Lazarsfeld, Paul

Born in the capital of Austria - Vienna, in the family of lawyer Robert Lazarsfeld and psychologist Sophie Lazarsfeld (nee Munk ), a student of Alfred Adler . He studied at a school in Vienna, which he graduated in 1919.

He was one of the leaders of the youth socialist movement in Austria, in particular, in 1918 he co-founded the Free Union of Socialist Schoolchildren ( Freie Vereinigung sozialistischer Mittelschüler ). He later joined the Social Democratic Party of Austria . The first publication, which he published at age 23 together with Ludwig Wagner, was a report on the activities of a children's summer camp, built on socialist principles.

In 1924, he defended his doctoral dissertation in mathematics, and the mathematical aspects of Einstein's theory of gravity are considered in the dissertation. He has been working in France for some time. The delegate of the Second Congress of the Socialist International in Marseille (1925). In 1925 he returned to Vienna and graduated from the University of Vienna , faculty of mathematics . From 1925 to 1929 he worked as a school teacher of mathematics in Vienna and studied psychology at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Vienna. He was close to the representatives of the Vienna Circle .

In 1927 he founded a private organization for the study of economic psychology (“The struggling revolution needs economics (Marx), the victorious revolution needs engineers (Russia), the losing revolution turns to psychology (Vienna) ” ^[5] ), associated with the University of Vienna, and For several years he conducted sociological research. From 1929 to 1933, he was an assistant at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Vienna, where he worked as an assistant to Karl Buhler (1879-1963) and Charlotte Buhler (1893-1974). From 1930 to 1933 he worked as director of a research center in Vienna.

In 1926 he married Marie Yagoda , an Austro-British psychologist of Jewish descent, July 17, 1930 - Lot's daughter was born.

In 1933 , receiving a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation , Lazarsfeld left for the United States , where he remained to live, because he could not return to Austria after the Nazi coup of 1934 (and the Anschluss of 1938). Divorced Marie and married his colleague Geert Herzog, whom he divorced in 1936. In 1937, he leads the Rockefeller Foundation-funded Radio Research Project. In the United States, he collaborates with representatives of the Frankfurt School on research on the impact of media on society. Through Max Horkheimer, he began negotiations on attracting Theodore Adorno to the project, who later becomes the head of the “musical component” of the Princeton study, however, in 1939, cooperation with Adorno was interrupted, because when the Rockefeller Foundation renewed a grant for a radio project, there was no place for research in the field of music .

In 1940, the radio project moved to Columbia University , where it was transformed into the famous Bureau of Social Research. Since 1940, Lazarsfeld was a professor at Columbia University for the next 35 years. After the war, Lazarsfeld organized the Center for Empirical Sociological Research in Oslo ( 1948 ) and the Institute for Higher Research (in the field of sociology) in Vienna. In 1948 he was appointed head of the sociological department of Columbia University, and in 1962 he was elected president of the American Sociological Association . Since 1940, a professor at Columbia University, where he continued to work on research projects and books; At the same time he works as a professor at the University of Pittsburgh , where he developed teaching programs for applied sociology.

The main interests of Lazarsfeld focused on the problems of empirical sociological research. P. Lazarsfeld laid the foundations of a “sociological” concept of electoral behavior, in which the act of voting is determined by the voter’s membership in large social groups. Paul Lazarsfeld and other researchers have developed a two-level communication model, according to which in any society there are “opinion leaders” susceptible to the effects of political propaganda, disseminating political information through interpersonal channels. The methodology of Paul Lazarsfeld has received significant distribution and is used up to the present. In the 1940-1950s. Lazarsfeld, along with Robert Merton, led the movement for transforming American sociology by combining sociological theory with empirical research.

• "Mathematical thinking in the social sciences" ( 1954 )
• “Personal Influence” ( 1955 )
• "Analysis of the latent structure" ( 1968 )
• The Choice of the People ( 1969 )

• Dmitriev A.N. Experience in cooperation between P. Lazarsfeld and T. Adorno in the study of mass communication // Sociological Journal . 1997. - No. 3. - S. 151-158.
• Batygin G. S. Craft of Paul Lazarsfeld (introduction to his scientific biography) // " Bulletin of the USSR Academy of Sciences ." - 1990. - No. 8. - S. 94-108.