William Lloyd Warner (October 26, 1898 – May 23, 1970) was an anthropologist[1][2] and sociologist noted for applying the techniques of British functionalism to understanding American culture.

Whitehead, F.J. Roethlisberger, W. J. Dickson, and others) was exploring the social and psychological dimensions of industrial settings and stimulated Warner's interest in contemporary society.

Warner's contribution consisted of the introduction of anthropological techniques of observation and interviewing, an innovation that helped cultural explanations to emerge from data analysis.

[6] He was largely responsible for the design of the third phase of the Hawthorne project known as the Bank Wiring Observation Room (BWOR) which examined how workers actually performed their jobs, as opposed to what they stated they would do during interviews.

[8] In addition to these community studies, Warner researched business leaders and government administrators, as well as producing important books on race, religion, and American society.

The noted Marxist sociologist Oliver Cromwell Cox's vigorous critique of Warner's framing of race in the Southern US as caste contributed to the disappearance of this once-fashionable conception.

Warner's interest in communities (when the social science mainstream was stressing the importance of urbanization) and religion (when the fields' leaders were aggressively secularist) also helped to marginalize his work.