An Introduction to Social Psychology
Chapter 4: Method of the Present Treatment
Luther Lee Bernard
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SYNTHETIC TREATMENT— The present treatment of social psychology is more or less synthetic and eclectic in its plan and content. It attempts to make use of the most valid materials in all three phases of the subject as it has been presented hitherto, but it emphasizes especially the development of acquired character in the individual under social pressures or stimulus patterns. As will appear from the context, and from a previous work by the author, the ordinary presentation of the theory of inherited behavior patterns cannot be accepted in this treatise. The position is taken that environment rather than inheritance is responsible for the major portion of the adjustment traits of the individual, although there is no denial that individual differences in inherited capacities exist. The basic contention is that the social environment has now come to be so highly organized and powerful that it presents stimuli which select these inherited and other acquired responses in the individual and give predominance to those characteristics and impulses within him which are necessary for his effective adjustment to any social situation. That is, the social environment, through the selective operation of the stimuli which it presents, selects in the individual those responses which are necessary for his adequate adjustment to its own organization.
DIVISIONS— The book as written falls into four parts. The first part presents the general and special considerations which must be taken into account in grasping the significance and content of the science of social psychology. This part deals with the nature of science and scientific methods, the relations of social psychology to psychology and the social sciences, and the phases of the subject of social psychology as they have been developed and treated by various writers. These phases may properly be called the schools of social psychology. Part I
(39) is therefore an introduction to the science of social psychology, which is developed in the other three parts.
BEHAVIOR of THE ORGANISM— Part II presents the human organism as a functioning unit in a social situation. This presentation is made on the assumption that it is necessary to understand the character of the socius before an intelligible exposition of his development and transformation under environmental pressures can be made. It is through his response to stimuli from the environment that all transformations in the social structure or organization are made. It is also through him that all social functioning occurs. In this treatment the individual or socius is not taken as a static or fixed quantum, but is regarded as a changing psycho-biological organism. First he is considered from the standpoint of his inheritance as determined by the organization of his protoplasms in the germ cells. Next, the factors in the environment which operate selectively to modify and transform these inherited structures and integrations are passed in review, with some analysis of the method by which they operate upon the psycho-biological organism through their presentation of stimuli. The remainder of Part II is concerned with a presentation and discussion of the behavior patterns and bio-psychic and neuro-psychic processes and technique which arise in the individual out of the combined operation of heredity and environment. These behavior patterns and processes are treated both analytically and developmentally. The interest here is in the types of behavior mechanisms possessed by the individual, as an aid to understanding the method by which these are organized and transformed by the social and natural pressures or stimuli to which he is subjected in our socially integrated world. Part II, therefore, is in the nature of an application of bio-psychology to social psychology proper. But, as McDougall has indicated, an analysis of the individual is so indispensable to the treatment of his behavior in a social situation that it must be presented here in order to acquaint the student adequately with the tools which he must use in dissecting the socio-psychological and psycho-social processes as such.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RESPONSE TO HIS ENVIRONMENT— Part III presents the socio-psychological processes proper.
(40) Part IV is concerned with the psycho-social processes, or those which operate selectively upon the individual's behavior. Part III makes the transition from the socio-psychic responses of individuals to the psycho-social organization of stimuli from the environment. It is concerned, therefore, with the method by which habits are developed in the individual as a means of enabling him to adjust his behavior to the collective behavior and to all of those environmental conditions which may be termed social. This process of adaptation of the self to the collectivity is also a process of defining and organizing the self, and likewise of constantly transforming the environment.
The process of adaptation is not merely negative, one of passive conformity to the environmental situation. It is also constructive and involves the expansion and integration of one's own personality through the acquisition of habits or acquired behavior mechanisms, and also the re-creation or reorganization of the environment, especially the social environment. But the power of any one individual unaided to transform the environment grows relatively less and the power of the social environment to transform the individual responses grows relatively greater as it becomes more strongly integrated. The transformation of the environment becomes increasingly a collective undertaking. The process of adaptation is, therefore, as Professor Cooley and others have pointed out, bipolar or reciprocal. One comes to understand himself as he understands his environment, especially his psycho-social environment. And he develops and creates self— a socialized self— through the development and integration of habits as he analyzes and, in a measure, helps to integrate and create collective forms and processes. The process of differentiating and segregating the self or personality and the environment and of objects within both categories is, as we shall see in Part III, necessary as a means of giving the individual leverage for the effective organization of his adjustment behavior. But this same process of adjustment results in new assimilative integrations of the personality and the environmcnt, through imitation and otherwise, as will be shown in Parts III and IV. Differentiation from and reintegration with the environment go on constantly as phases of the adjustment process.
