An Introduction to Social Psychology
Chapter 3: Phases of the Subject
Luther Lee Bernard
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KINDS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY— There are essentially three types of social psychology set forth in the text books, two of which are similar in form if not in principles. These have already been indicated in a general way in the review of the several definitions included in the previous chapter. Of the two most general subdivisions of the subject, one refers to the treatment of psycho-social phenomena objectively and in the mass. This is what Ross means by the planes and currents viewpoint, which is concerned with crowds and publics, and with such phenomena as fads, fashions, crazes, conventions, customs, traditions, mores, folkways, and the like. This was formerly the type of social psychology most commonly presented in text books and class room, and it is still much emphasized, especially in the departments of sociology.
The other two types of social psychology are of the same general pattern. They are concerned with the ways in which character or personality is built up in the individual. There are two hypothetical answers to this question. One is that character or behavior patterns are integrated from within on the basis of native processes or instincts, which dominate the process of character building. This is the view of the instinctivist school of social psychology, which became so popular among the educational theorists and many sociologists upon the publication of McDougall's Introduction to Social Psychology in 19oS. Recently this school has markedly declined in favor among students of the subject.
The third type of social psychology, second of the types which emphasize personality development, accounts for the integration of behavior patterns under the influence of environmental pressures, especially of those from the psycho-social environment. This aspect of the subject has been chiefly represented by Professor Cooley's writings. It is now the most
(26) emphasized by students of the subject. It does not deny the existence of instincts, or of other inherited behavior patterns, but it does deny that instincts dominate the process of character formation or that they determine the resulting characteristics of the individual. It maintains that the environment utilizes the inherited bases as foundations for the construction of matured and acquired behavior patterns. On the other hand, the instinctivist type of social psychology claims that the instincts themselves dominate the formation of the matured behavior patterns, although it does not deny some significance to the selective powers of environment. The development of the theory of conditioned responses as an explanation of the method by which new traits may be acquired has added much to the acceptance of this environmentalist type of social psychology.
THE PLANES AND CURRENTS SCHOOL— This type of social psychology may be said to have begun definitely with the publication of Walter Bagehot's Physics acid Politics in 1872, although there are earlier traces of it in some of the older writers, especially those of the French Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. William Godwin, in his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, also discussed many problems which may be considered as belonging to social psychology. But it was Bagehot who first evinced a clear insight into the abstract and distance contacts of publics and the traits which men develop when immersed in crowds. This viewpoint appealed strongly to those students of society who wished to see the invisible and abstract social processes as definite realities. He made such things as custom, tradition, convention, fashions, and public opinion stand out as objective facts. It was the Sophists who first learned to objectify the subjective constituent elements of these processes in such a way as to make them take on definite form. But it was Bagehot who first taught us to use these forms effectively in social analysis and constructive sociological thinking.
Gabriel Tarde followed up the safe method of analysis, but more extensively, in his several books, such as The Laws o f Imitation, La Logique Sociale, L'Opposition Universelle, etc.
( 27) He made a more systematic use of such connecting or contact categories as imitation and suggestion than did Bagehot. Whether he was influenced directly by the brilliant essayist of Lombard Street is difficult to determine, but certainly he must have felt his influence indirectly through the discussion of the time. In fact the new way of looking at subjective processes collectively as objective entities was, so to speak, in the air. The psycho-social environment was being rapidly extended and expanded and the carriers of it, especially books, newspapers, telephone and telegraph, and what Bagehot called just "talk," were multiplying with equal rapidity.
The chief American follower of Tarde has been Professor Ross, but his numerous books in this field, which include almost all of his academic works, except The Foundations of Sociology, have made abundant novel departures of their own. Bogardus, and to some extent J. M. Baldwin (Social acid Ethical Interpretations), Veblen (Theory of the Leisure Class and The Instinct of Workmanship), Ellwood, and W. G. Sumner (Folkways), may be regarded as other outstanding American writers of this type of social psychology. Some of the better recognized European writers dealing with planes and currents of the psycho-social environment are Duprat (La Psychologie Sociale), Scipio Sighele, who is known especially for his La Foule Criminelle and Psychologie des Sectes, Gustav LeBon, author of numerous works of this type, but best known for his The Crowd, and Graham Wallas, author of Human Nature and Politics and The Great Society. Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann, an American writer, may also properly be regarded as falling largely under this classification.
