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ANGUS CAMPBELL August 10, 1910-December 15, 1980 BY CLYDE H. COOMBS AN G U S C A M P B E ~ ~ was christened Albert Angus Camp- bell in Leiters, Indiana, and his first publications ap- peared under that name. In ~ 946, at age thirty-six, his twelfth publication appeared (with George Katona as coauthor) under the name Angus Campbell and that is what he was known as ever after. He once remarked that he felt he was nobody until he became just Angus Campbell. He was the fifth of six children born to Albert Alexis Campbell and his wife, Orpha Brumbaugh. His father, the son of a farmer, went to high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and then on to the Universitv of Michigan, where he gradu . · . By_ · ~1 , ~ ated In IVY / with a Degree in Latin and Greek. He returned to Indiana to become a teacher, principal, and finally super- intendent of schools in Peru, Indiana. Angus's father haul grown up in a strict Scottish Presbyterian atmosphere. It is saicl, perhaps apocryphally, that Angus's grandfather and great-uncle, returning trom church one Sunday in their horse-ctrawn cart, passed by a lovely lake; one enjoined the other not to look at it on the Sabbath. Such values do not . . . . dissipate In two generations. Angus was two years old when his father realizer! ten thousand dollars on an investment in a grain elevator. He moved the family to Portland, Oregon, bought a large house, 43
44 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS and became a school principal. Angus grew up in PortIancl and attended the University of Oregon, where he received the B.A. in 1931 and the M.A. in 1932, both in psychology. He then transferred to Stanford University, where Kurt Lewin was a visiting professor in the summer and fall of 1932. Angus attended Lewin's lectures and read some of his articles, as yet untransIatecI from the original German. He always felt that Lewin had exerted a major influence on his education as a psychologist. A personal friendship developecl that lasted throughout the remainder of Lewin's life. The other major influence during Angus's graduate stu- dent years was Ernest Hilgarcl, who came to the Psychology Department at Stanford in 1934 and established an experi- mental program in human conditioning ant] learning. Hil- garct served as a role mode} for Angus in research and teach- ing; Angus was his research assistant anct later an assistant in Hilgar(l's popular course in elementary psychology. Angus was Hilgard's first doctoral student, earning his clegree in 1936 with a thesis on eye-blink conditioning. There were two academic jobs available to him that year, one at Ohio State University ant] the other at Northwestern University; Angus accepted the position as instructor in psy- chology at Northwestern. He was promoter] to assistant pro- fessor in 1940. He went to Northwestern expecting to teach experimental psychology, but as Franklin Fearing tract just moved from Northwestern to UCLA, Angus was asked to teach Fearing's course in social psychology. In so doing, he came into contact with Melville Herskovits, a social anthro- pologist at Northwestern, and attended his courses and sem- inars. In a very short time this influence, along with his own experience teaching social psychology, completecl his transi- tion from an experimental to a social psychologist. It was the track he was to follow for the remainder of his career. At Herskovits' urging, Angus applied for and received a
ANGUS CAMPBELL 45 Social Science Research Council fellowship to study social an- thropology at Cambridge University during 1939 and 1940, but World War I} enclect his stay in England after half a year. He then moved the site of his work to the Virgin Islands, where he did field research among the black population on St. Thomas that resulted in a monograph examining the group's culture anti personality. This was his first experience with fielcI work anc! with research on race relations, both of which became major concerns of his professional life. Earlier, at Northwestern, he tract met Jean Winter, a student in psy- chology, and cluring his stay on St. Thomas they were mar- ried. Angus's intellectual transition from an experimental to a social psychologist fully matured when he left Northwestern to join Rensis Likert's Division of Program Surveys in the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. Likert had been asked by Henry Wallace, then Secretary of Agriculture, to form a research unit to provide information useful in pro- gram planning and policymaking. Likert had been developing the methodology of large- scale sample surveys for the Life Insurance Agency Manage- ment Association as a too! for scientific research, probing for attitudes, intentions, expectations, and trends that wouIcI re- flect dynamic aspects of a society anti not merely a static description. With the advent of WorIct War Il. the Division of Program Surveys' areas of research expanded, anc! so ctid the personnel. Angus joined Likert's group in 1942, and thus was formed a professional (and personal) relationship that was to endure for life. Other social scientists assemblecI by Likert who also be- came longtime research associates of Angus Campbell in- cludect Charles Cannell, Dorwin Cartwright, George Katona, Daniel Katz, anc! Leslie Kish, as well as others, like Theodore Newcomb, who were associated with particular projects.