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THE PSYCHO-SOCIAL ORGANIZATION— Part IV is concerned primarily with the objective or group processes which condition and organize the individual responses collectively. It outlines in moderate detail those psycho-social processes and structures which serve as the social environmental pressures and provide the stimuli which initiate and control the recognitive and imitative processes discussed in Part III. These objective psychosocial processes consist of direct and indirect contact groups, of attitudes and ideals which symbolize and project collective behavior, of institutional and non-institutional controls. As objective phenomena they are a part of the data of sociology and of the social sciences generally. But as processes affording stimuli to the individual behaving in a collective response situation they are also data for social psychology. In this second respect they bear a relationship to social psychology analogous to that of the data of the bio-psychic organism treated in Part II, which are also data for bio-psychology as well as for social psychology. It is through these data of individual behavior, treated in Part II, and the psycho-social data of social organization and control, treated in Part IV, that social psychology makes its chief liaisons with the sciences of individual psychology on the one hand and with the other social sciences on the other hand.
DEPARTURES IN THIS TEXT— It has been the purpose in this treatise to present the subject matter of social psychology as data and principles, or, as sometimes said, as pure science, rather than as application or applied science. Consequently, some readers may be concerned at the omission from the discussion of certain problems relating to the adjustment of individuals and groups which they have been accustomed to meet in the text books on this subject. It is the view of the present writer, however, that such discussions belong in separate treatises on social organization, social control, and social ethics, rather than in a treatise on the principles and data of social psychology.
In the matter of terminology also there has been some departure from previous usage. This seemed to the present writer to be unavoidable because of his emphasis upon certain
(42) themes and relationships not previously discussed in sufficient detail to call forth corresponding terminology. In the majority of cases, in all instances, in fact, in which it was possible to do so, the older terminology has been retained. Some of the ultra behaviorists (the author thinks of himself as a behaviorist) may even blame him for being so conservative in his retention of much of the terminology of the old introspective psychology. His justification is that under present conditions it appears to be necessary to clearness, and clearness should be one of the chief aims of any exposition. The chief departures from the old terminology are, therefore, mainly in the nature of additions to it. They center primarily in the adoption of the term neuro-psychic technique and the various terms differentiating the environment into its several phases. To this also may possibly be added the concrete emphasis upon a psychological and functional distinction between the inner or attitudinal (sometimes called covert or implicit) and overt aspects of behavior. An explanation of the purpose of these departures is made in each case at the point at which the variation from custom occurs. It is hoped that the results justify the usage. The term neuro-psychic technique merely emphasizes the neural (conscious or unconscious) aspects of behavior in contrast to the more complete or total overt adjustment responses, to which they are usually preliminary and preparatory. There is no attempt to draw any complete or final distinction between neuro-psychic (symbolic and internal) and neuro-muscular (total overt response) behavior. Both aspects of behavior have their neural organization, but only the latter has a well defined overt phase as distinguished from symbolic responses, and only the former normally is highly conscious and complex. Neuro-psychic behavior is a substitute for neuro-muscular behavior, and appears only in so far as the latter is being interrupted or modified.
ANTICIPATED CRITICISMS— Some psychologists may also object to the retention of a distinction between conscious and unconscious behavior. So far as the actual bio-chemical functioning of the nervous processes within the individual is concerned there is, possibly, no such distinction. All behavior mechanisms are equally definite anatomical and physiological
( 43) facts whether they are conscious or unconscious. The social psychologist makes this distinction because conscious behavior mechanisms apparently can be more effectively projected into symbolic collective behavior patterns to function as means to purposive social organization and social control. Similarly there are socio-psychological and sociological justifications for distinguishing rational and irrational, social and anti-social, moral and immoral, imitative and non-imitative behavior which are not apparent in the premises to the individual psychologist who looks only to the neural and physiological mechanisms for the data of his science. Psychology, to meet the needs of social science, must look beyond mere neurological and physiological mechanisms and seek to include social or collective relationship patterns, although the neurological and physiological emphases are indispensable to the social scientists as well as to the psychologist.
