Education
Hilde Himmelweit received her Doctor of Philosophy under Hans Eysenck at the Institute of Psychiatry.
Hilde Himmelweit received her Doctor of Philosophy under Hans Eysenck at the Institute of Psychiatry.
She taught at the London School of Economics from 1948-1983. From 1964 she was the first Professor of Social Psychology in Britain, founding London School of Economics"s social psychology department and, in effect, establishing the discipline on the university curriculum. She greatly enhanced our understanding of the contemporary world through her research, in particular through two studies.
Her work in the field of political psychology greatly strengthened the understanding of human decision-making by voters as she and her team studied a group of young people over a 15-year period.
The study was published as How Voters Decide in 1981. Hilde Himmelweit was also highly influential in advocating a societal psychology, on which topic she co-edited a volume with George Gaskell, as well as in the establishment and development of the theory of social representations.