46 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS This was a perioc! of rapid development in survey re- search methodology, especially in probability sampling, in- terview techniques, and questionnaire construction. For An- gus in particular, these clevelopments were parallelecI with experience in research administration, including the trans- lation of the needs of management and planners into well- structured, researchable problems followed by communica- tion and interpretation of the research findings to clients and the public. Two well-known studies undertaken by the Department of Agriculture Division 7 Program Surveys cluring this pe- rioct were the War Bond Redemption Study and the Bombing Survey. The first had to do with determining a suitable policy for War Bond redemption, based on projections of consumer attitudes after the cessation of hostilities. The second was a stucly of the effect of bombing raids on the attitudes anct behavior of civilians in Germany and Japan. This was a new kincI of social science. To preserve and develop it, the survey group wantect to move as a unit to an academic setting, continuing large-scale survey research use- ful to policymakers, managers, and operations planners. But the role and status of such research in an academic setting was not yet normalized, so an innovative arrangement with the University of Michigan was formulated in 1946. The Sur- vey Research Center was established: The University pro- vided housing, and some limited financial support baser] on teaching and academic services, ant! research program sup- port was obtained from outside grants and contracts, with overhead funds retained by the Survey Research Center. In 194S, after Kurt Lewin diecI, his group, then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, transferred to the University of Michigan as the Research Center for Group Dynamics. The two centers were joined to form the Institute for Social Research, with Rensis Likert as heat! and Angus .
A N G U S C A M P B E L L Campbell as assistant to Likert, as well as director of the Sur- vey Research Center. 47 For the remainder of his life Angus carried substantial administrative responsibility, but continued to be active in research. After Likert's retirement in 1970, Angus succeeded him as director of the Institute, a post he relinquishect in 1976 to return to research as a program (1irector in the Sur- vey Research Center. Throughout this long period many important studies were conducted. Beginning in ~ 94S, Angus colIaboratec! with Robert L. Kahn in a study of presidential voting intentions, reported in a small monograph, The People Elect a President (1952~. The election of 194X represented! a massive failure of pre-election polls to predict correctly the election of Presi- cl~ent Truman, a failure attributed to misguessing the actual vote of the late deciders. In contrast to the commercial polls, Campbell and Kahn refused to predict a victory for Dewey over Truman. They took this position in part because their data clip not support it, and in part because they continuccI to collect data up to the day of the election, the latter being one of the reasons they adhered to a policy of nonprediction in all their subsequent election studies. Following this initial election study, Angus establishect a research program for the continuing study of election behavior, collaborating with Ger- alcI Gurin and Warren Miller, and in later years with Miller, Philip E. Converse, and Donald E. Stokes. This program cle- veloped into the Center for Political Studies, another center within the Institute for Social Research. This program produced a series of books, among which The American Voter (1960, published in collaboration with Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes) is a landmark. It is based on national samples in the 1952 ancT 1956 elections, and smaller samples in 194X, 1954, and 1958. The purpose of this research was to examine the be
48 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS havior of the voter as an incliviclual and not to describe the electorate as a whole. Towarcl this encI, they introduced icleas of "icleological conceptualization" and of a "funnel of causality." The kinds of ideological conceptualization distinguished between persons in terms of the degree to which they used ideological concepts in making sense of political affairs. The . notion of a "funnel of causality" was a metaphor for the nar- rowing clown along a time axis from the more remote factors affecting a voter's decision, such as party identification anti social class, to the more immediate factors of specific attitudes and candidates. Although these concepts do not play a significant role in subsequent studies, they reflect a concern for explanatory theoretical abstractions of greater generality than the de- scriptive statistical relationships revealed in the data. The book was soon clescribec! as a classic, and it has had a seminal influence in political