It may also be necessary in this connection to forestall an erroneous interpretation. Because this volume emphasizes the development of the technique of the adjustment of the individual to his social environment from the instinctive aspects to the rational, some readers may conclude that the writer is under the impression that in our day men ordinarily and habitually use the rational adjustment procedures. There is no such illusion on his part. In writing a treatise on the general principles of a science it is necessary to describe all of the significant processes involved, but it is not incumbent upon the author — in many cases not even desirable— to attempt to estimate the extent to which the various processes are employed in practice. This is quite as true in the theory of social psychology as of chemistry. In the applied aspects of the subject, however, such estimates may very properly constitute a phase of the treatment.
ORGANISM AND ENVIRONMENT — Three other criticisms should, perhaps, be anticipated. The first is an objection to the distinction between environment and organism so frequently made in this volume. This criticism will Probably be to the effect that such a segregation is impossible, since a part of the organism, even the organism as a whole, frequently serves to release response mechanisms within itself. This is,
(44) of course, true. Nor is it the intention of this book to confine the environment to stimulus-giving objects wholly outside the organism. The contention is that every response mechanism has its stimulus, inside or outside of the organism, and that stimulus-response processes indicate stimulus-giving objects which constitute environment for the reacting mechanisms. Since in a social situation the organism usually responds as a unit to its stimuli it is well to know what objects, including the organism itself and its behavior patterns, constitute its environment. Environment is simply that which offers stimuli or conditions responses.
A closely related criticism anticipated is that the social psychologist and the sociologist are interested in behavior, that they are concerned more with what people do under certain circumstances than with what constitutes an environment or an organism. This also is true. But it is not possible to anticipate behavior without knowing what stimuli are available. Watson, in his behavioristic program, states that the ultimate purpose of the science of behavior is to make it possible to predict what will be the probable response when a given stimulus is applied. Such a program involves the ascertainment of two things: the nature of the response mechanisms (the organization of the organism), and the nature of the stimuli (the organization of the environment). Psychology has already gone far in the investigation of the former. The time is more than ripe for the sociologists or others to undertake the systematic study of the latter. Hence the emphasis in this volume upon the organization of the environment (including that of the internal physiology and anatomy of the organism itself treated in Chapter VII).
A corollary to this second criticism is to be found in the contention of some social psychologists that social psychology is concerned with the behavior of groups and of individuals in groups and that what goes on within the individual's neuropsychic organization is the concern of the psychologist, not of the social psychologist. They draw an analogy from physics, saying that physics would not have been able to make progress if it had refused to investigate the behavior of masses before investigating the inner organization of the constituent atoms.
( 45) The two problems of investigation are not exactly analogous, but aside from this fact, the comparison is properly of physics and sociology rather than of physics and social psychology. It is true that sociology may be studied as the behavior of groups and of individuals in groups without raising the question directly as to the organization of the internal mechanisms. It was studied in this manner until it recognized the need of assistance from social psychology. But social psychology is not sociology. The very fact that it is a psychological as well as a social science indicates that its task is the study of the responses of the individual to his social environment. Its task is exactly this of connecting the environment (stimulus-giving objects) with the organism (response mechanisms). The function of social psychology is to tell us how we can control the behavior of individuals in the group or in any social situation, and how the individual can control the behavior of the group. This involves both an organized presentation of stimulus controls (environmental organization) and of response mechanisms (the organization of the personality). The neglect of the former aspect leaves us psychology; of the latter, sociology. In either case of neglect we have no social psychology.
THE DOMINANCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT— Still another criticism, this time from the standpoint of individual psychology, is likely to be directed against the "metaphysical" assumption of an environmental organization and control where we have only individuals behaving with reference to one another. On the one hand it will be objected that institutions and groups, considered aside from the behavior of individuals, are only metaphysical assumptions, not tangible realities capable of presenting stimuli of their own. This is true, except where such institutional and group behavior has deposited some tangible organization, symbolic or physical, which is usually the case. Where reference is made to institutional or group control in this volume the intention is always to convey the meaning that it is individuals (although mutually conditioned or "organized" individuals) or tangible structures of organization which give the stimuli to responses.
