Richard C. Thurnwald, Psychological Questionnaire

Richard C. Thurnwald’s Psychological Questionnaire, originally published in 1935 and republished in the documented 1950 version, is an appendix providing a research instrument for investigating individual character among African populations. It comprises a methodological introduction, thirty-two questions under “Overt Behaviour,” and a supplement concentrating on activity, emotional response, and the duration of feelings. Its central proposition is methodological: descriptions of characteristic traits should begin with the conduct of identifiable people in particular situations, rather than with generalized judgments about populations. The questionnaire presents a program for collecting evidence, not findings from completed research.

Thurnwald begins by questioning the reliability of experienced observers. Long acquaintance does not necessarily produce agreement, because observers evaluate people according to their own occupations and purposes. His proposed remedy changes the unit of observation from an undifferentiated population to a person known to the informant:

In order to evade the lure of subjectivity and onesidedness it seemed advisable to ask only for the behaviour of one single person in certain situations.

The individual case is intended to discipline generalization, not eliminate it. Thurnwald still hopes to discover population characteristics and asks for a considerable number of people to be studied where circumstances permit. Each character sketch should be accompanied by approximate age, sex, tribal affiliation, family position, social status, and a short life history. Requests for information about tribal peculiarities and changes associated with European or Islamic influence place personal conduct within collective customs and historical circumstances. The instrument therefore combines individual observation with contextual information, although it supplies no formal procedure for sampling or comparing cases.

The questionnaire’s flexibility is explicit:

Not all the questions must necessarily be answered, many are supposed to be hints as to the accomplishment of the sketch of character.

This instruction makes the questions prompts for descriptive inquiry rather than a compulsory sequence of scored items. The recurring demand for examples is correspondingly important. Judgments about keeping promises, accepting others’ opinions, leadership, commercial ability, or responses to conflict should be supported by actual conduct. Difficulty and danger must also be assessed relative to the particular person: prior experience and the personal significance of a situation affect what a response demonstrates. Character is approached through a repertoire of actions across circumstances, rather than through a single encounter or an observer’s unsupported impression.

The “Overt Behaviour” section proceeds from responses to unfamiliar impressions, objects, and people into family relationships, authority, reputation, conversation, gifts, promises, and mutual assistance. It then broadens to danger, quarrels, sickness, consumption, dress, daily routines, animals, games, earnings, work, property, natural phenomena, and extreme emotional reactions. This range connects psychological description to ordinary social and material life. Reputation is investigated through the judgments of relatives, friends, superiors, subordinates, and enemies; conduct toward others is differentiated by familiarity and power. Questions about gifts ask both how the person behaves and what tribal customs require, acknowledging that an action cannot be understood solely as an expression of private disposition.

Work and property are especially revealing of the instrument’s conceptual tensions. Thurnwald asks about technical skill, independence, enjoyment, regularity, saving, business enterprise, and household management. He also seeks the purpose behind activity:

For what purpose does he work? For money, or to satisfy only his necessities?

The question treats motivation as something to investigate, but its alternatives also narrow the explanatory field. Similar tensions occur throughout the questionnaire: the request for concrete instances restrains premature judgment, while supplied contrasts—clever or awkward, courageous or evasive, eager or lazy—can channel what observers notice. References to mystical interpretations, magical prejudices, “mass-reflexes,” and “gregarious instincts” show that observable behaviour is being organized through an existing interpretive vocabulary. The effort to reduce subjectivity thus does not remove the assumptions embedded in the questions themselves.

The supplement intensifies the inquiry into emotional disposition. It asks about energy during work, hunting, and contests; rest and idleness; decision-making and suggestibility; reactions to bereavement, rivalry, mockery, annoyance, and sudden danger. Particularly distinctive are the questions about how long grief, resentment, and ill-temper persist. These seek to distinguish an immediate outbreak from a lasting tendency, and to differentiate responses according to the relationship or loss involved. Its concluding request for biography reinforces the importance of livelihood, ancestry, major occupations, and personal history as contexts for interpreting conduct.

Thurnwald also gives African informants a role in character assessment, rather than reserving judgment entirely to Europeans:

It would be wise otherwise not to interfere with their replies or “correct” them.

This follows his suggestion that people describe their countrymen and that teachers answer after the questionnaire’s scope has been explained. The instruction protects their replies from editorial conformity, although access remains mediated through the investigator’s explanation and categories. The appendix’s relevance lies in this combination of situational observation, biographical context, and multiple perspectives. It offers a practical attempt to make character description accountable to evidence, while also exposing how colonial distinctions and evaluative assumptions shape the evidence a research instrument invites.