science. Angus was influential in estab- lishing the Interuniversity Consortium for Political Research, which is, among other things, an archive of social and polit- ical cIata. The continuing series of election studies has been clecIarecI by the National Science Foundation "a national re- source," the first such designation outside of the natural sci . . ences. lust a few years after The American Voter was published, another book by the same four authors, Elections and the Po- litical Order, appeared (19664. Of its fifteen chapters, thirteen are papers publishecI by them, separately or in collaboration with others, during the interval between 1960 and 1963. This collection reveals some of the cumulative potential in pro- grammatic research macle possible by the continuing series of election studies anct an archive of data. The chapters are organizer! into four parts, beginning with a focus on the individual voter ancT why he behaves as
ANGUS CAMPBELL 49 he cloes. The book progresses to elections as the units of analysis and collective (institutional) factors as explanatory variables. Party affiliation, political ideology, and two-party ant] multiparty systems are stuctiecI, using comparative ciata from France and Norway. Campbell's own contributions in- clucle an explanation for the puzzling regularity of the loss of seats su~erecI by the party in the White House in the o~- year elections, referrer! to as surge and decline, as well as a classification of presiclential elections. Campbell had revealed an early interest in racial prejudice in his field work on St. Thomas, published in 1943. In 1967, in response to a government request, he and Howard Schu man directed a large stucly of racial attitudes in fifteen cities in North America. This resulted in a brief report for the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders publishect by the Government Printing Office. The report was followed a few years later by a somewhat longer book entitled White Attitudes Towarc] Black People, bases] on a secondary analysis of the data, and including some ciata from the Survey Research Center's election studies of ~ 964, ~ 968, and ~ 970. Since then, the Institute for Social Research has been monitoring trencts In racial attituc;les by repeating parts of that study every two . years. By the 1970s his interests tract turned to social accounting more generally. He regardec! the Institute's continuing re- search studies on voting behavior, political institutions, and race relations as prototypes for the study of more general social trends. With the support of the Russell Sage Founcia- tion, he and Philip E. Converse edited a book entitled The Human Measurement of Social Change (1972~. The twelve con- tributions contained in this book are concerned with possible psychological components and indicators of social change, such as attitudes and aspirations. The essays ranged over a variety of areas, including time budgeting, leisure, and eco
50 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS nomic affairs. Angus's own contribution was on the relation of levels of aspiration and satisfaction to social change. The Russell Sage Foundation provided support for a na- tionwicle survey on the quality of American life, which re- sultecI in the 1976 book of that title by Campbell, Converse, ant! Willard L. Rodgers. Measuring the quality of life is prob- ably the granddadcly of all social psychological measurement problems and may be inherently impossible to achieve in the strict sense. On the other hand, there is an intuitively com- pelling reasonableness about the concept and a "need-to- know" that makes some social scientists and statisticians will- ing to brave the perils and to construct an index. In their book on the quality of American life, seventeen specific domains of life experience were investigated, such as marriage, health, job, savings, and the like. A weighted acl- clitive combination of an individual's ratings on those com- ponents was used to predict an individual's global rating of his or her sense of well-being. The book contains a wealth of data, but one of the more Interesting findings reported is that subjective feelings of sat- isfaction do not always mirror objective reality in simple ways. Subjective ratings of variables like satisfaction with housing, stanciarc! of living, ancT utility of education, for example, dicT not just steadily increase or steadily decrease in their relation to some objectively measured variables like income, age, ant! education. They offered two explanations for this failure of the subjective to mirror the objective in a monotonic manner: accommodation, that is, adaptation over time; and con- stricted horizons, a consequence of lack of education limiting the salience of alternative situations. Angus and his coauthors of Quality of American Life discuss problems of bias, interactions, individual clifferences, and other possible limitations on interpretation. They used the metaphor of "an exploration into unknown territory (to]
