Hildegard Therese Himmelweit, née Litthauer (1918 – 1989) was a German social psychologist who had a major influence on the development of the discipline in Britain.

Hilde Himmelweit received her PhD under Hans Eysenck

Hans Eysenck

Hans Jürgen Eysenck was a German-British psychologist who spent most of his career in Britain, best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, though he worked in a wide range of areas...

 at the Institute of Psychiatry

Institute of Psychiatry

The Institute of Psychiatry is a research institution dedicated to discovering what causes mental illness and diseases of the brain. In addition, its aim is to help identify new treatments for them and ways to prevent them in the first place...

. She taught at the London School of Economics

London School of Economics

The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

 from 1948-83. From 1964 she was the first Professor of Social Psychology in Britain, founding LSE's social psychology department

Institute of Social Psychology

The Institute of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics, England was founded in 1964, is an independent department within the London School of Economics. Prior to 2009, it used to be located within the Department of Sociology. It has one of the largest concentrations of social...

 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. As director of the Nuffield television inquiry from 1954-58 she contributed to the understanding of television's impact in society, the subsequent book Television and the Child (1958) establishing her reputation in Europe and North America. 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

Societal psychology

Societal psychology is a development within social psychology which emphasizes the all-embracing force of the social, institutional, and cultural environments, and with it the study of social phenomena in their own right as they affect, and are affected by, the members of the particular society...

, on which topic she co-edited a volume with George Gaskell

George Gaskell

George Gaskell is a British Professor of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science . Formerly Director of the Methodology Institute, he is now Deputy Director for Planning and Resources and a member of the LSE Council and Court of Governors...

, as well as in the establishment and development of the theory of social representations

Social representations

A social representation is a stock of values, ideas, beliefs, and practices that are shared among the members of groups and communities. Social Representations Theory is a body of theory within Social Psychology and Sociological social psychology...

.

Major publications

• Himmelweit, H.T., Oppenheim, A.N., & Vince, P. (1958). Television and the child: an empirical study of the effect of television on the young. London: Published for the Nuffield Foundation by Oxford University Press.
• Himmelweit, H.T., Humphreys, P., & Jaeger, M. (1985). How voters decide: a model of vote choice based on a special longitudinal study extending over fifteen years and the British election surveys of 1970-1983. (Revised and updated edition). Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
• Himmelweit, H.T., & Gaskell, G. (Eds). (1990). Societal Psychology: Implications and scope. London: Sage Publications.