William McDougall (psychologist)

William McDougall
William McDougall
Born	22 June 1871 Chadderton, Lancashire, England, United Kingdom
Died	28 November 1938 (1938-11-29) (aged 67) Durham, North Carolina, U.S.
Nationality	British
Fields	Psychology
Doctoral advisor	W. H. R. Rivers
Influences	Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Carl Jung
Influenced	Thorstein Veblen,Konrad Lorenz, Cyril Burt

William McDougall FRS (/məkˈduːɡəl/; 22 June 1871 – 28 November 1938) was an early 20th century psychologist who spent the first part of his career in the United Kingdom and the latter part in the United States. He wrote a number of highly influential textbooks, and was particularly important in the development of the theory of instinct and of social psychology in the English-speaking world. He was an opponent of behaviourism and stands somewhat outside the mainstream of the development of Anglo-American psychological thought in the first half of the 20th century; but his work was very well known and respected among lay people.

McDougall was educated at Owens College, Manchester and St John's College, Cambridge. He also studied medicine and physiology in London and Göttingen. After teaching at University College London and Oxford, he was recruited to occupy the William James chair of psychology at Harvard University in 1920, where he served as a professor of psychology from 1920 to 1927. He then moved to Duke University, where he established the Parapsychology Laboratory under J. B. Rhine, and where he remained until his death. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society. Among his students were Cyril Burt, May Smith, William Brown, and J. C. Flügel.