The present partial lack of appreciation of this school of sociological analysis is due in the main to two causes. It is in part the victim of one of its own categories, fashion. It is no longer the fashion to deal with the larger psycho-social processes as it once was. The trend is more toward the analysis of individual reactions in a social medium. The other outstanding difficulty is that the phenomena dealt with are abstract and conceptual. They are furthermore so vast and so elusive that the temptation has been great to generalize hastily on the basis
( 28) of random observations, without an adequate testing of data and conclusions. The result is that this type of social psychology has sometimes been held in partial disrepute. While this method of psycho-social analysis provides a general perspective of what goes on in human contacts in the large it does not show exactly how changes in adjustment occur in the concrete. After all the individual and not the group is the ultimate unit in social change and therefore it is necessary to know what goes on in his behavior in order to find an adequate explanation of what occurs in the group as a whole. There is apparently a sort of rhythm of explanation between individual and collective behavior analysis. When one type of analysis gets ahead the other grows in favor. Just now the analysis of individual response to social stimuli is increasing in importance.
THE INSTINCTIVIST SCHOOL — This type of writing in social psychology also goes back fairly distinctly to the eighteenth century and beyond. The writers on ethics, especially Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Price, Hume, Adam Smith, and Kant, and the early psychologists, particularly Helvetius and Hartley, and the Scotch metaphysical psychologists, Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart, were much concerned with the native foundations of human behavior. The eighteenth century ethicists particularly emphasized inherited or innate and intuitive conscience, sympathy, and benevolence, upon which other finished social characteristics were built. These basic elements of character were in large measure supposed to control and direct other traits. Most of the Utilitarians, especially J. S. Mill, Spencer, and Leslie Stephen, author of The Science o f Ethics, and the psychologist Bain, also made large use of the category of innate impulses and tendencies. But the Utilitarians were also feeling their way over toward the third type of social psychology, as indeed were the ethicists of the eighteenth century.
By far the most outstanding book in this field is McDougall's Introduction to Social Psychology. But McDougall was preceded by William James, who, drawing from Preyer and Schneider in Germany, gave a dignity and plausibility to the instinct category which hitherto had been lacking. W. Trotter, in Instincts o f the Herd in Peace and War, William Drever,
( 29) and Graham Wallas, already mentioned in another connection, are British writers of prominence belonging to the instinctivist school. Ellwood and Bogardus in their earlier writings also inclined largely in this direction, but have since altered their position.
The writers on the new subject of educational psychology, beginning with E. A. Kirkpatrick (Fundamentals o f Child Study) and coming down to the recent works of Starch and Pyle, and many of the writers on educational sociology, emphasize rather generally the instinctive basis and domination of finished behavior. In this they are apparently following rather closely the lead of James and McDougall. In fact it seemed for a time quite recently that the whole of social science might pay tribute to the instinct theory.
THE ENVIRONMENTALIST SCHOOL— This school also began in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the theories of the ethicists and psychologists who took into account the influence of the environment in shaping human character traits. Locke and, in less degree, Hume and Helvetius prepared the way in the study of acquired character traits for the rather systematic treatise of Godwin previously referred to. Adam Smith also made some contribution to this phase of social psychology in his Theory o f the Moral Sentiments. J. M. Baldwin and Charles H. Cooley were the first writers of marked prominence in this country to work extensively in this direction of socio-psychological analysis, although James had preceded them by almost twenty years in his article entitled Great Men, Great Thoughts, and the Environment, published in 1880, in the Atlantic Monthly. Cooley's Human Nature and the Social Order was a particularly valuable introduction to this field of study. It was a very specific attempt to describe the growth of the self or personality in the child in terms of its experiences as conditioned by the environment in which it moved. This attempt was made at a time when the mechanism of the conditioned response was not yet known, at least by name.
This newer terminology has been adopted in large measure by Allport, who takes the conditioned response as the specific mechanism by which habit responses are built up in the developing personality. Allport applies this concept very exten-
( 30) -sively to the solving of all sorts of problems of training. No other concept has proved of equal value in social psychology and it promises soon to outstrip the popularity which the concept of instinct formerly enjoyed among the social psychologists. It is also entering into the' field of mental hygiene, which is closely related to social psychology. William H. Burnham has included five chapters on the conditioned reflex in his work on The Normal Mind and most of the other sixteen chapters are largely applications of this principle.
