Michael Argyle (psychologist)

Michael Argyle (11 August 1925, Nottingham – 6 September 2002) was one of the best known English Social Psychologists of the twentieth century. He spent most of his career at the University of Oxford, and worked on numerous topics. Throughout his career, he showed strong preferences for experimental methods in social psychology, having little time for alternative approaches such as discourse analysis.

Michael Argyle was born on 11 August 1925. He was educated at Nottingham High School for Boys. After completing with distinction a Royal Air Force science course at the University of Cambridge he trained as a navigator in Canada (1943-7). After the war he read part one in moral sciences at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and in 1950 graduated with first class honours in experimental psychology. Following two years of postgraduate study in Cambridge he became the first ever lecturer in social psychology at the University of Oxford, where he worked for many years. At the time, Oxford University was, along with the London School of Economics, one of only two universities in the United Kingdom to have a department of social psychology. He became a fellow of the newly founded Wolfson College, Oxford, in 1966 and three years later a reader. He was one of the very early pioneers of social psychology in the UK and Europe and helped to initiate the British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology as the first social psychology editor (1961-7). In 1968 he set up a social skills training programme at Littlemore Hospital, Oxford. He chaired the social psychology section of the British Psychological Society twice (1964-7, 1972-4). Distinguished psychologists and sociologists from all over the world visited the research group he set up at Oxford. He received honorary doctorates from the universities of Oxford (1979), Adelaide and Brussels (1982) and an honorary fellowship by the British Psychological Society (1992). In 1990 The International Society of the Study of Personal Relationships in 1990 gave him a distinguished career contribution award.

After his retirement, he became Professor Emeritus at Oxford Brookes University, regularly attended social psychology conferences, and had a great passion for Scottish country dancing.

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