing this constitution itself. The difficulty becomes obvious when the point is to convey with representative surveys what opinions and meanings people have toward questions of general public interest—in other words as soon as one wants to deal with the problem of so-called public opinion with the techniques of empirical social research.

2. The Problematic of the Concept of Public Opinion Individual Opinion and Public Opinion Under the old paradigm it was by no means beyond dispute that one could determine reliably what public opinion toward certain questions was. Today, on the other hand, it is assumed that public opinion can be elicited and measured everywhere.3 We put trust in a standardized technique. Interviewers from polling institutes pose a number of questions to a statistically representative cross-section of the population. The answers obtained are grouped according to their content and analyzed in relation to objective characteristics of the respondents. The findings are then presented in tabular form and interpreted as public opinion. Depending on the method applied and the size of the statistical cross-section, public opinion is considered reliably ascertained within a set margin of error.4 The problem of the concept of public opinion is hardly considered. Instead, it is simply postulated as known by stating the percentage of the sample—and, hence, of the entire population for which the sample is representative—that answered a question in one way or another. Yet the legitimacy of this procedure obviously depends on the concept of public opinion itself. The problem is only elided, not solved, by simply tailoring the definition beforehand to match the possible results of sample polls. Even the concept of individual opinion poses considerable difficulties, and would have to be clarified in order to understand the concept of public opinion in a concise way. Traditionally, “opinion” refers to the contents of a person’s consciousness, without judgment as to its truth or untruth. If a person believes that two times two equals four, that is his opinion just as if he believes that two times two equals five. Both types of judgment, however, differ not only in their objective content (which is independent of opinion), but also in their internal structure. Only one of these judgments contains an adequate relation to the facts. The act of holding an opinion varies accordingly; in the first case it is an actual synthesis, a logically legitimate evaluation of experience. In the second case psychological, if not outright pathological, determinants prevail. The concept of opinion underlying opinion research does not account for this difference. The relation of

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 22

consciousness to objectivity does not come to the fore. Beliefs are treated as if they are final, not traceable to a deeper source of legitimacy. In fact, the individual’s thinking-in-that-way really depends on aspects of what is thought that are not reducible to the subjectivity of opinion holding. Common opinion research’s concept of opinion, which deems itself to be scientifically devoid of assumptions, actually presupposes a nominalistic epistemology. It operates with a subjective concept of truth,5 without even targeting the problem of objectivity at all. The much-heralded objectivity of this concept is nothing but a generality aggregated from these subjectivities, the common denominator of the opinions irrespective of their objective coherence. But the concept of opinion is not problematic merely because it cannot actually separate opinion from truth. Indeed, the assumption of the existence of an opinion of every individual is questionable. That everyone possesses his own opinion is a cliché of the Modern. In earlier social epochs, the spiritual cosmos was, on the one hand, much too strongly constructed and strictly controlled for everyone to be able to have or to have been able to develop a private opinion about everything—the expression itself is specifically liberal; on the other hand, the information and communications possibilities were too limited for the overwhelming majority of people to have been in the situation to have an opinion about everything imaginable. Today, when in the large industrial states information about nearly everything is widespread, the mass of informational material has grown to such an extent with the complexity of all social relations that it is even difficult for the expert himself to form an opinion about everything in his own most narrow field. The oft-lamented indifference of the democratic individual toward public issues might come in part from his feeling powerless in this respect, from his not having enough time, energy, or schooling to familiarize himself with the data necessary to form an opinion. Insofar as opinion research proceeds from the assumption that one has to have an opinion about everything, it succumbs to the danger of misleading people in its interviews to statements about which they have no real conviction, which are not even their opinions.6 Exactly this contradiction between being compelled to have an opinion and being incapable of doing so misleads numerous individuals into accepting stereotypes. These relieve them of the futile effort to opine, but, nonetheless, bestow upon them the prestige of joining in.7 This contradiction proves effective in the discussion of general questions across all social strata. In any case, modern means of transportation and communication have generally facilitated the formation of opinions, no matter how they come into being. Precisely because of the immeasurably increased possibilities for communication,

The Group Discussion Method

p 23

however, it is no longer possible to understand every individual as a monad whose isolated opinions crystallize and then linger as if in a vacuum. Realistic methods of opinion research need to approach as closely as possible the conditions under which actual opinions are formed, persist, and change. Opinion research has to free itself from the prejudice that opinions are to a large degree stable properties of individuals and that their changes are of secondary importance. In the face of the findings of modern social psychology, it is just as problematic to assume a constant, unproblematic individual in modern society8 as it is to conceive of an individual’s opinion as existing at baseline and shifting in predictable situations. Opinion research has to account for the dynamic aspect not only after the fact, as through repeated interviews with the same individuals, but prospectively, through its methodological design. It needs to recognize that, in a totally socialized society (vergesellschaftete Gesellschaft), the objective conditions of society play a decisive part in the formation and content of individuals’ opinions9 without eliminating the subjective process of responding to objective social facts.10 Public Opinion—An Aggregate Phenomenon? All of these questions surrounding such a seemingly elementary concept as individual opinion precede the actual problem of public opinion. The dominant idea in empirical social research is that public opinion is the aggregate of all individual opinions. Since it is impossible to ascertain the opinion of all elements of the statistical universe—all individuals in a population—one should at least use reliable methods of selecting a sample to draw conclusions about the whole population. Whether public opinion is the opinion of all or of the majority, however, is not beyond doubt. At least in the German tradition the concept is not always understood in the same way as in contemporary opinion research. In the first place, common methods of counting and measuring recognize neither the significance of minorities for the formation of the majority opinion, nor even the crucial tension between majority and minority in opinion formation. Most of all, however, it is important to raise the objection from social theory, which is articulated more and more urgently in today’s America: that opinion research’s methods of counting and rating all individuals as equal—as points devoid of particular qualities—disregard the actual differences of social power and powerlessness.11 Discussions of the concept of public opinion usually solve these problems naïvely by resorting to elite theory and privileging education. Thus, W. A. MacKinnon,12 for example, calls public opinion the view held by the best-informed, most intelligent, and most ethical members of a group,

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 24

since their views prevail in the end—albeit gradually—and are accepted by at least the majority of the group. Other authors supplement their notions of public opinion by formal sociological criteria. Thus, Leonard W. Doob13 says that one can speak of public opinion only insofar as the attitudes of members of the same social group are in tune with one another. The concept of public opinion presupposes a social organization or group whose members have more or less the same experiences. This is an attempt to specify the concept of public opinion by considering the structure of the group forming that opinion. The idea that public opinion is not merely the sum of individual opinions but contains a transcending collective element arises here. There can only be talk of public opinion when something like a consistent group structure exists. One objection to this view is that there is still something like public opinion even in a totalitarian (and therefore atomized) society. Finally, some authors count opinions spread through newspapers and broadcasts as public.14 There is undeniably some justification for this view. All such organs understand themselves as public opinion, and they are often enough understood as messengers of public opinion, particularly in politics. But public media, more than anything else, spread the dominant views in society: what is in the air, so to speak. The centralization, concentration, and technology-based standardization exert extraordinary power over consumers’ consciousness. What these consumers parrot as their own is really just a reflection of what is produced by the social power standing behind the means of communication. While it is of course necessary to figure social power into the analysis of public opinion, such analysis cannot be content with simply studying the outputs of that social power. All the theories treated so far are similar in that they capture either the sum of all individual opinions or isolated sectors but not public opinion as a totality. The difference between this whole and what is accomplished by the aforementioned definitions of public opinion is reminiscent of Rousseau’s famous distinction between “volonté générale” and “volonté de tous”* Today, volonté de tous is the dominant understanding of public opinion as the sum of all individual opinions, while volonté générale references the whole that is more than the sum of its parts.15 Tönnies identified this problem and pointed out that public opinion as a unitarily effective

* French in the original, translated as “the general will” or “the will of the people” (volonté générale) and “the will of all” (volonté de tous). See J. J. Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole and J. M. Dent (London: Everyman, 1913), p. 203; and Rousseau, On the Social Contract, trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), p. 31.—Eds.

The Group Discussion Method

p 25

force and power must be distinguished sharply and clearly from the publicly articulated aggregation of multiple contradictory tendencies.16 The conception of public opinion as analog to the volonté de tous is based on a model of a purely competitive society. Everybody is supposed to enter social life as if he has nothing but his own mind and to proceed to form his views as an autonomous being. However, just as homo oeconomicus enters competition with far more than the diligence of his own hands, the judging intellect is far from a tabula rasa. From early on every individual carries with him a group of uncountable views, mostly solidified by the dominant intellectual climate and accepted without thought. Later on, the individual is subject to the pressure of this same intellectual climate, the more so since resistance against it requires a strength of ego few can muster. Individual opinions, which appear to be the elementary* particles of standard opinion research, are in truth highly derivative and mediated. What was initially introduced here as “intellectual climate”—German classical philosophy calls it the “objective spirit”—actually predates individual opinions. This is not some speculative construction but an effect of the tangible domination of the economic and social apparatus of production over consumption—including over supposedly intellectual consumption. This domination—and not a gestalt-theoretical organic conception— stands behind the “entirety” of public opinion, behind the Tönnian “unitary power”17 which other authors have identified as a collective factor or group opinion with its own independent existence.18 While it is borne by the individuals and based upon their thinking and feeling, it is not built up from their individual opinions. Rather, it confronts every individual as something already preformed, solidified, and often overwhelmingly powerful. Making public opinion into a kind of intellectual “thing in itself” is only the reflection of a social state in which the individual experiences conditions as autonomous, forcing him to adapt to them. True public opinion would epitomize this objective spirit, mirroring the social conditions and tendencies of power, the gestalt characteristic of the entire society. Since this consciousness exists above the heads of all individuals, it does not mesh with each individual’s consciousness; in fact, it contradicts that of many. In their attitudes and opinions it is modified, sometimes changed beyond all recognition by the whim of individual intellectual fate. Nonetheless, public opinion exists objectively, an expression of

* The reference is to elementary in the Durkheimian sense, that is, as an elementary particle. See Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: Free Press, 1995); see also Fields’ “Translators Introduction” thereto, pp. lix–lxi.—Eds.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 26

social totality; at the same time, though, it is also an expression of the social facts* washing over the individual. This conception of public opinion is attached to the dominant relations of power in society. Yet this fact is not acknowledged by an empirical and positivistic science incessantly appealing to “facts.” It is often conceded that public opinion has a supra-individual character. Public opinion researchers acknowledge that traditional ideas, feelings, thoughts, customs, and behavioral patterns exist in public and continuously mold people’s opinions. They also do not deny the interrelations between individuals and these institutional powers of intellect, nor among individuals themselves. Yet, in the end, they call public opinion the sum of individual opinions resulting from all these processes of influence. This sum and not the objective spirit becomes the substrate of opinion research because only individual opinions can be counted and measured. Although the principle “science is measurement” is far too stark for American scholars today, it continues to function as an implicit criterion for the scientific method. Therefore, no one can simply declare that the positivistic-atomistic conception of public opinion does justice to the issue. That discontent is counteracted by agnosticism: “the nature of public opinion is not something to be defined but to be studied.”19 People are consoled by the idea of a future in which so much empirical material will be gathered that the question of the nature of public opinion can be decided. This blinds us to the fact that the collection of material for this clarification presupposes an inadequate, unrealistic concept of public opinion. When speaking of theory, one does not mean a theoretical conception of the entire society within which the concept of public opinion is situated, but one limits oneself to formulating and to testing hypotheses that can only be verified or falsified using atomisticadditive methods. This insufficiency of the “philosophy” underlying opinion research is based on a problematic notion of society and therefore calls into question the reliability of the seemingly objective research methods. 3. Capacity and Limits of Precise Research Methods Sampling as a Tool for Sociological Research The survey method owes its existence to administration’s need for information about the conditions and people to be overseen and the desire of large-scale economic enterprises to be informed in advance about the extent and kind of demand

* The original refers to “gesellschaftliche Fatum,” presumably a typographical error. We have rendered it as “social facts” (gesellschaftliche Faktum).—Eds.

The Group Discussion Method

p 27

they face. Population growth, industrialization, and increasingly complex and confusing social structures increased the need for reliable surveys. Since the second half of the eighteenth century such surveys have been conducted more and more often, and in the twentieth century the questions extended far beyond the original objectives. The original model of applied methods was the census. Complete surveys were limited by the expenses of time and by costs demanded by surveys that include every individual element of the statistical universe, alongside manifold technical difficulties. Thus, in the past 20 years or so, particularly in America, methods have been developed to allow gathering empirical material about many types of social phenomena in a relatively short time and with less expenditure of money. Here in particular, economic needs were particularly important. Clients from industry and trade were less concerned about fully accurate findings than about spotting market tendencies with a high probability. For this purpose, it is sufficient to determine customers’ preferences through samples. After this method proved itself, the need for accuracy and reliability increased in the interest of steadily reducing risk, and the methods were more and more refined. Above all, the selection of interviewees was considered and planned more carefully in order to be sure that one could draw conclusions with mathematical stringency and according to the rules of mathematical probability about the entire population from the circle of interviewees.20 Sampling caused a public stir for the first time when in 1936 George Gallup correctly predicted the outcome of the American presidential election by interviewing a sample of only 6,000 voters.21 Since then the survey method has found its way into empirical sociology. A relatively small number of people selected with the greatest statistical refinement are interviewed, the answers are categorized, coded, transferred to punch cards, and counted, and the answers are correlated partly among themselves, partly with characteristics like age, sex, profession, income group, religion, residency, etc. Every single step is continuously examined for sources of errors by statisticians, psychologists, and sociologists. The sample selection, formulation and arrangement of interview questions, and the interviewers’ questioning technique are strictly systematized. Methods were developed to check the primary material provided by the interviewers, scales were constructed to ascertain depth, intensity, and stability of attitudes, and researchers proceeded to clarify the dynamic character of public opinion by repeated interviews of the same interviewees.22 As has been shown, these technical achievements are accompanied by  the positivistic attitude’s indifference toward the philosophical and

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 28

social-theoretical premises about the whole method. The frequent discussions of “frame of reference” [English]23 are occupied with providing ad hoc axioms, a series of more or less arbitrary definitions for operative, technical ends, rather than critical reflections on the ideas of society and knowledge implied by the method. In accordance with the scientific division of labor, such concerns are passed off to the study of logic, and the decisive basis—the material theory of society—falls between the cracks of the system of established science. Only gradually do the findings and contradictions of the survey method itself compel reflection on its foundations. They also compel modifications such as more consideration of the interviewees’ differential social power and the role of those who form the opinion. The Instability of Attitudes and Opinions There are, no doubt, questions on which most people have a firm opinion. In general, everybody will be able to say which familiar cigarette or soap brand he prefers, to which party he feels closest, what his favorite color is, whether he prefers theater or cinema, and whether or not he is interested in sports. But the relation of individuals to social reality is not limited to these questions. These problems already exist in questionnaire form, which offers a choice among precoded possibilities. They conceive humans in the mode of a customer who has to decide between the reified and fixed alternatives put forward by an organized economy and society. Although the general social tendency is certainly toward reducing people to such predetermined and limited decisions, even those decisions are not exhausted by “multiple choice” [English].24 There are countless questions toward which people behave in a less fixed manner, that is: more finely differentiated and more vividly expressed. They are too far removed from other issues to crystallize a clear opinion at all. Often they waffle, and their opinion swings from one extreme to the other. Yet, just because their opinion cannot be objectified in the way the survey method wants, it cannot be said that they lack an opinion—just that their opinion is of a different, more vague, and fluctuating character than the sharply contoured one of the interview. Particularly when people are passionately involved in a question, it is plausible that they might hesitate and that the most divergent motives would come into play. By the same token, it might be easier for them to proclaim a seemingly firm view when they are less committed to the view, when they are more indifferent, when their own affective charge and with it their psychological ambivalence influences their judgment less. Depth psychology has proven that the strongest psychological ambivalence surrounds the strongest affective charge.25 This persists in opinion formation. Clear attitudes cannot be expected in the case of multilayered, complex

The Group Discussion Method

p 29

questions that arouse the emotions of the interviewees, and when the interviewee himself is conscious only superficially (if at all) of the implications of such questions. Contradictory tendencies in an individual’s opinion do not mean that he lacks an opinion, but that these opinions are multilayered or antagonistic in themselves. Since such antagonisms are intertwined in the most diverse ways with the objective antagonisms of society, it is particularly important for sociology to follow them if empirical surveys are to gain as accurate a picture as possible of the relation between people and their social environment. It is obvious that one method alone does not suffice for this task; a combination of several methods is necessary for approaching the complex phenomenon of opinion formation. The Interview Situation In a social scientific interview situation, the interviewee faces the interviewer, usually a stranger, who reads him a number of questions and encourages him to reply directly. It is obvious that, particularly outside of market research, this is not a realistic simulation of a conversation. Instead, it is a laboratory experiment in which the question functions as a stimulus. Yet it is sometimes assumed that the reactions to these stimuli, the coded answers, have the same value as utterances made under conditions of reality. The dubiousness of this assumption and the source of error therein are examined in detail by Hofstätter26 among others. We only want to point out that even when a participant is entirely willing to answer to the best of his knowledge and belief, the interview situation still influences the findings because it requires decisiveness even where it may not exist. This is all the more true the more the questions are affectively charged or concern social taboos, or when they concern things the interviewee regards as his private sphere, about which outsiders have no business asking. The depth-psychological concept of rationalization adds to this.27 Under the influence of unconscious psychological defense mechanisms, narcissism in particular, participants often give incorrect or retouched answers, without being clear about them. Especially in this case the affective charge of the issues will assert itself most drastically. The participant’s unconscious will be careful to keep its cards close to the chest, and the same repression mechanisms to which the participant’s drives are subjected are mobilized to prevent more being revealed than psychological censorship allows. Even with especially sociable interviewers, who create a particular kind of transmittal situation, these defensive mechanisms cannot be fully neutralized.28 It is not rare to encounter cases in which the interviewees are only qualifiedly willing to grant interviews for the reasons above. This limitation generally leads to less openness in answering the questions. Fear of admitting

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 30

ignorance in particular shows up here. There are counteracting forces, though, which explain the fact that year after year countless people across the free world join in the question-and-answer game of an army of interviewers. Prominent among these are the personality and skill of the interviewer, curiosity, satisfaction at having been chosen as an organ of public opinion, the prestige of the survey organization, actual helpfulness, and, particularly in the U.S.A., the habit of participating in all kinds of surveys. However, beyond market research or interviews about relatively innocent issues, these factors only completely overcome the artificial character of the interview situation in exceptional cases. The Antinomy of Empirical Research and the Institute’s Pilot Study This critique of survey methods is not nullified by specifying exactly the statistical error of representation according to the rules of mathematical probability. That is because one can only calculate the extent to which the composition of the sample corresponds to that of the universe from which it was taken. But one cannot specify the degree to which the problems of the interview method affect its reliability and then eliminate these errors.29 The critique refers not to the technical precision of the method but to its epistemic adequacy, the matter of inferring public opinion from standardized questions posed to statistically selected individuals. Such criticism is not meant to discredit the survey method as such. Its achievements are beyond doubt the closer its questions are to market and consumer research and to less affectively charged topics. It is only problematic to hypostatize the method, because of its mathematical presentability, as a privileged instrument of objective knowledge across opinion research and to exceed the limits of the method that inhere in the form of its relation to the object. Empirical social research faces a kind of antinomy. The more exact its methods become, the more these methods are at risk of replacing the actual object of interest with one defined in “operational terms,” in other words, narrowing the issue itself to whatever can be ascertained by survey methods and neglecting what is socially relevant. The sterility of some empirical studies, and the frequent sense that one would have expected the results ahead of time—a critically justified observation cannot be refuted simply by the counter argument that there is a difference between what is expected and what is actually known— is not just the result of a lack of imagination or theoretical conception in designing studies. These problems are fundamentally connected with the method itself. By the same token, the history of sociology has often enough demonstrated the opposite risk: arbitrariness and untested dogmatic claims. We are far from demand-

The Group Discussion Method

p 31

ing that science should refrain from including the new methods of “fact finding” [English]. All the same, in the excitement of discovering the new method, one must not forget that it is vulnerable on particularly important questions of knowledge about society. This is true exactly where the method holds itself in highest regard: in objectivity or knowledge about the true object. Because of this contradictory situation, corrective techniques to help the new method understand its own problem have to tie in to the state of empirical social research. Empirical social research needs to overcome the underlying reasons for its own shortcomings with tools derived from it, and to nudge social research into being a tool for real social insight. It must not content itself with safe but irrelevant claims about dead, reified templates of reality. It is a matter of merging scientific objectivity with meaningful insight into the essential, which often eludes precise methods. The undertaking of the Institute for Social Research reported here is an experimental contribution to this task, with all the preliminary and questionable aspects that can hardly be avoided given the paradox of the task itself, and certainly cannot be avoided during the first steps. The goal is a procedure that will eventually lead beyond the limits of quantitative methods. In no way is the claim made that this is the first attempt in this direction. For a long time, depth-psychological interviews, projective tests, detailed case studies, and other techniques have been applied to correct and supplement common survey methods.30 The group technique discussed here differs from all these attempts, however, by not being content with post hoc modifications. Instead, it investigates an earlier stage: studying opinions in statu nascendi.

II. The Practice of the Group Discussion Method 1. The Hypotheses The hypotheses on which the group experiment is based emerge directly from the criticism of representative quantitative survey methods. The following considerations underlie them: FIRSTLY: People’s opinions and attitudes toward topics that claim general or public interest and which can therefore become objects of public opinion do not form and act in isolation but in continuous interrelation between the individual and the society that affects him both directly and indirectly. They are often not specifically fixed, but have an only vague and diffuse potential. Often they become clear to the individual only in interaction with other people. They may be present latently, but they do not really take shape until

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 32

the individual feels compelled to assert and maintain a viewpoint—for example, in a discussion. In this process of interaction, during which the attitudes themselves might change, the opinions emerge more clearly, only to revert afterward to something latent, unclear, and blurry and evade measurement. To reveal them it is therefore necessary to create a situation as similar to reality as possible, in which attitudes can be both activated and formulated by their exponents. SECONDLY: People’s opinions and attitudes about matters beyond the most immediate are also determined by the personality structure, and to a great degree they are subject to people’s affective vicissitudes. They change according to people’s mood and the situation, and the most diverse tendencies can appear in the foreground of consciousness. The method has to seek to register all aspects and to do justice to the contradictory tendencies. Narrowing the range of reactions should be avoided if possible. THIRDLY: The interviewees’ frequent inability to utter an opinion can be built on resistances of which they are not consciously aware. Surveys often register such interviewees as not having an opinion. But even if the interviewees are unable to communicate their attitudes in an articulate way by answering one of the questions posed to them, they still usually have more dispositions toward the problems than one would imagine from survey results. Hence, it is an aim of the new method to overcome these psychological barriers and to register attitudes whose expression they inhibit. FOURTHLY: Answers to questions against which one has conscious or unconscious resistances are often rationalizations. Understanding the content of such rationalizations and their frequency among the population is of great psychological interest. The epistemic value of a study will be that much higher, the more it helps to reveal what these rationalizations actually represent. Therefore, one of the pressing tasks in the area of opinion research is to find a way to circumvent rationalizations (the manifest statements) to reveal their actual meanings and to make a clear distinction between the superficial and the latent contents of a statement.

2. The Experimental Design In Winter 1950–51 our Institute undertook an experiment based on these considerations. In groups of approximately 8–16 participants, around 1,800 people from all strata of the population discussed31 questions which, as has already become apparent, could not be satisfactorily resolved with currently available survey techniques. This “pilot study” [English] exceeds the scope of what has been done elsewhere. It was conducted by three research centers in Hesse, Bavaria, and Northern Germany. Our goal was to understand important aspects of German public opinion—what is in the air in the realm of political ideology—by studying the “trans-subjective” factors, and especially to understand the ways and the extent to which

The Group Discussion Method

p 33

these take hold in the individual. Equally important, however, was the development and the testing of the “group discussion method,” a new method whose conception emerges from the critique of contemporary survey methods. The goal was to reveal the participants’ attitude and the interrelation between individual and group which importantly co-constitutes this attitude in dialogue insofar as one participant attempts to persuade the other group members of the truth of his own view, and by the influence the group opinion (the group standards) exerts on individuals’ attitudes: in short, by the dynamic nature of dealing with the topic. The project avoided studying attitudes, opinions, and patterns of behavior in isolation—a state in which they almost never occur. In addition, the group discussion should allow for apprehending multiple aspects of the opinions and attitudes simultaneously in their multilayered, contradictory complexity. The study sought to create a situation in which people could speak spontaneously and frankly in order to provide for the necessary range of reaction, to cater to the different reaction rates of individuals, and to eliminate everything in the experimental design that might strengthen internal resistance. Therefore, the discussions could not follow a preset agenda or a list of points to be systematically discussed. Rather they had to be conducted as freely as possible, without rigid topical restrictions, and without forcing the participants to express themselves. The often prolix breadth of the discussions of particular themes was usually allowed because only this made it possible to obtain the free associations crucial for assessing the stated opinions and attitudes. These associations were of especially crucial significance for the analysis of the discussions since they made it possible to infer the utterances’ latent content. It is, in turn, only from these that information can be gained about the attitudes that reside below and underlie the surface opinions. The question of how the participants were to be confronted with the objects of research was resolved after great initial difficulties by including the topics in a letter written for the project and recorded on audio tape [See the Colburn Letter, 177–178.—Eds.]. After a short opening address from the investigator, the text was played to the participants and put up for discussion. This foundation mainly had the task of raising the topics for discussion. Apart from that, it was designed to exert a stimulating effect by touching on psychologically sore spots and breaking through the participants’ reserve, which is often observed in discussions of affectively charged topics. In the first place, therefore, it was supposed to mobilize mechanisms of defense and rationalizations in order to reveal what they usually conceal, as in psychoanalytic techniques.32 The situation in a train compartment served as a kind of model for the group discussions. It frequently happens that strangers talk about the most

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 34

delicate questions with surprising openness in such situations. Similarly, the group discussions ensure the nonbinding character and the informality of the talk as well as the freedom to participate in the discussion or to withdraw from it. Only under these conditions could we count on the participants to speak spontaneously and without inhibition and without feeling irritated by a fixed scheme of questioning. In order to best approximate reality, it seemed important to eliminate all inhibiting factors evoked by external conditions. In general the participants were invited to a place familiar and known to them, or at least to a completely neutral place. Thus, the discussions took place in back rooms of small restaurants, in rooming houses, in barracks, in the canteens of big enterprises, in bunkers, club houses, in short anywhere where groups of people naturally come together and are used to talking to each other. As much as it would have lowered the cost to conduct the discussions in the Institute’s building or in another public building, such a venue was unacceptable. Such a venue, which for many of our participants is unfamiliar and charged with feelings of significance, would have been too great a distraction. Before the beginning of the meeting the participants were given pseudonyms, which they maintained during the entire course of the experiment. This dispelled the anxiety some individuals had about later identification and created sufficient anonymity for the participant to actually come out of his shell while discussing the different topics. To protect participants’ anonymity we therefore had to decide from whom they should remain anonymous. Above all, it seemed important to promise that their anonymity would be carefully protected vis-à-vis the Institute and its assistants, as well as from any authorities or the occupying powers and even from the police apparatus of a future Russian invasion.33 One must not forget that in the winter of 1950–51 there was still widespread fear that a candid political statement could bring persecution by German or foreign security organs. From the Institute’s side, everything that seemed necessary to keep the promise to our participants was done. Anonymity vis-à-vis the other group members is a different story. Naturally, it was only possible when the participants did not already know each other or could not easily discover their identity through other channels (employee of the same business, residence in the same area, living in neighboring accommodations). In artificially assembled groups whose members were homogeneous only based on a general social category (e.g., refugees, youths, etc.), using pseudonyms also proved a practical tool to overcome the inhibitions of distrustful or particularly anxious individuals. Here the name card put up in front of each participant served as a symbol for the

The Group Discussion Method

p 35

fact that his true name was not recorded and could not be known to his fellow participants without his consent. One objection could be that the anonymity granted in the discussions encouraged irresponsible drivel, since speakers were not bound to what they said. In some cases there were indications that participants played certain roles in the discussions that prompted them to say things that were at odds with their other attitudes and seemed at times to be clearly contradictory to those attitudes. Such contradictions between normal attitudes and expressions of opinion during the group discussion can be explained primarily by the fact that in most people several tendencies struggle for dominance. One of these usually prevails, while others are visible only in exceptional cases. That such phenomena can be observed in the discussion suggests a positive interpretation of our experiment—the experimental design caused a reduction of the controlling function of consciousness and, thus, granted access to deeper layers of consciousness.34 Depth psychology long ago disproved the common view that a person who knows himself to be free from responsibility would just talk, without any particular goal, for the sake of making himself appear important or to malevolently mislead the listener. In the same way that wine reveals but does not invent, the irresponsible drivel in the discussion can be very informative for those attitudes which are rarely visible and are hidden in an interview based on multiple-choice questions. One can even assume that people whose political opinions are the object of research are rather more likely to give irresponsible answers to an unknown interviewer (for example, to get rid of him) than to chatter about something irrelevant in a carefully organized group discussion. After distributing pseudonyms, short statistical questionnaires were handed out. These asked for common information such as age, marital status, profession, education, etc. The questions were formulated in such a way that answering usually led to some questions, through which more personal contact between the participants and the staff could be established before the beginning of the discussion. After a short introduction from the investigator and the playing of the basic stimulus, the discussion generally fell into two parts of 45 minutes to 1 hour each. The first section was entirely free discussion. In the second part the investigator inserted “standardized arguments” into appropriate sections of the discussion. The aim of this part was to give participants the opportunity to make their statements more precise and most importantly to gain further insight into the process of opinion formation and change.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 36

3. Carrying Out the Experiment Character and Composition of the Groups After some experimenting with randomly composed groups, it proved practical to limit the discussions to groups that were sociologically or ideologically homogeneous to some extent. The criteria for this homogeneity had to be worked out first. We assumed that, as in reality, opinion formation tends to take place in prestructured groups. Preliminary tests were meant to determine what kind of group was best suited for the experiment while still corresponding to natural conditions.35 The number of participants was generally not supposed to be smaller than seven or larger than seventeen. Groups that were too small were too closed to permit true opposition to emerge. In too large of a group, it would have been difficult to avoid disintegration and a feeling of coldness and foreignness. It was neither planned nor possible to base the research, conceived as a pilot study, on a statistically representative cross-section of the population. This, however, does not mean that the experiment was a shot in the dark. Rather, we sought to be very realistic in the selection of participants so that the groups would not be composed only of members of one social circle. It seemed equally unacceptable to conduct the discussions in only one city. Hence, within the limits of time and resources, we included members of many important population strata from different districts of the Federal Republic.36 The Function of the Moderator Based on the above, it should be clear that the discussions—and in particular the first part—were not steered substantively but only moderated formally. The best way to do this could only be determined experimentally. Thus, we experimented with different methods of moderation in the first research phase. From the experience gained, we finally developed a technique that differs crucially from the usual ways of moderating discussions. As a result of this experience we compiled the “moderator instruction,”37 according to which the rest of the study was conducted. The preliminary tests showed that the investigators alone were not able to record the observations necessary for interpreting the discussions. The necessary concentration on the discussion and constant interaction with the participants did not permit them to take notes at the same time. Thus, after the first pretests an assistant was assigned to each investigator. The assistant was charged with the task of recording the topics of the discussion in shorthand and recording observations on the behavior of the group and of individual participants.

The Group Discussion Method

p 37

Recording the Discussions It was clear from the beginning that only electronic recording would suffice for the group discussions. It was the only way to reproduce the complete course of the discussion and the intensity of the speakers’ affect. In addition, participants almost invariably got used to the microphone and recorder quickly, while the presence of a secretary writing feverishly can severely affect the realism of the discussion. Now, it would be wrong to assume that the tape recording readily allowed a complete transcription of the discussions. Even in the most favorable case it was not possible to identify and transcribe all statements with the help of the audio tapes; a few remained unintelligible. This is essentially because the group discussions proceeded with little organization due to their spontaneity. Numerous participants speak unclearly or in a dialect hard to understand, and many participants often talk at the same time. These difficulties could have been avoided by more rigid moderation but had to be accepted since the frankness of the statements clearly decreases with increasing discipline of discussion. This would therefore have strengthened the controls whose effects the experiment was designed to limit. The Individual Interview From the beginning, it was assumed that the group discussions, conceived and developed as tools for opinion research, would not fail to affect the participants. Thus, we sought to try to gain some insights into these effects. It was particularly important to determine the consistency of the articulated opinion: to find out whether opinion changes observed in the discussions were “stable,” or whether the participants reverted to their initial attitude at some point after the discussions. A survey of approximately one quarter of the participants (400 total) was conducted 4 to 6 weeks after the completion of the discussions as an attempt to consider this direction. The questionnaire was developed after a detailed review of around 50 discussions.38 It included questions relating to the main topics of the research as well as some to provide additional information about the psychological structure of the interviewees. The interviews were principally conducted by the moderators and their assistants in order to utilize the trusting relationship which had developed between them and the participants in the course of the discussions, to gain as open and sincere answers as possible. These interviews were therefore not inquisitions by strangers as criticized above, but talks between two people who, as a general rule, had gotten to know each other under particularly favorable circumstances. These individual interviews yielded an abundance of valuable material, but their goal was achieved only to a limited extent. This is, in part, because

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 38

the participants surveyed were not representative of the participants, because contact could be reestablished with only some of the discussion groups. It proved to be even more troublesome that the survey results could only be partially linked to the contributions to the discussion, because the questionnaire design was based on a plan of analysis that turned out to be impracticable. Therefore, the results of the survey were used as additional material for the qualitative analysis but not integrated statistically into the findings of the main analysis.

4. Analysis of Stimuli When the following discussion refers to the “stimuli” used, this should not be understood as an attempt to determine with scientific rigor individual differences in reactions to the same stimulus. We consider stimuli as those conditions set up to induce the participants to talk and make their attitudes and motivations known where they would otherwise have been inhibited. We also do not consider factors that influenced the participants’ reactions in particular ways without having been planned and standardized as part of the experimental design; these act as stimuli as well. Among those are, for example, the effects of the respective composition of the group, the specific group climate resulting from the composition, the personality of the moderator, etc. The combination of these factors excludes from the outset any thought of experimental methods, which always require the isolation of stimuli so that the reactions can be measured. The Basic Stimulus The basic stimulus was of central significance for the group experiment. It not only had to stimulate, to induce the participants into talking, but also had to set the topics for discussion insofar as this could be done without coercion. It was a functional analog to the questionnaire in survey methods, but without its rigidness. Hence, great care had to be devoted to the construction and extensive testing of the basic stimulus. A number of criteria were set up for the formulation of the basic stimulus. These arose in part from the study’s topic and in part from the methods intended for its execution. FIRSTLY: The basic stimulus had to relate directly to the subject of the research, i.e., to questions of political ideology. Among those questions were, for example, Germans’ relation to foreign countries and the occupying powers, attitudes toward democratic and totalitarian forms of government

The Group Discussion Method

p 39

respectively, the residues of national-socialistic ideology, particularly the racial theory, the question of anti-Semitism, and, finally, the question of German collective guilt, a question discussed with great vehemence in all strata of the population when this undertaking was conducted. SECONDLY: It had to be concrete enough to evoke specific reactions and to exercise a stimulating effect on members of the most diverse professional and educational groups. THIRDLY: It had to be stable enough to be used for the entire period of the survey, which lasted half a year, without losing the reality and intensity of the effects. FOURTHLY: It had to touch psychologically sensitive spots to reach deeper layers of consciousness, but should not overexcite the participants, which would cause them to take a defensive stance and provoke them to react unnaturally.