On the other hand, and in pursuance of this criticism, it will
( 46) be objected that it is the individual who acts by virtue of his inner organization and that the environment has no power to compel a response. Throughout this volume the environment is referred to as dominating the formation of behavior patterns in the individual. His character is regarded as in large measure the result of the operation of social pressures. It will scarcely be necessary to explain that the author does not conceive of these pressures as operating in any physical sense. All behavior is the behavior of individuals, even when they act in collective behavior or adjustment situations. Also, the behavior of individuals, as was indicated in the preceding chapter, is organized primarily in the form of neural responses to stimuli. The preëxisting neural organization of the individual, inherited and acquired, and his other physiological and anatomical organizations function in the determination of the responses of the organism to the environmental stimuli. Normally the internal organization determines these responses, and, as Allport has so clearly shown, the drives or prepotent impulses which result from this inner organization may be said metaphorically and somewhat metaphysically to reach out for suitable stimuli to release their response mechanisms. But it is, after all, the environment which offers the stimuli, whether this environment be another part of the same organism, other organisms, or physical and symbolic structures organized outside of the individual and themselves organized or created by mankind in the past and the present. It is also true that each individual contributes to the organization of this external stimulus-giving .environment, but any one individual can construct only a very infinitesimal part of it, unless his construction be in the realm of phantasy instead of fact. It is because the individual's character development depends so overwhelmingly upon the stimuli which the environment affords him before and after birth that we speak of this environment as dominating his behavior and his acquired human nature. In the long run he becomes pretty much what the environment affords him opportunity for becoming through offering him stimuli for the release of preconditioned responses and for the conditioning of new responses. Control of individual adjustment and character formation is, therefore, not physical, but psycholog-
(47) -ical and social. The environmental or objective social interpretation of character control is therefore not psychologically unsound. It is, on the contrary, the only possible interpretation, for, while the social environment is in the long run created by individuals, it is constituted of their responses to environments already existing, either natural or social.
THE GENERAL POINT OF VIEW OF THIS BOOK may be stated as follows
I. The organic or internal bases of behavior have always been determined through selection and in the long run by environmental factors or controls. But with the development of human-made or social environments there has appeared a tendency for them to become increasingly dependent upon and subordinate to the psycho-social and other highly derivative behavior controls.
2. Behavior patterns tend to evolve, both phylogenetically and ontogenetically, from the concrete, inherited, immediate, and predominantly overt types to the abstract, acquired, symbolic, and predominantly internal types.3. Symbolic behavior and symbolic behavior controls (language) tend to evolve from the concrete and partial overt responses of the organism to the abstract and verbal or substitute overt and internal response forms.
4. Symbolic behavior tends to become increasingly important in the adjustment process
(I) In individual adjustment, such as delayed or modified response, where it functions as thinking;
(2) In social adjustment, where it functions objectively as the content of science;
(3) In communication, where it functions both directly and indirectly between people of the same time, and wholly indirectly between people of different times by means of its storage functions.
5. Individual character or behavior patterns and sets tend to become increasingly acquired or habitual as the result of the differentiation of new stimuli in the environment and the conditioning of new responses to these stimuli. By this means the world or universe constantly expands for the individual and the capacity of the individual to respond to this world increases
(48) pari passu. Thus individual character or personality becomes richer and more intellectual, and the environment becomes increasingly elaborate and social, expanding into highly derivative forms of the social and institutional type.
6. Social organization tends to be characterized increasingly by abstract derivative and non face-to-face groups rather than by primary, concrete, and face-to-face groups. The sanctions for this increasingly abstract social organization also tend to evolve from the concrete emotional attitudes of the primary groups to the highly abstract and derivative ideals and principles which dominate the abstract derivative groups.
7. Institutional controls tend to shift from the primarily customary and traditional to the predominantly scientific.
8. Leadership, which represents the process of focusing stimuli upon individuals responding in a social situation, tends to evolve from the direct, personal, emotional type to the indirect, impersonal, and intellectual types.
9. Men learn to project their adjustments into the future and to behave telically, at first largely as individuals and later collectively. In the early stages of their social evolution men project relatively personal and immediate ends or objectives. But as their power of handling symbolic behavior mechanisms and concepts develops and abstract science is invented as the supreme symbolic system for making adjustments, the ends projected become increasingly social or, impersonal and indirect or intermediary to other ends. In this way mankind may be said to attempt to control their own social evolution.
These tendencies are not regarded as inevitable or absolute metaphysical principles inherent in the organization of nature itself, but are stated as empirical or projected generalizations of observed data. They are emphasized throughout the book because it is believed that these are the psychological and socio-psychological tendencies which are most characteristic of men as distinguished from other animals and which distinguish modern society from primitive society, and that an understanding of these points is essential to an understanding of modern society.