ANGUS CAMPBELL 51 provide benchmark data against which subsequent measure ments couIct be compared." This area of research human happiness became Campbell's research interest for the remainder of his life. In 1978 the National Science Foundation supported another study, and Angus summarized in nontechnical language the results of that study, along with material from four previous national surveys going back to 1957, in his last book, The Sense of Well-Being in America: Recent Patterns and Trends (19804. Angus was a scholar of breadth in social science, recog- nizec! and listened to by sociologists and political scientists; he was especially pleasecI with awards received from diverse fields of social science. In addition to the Distinguishes! Scien- tific Achievement Award of the American Psychological As- sociation, he had received the Distinguished Achievement Award of the American Association for Public Opinion Re- search (1962), the LazarsfelcT Award from the Council for Applier! Social Research (1977), the Laswell Awarc! from the International Society of Political Psychology (1980), and a Doctor of Letters, University of Strathclycle (19701. He was a professor of both psychology and sociology at the University of Michigan, and, as further indication of his breadth, he was appointed, beginning in 1964, as a lecturer in the Law School, where he taught a seminar on sociolegal problems to advanced law students. At his home institution, the University of Michigan, he servect on innumerable com- mittees, particularly in sensitive situations such as in the se- lection of presidents and deans anc! in controversial situa- tions where trust was a major ingredient. One feels the family atmosphere in which he grew up asserted an influence. His home institution honored him with the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award in 1969 and asker! him to deliver the Distinguished Senior Faculty Lecture Series in 1979. He was asked to serve in many professional activities .
52 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS where his breadth and judgment were neeclecI. To mention only a few, he was a consultant to the Ford Foundation in Poland and Yugoslavia in 1959, 1960, ant] 1961; on the Com- mittee on SST-Sonic Boom, National Academy of Sciences, 1964-70; on the Advisory Committee on Consumer Expen- ctitures, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1960-64; on an advisory group to the Social Security Aclministration, 1961-64; and served with numerous other groups for the American Psy- chological Association, the Social Science Research Council, the National Research Council, and agencies of the U.S. gov- ernment, including the executive office of the president. One of Angus Campbell's major goals was to bring the findings of social science to the effort to improve the quality of life and human welfare. The catholicity of his research interests, his administrative talent, ant! his understancling and ability to communicate the results of social research out- side the research community contribute(1 greatly to his suc- cess in achieving his goal. But his basic personality and (jeep commitments were also major factors. At first contact he might have seemed a flour Scot, austere and impressive, somewhat forbidding. Yet on even short acquaintance, his warmth, his caring, his objectivity, and his integrity came through; his family was (levote(l, his friendships were close and lasting, his impact on students and social research strong and important. ~ WISH TO THANK Betty Jennings, his secretary for twenty years; Philip E. Converse; Robert L. Kahn; and Adye Bet Evans, librar- ian, Institute for Social Research, for providing me with biograph- ical material. His wife, Jean W. Campbell, was especially helpful in providing information about his early background.
ANGUS CAMPBELL SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 1933 53 A study of the personality adjustments of only and intermediate children. i. Genet. Psychol., 43:197-206. 1934 The personality adjustments of only children. Psychol. Bull., 31: 193-203. 1935 Community of function in the performance of rats on alley mazes and the Maier Reasoning Apparatus. J. Comp. Psychol., 19:69- 76. 1936 With E. R. Hilgard. The course of acquisition and retention of conditioned eyelid responses in man. }. Exp. Psychol., 19:227- 47. With E. R. Hilgard. Individual differences J. Exp. Psychol., 19:561-71. 1937 ~ . . . In ease ot cone Toning. With E. R. Hilgard and W. N. Sears. Conditioned discrimination: The development of discrimination with and without verbal re- port. Am. J. Psychol., 49:564-80. With E. R. Hilgard. Vincent curves of conditioning. I. Exp. Psy- chol., 21:310-19. 1938 The interrelation of two measures of conditioning in man. Psychol., 22:225-43. 1939 A reply to Dr. Razran. }. Exp. Psychol., 24:227-33. 1943 Exp. St. Thomas negroes a study of personality and culture. Psychol. Monogr., 55:5, 90 pp.
