MAIL STUDIES
Unless otherwise noted, all biographies were written by Peter Simonson and Lauren Archer.
MARIE JAHODA (1907-2001) was a pioneering and successful social psychologist lauded for her “socially concerned, empirically competent, responsible, and psychoanalytically enriched psychology brought to bear on the important issues of freedom, justice, and equality in the contemporary world” (according to the American Psychological Association, giving her one of many awards she received over the course of her career). Among her many books and articles, she conducted propaganda and communications research for a time in the years after World War II. She was born in Vienna to a cultured family of agnostic Jews, and attended the University of Vienna, where she met her first husband,
Paul Lazarsfeld, whom she married in 1927. Together with Hans Zeisel, the two collaborated on
The Unemployed Persons of Marienthal (1933), an important study that would launch Lazarsfeld’s career in the U.S., after he and Jahoda were divorced in 1934. In 1937 she was arrested and held for nine months because of socialist ties. She was finally released on the condition that she leave the country and was exiled to the UK from 1937 – 1945. After World War II Jahoda established a new career in New York and became one of the best known social psychologist in the US. She worked with the American Jewish Committee to reduce prejudice through persuasive communication and identified the “authoritarian personality” as predisposed to prejudice. From 1949-1958 she worked as a professor of social psychology at New York University. In 1953, Jahoda, was elected the first female president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (the second wouldn’t be elected till 1971). She returned to Great Britain in 1958 to marry Austen Albu, a member of Parliament representing the Labor Party. She taught at Brunel College, where she played a key role in establishing a social science education program; in 1965 she moved to Sussex University and there founded the first university department of social psychology. She retired in 1972 and joined the Scientific Research Policy Unit (SPRU) as a research fellow. During that time she authored several books on various topics including futurism, Freud and unemployment. Her research reflected her interest in issues of employment and unemployment, race relations, prejudice and authoritarian personality, Freud and psychoanalysis, as well as nationalism.
Select Publications:
Jahoda, Marie, and E. Cooper. 1947. The evasion of propaganda: How prejudiced people respond to anti-prejudiced propaganda.
Journal of Psychology 23: 15-25.
Ackerman, N.W., and Marie Jahoda Harper. 1950.
Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation. New York: Harper & Bros.
Jahoda, Maries, Morton Deutsch, and Stuart W. Cook. 1951.
Research Methods in Social Relations. New York: Holt.
Merton, Robert K., Patricia Salter West, Marie Jahoda, and Hanan C Selvin, Eds. 1951. Social Policy and Social Research in Housing.
Special Issues of Journal of Social Issues 7(1-2).
Christie, Richard and Marie Jahoda, Eds. 1954.
Studies in the Scope and Methods of the Authoritarian Personality. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.
Jahoda, Marie, Paul Lazarsfeld, and Hans Ziesel. 1933.
Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal. Published in English as
Marienthal: The Sociography of an Unemployed Community. Chicago: Aldine Atherton, 1971.
Jahoda, Marie. 1979. The impact of unemployment in the 1930s and 1970s.
Bulletin of the British Psychological Society.
Jahoda, Marie. 1979.
Current Concepts of Positive Mental Health. North Statford, NH: Ayer Company Publishers.
Jahoda, Marie. 1981. Work, employment, and unemployment: Values, theories, and approaches in Social Research.
American Psychologist 36(2): 184-191.
Jahoda, Marie. 1982.
Employment and unemployment: A social-psychological analysis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Jahoda, Marie. 1988. Economic Recession and mental health: Some conceptual issues.
Journal of Social Issues 44(4): 13-23.
Further Resources:
Cook, Stuart W. Marie Jahoda, pp. 207-19 in Agnes N. O’Connell and Nancy R. Russo, eds.,
Women in Psychology: A Bio-Bibliographic Sourcebook. New York: Greenwood.
Klein, Lisl. 2001. Professor Marie Jahoda.
The Independent (8 May).
Unger, Rhoda. 2001. Marie Jahoda (1907-2001).
American Psychologist 56(11): 1040-1041
Unger, Rhoda. 2009.
Marie Jahoda.
Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encylopedia. 1 March. Jewish Women’s Archives.