History of mentalities

The history of mentalities, from the French term histoire des mentalités (lit. 'history of attitudes'), is an approach to cultural history which aims to describe and analyze the ways in which historical people thought about, interacted with, and classified the world around them, as opposed to the history of particular events, or economic trends. The history of mentalities has been used as a historical tool by several historians and scholars from various schools of history. Notably, the historians of the Annales School helped to develop the history of mentalities and construct a methodology from which to operate. In establishing this methodology, they sought to limit their analysis to a particular place and a particular time.^[1]: 7 This approach lends itself to the intensive study that characterizes microhistory, another field which adopted the history of mentalities as a tool of historical analysis.