54 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS 1945 two problems in the use of the open question. l. Abnorm. Soc. Psychol., 40:340 -43. 1946 With G. Katona. A national survey of wartime savings. Public Opin- ion Q., Fall:373-81. Polling, open interviewing and the problem of interpretation. I. Soc. Issues, 2:3-7. Measuring public attitudes (editor). J. Soc. Issues, May:69 pp. Attitude surveying in the Department of Agriculture. In: How to Conduct Consumer and Opinion Research, ed. A. B. Blankinship, pp. 274-85. New York: Harper and Brothers. The uses of interview surveys in federal administration. I. Soc. Issues, 2:9 pp. A summing up. }. Soc. Issues, 2. 1947 Factors associated with attitudes towards dews. In: Readings in Social Psychology, ed. T. M. Newcomb and E. L. Harley, pp. 518-27. New York: Henry Holt & Co. With P. Woodward and S. Eberhart. Public Reaction to the Atomic Bomb and World AJairs, Part II. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University. 1948 The American concept of Russia. I. Soc. Issues, 4:15-20. 1950 Knowing your public. Coll. Public Rel. Q. 2: 10-13. With C. A. Metzner. Public Use of the Library and Other Sources of Information. Ann Arbor: Survey Research Center, University of Michigan. 76 pp. The pre-election polls of 1948. Int. }. Opinion Attitude Res., 4(1):27-36. Human relations program of the Survey Research Center: First three years of development. Ann Arbor: Survey Research Cen- ter, University of Michigan. (Also in: Group Leadership and Men, ed. H. Guetzkow, pp. 68-105. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Press, 1 95 1 .)
ANGUS CAMPBELL 55 1951 With G. Belknap. Political party identification and attitudes toward foreign policy. Public Opinion Q. 15~4) :601-23. 1952 With R. L. Kahn. The People Elect a President. Ann Arbor: Survey Research Center, University of Michigan. 73 pp. 1953 Administering research organizations. Am. Psychol., 8:225 -30. With G. Gurin and W. E. Miller. Political issues and the vote: No- vember, 1952. Am. Poll Sci. Rev., 47:359-85. With G. Gurin and W. E. Miller. Television and the election. Sci. Am., 188:46-48. With G. Katona. The sample survey: A technique for social science research. In: Research Methods in the Behavioral Sciences, ed. L. Festinger and D. Katz, pp. 15-55. New York: Dryden Press. 1954 With G. Gurin and W. E. Miller. The electoral switch of 1952. Sci. Am., 190:31-36. With G. Gurin and W. E. Miller. The Voter Decides. Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson and Company. 242 pp. 1955 1956 Return to normalcy? New Repub., 133: 11-13. 1956 With H. Cooper. Group Di;Jerences in Attitudes and Votes. Ann Arbor: Survey Research Center, University of Michigan. 149 pp. The case of the missing democrats. New Repub., 133: 12-15. 1957 With W. E. Miller. The motivational basis of straight and split ticket voting. Am. Poll Sci. Rev., 51:293-312. 1958 The political implications of community identification. In: Ap- proaches to the Study of Politics, pp. 318-28. Evanston, Ill.: North- western University Press.
