Background

Michael John Argyle was born on August 11, 1925, at Nottingham. He was the only child of George Edgar Argyle, a schoolmaster, and his wife, Phyllis, nee Hawkins-Ambler, both of whom died when he was eleven years old. By his own account, his interest in psychology could be traced back to concern, when he was at school, about a friend whose shyness and deficient social skills caused him difficulties and made him unhappy.

Education

Michael Argyle studied at Nottingham High School for boys, after which he completed a Royal Air Force science course with distinction at Cambridge University in 1943. After the war, he graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1950 with first-class honors in experimental psychology. He was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Oxford in 1979 and the universities of Adelaide and Brussels in 1982.

Career

Michael Argyle worked as a fireman in the East End of London, helping to clear the damage caused by bombing during the Blitz; and in radio in Berlin, Germany. In 1943-1947, he served in the Royal Air Force, training as a navigator in Canada. In 1952, after two years of postgraduate study in Cambridge, Argyle was appointed as the first-ever lecturer in social psychology at Oxford University. He spent the rest of his academic career there, being promoted to reader in social psychology in 1969 and retiring as an emeritus reader in 1992. Argyle was a founding fellow of Wolfson College, where he was vice-regent from 1989 to 1991, and he also served as acting head of the department of experimental psychology from 1978 to 1980.

A teacher beloved by his students, Argyle was a ground-breaking researcher in such areas of psychology as non-verbal behavior, social interaction, interpersonal relationships, and the effects of work, entertainment, and religion on people's mental health. Perhaps his most significant breakthrough, however, was his discovery that many behavioral disorders have their roots not in mental illness but in poorly learned social skills, a theory that has since gained wide acceptance and about which he wrote in his best-known book, "The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour" (1967). Argyle was a prolific producer of other psychology books, publishing over twenty works during his lifetime, including "Social Interaction" (1969), "Bodily Communication" (1975), "The Psychology of Happiness" (1987), and, with Adrian Furnham, "The Psychology of Money" (1998). A pioneer of social psychology in the United Kingdom and one of its most influential practitioners in Europe, Argyle was joint founder and first social psychology editor (1961-1967) of the British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, the earliest academic journal in Britain dedicated partly to social psychology.

During the 1970s, he worked at the Littlemore Hospital. By the late 1970s, Argyle and his team were moving beyond the study of specific gestures and two-person conversations to study longer and more complex sequences of social behavior, such as family interaction. They employed the techniques that were being so successfully applied to the study of animal behavior and are now familiar to us all through TV wildlife programs. In the human case, this sometimes involved placing hidden cameras in the homes of volunteers. Argyle was much amused that one of his team from that period became a psychological consultant on Big Brother.

In the last part of his academic career, from the mid-1980s, Argyle embarked on the study of happiness.

Achievements

• Michael Argyle became a pioneer in the study of non-verbal communication. His research on interviews and conversations established that nonverbal rather than verbal communication dictate the impressions people make on others. So much is the primacy of "body language" now taken for granted that it is easy to forget that it required Argyle’s research and that of others in the 1960s to demonstrate how it works. He did a lot of work to define the topics of social psychology and to gain the nascent discipline's acceptance in academic departments and among the wider public. He was the founder and Chair of the Social Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. He made social psychology at Oxford a magnet for distinguished researchers from all over the world, and he visited many departments in North America, Europe, and Australasia, where he made lasting professional friendships.
  
  He authored or edited 44 books, wrote well over 300 articles and supervised over 50 doctoral students, many of whom went on to become distinguished psychologists. His book "The Psychology of Interpersonal Behavior," first published in 1967 and revised for three later editions, was an international best-seller, with sales approaching half a million, it was widely translated. His research article "Eye-contact, distance, and affiliation," co-written with his undergraduate student Janet Dean (later Janet Dean Fodor) and published in Sociometry in 1965, became a citation classic.
  
  He received Distinguished Career Contribution Award in 1990 and an honorary fellowship by the British Psychological Society in 1992.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Psychology of Happiness

    (Drawing on research from the disciplines of sociology, ph...)

    1987
  • Bodily Communication

    (Non-verbal communication - the eye movements, facial expr...)

    1975
  • The Social Psychology of Everyday Life

    (In this comprehensive and fully up-to-date account of the...)

    1992
  • Social Situations

    (This book not only documents the authors' own studies of ...)

    1981
  • Social Encounters

    (This work collects excellent representative studies of di...)

    1973
  • Social Interaction

    (This is the first book-length work to reflect the recent ...)

    1969
  • The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour

    (The first edition of this book outlined what amounted to ...)

    1967
  • Psychology and Religion: An Introduction 1999
  • The Anatomy of Relationships 1985
  • The Social Psychology of Work 1972

Religion

From his undergraduate days at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Michael Argyle was fascinated by religious and philosophical questions and read widely about many of the world's religions. He was an active member of the Anglican community in Oxford, and also researched the psychology of religion from the 1950s. His faith did not undermine the objectivity of his scientific inquiry into religion. Nor did his scientific analysis of religion undermine his own faith. His religious commitment informed his view of human nature as essentially benevolent and cooperative. He embodied these virtues himself and tried to live his life as if others embodied them too. He was also interested in how people's religious beliefs affect them mentally, a topic he wrote about in "Religious Behaviour" (1959).