In the construction of the basic stimulus, we proceeded from the experience of what was generally said about those topics and made it an object of criticism. We expected that the participants would mobilize exactly what was criticized—the ideology—against this very mild criticism. In this way the basic stimulus was meant to help release the ideology. The underlying hypothesis was that the discussion would spontaneously show through the manner of countercriticism what kinds of attitudes existed—at least latently—in the people. The basic stimulus was presented to the participants as an open letter written by an American sergeant to his newspaper after 5 years of service in the occupation army [The Colburn Letter.—Eds.].39 The letter is composed of three parts clearly distinguished from one another. In the introduction, the writer defends his right to judge Germany and the German people by his having lived in Germany for 5 years and, thereby, having had the chance to get to know Germans firsthand and under favorable conditions for objective observation, namely at work. The statement that much nonsense has been said and written about Germany is meant to assure the reader that he will not judge lightly. Its effect is further strengthened by the rejection of supposedly common generalizing judgments among his countrymen, which follows. The first part of the letter concludes with the captatio benevolentiae* that the writer is a sober (unemotional) and not vengeful observer, albeit one who does not let anyone pull the wool over his eyes. In the second part the depiction of the Germans starts with a description of positive characteristics. The good points are partly qualified by statements: “They are very interested in technology, even though they, naturally,

* An effort to secure the good will of a listener or reader.—Eds.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 40

are behind us,” “of course, I do not know to what extent they are independent or just recount what they have heard,” “often they just say what they think we want to hear,” etc. These statements qualifying the depiction of good characteristics of the Germans were meant to increase the sense of objectivity, since unqualified praise would easily have seemed unnatural, as clumsy flattery, or as pro-German bias. We were surprised by what occurred: the qualifications were often interpreted as attacks just as the critical statements were later on. The psychic reservoir from which many of the participants drew was largely collective narcissism. Although they were gathered in small groups, they acted as members of a mass or at least behaved as if they were in a mass as soon as there was talk of “we,” which, for them, replaced the notion of Germany. Among many participants their entire reactions seemed to be set up according to the binary scheme of for us vs. against us. This behavioral pattern should remind us that the problem of mass psychology is in no way limited to times when masses are immediately present. Phenomena of mass psychology can also occur in social situations in which individuals find themselves relatively isolated. Stubborn and unreflective reactions can occur whenever the psychic zones characteristic of mass psychology are touched. These reside in the domain of collective identification. The third and longest part comprises a detailed criticism of characteristics and behavioral patterns of Germans. Again, the critical comments are qualified with the aim of developing rapport with the group. This third part of the letter is the focus of the basic stimulus, as it concentrates the arguments that are designed to break through the participants’ reserve by means of their content, formulation, and psychological approach. The categories used in the analysis of the basic stimulus arise from the main topics of the object of investigation mentioned above. It is important to recognize, though, that these are not separate phenomena independent of one another, but rather question complexes forming structural wholes. Thus, even though the following isolates individual questions and, hence, breaks apart from this structural whole, one should not overlook that such a methodological operation must not lead to hypostatizing the crystallized factors as independent variables. The structural whole of the third part is best characterized by “ethnocentrism.”40 By this we mean the attitude that contrasts the (good) ingroup with the (bad) out-group, distinguishes between “us” (the Germans) and “them” (the foreigners), and projects all imaginable bad things onto the latter. The basic stimulus touches on five sensitive spots of ethnocentrism, namely:

The Group Discussion Method

p 41

1. the dogma of German cultural superiority, 2. the myth of the invincibility of the German soldier, 3. the overestimation of one’s own technological accomplishments and inventions, 4. moral condescension, and 5. aggression against nations that were supposedly more politically mature, arising from the cliché of one’s own political immaturity. These sensitive spots corresponded to the following phrases from the basic stimulus: “They believe they have exclusive rights to culture and are, thus, vastly superior to us.” “Even though we beat them, they believe themselves to be better and more capable than us.” “. . . they have a hard time accepting that now they are no longer in charge in the world.” “. . . even though they, naturally, are behind us (in technology).” “. . . that they attempt to learn as much as they can from our modern techniques.” “. . . they cannot understand at all that one admits the mistakes of one’s own country and talks openly about them.” “. . . that the Germans are learning from the ground up what practical democracy actually means.” “The risk is that, tomorrow, they will again follow a Hitler or Stalin, as soon as they convince themselves that they can come to power again that way.” Anti-Semitism is a special case of ethnocentrism. That anti-Semitism persists in Germany even after the collapse of the Third Reich is supported both by theoretical reasoning and by direct experience.41 We considered anti-Semitism as of special importance among the surviving elements of Nazi ideology.42 Anti-Semitism was probably less affected by the collapse of national-socialistic dogmas than were other ideological elements such as the cult of the Führer. Since we could not count on open acknowledgment of crassly ethnocentric attitudes, it seemed prudent not to refer directly to anti-Semitism in the basic stimulus. Thus, only indirect statements about anti-Semitism were included in the stimulus. One could, however, assume that these statements would induce the participants to intense discussion. The stimuli touched on ethnocentrism on three levels in order to achieve a sufficiently

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 42

wide range of reactions and to reveal the hidden and repressed manifestations of ethnocentrism. These levels were: the ideology of the superiority of the “German race,” the bitterness against the DPs,43 the degree of recognition of the extent of the persecution of the Jews. These three topics are introduced here as levels of ethnocentrism because of possible differences in the degree to which particularly antiSemitic attitudes are conscious. We assumed that participants who identified partially or completely with national-socialistic racial theory during the discussions would likely also have conscious anti-Semitic attitudes. For the other two groups—those participants who thought German bitterness against the Jews was justified or that the extent of the persecution of the Jews is generally greatly exaggerated—we assumed that less conscious, hidden forms of ethnocentrism were at work. In the first case, we suspected a suppression of feelings of guilt leading to the projection of aggression onto the victims; in the second case, the effect of a defense mechanism resulting in a distortion of reality. According to these hypotheses, the following arguments were formulated: “They imagine that their good traits, which I do not deny, grant them a sort of privilege in the world.” “They are still not free from the Nazi view that they are a master race.” “They are also still bitter toward the Jews.” “One only hears . . . complaints about the DPs’ trading on the black market . . .” “They act especially strangely when there is talk about racial persecution in America.” “I have always explained to them that among us it is a matter of 10 or 20 cases a year, while among them it involved millions . . .” “. . . while their state, however, managed lynching itself and in a disproportionally higher scale.” We have to note again here that breaking apart the structural whole of the study question and the isolated examination of subproblems, although unavoidable for the analysis of the stimuli, is only partially possible. This is particularly true of the guilt complex, since the question of guilt can never be discussed outside the context of the actions constituting guilt. Thus, it was impossible to avoid the fact that the stimulus arguments, particularly those aimed at the guilt complex, touched two sensitive spots at once. This reality would have to be judged as a deficiency in

The Group Discussion Method

p 43

quantitative survey methods due to the lack of a clear separation of variables. Here, though, it demonstrates the impossibility of splitting complex phenomena into cleanly delineated factors and underscores the necessity of coming to grips with the different dimensions of a multilayered problem all at once.44 Prior experience suggested that unresolved guilt in the majority of Germans was a key problem for understanding public opinion and political potential in the Federal Republic. We expected that German guilt for the war, for the cruelties committed during the war, and for the persecution of Jews would be partially repressed, partially denied due to narcissism as well as real reasons, and that even mild reproaches would be rejected, overcompensated, and returned. We also anticipated that repressed guilt would return as aggression, and that manifold projections, shifts, and rationalizations could occur in the discussion of the question of guilt. More arguments relating to the guilt complex were maintained than for the other categories in order to preserve the range of reaction. Moreover, the letter included phrases that did not relate to one of the three topics mentioned above but aimed in a very vague, general manner at the question of guilt. In the order of topics the stimulus arguments were: “They do not want to hear anything about the fact that they started wars with other people time and again, this time too.” “. . . yet this does not change anything about Hitler’s setting the world on fire and alone bears the responsibility for the mischief, which, since then, has not come to an end.” “Only a small minority is said to be guilty. In a certain way this is true, but in general one finds only very few Germans who unambiguously renounce the deeds.” “Instead, they always say that such things are unavoidable in war.” “When they hear that a Negro was lynched in the South, they crow and say: ‘You’re not any better’ . . .” “Some think that all are Nazis and all bear joint guilt for the cruelties.” “Most act as if we did the greatest wrong to them.” “They don’t want to be guilty of anything.” “When one listens to them, there are no Nazis at all. I didn’t see anybody admitting that he was one.” “They are always prepared to rail against all the others, only in order to distract.” “Instead, they tell you . . . that the Russians are even much worse.” The arguments of the letter relating to the authority complex hinted at Germans’ apolitical character and tendency to submit to authority, which

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 44

is time and again advanced as an excuse for political developments. Authoritarian submission is understood here in the sense of the “authoritarian syndrome,”45 the wide spread of which among the German population is often considered a reason for the lack of true democratic development,46 and which decisively influences the attitude of Germans toward to the question of the form of government. In regard to contents, the arguments related to both manifestations of authoritarianism, namely, servility and aggression.47 The corresponding phrases in the letter are: “They are . . . only rarely insubordinate.” “Of course, I do not know to what extent they are independent or just recite what they have heard.” “Often they just tell us what they think we want to hear.” “To me and to most of my acquaintances they are generally friendly.” “The risk is that, tomorrow, they will again follow a Hitler or Stalin . . .”48 “They are always prepared to rail against all the others . . .” “. . . that the Germans learn from the bottom what practical democracy actually means . . .” “instead of always being prepared to attack the other and insist that one is in the right in a one-sided way.” The Further Development of the Basic Stimulus The question of whether the basic stimulus was well designed, that is, whether it animated the participants to discuss the objects of the research uninhibitedly, could only be answered empirically. The course of the study showed that the participants were more ready and able to respond even to very emotionally charged questions than we expected. By the same token, the basic stimulus provoked too much objection and forced some participants into defensiveness. It therefore had to be somewhat weakened. Some phrases of the letter, such as the comment about the technological superiority of the Americans, proved too specific and narrowed the range of reactions. Above all, mentioning technology evoked a highly emotionally charged dimension among many participants, particularly workers. They could not get away from this topic, even though it was rather far from the specific interest area of the study. Moreover, the basic stimulus seemed not to be balanced in all respects. Some topics, such as antiSemitism and authoritarianism, were considered too strongly, while others like attitudes toward democracy were considered too little. Finally, the surviving elements of national-socialistic ideology were so close to the

The Group Discussion Method

p 45

surface of consciousness that we had to avoid provoking an all-too-easy verbalization with the help of these clichés. Based on these consistent observations in all three experimental centers during the pretests,49 we created a new version of the basic stimulus. Later in the experiment the question arose whether we could further weaken the content and formulation of the stimuli without the participants’ reactions losing spontaneity and intensity. The problem was how to determine the minimum stimulus content that would result in maximum reactions. A third version of the basic stimulus was developed to answer this question. This final version of the basic stimulus differed from the second one in its shorter length, achieved by removing more material from the section including the negative judgments. These deletions, which consisted essentially of negative judgments, already mitigated the content of the letter significantly. It was further weakened by formulating the negative judgments less crassly, yet more firmly, while retaining the number and intensity of the positive statements. In general, we tried to mitigate the stimulus’s provocative effect, to better balance the relation between positive and negative judgments, to shorten it, and to formulate the content in a vaguer way. The psychological sting of the Allied sergeant’s criticism of the Germans was increasingly dropped in the later versions, while the stimulating effect shifted from the psychological to the objective. The Standardized Arguments According to the design, the investigator begins in a purely formal role, then toward the end of the first or the beginning of the second hour begins to contribute standardized stimulus arguments and counter-arguments at suitable points. It goes without saying that he does not advance new topics but follows closely what is said in the “Colburn letter.” The following four pairs were selected on the basis of a list of forty proposed arguments identified from the pretests. The first stimulus argument relates to the Germans’ self-assessment, to the question of guilt (an example of shifting guilt is presented in order to encourage appropriately minded participants to express their opinions), and to the restrictions imposed on Germans. It also touches on the ambivalent attitude toward the occupation powers and the tendency to reinterpret facts to put one’s own position in a favorable light. “The Ami is quite right saying that the Germans should just be left alone and that they will rise again by themselves. Everything else he says, like that the Germans think they are better than others, the thing with guilt, etc., is just babble.”

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 46

The first counter-argument is initially presented as purely rational. It points to Germany’s inability to solve its current economic difficulties with its own resources and to the fear of war. Yet the argument also touches on the participants’ less conscious psychic strata, such as their fascination with the underestimated strength of the former enemy right up to the point of the collapse. “If the Amis were not here to help us, we would have much less to eat. Is it not better for the Amis to be here than for the Nazis to return or the Russians to invade and we would have to be afraid when the doorbell rings at 7 in the morning?”

The second stimulus argument advances another typical defensive reaction. It works with the stereotypical idea that “everything is decided beyond our control” and we “are just moved back and forth like chess pieces.” This alludes to feeling helpless against anonymous powers, which so often serves as an excuse for unwillingness to act responsibly. Again, the corresponding counter-argument uses rational argumentation by citing an example from the very recent past as evidence for individuals’ opportunities to hold their ground against such anonymous powers. Besides the direct mention of the question of form of government (and by extension also the authority complex), the selection of the American example hints at feelings of hatred and resistance against the Americans and their attempt to democratize Germany. Stimulus Argument: “How can one speak of guilt at all in the face of these huge processes? All these are processes decided beyond our control. We are just chess pieces moved back and forth. The individual does not have any say in that.” Counter-Argument: “Well, democracy really is not as powerless as you think it is. Just consider America. In the last election the whole apparatus creating public opinion, the press, broadcasts, enormous financial means, were against Truman. Yet he was elected because the majority of the population, the little people, believed they would fare better under him as president. Is that really nothing?”

The third stimulus argument is dedicated to the projection of negative traits onto other nations. It ties into the age-old thesis of Anglo-Saxon rivalry and envy alongside Germany’s being surrounded: a thesis often used to explain the First World War. The argument thus provokes a corresponding nationalistic attitude as well as the inclination to view historical contexts in particular ways in order to improve one’s own weak position. The second part (“cannon-fodder argument”) was heard frequently back then,

The Group Discussion Method

p 47

but cannot be taken literally: it is based only on Realpolitik, the will to strike the best bargain for oneself. The corresponding counter-argument ties directly into these. On the one hand, it argues against a narrow group egoism by pointing out the indivisibility of German and American interests, and, on the other hand, by mentioning the Korean War, it encourages participants who viewed its first phase with Schadenfreude* to express this view. Stimulus Argument: “It is nonsense that the Germans bear guilt alone. The Anglo-Saxons were against us. They still only want us as cannon-fodder against the Russians.” Counter-Argument: “Well, should one just throw Europe down the throat of the Russians? And are the American soldiers in Korea not also fighting for us today? We can no longer separate our interests from those of America.”

Finally, the fourth stimulus argument returns to nationalism and the obsession with power by authoritarian personalities. The counter-argument tries to ascertain how possible it is to counteract such an attitude by appealing to a desire for peace. Stimulus Argument: “We should not be bothered with all this prattle about international understanding. The only thing that counts is power, and everybody tries to seize as much power as possible.” Counter-Argument: “Why are you so opposed to the idea that the world could become beautiful and peaceful? One of the reasons it doesn’t work could be that people are so opposed to it.”

The fact that stimulus arguments were only used after a trusting relationship was established may have contributed to the arguments’ fitting naturally into the discussion. This makes them a useful tool for revealing important additions to the opinions expressed in the first part of the discussions. 5. The Interpretation The Quantitative Analysis In order to process the discussion we had to develop a method as different from common methods of quantification as

* A German expression referring to joy at the misfortunes of others.—Eds.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 48

the aim of this study was from other group experiments. These are not primarily concerned with ascertaining opinions and attitudes but with investigating communication between members of the group as well as with group phenomena like integration, cohesion, influence of the “group leader,” behavior toward outsiders, etc. It is therefore adequate in those cases only to record the participants’ statements that directly relate to the objects of investigation; everything else is extra. Thus, American studies of group dynamics usually limit themselves to registering the participants’ reactions in a few categories, without recording the actual wording and drawing on their whole depth and complexity for interpretation.50 Even Bales,51 who undertook to examine the entire communication process in order to gain insights into the effect of the group situation on group members and the principles of behavior within groups, made do with only twelve very abstract observational categories. Our investigation, by contrast, was not primarily concerned with studying such group phenomena. Rather, we sought to observe the attitudes and reactions of individuals in group situations. Understanding the group dynamics was not the main aim of the investigation but a step on the way to better understanding opinion formation. Accordingly, the interpretation had to be geared to categorizing the reactions of individuals as completely as possible in order to gain insights into their attitudes toward problems that were not posed by the group situation as such but by reality. This meant that the content of the contributions to the discussion had to be considered with greater completeness and complexity than other group experiments. This is not the place to describe in detail the differences between the categories used in other experiments and those used in this investigation. As an indication of our attempt to register every particular it is enough to point out that the content of the discussions was processed with the help of a coding key comprising hundreds of categories, while other studies use only a small fraction of that number. The difficulties arising from the development of a suitable method for quantification were correspondingly high. In the beginning, the material to be processed seemed to defy coverage by relatively simple, quantifiable categories because it was too varied. After reviewing more transcripts, however, it became apparent that the material was not amorphous. Rather, it was already pre-structured to some extent by the basic stimulus and the standardized arguments. Moreover, a set of topics was objectively important. An analysis of all of these factors and the resulting categories provided the first starting points for compiling the index, which allowed us to process the discussions quantitatively.

The Group Discussion Method

p 49

Descriptive and interpretive categories were used. The descriptive categories were used to record content and to count statements. We mainly used the techniques known as “content analysis”52 for this task. The interpretive categories were a scalelike judgment of the participant’s general view on each topic. The third chapter [Chapter 2 in this volume.—Eds.] gives an account of the development and application of the quantifying methods.53 Here we only note that the use of interpretive categories already introduced a qualitative component into the quantitative analysis. This is based on our conviction that the distinction between quantitative and qualitative social research is not based on the object of research and must therefore not be hypostatized by the method. The Qualitative Analysis Qualitative analysis is of central significance for the meaning and correct understanding of the discussions. According to Lazarsfeld,54 qualitative analysis does not use counting and measuring, but tries to interpret unquantified findings directly from the material itself and to consult them to verify a hypothesis or to develop new hypotheses. Until very recently, the social sciences depended almost exclusively on this method. They owe their crucial insights and successes to it. Qualitative analysis of a relatively small number of individual cases inspired Freud’s theories, which are also crucial for sociology. Comte, Marx, and Max Weber conducted mainly qualitative analyses when they tried to interpret social conditions and to use the findings to derive theoretical insights about the principles according to which social processes take place. Yet today the majority of empirical sociologists prefer to use the exact methods at their disposal for gathering and processing their material instead of adjusting research methods to their objects. This happens because scientific reliability is doubted if the findings cannot be verified, counted, measured, and specified in their percentage distribution within a population. Findings not fulfilling these desiderata are said to be unreliable, their generalization to be impermissible. Empirical social researchers mainly only concede the formation of hypotheses to qualitative investigations insofar as these are suited to verification by quantitative survey methods.55 Certainly, numerous questions cannot be resolved without using quantitative techniques. But the most suitable method for a specific case should be decided solely based on the object of research. Our investigation also includes quantifying the material. Now, the analysis of the irrational content in the discussion certainly cannot be mastered by common methods of categorization. Depth psychological categories need to be applied to the material of the discussions,

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 50

beyond merely systematizing the manifest meaning of statements. This can never be objective in the usual sense of exact investigations: the application of the categories to the material necessarily has to give more weight to subjective judgment than in the case of quantitative processing of survey results. This qualitative analysis is the only way to include the depth and complexity of the discussion material in the findings. It offers a better opportunity for discerning the underlying issues of the problems than mere quantitative analysis because it can study the entire structure including the most differentiated details. It is precisely the material crucial for insight into the social dynamic that resists analysis by exact quantitative methods. As with every scientific endeavor, there is only one definitive test for the fruitfulness of the findings gained by qualitative analysis: proof in practice.56 The introduction already pointed out that we were conscious of the problems of any social-psychological interpretation. We reiterate here that the analysis should not rely exclusively on the analyst’s intuition. The interpretation relies instead on a base stock of theory and on experience in daily practice as well as on the findings of prior scientific investigations. Furthermore, the interpretation in our study never uses isolated individual statements, but focuses instead on the overall contexts in all expressions of the participants’ speaking at a given instant as well as in the analysis of the entire material at hand. The criteria for the interpretation’s objectivity are theoretical coherence as well as inner consistency. In our case, many statements that were expressed in the most diverse discussions, completely disconnected by time and participants, are so closely linked that they demand interpretation. Finally, it is part of every investigation of important qualitative data to repeat the analysis with similar, more refined methods and new documents gained in a similar way. Comparing the findings of several such investigations of the same topic—which are still to be accomplished for the study at hand—offers further tools for objective control. As an example of qualitative analysis of our discussion material we present a monograph on “Guilt and Defense” [Adorno, Guilt and Defense, Harvard University Press 2010. —Eds.] as well as a report of the investigations on group dynamics in Chapter 4 [This volume.—Eds.]. The following pages give some information on the phenomena that were the objects of qualitative analyses. Internal Contradictions of the Attitude In numerous cases we could observe that opinion formation takes place only in the process of debating with others. These cases show, moreover, that one would receive arbitrary and even wrong answers if one tried to determine the opinions via questions before they have actually developed. The participants often responded

The Group Discussion Method

p 51

initially as if they were answering a question posed to them. They generally offered what they regarded as dominant opinion or what they thought was expected from them or was morally or politically advisable. Only in the further course of the discussion—and mostly without the speakers being conscious of it—did they express their actual opinions. This is not really a contradiction, though, only the appearance of one. It is only an expression of the reality that internal inconsistency is often a crucial element of attitudes. The Brittleness of Language One of the most striking findings is that people virtually speak two languages. This appeared in all groups and with the same clarity among former officers and farmers, tram conductors, and urban merchants. In the language of their profession and of daily contact, they are able to express themselves rationally and somewhat clearly. The language shows certain objectively conditioned symptoms of decline, yet within this language the speakers succeed in reacting coherently and meaningfully to all problems posed to them. When they are confronted with highly emotionally charged problems, however, this language fails them, and they are forced to resort to a second one, which has in common with language only the use of words. Actually, it is stammering. This second language seems to be much less a means of expressing thoughts or even emotions than to serve the effort to suppress manifestations of the unconscious. It is characterized by a certain brittleness. This is caused by the conflict between the intention to argue rationally and the irrational impulses activated by the basic stimulus. The conflict situation appears to destroy language; it reduces the ability for meaningful, intelligible expression. By doing just that, however, it unearths the real psychological layer. The irrational, whose expression the speaker unconsciously tries to prevent, emerges in the structure of the second language. Its seeming senselessness turns out to be absolutely meaningful at closer inspection, since it provides insight into the latent psychological mechanism effective in the speaker.57 Rationalizations If the interviewee is asked to justify an opinion he expressed, it is in order to ascertain the motivations behind the expressed attitude. It is known that the justifications one receives in such cases are not necessarily true, yet one proceeds in the analysis of the results as if the answers of the interviewees have to be taken literally. We consider this unacceptable. The analysis always has to keep in mind that such justifications often are rationalizations. This is particularly true when discussing emotionally charged topics. Unearthing the motives actually underlying

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 52

manifest opinions about affectively charged topics requires more intensive stimulus effects than can be invoked by merely asking why. Now, the stimuli in the group discussions were not so strong that the participants were shocked into consciousness about the true reasons for their opinions. But the basic stimulus operated intensively enough to produce an abundance of clues for an adequate interpretation of the statements. The basic stimulus itself as well as the standardized arguments and the moderation, which permitted free association, granted the participants a sufficiently broad range of reaction to facilitate a large number of expressions uncontrolled by self-censorship. The Trans Subjective Factors In our discussion of the concept of public opinion, we pointed to the fact that the sum of an individual’s subjective contents of consciousness is not identical with what constitutes public opinion, the objectivity transcending the individual opinion. The group discussions provided specific preliminary insights into the objectively given, socially preset contents of consciousness. The activity of trans subjective factors in many expressions of opinion arises from a number of observations, which imposed themselves during the analysis of the discussion material. Thus, throughout all the discussions there was a marked monotony of statements across all important topics. The basic stimulus acted as leverage, releasing statements without providing the individual motives. One could, of course, object that the recurrence of a limited pool of the same theses and formulas could be understood as the expression of accurate judgments and that their intensity is the result of the reality of the facts judged by the participants. Such a view contradicts the fact that the statements in question here actually share the characteristic that drastically distorts reality. Our analysis proceeds from the hypothesis that constantly recurring views that are in no way derived from the nature of the reality are the result of the effectiveness of trans subjective factors. We tried to discern two layers in the contributions to the discussion—a preset objective one and a specifically individual one that describes the reaction to those trans subjective elements, the relation between the subject’s view and those elements. We have not yet found a satisfactory solution for these methodological difficulties. Intensively comparing analyses of statements about the same object, where despite the statements’ differences one and the same argument is intended, promises a better understanding of these contexts. A further indication of trans subjective factors is the surprising agreement of many views among the most heterogeneous strata of our participants, especially in judgments that do not do justice to the issue. Although

The Group Discussion Method

p 53

discussions differ significantly in expression and psychological manner, there are strong similarities in the core structure, so we must assume an overarching role of trans subjective elements. Finally, the analysis demonstrates the presence of numerous, reified, stereotypical ideas and formulations whose very form implies that they do not reflect speakers’ opinions but, instead, are spoken without conscious intent. Insofar as these elements can be reconciled with a theoretically sound relation to the content yielded when the material is analyzed from a different perspective, they count as further evidence for the influence of objectively fixed factors. Phenomena of Group Dynamics We have already mentioned the role of the groups as a whole as a factor in the opinion formation of their members. The transcriptions as well as the electronic recordings offered extensive material for studying group dynamics. An analysis of phenomena of integration, especially those processes of emerging uniform group reactions, is particularly pressing. We therefore begin by studying the interrelations between the group members. We assemble a model of the process of group integration from several different discussions. The stages of steadily increasing conformity are foreignness, orientation, adaption, familiarity, and conformity. The hypotheses gained about psychic and social causes and conditions of individual phenomena in the process of integration are the mechanisms of contagion, identification, and norm formation. Comparative analyses of individual concrete sessions show that groups whose members constitute a social unit at the outset tend to agree not only in their attitudes but also in their formal behavioral patterns. But randomly composed groups can constitute themselves relatively quickly as collectivities and develop a considerable degree of integration insofar as they are made up of homogeneous elements.

Part Two

THE QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE DISCUSSIONS

chapter two

The Organization of the Discussion Materials

I. The Task and Working Hypotheses The group sessions were transcribed, alongside the observations of investigators and assistants, in 121 transcripts totaling 6,392 typewritten pages. These transcripts are just as multivalent and, therefore, confusing as were the discussions themselves. In order to address the study’s question we need an overview of the topics discussed, the opinions expressed, and the situations in which certain topics occur. In short, we have to get a grip on the discussions’ content, which is scattered over thousands of pages. Beyond that, the quantitative analysis has to use cross-tabulation to uncover structural relations between different opinions and to identify the factors on which certain opinions depend. Counting similar phenomena (a precondition for quantitative analysis) poses special problems here because of the nature of statements made during discussions. Our material contains very diverse statements. Two complications arose from the latitude our design granted to participants. First, participants can be distracted from the planned topics. Their statements go beyond the scope of the planned discussion. Second, it is easier for a participant to avoid responding in a discussion than in an interview, because we had to refrain from directing the discussions so as not to jeopardize the informal atmosphere. This means that the data lack a tight topical structure and complete individual information. It is therefore impossible to organize the entire

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 58

“sample” according to specific characteristics. When using a questionnaire one can easily cover the various dimensions of the issue with specific questions.1 In discussions, on the other hand, the material on any individual aspect of a topic remains incomplete unless one elects to moderate systematically. In that case, the discussion is stripped of all spontaneity and becomes a group survey interview. The extent and richness of the entire material and the considerable differences in quality and quantity of individual statements complicate the formation of statistical groups. The search for suitable and countable categories was initially based on the material’s topical structure, evoked by the basic stimulus and the stimulus arguments of the investigator. The organizational scheme required for classification was meant to represent the reality of the material and was therefore modeled according to categories that were suggested by the material. In the course of processing the material, it became clear that the basic stimulus and the stimulus arguments set the discussions in a general direction but did not determine their course in detail. Table 2.1 illuminates this fact. It juxtaposes the topics raised by the basic stimulus and the stimulus arguments with the topics that came up in the course of the discussion. This table only includes topics addressed in the statistical analysis. Beyond these topics, though, an abundance of statements in the material surround the actual topic of discussion. Even the topical differences between the basic stimulus and the discussion material already show that we were right to develop the statistical classification scheme from the material itself after the fact. Based on the 20 items on the first list of topics in the material, the statements were initially simply organized and examined for further similarities. We expected to arrive at a tally by using categories including more of the concrete structure of the material than, for example, the categories used in content analysis can connote. Two claims underlay this process: FIRST: Form and content of statements reoccur with a frequency sufficient for statistical processing. SECOND: Even statements differing in form and content might have the same meaning, which can be identified through interpretation. These two ideas directed the work on a scheme for ordering statements in the discussion. On the one hand, this scheme describes the statements by categories tailored neatly to the material; on the other hand, it captures the meaning of different contributions to the discussion.

Preset and discussed themes Discussed

(continued)

1. Theoretical debate on the form of government best suited to Germany 2. Assessment of the Bonn government 3. Relations with the United States 4. Relation to the American occupation 5. Relations with England 6. Relation to the English occupation 7. Relations with France 8. Relation to the French occupation 9. Relation to Russia and the Russian occupation 10. Joint responsibility for National Socialism and the war 11. Joint responsibility for atrocities committed during the war and in the concentration camps 12. Anti-Semitism 13. Judgments about Germans 14. Judgments on the behavior of the Displaced Persons

Through Arguments in the Basic Stimulus

1. Attitudes toward democracy 2. German nationalisma (Relations with other Western countries) 3. Russia and the Russian occupation 4. Joint responsibility for National Socialism and the war 5. Joint responsibility for atrocities committed during the war and in the concentration camps 6. Anti-Semitism 7. Judgments about Germans 8. Judgments on the behavior of Germans toward Displaced Persons

Preset

Table 2.1.

15. Remilitarization 16. The war in Korea

Through Stimulus Arguments

Discussed

18. Statements on denazification 19. The role of the church 20. The position of Germany in the world and in history

Not Directly Present

17. Assessment of the Colburn letter

a Given the current distribution of political opinions, nationalistic attitudes are revealed only with respect to Western countries. Negative attitudes toward the East are so widespread that any differences between nationalistic and compromising participants are submerged. The topic of Russia, thus, appears separately in this table.

11. The Colburn letter

Through a General Opening Argument Relating to the Basic Stimulus from the Investigator

(continued)

9. Remilitarization 10. The war in Korea

Preset

Table 2.1.

The Organization of the Discussion Materials

p 61

This task is performed by two different kinds of categories. They can be described as descriptive and interpretative. Descriptive categories reduce statements to their shared natures by abstracting away from accidental differences. Interpretive categories make the discussion material accessible to quantitative processing by the circuitous route of counting the results of interpretation. Among the interpretive categories, we further distinguish between two methods: gradation, which arranges the attitudes on a three-level scale according to their approving or disapproving character, and evaluation, which relates a speaker’s statements to the dominant Western system of values.2 We began by collecting all statements for the listed topics. After a first tabulation made it clear that some topics included very few contributions, we limited the number of topics to twelve for future analysis. We combined the “England” and “English occupation” topics as well as the “France” and “French occupation” ones into one topic each and left out six topics: the Colburn letter, DPs, denazification, Korea, role of the church, and position of Germany. For the sake of quicker communication during interpretation we labeled the twelve topics with the following roughly schematic keywords: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Form of government Federal Republic of Germany (Bonn) War guilt Joint responsibility for concentration camps and war atrocities Anti-Semitism U.S. occupation United States of America England France Eastern Bloc states Remilitarization German self-assessment

II. Descriptive Categories 1. The Process of Category Formation At first, the formation of descriptive categories was based on the topical structure of the material, since it provides the first common characteristic for certain groups of statements. The topical structure of the material,

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 62

however, does not suggest that the discussions can be divided into chronological sections sticking to single topics. In the course of the discussion, the statements’ subjects change in irregular succession. The discussion jumps around. In some statements, different topics are frequently interlocked to such an extent that it became necessary to decompose individual sentences and subsume them under different categories. An example of this: I.: I don’t believe that the Germans, or let’s say even the majority of the Germans, rubbed their hands when the Americans sustained casualties (in Korea).

This sentence includes three topical aspects: FIRST: To start with, our participant (a woman) makes a statement about Germans. (They don’t take pleasure in American defeat in Korea.) SECOND: The statement refers to a passage in the Colburn letter (basic stimulus) and questions its truth. THIRD: The statement shows that our participant identifies with the destiny of the Americans in Korea. The statement was coded under three different topics: judgments about Germans, the Colburn letter, and Korea. When we select all the sections relating to one of the topics mentioned above, we find that, on the one hand, the statements—which were strung together arbitrarily—present an image of diversity but that, on the other hand, they reveal certain similarities. Now, the task is to subsume similarities under one category. Therefore, the principle should be to be as concrete as possible, i.e., to limit abstraction as much as possible so that the category reflects the structure of the statement itself. This task is made easier by the fact that some statements are grouped around current stereotypes. In these cases the categories can be derived closely from the material. From time to time, statements are articulated in such a formulaic way that they can be used immediately, i.e., without further revision, as a category for coding the rest of the statements. These opinions served as tools for building the very categories in which they themselves were classified.3 Now, stereotypes alone do not determine what is said in the discussion. Some contributions to the discussion feature a rationality that largely evades stereotypes. A balanced approach using real criteria is preferred to orientation by means of stereotypes. Frequently the generalizing abstraction of stereotypes is avoided by simply reporting personal experiences. In these cases, we had to develop categories with a broader logical scope, i.e., with a higher level of abstraction, in order to capture the commonality of

The Organization of the Discussion Materials

p 63

these types of statements in a category. Categories of this kind, naturally, have less descriptive strength due to their higher level of abstraction. Hence, the descriptive categories developed for the individual topics feature different levels of abstraction. These differences are not the result of arbitrary handling of the coding, but rather of the principle of formulating the categories by following the material as closely as possible in order to describe recurring arguments as concretely as possible. The differences in the categories’ level of abstraction reveal the following about the nature of the statements in each: FIRST: concretely formulated categories reveal the presence of the stereotypes that make the concrete formulation possible in the first place. SECOND: By contrast, abstract categories indicate that stereotypes were largely absent from the discussion. To illustrate the process of developing categories, we present an example for the topic “Federal Republic of Germany.” We print only five examples from a very large set of similar statements: Z.: When looking at the poor children . . . the anemic children, it’s terrible. And then they spend incredible amounts for the sake of appearances, and we have to pay taxes all the time . . . E.: I think the federal government should not make the unnecessary expenditures it makes. I think the people see what’s going on . . . When one sees what Adenauer spends, what a gaudy set up he is building for himself, a man more than 70 years old, he should consider dying instead. I.: Instead of thousands of marks for flower donations and decorations, we should use this money to build homes for youth. M.: They also show off too much in Bonn, no? Yes, of course, they also should save a bit more, then there would be a bit more left for the people. There is no need for what one reads in the newspapers, Persian carpets and club chairs and red uniforms and all this stuff, they do it just like the Nazis did, no? P.: There is always talk of burden sharing, that the refugees should get their share. If they finally cut the salaries of the gentlemen in office and took the burden sharing from there, I think that would leave us with an entirely decent deficit.

The common core of these statements is the supposedly unnecessary expenditure in Bonn paid for with public funds. The reproachful statements recur uniformly in a whole series of remarks in different guises. The category that captures this similarity is formulated as “reproach for wasting public funds in Bonn.” The differences among the remarks do not obscure the uniformity described by the category. Almost all the statements arise from the experience

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 64

of economic misery. In our examples, there is talk of “poor children,” of lacking “residential homes for youth,” of “burden sharing,” and of the people for whom a “bit more” should be left. The expenditures in Bonn are viewed in contrast to the background of economic misery, which plainly arouses dissatisfaction. The indignation over expenditures in Bonn in the face of “anemic children” is rendered intelligible by the implication that the funds spent “unnecessarily” in Bonn could help to remedy the misery. This is explicit in some statements, e.g., “we should use this money to build residential homes (dorms) for youth,” “they also should save . . . more, then there will be a bit more left for the people.” Regardless of economic processes and proportions, a connection between the expenditures of the federal government and the economic misery of the people is presumed. The mode of declaration substitutes for evidence. Judging from our quotations, the origin of this stereotype is in transferring individual experiences to social processes. Misery in a particular household can be avoided by avoiding unnecessary expenses and saving. What holds true on a small scale should also apply on a large scale. Thus, one says that “they” should save so that “there will be a bit more left for the people.” The way the expenditures’ extent is illustrated is characteristic of the structure of the stereotype in our case. Even though it is devoid of evidence, the imagination clings to the obvious, such as “flower decorations.” A combination of the evidence presented shows that the main things that are cited are those one has to forgo because of a low income, like Persian carpets, club chairs, and, finally, the thing which enables one to purchase “all this stuff,” the high salaries. Apparently, what is concrete and real in these stereotypes is the economic situation on which the argument is based. These observations are distorted by the fact that the understanding of economic processes is drawn from the pool of individual experience. The sense that one has to use different means to judge such processes is illuminated by the word “deficit.” The speaker tries to master the difficulty with a chunk from the language of budgets or foreign trade balance. Its faulty application, however, merely underlines the complete helplessness in the face of economic processes. Yet this changes nothing about the subjective feeling of certainty demonstrated by the stereotype. “Incredible sums” are spent in Bonn. The statement attains the power of a conclusion at the end of a detailed investigation. At the same time, the existence of “anemic children” puts forward a better purpose for the funds spent unnecessarily in Bonn. “What conditions are these?” “I don’t know whether one can agree with that!” The indignation felt by

The Organization of the Discussion Materials

p 65

speakers who adopted the stereotype as their own gives way to open aggression in some passages: “he (Adenauer) should consider dying instead!” It becomes clear here how the stereotype that “public funds are wasted in Bonn” can influence attitudes toward the Bonn government. In interpreting the origin of this stereotype, though, it is important to add that its usage is relatively independent of social status. The pretension of wasting public funds has always been used as a standard phrase in the demagogical polemic against democratic forms of government. The agitation with this stereotype is not only directed toward poor audiences. It accepts any reason for its adoption—from the resentments of those paying high taxes to jealousy toward the social position of “the gentlemen in office.” This indifference toward diverse motives suggests that the effectiveness of such a stereotype is no longer particularly tied to the reality from which it arose: in this case economic misery. Instead, it appears to have originated in the disposition to oppose democratic government. Factually, the stereotype is wrong. Moreover, it is freed from its tethers to these facts. In turn, it connects to an authoritarian personality structure, which a large number of our participants use to argue against the democratic form of government. They use the stereotypes like stones to cast at others. 2. The Coding Scheme Similarly, all further statements about the “Federal Republic of Germany” are reduced to categories, provided that they are sufficiently similar. The interpretation following the example above is meant to remind the reader of the underlying potential in the statements when reading the rest of the categories. Since the statements contain widely varying shades of favorable and unfavorable judgments about the Bonn democracy, we consider them in a rough scalelike arrangement, ranging from one extreme to the other. The categories are roughly arranged into the grades of this scale: approval, qualified approval, and disapproval. The coding scheme shown in Table 2.2 emerges from this. 3. Summary* The categories of the descriptive coding scheme, which was developed with the help of two examples, reduced the material to a manageable

* We have removed three intervening sections from the original here.—Eds.

Criticism of the electoral system

The Bonn government is too authoritarian

Limitation of democratic development by occupation statute Reproach of wrong selection of politicians Reproach of wasting public funds in Bonn

Lack of support for the economically weak

L.: The poor cripples, who lost their bones in the war, today they sit in the cold and grind out a living. Well, what is all that about? W.: Can we even develop a democracy under the auspices of an occupying power, under the auspices of the high commissioners? K.: Today kin and clique reigns, not the people. W.: Just think about the members of the Bundestag with their colossal incomes, as double earners in most cases. And spending, for example, we read in the newspaper about an event in Bonn, flowers for 7,000 marks. Sch.: Yes, but, again, I want to point out that Bonn is not demonstrating to us what democracy is, since what our beloved chancellor does there is absolutely not democracy. Because he is slowly becoming a dictator. He actually excludes his own government from all the oversight. Sch.: Well, how can one vote at all, if one doesn’t know the person? Why can’t we have a government where all of us really got to know the character of this person, especially his present life, his past life?

Qualifiedly Approving Statements

W.: I must tell you that we can say ‘Thank God’ that we’re in the American zone and not in the Russian zone. I would not like to be over in the Russian zone, living under this standard of living over there which we have here in the Western zone, I really have to say, I am for this. E.: Our government today faces the most severe difficulties, and I believe that another government would certainly not do it any better.

Higher standard of living in the West

Appreciation of the effort in Bonn

Quotation

Approving Statements

Categories for coding statements about the Federal Republic of Germany

Category

Table 2.2.

Remark on a better standard of living under Hitler

Doubts about democracy in America

Desire for a “Führer” Doubts about democracy due to the attitude of the occupying powers

Reproach of insufficient participation of women Introduction of democracy was in exceptional times

Reproach of corruption

Reproach of the lack of an ideal

So far unsatisfactory development of democracy

Insufficient consideration of the opposition

(continued)

Z.: And I think that, today, people want a strong government and also a strong man. W.: . . . now, after 1945, England comes and says: well, I bring you a democracy; and they start this democracy with letting us starve from the beginning, disassembling our machines, wanting to press a standard of living on us that is as low as we have almost never seen. And say: this is democracy. F.: . . . now, is this their policies, their democracy? And they want to introduce it here among us? H.: Let’s look back to 1933 for once. There was an economic crisis. Hitler came and remedied unemployment, and this was an improvement, after all.

