Marie Jahoda

Marie Jahoda (26 January 1907 in Vienna – 28 April 2001 in Sussex) was an Austrian-British social psychologist.

Jahoda was born in Vienna to a Jewish merchant's family, and like many other psychologists of her time, grew up in Austria where political oppression against socialists was rampant henceforward Dollfuß claimed power. Starting in her adolescent years she became engaged in the Austrian Social Democratic Party in ″Red Vienna.″ This was a major influence on her life. Nowadays she is (among many others) considered as Grande Dame of European socialism. In 1928 she earned her teaching diploma from the Pedagogical Academy of Vienna, and in 1933 earned her Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology from the University of Vienna. Together with her husband Paul Lazarsfeld and Hans Zeisel, she wrote a now-classic study of the social impact of unemployment on a small community: Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal (1932; English ed. 1971 – Marienthal: the sociography of an unemployed community – paperback by Transaction Publishers in USA, 2002). Marienthal was an industrial district that suffered very high levels of unemployment in the 1920s, and the research team examined the (often devastating) psychological consequences. These went beyond the obvious hardships associated with financial deprivation, and Jahoda concluded that in modern industrial societies work provides important social benefits, including a sense of personal worth, connection with wider social objectives, and a time structure to their days and weeks.

In 1934, Jahoda divorced Lazarsfeld since he had started a relationship with Herta Herzog in 1932. In 1936, she was imprisoned by the dictatoral regime of Kurt Schuschnigg for her underground work for the socialists. In 1937, after some foreign appeals to release her, she could leave prison on the condition to leave the country immediately. Her Austrian citizenship was revoked. Jahoda went to England staying there during World War II. In 1945 she arrived in the United States. During her time there, she worked as a professor of social psychology at the New York University and a researcher for the American Jewish Committee and Columbia University. She contributed significantly to the analysis of the Studies on Prejudice and was co-editor of the third volume of these studies called Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder: a Psychological Interpretation, which was published in 1950. Between 1958 and 1965, at what is now Brunel University, she was involved in establishing Psychology degree programmes including the unique four-year, "thin-sandwich" degree. Jahoda founded the Research Center of Human Relations, and was recruited by the University of Sussex in 1965, where she became Professor of Social Psychology. Later at Sussex University she became consultant, and then Visiting Professor, at the Science Policy Research Unit. In 1968 she was member of Social Science Research Council (UK).

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