“My father, who was in advertising, had heard of this new little industry that was just developing called market research and he made an appointment for me to go to a job interview.” ROD HENSHAW talks to acclaimed social psychologist Hugh Mackay.

Canberra-based Hugh Mackay is one of this country’s best known and acclaimed social psychologists and academics, not to mention the author of 25 best-selling books on all sorts of subjects, his latest being Just Saying. 

It’s just that – a collection of famous sayings, but more about that later.

The thought of spending time in conversation with Hugh Mackay can be slightly daunting, because, in simple terms, he knows a lot of stuff that you don’t.

But in a lengthy interview, his gentle manner of explaining things – including about himself – is a pleasurable listening experience. Like having a conversation with a friend you haven’t seen for years over a few drinks.

He has been described as the man who explains us to ourselves; a description he’s comfortable with.

“Several people have said that. Someone once introduced me at a conference saying that. And I thought that actually is quite nice,” he said.

“If that was on my headstone on my grave, I’d be quite happy. I think that was kind of what my role has been.”

That role has evolved through several iterations since he left school at the age of 16 and had no idea what he wanted to do.

His father soon played a pivotal role in pointing the young Hugh in the right direction.

“My parents explained to me that I would have to go to work and contribute board to the household. If I wanted to go to university – no-one in my family had – it would be as an evening student. So I had no idea what I might do,” he said.

“My father, who was in advertising, had heard of this new little industry that was just developing called market research and he made an appointment for me to go to a job interview. He attended, too, in the way it happened in 1955.

“I got a job at McNair, which was one of three research companies operating in Australia. So, at the age of 16, I rolled up and started a career which absolutely consumed me, it engrossed me.

“Very early on, I realised that even if you’re doing commercial market research, you’re studying human behaviour. 

“Why do people choose brand A or brand B and why do people watch that television program and not this one? All the ‘why’ questions that intrigued me about people. That turned out to be what my job was.”

And that, essentially is what his job has remained for decades – social psychologist and researcher. Except for a year, when he decided to branch out to become a teacher at a regional boarding school in Queensland. He describes that year as an experiment.

“I was teaching five subjects. I was a resident house master. I was the school librarian, choirmaster, officer of cadets, rugby coach. It nearly killed me”, he said, only half-jokingly.

Hugh willingly abandoned his teaching aspirations and went straight back to marketing at the ABC, in the audio research department. 

“It was a thrill to get back into research at a very exciting time. Television was still a very new medium and the ABC audience research department was led by an imaginative, creative bloke who really transformed my thinking about research and my subsequent career,” he said.

After three years at Auntie, he decided to branch out into his own business, but research and all aspects of it have remained at the core of his motivation.

Hugh says he considers himself introverted by nature, but he is fascinated by people. He loves listening to them and admits he can’t resist psychoanalysing them.

“I find social situations quite challenging. I think my father must have intuitively known this when he suggested this as a career. I’ve always been a bit on the outside watching,” he said.

“I used to sit up in a tree in the street where I grew up in Sydney watching people pass by and loving that feeling of being the observer of what people were doing and saying.

“I had plenty of friends and I wasn’t an outsider. But I was, by nature, an observer. It really suited my natural curiosity.”

It was this curiosity behind his 25 books, including his latest tome Just Saying, drawn from 25 famous utterances from a vast range of famous people.

“The publisher suggested 50 and I said, no. I’m too old and too tired to do 50. I could easily have done 50, as it turned out,” he said.

“But I think 25 is digestible for the reader. And, of course, it was enormous fun. A thousand words on each (person). It’s 25 five or six-minute reads.

“It’s the easiest read anyone would have got from me”, he chuckled.

Just Saying is published by Allen & Unwin.