Disapproving Statements

R.: I believe especially here in Western Germany and especially in important questions our government should listen a bit more to the people and to the opposition, namely the Social Democrats. O.: I believe however that a democracy, in the way the Americans imagine it for us, can’t be created from one day to the next. A monarchy was the basic idea for centuries . . . and then, finally, democracy only for a brief moment, and that problem doesn’t go away overnight. I.: Before the war, our youth had a goal and an ideal before it, for example, the quest to be: hard like Krupp-steel, tough like leather, quick like greyhounds. What does democracy fight for? It does not have a goal. Sch.: . . . Dr. Adenauer is bought off just like the old Grandpa Heuss,* right; the entire CDU is bought off to the interests of England. A.: Since especially the women should have just as much to say, so that they finally get in on a reasonable basis. U.: One has to note that the beginnings of German democracy are always burdened with a lost war prior to it.

H.: . . . hence they were elected, not because of their figure or because of their face but because of the things they tried to present to us as their ideals, and they never kept those promises, no party did that. I.: The West does indeed accept opposition. If you like, we can speak. But, at least in the first years, it did not change much about the conditions. Well, in this respect, the difference isn’t so very big. Thus, democracy appears to be a political form that does not permit honest people like us to participate in politics. H.: In Germany it was only that the persecution of races was admitted in the Hitler period. Did it not take place in other countries? In August—eight weeks ago—there was a big brawl in London between blacks and whites. Well, isn’t this a persecution of races? This is the state that wants to teach us democracy!

Democratic ideal cannot be realized

* Presumably referring to Federal president Theodor Huess.—Eds.

Doubts about the democracy of other Western countries

Democracy is always corrupt

Doubts concerning the difference between East and West

Quotation

(continued)

Category

Table 2.2.

The Organization of the Discussion Materials

p 69

series of statement types. These provide reasonably concrete information about what certain groups of interviewees predominantly say about the topics mentioned in the basic stimulus under the conditions of our experiment. In forming the descriptive categories, the actual wording of the statements was either reduced to: (1) the core ideological claims recurring in variations, (2) a common topic, or (3) the mere connection of the statements with one of the twelve named topics (miscellaneous arguments). The descriptive coding is oriented solely by the content of the statements. These are classified as what they seem to be when in isolation. The coding, hence, remains purely descriptive. It enables us to take stock of the statements that recurred in the discussion. Categories for descriptive coding emerge from the material itself by processes of abstraction. The representation of the material, preferably by concrete categories, allows an overview of common arguments. The statistical presentation is best done as rankings, differences among which can be observed across different sociological groupings. Using descriptive categories, the discussion material cannot be analyzed beyond listing the most current statements and determining favored sources for argumentation. In the first place, this is because statements coded in isolation, based on their face value, cannot yield reliable insight into the attitudes of the participants. One cannot even confidently infer attitudes from the sum of the categories used in coding a contribution to the discussion, since coding individual arguments dissolves the context of argumentation. One has to abstract from qualitatively significant nuances of the statement. Substantively important singular or rare passages fall under the collective category “miscellaneous.” Furthermore, the statistical characteristics of a descriptive coding scheme complicate quantitative processing. Namely, the variation in the code “statement about topic X” is so large that the small numbers of each value render the feasibility of a statistical analysis questionable. The phenomenon of opinions expressed in the group cannot be understood with topical categories alone. Coding opinions according to their face value is in no way sufficient for a quantitative analysis. One has to find criteria allowing for reducing statements from mere façade to their ideological or psychological significance. A classification scheme including those aspects of statements from which one had to abstract in the descriptive consideration has to rely on an interpretation of the contributions to the discussions. This kind of coding consists of judgments about the material. These judgments constitute a system of categories, all based on a common principle of interpretation; comprise all possible statements in accordance with the principle of interpretation;

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 70

and are mutually exclusive like the elements of a logical contradiction. An interpretive coding scheme has three advantages compared with descriptive sets of categories: FIRSTLY: the characteristic (attitudes toward topic X) cannot be combined, SECONDLY: variations in the characteristics can be minimized, THIRDLY: the contributions to the discussions are classified according to significant aspects. Classification according to qualitative characteristics, however, can be done only if the material is rich enough that an interpretation anticipated by the categories is possible with confidence in each individual case.

III. Interpretive Coding The quantitative coding of the discussion material on the basis of interpretation had two goals: the attitudes toward different topics expressed during the discussion and certain psychological mechanisms.4 1. The Concept of Attitude Even though it is generally true that one can infer attitudes from behavior and expressions of opinion, what is said by the participants in the situation of a discussion does not suffice for a secure diagnosis of their attitudes. One cannot conclude from a singular observation of reactions in a certain situation whether the displayed reactions are solely the expression of attitudes toward the topics discussed, or whether they are also caused by intervening factors, like protest against caustic formulations in the basic stimulus or the readiness to submit oneself to the control of a group, to adapt to a majority, or to argue against the opinion of whichever majority. The extent to which a general, relatively stable orientation5 to the topics of the investigation is present in the discussion can be specified only if the observation is extended beyond the scope of the discussion session in such a way that the behavior in the discussion can be compared with that in other situations. Thus, identifying attitudes and specifying them quantitatively on the basis of contributions to the discussion can be done only with considerable caution. What is available are, in the first place, the reactions of the participants during the discussion. Yet in the statistical analysis of reactions toward the individual topics, structures of behavior emerge permitting the

The Organization of the Discussion Materials

p 71

conclusion that a certain percentage of the participants argued in accordance with their attitude toward certain topics in the discussion. The fact that reactions toward different subjects are systematically connected indicates that some of the discussants’ reactions are caused by organizing principles. The presence of such factors, such as the principle of humanity, is the characteristic feature of attitudes and bearings.6 Thus, what was initially classified as behavior during the discussion should be, in part, a matter of genuine attitudes and bearings. For that reason, we referred to the collected reactions of a participant toward any topic as attitude. However, one has to bear these qualifications in mind.

chapter three

Quantitative Analyses

I. Preliminary Results* In this section we attempt to formulate a survey of the results of the quantitative analysis, but we must emphasize as strongly as possible that the following details cannot be understood literally, but are subject to several important reservations. Among these are above all the limitation on the validity of all numbers to the statistical groups they relate to, the problem of the significance of the differences in the percentages, the influence of the degree of participation in the discussions on the generalizability of the statements to all the groups and beyond, and other factors. All this makes it advisable to regard the results as quite preliminary. They may need to be corrected, potentially drastically, later on.1 Furthermore, remember our criteria for grading attitudes. The criteria rank positive attitudes toward the Soviet-Russian world as negative, and critical judgments about Germans as free of ethnocentrism and, hence, as positive attitudes. As much as it was tempting to trace the sometimes striking accumulations of a certain attitude or the large deviations of individual groups from the average opinion back to their causes, we generally did not try to reveal causal relationships that did not arise from our material itself.

* We removed seven intervening sections from the original here.—Eds.

Quantitative Analyses

p 73

Our quantitative findings can be grouped into four areas. To begin with, the preparation of a coding manual created a catalog of nonsingular opinions and reactions and, thus, offered a first insight into the emotions and beliefs that make up the object of our study. We already mentioned that, after using half of our transcripts to formulate the categories necessary for coding the material, the other sixty transcripts showed no accumulations of opinions and reactions that could not be classified easily with the available categories. This fact argues in favor of the completeness of these categories, at least in relation to our circle of participants. A comparison between the quotations reproduced in this chapter as illustration for the different categories and the complete transcripts shows that even attitudes with low frequency are represented in our catalog of categories. The numerical data gained so far can be summarized in two different ways. Not only can we analyze the reactions of the statistical groups based on demographic factors, for each topic individually—as we have in our account up to this point—but we can also compare the distribution of reactions within each statistical group with that of all the speakers in our circle of participants. The conformities or deviations might tell us something new about the dominant ideology and the role of subjective factors. We can also trace the counts of graded codes as well as those about the participation in the discussion of each statistical group across all topics and see whether relevant group characteristics emerge. In this way we can more clearly reveal the characteristics of the groups in relation to their attitudes toward democratic values as well as their interest in individual political topics. 1. The Speakers’ Attitudes in Each Demographic Group Compared with All Speakers’ Average Attitude The following seven graphs show the level for each topic for each statistical group (men, women, etc.) alongside the average level for all speakers on each respective topic. In addition, the number of speakers is marked in percentages of the group size for each topic. Hence, one can easily read from each graph to what extent the attitudes of the speakers in each statistical group conform to or deviate from the average attitude of our participants. Each graph also presents a concrete picture of the proportions in which the three (or four) types of reactions are distributed across the different statistical groups and, likewise, across all speakers. The graphs also present a picture of the extent of speakers’ tendency to talk about each topic. We provide seven additional graphs in the appendix* in order to illustrate further the

* These additional graphs are not included in the translation.—Eds.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 74

differences in attitudes of each group toward each of the seven major topics in comparison to those of each other group as well as to the average attitude of all speakers in all groups (the general average) to each topic. These graphs depict the percentage deviation in attitude of twenty groups from the general average attitude on the topic. The computation was not made in percentages but in percentages of deviation from the general average.2 Attitude toward Democracy The topic of democracy has the largest participation in discussion of all topics (53% as compared with the average of 39% for all speakers for all seven topics). The following groups participated particularly often: University graduates: 71% High school graduates: 64% War veterans: 64% We find particularly low participation for the topic of democracy among young people (20 years old and younger), who also stand out for the low percentage of their speakers on other topics. The average attitude of all participants toward democracy shows: • approval among one-tenth. • disapproval among approximately one-fifth. • ambivalence among the great majority, approximately two-thirds.

At the top of advocates of a positive attitude3 toward democracy (average 10%) we find unskilled workers (20%) and participants 20 years old or younger (15%), while university graduates (6%) and farmers (3%) show the smallest percentage of approval. Overall, every tenth woman and every tenth man spoke positively about democracy. Between the ages of 20 and 50 years, our speakers become less positive with age, until the group of participants aged 50 and older again shows a more positive than average attitude. A negative attitude toward democracy (average 22%) is displayed particularly by farmers (39%) and soldiers with more than 6 years of service (32%). Lower numbers of a markedly disapproving attitude toward democracy are documented for: University graduates: 15% High school graduates: 15% Housewives: 14%4 Women: 13% The men show almost double the women’s percentage of rejection (25%). Ambivalent attitudes toward democracy are characterized by their enormous breadth and relatively high uniformity.

Quantitative Analyses

p 75

Attitudes toward Democracy in % of people who responded in each category for this subject* 100 80 60

53%

40 20

M W en om U nd en er 20 20 to 35 35 t Ab o 5 ov 0 e G 50 en Vo e c ra H ati l ig on h Sc al ho C ol ol le ge C le r S k H kille ou d se w St ife ud e Fa nt r U me ns r ki l U led nd er 2 2 to Ab 6 ov e 6

0

Yrs Military Service

Approve

Ambivalent

Disapprove

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.1

More than two-thirds of all speakers on the topic (68%) display neither an unreserved commitment to democracy nor a radical rejection. Groups showing above-average ambivalence are: University graduates: 79% Women: 77% Housewives: 76% High school graduates: 75% We questioned what this high percentage of speakers who feel neither cold nor hot toward democracy actually means and examined it in relation to the other statements against the background of the group atmosphere.5 Even if we hesitate to regard ambivalent reactions generally as essentially rationalizations of underlying rejection (which they certainly are in many cases), we have to state at least that the broad zone of ambivalence pervading all statistical groups clearly demonstrates that among two-thirds of our “population”6 no definite attitude had emerged at the time of our research. This would mean that the large majority was probably susceptible to positive as well as negative influences. This interpretation is complemented by the small percentage of approving and disapproving participants (except for the two exceptions mentioned above). It is disquieting at least that, on average, the number of outright enemies of a democratic system is double that of its unreserved friends.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 76

To the extent that we can discern a regularity from the relatively small range between the percentages of the gradations, one can say the following: it seems as if the personal negative attitude toward democracy decreases with increasing educational level.7 Yet the negative attitude does not decrease in favor of a commitment to democracy but in favor of an increase in ambivalent statements. The inverse picture appears for the length of military service, where the rejection grows dramatically with increasing years of service, mainly at the expense of ambivalent attitudes.8 Attitudes toward Guilt Approximately half of the participants (48%) spoke on this topic. The participation was above average among the following groups: those with the longest military service (58%); high school graduates (57%) and university graduates (56%). Again, the topic was discussed particularly little by adolescents of 20 years or less (29%), and by workers (unskilled 38%, skilled 41%). Of all 800 speakers on the topic, only an average of five in a hundred conceded unreserved complicity (Mitschuld). Half of the speakers (51%) denied any complicity, and almost every other (44%) showed an ambivalent attitude. If we register concession of complicity as a positive attitude within our frame of reference, the following groups behaved a little bit more positively than the average: those 50 years of age and older (9%); those 20 years of age and younger (7%); and women (7%). A below-average positive reaction on the question of complicity is displayed first and foremost by the farmers, among whom not a single speaker conceded the existence of complicity, and among university graduates, who presented a very similar picture (1% of approval). As we already learned from the average number of disapprovals (51%), one in every two speakers rejects all responsibility for the crimes of National Socialism. Almost unanimous in their negative attitude are the farmers (92%),9 and the groups with the longest term of military service show about two-thirds disapproval. The percentage of disapproving speakers is about 40% among participants aged 20 years or less (37%), women (40%), and students (42%). Maintaining the limitations mentioned above, we can identify some interesting differences in negative attitudes. Considerably fewer women than men categorically reject complicity (40% versus 56%). The frequency of negative attitudes increases with age up to 50 years and then falls again.10 The frequency of negative attitudes increases with the length of military service.11 It decreases with increasing education.12

Quantitative Analyses

p 77

Attitudes toward Guilt in % of people who responded in each category for this topic*

100 80 60

48%

40 20

M W en om U nd en er 20 20 to 35 35 t Ab o 5 ov 0 e G 50 en Vo e c ra H ati l ig on h Sc al ho C ol ol le ge C le S rk H kille ou d se w St ife ud e Fa nt r m U ns er ki l U led nd er 2 2 t Ab o 6 ov e 6

0

Yrs Military Service

Approve

Ambivalent

Disapprove

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.2

Table 3.1.

Groups deviating from the average by 9% or more in their ambivalent attitude toward complicity Higher Frequency

age 20 years or less University graduates

56% of speakers 54%

Students Women

53% 53%

Lower Frequency 2–6 years of service More than 6 years of service Farmers

36% 34% 8%

The sphere of ambivalence is not as broad as for attitudes toward democracy, but is still 44% on average. The major deviations from the average are presented by the following table [Table 3.1]. These results clearly show that, at the time of the study, the attitude toward the question of complicity was much more definite than that toward democracy. When we consider that each speaker conceding complicity matches ten who strictly reject it, one can hardly resist the conclusion that the final attitude of the large majority approached a radical rejection of complicity. Attitudes toward Jews For comparison’s sake, we reduce the four grades of attitudes toward Jews to three—positive, negative, and ambivalent. By

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 78

Attitudes toward the Jews in % of people who responded in each category for this topic*

100 80 60 40

22%

20

M W en o U me nd n er 20 20 to 35 35 t Ab o 5 ov 0 e G 50 en Vo e r H cat al ig io h na Sc l ho C ol ol le ge C le S rk H kille ou d se w St ife ud e Fa nt r m U ns er ki l U le d nd er 2 2 to Ab 6 ov e 6

0

Yrs Military Service

Approve

Ambivalent

Disapprove

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.3

positive we mean a non-anti-Semitic attitude, by negative the opposite, and “ambivalent” comprises—under the reservatio mentalis stated above— qualified anti-Semitic and pro-Jewish statements. Fewer participants spoke on the topic of Jews than on any other topic. The average participation was only about half that of all topics taken together (22% versus 39%) and about one-third of the highest participation for an individual topic. Notably above-average activity on the discussion of the topic of the Jews (31%-32%) can be found among the groups of white-collar workers (Angestellte), students, high school graduates, women, and mittleren Reife.* The following groups score five percentage points (20%) and more below the average: 20 years old or less, 19%; university graduates, 19%; skilled workers, 17%; unskilled workers, 13%.13 A comparison between Figures 3.2 and 3.3, which present the somewhat related attitudes toward complicity and Jews, highlights that the average number of positive statements for the question of Jews is much higher than that for the problem of complicity. The percentage of speakers who make decidedly non-anti-Semitic statements is almost six times that of those conceding complicity (28% versus 5%). Correspondingly, the frequency of radically negative (i.e., anti-Semitic) speakers is considerably

* A secondary-school certificate indicating readiness for vocational training.—Eds.

Quantitative Analyses

p 79

lower than that of speakers with a negative attitude on the question of complicity (37% versus 51%). In the category of positive attitudes, i.e., the speakers who are definitely not anti-Semitic, we find the following significant deviations from the average [Table 3.2]. While the frequency of our participants’ anti-Semitic attitudes is not much higher in total than their positive reactions, there are, nonetheless, large deviations from the total average among specific statistical groups. Particularly remarkable in this respect are the farmers (53%) and the university graduates (52%), the 20–35-year-olds (44%) and those 20 years old or younger (43%). Above-average reticence in anti-Semitic remarks can be found among housewives (24%). A similarly large differentiation among the groups becomes apparent with ambivalent reactions, so we illustrate it in table form (average 35%) [Table 3.3]. At first sight, the general picture conveyed by these results seems to indicate a fairly even distribution of the three gradations among our “population.” On closer inspection, however—and, it should be reemphasized, at

Table 3.2.

Groups deviating from the average frequency of positive reactions by 6% or more in their frequency of non-anti-Semitic attitudes Higher Frequency

Skilled workers Housewives Unskilled workers

40% of speakers 40% 39%

Students

37%

Up to 2 years of service High school graduates Women

35% 35% 34%

Table 3.3.

Lower Frequency University graduates Farmers More than 2 years of service More than 6 years of service

4% 14% 21% 21%

Groups deviating from the average frequency by 7% or more in their frequency of ambivalent attitudes toward Jews Higher Frequency of Ambivalent Attitude

(average 35%) White-collar workers 35–50-year-olds Academics

47% of speakers 45% 44%

Lower Frequency of Ambivalent Attitude Unskilled workers Skilled workers Students 25–35-year-olds

22% 23% 24% 25%

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 80

the time of our investigation and among our participants—alongside a third of open anti-Semites one finds another third with considerable antiSemitic potential. Even if we classify all pro-Jewish speakers as positive, the anti-Semitic potential decreases only from 35% to 25% on average for all speakers, while the frequency of participants with a positive attitude only reaches that of the anti-Semites. Two of the groups leading in the frequency of anti-Semitic reactions, university graduates and farmers, also attracted our attention because of the far-below-average frequency with which nonanti-Semitic statements were heard among them. The very high frequency with which the university graduates are represented among the ambivalent speakers (44%) permits, on closer examination of the transcripts, the conclusion that anti-Semitic attitudes are far more prevalent among our academically educated than among all other statistical groups.14 Attitudes toward the West Participation in discussions of Western foreign countries amounts to an average of 50%, and among most of the statistical groups it is not far from this average. It is only more than ten percentage points higher among high school graduates and the group with the longest military service (63%), and it is below average by more than 10% only among one group: young people aged 20 years less (35%). The average attitude toward the West is predominantly negative among our speakers (61%), only one-eleventh (9%) is favorably committed to it, and about a third reacts ambivalently. Among the small minority of approving participants, there are only three groups among whom a notably above-average percentage reacts positively toward the West. These are: housewives (20% of speakers); women as a group (16%); high school graduates (15%); and 35–50-year-olds (12%). Approvals considerably below the average can be found among young people 20 years old or less, university graduates, farmers (each with 6% of the speakers), and veterans with the longest term of service (5%). From within the chorus of participants reacting negatively, the deviations of more than ten percentage points can be found in Table 3.4. Among those who cannot rule absolutely for or against the West, the lead is taken by young people 20 years old or less (50%), students (48%), and university graduates (40%). Ambivalence is low among farmers (17%), unskilled workers (17%), and skilled workers (24%). Women prove to be much more positive in their attitudes toward the West than do men. The first three age groups show clear increases in negative attitudes (from 44% to 62%), albeit accompanied by an increase in positive attitudes (from 6% to 12%).

Quantitative Analyses

p 81

Attitudes toward the West in % of people who responded in each category for this subject*

100 80 60

51%

40 20

M W en om U nd en er 20 20 to 35 35 t Ab o 5 ov 0 e G 50 en Vo e c ra H ati l ig on h Sc al ho C ol ol le ge C le S rk H kille ou d se w St ife ud e Fa nt r U me ns r ki l U led nd er 2 2 t Ab o 6 ov e 6

0

Yrs Military Service

Approve

Ambivalent

Disapprove

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.4

Table 3.4.

Groups deviating from the average by 10% or more in the frequency of negative attitudes toward the West Higher Frequency

Farmers Unskilled workers

77% of speakers 74%

Lower Frequency Students Age 20 years or less Women Housewives

44% 44% 48% 48%

The number of approving speakers increases with education (within the limits of the very low average) as follows: grade school (8%), technical school graduates (11%), and high school graduates (15%), only to drop far below the average for university graduates: to 6%. The relatively low average of ambivalent remarks, together with the majority of almost two-thirds of participants disapproving, suggests that strong trans-subjective factors took effect on our “population’s” attitude toward the West at the time of our investigation. Attitudes toward the East A look at Figure 3.5 seems to prove that the overwhelming majority of our participants has a fixed attitude toward the East. More than four-fifths of all speakers speak against the East (83%),

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 82

Attitudes toward the East in % of people who responded in each category for this subject*

100 80 60 40

31%

0

M W en om U nd en er 20 20 to 35 35 t Ab o 5 ov 0 e G 50 en Vo e c ra H ati l ig on h Sc al ho C ol ol le ge C le S rk H kille ou d se w St ife ud e Fa nt r m U ns er ki l U led nd er 2 2 to Ab 6 ov e 6

20

Yrs Military Service

Approve

Ambivalent

Disapprove

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.5

about one out of twenty supports the ideology and policy of the SovietRussian domain, and only 12% of the speakers on the topic express ambivalence. The frequency of ambivalent attitudes amounts to only onethird of the average frequency of ambivalent speakers for all seven major topics (37%). No other topic has such a low level of ambivalence. Doubts on the explanatory power of this picture arise, however, when we look at the degree of participation in the discussion. At 31% it is significantly below the average (39%), and we again have to ask ourselves what the silence of more than two-thirds of our participants means. Did they not speak because they agreed with the disapproving remarks of the speakers, or did they not want to oppose the dominant opinion of their group? Or were they afraid of reprisals which could arise for them in case of a Russian invasion due to their rejection of the East?15 Reports from our moderators permit the conclusion that—at least in some cases—the silence meant agreement with the disapproving remarks. We cannot yet say to what extent this interpretation is valid or how much other motives might have affected the silent participants. Even more than for all of the other topics, the results of the quantitative analysis apply only to the speakers themselves. Thus, even though we cannot say anything certain about the actual attitude of our “population” toward the East, the same reaction of almost every statistical group presents an impressive example of what one says and what one is expected to say.

Quantitative Analyses

p 83

Very few groups deviate from the average frequency of rejection by even around eight percentage points.16 These groups are high school graduates and white-collar workers. Their speakers’ antagonism against the East is expressed at a frequency of around 90%. The other extreme—if we can talk at all about extremes in the face of such small percentage differences— features students, with only 73% disapproval, young people of 20 years of age or less (75%), and, strangely enough, farmers (74%). The frequency of approval of the East varies between zero and 17%. Deviations of 2% or more from the average in favor of the East emerge among farmers, with the shocking frequency figure of 18%,* war participants with less than 2 years of service (11%), 20–35-year-olds, participants age 50 and older, and those with a grade school education (7% each). On the other hand, there are no uncritical remarks on the East among participants 20 years of age and less and among high school graduates; among university graduates, white-collar workers, and the 35–50-year-olds the frequency of approval of the East amounts to 2% to 3%. Larger deviations from the average ambivalent attitude can be found only among participants 20 years of age and less and among students (25% and 24% higher frequency) on the one hand, and, on the other hand, among the oldest age group, high school graduates, and farmers (7–8% lower frequency). The difference in frequency among the age groups and the other statistical groups is either too small or too inconsistent to infer regularities from it. The attitude of the male and female speakers toward the East is virtually identical (as is their participation in the discussion). In contrast to their attitudes toward other topics, the positive attitude (i.e., the rejection of the East) increases among the speakers with longer terms of service.17 Attitude toward Remilitarization We already know that the topic of remilitarization was not included in the basic stimulus, but that it came up anyway in many discussions. This was an expression of the agitation about the sudden change in Allied policy toward German rearmament that affected large parts of the German population in the winter of 1950–51. Although an average of only one-third of the participants (36%) got a chance to speak on remilitarization, some statistical groups showed much higher participation: almost one in two university graduates and war participants with 6 or more years of service contributed to

* It is unclear how farmers could agree 18% of the time when the top degree of agreement was reported as 17% in the same paragraph.—Eds.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 84

Attitudes toward Remilitarization in % of people who responded in each category for this topic*

100 80 60 40

36%

20

M W en o U me nd n er 20 20 to 35 35 t Ab o 5 ov 0 e G 50 en Vo e c ra H ati l ig on h Sc al ho C ol ol le ge C le S rk H kille ou d se w St ife ud e Fa nt r m U ns er ki l U led nd er 2 2 to Ab 6 ov e 6

0

Yrs Military Service

Approve

Ambivalent

Disapprove

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.6

the discussion. Most silent were women and young people 20 years of age or less; only about every fourth participant from these two groups spoke on the topic. Approximately two-thirds of the speakers (59%) rejected rearmament, a little bit fewer than one-third approved of it with reservations (29%), and only every eighth speaker (12%) was an unqualified spokesman for armament [Tables 3.5 and 3.6]. These average numbers, however, offer too crude a picture. The differences between the attitudes of many groups are particularly interesting. While the average rate of approval of rearmament shows a frequency of only 12%, there are groups with a frequency between 18% and 24% and others among whom it sinks as low as 4%. In contrast, the frequency of negative attitudes increases to 83% (unskilled workers),18 while the lowest percentage of speakers who are hostile toward rearmament amounts to 38% (20 years of age or less).19 Remarkably, the frequency of disapproval among unskilled workers is double that among students and participants aged 20 years or less. Also, those who approve conditionally of remilitarization are distributed very unevenly among the statistical groups. The tabulation of the numbers shows that the first impression of an overwhelming, unconditional rejection of remilitarization has to be corrected. Among strata that are particularly important for the formation of public opinion and also among a large part of those who would have

Quantitative Analyses Table 3.5.

Groups deviating from the average by 3% or more in the frequency of approving attitudes toward remilitarization Higher Frequency

Age 20 years or less High school graduates Junior high graduates White-collar workers

Table 3.6.

p 85

24% of speakers 19% 18% 15%

Lower Frequency Farmers University graduates 35–50-year-olds Grade school graduates Housewives Unskilled workers

4% 7% 8% 9% 9% 9%

Groups deviating from the average by 5% or more in the frequency of ambivalence toward remilitarization Higher Frequency

Students and university graduates Up to 2 years of service Age 20 years or less

Lower Frequency

47% of speakers

Unskilled workers

40%

Age groups 30–35 and 40–45 years Junior high graduates

38%

9% 17% 22%

to supply officers and enlisted men of the new army, unconditional and conditional approval were more frequent and disapproval rarer than on average. The frequency of approving remarks increases with higher education from 9% (grade school) to 19% (high school) to drop back among the university graduates to 7% due to other overcompensating influences. This hypothetical influence of the degree of education on the frequency of positive reactions toward the topic is displayed impressively in Table 3.7.20 The higher the level of education, the more positive the attitude (measured by the sum of approvals and conditional disapprovals) and the smaller the unconditional rejection. As to age groups, the approval sinks from 24% frequency among the youngest to 8% among the 35–50-year-olds, while the frequency of disapprovals almost doubles between the young people 20 years old or less and the 35–50-year-olds—from 38% to 65%, only to turn again to a positive direction among the participants over 50 years of age. Women, men, and all war participants of 2 years or more of service display approximately the same average frequency among the three categories.21

Group Experiment and Other Writings Table 3.7.

p 86

Degree of education and attitude toward remilitarization (in % of frequency)

Groups Grade school Junior high High school University Average of all speakers

I Positive

II Ambivalent

I + II Positive plus Ambivalent a

III Negative

9 18 19 7 12

25 22 33 47 29

34 40 52 54 41

66 60 48 46 59

a Adding rows I and II is methodologically justified since an examination of the transcripts as well as the reports of the assistants in the sessions showed that the majority of ambivalent reactions evinced approval “at a price.”

German Self-Assessment The lower participation for the topic of German self-assessment (average of 30%) might be balanced to a certain extent by the definitiveness of the statements. Only every fifth judgment (20%) is neither exclusively critical nor similarly explicitly ethnocentric. The low average for statements on the topic is further balanced by the fact that participants with higher education, that is, the strata who are most important for opinion formation, address the topic with a frequency far above average.22 On average, every other judgment on Germans (49%) is articulated exclusively critically, about every third is ethnocentric by distinguishing the Germans at the expense of all other people, and, as already mentioned, only one-fifth displays an ambivalent attitude. Regarding the individual groups, we find that the educated not only talk most frequently, but also are most frequently critical about the Germans [Table 3.8]. The lead in the frequency of criticism falls to the group of 25–30-year-olds, who overlap to some extent with the students, high-school graduates, and university graduates. The conjecture of a linear relationship between the degree of education and critical judgments is supported by the above-average frequency of ethnocentric remarks among some groups with little education and vice versa [Tables 3.9 and 3.10].23 The numbers in the right column of Table 3.10 suggest greater cosmopolitanism with increasing education, since the high school graduates place first with a frequency of ethnocentric judgments of only 13%. After attitudes toward the East, the assessment of Germans is the topic with the most definitive statements and with the number of ambivalent participants (20%) far below the average frequency for ambivalence (37%). The frequency of

Quantitative Analyses

p 87

German Self-Assessment in % of people who responded in each category for this subject*

100 80 60 40

30%

20

M W en om U nd en er 20 20 to 35 35 t Ab o 5 ov 0 e G 50 en Vo e c ra H ati l ig on h Sc al ho C ol ol le ge C le S rk H kille ou d se w St ife ud e Fa nt r U me ns r ki l U led nd er 2 2 t Ab o 6 ov e 6

0

Yrs Military Service

Approve

Ambivalent

Disapprove

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.7

Table 3.8.

Groups deviating from the average by 9% or more in the frequency of critical remarks about the Germans Higher Frequency

Lower Frequency

University graduates Students

66% of speakers 65%

High school graduates 25–30-year-olds

61% 60%

Table 3.9.

Farmers 6 years of service or more 35–50-year-olds

30% 33% 40%

Speakers of the smallest professional groups according to critical and ethnocentric judgments (in %, based on the number of speakers)

Group Higher officials Independent professionals Lower officials Self-employed

Critical Remarks

Ethnocentric Remarks

Number of Speakers

54% 48% 40% 11%

23% 24% 25% 67%

13 25 20 18

Group Experiment and Other Writings Table 3.10.

p 88

Groups deviating from the average by 6% or more in the frequency of ethnocentric remarks

Higher Frequency Farmers Six years of service and more Unskilled workers Junior high 35–50-year-olds 50 years and older

Lower Frequency

50% of speakers 44%

High school graduates Students

13% 20%

43% 38% 38% 38%

20–35-year-olds University graduates Age 20 years or less

22% 22% 25%

ambivalent judgments is noticeably small among university graduates and skilled workers (12% each) and among unskilled workers and students (14% and 15%). Compared with men, women display a slightly lower frequency of critical statements and a significantly lower frequency of ethnocentric judgments; however, their participation in the discussion is substantially higher than that of men.24 Examining Figure 3.7, two general impressions are particularly dominant. Of the twenty statistical groups, one quarter deviate more than 10% from the average frequency of ambivalence. This is to say, the range of the frequency of ambivalence shows approximately the same breadth for three quarters of all cases, and, hence, the lines of criticisms and ethnocentric judgments move almost in parallel. The higher the frequency of critical judgments within a group, the lower the frequency of ethnocentric judgments and vice versa. This parallel movement is particularly clear among long-serving soldiers. A second, much more significant finding is the strong preponderance of critical judgments over each of the other two categories. In contrast to the widespread opinion that Germans are especially ethnocentric, the attitude of our “population” turns out to be predominantly critical about their own people. 2. “Profiles” of Individual Statistical Groups, Constructed on the Basis of the Frequency of Their Attitudes As a second method of summarizing our quantitative results, we compile the gradations of attitudes toward each of the seven topics for each statistical subgroup and compare them to the average reactions of all participants. Thus, we obtain for each group a kind of “profile,” which, so to speak, draws their character sketch in relation to each topic, and which provides a general impression of their more or less positive attitude toward democratic

Quantitative Analyses

p 89

ideas. This profile can be compared with an ideal democratic orientation and contrasted with the positive and negative variations from our participants’ (already rather far from the ideal) average attitude.25 Figures 3.9 to 3.18 illustrate the frequency of attitudes in percentages of the speakers on the seven major topics for a selection of ten out of the twenty statistical groups. Furthermore, they show all groups’ participation in the discussion as well as the extent of their deviation from the average participation. The topics are arranged according to the frequency of positive attitudes among all speakers of all statistical groups. The average attitude of all speakers toward each topic as well as the respective group’s average frequency of the different attitudes based on all topics (except the topic of the East) are charted for comparison. Each profile gains its significance only in comparison with the average of all profiles26 as well as with those of individual distinctive statistical groups. As rough as the construction method used here may be,27 characteristic results still emerge from the tables. Due to their consistency these results cannot be regarded as purely accidental. In particular, we surmise that the characteristics of the extreme groups—just as those of the average of all twenty groups—point to facts that hold beyond the “population” of our experiment. The twenty profiles can be divided into three major groups, each of which shows clearly distinctive features in respect to the other two. As everywhere in this study, the typology is guided by group members’ attitude toward the traditionally democratic frame of reference. Based on that we distinguish among participants: I. with a more positive attitude II. with an average attitude, and28 III. with a more negative attitude. It goes without saying that this classification is a matter of more or less, not a matter of exclusively positive, average, or negative attitudes. Moreover, one has to consider in applying these “types” that we are dealing with a schematic ordering of statistical groups whose individual members frequently appear in several of these groups.29 The classification of the twenty statistical groups into the three types is based on the interpretation of each individual profile and complemented by a simple mechanical device—for each group, we computed an index indicating the degree to which the group’s attitude deviates positively or negatively from the average attitude of all twenty groups toward six major topics.30 With the aid of this index, one can easily compile a scale ranging from +292 (high school graduates) to −658 (farmers). Table 3.11 summarizes the result of classifying all twenty groups.31

Women (+257) (+234)

20 years and less (+273) (+113) 50 years and older (+124) (+176)

High school (+292) (+133)

Age

Education

More Positive Attitude (+292 to +124)

Junior high (+32) (−21) Grade school (−78) (−24)

20–35-year-olds (+39) (−20) 35–50-year-olds (−78) (−80)

Men (−78) (−80)

Average Attitude (+115 to −118)

Classification of our twenty statistical groups according to type of attitude

Gender

Table 3.11.

University (−180) (−284)

More Negative Attitude (−180 to −658)

Term of service

Profession

Housewives (+238) (+291) Students (+245) (+125)

White-collar workers (+115) (+65) Skilled workers (+90) (+87) Unskilled workers (−34) (+81) No service (+103) (+57) Up to 2 years (+44) (+30) 2–6 years (−93) (−79) 6 years and more (−294) (−211)

Farmers (−658) (−477)

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 92

Attitude Types

− 658

Sc h nd ool er W 20 om St en H ude ou n se t w O ife N ve o r5 M ilit 0 ar Cl y er U S nd er k er vi c 2 Yr Ski e s lle Se d rv ic e 2 Vo 0– 3 ca 5 t U iona ns l ki lle d M 2– G e n 6 Yr en s era Se l rv Ab ic 35 e ov –5 e 6 Co 0 Yr ll s eg Se e rv Fa ice rm er U

ig h H

− 477

− 180 − 284

− 600

− 294 − 211

− 79

− 118 − 36

− 93

− 78 − 24

81

− 400

− 78 − 80

− 21 − 32

− 200

− 34

39 − 20

90 87

103 57

238 291

245

257 234

124 176

115 65

44 30

0

125

133

200

113

292

400

273

in order of their values

of all topics (except the East)

of 4 test topics

Figure 3.8

Figure 3.8 illustrates the order of the twenty statistical groups, ranked according to the indices computed from the attitudes toward the major topics. The table of the types of attitudes seems to contradict all of our previous experience with the attitude of our participants. Just three out of twenty groups have to be classified as negative. When referring to the predominantly negative attitude of our participants, we proceeded from average values of attitude toward all or individual topics for all or individual groups. No matter how one calculates the average, it is always apparent that the average frequency of the negative attitude is considerably higher than that of the positive attitude. The computation of the indices, however, was based on the percentage deviation from the overall average of all groups for each topic. This is to say that the [three] groups with negative attitude types are more negative on average than the already largely negative average and vice versa. With all due reservations arising from the data as well as from the method applied, we can make the following assertions about the individual statistical groups of our participants: 1. Women are more likely to display a positive attitude toward democratic values than men. They rank among the top of all positive speakers.

