one of the first forms of socio-psychological theories, developed by the English psychologist W. MacDougall. The main thesis of McDougall’s theory is that innate instincts are recognized as the cause of social behavior. This idea is the realization of a more general principle adopted by McDougall, namely, the pursuit of a goal, which is characteristic of both animals and man. It is this principle that is especially significant in McDougall’s concept; In contrast to behaviorism (which treats behavior as a simple reaction to an external stimulus), he called the psychology he created “goal-oriented” or “gormic” (from the Greek word “gorme” – aspiration, desire, impulse). Gormet acts as a driving force of an intuitive character that explains social behavior. In MacDougall’s terminology, gormé is “realized as instincts” (or later “inclinations”).
Despite the enormous popularity of McDougall’s ideas, their role in the history of science turned out to be very negative: the interpretation of social behavior from the point of view of a certain spontaneous striving for a goal legitimized the importance of irrational, unconscious drives as the driving force not only of the individual, but also of humanity. Therefore, as in general psychology, the overcoming of the ideas of the theory of instincts served as an important milestone in the formation of scientific social psychology.