Views

Michael Argyle's work established that people differ in their ability to utilize the various channels of communication successfully. From this insight Argyle invented the idea of social skills, arguing that they are not very different from motor skills such as riding a bicycle. In consequence, he believed that these skills could be taught and learnt through demonstration, practice and video feedback. He created a programme of training for those who were shy or suffering from minor mental disorder whose lack of social skills might increase their problems. Members of his research team applied such training to help troubled adolescents control their own anti-social behavior and violent offenders manage their own anger.

He felt that psychologists concentrated too much on the causes of unhappiness and depression and he thought that research on happiness was equally necessary. Argyle found that removing the causes of unhappiness did not in itself lead to happiness. What emerged repeatedly from his research was that happiness depends principally on wholehearted involvement in an activity and the possibility of sharing this activity with others. Consistent with his character, most of his books focus on the positives of human existence: cooperation, happiness, leisure, social interaction, social relationships and, for him, religious faith. In his texts about money, social problems and work, the emphasis is on improving the human condition.

Argyle anticipated many of the ideas about social capital and trust which are so popular with economists today.

Membership

• 

  Michael Argyle chaired the social psychology section of the British Psychological Society from 1964 to 1967 and again from 1972 to 1974.

  British Psychological Society , United Kingdom

Personality

Michael Argyle gave an immediate and continuing impression of someone with an optimistic zest for living. He was an extrovert and a sublimely happy man who inspired affection in students and colleagues alike. He was a witty and charismatic lecturer and an inspiring conversationalist, entirely lacking in self-importance. Michael Argyle had great generosity of spirit. This was apparent in his concern for his graduate students. By organizing social events in the department and in his own home, and demanding participation in seminars and conferences, he created a happy and productive group with a sense of community. Argyle presided over his group in an energetic and avuncular fashion. As a colleague, he was open and constructive, constantly concerned to promote research of quality and relationships of goodwill. He delighted in human company, loved social activities and was especially enthusiastic about Scottish country dancing, although to his mild regret he never managed to find convincing evidence of Scottish ancestry in his family tree. His enthusiasm pervaded both work and leisure, and he timetabled himself to include as much as he could in each day: time for writing and reading, time for research and teaching, time for family and friends, and time for fun and devotions. Argyle was an immensely hard-working and productive academic.

He was a mischievous and humorous person who loved nothing better than having fun. He adored telling jokes and hearing new ones and would often laugh until he cried. He liked to arrive at parties wearing ludicrously colored ties, and many will remember his revolving and flashing bow tie.

Michael Argyle was a strong family man and a devoted father, who enjoyed being with his wife Sonia and their four children, Miranda, Nicholas, Rosalind, and Ophelia. Despite his dedication to work, Michael always returned home in the late afternoon to have fun playing board games and charades with his children. He also passed on to them his love of 20th-century art and his abiding interest in the transcendental. Michael Argyle had grieved greatly at the death of Sonia, but recovered and remarried. With his second wife, Gillian, his zest returned in full measure and the future again looked bright.

Interests

• Scottish country dancing

Connections

On June 24, 1949, Michael Argyle married Sonia Kemp, a former classics student at Girton College, and a daughter of Marshall Dennis Kemp of Nottingham. They had three daughters, Miranda, Rosalind, and Ophelia, and a son, Nicholas. Sonia died in 1999, after a long illness, and on December 29, 2000, he married Gillian Wade Thompson, an Oxford schoolteacher, and daughter of John Wade Thompson.

Father:

George Edgar Argyle

Mother:

Phyllis Argyle

late wife:

Sonia Kemp

While at Cambridge, Michael Argyle fell passionately in love with a fellow student, Sonia Kemp. Both were forthright characters, and their frequent dinner parties were marked by lively repartee. Michael declared in the last year of his life that he had never known a day's depression. He was indeed consistently ebullient and energetic, but a good friend of the couple has commented that without Sonia's understanding he would not have been able to rise above the many frustrations he encountered in his efforts to establish social psychology as a respectable academic discipline. Sonia died in 1999 after a long and difficult period of illness during which he gave her complete support.

Daughter:

Miranda Argyle

Daughter:

Rosalind Argyle

Daughter:

Ophelia Argyle

Son:

Nicholas Argyle

Wife:

Gillian Wade Thompson

Michael Argyle and Gillian Wade Thompson were delighted to have found each other and together engaged in Michael's lifelong hobbies such as Scottish country dancing and swimming. They also shared a love of contemporary literature and enthusiastic involvement in church life.

co-author:

Adrian Frank Furnham

Professor Adrian Furnham is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and is among the most productive psychologists in the world. He has been a Professor of Psychology at University College London since 1992. He has lectured widely abroad and held scholarships and visiting professorships. He has written over 700 scientific papers and 57 books. Adrian Furnham was the co-author of the book "The Psychology of Money" by Michael Argyle.

co-author:

Janet Dean Fodor

Janet Dean Fodor's field of research includes psycholinguistics, psychological mechanisms for decoding the structure and meaning of sentences, the process of grammar acquisition by children. She is a former president of the Linguistic Society of America, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.

At Oxford University Janet Dean was a student of Michael Argyle. Their "equilibrium hypothesis" for nonverbal communication became the basis for affiliative conflict theory. Michael Argyle's research article "Eye-contact, distance, and affiliation" was co-written with Janet Dean.