Quantitative Analyses

p 93

2. The youngest and the oldest age groups express themselves positively concerning the problems of our major topics considerably more often than the two age groups between 20 and 50 years; the frequency of negative statements increases from the first to the third age group and decreases subsequently. 3. Among our participants, education relates to attitude in a curious way. Participants with a high school diploma but without a university education are ranked in the top of the positive part of our order, while speakers with a university education belong to the opposite extreme. The speakers with only grade school or junior high education show an average type of attitude.32 On the other hand, ambivalence increases with educational level. 4. Since only six occupations were represented strongly enough to justify a separate quantitative analysis, we can make statements only about these few professions. Housewives and students make up the positive extreme; farmers the negative counterpart. In the category of average attitudes, white-collar, skilled, and unskilled workers follow housewives and students after a considerable gap. 5. Furthermore, there seems to be a clear correlation between length of military service (which for our older participants coincides with the time between their entry into war and their captivity) and attitude toward the major topics: the four groups for length of service can be easily arranged on a scale from a more positive attitude among the speakers without military service through the clearly more negative attitude of the two groups of 0–2 years and 2 to 6 years of service to the extremely negatively minded group of war participants with 6 years of service or more. Parallel to this curve runs the increasing participation in the discussion with increasing term of service. This increase in negative attitude with increasing military service is understandably also seen among those age groups whose male participants were largely also doing a longer term of service. Due to space restrictions, we reproduce here only the extremes from the first four major statistical groups as well as the skilled and unskilled workers’ groups, which are classified as averages, from among the twenty profiles. We also discuss the profile compiled from the statements of all speakers related to all seven major topics for the average attitude of the entire circle of participants. Women Of all statistical groups, women (including the housewives subgroup) present by far the most positive picture.33

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 94

Women’s Attitudes (n = 563) in % of women who responded in each category for this topic* Guilt The West Democracy Remilitarization Jews Germany The East 0

10

20

30 Positive

40

50

60

70

Ambivalent

80

90

100

Negative

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.9

Table 3.12. Topics for which the frequency of attitudes of female speakers deviates by 11% or more from the average distribution of attitudes (in % of deviation) Topic The West Jews Democracy Guilt Germans Remilitarization

Positive

Ambivalent

Negative

+78 +21 0 +40 +6 +8

+20 −6 +13 +20 +10 −17

−21 −11 −41 −22 −16 +7

For five out of the seven major topics, female speakers’ opinions are more positive than the general average, and, likewise, their negative statements are less frequent for five topics. For five topics, ambivalent statements are more frequent in this group than among the average and less frequent for two (Jews and remilitarization). The high percentage of ambivalent statements for the topic of democracy (more than three quarters of speakers compared with about two-thirds for the general average) is striking. Women participated a roughly average amount in the discussion, but not evenly: for the first four topics the participation in the discussion is 2%–22%

Quantitative Analyses

p 95

lower, for the remaining three it is 3%–18% higher. For the following topics, female speakers display considerable deviations from the average distribution of attitude [Table 3.12]. The indices of the test topics confirm the general view: for the topics of complicity and Jews as well as for the topics of the West and democracy, women present the highest positive number (+94 and +140). This does not come only from the above-average frequency of speakers’ positive opinions toward those topics, but also from the considerably below-average frequency of negative speakers for five of the topics. In contrast, the attitude toward remilitarization is more negative than average, a behavior much more pronounced among housewives (n = 237; positive −25%, ambivalent −14%, negative +12%). In contrast to the alarming general average of our participants for the attitude toward democratic values, women as a group stand out as by far one of the most positive. However, the high percentage of ambivalent statements, particularly for topics like democracy and complicity, urges caution in evaluating the results. Men The profile contrasts in virtually every respect with that of women. Figure 3.10 shows that the frequency of positive statements is predominantly below average, while the frequency of negative attitudes is above average for six of seven topics. However, these deviations from the average exceed the 15% limit only for two topics.34

Men’s Attitudes in % of men who responded in each category for this topic* Democracy Germany Guilt Jews Remilitarization The East The West 0

10

20

30 Positive

40

50

60

Ambivalent

70

80

90

Negative

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.10

100

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 96

Table 3.13.

Men Women Men more negative in attitude than women, in points

Guilt and Jews

The West and Democracy

−46 +25 71

−34 +40 74

The frequency of ambivalent attitudes is not insignificantly below the average, an indication that opinions among men are considerably more fixed than among women. We already demonstrated above that men as a statistical group are not extremely negative, but can still be counted among the middle group. However, they rank only as number 14 in the scale organized according to the index.35 For the test questions, the difference in attitude of the two sexes becomes particularly apparent. The indices are in Table 3.13. The average participation in the discussion is close to the average for men and is considerably higher than that of women for the first four topics, particularly for remilitarization. The fact that the statistical group of men comprises two-thirds of our participants has to influence the numbers for the attitude of the sum of all groups decisively. This makes the deviations in the following profiles of the remaining eight subgroups, which, likewise, are predominantly composed of men, all the more remarkable. Participants up to 20 Years Old This group comprises young people who were 14 years old at the end of the war and experienced the school of the Hitler Youth and the triumphant demonstrations of the first years of war, but also the defeat and the years of starvation at the beginning of the postwar period.36 Their attitudes are particularly interesting as a cue for the spiritual (Geistesverfassung) and mental (Gemütsverfassung) state of the youngest group of German youth, who were exposed to Nazi education during only a limited period of their childhood. Yet again, one has to advise greatest caution in generalizing from this group, here especially due to the low total number of only 150 participants. The first impression of the profile at hand is extremely positive. With two and one exceptions, respectively,37 the frequency of positive attitudes

Quantitative Analyses

p 97

Attitudes of Respondents Under Age 20 (n = 150) in % of people in the group who responded in each category for this topic* Guilt The West Democracy Remilitarization Jews Germany The East 0

10

20

30 Positive

40

50

60

Ambivalent

70

80

90

100

Negative

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.11

is above the average, and that of negative attitudes below it, and some of the differences are quite sizable. For the topics of complicity, the West, remilitarization, and the East, the frequency of negative statements is the lowest of all statistical groups. Yet this positive impression is disturbed by a series of factors. In addition to the small total number of groups, it is important to note the aboveaverage frequency of ambivalent attitudes, with the exceptions of the topics of democracy38 and Jews, and the above average frequency of ambivalent attitudes as well as the abnormally low participation in the discussion. These young people rank at the top of all groups with respect to the average frequency of ambivalent attitudes and at the bottom with respect to participation in the discussion. All these data lead to the conclusions that our young people have a tendency to respond positively to democratic values in general, but that their attitudes are still rather undecided and, hence, probably also very susceptible to influence. Participants Aged 20 to 35 Years One cannot draw conclusions about the development of the young people from the considerably less positive character of the next age group, since the 20–35-year-olds were subjected, largely defenselessly, to the National Socialistic education and propaganda apparatus for 12 years.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 98

Frequency of Attitudes of Participants Aged 35-50 (n = 529) in % of people in the group who spoke in each main category for this topic* Guilt The West Democracy Remilitarization Jews Germany The East 0

10

20

30 Positive

40

50

60

Ambivalent

70

80

90

100

Negative

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.12

Participants Aged 35 to 50 Years The influence of these Goebbels-style methods of education is reinforced in the case of the 35–50-year-old age group by the fact that a large number of its participants experienced inflation and unemployment as well as the later despair of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and were hardened through long military service.39 This group, too, does not exhibit predominantly negative types of attitudes, yet it ranks at the bottom of the average type. The frequency of positive attitudes is predominantly below average, that of negative attitudes above average, and that of ambivalent attitudes about average with one noticeable exception.40 The greater deviations from the average are summarized in Table 3.14. Perhaps the relatively high numbers of participants prepared to come to an understanding with the West in relation to rejecting remilitarization reflect war-weariness rather than a truly democratic attitude. This supposition is suggested by the far-above-average frequency of ethnocentric statements, the radical rejection of complicity, and the high frequency of ambivalent remarks on the topic of Jews, probably indicating a disposition toward a hostile attitude. Despite the relatively high frequency of positive speakers for the test topic of the West and the lower frequency of anti-Semitic remarks, the combined index for all four test topics puts the 35–50-year-olds in fifteenth position, i.e., in the bottom quarter ordered according to this criterion. This shows that, due to its attitude toward democratic values, this age

Quantitative Analyses

p 99

Table 3.14. Topics for which the distribution of attitudes of 35–50-year-olds deviates by 15% or more from the frequency of the general attitude (in % of deviation) Topic

Positive +33 −40 −33 −20 −18

The West Guilt Remilitarization Democracy Germans Jews

Ambivalent

Negative

+29

+23 −19

Attitudes of High School Graduates (n = 159) in % of people who responded in each category for this subject* Guilt The West Democracy Remilitarization Jews Germany The East 0

10

20

30 Positive

40

50

60

Ambivalent

70

80

90

100

Negative

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.13

group seems to belong in the neighborhood of groups with extremely negative attitudes. High School Graduates The quantitative as well as the qualitative analysis of our discussions do not leave any doubt that an important correlation exists between the degree of education and the attitude toward our topics. However, this correlation is partly hidden by the effects of the other variables. It has to be left to future research to try to isolate the effects of individual factors.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 100

In the following, we arrive at diametrically opposed pictures when comparing the profile of participants with only high school diplomas to that of university graduates: the high school graduates and university graduates are on opposite poles of the scale ranging from extremely positive to extremely negative attitudes. To begin with, let us examine the profile of high school graduates.41 Here we find a picture already familiar from the groups of women and upto-20-year-olds: a predominantly above-average frequency of positive and a below-average frequency of negative statements. Classified according to their indices for attitudes toward the six major topics, we find high school graduates in the first position, for the four test topics in fourth position: hence at the positive end of our scale. This group ranks third in the order of participation in the discussion; in relation to its total number, the group has significantly more speakers for each topic than all participants on average. Intense investigation is required in order to find out why high school graduates, i.e., those who did not attend university despite qualifying for entrance, show a much more positive attitude than university graduates. Greatest caution is also advised in generalizing these preliminary findings for high school graduates due to the relatively small number of participants (n = 159) and the above-average frequency of ambivalent attitudes. University Graduates In the case of university graduates, we are dealing for the first time with a group whose attitude gives a predominantly negative impression. Here, far-above-average participation in the discussion comes together with a frequency of positive attitudes that falls substantially below the average, remarkable reservations as regards critical comments for all six major topics, and an above-average (for five topics extremely aboveaverage) frequency of ambivalent attitudes, again with one exception.42 No matter which benchmark we use to measure the position of speakers with university education among the twenty groups, we always have to include them in the predominantly negative attitude type. Particularly striking are the characteristics for attitudes toward Jews. The frequency of positive attitudes is 86% below the average. The frequency of negative attitudes is 40% above the average. The frequency of ambivalence is 26% above the average. The participation in the discussion is 14% below the already low average. A higher-than-average ambivalent attitude together with lower-thanaverage participation in the discussion is, in this case (as generally), interpreted as accentuation of the negative attitude.43 We have to leave it to future investigations to make claims as to whether a broader representation of university graduates would lead to a picture

Quantitative Analyses

p 101

Attitudes of University Graduates (n = 135) in % of people in the group who responded in each category for this topic* Guilt The West Democracy Remilitarization Jews Germany The East 0

10

20

30

40

Positive

50

60

70

Ambivalent

80

90

100

Negative

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.14

Attitudes of Participants with Vocational Training (n = 200) in % of people in the group who responded in each category for this topic* Guilt The West Democracy Remilitarization Jews Germany The East 0

10

20

30 Positive

40

50

60

Ambivalent

70

80

90

100

Negative

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.15

similarly negative to the profile constructed from the behavior of only 135 participants. Students The group of participants who are still in professional training deserves special attention, since it includes members of the first two age

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 102

Table 3.15. Topics for which the distribution of students’ attitudes deviates by 15% or more from the frequency of the general attitude (in % of deviation) Topic Democracy Germans Jews Remilitarization The West Guilt

Positive +40 +33 +32 +17

Ambivalent

Negative

−25 −31 +62 +60 +21

−23 −36 +5 −34 −28 −18

groups, both men and women, and different degrees of education. When comparing this group to other profiles it is immediately clear that we are dealing with one of our positive groups. The students take the lead in the frequency of positive speakers and in the low frequency of negative statements. Yet the spectrum of ambivalence is broad in their case, too; they rank third place there, after the university graduates and the 20-year-olds. Their participation in the discussion is above average. The profile presents striking deviations from the average (Table 3.15). Their relatively high positive and relatively low negative frequencies for the four test topics are remarkable.44 Furthermore, their very frequent ambivalence toward the topics of the West and remilitarization together with a relatively low frequency of negative statements toward these two topics is also interesting. One can probably infer from the profile above that students at the time of our survey show a strong disposition toward accepting democratic values, but that a broad area remains for influencing their final decisions. Farmers The exact opposite can be said about the speakers who were farmers, who present in all respects the extreme of negative attitudes among our participants. The frequency of all positive statements is far below average, that of negative statements far above average, and the ambivalent spectrum is significantly smaller than for the average of all groups. The farmers participate in the discussion about as frequently as the average. Table 3.16 shows that the farmers also outstrip all other groups in regard to negative (and low positive) attitudes on individual topics. They attain by far the highest negative number for the indices for the four test topics.45 The far-below-average spectrum of ambivalence indicates that we

Quantitative Analyses

p 103

Attitudes of Farmers (n = 140) in % of farmers who responded in each category for this topic* Guilt The West Democracy Remilitarization Jews Germany The East 0

10

20

30 Positive

40

50

60

70

Ambivalent

80

90

100

Negative

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.16

Table 3.16. Topics for which the distribution of farmers’ attitudes deviates by 14% or more from the frequency of the general attitude (in % of deviation) Topic

Positive

Ambivalent

Negative

Guilt Democracy Remilitarization Jews Germans The West

−100(!) −70 −67 −50 −39 −33

−82 −15

+80 +77 +14 +41 +61 +26

−43

might be dealing with higher-than-average fixed attitudes for three of the topics. Not a single farmer speaks positively about the question of complicity, and eleven times as many speakers are hostile to democracy than speak positively about it; for the attitude toward the West, the ratio is even more unfavorable with 1:12.5. By the same token, the frequency of anti-Semitic farmers who spoke is only four times as high as of non-anti-Semitic speakers. If the profile of farmer speakers derived from our group of 140 farmers were only approximately representative for the agricultural population of

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 104

the Federal Republic, it would be an exceedingly difficult task to win this group for democracy.46 Yet we have reason to assume that the progressive strata of the farming population are far too little represented in our circle of participants. Future investigations have to attach special importance to providing democratically minded farmers with the opportunity to articulate their opinion. Skilled Workers The following two profiles of skilled and unskilled workers present a middle position among our twenty statistical groups. Ordered by the index for the attitude toward six topics (without the East), the skilled and unskilled workers are in the average attitude type. Ranked by the index for their attitude toward the test topics, however, both groups prove to be rather positively minded, and they receive the seventh and eighth positions in that scale. Despite much similarity, the two groups show differences that may be important for their evaluation. For some topics, the frequency of positive statements is significantly above average (Jews +43%, democracy and complicity both +20%, Germans +14%) and of negative statements below average (complicity −8%, democracy −18%). On the other hand, the attitude toward the West and toward remilitarization is not insignificantly more negative than the average. The higherthan-average frequency of criticism against remilitarization probably reflects the brusquely dismissive attitude of the Social Democratic Party. It is part of the tradition of this group that they attain the highest number of all statistical groups in the frequency of positive statements on the topic of Jews. The frequency of ambivalent speakers is much lower among the skilled workers than the average—on the scale arranged according to the frequency of ambivalent attitudes, this group is in the third to last position. In its decidedness to speak in favor or against a topic, it ranks behind only unskilled workers and farmers. The participation in the discussion among skilled workers is also far below average: they rank at the fourth to last position. It does not quite fit the common image of the skilled German worker with his traditional union and political schooling that his profile shows a frequency of 70% ambivalent speakers for the topic of democracy. This surprising finding is emphasized by the ratio of positive to negative attitudes for the topics of complicity (1:8) and the West (1:8.5), both of which deviate considerably from the ideal of a democratic attitude. Insofar as representative significance can be attached to our group of skilled workers, political education still has major work to do.

Quantitative Analyses

p 105

Attitudes of Skilled Workers (n = 308) in % of skilled workers who responded in each category for this topic* Guilt The West Democracy Remilitarization Jews Germany The East 0

10

20

30

40

Positive

50

60

70

Ambivalent

80

90

100

Negative

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.17

Attitudes of Unskilled Workers (n = 104) in % of unskilled workers who responded in each category for this topic* Guilt The West Democracy Remilitarization Jews Germany The East 0

10

20

30 Positive

40

50

60

Ambivalent

70

80

90

Negative

*lines denote mean percentages of approve, ambivalent, and disapprove with respect to all data

Figure 3.18

Unskilled Workers A similar story may hold to an increasing degree for unskilled workers. Their profile is characterized primarily by an aboveaverage frequency of negative attitudes for the six major topics. However, this group proves to be remarkably positive for the topic of democracy: it has the highest frequency of positive and the lowest frequency

100

Group Experiment and Other Writings Table 3.17.

p 106

Indices (sum of the percentage deviation from the average) of the frequency of ambivalent attitudes among four degrees of education Degree of Education

Index

Grade school (n = 981) Junior high (n = 213) High school (n = 159) University education (n = 135)

−54 +2 +48 +120

of ambivalent speakers for the topic, and the ratio of positive to negative statements is about 1:1. The frequency of critical statements toward remilitarization is above 80%, a number that only occurs elsewhere among the negative attitudes toward the East. While the unskilled workers rank third to last in the participation in the discussion, they uphold, as was already mentioned, the first position in their definitiveness for or against a topic. There is probably a close correlation between the frequency of ambivalent statements and the degree of education; the latter seems to increase with the former [Table 3.17]. Since the majority of unskilled workers possesses only a grade school education, this would at least partially explain their definitiveness. We probably have to trace it back less to political maturity than to the overpowering force of the dominant ideology. 3. General Average of the Frequency of Attitudes Above, we had the chance to indicate that the profile of our entire population offers little cause for confidence for supporters of a democratic world order. Certainly, the attitude toward the East shows a radical rejection of the Russian program—one approving speaker is matched by more than sixteen disapproving speakers and only a bit more than two whose statements are ambivalent. Yet examining the average frequency of the attitudes toward the six other topics, we find that only about one-sixth of the speakers have a positive attitude (16%), but that almost three times as many have a negative one (44%) and more than twice as many an ambivalent one (Figure 3.19). For five of the six major topics (leaving out the attitude toward the East) the frequency of positive statements is but a fraction (and usually a very small one) of negative ones. The details can be inferred from the overview in Table 3.18.

Quantitative Analyses

p 107

General Average of all Participants’ Attitudes in % of people who responded in each category for this subject Guilt The West Democracy Remilitarization Jews Germany The East 0

10

20

30

40

Positive

50

60

70

Ambivalent

80

90

100

Negative

Figure 3.19

General Average of the Frequency of Attitudes (n = 1635) in % of speakers who responded in each category for this topic Guilt The West Democracy Remilitarization Jews Germany The East 0

10

20

30

40

Positive

Average of all topics

50

60

70

Ambivalent

80

90

100

Negative

...except the East

Figure 3.20

Apart from the topic of the East, the frequency of positive attitudes predominates only for the topic of German self-assessment, namely in relation to the negative speakers as well as to the ambivalent ones. Significantly more speakers participated in the discussion of the first three topics than of the other four. The lowest average participation in the

Group Experiment and Other Writings Table 3.18.

p 108

Ratio of positive to negative statements for six major topics among all participants Approximate Ratio of Positive Frequency to the Frequency of

Topic Complicity The West Democracy Remilitarization Jews Germans All six topics

Negative Attitudes

Ambivalence

1:10 1:7 1:3 1:5 4:5 5:3 1:3

1:9 1:3 1:7 1:2.4 4:5 2.5:1 1:2.5

discussion is found for the topic of Jews (= 22%), the highest for the topic of democracy (= 53%). 4. On the Interpretation of the Profiles In this section, we presented and commented on some of the profiles gained from the quantitative analysis. We tried to point to the differences between the individual groups. Now, when asking whether these differences touch on the basic structure of the frequency of attitudes, we have a simple instrument to establish clarity. The profile of the general average of all groups is plotted in each of the ten group profiles. By examining the deviation of frequency of each individual group from the group average, we discover that the conformity of the basic structures carries significantly more weight than the individual deviation from the general average. We are probably entitled to deduce the “public opinion” pertaining to our circle of participants from that. In the preponderance of negative and ambivalent attitudes toward the four test topics as well as in the sharply profiled distribution of attitudes for the three other topics, we may detect the influence of trans-subjective factors, i.e., the political ideology effective during the time our pilot study was conducted.

chapter four

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

1. General Information Preliminary Notes As a special field, the qualitative analysis* lent itself to an investigation of the dynamics of opinion formation in the group sessions. It was of prime importance for our research to gain a better understanding of the processes at play in the group discussions. This is because our experiment is based on the assumption that opinions on political ideology usually crystallize only during engagement with the stimuli and with other people. This process is reciprocal: while group opinion is reflected in individual opinions, individual opinions contribute to group opinion. The group opinion becomes a psychological force. Once it is formed, individual group members no longer feel isolated. They feel emotionally connected to each other from then on. This is what we understand as the “integration” of a group. In the process, factors are at play such as the specific atmosphere that dominates a certain discussion, the crystallization of group opinion, and the effectiveness of “social control” exercised by the group.†

* The qualitative analysis is presented in full in the companion volume, Guilt and Defense. —Eds. † The text refers to sozialen Kontrolle and to “social control” (English in the original). —Eds.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 110

The experience of the moderators and their assistants as well as a first review of the discussion transcripts shows that valuable material was at hand for the study of such problems of group dynamics, especially for tendencies of integration and disintegration. The issue in this chapter was, in each case, the entire group. We consider the opinion formation of individuals within the group only in this context. Specifically, we use the empirical material itself to develop a theory of which forces provide the group with a more solid structure. We seek to explicate elements of integration and disintegration: an essential prerequisite for reliable insight into the position of the individual vis-à-vis the group. Since we are not concerned here with an experiment during which different variables relevant to integration were manipulated, attempting to proceed from establishing elementary phenomena and factors for integration to investigating constant interdependencies would miss the point. Such an attempt would necessarily demand quantification. Here we carried out a purely qualitative analysis. Thus, we are not concerned with countable concepts or measurable units.1 This does not preclude the hypotheses of this work from proving useful for quantitative experiments on integration as well. The categories constructed here might provide models for variables to be used in such experiments. Since our study was not focused on the investigation of phenomena of integration, our material for the analysis of important individual problems of the process of integration is not equally fruitful throughout. Some issues, first and foremost the role of the “opinion-leader” [English] and the role of the group as representatives of the dominant opinion, should be given particular attention in future investigations. 2. On Terminology A short discussion of the two basic concepts of group and integration is appropriate for terminological reasons. Both have been used in sociology with widely varying meanings, so we have to outline what these terms mean in this study. The Concept of Group There are three characteristic types of group concepts in traditional sociological literature. Some authors (e.g., Oppenheimer, Geiger, Bogardus)2 define the concept of group in such a way that it becomes a collective name for most social structures. Others (particularly Sombart, Vierkandt, L. v. Wiese)3 use the term group for a specific category of social structures. And sometimes the concept of group is hypostatized. It is understood as an entity that preexists its members. Thus, for Vierkandt,4

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 111

for example, a group is a structure that has a life of its own, is an entity for itself, and has its own conditions, characteristics, and patterns of behavior. Comparing the actuality of our discussion groups with these concepts of group, the first of these formal concepts seems to be most applicable to our group discussions. We will provide closer—and if necessary changing— specifications of our groups in the course of this investigation. A first feature which all of our groups have in common can already be indicated here: the groups are small in the sense that they have few members, and, hence, there are immediate personal contacts among all members. The word group is an example of “occasional expressions” in logic.* This means that, by nature, group is an open concept defying any universal definition. It can be compared to the X in algebra, which can be inserted into completely different formulas and the specific value of which results from the respective formula. By analogy, the concept of group gains meaning only when the structure identified by it is understood concretely through the social situation and constellation. If the nature of the group is to be specified, one has to proceed from this insight, not from a formal definition. The Concept of Integration Most sociologists consider integration a process that takes place in the entire society or at least in major parts of it (Spencer, Geiger, L. v. Wiese).5 In this sense, integration is one pole of the integration-differentiation tension, on which opinions diverge. For Spencer and Geiger, the processes are complementary, i.e., they identify simultaneous occurrences, while for v. Wiese only integration (binding) or differentiation (dissolution) can exist at any moment. These extensive concepts of integration, however, need not be considered here, since we are dealing with the integration of small groups in a specific situation—the discussion. It is precisely this situation to which more recent American literature applies the term “group integration” [English], though here it means only the development of an undivided group opinion. The researchers have in mind discussion groups that have to come to decisions, and this was not the case for the groups in this study. In the case of small group discussions seeking to arrive at a conclusion, MacIver and Page6 distinguish four types of unification: (a) through authority, (b) through compromise, (c) through voting, and (d) through integration. Integration means an actual dissolution * The term is from Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, (New York: Humanities Press, 1970), vol. 1, Section 26. “Occasional expressions” are expressions whose meaning depends on the particular context of their use.—Eds

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 112

of differences in contrast to, for example, a majority vote. This dissolution can only be effected by a completely unanimous group opinion. For our usage of the word integration, we selected from the definitions of various authors those characteristics of the process that fit the group phenomena of our study. Since this study is concerned with processes in small groups, one must not think of a growth or fusion of several complete groups, as Spencer does. Processes of integration rather take place within the group (Geiger).7 Integration consists of psychic interrelations between individuals and may result in stronger identification of the group members with one another: an emotional consensus (Giddings)8 or group opinion (MacIver).9 No individual is isolated in a strongly integrated group.10 In summary, in these pages we use integration to refer to the development of relations between group members constituting a unity that only persists for the duration of the group session. In this process the relations, not the group members, are actually the integrating factors.11 3. Two Major Types of Discussion Groups Arranged Groups Approximately one-tenth of the discussion groups consisted of people who did not know each other before the discussion or knew each other only casually. We call such a circle of people who were not constituted as a group until the day of the discussion (and did not outlast the hours of the discussion as a group) an “arranged group” in order to mark their difference from the discussion groups whose participants belonged to an already existing social group. These arranged groups are of particular interest for us because they were not subject to any processes of integration prior to the discussion. In these cases, integration can be studied ab ovo, so to say. It will be shown that, even after only a short time, an astonishingly high degree of integration could be observed in some of them. These could be called “psychological groups.”12 They are defined neither by living near one another, nor by profession, nor by any common interest or attitude as the social groups are (which, of course, are psychological groups as well). Examples of arranged groups are: a number of men and women who were invited on the basis of their addresses in the address book; patients on different wards in the same hospital; and men who registered on a certain day to spend the night in a large urban public shelter (Großstadtbunker). Preexisting Groups The difference between arranged and preexisting groups can be simplified to this: the members of arranged groups did not know each other prior to the discussion and did not perceive the other

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 113

discussion participants as fellow members of their community of fate or interest. The members of the preexisting groups did know each other or at least had some feeling of connectedness (e.g., as refugees). It is irrelevant to our analysis whether the members of preexisting groups had daily contact with one another (e.g., joint residences in barracks, bunkers, etc.), whether their group was defined by a common profession (shipyard workers), by the same attitude (young socialists), or by common interest (participants of a course of higher education). Rather, it is crucial that the groups were either already integrated or at least in a way were disposed toward integration. The style of moderation was the same for arranged and preexisting groups. The difference between “homogeneous” and “not homogeneous” groups is on a different logical level. By “homogeneous” groups we understand those groups among which sex, age, education, religion, political attitude, and other common interests create a feeling of connectedness, through which the members, even if they did not know each other beforehand, feel at home relatively quickly. In contrast to this, nonhomogeneous groups are those whose members feel isolated due to the differences in the variables mentioned above and are, thus, impaired in their ability to connect.

I. Model of the Course of a Discussion (Continuum of Integration) In order to arrive at a coherent picture of the processes that combine over the course of the discussion to produce integration, we will use a model. We will select different phenomena found in numerous discussions and arrange them as if they were phases of a single, exemplary discussion, in which integration starts from zero and increases gradually until it reaches its peak. This construct uses only empirical material from the discussions for a montage. We selected the phenomena from several sessions that seem to be particularly striking expressions of progressive integration. A large number of less relevant phenomena for our current interest are not considered, even though they might appear frequently in the actual discussions. Furthermore, the model does not comply with reality’s chronological order of categories. Its order is rather assigned systematically; at base is the assumption that the phenomena can be arranged on a scale as indicators of different degrees of integration. Thus, the processes scattered throughout the entire research material recur here as categories of a continuum. This selection and abstract ordering of phenomena is meant to facilitate the overview of the actual co-occurrence, order, and mixture of phenomena.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 114

In the discussion of the model, the individual evidence in the transcripts is interpreted realistically. The interpretation is not modified in view of the model, but relies on the events in the respective original sessions. Passages are selected to allow meaningful integration into the model. The individual phases—or categories—are indicated by subheadings. 1. Strangerhood All arranged groups shared the phase of strangerhood at the beginning of the session, although this varied in nature. We will begin the presentation of our model and analysis with this phase. The investigator opens the session with a brief explanation about the purpose of the discussion, and the assistant plays the base stimulus on a tape recorder. The phase of strangerhood at the beginning of the discussion is marked by cautious phrases and prophylactic clichés. Numerous such words and phrases such as “I think,” “a little,” “sure enough,” “perhaps,” and similar can be found at the beginning. The implicit question of what others might say is always dominant. The participants are, moreover, uncertain as to the attitude of the moderator. In our discussion, Mrs. P. is the first one to try to learn something about the moderator’s attitude. The moderator repeats a passage from the base stimulus: In.: Well, Mr. Colburn says that there is a risk that they (the Germans) will follow Stalin or Hitler because they long for a strong man.

After brief hesitation, Mrs. P. says: P.: Surely, this is not the case . . . No, we are wiser now, don’t you think?

She addresses her question to the moderator in order to discern his attitude. He enjoys a certain authority, formally supported by the design of the experiment. In the arranged groups in particular, the participants focus on the moderator at the beginning of the session. He is expected to lead the discussion firmly. The moderator does not answer the question, but passes it on to the group: In.: You think that we have become wiser through experience? Ladies and Gentlemen, what do you think about it? M.: That one has learned something from it, from the past. It’s probably not so simple.

This remark, too, evades an actual response; it hedges a personal statement.

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 115

The reaction of the other cannot yet be predicted, and, thus, the participants formulate their statements as tentatively as possible. Accordingly, Mr. M. says: M.: Of course, an accused person will always deny his guilt. This is a completely natural phenomenon. At least, he will find grounds for his justification. In my view, this is an obvious thing, if a German is judging from his German perspective. We have to be clear about the fact that an Englishman also judges only from his perspective. But what appears to be red from the English perspective can appear to be blue from the German perspective. The question of which of these two representatives of those perspectives is right would have to be decided by a third person.

The relativization of perspectives relieves people of the obligation to take a position. In this way one becomes unassailable because one can avoid every bind. 2. Orientation In the next phase of discussion, people try to gain certainty about the attitudes of the other participants. A common way to evoke group reactions so one can adjust one’s habit to them is by referring to supposedly popular opinions. Such contributions often start with the words “people say.” By distancing oneself in such a way from the opinion and passing it off as somebody else’s, a speaker can adhere to it in case of agreement from the group, while possible objections can be neutralized by retreating from the referenced opinion without consequences. The following example is typical for referring to an opinion to elicit the group’s attitude toward it. The [female] participant A. continues the discussion in our model session: A.: One often hears older and younger people say: No, it won’t work like this. Here in Germany there has to be some man at the top, someone has to dictate. Otherwise, it won’t work with the Germans. This opinion is actually quite common . . .

Then she dares to advance a bit: A.: . . . Actually it is unfortunate that it is common, because this does not advance democracy . . .

The group does not approve of the referenced opinion. Yet, after a few minutes, Mrs. A. ventures a second time in a similar direction, i.e., she again

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 116

reproduces a supposedly popular opinion that is not advantageous to democracy: A.: Perhaps it is unfortunately the way people say: If what we have today is or is supposed to be democracy, if this is democracy, the way things are going in the country, then democracy is no good.

The other participants disagree with her excitedly, several at the same time. Mrs. A. is lectured that one must not expect the group to tolerate such a view. She reacts immediately and hurries to add: A.: That’s exactly the bad thing about it, that it is repeated and that one does not get to the bottom of things and that one does not actually make an effort to take up democracy, intellectually.

Other participants act similarly to Mrs. A., advancing views for which agreement is unlikely as those of other people or groups. If participants want to learn about the group’s attitude on delicate subjects, they like to start with harmless remarks, in order to touch the hot potato only bit by bit. They, so to say, increase the dose of caution in the statements. That this procedure is intended to provoke the group’s reaction, which is necessary for their own orientation, is demonstrated by the words of the participant E.: E.: In order to arouse disagreement, I want to express myself in an exaggerated way. Since 1945, as they have tried to force the concept of “democracy” on us in Germany, this feels to me like remedial help for children who have been held back . . .

His preface shields him in any case. If disagreement emerges, he can retreat and say that he was trying to provoke; if no disagreement emerges— and this is the case in our discussion—he can further develop his idea and reveal that what he called an exaggerated expression is, as will be shown, just a moderate part of his true view. He goes on to speak of National Socialism as an “experiment,” which “unfortunately” failed, because it was impossible to keep the leadership under control. After that he marks his true view as follows: E.: I believe every place will get to this point in the not too distant future, that is, an authoritarian form of government, in which democracy still functions insofar as it occurs as background organization without impeding decisions as such.—An American told me recently that the United States is governed by a democracy that is really corrupt, although he had drunk a lot of whiskey,.

It is easy to construe the affinity between the sentences cited first and last. E. wants to say that there is no reason for a German to learn to strive for a certain form of government if its downfall elsewhere is already

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 117

evident. Hereby, the “exaggerated” assertion of “remedial help” is still the mildest passage of his remarks. Much more radical is his final claim that democracy is ruined everywhere. But even here he shields himself through the disclaimer, which sounds almost like a concession to the idea of democracy, that democracy might still have a background function. Furthermore, he seeks to prevent a shock effect by giving the little anecdote of the drunken American and, thus, addressing consent in matters that are all too human. With the help of these little tricks, E. can venture to raise his statements after his preliminary, cautious remarks stirred no objection, and in doing so he can find out what the group will put up with. The orientation phase, of feeling one’s way, which springs from the desire for certainty and for discovering and finding commonalities between oneself and others, is now over according to our model. Now, speaking figuratively, the participants define rough contours for the field of free movement of opinions, the range of the acceptable, the scope of tolerated views. The participants begin to adapt their behavior accordingly. This takes place in the adaptation phase. 3. Adaptation The adaptation phase clarifies which people within the group adopt which behavioral patterns. It is comparable to a crystallization process, the result of which leads to a determinable structure of the group opinion. The same form of appearance of adaptation can have different causes. Two of the most important should be mentioned: (1) the adapting participant is labile or unstructured and actually adapts to another participant’s view, sometimes without consciously accounting for it; (2) the adapting participant adopts another’s attitude only outwardly, in order to conform, while in reality he thinks completely differently and disguises his true opinion in the face of others. There are two other behavioral patterns that, from a psychological point of view, have to be separated from both of those above. Yet they often become manifest in a similar way: (3) a participant can actually be persuaded by the arguments of another; (4) a participant thinks that an earlier speaker took the words out of his mouth, i.e., both share specific, closely related dispositions for opinions; thus, the later speaker would have expressed the same thing as the earlier one in any case. These two processes cannot, of course, be called adaptation. In an actual discussion these types of adaptation overlap one another. For our example discussion, we only make use of the first three types. Reflecting earlier remarks is a clear sign of adaptation and sometimes becomes manifest midsentence. Our participant T. tries to make up for a

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 118

lapse, so as not to offend several other participants. The following words come during his longer explanations: T.: . . . This is an artificial thing, all the unemployed. Many of those who have been stuck here . . . or much more not stuck here, but who had to take refuge here, this provides the best cannon fodder for them.

The words “or much more” (vielmehr) start the adaptation, because T. is mildly alarmed to remember from earlier remarks that two group members identified themselves as having been expelled. Of course, they would have to feel offended if someone discussed their fate in such unfavorable terms. T. cannot change the content of what has already been said; he tries by way of form to make up for it by stopping his idea and talking about something else in order to wash away the bad impression. He seamlessly connects to the sentence concerning cannon fodder: T.: This is exactly how it’s going to be, when a troop is deployed, that the Germans are located where things are worst, because not enough people died in the bombings . . .

This is a very fine-tuned taking into consideration of what had been said earlier, which now has its effect only formally. Most often, however, adaptation proceeds more primitively, in that a participant directly adapts to another’s attitude. Sometimes it seems as if the later speaker maintains the idea that he arrived at his view without being influenced, while in principle he simply reformulates the idea expressed earlier by another participant. The following example is a case in point. Referring to the change in America’s political relations to Soviet Russia in the years after 1945, the participant T. says about the American statesmen and their knowledge of Russia: T.: . . . in the end people suppose that a politician has a long view . . . The entire (Bolshevistic) system actually has already existed for 20 years, and there are enough emigrants who fled from Russia, who found a new home in America . . .

The participant U. reproduces exactly the same content, simply in other words: U.: . . . and not a single American politician or senior official can make me believe that he did not see the Soviet danger back then the same as today. This is impossible!

Either he thinks that his stated opinion is entirely his own or he wants to evoke this impression, because he does not refer to T.’s contribution. This is a case of unconscious adaptation.

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 119

The few following words of the group member T. shed light on the socialpsychological element effective during adaptation. By all means, adaptation is not always performed for the sake of others whom people wish to please or whom people do not wish to have as enemies. Adaptation can well be an indication of something lying deeper: the idea that the group is an objective authority capable of deciding on correctness and incorrectness, on truth or falsity. This is a symptom of clinging to authority. This also comes through in T.’s words: T.: I have discussed this with several others and it is also my own opinion . . .

The several others cited by T. are not participants in the discussion, yet it stands to reason that he will say later: I participated in a discussion in which people were of the same opinion. It is comforting to find opinions to which one is predisposed in a group or to have them confirmed by it, i.e., to experience the kind of collective reinforcement that American sociology calls “social support” [English].13 Sociologists and psychologists have repeatedly stated that group members are inclined to regard their group as an objective authority. In the end, trust in the working of democratic institutions is based on the assumption that the mistakes and eccentric opinions of individuals are cancelled out in a sufficiently large collectivity. It is believed that, using Simmel’s phrasing, “collective opinion approaches objective truth.”14 If the individual observes other people sharing his experiences and opinions, the content of these experiences and opinions is “transplanted” from a sphere of pure subjectivity into objectivity, as Vierkandt says. This is, he assumes, due to the fact that the group is the natural source of objectivity.15 As Durkheim highlights, the sanctioning of the group as objective authority causes adaptations, often in the form of mere imitation. Imitation within a discussion simply means repetition, as in the following passage: D.: Let’s take an example from recent history for illustration. The German people are absolutely against a war. Yet, we find the press full of topics like military buildup and remilitarization, even though we have a democratic government. Where, now, is the voice of the people?

Shortly after this, a second speaker puts the same idea in very similar words: M.: . . . even though we have a democracy, even though the German people want peace, we find in the press the echo of war and war cries, the tendency to make a possible war palatable to the people . . .

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 120

Merely repeating or expanding a contribution with the same content happens quite frequently in the discussion. We find this particularly for views that garner general consent, as would be the case in our model during the familiarity phase. 4. Familiarity All the phases described so far could have appeared in any discussion, even one that does not develop toward firm group integration. The decision as to whether the group finally integrates or splits is made only in the familiarity phase. (Of course, whether its members act in parallel with one another in an atomistic and unrelated way is decided earlier.) For our model we leave aside the possibility of splitting. Only familiarity allows for a general group consensus, as it is now constituted in our example discussion. Meanwhile an atmosphere was created in which the participants agree in principle and where a weak difference in opinion shows itself at most in insignificant details, such as whether charitable gifts or “frontline soldier”–packages were sent to the German soldiers in Russia during the Second World War. Yet on the questions they deem essential, group members tend toward consensus in this phase. Thus, Mrs. M. and Mrs. A. confirm their agreement: M.: May I quickly say on that: a people will come together if it hasn’t been filled with hatred, right. A.: That’s it: A people comes together! In.: That’s a very important thought. M.: Yes, a people always finds itself. A.: And also politics is just hatred in my eyes, where politics is done, it’s just agitation against one country or another.