56 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS With D. E. Stokes and W. E. Miller. Components of electoral deci- sion. Am. Poll Sci. Rev., 51:367-87. 1959 With D. E. Stokes. Partisan attitudes and the presidential vote. In American Voting Behavior, ed. E. Burdick and Brodbeck. Glencoe Ill.: The Free Press. 1960 With P. E. Converse, W. E. Miller, and D. E. Stokes. The American Voter New York: John Wiley & Sons. 573 pp. With S. Rokkan. Citizen participation in political life: Norway and the United States of America. Int. Soc. Sci. }.,12:69-99 (English em.; 78 -1 1 2 (French em.. With P. E. Converse. Political standards in secondary groupings. In: Group Dynamics: Research and Theory (2d ed.), ed. D. Cart- wright and A. Zander, pp.300-18. Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson and Co. With H. Cooper. The votes of population groups. In: Politics 1960, ed. F. Carney and F. Way, Jr., pp. 39-52. San Francisco: Wads- worth Company. Surge and decline: A study of electoral change. Public Opinion Q., 24:686-88. 1961 With P. E. Converse, W. E. Miller, and D. E. Stokes. Stability and change in 1960: A reinstating election. Am. Poll Sci. Rev., 55:269-80. With H. Valen. Party identification in Norway and the United States. Public Opinion Q., 25:505-25. 1962 The passive citizen. Acta Sociol., 6:9-21. Social and psychological determinants of voting behavior. In: Poli- tics of Age, ed. W. Donohue and C. Tibbits, pp. 31-46. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Recent developments in survey studies of political behavior. In: Essays on the Behavioral Study of Politics, ed. A. Ranney, pp. 31- 46. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
ANGUS CAMPBELL 57 Prospects for November. New Repub., October 8:13-15. Has television reshaped politics? Columbia Journalism Rev., 2: 10- 13. 1964 Who are the non-voters? New Soc., January 16: 11-12. Voters and elections: Past and present. I. Politics, 26:745-57. With W. C. Eckerman. Public Concepts of the Values and Costs of Higher Education. Ann Arbor: Survey Research Center, University of Michigan. 138 pp. 1966 With P. E. Converse, W. E. Miller, and D. E. Stokes. Elections and the Political Order New York: John Wiley & Sons. 385 pp. Interpreting the presidential victory. In: The National Election of 1964, ed. M. Cummings, pp. 256-81. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution. Recherche comparee sur la psychologie du votes. Rev. Fr. Sociol., 7:579-97. 1968 Civil rights and the vote for president. Psychol. Today, Febru- ary:26 - 31, 69. With H. Schuman. Racial attitudes in fifteen American cities. In: Supplemental Studies for The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, pp.11 - 67. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Print- ing Office. How we voted and why. Nation, November 25:550-53. 1970 Some questions about the New Jerusalem. In: Data Bases, Computers, and the Social Sciences, ed. R. L. Bisco, pp. 42-51. New York: Wiley-Interscience. Problems of staff development in social research organizations. Int. Soc. Sci. J., 22~2~:214-25 (English em.; 236-47 (French em.. 1971 Social accounting in the 1970's. Mich. Bus. Rev., 23:2-7. Politics through the life cycle. Gerontologist, l l (Part b: 112-17 .
58 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS White Attitudes Toward Black People. Ann Arbor: Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. 1972 With P. E. Converse, eds. The Human Meaning of Social Change. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 1974 Quality of life as a psychological phenomenon. In: Subjective Ele- ments of Well-being, ed. B. Strumpet, pp. 9-20. Paris: Organiza- tion for Economic Co-operation and Development. 1975 The American way of mating. Psychol. Today, May:37-43. 1976 Subjective measures of well-being. Am. Psychol., 31~2~:117-24. Women at home and at work. In: New Research on Women and Sex Roles, ed. D. G. McGuigan, pp. 112-23. Ann Arbor: Center for Continuing Education of Women, University of Michigan. With R. L. Kahn. Measuring the quality of life. In: Qualities of Life, pp. 163-87. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books. With P. E. Converse and W. L. Rodgers. The Quality of American Life: Perceptions, Evaluations, and Satisfactions. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 1980 The Sense of Well-being in America: Recent Patterns and Trends. New York: McGraw-Hill.