Dewey, Mead, and Thomas should also be mentioned as writers in this field of social psychology. Wallas and Ellwood, although less characteristic of this school, should be mentioned in this connection. These writers use essentially the philosophic approach rather than the strictly technical behavioristic one in discussing the data and principles of social psychology. No one of them has made any considerable use of the conditioned response concept in accounting for the building up of habits within the psycho-social adjustment process. Dewey and Mead make an approach largely from the angle of the logic of the social sciences. Thomas is very definitely of the environmentalist school. Allport, Thomas (in his theory of the four wishes), Martin, and Wallas show traces of the psychoanalytic influence. The chief interest of Wallas is in the foundations of collective behavior. Ellwood is concerned very largely with the rational processes in learned psychosocial adjustment.
SYNTHETIC TYPES— As a matter of actual composition most of the social psychologies make various combinations of these relatively pure types. Ellwood and Wallas combine all three phases of social psychology in greater or less degree. Bogardus did the same in his earlier text book in this field, but now he emphasizes primarily the planes and currents and environmental pressures types. Gault follows the same method with even greater emphasis. Even McDougall employs environmental data at points in the second section of his Social Psychology, and especially in his Group Mind. But on the whole, McDougall, Cooley, Ross, and Allport, conform pretty closely to the different types which they represent.
The most frequent overlapping occurs between the planes
(31) and currents and environmental pressures types. This may be due to a number of causes. In the first place, both deal with objective phenomena, although the third type of social psychology is concerned with the subjective behavior patterns which are formed under the environmental pressures. Both Cooley and Allport illustrate this fact in their treatments. Secondly, since science interests itself first of all in objective phenomena, which can be measured and if possible perceived directly through the senses, and since social psychology is in its formative period, it is to be expected that more correlations would appear between these two fields of objective behavior than between either of these and that field which concerns itself with the subjective phenomena of instinct. Finally, our modern world emphasizes largely external processes and phenomena. We have just recently come to objectify in regular collective forms the subjective phenomena which constitute traditions, conventions, mores, beliefs, customs, etc., and to conceptualize them as planes and currents instead of remaining in the realm of purely introspective phenomena. This has objectified collective behavior in a way analogous to that in which behaviorism has objectified the behavior of the individual. It has caused the perceived psycho-social environment to increase very rapidly in volume and content. Consequently the amount of material which has to be observed and interpreted has also greatly expanded, calling for systematic analyses and treatments.
The most neglected of all aspects of social psychology hitherto has been an account of the integration of behavior mechanisms arising from the environmental pressures or organizations of stimuli. Cooley and Baldwin introduced this treatment in more or less general terms, getting down to specific processes of habit formation only occasionally. But Allport, Watson, and Woodworth have attempted to give us the actual mechanisms by which the processes of acquired behavior growth take place. The development of the theory of the conditioned response makes further expansion in this direction easier. Probably the largest growth in social psychology in the near future will be in this direction.
The more recent emphasis by writers of this type is not so
(32) much upon the steps in the development of personality in the individual as upon the processes of behavior modification and integration by which these changes occur. Also, there is perhaps less of a tendency among recent social psychologists to give an account of the more permanent integrations of personality traits than was customary among those (like Baldwin and Cooley) who were influenced by the educational psychologists of two decades ago, and more of a leaning toward the analysis of relatively immediate and temporary responses of individuals in social situations. This latter tendency, represented by Allport and Martin, is probably in some degree a response to the influence of the planes and currents school, on the one hand, and to the marked increase of such appeal from commercialized amusement and publicity interests, on the other hand.
EARLIER INTELLECTUALISM OF SOCIAL SCIENCE— The development of theories of behavior mechanisms in social psychology recently has been largely in the direction of an analysis of suggestion processes and of the unconscious patterns generally. The early accounts of psychic processes were all couched in highly intellectualistic terms. The reason for this is obvious. The first systematic studies of behavior phenomena were mainly introspective. Where the phenomena of hysteria or other psychopathic behavior were observed, they were more likely to be attributed to outside, frequently to spirit, causes than to be looked upon as distorted phases of the normal mental processes. The psychological treatises of the eighteenth and most of those of the early nineteenth century left these things out of account altogether. The result, as McDougall has so well shown, was that the social sciences and ethics of that time were hopelessly artificial, aprioristic and intellectualistic.