Large parts of the discussion consist of such passages, which are accompanied by approving murmurs and affirming nods from the listeners. One contribution fits the next so well that sometimes one can succumb to the illusion that only one person is speaking. Often, one participant even interrupts another in order to complement, substantiate, or strengthen his statement. Women in particular easily reach this level of mutual consent. In this state of the group it happens now and then that a participant, completely used to agreeing, inadvertently endorses contradicting views, without his or the group’s realizing it.16 If a participant contradicts himself, if a later statement is not in tune with an earlier one, this usually remains unnoticed by the group. It has, so to say, a short memory. It is crucial that a second statement contradicting the first is not contrary to the momentary group consensus. Otherwise, it would be suspect and would certainly not evade attention.

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 121

If a participant is actually caught contradicting himself, he feels embarrassed. In the course of most of the discussions it became apparent that the speakers were always anxious to maintain at least a formal consistency in their statements or at least to reestablish the appearance of consistency for the group, for example by pointing out that they were misunderstood. In adapting to a newly formed group opinion some speakers also like to appeal to a misunderstanding if suddenly changing sides to the group opinion would set them into too strong of a contrast with their own earlier statement. The following example illustrates this. The participant T. claims unmistakably that the allies of the Second World War were of the opinion that: T.: . . . we (Germans) did not suffer enough on the front. They have to be gotten rid of, because things are still proceeding according to the Morgenthau plan,* and they can write whatever they like in the newspapers. I always believed: The Russians and the Americans fully agree in this point. It is a matter of exterminating the German people . . .

The moderator expresses reservations as to the objective truth of this claim and asks: In.: Do you also believe that the Americans and the Russians agreed in the case of Korea that there are too many Koreans in the world? . . .

Another speaker replies that he believes American politicians during the war had a different attitude toward Germany than at present: now America feels threatened by Russia and wants to include Germany on the front line against Russia. The world was simply divided into two large camps, the Communists on one and the democratic governments on the other side. Yet T. wants to prove that America and Russia can nonetheless agree, as he says: T.: I’m of the opinion that there is not a large difference. In America, capital reigns, in Russia, the dictatorship reigns. In the end, it is the same.

Yet when the investigator poses the specific question to the entire group of whether they agree with T’s opinion—Russia and America agree on the

* Henry Morgenthau Jr., U.S. Treasury Secretary during the war, had proposed a plan for de-industrializing Germany after the war so as to prevent Germany from being able to remilitarize. The plan was never formally implemented, though it served as a symbol for the belief that America wanted to destroy Germany through a harsh, vengeful peace. It is not incidental that Morgenthau was the highest-ranking Jew in American government. See Jeffrey K. Olick, In the House of the Hangman: The Agonies of German Defeat, 1943–1949. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 122

destruction of Germany—or of the other speaker’s opinion—America wants to consolidate its position against hostile Russia with the help of Germany—T. revises his initial thesis by taking refuge behind a supposed misunderstanding: T.: I was mistaken in this point, because I don’t want to say now that they just want to destroy the Germans. They just use the Germans; the ideologies of those two are opposed to each other, and the Germans are the best instrument against this.

In principle, T. has surrendered completely; his self-esteem, however, does not permit him to concede. In the familiarity phase within our continuum of integration, critical consciousness seems to recede to some degree. The group members, who no longer regard each other as strangers and are less reserved than at the beginning of the session, are more inclined to be impressed by the others’ statements, to forget their own previously expressed attitude, and to let their new attitude be prescribed by the group atmosphere. Those who want to influence the group are not excluded from this behavior. If this state has been reached, the individual feels safe and secure within the collective. Then an outright sense of togetherness is developed within the group. The idea of not being accepted by the group or of being excluded from it as an individual causes discomfort. The more closely bonded the group feels, the higher, on the one hand, the incentive for the individual to dare to come out with more extreme statements as well as, on the other hand, the risk of psychic isolation if the group disavows an individual’s attitude. Groups with a strong sense of togetherness often refuse outsiders in a particularly stringent manner.17 The kind of isolation at issue here has been called “psycho-social isolation” or “moral aloneness” by some authors.18 This means that the lack of esteem from the group causes discomfort in the isolated individual. Solitary confinement has been regarded as the worst punishment; yet physical isolation—these authors argue—becomes unbearable for the person concerned only when it includes “moral aloneness.” William Trotter’s theory of instinct interprets the fear of solitude as a feature of instinctive human herd behavior, thus not subject to further analysis.19 Sigmund Freud, however, derived the “herd instinct” as a reaction formation from primordial envy. According to him, not even group spirit or the “esprit de corps” disavows this origin: “No one wants to stand out, every one must be the same and have the same.”20 These are probably the unconscious motives in our group, too. Social sense, the formation of norms, and control are mutually dependent and develop at the same time, apparently in society as well as in our group.21 We will observe these processes in the conformity phase.

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 123

5. Conformity In our model session, we call conformity the phase during which there is no deviation of individuals within the group from the general tendency of opinion expressed. A consensus has been reached allowing no space for remnants of deviation, let alone for antagonism. The members identify with one another. They feel united. We can see this clearly in their behavior; they speak more and more frequently of themselves as “we.” The individual seems to be only a spokesman, even a function of the group. To a larger and larger degree, his contributions conform to the group opinion. They are, in a way, molded by it. Any individuality is more and more renounced. Quite frequently, the group opinion in this phase expresses the dominant opinion.22 A major motive of conformity in our model group is collective defense against reproach. It takes the form of reckoning: American acts of war are used to compensate for the extent of German guilt. The following passage documents this attitude and, at the same time, illustrates how a speaker starting with light aggression can escalate to outright hostility if he is supported by the group. At first, when the bombing of city X by the American Air Force comes up, the participant J. argues, as outlined elsewhere,23 that the destruction of X was “unfair,” since, in contrast to other cities, no war matériel was produced there. The next speaker agrees with him and explains that “they” consciously wanted to commit a crime. Thereupon J., supported in his views, strikes out with full aggression: J.: It’s obvious: this was dirty business by the Americans. I have to say here: The end justifies the means. The Americans didn’t attack many large heavy industry enterprises (IG-Konzerne). Why? Because the major capitalists’ dough was in there (approving laughter). Absolutely, it’s still standing there, the heavy industry tower, it’s still standing upright, straight as an arrow. Even more, the Volkswagen factory! Not a single bomb in the Volkswagen factory! Certainly, they did not let it stand to make us happy that we can build Volkswagens afterward. Again the capitalists have wound up with significant sums.

It is interesting that J. introduces a completely new aspect to his own argument and only remains constant in the tendency to attack “the” American as the enemy, a tendency for which he can count on the group’s approval. He has judged the group opinion accurately, as the reactions show. The next speaker starts: U.: . . . this was a completely clear consideration, since they not only left the heavy industry factories in one piece, but they also left all the barracks in one piece . . .

and other speakers deal with the topic similarly.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 124

The claim that it seems as if conformity and delivering monologues belong together will not sound completely paradoxical after we have hinted at the fact that a person might agree to two opposing arguments in quick succession, in order to conform in any moment and under any circumstances, and after we have shown that a participant’s transition to a new idea does not necessarily arise from logical continuity but from the group atmosphere. In contrast to dramaturgical usage, we will call “monologues” those statements showing not a logical but at most an associative link to the content of what has been said before. A participant delivers a monologue when he does not respond to the argumentation of the others, when he says something that just crosses his mind and to which the discussion can contribute nothing but the keyword. Monologues appear where no dialectical argument takes place; the adaptation to the group atmosphere is indeed blind. One could assume that monologues would have to retard or disturb the progress of the discussion; instead, they can be found, as has just been said, namely in the conformity phase, when the discussion seems to proceed completely regularly. The explanation is easy. People in the group listen to each other only superficially because they have the vague sense that they agree with the others, that a given speaker will in the end argue in the sense of the group (they, themselves, would do the same), and that the unanimity will not be disturbed easily. Thus, nobody works to ensure that the object of discussion stays the same, let alone that the thoughts stay within the bounds of logic. Conformity is largely an emotional harmony. It allows for the kind of reckless prattle that finds its typical expression in monologues. What, then, underlies conformity from a psychological point of view? Our hypothesis is: the identification of the group members with one another. This requires a brief explanation. Identification means that an emotional bond is formed between two or more persons. Freud explains the nature of this bond in his theory of libido.24 Identification is an early form of emotional bond in the life of a human being. (Roughly speaking: the boy, for example, identifies with his father; he wants to be like him.) An emotional bond at a later stage of development is the choice of an object (Objektwahl) (roughly: someone wants to possess a loved person). Identification, however, can reappear regressively later on, as it becomes a substitute for a libidinous object-bond; yet it can also—and this is important for our analysis—“arise with any new perception of a common quality shared with some other person who is not an object of the sexual instinct.”25 In such cases, Freud talks of a partial identification. Freud explains the emergence of such identification with the idea that several persons have substituted their ego ideal with one and the same object and that, thus, everyone identifies his own ego with the ego of the other.

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 125

Freud studied identification for masses, in particular for those who have a leader.26 At first, a leader seemed to him indispensable for the formation of masses, i.e., for the emergence of emotional bonds constituting identification. The individuals identify with one another by mutually accepting the leader as ideal. Furthermore, the illusion exists that the leader loves all of them with equal love. Freud himself, however, encouraged an investigation of whether the leader as an object of libidinal aspiration is nonetheless substitutable for the nature of the group. We will come back to that question in the next section. Identification in our group is established such that one person perceives commonalities with another, i.e., it is a “partial” one according to Freud. The commonalities exist in that the people agree in either the attitude or the intensity of the affective charge concerning a certain topic. In part, we explained the orientation phase as a result of the search for such commonalities. In the conformity phase—which we regard as the highest degree of integration—identification of almost all of the conversation partners with one another has been accomplished. We also recognize this in the paradoxical appearance that the group members are no longer listening properly to one another. This demonstrates the primacy of the libidinal factor over rationality. The only ones who listen closely are individuals who want to object, thus those who have not identified with the others. However, the other participants, we should perhaps say more precisely, listen with half an ear, secure in the knowledge of their agreement. They take in what is said enough so that they can notice glaring deviations from conformity and that they can register striking words—keywords, as it were—which, beyond the general tendency of the utterance, are suited to arouse the latent joy of acclaim and approval. Sometimes, the discussion gets hung up on a striking formulation like the slogan below: “Think less politically—more economically!” (Acclamation: Party discipline does not exist!) K.: Everyone can do what he likes. He just has to pay more attention to the economic situation. A.: . . . We are too mired in the parties. We should have a voice from an economic viewpoint instead. (Acclamation: More economy and less politics!) A.: Moreover, I believe that we should not vote based on party membership, but economically. The party is no longer so interested in the masses. We saw it before the war, where did that lead with 28 parties, and now it has come that far again. They are just interest groups in my view. We should think economically. Because with this party business we’ll go to the dogs, just like before the war. (Acclamation: Indeed! Then dictatorship will arise again!)

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 126

K.: I’m of the view, as Mr. A. says, away from the party system, I completely agree, and setting up economic groups . . . Z.: In any case, this would be much better, we would again work economically instead of politically. This would be much more reasonable. We can’t get ahead at all with all these party politics.

The relapse to certain, not necessarily interesting, topics in which there was unanimity even before conformity was achieved is a further indication that conformity has developed. In our model group, this occurred for the topic of youth. Dealing with this topic led to a not entirely concealed eulogy for National Socialism. What follows are six contributions of different male and female speakers uttered at uneven intervals, sometimes after dealing with other topics: D.: I was 16 years old. We finished school in 1934, we were young then, we were enthusiastic, one really wasn’t worried about anything. I took part in many camping trips, and it was always nice. I have to say that in each camp life was wonderful. We weren’t forced to do anything. We played, we cooked, we learned, we learned to tinker, we learned sewing. It was nice, really. Until 1938. I didn’t go anymore after that. Until ’38, afterward, during the war, I was at home. H.: I’d really like to come back to talking about youth again, youth during the prewar period and now after the war . . . While I was in the Hitler Youth, I have to say that it was very pleasant and very nice. And in today’s youth? Take a poll about how many boys and girls are in organizations today, it is certainly a minority of them . . . And the largest part, they don’t get to see anything other than work, the café, smoking cigarettes, standing on street corners and chatting up girls. J.: . . . and then (1945) the Americans would have to have been smart enough to organize these adolescents again right away, so that they would get on the right track. F.: . . . well, back then we weren’t allowed to go to dancing lessons under 18. Today the kids are 14 years old, they haven’t finished school, but insist on going to dancing lessons . . . A.: At any rate, I can only say that every human being who was in that organization (the Hitler Youth) is—mind you in the peace time—a completely different human being from today. Look at today’s youth at the same age as back then and consider the difference . . . I.: On the question of youth: Due to the huge differences between prewar youth and today’s youth movements—we have to consider the following cause: before the war, our youth had a goal and an ideal in front of it, and in everybody they saw ideals posed before them, people who tried to reach the ideal . . . the demand on the youth: to be hard as steel, tough as leather, and quick as greyhounds. And we tried to strive for that. It was a worthwhile idea, to be there for the people, and it was worthwhile to make sacrifices for it. The war is over, today . . . who gives the youth an idea, an ideology worth supporting?

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 127

Often the topics that the group returns to repeatedly are the sensitive spots of the respective social group, its specific existential or prestige concerns. For example, a sensitive spot for young men who find themselves confronted with the possibility of being drafted is remilitarization. Or the question of economic competition from foreign countries for a group of exporters; or the measures of the Soviet government in a discussion group made up of inhabitants of the border zone area. For the observer of group behavior, conformity has a passive appearance. In this phase the group members let things happen to them; they subordinate themselves to the group, to its atmosphere and its vaguely sensed, unwritten codex (assimilating to the thinking ratified by the group, the mode of argumentation etc.). This subordination happens voluntarily in the sense that there is no apparent individual will to unify the group. The compulsion for integration is an unconscious phenomenon, not the result of an individual’s act of will. It can be regarded as proven that the consensus of even just a majority within the group can have a suggestive effect. We touched on that when we discussed the group as objective authority. Yet it would have been premature to assume a suggestive effect already in the familiarity phase within the discussion group. As Vierkandt says, the larger the degree of “communal proximity” (in our terminology: the degree of integration), the bigger impression the fact of agreement makes upon the individual.27 Conformity is not only present in passive phenomena, it can become manifest actively too. This is the case when the unity of the group is exposed to attacks of any kind. Attempts to question, violate, or disrupt the conformity of the group can emanate from individual participants, including the moderator. If the group is tightly integrated, it answers these attempts by excluding the attacker at once, by labeling him as enemy, by attacking him on the group’s behalf. Often the moment of exclusion is audible: the group laughs at the person concerned. In our model session it is Ms. S. who is unwilling to approve of or even put up with each unreasonable argument. She feels compelled to intervene when the main speaker tries to rationalize his anti-American polemic: M.: . . . Indeed, we want to become democrats—but not American democrats. This is impossible, because we have never had what is essential about America, the racketeering. Apparently we’ve now adopted that as well. I remember very well that in 1935, 1936, 1937/38 I could leave a bicycle standing next to a house for eight days, without locking it. And is this possible today? Just leave something valuable around, it will be stolen, as a principle anything will be stolen if it’s not screwed down or if it’s not as heavy as rocks. S.: That isn’t the Americans’ fault!

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 128

M.: It’s being brought in in a way, since where does all this stuff come from? It’s just being imported from America.

Ms. S., however, does not cease in her effort to convince different speakers that some of their statements are untenable. She fails with this intention, is unable to teach the group; instead, the aggression against her arguments spreads to others, and the entire group fights against Ms. S., until, in the end, she says: S.: Yes, my standing is very difficult here. There was Mr. M. . . . yes, everybody really is arguing against me!

On the other hand, an individual can enjoy the protection of the collective, to the extent that it is sufficiently integrated. The group members also feel this, and some almost solicit the group’s protection. Mrs. H. tries to do so with the following remark: H.: . . . the Marshall plan does not erase the mistake they (the Americans) made years ago. Roosevelt was about to . . . already the big evildoer, that they . . . for God’s sake, but . . .

The “for God’s sake” is, as becomes clear from listening to the recording, just performed shock; basically it is nothing but begging for collective cover. It is also received with complete understanding by the group laughing approvingly. The speaker feels secure in her daring, because she can count on the group to provide cover. Thus, she mocks her own daring. The expectation of being protected by the group contributes considerably to reducing psychic blockages which earlier prevented latent attitudes from individuals’ deeper layers from being verbalized.28 The more passively a group member has behaved toward the group’s stream of opinion, the more his activity, and that of his colleagues in the group, is aroused when an individual aspires to leadership. Group members are ready to subordinate themselves to the group as a whole; they withhold allegiance to an individual who seeks to “lead.” The group is very subtly sensitive toward such intentions, and reacts with clear rejection of the individual who strives for leadership. This does not preclude one or another from temporarily winning much acclaim or the group from regarding his opinion as binding for the group or asking for his comment. But he is not allowed to exert pressure, to show a desire to dominate. 6. Fading of the Discussion The essential manifestations of the phase of strongest integration have thus been described, and it would seem that the model discussion can be con-

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 129

cluded here. Yet, this would mean that a remarkable phenomenon, which, as the analysis shows, belongs logically to the process of integration, would remain disregarded: the fading of the tension, the fading of the intensity of the discussion. As if the group has reached a goal with conformity preserved against various obstacles and has accomplished an achievement after which no further effort is necessary, the group’s activity decreases in some respects. From the outside this state is characterized by less value being placed on incisive formulations. The contributions become shorter, and fewer interruptions take place. The content of most statements repeats things that were said earlier or at least adds to topics already treated. One could exaggerate and say that the situation appears as if the conversational partners have (almost) nothing left to say to one another. The following evidence supports this interpretation: G.: Mr. N., I don’t know if I understood you correctly. I want to make sure. Do you believe in the possibility of an accord between East and West? N.: No. G.: No? Then I don’t have anything to say. But then I also absolutely don’t know why they want to try to negotiate with them. Or did I misunderstand you? I want to make sure. N.: No, in the sense of negotiating with the Soviets now? (Shout: Yes, yes.) N.: You can’t negotiate with gangsters! G.: Then I don’t have anything to say, right?!

Thus, the group in no way falls apart with a decrease in tension. Precisely the consensus, the conformity, ensures that no more tense moments arise in the group. The moderator often feels compelled to conclude the session in the face of this development. The fact that energy wanes after the group has become tightly integrated can be explained in part as symptoms of fatigue. In addition, however, another factor might be at play. It seems as if the participants do not seek to overcome their fatigue because integration itself matters more to them than does the factual content of the discussion. As important as the topics might be to some, the individuals should be primarily concerned with adopting a certain position within or toward the collective and, thus, creating and stabilizing the structure of the collectivity (to which they belong, or which they may want to impress). To a large extent, the facts only provide a vehicle for the discussant to achieve collective identification. For them, the latter is the internal purpose of the gathering; when it is achieved, the energy, too, is exhausted, and the discussion wanes. In other words, it seems as if the function of the discussion for our participants is more to effect a certain sociopsychological situation and

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 130

constellation than to address an objective question. If this is true, it implies a warning to be cautious about statements of public opinion. It would be wrong to interpret them according to their content as the conviction of the speaker, since they are first and foremost formed by the person’s attachment to a social situation, by the pursuit of belonging to a collectivity or by bestowing a certain form on it. These motives are more important than rationality, which is often used only in the service of such aspirations. Here we have one of those mechanisms before us through which social tendencies prevail even against rational interests of the individuals. The identification with what people perceive as preset, as objective feeling, matters more than the expression of private beliefs, and this relativizes the notion of opinion. After the description and explanation of the model session, it seems useful to present a scheme to illustrate the individual phases of integration,

Table 4.1.

Scheme of our model of integration

Phase of Discussion

Manifestation

Hypothesis on Causes

Foreignness

Timid phrases; tentativeness; “looking over a shoulder”

Orientation

Cautiousness, stimulating and provocative statements

Desire for certainty; search for commonalities

Adaptation

Consideration of preceding statements; repetition

Need for consent; satisfaction with the validation of one’s disposition or opinion; group as “objective authority”

Familiarity

Reactions toward other group members; statements of common sentiment; complementary acclamations: consensus

Familiarity with attitudes of the group members; feeling comfortable in the collective; fear of isolation

Conformity

Uniform group opinion; no deviation of individuals; “monologues”; retreat to certain topics; ganging up on outsiders; defense against aspirations for leadership; covering up of faux pas

Infection; “group suggestion”; identification; care for the cohesion of the group

Fading of the discussion

Fading of tension; decrease of intensity of the discussion, inattentiveness; repetition

Satisfaction with the achieved conformity; fatigue

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 131

their manifestations, and some hypotheses on the causes of the phenomena. In regarding the scheme, we remind the reader (as always) that the connections were established theoretically. It could well be possible (and probably is the case in reality) that factors that are listed as decisive for a certain phase of discussion play, in some cases, the crucial role in a different phase. We are not trying to depict the full variety of interdependencies.

II. Tendencies of Integration and Disintegration We now turn to what the actual conditions for the realization or nonrealization of integration look like in the group discussions. With this, we begin correcting our model based on reality. The next task, already begun, is contrasting the proceedings of the discussion in characteristic groups with the model constructed here.

1. Factors Facilitating Integration Hardship Community The social-political situation of the months in the winter of 1950–51, during which the group discussions took place, greatly facilitated integration of the ad hoc arranged groups because at that time in Germany strangers came into contact with one another much more commonly than in so-called normal times, which provide less opportunity for contact. The common habits of the time of hardship, which all had to suffer under the circumstances, persisted; people had long formed the habit of exchanging thoughts with strangers, sharing woes, or griping in public shelters and in lines in front of grocery stores or the housing office. Even though consciousness of social stratification had increased by the time of the study, people were still strongly influenced by the collapse of 1945. The normalization of the governmental, economic, professional, and private conditions was still in the early stages. Remnants of the feeling that Germans constituted a large community of hardship were still alive. In such an atmosphere, many people showed a marked disposition to speak. People did not mind talking to strangers if they could hope for sympathy for their own situation. As far as possible, our discussion groups were arranged so that there were no overly great social differences between the members of the same group session. Of course, the discussants did not say that they felt able to talk freely due to the fact that as Germans they all shared the same fate. Yet our conclusion is probably justified because there was frequent talk of exactly this

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 132

common situation, from which solidarity among all Germans would have to result; it was just not directly explicitly related to the disposition to give one’s opinion. The bonding feature of this common hardship is also emphasized by the speakers of a group of unemployed cited below: Z.: But the letter writer doesn’t say why we can’t commit ourselves to democracy overnight: there are 7 million refugees from the East, 11⁄2 million unemployed and millions of welfare pensioners who have an income significantly below the subsistence minimum. These social problems haven’t existed in any democracy yet . . . We’ll arrive at a democracy, sooner or later . . . H.: I still want to say the following: We mustn’t forget that we lost the war and that the powers opposed to our people brought about an even more difficult predicament than before. I actually want to use the expression that Germany is over-burdened (überhitzt), i.e., it’s a real trick to feed 50 or 59 million or even much more from this little piece of soil we live on.*

In all these statements the word “we” stands for “we Germans.”29 Influence of the Discussion Topics As we saw in the quantitative analysis,30 the basic stimulus touched on some topics that were particularly emotionally charged for a lot of participants at the time. The participants were so captivated by them that they fell back on just these topics continually, without adhering to the thematic continuity of the group discussion. The questions of guilt and defense, occupation authority, and democracy were in a sense like catalysts suited to effect integration. Only topics that involved worries, hardships, and interests close to the social group were up to the task of catalyzing integration. The integrating effect of the topics touching on immediate interests of the groups appeared most clearly among the groups of farmers and in some groups of refugees. Evidently the discussion had the function of an emotional release valve; the speakers wanted to relieve themselves of their burden, they were perhaps even thankful for the opportunity to let their hardships be heard by “higher ups,” the “Gentlemen in Bonn.” The moderator reports on the behavior of a group of Bavarian farmers: Moreover, it became apparent that some participants had something on their mind that they wanted to get off their chests on this occasion . . . The older ones spoke with emotional turmoil.

* In “Guilt and Defense” Adorno quotes this same passage but uses only the 50 million figure (Adorno 2010, 91).—Eds.

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 133

And among a group of farmers from the Main area, the following remark was dropped: A.: That entirely depends on what comes of this discussion, whether it matters, whether the office to which this is sent, whether they really take the thing seriously . . . and the conditions will be changed; if not, you can throw this machine (indicating the tape recorder) into the river, because none of it will matter . . .

The participants in this and many other discussions were happy that their words could have an effect beyond the circle they were otherwise accustomed to. The recording guaranteed that they were not just speaking for the moment. Feeling of One’s Own Importance After the group discussions, most of the participants said they did not regret the time spent in the discussion. The majority even expressed spontaneously and very pointedly a desire to be able to participate in such a group session again. We have reason to assume that we have before us the effect called “group cohesiveness” [English] in American “Group Dynamics Research.”31 This effect of cohesion itself results from the possibility of satisfying psychic needs and wishes which group membership seems to provide. By counting and measuring, American experiments have supported the hypothesis that the more group membership is a means for satisfying needs, the more desirable it is for the individual.32 In the case of our discussions, the satisfaction of demands can be seen in the discussant’s feeling of being taken seriously for the duration of the discussion, of being an accountable, acting subject. The sense of authority to speak as a group member authorized, as it were, on behalf of the many who were in the same position (“I suggest we ask the people, i.e., us here”) is crucial. It functioned as an integrating factor. People who are weighed down by the feeling of their own insignificance and powerlessness were particularly grateful that for once their words would be heard. At the conclusion of a session with peasants they said: Acclamation: This should be done more often, so that the little people also get a chance to speak!

Unemployed or poor participants, who were forced to live under the most meager conditions, showed a particular tendency to play real parliament in the sessions. In one of these groups, genuine speeches to the people were delivered. We found a strong affinity for the cliché “Mr. previous speaker” in groups with low-ranked social status. This holds for groups who placed high

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 134

value on their views being made widely accessible. Participants concurred with “previous speaker” in groups in which participants addressed each other with the informal “du.” The words “previous speaker” and “concur” were correlated in a stereotypical way throughout the discussions. The dream of achieving something through one’s words can be inferred from the following contribution from a refugee: X.: . . . And that’s the idea, and over and over I’m glad that we’re speaking so clearly in discussions, because, on the basis of our experience in life as little people, we can finally tell these big statesmen what they did badly . . .

Apparently, it is not just the simple drive for expression finding its satisfaction in the group session, but, beyond that, the wish to achieve something with words. Delegate Role Our participants felt important as spokesmen for many others. They were particularly encouraged by the introductory speech of the moderator. He had emphasized that all are speaking on behalf of those who agree with them. The basic stimulus only spoke of “the” Germans, “the” German women, of the conditions in America in their entirety, so that no one had to feel addressed as an individual. The discussion was limited to so-called political questions; the experience and welfare of the individual, as much as it might be influenced by the political situation right down to the last detail, was not actually at issue. Certainly, the organizer’s agenda-setting would not alone have moved all participants to abstain from discussing their private problems if a socialpsychological mechanism had not exerted its influence: making private emotions taboo. If individuals violated this norm, the group’s shying away from intimacy became all the more apparent. In a few cases, the most private things were articulated—thus, a woman describes her sterilization by the “health authorities” of the Third Reich in detail with all physical symptoms—and such contributions always seemed like foreign intrusions within in the overall context; they remained unrelated to what happened otherwise in the group discussion. When private emotions came up, an atmosphere of embarrassment was regularly created; emotions were only accepted if they could legitimate themselves as those of a collective. Even if the participants gave an account of their experiences or described their own situation, they did so as representatives of a group, not as human beings with individual fates. What they had suffered, what they demanded, they experienced or they desired not as Mr. or Mrs. X., but as “Sudeten German refugee,” as member of the “peasantry,” as “young socialist,” as “re-

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 135

turnee.” They acted as representatives of a collective from which they drew their power. It has already been said that members of established groups could count on everyone’s agreement if they acted as the speaker of the social group to which all assembled people belonged. By the same token, some individuals felt empowered to oppose the discussion group on the basis of their consciousness of membership in a different group, for example, a political party, whose official views they espoused in a group that was contrarily disposed. This was the case for two communist women in a prevailingly democraticminded group of women. The participants played a role in the discussion, and the integration of a discussion group depended largely on whether the roles of the individual speakers were complementary. While insecurity about the speakers’ own roles and those of the other participants frequently prevailed in the arranged groups, the roles were fixed from the outset in some established groups. The individual roles were defined by the situation, or, more specifically, by each individual’s idea of what the others expected from him or her.33 Sometimes the group articulated what it expected from an individual: a rural group literally asked the mayor of their village to play the role of the mayor in the discussion. It was a forgone conclusion that he would have to start the discussion, as per convention, and he met these expectations. Thanks to the precise information from the moderator about how a group of former general staff officers behaved immediately before and after the discussion, we can see clearly how the participants in this group reassumed particular roles they had had to give up since the end of the war.34 They used the discussion as an opportunity revert to their old status, at least based on their behavior, and to act as if they had influence over decisions of their superior, as they had in the past. Participant M. in particular completely changed his behavior based on whether he was speaking in the session or privately. In the discussion he put himself in the role of the chief of general staff of an army corps reporting to the General in charge, where the greatest sobriety, clarity, and weighing up the pros and cons was demanded. He asked, M.: . . . that we say what we think entirely openly . . .

and advocated a “completely dispassionate view.” He stuck with these rules as long as he stayed in his role. Yet as soon as he had cast it off, a completely different behavior appeared. The investigator reports: In the case of M. it struck me that, after the recording, he said, so to speak, what he had avoided saying earlier. He had saved up his entire arrogance for

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 136

the private talk. The imprecise and unimaginative character of his private statements also caught the attention of the moderator.

Systematic observation in future group experiments will also be able to provide further material for the phenomenon of role-playing. Social Control All of what has been dealt with so far in terms of collective psychic processes within the group can be traced back to the effectiveness of “social control” [English] in the broadest sense. The social control mechanism can be seen in that the individual consciously or unconsciously anticipates others’ reactions when in their presence and adapts his or her behavior accordingly.35 The role of social control is of special importance for our study goals insofar as we can identify in our discussion groups a social agent that effectively makes the prevailing ideology in society the “dominant” one. General standards (e.g., “We Germans . . .”) and group standards (e.g., “We Catholics . . .”) are imposed upon the individual by “functionaries of the dominant ideology.” Their function is to exert pressure. If a functionary of society is an individual, we are dealing with a person of authority, an “opinion leader” [English]. He can, as we will see in the following examples, come into conflict with another agent of social control [English]. In our example, it is the group itself that is able to impose a certain ideology via the person of authority. It is important here to note the connection between social control and the individual’s anonymity within the discussion group. The more confident the individual participant is in his anonymity, the less he is subject to social control and vice versa. This hypothesis, however, has to be qualified because of the other factors alongside individual identifiability and the expectation of reward and punishment influencing the individual within the group, e.g., the desire to be seen, even by people one does not know personally, as a decent human being, a good patriot, a loyal comrade, or not to be regarded as an outsider. In general, however, social control will be most effective if the individual knows and respects its functionaries. Of course, this is especially so where certain concise norms of behavior have formed for the relationship between the individuals and specific others (e.g., superior—subordinate). We found this in a group of nurses with their head nurse, among a youth organization and its regional leader, as well as among a group of resettled Germans who already met for discussion outside the study, and in which the main speakers of the regular meetings also dominated in this, i.e., functioned as opinion leaders [English]. Control can also be located on a nonpersonal level. For example, within a student group, observers could detect a kind of intellectual control, i.e., the participants

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 137

considered the knowledge value of what was said and were sensitive when the intellectual standard sank. A well-integrated group can, however, revolt against the pressure exercised by a superior if the superior’s claim for authority conflicts with the group’s advocated ideology. In a group of urban police officers, the social control exercised by an individual because of his rank changed into the collective group’s control, to which the individual who had lost his authority willingly submitted later on. The process is described below: the highest ranking officer of the mentioned police group acted with a notable claim to prominence from the beginning of the discussion, after he felt that a certain amount of esteem was paid to him. It was left to Mr. Unger* to open the discussion, and it was soon apparent that the participants were also obedient to his views. U. spoke the most of all participants. He reinforced his words by banging on the table. The other group members hardly dared to take a stand on a new topic before U. had spoken. At first, they cautiously stated the bare facts, without taking a stand. They spoke more freely only after U. had stated his attitude toward the respective topic. However, they did not take the risk of an overt protest, but sowed the seeds for an opposing position by suggesting that the problem could be considered from different points of view (for example, an economic instead of a political one). The situation came to a crisis when the group had to realize that, unlike the majority of police officers, U. did not base his arguments on the political theses of Social Democracy, but held a contrary view. The fact that he did not accept the demand for new elections for the Bundestag—which the SPD [Social Democratic Party] had put forward back then—was already taken badly. His position began to teeter without his being conscious of it at first. With complete confidence in his dominant position, he made the mistake of letting himself get carried away, remarking that the “capitalist” had nothing to gain from a war, a view that was ideologically diametrically opposed to the group. He tried to make his voice heard against the building objections with the words “Gentlemen, gentlemen!”, which aroused laughter from the group. His reaction U.: You can laugh or not, I don’t care!

proved that he felt his reputation fading. Once the opposing group appeared on the scene, the rebellion against U. could no longer be stopped. Direct and carefully formulated objections

* Here the text gives the full surname (Unger) instead of the customary first initial.—Eds.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 138

against U.’s opinion appeared now. Everyone thinking of him as “leader,” including U. himself, sensed the loss of his prestige, and U. tried to rescue himself from psychological isolation at a certain point by participating in the debate again after a period of silence, when his opinion could be inserted without breaking with the newly-existent group opinion. This example illustrates two of our hypotheses. (1) Highly integrated groups seem to accept only the group itself, in its entirety, as the controlling authority and resist individuals’ dominance. (2) An individual excluded from the group is generally unable to bear the tension of “psychological isolation”36 and, thus, seeks reconnection with the group through conformism. Aggression Against Out-Groups Our observation is that integration begins before the group is united; we are inclined to classify similarity of reactions as a symptom of integration. Yet in the passages of the discussion with advanced integration, when consensus within the group is already present, we find that the participants mostly united around a negative attitude, opposing a person, a view, an institution. This fact was described (but not explained) for masses by Georg Simmel in an excursus on the negativity of collective patterns of behavior: Negation is simply what is easiest, and, thus, large masses, whose elements cannot agree on a positive goal, unite around it. The negative character of the bond uniting the large group becomes evident particularly through its norms. This is already indicated by the phenomenon that binding arrangements of any kind have to be the easier and less extensive, the larger the scope of application is supposed to be, all else being equal.37

Freud assigned negative patterns of collective behavior a different priority and explained their integrating effect. According to his theory, in some cases they make possible the emotional bonds by which a mass becomes a psychological mass—becomes integrated, as we would say. He means those cases where neither a common leader nor a guiding idea prompts the individuals to identify with one another. Then—according to Freud—“the hatred against a particular person or institution might operate in just the same unifying way, and might call up the same kind of emotional ties as positive attachment.”38 With this sentence Freud indicates that a leader is not required for a mass to be constituted. Now, our groups are leaderless, yet they are not psychological masses. In the groups, emotions are low intensity, and we will have to substitute the word aggression for hatred in the Freudian sentence. Aggression toward the outside integrates our groups internally. The discussion groups become aware of their own unity by feeling that they are in opposition to an out-

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 139

group39 or to an actual or fictitious common enemy. For the effect of increasing integration through common aggression, it does not make any difference who the enemy is. (Studies on persons inclined to have prejudices have shown that the out-group or the enemy is interchangeable, without the structure of the prejudice being altered.40) In our sessions, the basic stimulus addressed all of our group members as members of the large group of Germans, and supposedly in the voice of someone who does not belong to this group himself. As has been highlighted several times, Colburn’s remarks had to provoke many to resist; thus the division between the in-group and the enemy was predetermined by the stimulus. By presenting an outsider, Sergeant Colburn, in the central function of setting the provocative terms of the discussion, the experimental design at the same time offered a target for latent aggression.41 The fact that the aggression shifted in very many cases toward the entire out-group, of which Colburn was considered a representative, toward the Allies or the occupying force, does not change anything about this constellation. The integrating effect, for the sake of which the aggression of the group toward the outside is mentioned here, persisted nonetheless; the group became integrated through the common emotional charge in the hostile statements against the one enemy. If Colburn’s criticism of “the” Germans was to be defended, the participants sometimes narrowed their own group from the entire people to the smaller one of the social stratum with whose members they were sitting around a table, and finally to the group of the other participants with whom they identified. This took the form of exempting themselves from Colburn’s charges as “shipyard worker,” as speaking for “the [social] circles around me,” or as “garden plot holder.” The participants met such remarks with approval; the one who made the remark was authorized as speaker of the group by acclamation. This is thinkable only in tightly integrated groups. The aggression mentioned—as a rule disclosed cautiously and increased only when the participants realized that they were tolerated by the moderator and the group—was in no way directed at Colburn exclusively. Its object could just as well have been an outsider of the group, a subgroup, “the” Jews, “the” refugees, “the” capitalists, or the government in Bonn, without impairing the integrating effect of affective expression. 2. Factors Facilitating Disintegration These pages have not made a secret of the fact that they could not convey a complete picture of the dynamic of the discussion. This is due to the

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 140

restriction of the report to those phenomena associated with integration, that only the one aspect is addressed—integration. Hence, the analysis risks suggesting one-sided ideas to its reader. This section is meant to guard against this risk. In each discussion group there is a latent tendency for disintegration. In many groups it becomes manifest. Psychological experiments have revealed that a number of persons in almost any small group are inclined not to be influenced by the judgments of the majority.42 In the same way, nowhere near all of our participants in every discussion group merged into an undifferentiated unity. There were indeed a number of sessions in which there was antagonism, there were variations in the strength of integration over the course of the discussion, and finally there were participants who did not participate in the discussion at all—the silent participants. As concerns the motivations for their reservation we depend on speculation. Since some of them, as other investigations seem to show, deviate from the group opinion,43 hypotheses on the factors causing or influencing silence are interesting for us. It is plausible that these factors are at the same time those of disintegration. We imagine that the following factors facilitate disintegration as well as influence silence to an unknown extent: lack of interest, diverging interests, social distance, contact problems, psychological antagonism, and factual disagreement. Each of these is subject to brief reflection. Lack of Interest We highlighted above the emotionally charged topics and the close interests of the group as discussion contents that function most strongly as catalysts for integration. They have in common that they concern the individual in his emotional realm, that he is affected by them. The individual’s ability to belong to the group would therefore have to decrease to the degree to which he is not touched by the central topics. This hypothesis is supported by the material. The patients of a recovery home for mothers, for example, hardly knew how to deal with the basic stimulus. The individual stimuli of the letter remained without impression or even echo. In this group, the lack of comprehension toward the discussion topics exerted an almost atomizing influence. It can be assumed that among these very poor women the immediate hardships of each individual were so overwhelming that no psychic energy was left for even the most minimal distance. The session was ended early because it was unproductive. Only four of eleven women had spoken and these only after the moderator had asked them for their experiences during the flight from Eastern Germany; the others could not be moved to speak despite being directly addressed. The women said after the discussion that they had never bothered about such

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 141

things and did not have anything to say on the topics. The same was experienced with women in a housing camp. In these sessions the interrelations common in the other groups were missing. We can connect this with the hypothesis that an individual uninterested in the topics within an interested group is not integrated into the group. Now, since the interest of the individual can change from topic to topic, it can be assumed that a change in topic can also involve variation in the attachment of the individual to the group. Diverging Interests A bridge from the type of group where integration does not take place due to a lack of interest to one whose members remain unconnected as a result of diverging interests can be found in an arranged group of overnight guests in a public shelter in a large city. This discussion group comprised eighteen men between 25 and 70 years of age from all areas of the Federal Republic, mostly with general and middle school educations. Several refugees and people who had been expelled from the Soviet zone were among them. Some had recently accepted a job in the respective city; most of them were unemployed and were searching for jobs. At most two of them worked in the same occupation. Despite its being lively, the discussion was almost completely incoherent, unconnected, monadic. While those who had begun to create a secure occupational existence again were most likely to be appreciative and interested in the topics of the basic stimulus, those who were still roaming the streets, who were (as the moderator put it) “in an extreme borderline situation,” were not receptive to the discussion topics. Each described his own hardships and distresses without eliciting understanding or sympathy. Each was too concerned with himself. The impression of embarrassment (mentioned above) arising in the group after revealing private emotions did not fail to appear here as well. The interests diverged to such an extent that the group did not even become weakly integrated. Rather there were indications that the group was splitting into two parties, one with limited interest in the topics of the investigation and one without any. Kurt Lewin’s observation that a group can endure as unity only if its elements do not exceed a certain degree of difference seems to pertain to this group. The boundary between bearable difference and that disrupting the group is, according to Lewin, relatively low in Germany.44 With the exception of the group just described, however, there is none that was so heterogeneous, even among our arranged groups. As it seems according to Lewin’s theory and to the case described, integration can hardly be expected in very heterogeneous groups. According to

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 142

our findings, social distance and differences in education within the group inhibit integration most strongly. Through them, a part of the group can become timid enough that it does not connect. The absence of such control was felt in a group of women, who explained to the moderator after the discussion that they would not have spoken so freely in the presence of their husbands. Contact Problems If individual participants are unable to establish a connection to the group, numerous reasons, summarized here as contact problems, are possible: extreme narcissism with starkly autistic patterns of behavior on the one hand, self-consciousness and various feelings of insufficiency on the other. While persons whose behavior is determined by the latter mostly do not talk, narcissism permits completely different patterns of behavior: silence, trumpeting one’s importance, trying to dominate, opposing, having the last word, etc. Frequently such participants are not fully integrated into the group if it has attained a certain degree of unity. In an arranged group of female and male patients in a hospital, for example, the participant M. contributed considerably to the group’s integration around a common positive attitude toward nationalistic ideas. And yet he was not accepted as leader, probably because of his authoritarian manner. He mentioned, when the congruence of his views and the general opinion of the group had emerged and he felt certain about his influence, that he was a Hitler Youth leader at first and an active soldier later on. Thus, he himself indicated the points from which the most effective opposition against him could proceed. C.,* one of the youngest participants, who was not quite in agreement with M. already beforehand, tried to attack M. as a former Hitler Youth leader: O.: Yes, I want to come back to Mr. M again, . . . it might be quite nice that the youth back then were raised exactly like today, this might be, but when I was in the Hitler Youth, we had to enter, when we were 10 years old, we were required to go there. If we didn’t appear for our service on Tuesday or Saturday, there was a punishment, a disciplinary punishment right away. That is pure force!

M., conscious of being unable to object to such widely known facts, simply evaded by saying: M.: Unfortunately, I’m not aware of that, because I entered the work command in 1936.

* The speaker is referred to as C. in the text but O. in the quotation.—Eds.

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 143

The participant U., who up to that point had shared the views of M. and, like him, acted as a kind of spokesman, saw that the time had come to supplant his rival. In clear opposition to M.’s glorification of soldiers’ work, he commented ironically: U.: And the army life, it was nice!

M. replied: M.: Wait a minute. I spoke to a very old communist who absolutely despises war to the last. And I told him: Listen, dear grandpa, soon you’ll be 80 years old and your great-grandchildren will play on your knees, and you won’t know what to do, then you fetch the picture box and at the very bottom, under the newsprint, a yellowed picture comes up, you’ll take it in your hand and say: Gosh, here I am as a soldier, those were good times! Guaranteed, everybody says that!

M. had to use the trick of citing his own view as that of the supposed addressee (whose answer he did not mention at all), but this still did not gain attention. U., however, was not impressed by this statement; he continued the attack against M.’s opinion in a very drastic manner of speaking. In order to take the aces from M.’s hand, he said: U.: . . . I carry with me my discharge letter from the army, it is not like that . . .

However, what he learned “among the Prussians” was “not so very decent.” With very vivid words he critiques “the” Germans’ fearful respect for authority: U.: This is what the German suffers from: Fear of the one who is called doctor or whatever, what have you, or director or whatever, his knees shake . . .

Yet U.’s usurping behavior was also rejected by the group, and he was told: T.: . . . just start with yourself, when you’re in your job . . .

From this point onward, M., like U., no longer had a major influence on  the group and participated noticeably less in the discussion than beforehand. Only in rare cases do speakers who are overtly seeking a leading position manage to win over a subgroup within the discussion forum. When subgroups are formed, these become integrated more in a narrower sense, yet also do not allow an individual to become too strong; over the

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 144

long term, they, too, accept only the supremacy of the collective, not of an individual. Antagonism In case of antagonism within the entire group, the fronts can very well shift, and the composition of individual subgroups can change. Yet, as a matter of fact, constant parties evolved in the majority of really antagonistic groups. The opposing subgroups then feuded throughout the entire discussion, completely independent of the topic and, thus, of factual concerns. Evidently personal, not content-related, factors influenced the stated opinions. The antagonism was therefore predetermined, inherent in the persons. In very many cases we succeeded in tracing the differences responsible for the antagonism. Mostly these were ideological oppositions, which were activated by the basic stimulus. Thus, an arranged group with long-established residents and refugees was dominated by an antagonism between the two parties, one of which argued for a militant nationalism while the other advanced pacifistic ideas. In a group of women, two communists formed one side, women from the bourgeois class the other. We mentioned above that a group that remained completely atomistic (made up of overnight guests in a public shelter) began to be grouped into employed and unemployed. Also, preexisting religious tensions could lead to antagonism during the discussion. Hostilities caused by living closely together in emergency shelters were not suspended during the discussion. Often two generations confronted one another in a hostile way, and among women an animosity between unmarried and married women seems to have existed at times. Of course, there were enough cases of opposition based on factually and not personally motivated differences in opinion, even if they were rarer than the discussed personal antagonisms. Factually justified objections often met a willingness to respond to the arguments of the opponent. In contrast to personally motivated antagonism, they did not, as a general rule, lead to personal groupings, which themselves could have tended toward integration or disintegration. From all this it follows that we may not draw the conclusion from the present study on discussion groups that every group must invariably become a firm unity, in which the individual is collectivized and shaped by force.45 Even if adaptation to the group situation is almost never absent, few groups attain the highest degree of integration, and only a fraction of these keep it for the entire discussion. Moreover, there can be no talk of the individual inevitably submitting to the group. In most groups there are individuals who more or less stave off the pressure from the group. Apart from that, there are forces in both directions

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 145

effective in every group—toward integration as well as toward disintegration. The contradictory elements are understood in their proper weights when they are considered against the background of the dynamics of integration.

III. Some Notes on Experiences with the Course of the Discussion in Individual Discussion Groups The investigation permitted insights into the concrete, observable individual processes of the society-forming progress of integration. The analysis of the course of the discussion among our groups has shown that strong immanent forces bear on the participants even within arranged groups to move in a series of repeatedly observable steps from the initial phase of strangerhood to conformity, i.e., to the formation of a unitary group opinion. We have also seen that, besides the factors facilitating integration, there are forces that do not allow for integration and may even dissolve the already advanced process of integration (factors facilitating disintegration). We were in the position to trace the dynamics of arranged groups, i.e., of collectives comprising individuals who met for the first time. We could, furthermore, compare the behavior of these newly formed groups with those of previously established groups during the discussion. This demonstrated that after a certain period of time many arranged groups displayed the same phenomena as the established ones, and that the process of integration passes through at least the first few phases depicted in the model. To the extent that the arranged groups were homogeneous, they did not only prove to be unitary in themselves but also became similar to the established groups. If an unbiased observer were to join group sessions that had already lasted a while, he would have hardly been able to determine whether he was observing an arranged homogeneous group or an established group. This seems to strengthen our thesis that the individuals were primarily concerned with the satisfaction of psychological needs during the discussions. We concluded this, as should be recalled, mainly from the fact that the intensity of the discussion decreased after integration was achieved, as if the unification of the group had been the goal the participants were aiming for in their discussion. Now, we wish to generalize this conclusion insofar as individuals collected in a new group mold the group according to their needs. The most urgent need seems to be in line with fleeing from painful solitude and being admitted into a kind of community, even if only for a few

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 146

hours. Yet one of the constituting elements of the feeling of community is the dominant ideology. During the discussion it becomes evident what opinions and reactions the individual has to show in order to be accepted by the group. Satisfying this demand is easier for the individual participant the stronger his conscious or unconscious wish for belonging. All observers of our discussions were impressed most strongly by the emotional involvement, joy, and sometimes even enthusiasm with which the participants talked in most groups. The need for expression was very high, and the speakers were visibly happy to be in a situation in which they could satisfy it. There is no other explanation for the repeatedly articulated and spontaneous wish to hold further discussions; that is to say: to reproduce the situation in which the participants felt comfortable. The fact that the content of what was said is secondary to libidinal psychological motives has already been discussed in the description of the model. Remarkably, not only the active participants—the speakers—agreed to the proposal to have another discussion, but the inactive—the silent participants—did too. (Often the “Yes” to this proposal was their only contribution to the discussion.) We can conclude from this that the group sessions satisfied not only the drive for expression, the wish to have an audience, but also the desire to be part of an audience. Sometimes these two aspirations might have been present simultaneously in an individual. Both can probably be related to the basic need to belong to a social structure that is stronger than the individual and in which the individual participates in its power. It is the desire for security inside a collective that, in turn, makes possible the exertion of the will for expression in the first place. The objection to usurpers on the part of the already stabilized group supports this hypothesis. When we say the individuals shaped the group according to their needs, this must not be understood as the desire to reverse the theorem of collective determination of the individual into its opposite and assume a determinant shaping of the group by the individual. In reality the process is much more complicated; interrelation occurs. At first, liberation of the individual takes place in the formation of a group insofar as fears are alleviated and controls (taboos of strangerhood) are removed. While the individuals in this phase seem to try to shape the group according to their will and their aims, regression soon sets in. The individuals then submit to new controls (group norms); they delegate their own will to a certain degree again to the group, and the group for its part gains power over its elements. The first results of an analysis of the process of integration presented here offer important information for a refinement of the technique of the method of group discussions. In future group sessions the observing assistant will,

Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions

p 147

for example, try to ascertain in each case whether and when the individual phases of integration occur and which topics facilitate and inhibit integration, and it will be possible to deepen the understanding of the process of integration for small groups by using the conceptual and theoretical tools developed here.

Afterword

O

ur group experiment set itself the task of developing a method of spontaneous but still meaningfully comparable group discussions. We hoped that it could, on the one hand, be used to research the otherwise only barely tangible sector of social consciousness that Franz Böhm called “non-public” opinion. Even though the intention was primarily focused on the method, our interest was also directed at the content chosen for refining it. In neither case can can we claim that we arrived at definitive solutions. The frequently emphasized difficulties with the empirical method obviously have consequences for content. We do not know to what extent the extremely rich and qualitatively exquisitely fruitful material allows for generalizations. There is, as of now, no interpretive technique that could do justice both to such richness and to the standards of empirical research. Likewise, it cannot yet be determined whether such a technique can be developed solely through improvements of this method or whether one will have to combine the group discussions with more orthodox survey methods. In later projects, the Institute also worked on this combination: for example, in a study on students’ attitudes toward problems of marriage and the form of marriage and in a multilayered industrial sociological project on work climate. The analysis is not yet concluded. Still, the current state of affairs allows us to specify the still-unresolved questions of technique and point to possible answers. Although plenty of

Afterword

p 149

individual insights about elements of non-public opinion, their bearers, and the dynamics of opinion formation have been discovered, these are not enough to tackle the bottom line: a model of “non-public opinion.” The uniformity of motives, which became manifest in the participants’ statements, is nevertheless astonishing. It can hardly be traced back to the assumption that the starkness of the issues compelled stark reactions, because reality itself is in many ways blatantly distorted in the participants’ statements. Relatively small differences appeared between the attitudes of groups that were sociologically widely divergent. The mode of speaking also tended toward a “uniform language,” in which differences in education became less important; according to one of the monographs, a universal language of semi-education took hold. The attitudes of the participants toward the study’s major topics reveal a diffuse, logically confused in many ways, but relatively fixed structural whole, a medium through which reality is perceived and to which it is distilled. The core of this structure could be called collective narcissism—exaggerated identification with the collective to which one belongs, the nation in particular. This disposition dominates the majority of the speakers and might be one of the essential conditions for the often disconcerting lack of desire for agreement. At this point, we simply raise some problems that should be taken up by future investigations, some of which have even already been started.

I. Methodological Problems Of special importance are the selection effects that manifested themselves in the selection of the group of participants, in the composition of individual groups, in which of those who had agreed to attend showed up and who did not, and in the frequency and scale of the individuals’ participation in the discussions. Even if one disregards the latter—a factor residing in the nature of free discussion yet interfering considerably with the quantification— the “mortality” [English], the attrition of participants, definitely remains much more of an issue here than for questionnaire or interview research. Such sources of error can, naturally, influence the result of the research significantly. It is possible that social groups or types of individuals who are of considerable importance for opinion formation were not represented sufficiently in our groups. An unquestionable source of error can be found in the differences of willingness to participate in the discussion groups. These differences are related to the social composition of the groups.

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 150

Given the circumstances at the time, we had to keep the instructions for the groups’ composition fairly elastic to be able to bring together 120–130 groups at all. This evokes the danger that sectors of the population that were relatively easy to attract were favored. Another selection effect was introduced whenever we approached organizations seeking participants—the leaders of the contacted organizations might have selected those members whom they expected to be willing, and they might have nominated those whom they credited with a certain degree of intelligence and verbal skills. Yet our contact persons emphasized time and again that we were not at all interested in “elites.” Naturally, not all of the persons invited to participate accepted the invitation, and even among those who did, a certain fraction nevertheless failed to show up: based on our observations these were especially those who consented only reluctantly or after coaxing. However, we developed techniques in the course of the study which, if refined in the future, will control these sources of error. Silent participants presented a problem for adequate interpretation of the discussions, as became clear at the beginning. “Silent participants” are those who did not speak at all or who spoke on only a few topics. This problem is analogous to the problem of “no answer” or “no opinion” in survey research. Later interviews with “silent participants” revealed a wide variety of reasons for their silence. Some are too shy or appeal to lack of experience speaking in public. Despite the intervention of the moderator, reserved participants are not always able to get a word in edgewise in the face of more impulsive or reckless ones. Others considered their ideas superfluous, because other group members had already expressed what they wanted to say. Others did not have an opinion and—in contrast to the interview method— did not feel compelled to express themselves. Still others are too tired or too indifferent; some, finally, deem themselves to have such an extremist attitude that they prefer not to proclaim their views. The nature and the weight of these motivations varies considerably; generalizations about the silent participants cannot yet be made. However, the more their number can be reduced, the more reliable the findings will be. We are working on developing methods to accomplish this. One possibility for improving the experimental design would be to use two sharply contrasting basic stimuli in comparable pairs of groups. One could also consider designing experiments in such a way that the groups can be understood as statistical units from the beginning. Furthermore, one could evaluate factors like the influence of the moderator, the seating arrangement, the time of discussion, etc., through systematic observation and, if need be, take them into account in the interpretation of the data.

Afterword

p 151

II. Tasks as Regards Content The most disconcerting result of the study was the low frequency of positive statements about democracy and what that implies. The almost unanimous rejection of the East, which was registered as indication of a democratic attitude, is by no means to be taken as evidence of such an attitude without further examination—our study does not allow differentiating between liberally minded participants and narrow-minded nationalist ones. In any case, it is important to consider whether our participants are indeed so “negativistic,” whether their general outlook is as narrow as the transcripts suggest. In particular, it is possible that the negativity of the statements is an effect of the discussion situation and could in reality be different. The following considerations relate to the possibility of such factors. To start with, many participants probably perceived the basic stimulus— despite its moderate language—as a reproach, which demands a defense. The defensive stance causes more drastic claims than would be made otherwise.1 But that begs the question: Why was the letter interpreted in this way, even altered in the minds of many participants, and why did they believe that a defense was required? Part of the answer is surely that the basic stimulus evoked the circumstances of the collapse and thus opened old wounds. This caused comparatively strong reactions.2 In order to approach this complex, a controlled experiment3 would be required, one confronting sociologically comparable groups of participants with stimuli containing different nuances. Furthermore, one has to account for a possibility, which, of course, applies to empirical research in general, far beyond the scale of our study. Empirical sociology is concerned with observable, isolatable facts and not with social totality, which as such cannot be adequately “observed.” Therefore, the empirical social researcher is tempted to attribute phenomena to the particular situation or subject area with which he is concerned at a particular time, even though these phenomena may not come from these but from social interrelations well beyond his reach. Hence, it is conceivable that the tendency to say no is not so much explained by the rejection of something concrete—like democracy or foreign countries—but that it is a symptom of a general “malaise” about the entire social condition. This “malaise” is merely channeled by the concrete rejection, without actually being directed at it. Saying no without consequences, without committing oneself to actual resistance and oppositional action, is an outlet for onerous dissatisfaction. Since our group discussions resemble a casual conversation, the prevalence of grumbling and spouting off will not come as a surprise. The pleasure of “being someone” by acting hostile toward

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 152

something which is presumably accepted becomes greater as one discovers that this pseudononconformism is backed up by a small majority. Among our participants, this was the case insofar as they repeated what they believed to be in the air. Similarly, the above-mentioned theories of Simmel and Freud give priority to negative behavior in contexts of mass psychology.4 Some of the possible motives for negativity reside closer to the surface— for example, the desire to make a commitment. To affirm a certain thing implies a higher degree of commitment than does vague criticism, which does not have to offer definite goals. When the research was conducted five years ago, the anxiety that people could be prosecuted for their opinions was still in effect in Germany. People might have thought it to be most advantageous not to argue for anything at all. Finally, people may emphasize less what they agree on, which for them is given and self-evident, than negative judgments, deviation, and difference—an observation with psychological grounding that, of course, describes the problem rather than solving it. Yet, none of these considerations is conclusive. Even if one assigns huge importance to conformism, as seems appropriate in the light of Chapter 4, the inverse result—increasing affirmative statements accepting current conditions—would be just as plausible. No matter what mechanisms play a role in the relation between negative and positive attitudes, a reservoir of negativity has to exist as a common source for all the consistently negative statements. It is obviously necessary to examine all of these factors more closely.

III. Information on Unpublished Monographs It is not only the material on the seven main themes presented in the quantitative section nor the profile of the most important demographic and professional groups that await further assessment. Qualitatively as well this volume* contains more in the way of examples of what needs to be done rather than having worked through the entire material. Thus, there is no description or analysis of the views that came up on economy and society. The categories applied to only 25 discussions in Guilt and Defense5 would have to be systematically examined for all the transcripts. Above all, however, it is important to bear in mind that only a fraction of the qualitative monographs are included in this volume. In the following, we would like to address some of these monographs.

* The volume referenced is the original 1955 German monograph.—Eds.

Afterword

p 153

1. Attitudes toward Democracy The study on “Mistrust Against Democracy” investigates this phenomenon by categorizing anti-democratic statements. At the top we find disappointment—an idea, by the way, that includes the most diverse dimensions. It refers foremost to the hopes nourished by the fall of the National Socialist dictatorship; hopes probably directed less at restoration of pre-1933 conditions than at ideas of social justice and a better life for everybody. The thought of autonomous action, which is decisive for any democracy, is, however, only second to these hopes. Rather than taking their political and social destiny in their own hands, the discussants seem to be disappointed that a new administration is not taking better care of them. Such passivity corresponds with disillusion toward all politics. A characteristic utterance states, “Politics—no! One foot in jail, one foot in the grave.” This climate has, without any doubt, its compelling grounds. On the one hand, the avoidance of politics is based on the tedium of pseudopoliticizing in the Third Reich, where—comparable to the East—political information and theses were incessantly beaten into peoples’ heads, and they had to obey. It is, furthermore, based on the feeling of being a mere plaything in modern mass society of impersonal powers alien to the subject. It is imaginable that the mistrust against democracy and the disappointment about all politics is to cover up the fact that one is not trying to contribute anything to improvement even within the narrow limits. In this sense, participants often appeal to history and deny—in contradiction to the facts—that Germany ever had a democratic tradition. The problem of democracy is shifted from the self to “the others.” Even if they understand that democracy is a matter of those making up the democratic state, this insight is twisted by the speakers’ shifting their own presumed or actual inability for democratic thinking and acting to others, namely the powers from the past, which have supposedly simply made “us Germans” undemocratic. This is sometimes followed by a defense of authoritarian forms of government as the ones culturally appropriate for Germany. Often this apolitical attitude is justified with reference to Germany’s political powerlessness, which is interpreted as the powerlessness of democracy itself. When the research was conducted in 1950, many still believed that the existence of the [German] people could not be adequately reproduced inside the borders of the Federal Republic. Such motivations for anti-democratic attitudes should be less important today; we have already pointed out that views on democracy in particular have certainly undergone a change. Finally, negative attitudes toward democracy are often associated with an inability to imagine it concretely. It is indeed equated with today’s parliamentary form of government, yet there is a lack of concrete

Group Experiment and Other Writings

p 154

knowledge. Ideas such as freedom of opinion, tolerance, and liberty are mentioned, but with a skeptical tone, as mere ideologies. People’s experiences in the last 20 years are that statements of all kinds, no matter how emphatically they might be articulated, no matter how strongly underlined their objective validity, are media for instrumental propaganda and are modeled according to those goals. This tendency is not restricted to totalitarian systems of government of both varieties [Fascist and Communist. – Eds.], but emerges throughout the “communications” of modern mass society. It offers a way to avoid one’s own choice, the effort of comprehension, the responsibility for oneself, and hence favors totalitarian tendencies. 2. Attitudes toward the United States The basic stimulus included statements referring to the relationship between Germany and foreign countries and to the population’s assessment of foreign countries. Of all the contributions in this subject area, the ones concerned with the United States were analyzed most closely. This analysis was headed by Kurt Wolff from the department of sociology at Ohio State University in Columbus and made the most extensive use of the methods of American social research.* Similar to Guilt and Defense (Adorno 2010), thirty transcripts were selected for the richness of statements about the topic and then examined. The statements were classified according to a range of categories like “comparison between America and Germany,” “emphasis on shared human traits,” “American power,” “American goals,” “American motives,” “picture of America,” “changes within the American circumstances,” and others. The statements in each category were arranged on a scale from the friendliest to the most unfriendly statements. In accordance with the overall quantitative findings, negative reactions predominated to the extreme. Altogether, the sample rated America worse than Germany. According to this group, American power is used for repression rather than for help; American policies are focused more on power than cooperation; American help in Europe is motivated by fear rather than solidarity, and there are more reasons to mistrust than to trust America. The “factor analysis” traces these unfriendly attitudes back to three essential aspects: the participants’ overall assessment of America; their “desire for recognition”

* Wolff’s analysis was never published, but was produced as a mimeograph by the Department of Sociology at the Ohio State University. See Kurt H. Wolff, “German Attempts at Picturing Germany: Texts,” Studies in German-American Postwar Problems (SGAPP), no. 3, (unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, August, 1955).

Afterword

p 155

(closely related to the psychological drive of collective narcissism); and their unease about American power. The dominant psychology is characterized as ambivalent: indecision between repressed desire for help from someone strong and rebellion against the feeling of dependence. Through the mechanism of projection, this results in a vague, negative image of America. 3. Social-Philosophical Interpretations Certainly, sociology’s contribution is not exhausted by empirical research, and it is one of sociology’s most noble tasks to exceed the ascertained facts by developing theoretical considerations, and to integrate them in a broader context. This task was also fulfilled in the analysis of the group discussions. For example, this impulse motivates the social-theoretical construction of the complex attitude toward rearmament. This construction seeks to place the frequently contradictory aspects of the changing views within an historical process. Above all, however, this is the place to mention the very substantial language study written by two students of philosophy. It definitely takes a philosophically critical stance, is neither “value-free” nor stringently in tune with the established standards of empirical research, and is also outside of the methods of academic sociolinguistics. But it still offers perspectives that would be unavailable using common techniques based on the ideal of scientific or philological objectivity. While the extent of the study did not permit us to include the text in this volume, Appendix B, written by the authors themselves, offers at least a somewhat more detailed presentation of its essential content.

appendix A

Findings of a Study of the Silent Participants

Preliminary Remarks on Terminology We call participants who did not speak at all “the totally silent” (Totalschweiger). If we include the themes discussed in the definition for participation in the group discussions, then there are participants who spoke on all themes and participants who did not speak on all themes. We call the latter “the partly silent” (Teilschweiger). Here we seek to identify the factors that reduce the number of totally silent participants. Their reduction is relevant for general methodological reasons; it is also particularly important for generalizing the results of the group discussions to the population.

Factors of the Experimental Design The following factors are effective in reducing the proportion of totally silent participants: 1. A query strategy. When a participant remains silent about a topic, he is addressed personally and asked to articulate his view. 2. The group size. The smaller the group, the lower the proportion of totally silent participants. This is related to the importance of group integration and other factors.

Appendix A

p 158

3. The duration of the discussion. This has a small effect, and only if the discussions take about two hours or longer. 4. Theoretically available speaking time1 per participant. The more time theoretically available, the smaller the quota of the totally silent. Definitionally, there are two ways to increase theoretically available speaking time: increasing the numerator or decreasing the denominator. Only in the latter case was the number of the totally silent reduced. 5. The number of topics discussed per group. Individual participants’ likelihood of taking part in the discussion increased with larger numbers of topics discussed in a group. 6. The investigator. The investigator influences the proportion of the totally silent to a small degree mainly through the mechanism of affecting the length of the discussion by discontinuing the discussion too early or because of his or her personality. We can conclude from these results that group size is the most important factor for reducing the proportion of the totally silent. Factors of Group Structure Furthermore, we examined factors of group structure: 1. Gender. For the discussion of political topics it is advisable to have men and women discuss separately, i.e., not to form mixed groups. 2. Age. Overly large age differences within individual groups can result in an increase in the totally silent. 3. Schooling. There is reason to expect that the presence of more educated participants stimulates the less-educated ones to speak, as long as the differences in education are not drastic. When they are drastic we would expect the opposite effect. Hence, we can conclude that the group structure, too, can result in an increase or decrease in the proportion of totally silent participants. The Partly Silent An examination of the proportion of the partly silent yields some insights into the reasons for partial participation in the discussion. 1. Significance of the topic. The less participants have to say about a certain topic and also the less significance this topic has for them, the more likely they are to remain silent. Also the degree to which a

Appendix A

p 159

topic is emotionally charged can influence participation in the discussion. 2. Significance of group opinion. The opinion of the majority of the group constitutes another factor. In a study using questionnaire and discussion together it was possible to demonstrate that two-thirds of the partly silent participants held opinions opposed to the majority of the group.

appendix b

From a Monograph on “Aspects of Language”*

Our study of language proceeded in a twofold manner:2 as an analysis of characteristic features of the language available at the time, which as a symptom of crisis conditions was intended to reveal something about these conditions; and as a study of the modes of speaking, of the behavior of people toward the language, from which we hoped to learn something about their thinking, their relation to reality. The following is meant to communicate at least a vague notion of our participants’ linguistic behavior within the limits of a group-sociological analysis through some examples; the analyses of meaning of the established language are more or less treated as givens.

Language of Passivity The marked surrender to language is just another expression of the surrender to the reality that people in industrial mass society can no longer

* This Appendix was excerpted for the Gruppenexperiment volume from a monograph called “Aspects of Language” by Hermann Schweppenhäuser and Rainer Köhne. The monograph remained unpublished but was apparently circulated informally to some extent, and René König refers to it along with the rest of the project in a 1954 letter to Adorno (König, Briefwechsel, Bd. 1, Wiesbaden, VS Verlag 2000, pp. 454–456).

Appendix B

p 162

experience themselves as subjects, only as disposable objects. Their own destiny confronts them as an object. They are not supposed to interfere; at most they can offer passing commentary. The ways the participants in the discussion spoke attest forcefully to this—although it is certainly important to bear in mind the artificial and fictitious character of the situation. It would be difficult to find even occasional passages in the transcripts in which there is some of the earnestness that truly wants—even if it is only a matter of persuading others—to do something. Even the vehemence with which participants frequently speak cannot belie this. Like the chimera of many speeches, it is only the product of the enthrallment of the powerless spectator: the vehemence of someone who at least wants to give a proper piece of his mind, and who does not have to fear any consequences. Another, nonsublimated expression of such vehemence is, for example, spectators’ howling at sports events. People use certain phrases and figures of speech without critical reflection. These unwittingly reveal both the truth of their condition and their blind relation to the events themselves. P.: . . . The other thing here is again a bad game of intrigue between the Americans and the Russians. This doesn’t concern us Germans at all, what they are doing. Monopolism and capitalism, they want to shove us in, us, the other states, too, right? Because if the Russians advance to the Atlantic—and they will not stop in Germany, they will proceed to the Atlantic—I don’t have anything to lose, right? I could be transferred to Siberia, I don’t care. I don’t have anything to lose, from a personal point of view. I only have one suit and this one, otherwise I don’t have a thing. And I won’t protect the next person. I’ve had it, right? What do I care about a bureaucrat or a director up there? He can kick the bucket just like me, right? That’s out of the question. I don’t care anymore. Only my own self . . .

Consider the passage “I could be transferred to Siberia, I don’t care.” The word “transferred” (Versetzen), which in its common meaning signifies the not-entirely-smooth movement of public officials, is reduced to the bare core of this meaning: move from one spot on the map to another. This sentence alludes to the familiar idea of people as pawns in politics. It corresponds to the image in the first sentence: the “game of intrigue” with the actors “the American,” “the Russian,” and “Monopolism and capitalism” appearing here like the giant figures one occasionally sees sitting atop the globe in newspaper caricatures. The participant tries to avoid the intrigue by, in a sense, playing dead: as he says, by not being interested in anything but himself. Understanding the phantasmic character of this trick—turning himself into the passive thing he is already supposed to be—might contribute

Appendix B

p 163

to the desperate tone that pervades the entire statement. Consequently, the sentence: “I could be transferred to Siberia, I don’t care” precisely excludes the speaker’s self as a mere body, as disposable “human material.” This desire for absolute passivity simultaneously echoes the defiance of the outlaw and the excluded. Because of this defiance, the speaker does not segue from his rejection of remilitarization to a discussion of how remilitarization could be avoided and also does not attempt to persuade other participants. The spectator’s attitude comes to the fore particularly when participants express a strong wish for a change in reality. They appear like an audience member who wants to interfere in the course of a play but remains wedged in a seat. One participant, for example, criticizes the state of democracy: B.: . . . Democracy? We haven’t really even been shown what democracy is, because that would mean self-determination . . .

The spell these people are under could hardly be more obvious than in this remark. The comment reflects that spell; it simultaneously expresses the conflicting conclusions that “what democracy is” “wasn’t shown to us” and that it means “self-determination.” Linguistically, this comment remains restrained by collective passivity: self-determination should be introduced, but at the same time remains a matter for another subject. Autonomy becomes the charge that autonomy is not granted from without. People expect effective action to change reality to come from external sources—certainly not from themselves. These external sources may be a government or an anonymous “someone.” This can never become an active subject, though, since every individual in the collective resorts to counting on that anonymous collective. The refrain “but why doesn’t anybody do anything?” recurs countless times and in manifold variations (such as “they should . . .”) in the discussions. Reality confronts these people as a compact and closed scene instead of as a network of living human relations. Individuals can therefore no longer intervene in it with action. The following passage (already quoted above) is typical:3 Pf.: I’m 63 years old and was able to watch two world wars. I myself never participated. After the First World War, we recovered more in the first three years than today after five years. At the outbreak of the Second World War, or before the outbreak of the second war, a terror was organized in the Nazi regime that could not be opposed by the man in the factories, the worker. The terror was so vast that we were ordered to all kinds of festivities and events. After the horrors of the war began and the big air raids here on . . . came, as we could watch here from up close—so

Appendix B

p 164

one can really not speak today of German guilt, because those were not, in my opinion, strategic targets, that one in this way without further ado . . . that one just leveled entire villages.

The dominant phrases show that the reality of the bombing war and totalitarian terror is experienced as a multiple spectacle. The passage “was able to watch two world wars. I myself never participated” draws a sharp distinction between the observer and the observed, who “participated.” Later the language describes the terror as having been “whipped up” (aufgezogen). This expression traces back to the phrase that a rally should be “whipped up,” a phrase common in the national-socialistic organization. Terror itself appears as a spectacle, and the language betrays the nuance of brawling, roaring, monotonous marching at the mass rallies, which are associated with the following sentence: it directly links terror “to all kinds of festivities and events,” which the people were required to attend. The arrangement and mandate of the allegedly spontaneous national-socialistic movement cannot be articulated more clearly than by the link between “terror” and “whipping up.” The experience, which is congealed into a cliché, is articulated in a very similar way in the next sentence with the topic of the “horrors of the war,” about which it is said that they “set in” like something exactly pre-calculated. In the process, the speaker, who links his words together as people did against all sense and yet with official sanction for thirteen years in Germany, makes the exact point that the air raids fit into the Imperial Ministry for Popular Education and Propaganda’s scheme of war propaganda just as well as the required “festivals and events.” It might, indeed, have been experienced as something that “set in” like the heavy brass in an orchestra. It is also said that one “could watch” the air raids. The term used in this context, “air raids,” certainly does not evoke good spirit in the speaker, yet inspires the reminiscence of similar terms from advertising for entertaining events (“Bombenstimmung” [terrific atmosphere], “Stimmungskanone” [great joker], for example). The physiognomy was explored by Karl Kraus in “The Last Days of Mankind.”4 The jargon of the years of war itself, cobbled together out of manifest and cryptic elements, releases the repressed humor of the word rather than the nuance of dread, which refuses such a usage of language. Finally, referring to “strategic targets” and using the standardized phrase “leveled entire villages” in today’s language, reifies the object. It estranges it from experience, making it something merely stated and therefore indifferent. Similar to people’s perception of what happens to them as a piece of an exhibition, they talk about what they do collectively as a piece of this universal exhibition. They do not intend it to be as ironic as it sounds:

Appendix B

p 165

W.: . . . for example, from [19]33 onwards, we who had a democracy were anxious to move ahead, and we also managed to present so much to the world and to demonstrate so much ability that we suddenly had the whole world against us . . .

Thus, the world turned suddenly against Germany because the Germans demonstrated so much ability. Moving ahead appears as an action itself and ability seems to exist for demonstration. This is underlined by the expression “to present,” which suggests ostentatious offering. The history of the Hitler empire is neutralized to a stage performance, against which the audience—the foreign countries—revolts as a collection of skills. The actual cause of the revolt (the aggression of Hitlerian ability) never comes into question. The content of action turns into an exhibition of form divorced from actors’ intentions: W.: . . . In a dictatorship a man says something, gives an order and it is executed, while we do not have this in a democracy. There are so many parties, one wants it, the other is opposed to it, and we do not arrive at a conclusion in the end.

The limits of the language people glean from their relation to their environment, which is reified to mere spectacle, also comes up in the remarks about Jews. Consider the following quotation from among many similar ones: U.: I think the Jewish problem as such is not about the Jewish religion or the Jewish race. The charges pressed against Judaism today concern in the first place Jewish emigrants from the East, who live a loose life, a cheapskate’s life, an indolent life, and hence considerably harm Judaism as such.

The speaker does not say that indolence, loose living, and the cheapskate’s life, which are attributed to the Jews, do real damage—they are charged with “demonstrating” something, which one cannot observe. This takes place entirely in a mode of speaking which is otherwise an adequate paraphrase for the fossilized expression “unbearable,” which rigorously cuts off every discussion. As in reality, Jews are pilloried yet again by language: the participant’s speech resembles the hail of the surrounding crowd. Particularly in the rhythm of the last passage similar to a chorus—“demonstrate a loose life, a cheapskate’s life, an indolent life, and hence considerably harm Judaism as such”—the speech degenerates into an empty mass. It is not set up to evoke understanding and an answer, but to fight. Correspondingly, the speaker attributes a certain meaning to the term “Jewish problem” by linking it to the predicate “to affect.” The result is an elimination of any reflection suggested by the initial association of “Jewish” and “problem.” This again goes with the catchword “as such,” which occurs twice in the speech

Appendix B

p 166

and which is linked to the terms “Jewish problem” and “Judaism.” It is meant to signal the detachment of a speaker who works his concepts out neatly and, therefore, situates his charge against Eastern Jews as subjective or empirically contingent. The charge does not relate to “Judaism” or “the Jewish problem as such,” which remains isolated like a pure idea. At the same time, the idea’s invariance and unalterability are expressed: whatever exists in a certain way “as such” has to be like this, and all thinking and doing has to comply with it. People making anti-Semitic arguments do not experience Jews as human beings to whom one talks, but rather as objects at which one stares. That fact becomes quite clear in the following remark of a participant from a different discussion group: L.: . . . first of all, he should turn into a human being, that’s my private opinion; and when he turns into a real human being, and . . . develops those human instincts that are at the basis of other humans, then nobody will harm a hair on a Jew’s head . . . L.: If I should say something about it: if the Jews had comported accordingly, had conducted themselves accordingly, all this would not have happened. Such things happened in Germany many times even before 1933, that one also carried out a persecution of Jews in the cities, a sabotage and suchlike, because they in fact did not act as human beings, as German people . . .

In this passage, the denial of the Jew’s humanity goes with the widespread usage of the words “to comport” and “to conduct.” They measure behavior— and truly not only that of Jews—according to a prescriptive ideal. This can be traced back to the language of the barracks; in “to comport” there is the image of the corporal evaluating an exercising recruit. The phrase that one “carried out” orders was characteristic for the persecution of people in the Third Reich. It is in accordance with the facts. The victim, with whom there is no further communication, is no longer acknowledged, was abused merely as a physical entity. The murder was commanded, without relation to the victim: gassing occurred because of statements in a questionnaire. The Language of Role-Playing How speakers submit to existing language becomes fully clear when the lost subjectivity escalates into a self-satisfied gesture, when people endear themselves to the popular jargon. One of the most obviously striking themes in the group discussions is the participant’s need to prove something and gain at least something of the prestige and status he lacks in reality.