It was this one-sided intellectualism in psychological interpretation which made the Utilitarian philosophy possible. The philosophers of this school believed that society could be controlled by a properly regulated appeal to self-interest; Their assumption was that every one plans his conduct beforehand with regard for his greatest advantage. This procedure could be possible only if the human mind were capable of grasping
( 33) all the details of any situation at once and of acting on them effectively. But there is neither time, nor energy, nor a sufficient body of data to make this possible. The fact is that we are constantly acting on some suggestion after incomplete analysis and with little, if any, foresight of ultimate consequences.
The same intellectualistic bias created the theory of the economic man who followed in his economic relationships the Utilitarian principle of enlightened self-interest without error or distorted prejudice. According to this concept the market place was a battle ground of wits and all exchanges tended to the mutual and maximum advantage of all the parties participating. In jurisprudence the same bias conceived of the jury as a group of twelve apostles of philosophy and of the judge as a dispenser of cold logic. Law itself was conceived as the embodiment of reason as it earlier had been regarded as the social extension of the principle of natural law. Retributive punishment was based on the tacit assumption that all crimes were acts of deliberation and emanated from a free will. In ethics the good was identified with the pleasant, and the pleasant was conceived of as the product of rational choice. The bad was the unpleasant, which afflicted the individual who failed to use his reason. The world was regarded as the product of creative reason, and human happiness was supposed to correlate with the maximum of rational guidance. Reason was itself looked upon more as an absolutistic entity than as a method of judgment, and it was scarcely conceived that reason could support the anti-social motive or justify the unworthy cause. If one were judged for his behavior it was invariably assumed by the intellectualists that he had acted from choice with a full knowledge of all of the consequences. The mystics, however, might assume that some satanic personage had dimmed his vision or warped his power of judgment. This mystical interpretation was the anthropomorphic forerunner of the modern psychological theory of the unconscious.
THREE TYPES OF ACTION— More extended and careful analyses of behavior, however, have convinced us that man is not necessarily so intellectually rigorous or logical in his
(34) choices. We may classify the types of overt action in which one may engage somewhat as follows.
1. Action by impact, in which the organism reacts, not to a stimulus differentially and distributively, but to some force as a mass of matter, very much as if it had no nervous organization or other inner communicating system which would enable it to redirect its initial motion into a controlled response. An example of this type of action is the bodily transference of position of a man when struck by an automobile or train. Of course most action by impact soon transforms itself into action by response to stimuli. That is, the organism rapidly gains control of itself through its nervous system and brings itself into a position or attitude more advantageous to itself. In many cases the action by impact is partly or wholly transformed into action by selective response before the activity is completed.
2. Action on the basis of relatively automatic behavior mechanisms. These mechanisms are of two sorts: (1) instinctive processes and (2) habitual processes. It is now believed that the degree of complexity of the inherited reaction patterns has been greatly overestimated. Apparently not a very large portion of human behavior belongs to the instinctive category, for complex activity calls for so much differentiation of response that the basic instinctive patterns are quickly changed into habitual ones. Not all habits are necessarily unconscious in their operation. Only the purely automatic ones. call forth no conscious responses in the nervous mechanism. Most habitual responses occur on a relatively low level of consciousness.
3. Action by choice constitutes a third type of behavior. The fact of choice implies some degree of foresight and evaluation of the nature and aims of the response. Where the behavior involves foresight, this consciousness of the end becomes itself an important consideration in understanding and describing the act. We may divide the motives to conscious choices into two groups : (1) Those choices, which are made on the basis of subjective appeal, that is, when the desire for pleasant feeling or the wish to escape unpleasantness is the dominant motive; and (2) those in which the choice is based
( 35) on an objective consideration of the logical merits of the behavior. Presumably the choice would here be made on the basis of some socially approved criterion of values, but the choice may be based on some metaphysically assumed obligation or relationship. Choice as here used does not imply fiatistic behavior. As a matter of fact, all behavior is the product of a conjunction of environmental pressures and the set of the organism. What we call choice is the resolution of conflicting sets and the prevision of the direction of the resulting behavior.
Of course these three major types of behavior graduate into each other and no thoroughly distinct dividing line can be drawn between any two of them. The middle group apparently comprises by far the largest number of behavior patterns, although the other two are also very significant in an inclusive account of behavior. Under the first group we should classify the more than a million more or less serious accidents which occur in this country annually. In the third group we find those phases of behavior which arise in times of conflict or of crisis. Apparently we do not make choices unless we are compelled to do so, even in a crucial situation. And the choice itself may be emotional and subjective rather than rational and objective. When possible we fall back upon the guidance of ready-made action patterns. That is, we act either from instinct (which is not very frequently the case) or from habit. In such relatively unconscious conduct we are able to save time and energy for other phases of adjustment which require more conscious resolution of conflicting impulses.