Appendix B

p 167

When some speakers indicate their actual misery with clichés like “important question of the day,” it almost sounds like they are romanticizing it. An unemployed refugee speaks in such a tone about having “resorted” (sich begeben) to the refugee camp. Two characteristic passages of his speech should be cited: T.: . . . If somebody wants to campaign for a political party, please do it elsewhere. I would rather discuss important questions of the day. I’m from the eastern zone and had to go. Subsequently I resorted to the camp Ülzen . . . T.: . . . I personally endeavored to find work, in Essen as bricklayer re-trainee . . .

It appears that he felt prominent within this small group by being the kind of person one normally only reads about in the newspaper. His manner of speaking resembles the diction of a story about celebrities: “I resorted”; “I personally endeavored.” This indicates a function of the media that is as important as it is fatal. It provides people with formulations they can adopt for their own use. They are thus reconciled with the fact that they are forced to endure passively that about which they are incessantly informed. In a literal sense, people seem to bite off more than they can chew when they use the pompous, superlative terms too common in today’s language. According to Theodor Haecker as well, these terms are “Collosi of averageness, [ . . . ] which produce a colossal effect,” and the linguistic usage of which is a “mode of mediocrity.”5 This can be found in the following statement concerning the term “global scale.” R.: . . . Today’s conflict between East and West has already assumed a global scale. We see that time and again just by considering its proportion on a globe.

It is striking that the listing of such pompous terms often ends in an “etc.”: N.: . . . And I’m of the opinion that this development, as well as the terrible tragedy of the last war, must be rated as the force of history, as something supra-personal, that one . . . has to mark as historical development, which does not happen within the purely personal sphere, but within suprapersonal powers, in nations, Weltanschauung [World views.—Eds.] etc.

The disjuncture between the actual experience and its conceptual and linguistic mastery could hardly be clearer. The more opaque, the more total the catastrophe that has been experienced, the more hollow are the pompous conceptual clichés with which it is seemingly mastered, and which are based on concepts that are in themselves correct. Instead of even trying to explain what was deemed beyond human capacity, the speaker at

Appendix B

p 168

once dismisses it as something “supra-personal.” The usage of “etc.” indicates that parts of the internal structure of this language fit with such big terms. They erase the person who uses them. Thus, while the speaker considers himself in tune with the higher powers, like the events they denote, the speaker is in the hands of higher powers without realizing it. Language has to cover up the emptiness of such coinages like “supra-personal powers,” the lack of factual persuasiveness, with a concentration of words allowing the speaker to avoid individual reflection or to preempt objection. Apparently, the speaker feels that he has to continue his list endlessly. He therefore replaces this impossibly endless speech by the abstract clause “etc.” The clause implies that he could go on if he wanted to. It endows the nonexistent continuation with the fascination of something one does not even want to consider. Similar to those vague conceptual clichés is another form of bombastic speech. These are numbers, which turn something abstract and open into something mysterious and monstrous.6 In the following passage one can feel how the joy of vocalizing an enormous number makes the participant almost forget about the object it refers to: M.: One cannot understand that at all, that this is supposed to be democracy; I cannot understand this, what democracy means since the Americans came over and killed women and children here. Just this one thing in X, where three times a hundred thousand were dead in one day.

The meaning is no longer felt; rather, it functions like the rhetorical device of a demagogue, who effectively supports the cliché of the defenseless “women and children” with the phrase “three times a hundred thousand [ . . . ] in one day.” This number appears like the record figures of an advertisement turned around in the negative. Hitler blared out numbers in the same tone of voice. The frequent use of numbers and the insistent performance of calculation is also reminiscent of something beyond confusing oneself and others with abstract sizes. The rationalistic opposite—trust in the reliability of numbers—seems to play an equally important role. Using numbers provides an air of precision and demonstrates expertise—numbers easily pass as true. An example of the gesture of exact calculation to hide pure nonsense: S.: . . . I know through my own experience that a product manufactured in German workshops, be it a Leica or a wristwatch, is sold to the Americans for 30% of its value . . . as reparations. 30% of value for reparations and—please don’t get me wrong—the American soldier did not buy this Leica with 30%. The American soldier doesn’t pay 30% in his PX-store, but 100% of its value, so that the American state earns 70%. And the American state does not sell this Leica for 100%, but surcharges 100%,

Appendix B

p 169

so that the American GI pays 170%. And these are devoured by the State. However, I cannot prove this allegation . . .

This participant, too, uses the residue of advertising—the brand “Leica,” which counts as the epitome of German workmanship, and the coinage “manufactured in German workshops,” which does the same thing—in order to wrap himself in it. By the end, the speaker himself seems to sense that language is more an instrument of theatrical self-presentation for him than a medium of reflection. As if driven by a guilty conscience due to the gesture of calculation, he retreats from it. Gesticulating and Talking Down Speaking that fancies phrases and linguistic gestures, which it does not communicate as in thought but presents as an imitation of the language of the privileged, escalates in many places in our material to a rally speech or even to a disconnected monologue. Rare are the passages in which participants reflect about what has been said and respond to the experience and thoughts of other participants. The dominant impression is much more that the participants seek to maintain their viewpoint at all costs.7 They do not want to be right because they are interested in an issue. Rather, they indifferently use any affair as an instrument for their desire to be right. This behavior expresses the contradiction that, by their need to posture, they lose the objectivity they would need to give weight to their statements. All the more vigorous gestures have to substitute for objectivity. Loudness and obstinacy bear witness to the anxiety of a factual counterquestion—be it imposed by reality, asked by other participants, or alive in the speaker. The Volksgemeinschaft,* in which the people were forced en bloc to recite opinions, convictions, and pledges loudly that were not their own, shows its downside. Under conditions of freedom, the truly silenced individual of the Volksgemeinschaft can only speak in an uncommunicative monologue. The dictator and the party spokesman are deeply entrenched in the participant’s consciousness as speakers. Although he is now allowed to speak freely, he seems unable to do so without those models in mind. It seems self-evident that others have to be content with passive listening; and every single one makes this a precondition. True dialogue, which died out in the Volksgemeinschaft, needs a long time to come back to life, and the conditions of mass society are not favorable. Several approaches were attempted

* “National Community,” an attempt by the Third Reich to establish a purely German ethnic identity free of internal conflict.—Eds.

Appendix B

p 170

in our groups—more among women than men. However, these speeches usually unconsciously took on a demagogical cast despite the good intentions. According to their meaning, they did not allow for a reply. Language, though, develops as speech and response. These are smothered by the emptily resounding speech. Speech becomes nothing more than agitated gesticulation with language. Here a further aspect of speech, one which can be considered the decisive for the “language of the Third Reich,” is indicated. Even more than “typical Nazi-terms,” this language was dominated by a totalitarian, loud-mouthed gesture, by a commandant ruling even language itself, which has to submit just as people do. Under the command of the “force of words”—as the National Socialists’ manipulation of language was once revealingly and literally truly called—language was reduced to its official and disorganized form, to which speaking and thinking bow down even today. According to its own boasting vocabulary, the language of National Socialism is not such a definite phenomenon, and the objection that people talked like that before National Socialism is as right as it is wrong. Neither National Socialism nor its language came into existence in one fell swoop. Most of the “Naziterms” perceived as typical existed long ago, and what made them nationalsocialistic terms was the fact that they were brought home and gained primacy under National Socialism. The traces of such thinking and speaking bear witness to National Socialism, even where its political power is long broken. Precisely in people’s speech, which seeks to oppose the language of understanding and discussion, which smugly imitates what droned out of the loudspeakers of the rallies, a barbaric impulse is upheld as the primitive longing that was once demonstrated by the unbounded oppressive politics of the National Socialists: to model the world after one’s own image. The fact that this language has meanwhile become infamous only makes it the more appealing. Once one of these words (the “Führer,” “blood,” “cleansing,” etc.), which are hidden as if obscene or are whispered, is spoken out loud and once the spell is broken, the great slogans and the intoxicating phrases appear by association. They are unscrupulously sputtered with the unmistakable nuance of lust and aggression. The name of the “Führer,” by the way, seems to be avoided with utmost powers like a magical taboo. Savage statements bubble furiously to the surface, invariably stigmatizing or elevating entire groups of people while failing to do justice to the individual. Some typical examples: S.: . . . These gentlemen (the American occupying soldiers) learned for the first time what Kultur means, and interior design (Wohnungseinrichtung)—in America they really don’t know this . . .

Appendix B

p 171

K.: . . . And the American has shown us in how he has occupied Germany, that he can be just as brutal and just as big a rogue and a troublemaker as the Russians . . . E.: . . . And as far as I know the Negro is a bloodthirsty person and caused a lot of devastation here . . . M.: . . . The Frenchman is among the worst! . . . The worst is the Frenchman; he stops everywhere—wherever he can, gets in the way of everything. P.: . . . Well the Frenchman is the worst sadist I have ever known . . . He can look at his own brother being put through a meat grinder, alive, and is only interested in making sure he is not personally harmed. He is a real coward, cares only about himself . . . H.: . . . Where, why is the Jew persecuted, why did he get into the KZ, why the Jew of all people? What is it about him that he—and we really want to be clear on this—was and perhaps is hated not only in Germany, but around the world? There must be something about him that stirs up and goads others . . . Well, my private opinion is: it is his business sense and extreme cleverness. Perhaps he does not even have evil intentions with these, but he simply has them, and they somehow snub everybody else. He has success in business. He does that with the utmost cleverness, with terrific shrewdness, and arrives at his goal, while others who want to earn their money honestly always go broke. H.: . . . Well, it is actually strange . . . that the Jew has never managed to found a real nation. He sits around in dribs and drabs in other countries and, of course, is regarded as a parasite by these countries . . . and the Jew is allowed to go everywhere and is allowed essentially to pick off the best bites, and people are offended by that. U.: . . . The German is a good technician, the Jew is a good merchant. Can one criticize him for that? . . . U.: . . . And our Adolf Hitler was quite right when he said that the German is the best soldier in the world . . .

The slogans drilled into the people’s minds by totalitarian propaganda return to the fore. The projective talk of the “hatred of foreign countries”; of “the people without space”; the people of the soothing “Führer personality,” addicted to the search for deliverance: T.: . . . and now we turn to the heart of the question, on which you’ve touched, Mrs. W.: Everyone clings to the hope that a person might arise to bail us out, indeed bail out all of Europe and the whole world, beyond just our people. The preconditions for this exist in Germany more than anywhere else. If no such personage can be found now, the German people will head toward total Bolshevism and other nations will follow very quickly. We can see that today through election results . . . but those who did not go to the polls, and those who did go only as a compromise to the middle-of-the-road parties . . . These are actually people who yearn for something to rally around which would overcome rationalism,

Appendix B

p 172

intellectual Bolshevism, and the local and American Bolshevism. The most fertile soil for such a leader is in Germany itself. B.: . . . One has to consider that the popular sense (!) (Volksintelligie) of the German people consists directly of the cry for the Führer.

—the magic formula of the “Volksgemeinschaft”— S.: In my opinion the party system needs to be abolished, because the German people need a Volksgemeinschaft. Because only through a Volksgemeinschaft can the German people rise again. The party system just prevents a Volksgemeinschaft of any kind, including the way we had it earlier. Dictatorship and Democracy—such a thing did not come about through democracy, and Hitler realized: no party holds the Volksgemeinschaft together.

—all of them become focal points of dogmatic monologues, for the sake of which the participants are allegedly arguing; they become linguistic vehicles for aggression against the “victors,” from whom one does not want to accept (annehmen) anything.* Taking this speech as the unmediated expression of the speakers themselves instead of recognizing it as being codetermined by National Socialist speech ignores the common type of person who cannot respond to other ways of thinking or other characteristics; who is “against” things from the outset, who does not examine himself and who searches for guilt first of all in the “stranger.” This misrecognition forgets what National Socialist language initially released—or created—in the people, which might have been expressed differently under a different influence. They are not yet National Socialists just because they are impressed by these linguistic gestures. Certainly, they can get absorbed with imitation to such a degree that it becomes difficult to distinguish. With the gesture of aggressive talking down, which no longer concerns the issue but is meant to intimidate, one participant accuses foreign countries of unjustified dismantling: O.: . . . Yet, one has begun to rob Germany, totally, one dragged off all patents, which are worth millions and billions, everything was pulled apart and dismantled and taken away—whether it was the Russian or the Frenchman or the Englishman—everything was snapped up. Now, Germany is nothing but an empty cloud of dust! . . .

Here speaking is just wild gesture. The immaterial patents turn into mountains of tangible material only to visualize the criminal action of dismantling—rendering the gesture of accusation effective in the first place. The denunciatory synonyms do not suffice to describe their “removal.”

* Annehmen—to acquire (habits) or accept (presents). Probably intended as a pun.—Eds.

Appendix B

p 173

Similarly, immense numbers are plucked out of the air, which render manifest the speaker’s inability to do enough to make his point. The picture of the empty cloud of dust, which signifies the Nazi legacy of a desolate Europe more than a Germany not-at-all-dismantled, functions in a projective manner similar to passages in Hitler’s speeches where, for example, he alleges a conspiracy of foreign countries. By the speakers’ not letting anything affect them, not wanting to continue talking, their claims lose their substance and content. This constitutes a possible discussion only by transcending the individual linguistic formula. The claims regress to “claims” in the sense of brute force. Many speeches in the group session seem to be designed in such a way—and here we believe that they indeed reflect an element of reality—as if a thesis could come into force by the mere bodily effort of speaking. Concise, logical conclusions from premises are replaced with argument by attrition, which seeks to force the listener and possible objector to capitulate to a loud and confused stream of words. A speech which is a singular aberration in anacoluthia* and at the same time its forcible coverup, and finally abruptly gives up the topic as proven is presented here: B.: I’d like to return to Mr. T’s remark that the Germans always get blamed for the last war. The true root of the problem, as the previous speaker said, lies in the Treaty of Versailles. If you rape a people at gunpoint, as happened in Versailles in 1921, to deprive an overpopulated country of the possibility of living and brutally take away everything, this people is forced to emigrate and has no ability to spread out. By taking the colonies from it, then giving them to people who can’t possibly govern them like today’s Frenchmen, who have to abandon their colonial areas because they are too spineless to hold onto them. Americans do not understand European politics. We Germans are in an unpleasant situation, we are threatened by the Romanians on one side and on the other side by the Slavs—cramped with about 70 million people in a small space. This, of course, is a political necessity from our side and cannot be maintained even today. The mistakes of our government—these enfants terrible, as the foreigners say about our German politicians—that’s true, though. Germans are indeed impatient. They do not wait until affairs have fully developed, but instead act like a bull in a china shop. But the people cannot be held responsible for this. It is the responsibility of today’s new victors, as they call themselves—in truth they are actually losers—the true victor will be someone else—to provide the opportunity to spread out. Because it will have to return at some point that even today we are overpopulated. We have 12 million

* Anacoluthia refers to a sentence that lacks grammatical structure, starting out in one direction and abruptly taking up another.—Eds.

Appendix B

p 174

refugees who were forcibly expelled from the Sudetenland, from Silesia, from Poznan, from Pomerelia, and from Austria—and who thus support the cause of Bolshevism. The Americans allow this to pass but today we face a fact, this is a signal, that America did not control the true political situation of Europe—something that can be excused—in general in 1945. And guilt—when he says, Hitler wanted or instigated the war—the true reason for the war can be found in the Treaty of Versailles.

This hasty monologue teeters between strained argument and breathless rests as it charges forward from aggressive cliché to cliché. It does not get down to real themes for want of spontaneous thinking. It almost seems as if the relation between topic and argumentation is reversed, that the style of argument is not tailored to the topic, but the topic—the idea of a population explosion—to the argumentative style. The topic, however, is already formed as the object is represented in the totalitarian brain: projectively disfigured; and the crude expression (Parole), the explosive speech are merely another expression of that. Evaluating statements in this language as people’s opinions or substantial judgment would be questionable. It would be just as wrong as the inclination to enumerate the moral defects of such speech. It is only an example of the expanding decay of thought and language. Language and Speech It is characteristic for the language of the group discussions that they approach a kind of linguistic uniformity that is not an intact language and which inserts itself in front of thought like a hardy screen. Language and thought prove not to be presented in speech. Speech and, therefore thought itself, yield to language. Correct speech is not only adopting a preset language, or its so-called “mastery.” It is a kind of spontaneous receptivity, which wrests language’s desire from language itself: the clear-thinking claim in it and at the same time against it; the expression of the experienced and the felt, which in the bonds of language promise liberation from itself. Once language drops out of this mediated unity of language and thought, language and life, and appears autonomous and set for itself, this reveals that thought has lost its medium and itself to language—thus, language, too, has lost its language. Yet absolutized language is exactly the kind spoken in the discussions. It remains alien to reflection and suppresses it or—strictly speaking—does not allow it to develop. The group discussions make it tangible that speech cannot assert itself against ossified language. Empowering language itself is

Appendix B

p 175

already dead: it remains accepted and simply repeated. Speech is the questionable expression of subjects who are subjects only nominally—the parroted, empty gesture of fractured subjectivity. The omnipotence of language that is itself already destroyed, which dictates the impotence of speech, is that of the objective mind: the inhumanity of conditions have hardened into a language which determines from the outset what and how far one is allowed to think and perceive. Already with language, however, these conditions are accepted without criticism or resignedly. The societal premise has been established for linguistic behavior: accepting and hence futile adaptation. Once the language roaring from newspapers, loudspeakers, and advertising ceases bringing people to their senses, it becomes instantaneously adopted. Anyone who speaks can hardly help reproducing what is incessantly heard and read. Speech adheres throughout to a licensed, ossified vocabulary. It is made up of the instances and agencies which determine and reflect reality. Administration, technology, and commerce contributed as much to this vocabulary as the rudiments of National Socialist language as well as the vocabulary of the military* of both wars, and the mass media which at the same time spread it far and wide. The people remain enclosed like windowless monads inside the language constituted by such vocabulary, papered over with linguistic clichés and jumbled fragments of experience. Language no longer helps people to get a picture of reality—as is revealed from language itself taken at its word. Language commands through order, instruction, and advertising. Being rhetorical and a pool of mangled clichés, it relieves people of reflection. Interspersed with administrative and technical categories, with scientific terminology, it reifies life itself. Being euphemistic, filled with cynicism and petrified jokes, it allows neither for concern nor for human emotion from the outset. Being the epitome of adherence to the facts, it dethroned what remains: the incommensurable, suffering, and hope. People uphold the appearance of autonomy and reflection while they surrender to language. Imitation and repetition in particular are meant to make something out of powerlessness—yet they reveal it all the more drastically. The more insecure the reflection, the more demanding and bombastic the words and sentences, the more apodictic the tone; the more conscious the powerlessness, the stronger the drive for importance, which takes advantage of established language. Modern speech can be characterized by the meaning that the phrase “to have something to say” has assumed. At one time,

* The original refers, in quotes, to the “Barras” of both wars, soldierly slang for the military.—Eds.

Appendix B

p 176

it denoted the most legitimate need for autonomous reflection—to have something to say. The emphasis shifted from “something” to “to say,” and today one who has something to say counts as someone who can speak simply because he is allowed to. Thus, the expert, the politician, the journalist are imitated consciously or unconsciously. Speech is the childish inability to speak for oneself (Unmündigkeit) that fills one’s mouth (Mund).*8 But this runs roughshod over the established language that presents itself in our research quite uniformly on all social levels. Such uniform jargon only instructs people in their own heteronomy. The action of the linguistic gesture must not belie the stigma of passivity, with which it is afflicted. People’s further susceptibility to any kind of demagogy or totalitarian agitation is preserved by their own speech.

* The German word Unmündigkeit (naïveté or childishness) is used as a pun with Mund (mouth) here.—Eds.

Final Version of the Basic Stimulus (Colburn Letter)

I

was associated with several offices of the occupation army in Germany from the end of the war, in which I participated as reservist, through August 1950. Most of my assistants were Germans, from the most diverse regions and with the most diverse views. Beyond that, my work brought me together with Germans of all kinds. I believe that, to the extent that one can speak of such things, I got to know average Germans and their opinions firsthand, and especially how ordinary people feel. Superficial observers say and write a lot of nonsense about Germany. Some think they are all Nazis and bear guilt collectively; others see things as rosy because, as victors, they are in a privileged position and generalize too quickly from their own pleasant experience. Perhaps your readers will be interested in the opinion of a sober GI who is not vengeful, but who also doesn’t let anyone pull the wool over his eyes. I can say many good things about the Germans. They are hardworking and only rarely insubordinate. They are clean and orderly, and many give the impression of being intelligent. Of course, I do not know to what extent they are independent or just repeat what they have heard elsewhere. I do not find any indication of unusual crudeness and cruelty, but nor are there many indications that they have taken to heart what was done to people under Hitler. Of course they themselves had to go through so many things—air raids in particular—that it is difficult for them to consider other people’s suffering.

Final Version of the Basic Stimulus

p 178

Individual Germans seem rather good-natured. Married men are kind to their families and hope to succeed. I think the Germans, who were used to a high standard of living, will pull themselves up again economically. Their splendid technical talent will only really prove itself once they are able to work without inhibition. To me and most of my acquaintances they are generally friendly— especially the women—naturally also because they think all of us are wealthy. But this is not the whole story. Despite the past calamity, many think of themselves as better and more capable than us. They do not want to hear anything of the fact that Hitler started it. They apparently have the feeling that the world did the greatest injustice to them. Whenever something goes badly with us, they become indignant. When we are in a difficult situation, as in Korea, one sometimes gets the impression that they are secretly glad about it and do not think about the fact that we alone protect them from the Russians. Admitting the mistakes of one’s own country and talking openly about them appears to be a weakness to them. They are still hostile toward the Jews and use the DPs [displaced persons] in particular as a pretense for one-sided judgments. Only very few openly admit that they were Nazis, and those admitting it are often not the worst ones. Only a small minority is said to be guilty. In a certain way this is true, but in general one finds only very few Germans who unambiguously renounce what happened. They act especially strange when there is talk about racial persecution in America. As soon as they hear that a Negro was lynched in the South, they rub their hands together [as if relishing the inconvenient parallel]. I always explain to them that in our case it is a matter of ten or twenty cases a year, while with them was a matter of millions. In the end, for us lynching is and remains a crime prosecuted by the state. Their state, however, managed lynching itself on a vastly greater scale. Certainly they were subject to terror and could have done little more once Hitler was in control. But did they not celebrate him time and again? I was able to convince individuals of all of this, but this is like a drop in the bucket. The risk is that, tomorrow, they will again follow a Hitler or Stalin, and will still believe that such a strong man will represent their interests best. Whoever is really interested in international understanding must pay attention to what practical democracy actually means and must engage in the long work required to bring it about. One cannot simply plug something else into the space left by dictatorship. Rather, one has to have just as much understanding for others as for oneself. Only when the Germans accept this spirit will they really be able to make a big contribution.

Opinion Research and Publicness theodor w. adorno (1964) Translated by Andrew J. Perrin and Lars Jarkko

P

ublic opinion research is generally pursued for practical reasons. For example, one wants to reliably predict the result of an election. The techniques employed were originally developed for market research. Unreflexive, practical sociology gets by with this. To be sure, limited to what sociology has always concerned itself with, it considers it easy, superficial, and simple. Nevertheless, an element of necessity calls for the development of a new discipline, which would gladly encompass the whole of social scientific knowledge. The German term “opinion research” (Meinungsforschung) drops, for the sake of brevity, a key adjective, which alone identifies its concern: research on public opinion. That adjective refers to the idea of publicness. Looking at the history of public opinion research determines how it came to this. Publicness, the increasing scrutability of actions within their social surroundings, reaches back immeasurably far in history. The concept of publicness itself* was first conceived with the beginning of the bourgeois era, sometime in the seventeenth century. Since then, the public character (Öffentlichsein) of all possible ways of thinking, ways of conduct, and actions, has been conscious of itself as an idea and has been threatened. * Adorno differentiates here between the practice of publicness (the increasing scrutability of actions) and the normative concept of publicness, which he takes to be the new development. The distinction becomes important later in the essay.—Eds.

Opinion Research and Publicness

p 180

Publicness is a bourgeois category, as Jürgen Habermas succinctly formulated it in his groundbreaking book about its structural changes,1 to which I am very indebted. He emphasizes that John Locke, one of the first important political philosophers of bourgeois democratic society, describes, “besides the divine and the national law, the ‘law of opinion’ as a category of the same rank” as a law through which virtue and vice, in general, are first identified. The vagueness, however, with which, certainly in Locke, the ideas of public and public opinion are tainted cannot be corrected through precise verbal definition. Publicness is not clearly demarcated; it is essentially polemical: what was once not public should become so. Only in this sense is the point to understand, as a criticism of absolute cabinet politics,* how the inverted aristocratic orders allow—and contemporary elite theories even celebrate—the secret. Publicness could never, and it cannot now, be regarded as a given. It is a product of the political conception of democracy, which assumes citizens who are responsible and well-informed about their fundamental interests. Publicness and democracy are thoroughly tied up in one another. Only under the guarantee of democratic rights to change opinions freely can publicness develop; only if the things citizens have a voice on are public, is democracy thinkable. Publicness is, though, endangered in its actual development by the social form of bourgeois society, through the commercial concerns that seek their own profits from the information that represents the people. Through this, right from the beginning, a moment of the restricted, the particular, is added in practice to the theoretically universal idea of publicness. It yields generally to the material interests of institutions that prey on it. That clarifies the known difficulties with defining the concept of publicness. A societal (sub)sector monopolizes the information and colors it according to its interests. The idea of publicness yields the popular voice to those institutions. It stems from the fact that the normal conception of public opinion is that which is in the newspapers; that faced with all the resistance of the so-called public opinion against this or that political or social fact after its echo in the media becomes more valued, they therefore want less to reflect what the public thinks than to control it. The hypostasization and oppositionization of all categories in bourgeois society also underlie public opinion and publicness. They split themselves off from the living subjects who constitute the substance of the idea of publicness. That distorts what civil history regarded throughout as progressive and demo-

* Adorno refers here to the practice of governing “behind closed doors” by national and international leadership without regard for the involvement of the public.—Eds.

Opinion Research and Publicness

p 181

cratic. Publicness became whatever it wanted to be and should want to be, the public consciousness of the masses, therefore inexact and ever less the democratic political development of the will, itself constrained in the face of the old circle of the so-called notable and cultivated. The people turned into an appendage of the machinery of public opinion from its fundamentally passively imagined audience, to which was conveyed the (objectively most important, political) news, not so differently from the audience of the theater, which demands that something be offered to it. In that way, today’s tabloids and magazines and their gossip stories about the high, indifferent private lives of movie-stars and potentates are the consequences of the development of bourgeois publicness. Cushioned with private interests, publicness has always been accompanied by self-contradictory elements of the private. Publicness today serves those whom it does not concern at all, and withholds from, or ideologically targets, those whom it actually does concern. Habermas summarized this development as the disintegration of publicness. Perhaps publicness was generally never realized in reality. At the beginning, since publicness was unavailable, it would have had to be created, since it prevented in the growing masses the very maturation it requires. Men’s right to publicness turned into their allotted supply of publicness; while they should be its subjects, they turned into its objects. Their autonomy, which required public information as a medium, is hindered by publicness. Those who do not allow themselves to escape from ideal economic exactitude to basic human intelligence will not allow themselves to express that the content that floods the organs of public opinion, exactly in reference to the masses, could hardly cause anything other than stultification. But publicness does not lay its degradation on men; men stay prisoners of appearances into which publicness’s social function can only be denigrated under the ruling conditions. The irreconciliation of general and private interests also reveals itself in the opposition between the public and the private. Institutionalized public opinion falsely negates it: the private turns into public, the public private. The problem of publicness is not its excess, but its scarcity; if it were fully developed, it would not be through that which gets said, refracted by its own essentials, nor through that which is not said, so it would arrive at its correct place. Such problematics of public opinion identify the status of public opinion research. On the one side is control, in view of ersatz public opinion manufactured through the organs of its production, with these an interest in controlling if and to what extent they and the people actually choose or adopt their broadcasters’ opinions; if the masses’ opposition and independence move against the monopoly (Oktroi). Consolidation and rationalization of the large economic and administrative units lie in the plan of its success,

Opinion Research and Publicness

p 182

the anticipated scientific control of the market. The growth of market research corresponds to this tendency; it is applied market research, transmitting those dead-end ways to communicating spiritual objects. The idea, introduced by P. F. Lazarsfeld, of administrative social research, empirical social research for purposes of administration, describes the reality correctly, appropriately; incidentally, market research is only one root of opinion research, the other is the social survey, whose history in Germany is also connected with the name of Max Weber. The current identity of market and opinion research in America, which are also bound together terminologically in Germany, is, throughout, in the sense of the observation of common sense, that no radical difference prevails between the preferences for the names of a political candidate and for those of a brand name, as would be expected according to the theoretical differentiation between the autonomous and mature/responsible folk and the surroundings (Umkreis) of the servitude (Kundenschaft) to mass products. Under this aspect, opinion research would not be a mere technique, but just as much an object of sociology as a science that inquires into the objective structural laws of society. But its meaning must not exhaust itself. It steps exactly into the space that was formed by the transition of the idea of public opinion to those of production and control: it could, following its potential, show how much it manipulates the opinions of the population, to what extent actual public opinion is a reflex of usurpation. The potential for improvement springs from the limits of manipulation. To choose only the most drastic example, that submits the assumption of every non-naïve survey to political sociology: the results are demonstrated only if the populations actually determine the information on which their sensible political decisions depend from the very beginning. Where that is not the case, opinion research, without socialcritical intentions, spontaneously turns into social criticism. It can determine the reasons for insufficient trust in information, through analysis of information sources and of that which they supply the population, just as of the position of consciousness of those questioned, who are modeled for their part again through the whole social conditions, especially such as the consciousness industry, under which they live. Sensible research on public opinion, as they say in America, “on the other side of the fence,” namely by the masses themselves, is able to do that further, if the so-called organs of public opinion really represent these, and if these opinions are spontaneous and sensible or, alternatively, if they fall into line with mechanisms of social control. Research on public opinion could restore something of that, which the replacement of these opinions committed by market organs, since the idea of publicness in political life became real. To be sure, that incorporates the demand that opinion research not hypostatize itself, that it not confuse the

Opinion Research and Publicness

p 183

data it gathers with the final immediate truth, but remain conscious of its own state of mediation through the societal structure and through the institutions of opinion formation, which try to grab more and more power. Opinion research can fulfill its promise only if it applies its results and undertakes question formulations that hold to the objective social facts. Once previously objective societal institutions like the press monopolized the democratic title to public opinion, public opinion became centralized and therefore moved in opposition to the idea of living subjects, whose diverse opinion it should record, so opinion research is caught up in the attempt, equally abstract, isolated, to isolate the naked subjective moment of opinion, the meaning of individual persons, and to confuse that, which is the naked reflex of objective, societal legalities, with the basis of social reality. Opinion research then turns into ideology, understandable through the claim that organs of public opinion like the mass media would have conformed to the opinions of the populations, which, for its part, returns to the manipulation of public opinion. Opinion research easily assists the manipulation of consciousness at the expense of objective reality. But it shows through this to the same dialectic as the sphere of the political, to which the idea of opinion was indigenous and to which it still belongs. It is an ideology which, once it achieves critical competence, will be able to dissect ideology and to change its conclusions of existence.

Notes

Foreword 1. Friedrich Schiller: The Piccolomini, or the First Part of Wallenstein, a Drama in Five Acts, trans. by S. T. Coleridge, London (Longman) 1800, p. 15

Introduction 1. The appendix provides material from preparatory work for such comparative research. This material might serve for formulating questionnaires and representative surveys for our topic. [This material is not included in the English appendixes. –Eds.] 2. R. F. Bales: Interaction Process Analysis, Cambridge, Mass., 1951. The fundamental difference is the fact that Bales’ interest throughout is in the group as such, while our study is interested in the group participants. We do not treat problems of group dynamics as ends in themselves, but rather as evidence of collective influences on individuals. 3. Consider those experiments, motivated by Kurt Lewin and essentially based on his topological psychology, that have been conducted in the United States for about two decades. These experiments seek to investigate group structures and group phenomena. These experiments are characterized by an experimental design modeled after natural science. It seeks to manipulate only the independent variables and to hold all other factors constant. They thereby create— quite consciously—such an artificial situation that one can expect an outcome approximating reality only in the most fortunate cases. See K. Lewin: Principles of Topological Psychology, New York 1936.

Notes to Pages 12–23

p 186

4. See Chapter 4 and T. W. Adorno: Guilt and Defense, Cambridge, Mass. (Harvard University Press) 2010. 5. See the series Studies in Prejudice, edited by M. Horkheimer and S. Flowerman, New York 1950, especially volume III, T.  W. Adorno, E. FrenkelBrunswik, D. J. Levinson, and R. N. Sanford: The Authoritarian Personality. 6. The difference between the quantitative and qualitative was only introduced into the material by the scientific analysis and must not be considered absolute. Insofar as all quantification refers to qualitative facts, which can only be analyzed statistically after preparation, the categories of understanding, which make quantitative studies meaningful in the first place, stem from the qualitative area. We cannot unpack the epistemological problem of distinction here; we maintain the concepts as developed in actual research. The oppositions refer, of course, to the very deep question of how the objectifying method in social sciences actually shapes its subject. It also has to be stated that, in the practice of social science, the separation of quantitative and qualitative methods can never be accomplished in a pure way. (See B. Berelson: Content Analysis in Communication Research, Glencoe, Ill., 1952, pp. 135ff.) 7. M. Horkheimer (editor): Studien über Autorität und Familie, Forschungsberichte aus dem Institut für Sozialforschung, Paris 1936.

1. The Group Discussion Method Compared with Other Methods of Empirical Sociology and Its Application in the Study at Hand 1. See S. A. Rice, Preface to P. V. Young: Scientific Social Surveys and Research, New York: Prentice-Hall 1949. 2. See H. Cantril: Gauging Public Opinion, Princeton 1947, pp. VII f.; E. Noelle: Amerikanische Massenbefragung über Politik und Presse, Limburg 1940, p. 36; W. Albig: Public Opinion, New York 1939, pp. 181 ff. 3. See L.  W. Doob: Public Opinion and Propaganda, New York 1949, p.  9; W. Albig: Public Opinion, pp. 181ff. 4. See M. Parten: Surveys, Polls and Samples, New York 1950, pp. 290ff. 5. See M. Horkheimer: Eclipse of Reason, New York 1947, pp. 3f. 6. Scholarly literature often refers to this point, but research practices often fail to draw the necessary conclusions from it. 7. See W. Lippmann: Public Opinion, New York 1947, pp. 3f; P. R. Hofstätter: Die Psychologie der öffentlichen Meinung, Wien 1949, pp. 64ff. 8. See M. Horkheimer: Eclipse of Reason, pp. 128ff. 9. Recently, the complicated relation between opinion and attitude has been thoroughly discussed by G. D. Wiebe: Some Implications of Separating Opinions from Attitudes, Public Opinion Quarterly, Fall 1953, pp. 328ff. 10. In the interest of better comprehensibility, we diverge somewhat from the conventional but not always uniform terminology offered in the scholarly literature. At the same time, the terminology cannot always be kept up throughout the quantitative part of this study. In the case of divergence we provide appropriate annotation.

Notes to Pages 23–27

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

22.

p 187

As a general rule, the following expresses the problems articulated here in the stated terminology: By individual or group opinion we mean the separately formulated and therefore conscious conception of an object. Attitude is the conception of an object that underlies the opinion and evaluation of the object. Conception and judgments can be latent or conscious, fixed or generalized, or more or less fluent. Hence, they can be more or less influenced by subjective and external factors. Stance, behavior, and behavioral pattern: the disposition for judgments and actions relying on entrenched and to a certain extent generalized conceptions and forms of reaction. By mode of reaction [Reaktionsweise] we mean the formal character of an expression of opinion, for example, whether the opinion is approving, conditionally approving (ambivalent), or opposing. See Chapter 2. The word disposition is used as a collective term for attitudes and behavioral patterns. See P. F. Lazarsfeld and others: The People’s Choice, New York 1949, pp. XIXff., pp. 40ff., pp. 65ff. See W. A. MacKinnon: On the Rise, Progress and Present State of Public Opinion in Great Britain, London 1888, pp. 15. See L. W. Doob: Public Opinion and Propaganda, pp. 31f. See W. Bauer: Die öffentliche Meinung in der Weltgeschichte, Potsdam 1950. J. J. Rousseau: Le Contrat Social, Paris 1834, p. 48: “Il y a souvent bien de la différence entre la volonté de tous et la volonté générale: celle-ci ne regarde qu’à l’intérêt commun, l’autre regarde à l’intérêt privé, et n’est qu’une somme des volontés particulières: Mais ôtez de ces mêmes volontés les plus et les moins qui s’entre-détruisent, reste pour somme des différences la volonté générale.” F. Tönnies: Kritik der öffentlichen Meinung, Berlin 1922, pp. 131ff. See also F. Tönnies: Ferdinand Tönnies on Public Opinion: Selections and Analyses, edited and trans. by H. Hardt and S. Splichal, Lanham, Md. (Rowman & Littlefield) 2000, pp. 137–139. F. Tönnies: Ferdinand Tönnies on Public Opinion, p. 135. See W. Albig: Public Opinion, pp. 1ff.; L. W. Doob: Public Opinion and Propaganda, pp. 33ff.; A. L. Lowell: The Nature of Public Opinion, in: B. Berelson and M. Janowitz: Reader in Public Opinion and Communication, Glencoe, Ill., 1953, pp. 21ff. H. L. Child: By Public Opinion I Mean, Public Opinion Quarterly, April 1939, p. 336. Among the many publications describing the development of empirical research, we merely defer to the text books of Pauline V. Young and Mildred Parten. This result was the more surprising since the magazine Literary Digest, which since 1916 regularly made election prognoses, arrived at a wrong result by interviewing circa 2 million people. See P. F. Lazarsfeld: The Use of Panels in Social Research, in: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 92, 1948, pp. 405ff.