The emphasis upon unconscious behavior has come primarily from three sources. With the remarkable growth in complexity of modern life there has come about a vast increase in crowd phenomena and of those more abstract types of contacts which Ross classes under the phenomena of the public. It was perceived that the crowd and some forms of the public operate largely through suggestion and only partly on a conscious and purposive basis. Certainly the grade of choice in these types of behavior is very low. Also, as psychology came to be applied to business, in personnel management and especially in the field of advertising, a large group of unconscious behavior phenomena opened up for psycholog-
( 36) -ical analysis. The psychology of the newspaper presentation and of the movie, among other examples, also urged itself on our attention. From such sources materials have come which are of great value to social psychology.
The students of so-called abnormal psychology— the psychiatrists, suggestion therapists, and the psychoanalysts— also began, a generation or more ago, to uncover vast fields of unconscious or dimly conscious behavior. These phenomena had previously been explained in the terminology of the pseudosciences of spiritism, demonology, and other mystical interpretations, when not neglected altogether. The work of Kraepelin, Charcot, Bernheim, and Janet introduced us to the new methods of interpretation which have been so widely extended and accepted in recent years. Perhaps it is psychoanalysis which latterly has given us most data in this field. Without accepting its teachings uncritically we can say without hesitation that it has opened up many new psychic phenomena arising from sublimations and repressions and conflicts and the consequent attempts to escape from reality into a pleasanter world of imagination or of dreams. This tendency to seek flight from reality is now seen to be one of the most persistent and universal characteristics of practically all men. Art, social intercourse, play of all sorts, our ideas and ideals, even our daily hobbies in some degree afford us an opportunity to shift our attention from the active conflict situations to that of comfortable adjustment, even if only in our dreams.
HABIT VERSUS INSTINCT IN RELATIVELY AUTOMATIC BEHAVIOR — McDougall has correctly indicated the need for an escape from an artificial and over-intellectualized interpretation of social processes. As we have seen, it has become increasingly clear from our analysis of the mass phenomena of the psycho-social environment and from our studies of psychopathic personalities that in a large part of our behavior we act from relatively unconscious impulses rather than from highly conscious motives of advantage to ourselves or to society. What is the nature of these impulses which dominate our behavior? McDougall says they are instinctive; that the factor in psychology which we have neglected is the original nature of man; that in order to achieve a complete picture of men in
(37) action, whether performing as individuals or as members of a group, or in any social contacts whatever, it is necessary to unravel the hidden springs of conduct which come to us by inheritance.
This theory represents the dominance of the biological viewpoint in psychology, which began to be so strong soon after 1 goo and which was clearly discernible as early as the 1890's when the physiological psychologies began to appear. Before this, psychology had been dominated by metaphysics and formal logic, and if we were compelled to choose between the two methods of interpreting conduct, we should unquestionably prefer the instinct theory. But the environmentalist believes he has a more adequate substitute for both of the preceding methods of accounting for human behavior. He does not deny that the instinctivist view has great significance and explains many basic facts. He contends, however, that we live not in a world of primitive nature, but in one in which our adjustments are on an acquired or cultural basis. Therefore the impulses which give man largely an unconscious direction are habits rather than instincts. Why this rather obvious fact should not sooner have been perceived and appreciated is difficult to explain. It may have been due to the fact that the analysis of the behavior of living forms had proceeded farther than the analysis of the objective phenomena of the psycho-social environment when the instinctivist interpretations of behavior were produced. That was in the day of the dominance of the biological concepts and methodology in all science. We are now beginning to appreciate the environmentalist conception. This transition is taking effect even in the field of the biological sciences, as is so amply evidenced by the conclusions of Professors Child, Herrick, Newman, and even Jennings and C. B. Davenport.
MATERIALS FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING- Allport, F. H., "Social Psychology," Psy. Bul., XVII: 85-94
- Bernard, L. L., "Recent Trends in Social Psychology," J. S. F.. II: 737-43
- Ginsberg, M., The Psychology of Society, Introduction
- McDougall, W., An Introduction to Social Psychology, Ch. I
- Schaupp, Z., "A Review of Some Present Tendencies in Social Psychology," J. A. P. S. P., XVII : 93-103