Notes to Pages 28–39

p 188

23. Best translated as Bezugssystem [reference system]. See Glossar zur Verdeutschung englischer Fachausdrücke aus der Methodik der empirischen Sozialforschung, Beitrag des Instituts für Sozialforschung, in: Praktische Sozialforschung, edited by R. König, Dortmund and Zürich 1952, p. 295. [Ironically the translation offered there is Bezugsrahmen.—Eds.] 24. A common term in survey-method for a type of questions for the answering of which the interviewee has to choose between a number of preset alternatives. See M. Parten: Surveys, Polls and Samples, pp. 189f.; W. Albig: Public Opinion, p. 192. 25. See S. Freud: Gesammelte Werke, London 1940–52, vol. X, p. 225; S. Freud: Instincts and their Vicissitudes, p. 131, in: Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. by J. Strachey, London (Hogarth Press) 1957, vol. XIV, pp. 109–140. 26. See P. R. Hofstätter: Die Psychologie, pp. 164ff. 27. See W. Hollitscher: The Concept of Rationalization, in: Journal of Psychoanalysis, XX, 1939. 28. There might be certain differences between Germany and America, but these must not be overestimated. The American ideal of extroversion makes it easier than in Germany to talk about personal matters in a rather unrestrained way, and the reliability of survey findings might profit from that. However, this willingness seems to have its limits when the discussion transcends the preconscious— particularly about actually emotionally charged zones. See K. Lewin: Resolving Social Conflicts, New York 1948, pp. 18f. 29. See C. F. Schmid: Basic Statistical Concepts and Techniques, in: P. V. Young: Scientific Social Survey and Research, New York 1950, pp. 329ff.; M. Parten: Surveys, Polls and Samples, pp. 499ff. 30. See P.  V. Young: Scientific Social Surveys, pp.  265ff.; M. Jahoda and others: Research Methods in Social Relations, New York 1951, pp.  209ff.; T.  M. Newcomb, Personality and Social Change, New York, 1943, pp. 173ff. 31. See the description of the circle of participants in Chapter II [not included in this translation.—Eds.]. The groups between eight and sixteen participants comprise three quarters of all groups and two-thirds of the entire circle of participants. 32. See the below section on stimulus analysis. 33. Indeed, such concerns were voiced repeatedly. 34. See S. Freud: Gesammelte Werke, p.  65ff; S. Freud: On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, in: Standard Edition, vol. XIV, pp. 7–66, p. 27ff. 35. See Chapter 4. 36. See the description of the circle of participants in Chapter II [not included in this translation—Eds.]. 37. See Appendix. [Reference is to an Appendix not included in the translation.— Eds.] 38. See Appendix. [Reference is to an Appendix not included in the translation.— Eds.] 39. See the wording in its final version in this volume. In the British zone, the American was made a British soldier.

Notes to Pages 40–49

p 189

40. See T.  W. Adorno, E. Frenkel-Brunswik, D.  J. Levinson, and R. N. Sanford: The Authoritarian Personality, vol. III, Studies in Prejudice, edited by M. Horkheimer and S. Flowerman, New York 1950, pp. 102ff., 145ff. 41. See e.g.: Trends in German Public Opinion 1946 through 1949, edited by HICOG Reactions Analysis Staff, nd, pp.  2 and 6; Antisemitismus-Umfrage des Instituts für Demoskopie, Allensbach 1949. 42. Ethnocentrism is directed against all kinds of out-groups, no matter whether these are foreign nations or members of a different ethnicity in one’s own nation (Prussiophobia of the Bavarians) or a minority (Jews, Negroes, and recently refugees as well). The suppression of the “inferior” Slavic people during the war is an example of ethnocentrism directed toward the outside, the persecution of Jews of ethnocentrism directed toward the inside, against a minority. 43. “Displaced Persons” (DPs) is the official name for the workers abducted to Germany by the Nazis or for foreigners of non-German origin who fled to the Federal Republic following Russian occupation of their home countries. 44. See T. W. Adorno and others: The Authoritarian Personality, p. 229. 45. Ibid., pp. 759ff. 46. See for example: Schaffner: Fatherland. A Study of Authoritarianism in the German Family, New York 1948. 47. See T. W. Adorno and others: The Authoritarian Personality, pp. 230ff. 48. This argument is related not only to the authority complex but also to one of the other sensitive areas and, thus, is repeated in this context. 49. See Memorandum betreffend die Konferenz der Mitarbeiter der Gruppenforschung des Instituts für Sozialforschung vom 5. Bis 7. Oktober 1950, Ziff. 5, as well as the report of the investigators in Hesse, Bavaria, and Northern Germany in the archive of the Institute. 50. See e.g.: R. Lippit: Training in Community Relations, New York 1949, pp. 156ff. and pp. 271ff. A. F. Zander: The WP Club, in: Human Relations, vol. 1, 1948, pp.  321ff. K. Back: Interpersonal Relations in a Discussion Group, in: Journal of Social Issues, vol. 4, 1948, pp. 61ff. K. Back: The Exertion of Influence through Social Communication, in: L. Festinger, K. Back, S. Schachter, H. H. Kelley, J. Thibaut: Theory and Experiment in Social Communication, Ann Arbor 1950, pp. 28f. S. Schacter: Deviation, Rejection, and Communication, in: L. Festinger and others: Theory and Experiment, pp. 72ff. J. Thibaut: An Experimental Study of the Cohesiveness of Underprivileged Groups, in: Human Relations, vol. 3, pp. 259ff. L. Carter and others: The Relations of Categorizations and Ratings in the Observation of Group Behavior, in: Human Relations, vol. 4, pp. 241ff. 51. See R. F. Bales: Interaction Process Analysis, Cambridge, Mass., 1951, p. 8 and pp. 177ff. 52. Content analysis is defined as the process of classifying qualitative material with the help of suitable categories so that it can be described systematically. See L. Festinger and D. Katz: Research Methods in the Behavioral Sciences, New York 1953, pp. 423ff. B. Berelson: Content Analysis in Communication Research, Glencoe, Ill., 1952, pp.  14ff. M. Jahoda and others: Research Methods in Social Relations, pp. 539ff. H. D. Lasswell: Why Be Quantitative?

Notes to Pages 49–62

53. 54. 55.

56.

57.

p 190

in: Berelson and Janowitz: Reader in Public Opinion and Communication, pp. 265ff. B. Berelson and P. F. Lazarsfeld: Die Bedeutungsanalyse von Kommunikationsmaterialien, in: Praktische Sozialforschung, edited by R. König, pp. 141ff. Institut für Sozialforschung: (Article) Sozialforschung, empirische, in: Handwörterbuch der Sozialwissenschaften, 6. Lieferung, Stuttgart 1954, pp. 430ff. See Chapter 2. See A. H. Barton and P. F. Lazarsfeld: Some Functions of Qualitative Analysis in Social Research, in: Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie, vol. 1. The following statements of one of the leading scholars in American social research directly relate to “anthropological procedure,” but apply analogously to all qualitative research. It is said that this kind of research: “represents only the first step in science, because its rich interpretations are not based on relations which have been quantitatively established. They are inferences which either represent a wholistic type of judgment or are based upon what the investigator regards as his most central observations. There is little attempt at specification of the types of data which are necessary for the measurement of a given variable. Hence, it frequently makes difficult and often impossible the verification of relations by another investigator. The history of social psychology illustrates the importance of the replication of findings in that many of its initial results have not been confirmed by later investigations. Only when we attain the level of standardizing our specifications for data can we see the extent to which reported findings are true generalizations.” The author then states that the conflict between quantitative and qualitative method can be solved easily by using the latter only in the initial stage of the investigation. “This stage can utilize to the full the advantages of seeing the situation as a whole and of attempting to grasp the fundamental relationship. From this study can come the insights which can furnish the hypotheses for later, more detailed quantitative study.” D. Katz, in: L. Festinger and D. Katz: Research Methods, pp. 64f. Lately, under the lead of Lazarsfeld, the scholarly literature has been concerned to an increasing degree with the significance of qualitative analyses for empirical social research. See the summary with bibliographic references of Dorwin P. Cartwright: Analysis of Qualitative Material, in: L. Festinger and D. Katz: Research Methods, pp. 421ff. See the preliminary remarks for part III [not included in this translation—Eds.].

2. The Organization of the Discussion Materials 1. See H. Zeisel: Say it with Figures, New York 1950, pp. 4ff. 2. See the section on interpretive coding below [Section III, pp. 70–71]. 3. See T.  W. Adorno, E. Frenkel-Brunswik, D.  J. Levinson, and R. N. Sanford: The Authoritarian Personality, vol. III, Studies in Prejudice, edited by M. Horkheimer and S. Flowerman, New York 1950, pp. 291ff

Notes to Pages 70–76

p 191

4. It follows from the aim of our study as well as from the character of the material unearthed by it that the objective significance of the statements, i.e., their declarative value about reality, cannot be the subject matter of the analysis. Our interest is focused on the significance of the statements for the attitude of the participant, not their value for a correct assessment of the question discussed. 5. T. M. Newcomb, Personality and Social Change, New York, 1943, pp. 119ff 6. Ibid., pp. 217ff.

3. Quantitative Analyses 1. In the following, we assume—if not explicitly indicated otherwise—that the speakers reflect the attitudes of the individual discussion groups as well as of the statistical group to which they belong. We cannot yet say to what extent this assumption is backed up by more than experience. The explanations in Chapter 4 about phenomena of integration, for example, apply to this question. Likewise we count among this the impressive internal consistency of the attitudes of the individuals who make up the discrete statistical groups, as long as the relevant group contains a minimum number of individuals. Only then can we expect that the speakers are articulating essential factors and not other, nonessential influences. 2. Comparing percentages of the individual statistical groups with the average serves only the purpose of an ordering scheme that establishes relations. One would have to include the different sizes of these groups in order to arrive at an exact quantifiable assessment of the demographic groups in their relation to the average. This is because the larger groups contribute more to the computation of the overall average than do the smaller ones. As a result, the relatively smaller percentage deviations of the larger groups (e.g., men or those with grade school education) are more important for the interpretation than are those of the smaller groups. 3. Recall that we evaluate the code “approval” as positive attitude, “disapproval” as negative, etc., except for the topics of the East and German self-assessment (where we proceed conversely). See Chapter 2. 4. It is worth noting that the small percentage of rejection of democracy among women and housewives is almost equal, even though the housewives constituted less than half the women speakers (110 of 274). 5. Even among groups with the smallest ambivalent attitude (unskilled workers 54%, farmers 58%) the number of ambivalent remarks accounts for more than half of the speakers. 6. In the statistical sense: the circle of participants. 7. Grade school: 25% of rejection; high school: 22%; high school graduate: 15%; university: 13%. 8. 0- 2 years: 20% of rejection; 2–6 years: 24%; 6 years and more: 32%. 9. With an almost average participation (42%) only 8% of their speakers acted ambivalently, none positively. 10. 20 years or less: 37% of the speakers; 20–25 years: 49%; 25–30 years: 56%; 30 years and older: 48%. [As in the original, the highest age category in the

Notes to Pages 76–89

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22. 23.

24.

25.

26. 27. 28.

p 192

footnote is 30 years and older, not 50 years and older as implied in the text.—Eds.] Up to 2 years of military service: 52% of speakers; 2–6 years of military service: 59%; 6 years and more: 63%. Grade school: 54% of speakers; high school: 50%; high school graduate: 46%; university: 45%. It is remarkable that the university graduates show above-average participation in all of the other topics. See the profile, Figure 3.8. See the profile, Figure 3.8. See Chapter 1. See Table 30 in the appendix [not included in this translation—Eds]. 0–2 years of military service: 78% disapproval, 11% approval; 2–6 years of military service: 84% disapproval, 5% approval; 6 years and more: 86% disapproval, 4% approval. The significance of the unusually high frequency of disapproving speakers among unskilled workers is emphasized by the fact that this group’s participation is generally far below average and it essentially reaches the average for this topic (32% as compared with 36% on average). Unskilled workers: 82%; farmers: 67%; housewives: 66%; general school: 66%; 20 years or less: 38%; students: 39%; university graduates: 46%; high school graduates: 48%. Adding rows I and II in Table 3.7 is methodologically justified since an examination of the transcripts as well as the reports of the assistants in the sessions showed that the majority of ambivalent reactions evinced approval “at a price.” Men’s participation, however, is significantly higher than women’s (39% versus 28%), and the negative attitude among women is a little bit higher than among men. Participation frequency among students: 37%; high school graduates: 39%; junior high: 42%; university graduates: 47%. In general we refrained from interpreting findings for statistical groups of fewer than 100 participants. These groups make such small subgroups for classification that their significance is even more problematic than with larger subgroups of our “population.” It is still interesting that something like a correlation between degree of education and attitude toward the Germans in also reflected in these smallest groups. Participation of women = 33%; of men = 28%. The only other topic in which women participate remarkably more often than men is the topic of Jews (26% versus 21%). The construction of models of such attitude-types and their confrontation with profiles gained from statistical material was started. However, it was not complete at the time this report was finished. See the Afterword. See Figure 3.19. The narrowly limited validity of the underlying data made more complicated presentation methods seem inadequate. This average is based on the classification of the profiles of the demographic groups and must not be confused with the average of the attitude toward the topics.

Notes to Pages 89–98

p 193

29. Students, for example, were also included in men or women, their age and educational groups, and according to their military service. 30. The attitude toward the East was not considered for the construction of the index because the high average of the positive attitude tends to blur the differences among the other topics. See the difference in average with the East and without the East on Figure 3.19. 31. The numbers added in brackets display the index. It goes without saying that these numbers can indicate only the approximate relative position in the respective order of all groups, and that they serve as a rough illustration at best. The second number for each group is the combined index of the “test topics.” Based on the idea that four of our seven topics are particularly characteristic for the speakers’ attitude toward democratic values, we constructed an additional measure. It is based on the sum of percentage deviation of the frequency of each group’s attitudes toward the topics of complicity, Jews, the West, and democracy from the general attitude toward the same four topics. Introducing this additional index changes the status of the statistical groups. These changes, however, generally alter the picture only a little. An exception is the occupational group of unskilled workers, which ranks thirteenth according to the index including six topics and advances to the eighth position in the ranking according to the test topics. The pro-Jewish attitude was classified as ambivalent in the computation of the indices. Classifying it as positive together with the non-anti-Semitic attitude changes the status of the groups only marginally. For the indices including all topics, the change amounts to one point each for four groups, while the other sixteen groups maintain their status. For the indices comprising the test topics, the status similarly does not change in twelve cases; it changes by one point each for six groups and by two points each for two groups. 32. This does not imply a high degree of ambivalence but that the frequencies of positive and negative statements roughly balance each other. 33. The graphical profiles are obtained by registering the frequency of speakers of the respective group for each topic in percentages and comparing them with the average attitude of all speakers. Each table, furthermore, displays the participation in the discussion of the group as well as its deviation from the participation of all groups. 34. Frequency of positive remarks below average for the West (−22%), complicity (−20%). 35. According to the index for the test questions, they rank 13. 36. See also Table 1 and Chapter II [These are not included in this translation—Eds.] 37. For the positive attitude: the West −33%, the East −10%; for the negative attitude: Jews +16%. 38. For this topic, the average frequency of ambivalence is so high (68%) that considerable deviations upward are hard to imagine. 39. Among the age group 50 years and older, all these influences are presumably modified by the experience of the First World War and the years of peace preceding it. See Chapter II [Not included in this translation.—Eds.]. 40. Jews (+29%).

Notes to Pages 100–119

p 194

41. We are using this abbreviated group label instead of the inconvenient “participants with high school diploma but without university education.” 42. “University graduates” (speakers with university education) are ranked in second place in regard to the frequency of ambivalent attitudes, immediately following adolescents up to 20 years. 43. In contrast to their silence toward the topic of Jews, the university graduates participate between 14% and 57% more often in the discussion concerning all other topics than the average of all groups. 44. The index for the test topics is +125 and takes the fifth position in this rank. 45. The combined index of the farmers is -477; the next highest negative index for the four test topics is -284 (university graduates). 46. Even though we do not discuss the attitude toward the East in the analysis of the profiles due to reasons mentioned above, we wish to at least point out that a friendly attitude toward the East is three times as high among the farmers’ group as among the average of all groups.

4. Integration Phenomena in Group Discussions 1. See A. H. Barton and P. F. Lazarsfeld: Some Functions of Qualitative Analysis in Social Research, in: Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie, vol. 1 2. See F. Oppenheimer: System der Soziologie, vol. 1: Allgemeine Soziologie, vol 2: Der soziale Prozeß, Jena 1923, p.  462; T. Geiger: Sociologi, Copenhagen 1939, p. 76; E. S. Bogardus: Sociology, New York 1945, p. 8. 3. See W. Sombart: Grundformen menschlichen Zusammenlebens, in: Handwörterbuch der Soziologie, Stuttgart 1931, pp. 221ff.; A. Vierkandt: Gruppe, in: Handwörterbuch der Soziologie, Stuttgart 1931, pp. 239ff.; L. v. Wiese: System der Allgemeinen Soziologie, Munich and Leipzig 1933, pp. 384ff. 4. A. Vierkandt’s theory of groups can be found in his “Gesellschaftslehre,” 2nd edition, Stuttgart 1928, pp. 320ff., as well as more concentrated in: Archiv für angewandte Soziologie, Jg. 1, Heft 1, Juli 1928, pp. 1ff., and in the article on groups cited above in the Handwörterbuch der Soziologie. 5. H. Spencer: The Principles of Sociology, 3rd edition, London 1885, vol I, pp.  435ff.; T. Geiger: Sociologi, pp.  193f. and 291; L. v. Wiese: System der Allgemeinen Soziologie, pp. 157 and 316. 6. See R. M. MacIver and C. H. Page: Society, New York 1950, p. 228. 7. See T. Geiger: Sociologi, p. 291. 8. See F. H. Giddings: The Principles of Sociology, London 1896, pp. 134ff. 9. See MacIver and C. H. Page: Society, p. 228. 10. See E. Durkheim: Suicide: A Study in Sociology, trans. by Spaulding and Simpson, Glencoe, Ill. (Free Press) 1951, 2nd book, Chapters II and III. 11. Integrating is used in the sense of integration throughout this work. 12. See W. McDougall: The Group Mind, Cambridge, Mass., 1921, p. 88. 13. See S. E. Asch: Effects of Group Pressure Upon the Modification and Distortion of Judgments, in: H. Guetzkow: Groups, Leadership and Men, Pittsburgh 1951, p. 188. 14. See G. Simmel: Soziologie, 3rd edition, Munich and Leipzig 1922, p. 132.

Notes to Pages 119–138

p 195

15. See A. Vierkandt: Gesellschaftslehre, p. 238. 16. Such contradictory behavior was coded as ambivalent attitude. The problem arises here of whether it would not be advisable to distinguish between ambivalence under the pressure of group opinion and an unstable attitude without specific external influence. 17. See L. Festinger: Informal Communications in Small Groups, in: H. Guetzkow: Groups, Leadership and Men, p. 41. 18. See G.  C. Homans: The Human Group, New York 1950, p.  459; and E. Fromm: Escape from Freedom, New York, 1941, p. 19. 19. W. Trotter: Instinct of the Herd in Peace and War, London 1916. 20. See S. Freud: Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse, in: Gesammelte Werke, Bd. XIII, London 1947, pp. 132ff.; S. Freud, Group Psychology, in: Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. by J. Strachey, London (Hogarth Press) 1955, vol. XVIII, p. 120. 21. See G. C. Homans: The Human Group, p. 177. 22. We distinguish this actual conformity from a phenomenon formally similar to it that occasionally appeared during the first phase of the discussion. It has a completely different character from the consensus reached only in the integration phase, since it regularly refers to only those topics which, from the outset, are uncontroversial in the respective group. We could talk of “pseudoconformity,” because it allows space for the greatest differences in opinion within the group and, thus, must by no means be regarded as a symptom for the last stage of group integration. 23. See T. W. Adorno: Guilt and Defense, Cambridge, Mass. (Harvard University Press) 2010, p. 122. 24. S. Freud: Massenpsychologie, pp. 115ff. (pp. 105ff in the English edition). 25. Ibid., pp. 118 (p. 108 in the English edition). 26. Ibid. 27. A. Vierkandt: Gesellschaftslehre, p. 238 28. See Chapter 1. 29. We have to distinguish this usage from the cases where “we” stands for the group. See above, section on “Conformity,” p. 123–128. 30. See Chapter 3. 31. See L. Festinger, S. Schachter, and K. Back: Social Pressure in Informal Groups, New York 1950, pp. 164f. 32. See D. G. Marquis, H. Guetzkow, and R. R. Heyns: A Psychological Study of the Decision-Making Conference, in: Guetzkow: Groups, Leadership and Men, p. 60. 33. See E. Fromm: Escape from Freedom, New York, 1941. 34. See the interpretation of the group discussion with former General Staff Officers, unpublished manuscript in the archive of the Institute. 35. K. Young: Social Psychology, 2nd edition, New York 1944, p.  547. On the problem of the notion of “social control,” see the chapter Social Control by G.  Gurvitch in: Twentieth Century Sociology, edited by G. Gurvitch, New York 1945, pp. 267ff. 36. See K. Lewin: Field Theory in Social Science, New York 1951, p. 272. 37. See G. Simmel: Soziologie, pp. 473f.

Notes to Pages 138–164

p 196

38. See S. Freud: Massenpsychologie, p. 110 (p. 100 in the English edition). 39. The term out-group should be understood sociopsychologically, it is felt as an object of contra-identification as opposed to the in-group to whom one is attached through identification. See T.  W. Adorno, E. Frenkel-Brunswik, D.  J. Levinson, and R. N. Sanford: The Authoritarian Personality, vol. III, Studies in Prejudice, edited by M. Horkheimer and S. Flowerman, New York 1950, p. 104. 40. Ibid., pp. 609f. 41. See S. Freud: Massenpsychologie, p. 111 (pp. 101f. in the English edition). 42. See S. E. Asch: Effects of Group Pressure, pp. 177f. 43. See Festinger, Schachter, and Back: Social Pressure in Informal Groups, p. 176 and p. 531. Yet silence can also mean approval. 44. See K. Lewin: Resolving Social Conflicts, New York: Harper & Row, 1948, pp. 51–52. 45. See A. Vierkandt: Gesellschaftslehre, p. 238.

Afterword 1. See T. W. Adorno: Guilt and Defense, Cambridge, Mass. (Harvard University Press) 2010. 2. Nietzsche developed a psychological explanation for this form of reaction of “anaesthetiz[ing] pain through feeling”: “generally this is sought, quite wrongly it seems to me, in the defensive counter-strike, a merely reactive protective measure, a ‘reflex movement’ in the case of any kind of sudden injury and danger, like the way in which a frog still seeks to escape a corrosive acid once decapitated. But the difference is fundamental here: in one instance, the desire is to prevent further injury, in the other, to anaesthetize by means of any more intense emotion a secret pain and torment which is becoming unbearable, and so to exclude it from consciousness for a moment at least. And for this purpose a feeling is required, the most intense feeling possible, and, in order to stimulate it, the first pretext which happens along. ‘Someone must be to blame for the fact that I do not feel well’—” From F. Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morals. A Polemic, trans. by D. Smith, Oxford (Oxford University Press) 1996, pp. 105f. 3. See Handwörterbuch der Sozialwissenschaften, Tübingen 1954, Empirische Sozialforschung, Kontrolliertes Experiment, p. 424. 4. See Chapter 4. 5. See T. W. Adorno: Guilt and Defense.

Appendices A & B 1. Theoretically available speaking time = Duration of the discussion/Size of group. 2. See Aspekte der Sprache, vol. IV of the Manuscripts on the “Gruppenstudie” in the Institut für Sozialforschung, Frankfurt am Main. 3. See T. W. Adorno: Guilt and Defense, Cambridge, Mass. (Harvard University Press) 2010. 4. See Karl Kraus: Die letzten Tage der Menschheit, Zürich 1945, for example Act III, Scene 45, pp. 406f.

Notes to Pages 167–180

p 197

5. See Theodor Haecker: Tag- und Nachtbücher, München 1947, p. 126. 6. Ibid., pp. 109f. 7. This is only an apparent contradiction to what was said above about the phase of conformity, because in most of the cases the topic is already implied by the conformistic general attitude. 8. See T. W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, Frankfurt 1951, pp. 182f. Minima Moralia, trans. by E. F. N. Jephcott, London (Verso) 1974, p. 102.

Opinion Research and Publicness 1. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (trans. Thomas Burger), Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962.

Index

Abbott, Andrew, xxvi Ackerman, Bruce, xxvii, l Adenauer, Konrad, 63, 65 Administrative research, xv, 182 Adorno, Gretel, xxxix Age, attitude according to, 90, 96, 97, 98 Albig, William, 20n2, 21n3, 25n18, 28n24 Albrecht, Clemens, xxii, xliv Altemeyer, Bob, xxii Ambivalence, xxxi Anti-Semitism, xvii, xix, xxix, xxxi, xxxii, 39, 41, 44, 59, 61, 78, 79, 98, 103, 166 Apostolidis, Paul, xx Asch, Solomon E., 119n13, 140n42 Attitudes, 9, 19, 20, 23n10, 31, 32, 38, 44, 50, 73, 74, 89; instability of, 28; of men, 95, 96; of women, 92–96 Austin, John Langshaw, xlix Authenticity, xxv, xxvi, xxxv, xlvi, xlvii, 3; of opinions, xxx, xlv Authoritarianism, xxii, 44, 47 Back, Kurt W., 133n31, 140n43 Bales, Robert, xvi, xxxiii, 10n2, 48, 48n51 Barton, Allen. H., 49n54 Basic stimulus, 12, 44, 45, 58, 134, 141, 144, 151, 177

Bauer, Wilhelm, 24n14 Behrmann, Günter C., xxii, xliv Benjamin, Walter, xviii, xxi Berelson, Bernard, xxiv, 12n6 Bergmann, Werner, xxxv Bock, Michael, xxii, xliv Bogardus, Emory S., 110n2 Böhm, Franz, xxiv, xxv, xlvi, 1, 148 Bolshevism, 170, 171, 174 Bourdieu, Pierre, xxvii, xxxvi, xlviii Brecht, Bertolt, xviii Cantril, Hadley, xxiv, 20n2 Child, Harwood L., 26 Claussen, Detlev, xvii Coding scheme, xxxi, 65 Colburn letter, xxviii, xxx, xxxv, xxxvi, xli, 33, 39, 45, 60, 61, 62, 114, 139, 177 Communists, xxi, 121, 154 Complicity (Mitschuld), 76, 77, 97, 104. See also Guilt Comte, Auguste, 49 Conformity, 123, 123n22, 124, 127, 130, 145 Converse, Jean M., xxvi, xlviii Corruption, 67, 68, 116 Coser, Lewis A., xviii

Index Dahrendorf, Ralf, xxxix, xliii Democracy, xxi–xxiii, xxvii, xxx, xxxi, xlix, 1, 15, 44, 67, 115, 116, 117, 121, 151,153, 163, 165, 172, 180; attitudes towards, 59, 74, 75, 92, 97, 153; ideal of, 68, 89, 104; mistrust against, 153; potential of, xxvii, 19, 20 Denazification, 60, 61 de Saussure, Ferdinand, xxvii Displaced persons (DPs), 42, 42n43, 59, 61 Doob, Leonard, xxiv, 21n3, 24n13 Durkheim, Emile, xxvii, xlv, xlvi, 25, 112n10, 119 East, 151, 165; accord between West and, 129; attitudes toward, 81, 82, 97, 106; differences between West and, 68, 167 Education, attitude according to, 90, 93, 99, 100, 102, 106 Elections, xxiv, 3, 66, 179 Eliasoph, Nina, xlvii, l Emotions, 28, 29, 72 Empirical social science, xix, xxix, 10, 11, 21, 27, 30, 49; American-style, xix, xxii; experimental methods in, 2, 5, 6, 150, 157; methods of, xxvii, 10 England, 59, 62 Erickson, Robert S., xlviii, l Espeland, Wendy Nelson, xlix Ethnocentrism, 40, 41n42, 72, 86, 87, 88 Familiarity, 120, 130 Federal Republic of Germany, xxiii, xxxvi, xliv, 9, 36, 36n36, 43, 61, 63, 65, 141, 153 Festinger, Leon, 122n17, 133n31, 140n43 Fields, Karen E., xxiv Fischer, Claude S., xxi Fishkin, James S., xxvii, l Fiske, Marjorie, xxv, xxviii Floweman, Samuel H., 12n5 Focus groups, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxviii, xxx, xxxiii, xxxiv, xlvii Foucault, Michel, xxvii, xlv, xlvi France, 59, 61 Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, xxxv Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, xxxviii, 1, 9, 10, 15, 24, 30, 31, 148 Fraser, Nancy, xlv Frenkel-Brunswik, Else, 12n5, 40n40 Freud, Sigmund, xli, 12, 28n25, 35n34, 49, 122, 124, 124n24, 125, 126, 138, 138n38, 152 Fromm, Erich, xviii, 135n33

p 200 Gallup, George, xxx, 27 Gamson, William A., xlvii Geiger, Theodor, 110n2, 111n5, 112n7 Gender, attitude according to, 90 Germany, xvii, xviii, xxii–xxv, xxvii, xxxii, xxxvi, xxxviii, xxxix, xlii, xliii, 4, 15, 34, 40, 43–47, 61, 62, 72, 86, 115, 118, 122, 131, 134, 136, 139, 143, 152, 153, 166, 164, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 177, 178, 179; cultural superiority of, 41, 42; custom (deutsches Brachtum), xxxv; differences with America, 29n28; East, 140; Nationalism, 59; over-burdened (überhitzt), 132; rearmament, 83; social science in, xxix, xliv, 10, 20 Giddings, Franklin Henry, 112n8 Ginsberg, Benjamin, xxvii, xlix Gitlin, Todd, xx Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 2 Greenberg, Stanley B., l Group discussions, 10, 15, 33, 34, 37, 52 Group dynamics, 10n2, 48, 50, 53, 133 Guetzkow, Harold, 122n17, 133n32 Guilt, xxxi, 1, 39, 43, 45, 47, 61, 76, 123, 164; attitudes towards, 76, 77; complex, 23. See also Complicity (Mitschuld) Habermas, Jürgen, xxxix, xl, xliii, xlv, l, 181 Haecker, Theodor, 167n5 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 13 Held, David, xvii, xxxviii Herbst, Susan, xxi Herzog, Hertha, xxxix Heyns, Roger, 133n32 High Commissioner for Germany (HICOG), U.S., xxii, xxvii, 41n41 Hitler, Adolf, 41, 44, 67, 114, 173, 174, 177, 178; regime, 20; speeches of, 173; Youth, 126, 142 Hofstätter, Peter, xxxv, xxxvi, xlii, xliii, xliv, xlvii, xlix, 29, 29n26 Hollitscher, Walter, 29n27 Homann, Harald, xxii, xliv Homans, George C, 122n21 Horkheimer, Max, xv, xvi, xvii, xviii, xx, xxi, xxii, xxiii, xxviii, xxxvii, xxxviii, xl, xli, 12n5, 13n7, 22n5, 23n8 Hullot-Kentor, Robert, xxi, xxxix, xli, xlii, xlix Igo, Sarah E., xxv, xxx, xlviii, xlix Inkeles, Alex, xxx, xxxvi

Index Institut für Sozialforschung (IFS). See Frankfurt Institute for Social Research Jacobs, Lawrence, xlviii Jäger, Lorenz, xxiii, xxxviii, xxxix Jahoda, Marie, xxii, xxxii Janowitz, Morris, xvi, xxiv Jarkko, Lars, 179 Jay, Martin, xxii, xxxii, xxxviii, xlii Jenemann, David, xvi, xvii, xix, xxii Jepperson, Ronald L., xxvi, xxx, xxxvi, xlix Jews, xxvii, xxxi, xxxii, 13, 42, 43, 79, 97, 98, 108, 139, 165, 166, 171, 178; attitudes towards, 77, 78, 100, 101; problem, 165–166; question, 1 Karplus, Margarete, xxxix Katz, Elihu, xix, xx Kellner, Douglas, xlii Kendall, Patricia L., xxv, xxviii Klinenberg, Eric, xxi Köhne, Rainer, xxxiv, 161 Kohut, Andrew, xlviii König, René, xxii, xliv, 28n23, 161 Korean War, 47, 60, 61, 62, 121, 178 Kracauer, Siegfried, xviii Kraus, Karl, 164n4 Lamont, Michèle, xxxvi Language, xxvii, xxxiv, 161, 166, 174; brittleness of, 51; and speech, 174 Lasswell, Harold, xxiv Latour, Bruno, xxvii, xxxiv, xlv, xlix Lazarsfeld, Paul, xv, xvi, xix, xx, xxiv, xxxix, 23n11, 27n22, 49, 49n54, 50n56 Le Bon, Gustave, 12 Leib, Ethan J., l Levinson, Daniel J., 12n5, 40n40 Lewin, Kurt, xxiv, 11n3, 138n36, 141, 141n44 Lezaun, Javier, xxxiv, xlvii Lichterman, Paul, xlvii, l Lippit, R., 48n50 Lippmann, Walter, xxiv, 21n7 Löwenthal, Leo, xv, xviii Lukács, Georg, xviii Lynching, 13, 42, 43, 178 Lynd, Robert, xvi MacIver, Robert M., 111n6, 112n9 MacKenzie, Donald, xlix MacKinnon, William Alexander, 23n12 MacKuen, Michael, xlviii, l

p 201 Marcuse, Herbert, xv, xviii, xli Marquis, Donald G., 133n32 Marres, Noortje, xxxiv, xlv Martin, John Levi, xxii Massification, xxi Mass society, xvii, 169 Maus, Köhne and Heinz, xxxix McDougall, William, 12, 119n12 McFarland, Katherine, xxxiv Mendelberg, Tali, xxxiv Merritt, Anna J. and Richard L., xxix Merton, Robert K., xxv, xxviii, xlvi Military service, attitude according to term of, 91, 93 Morgan, David L., xxviii Morgenthau Jr., Henry, 121 Morgenthau Plan, 121 Mutz, Diana C., xxxiv Nagel, Ivan, xxxix National Socialism, xxiii, xxix, xxxiv, xxxv, xxxvii, 41–43, 46, 59, 63, 96, 97, 116, 126, 163, 164, 170, 172, 173, 175, 177 Neumann, Franz, xxxviii Newcomb, Theodore Mead, 70n5 Newport, Frank, xxx, xlviii Nietzsche, Friedrich, xxxviii Noelle-Neumann, Elizabeth, xxix, 20n2 Non-public opinion, xxiv, xlvi, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 148, 149 Occupation, attitudes according to, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106. See also Profession, attitude according to Oehler, Christoph, xl Olick, Jeffrey K., xxii, xxiii, xlii, xliv Opinion, xlvii, 2, 9, 13, 19, 20, 21, 23n10, 31, 32, 53, 69; act of holding, 21; and attitude, 23n8; collective nature of, 33; contradictory tendencies in, 29; formation, 12; instability of, 28; polling, xxviii–xxx, xxxiii, xlv, xlviii, 21; public, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, xxxiii, xxxiv, xlv, xlix, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 31, 32, 108, 180, 181, 183; public, concept of, 21; research, xxiii–xxvi, xxx, xxxiv, xxxvi, xl, xlv, xlvii, xlviii, l, li, 10, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 30, 37, 179, 182, 183; surveys, xxiii Oppenheimer, Franz, 110n2 Osborne, Thomas, xlix Page, Benjamin, xlix, l Page, Charles H., 111n6

Index Paley, Julia, xxvii, xlix Parten, Mildred, 21n3, 27n20, 28n24 Perrin, Andrew J., xxi, xxii, xxvi, xxviii, xxxi, xxxiv–xxxvi, xlii, xlvii, xlix, 179 Piazza, Thomas, l Pickford, Henry W., xx Plato, 13 Plessner, Helmuth, xxxix Plessner, Monika, xxxix Polling. See Opinion: polling Pollock, Friedich, xviii, xxii, xxiv, xxviii Princeton Radio Research Project, xv, xvi Profession, attitude according to, 91, 93, 102 Publicness, xl, xlvii, 179, 180, 181 Public opinion. See Opinion: public Radio, xxi, xxiv, 3, 7 Rae, Saul Forbes, xxx Refugees, 132, 139, 167 Remilitarization, attitudes towards, 60, 61, 83, 84, 85, 86, 97, 102, 104, 119 Rice, Stuart A., 19n1 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 128 Rose, Nikolas, xlix Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 24n15 Russian occupation, 59 Russians, 6, 34, 46, 59, 66, 72, 106, 118, 121, 122, 162, 171, 178 Sanford, R. Nevitt, 12n5, 40n40 Sasson, Theodore, xlvii Sauder, Michael, xlix Sawyer, R. Keith, xxxiv Schachter, Stanley, 133n31, 140n43 Schiller, Friedrich, 3n1 Schmid, Calvin F., 30n29 Schudson, Michael, xxviii Schweppenhäuser, Gerhard, xviii, xxxix Schweppenhäuser, Hermann, xxxiv, 161 Science, 4, 14, 26, 31 Sell, Hans Joachim, xxxix Shapiro, Robert, xlviii, xlix, l Silent participants, xxix, 150, 157; partly, 157, 158, 159; totally, 157 Simmel, Georg, 119n14, 138, 152 Skocpol, Theda, l Smith, David Horton, xxx, xxxvi Sniderman, Paul M., l Social control, 109, 136, 137

p 202 Social science, xxii, xxiii, xxv, xxx, xlii, 13, 19, 20; American, xxiii, xxviii, xxix, xxxii, xxxvii, xlvi, 10, 154; methods, xxx. See also Sociology Sociology, 11, 19, 20, 49, 155; in postwar Germany, 10 Sombart, Werner, 110n3 Spencer, Herbert, 111n5, 112 Stanton, Frank N., xix Steigert, Nikolaus, xxxix Stendenbach, Franz Josef, xxxviii, xliv Stereotypes, 22, 62, 64, 65 Stern, Frank, xxix Stimson, James A., xlviii, l Sunstein, Cass R., xxxiv, l Surveys, xxvi, xxvii, xliv, 1, 27, 30, 32, 37; method, 26, 31, 32, 43 Swidler, Ann, xxv, xxxvi, xlix Templer, William, xxix Tenbruck, Friedrich H., xxii, xliv Thévenot, Laurent, xxxvi Thomas, Martin Luther, xx, xl Tiedemann, Rolf, xx Tilly, Charles, xxv Tönnies, Ferdinand, 24, 25n16, 25n17 Totality, xv, xvi, xvii, xxix, 11, 24, 154, 171 Totally socialized people (vergesellschaftete Leute), 20 Totally socialized society (vergesellschaftete Gesellschaft), xviii, xix, xxi, xxx, xxxiii, xxxiv, xli, xlii, xlv, xlvi, xlviii, 23 Trombadori, Duccio, xlvi Trotter, William, 122 Truman, Harry, 46 United States, xvi, xviii, xix, xxii, xxvii, xxviii, xxxviii, 59, 61. Vergesellschaftete Gesellschaft. See Totally socialized society (vergesellschaftete Gesellschaft) Vierkandt, Alfred, 110, 110n3, 119n15, 127, 127n27, 144n45 Volksgemeinschaft, xv, 169, 172 von Friedeburg, Ludwig, xxxix, xl von Haselberg, Peter, xxxix Warner, Michael, xlv, xlix Weber, Max, 11, 12, 49, 182 Weil, Felix, xviii West, the, xxii, xxxi, 98; attitudes toward, 80, 81, 97, 102, 103

Index Wheatland, Thomas, xix Wiebe, Gerhart D., 23n9 Wiese, Leopold von, 110n3, 111n5 Wiggershaus, Rolf, xviii, xxiii, xxxviii, xl Witkin, Robert W., xxi Wolff, Kurt, xxviii, xxxix, 154 World War I, 46, 163

p 203 Young, Iris Marion, xlv Young, Kimball, 136n35 Young, Pauline V., 20n2, 27n20, 31n30 Zaller, John, xlix, l Zeisel, Hans, 58n1