An Introduction to Social Psychology
Chapter 10: Habit Mechanisms and the Adjustment Process
Luther Lee Bernard
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THE PURPOSE OF THIS CHAPTER IS to show: first, how individual adjustment patterns have evolved phylogenetically and ontogenetically from the preconscious instinctive types, in which the behavior is predominantly overt with a minimum of internal dominance, to the intellectual and rational and distinctively human modes, in which the behavior is predominantly internal and symbolical, with a minimum of immediate overt response; and, secondly, how these higher modes of inner or symbolical behavior have been conditioned to storage symbols which can serve as releases for inner or overt responses for a very long period of time, with the result that useful or insistent types of social organization and social control are preserved. By this means we shall be able to accomplish two objects. First, we shall review and state in definite order the main facts regarding the evolution of behavior which has been covered in the preceding chapters from the standpoint of the general problems of adjustment. Second, it will be possible to illustrate very clearly the growing importance of environment, especially of the symbolic and projected psychosocial environment, in the control of individual and collective behavior through the conditioning of responses by stimuli.
The transition from the dominance of inherited to acquired technique is of course most apparent in the case of man, where the latter type of control is overwhelmingly important; but it is also to be observed in the lower forms, especially those nearest to man. This development of the environmental dominance can be traced through two aspects: first, the Progressive integration of acquired adjustment patterns, and, second, the progressive analysis and evaluation of behavior in adjustment situations from the primitive sensory and affective proc-
(143) -esses to the highly intellectual methods of discrimination and measurement of the adjustment values of this behavior. In this chapter we shall consider only the former of these two aspects. The latter will be discussed in the two following chapters. In both of these aspects of progressive integration of adjustment patterns, we are, of course, concerned primarily with habits.
THE FUNCTION of HABIT— Habit is, as we have seen, an acquired mechanism employed in mediating a more effective and selective adjustment of the organism to its environment. It appears when inherited mechanisms can no longer secure sufficiently accurate, rapid, and differentiated adjustment of the organism to a radically and rapidly changing environment without changing the form and structure of the organism. Those animals which live in a relatively constant medium, especially the sea animals, or the insects which so generally have but a limited habitat and live but a season or through only a part of it, have little need of habit forming powers. Insects which live longer than one season and thus may be said to have a varied climatic environment, or those which change from the air to the earth or vice versa, usually change their form as a method of instinctive or inherited adjustment to a changing environment. Where there is no adequate inherited equipment for the mediation of adaptive adjustments, habit modifications must arise. At what stage of development they first appear it is scarcely possible to say. Jennings finds them operating very low down among living forms. In lower animals they are seen doubtless as relatively simple recombinations of primitive tropisms and reflex patterns. In fact, the earliest acquired or habit modifications of responses are of just this nature, relatively formal and simple recombinations of elemental inherited response patterns.
OVERT ADJUSTMENT MECHANISMS ACQUIRED THROUGH TRIAL AND ERROR— As intimated in Chapter VIII, habits are either overt (neuro-muscular) or internal and symbolic (neuro-psychic). The earlier habits are overt in character. That is, they involve an external readjustment of the organism on the basis of trial and error. An inner, or neural, adjustment is of course also involved, but it is secondary. There is
(144) an absence of cortical dominance in this early form of habit integration. Ordinarily the simple acquired overt adaptive readjustment neither originates nor ends primarily in the neural processes. Its inception comes from the presentation of unusual stimuli to the end organs of the nervous system with the result that new adjustments must be formed, at first by the trial and error method. In such a case the neural stimulus-response patterns act primarily or exclusively as transmitters, not as transformers, of the impulse. The organization of the environment determines in the main, through the successive stimuli presented, the organization of the response, aided by whatever neural patterns, instinctive or acquired, there are for making responses to such stimuli. Where such patterns are lacking new ones must be conditioned or integrated. The response occurs overtly and immediately, and usually as the act of the organism as a whole, instead of being transformed or redirected by previously organized sets within. Effective transformations and redirection from within can operate only if acquired neural dispositions or sets have been built up in considerable volume through the modification of instinctive patterns as the result of previous trial and error or overt adjustment processes. Among animals this transformation never occurs to any appreciable extent. It is primarily a human achievement. The animal acts; it does not think. Or, if we hold with the behaviorists that all adjustment behavior is thinking, we must say that the animal in this stage of habit formation is thinking in terms of relatively uninhibited overt responses, or trial and error thinking, instead of in terms of internally controlled adjustments, or verbal thinking. This internal control is acquired slowly and painfully only at the end of the trial and error process.
AMONG MEN TRIAL AND ERROR ADJUSTMENT BECOMES INTERNAL AND SYMBOLIC— The Function of Language Symbols — In the case of man, however— at least in the case of individuals whose inner behavior processes have been previously conditioned to the symbolic overt partial responses called language— total overt response adjustment behavior is not normally consummated on the overt trial and error basis. The adjustment is worked out internally and symbolically on
( 145) the basis of an integration of the internal behavior mechanisms conditioned by the symbolic, usually verbal responses. This internal behavior is conditioned by the overt partial and substitute responses which we call language. Such language may be gesture or speech. Each overt partial or substitute response which arises in connection with the interruption or delay of total overt adjustment responses symbolizes the total overt response which is blocked or inhibited, that is, which attempts or tends to occur in overt behavior but fails to do so or is inhibited by the inner behavior mechanisms or by some stimulus from the environment. In the course of the evolution of human behavior, words and the combinations of words become the most important and condensed and abstract of all of the symbolic overt behavior conditioners of internal or conscious behavior. These symbolic, usually verbal, partial or substitute responses can be set up in much more rapid succession than the total overt trial and error responses could possibly occur. They immediately bring about appropriate organized internal substitute behavior. As a result the trial and error process of adjustment goes on internally instead of overtly, until finally there is a successful issue, or until the inner behavior mechanisms cease to inhibit each other and are organized supplementarily.
HOW PREËXISTING LANGUAGE FORMS AID IN THIS PROCESS— It is not ordinarily
necessary for human beings to invent their own language symbols, and lower animals probably
cannot, at least not to any appreciable extent. Human beings are born into a world with a
language already made. Together with each object or stimulus presented to the child for his
response the name of the object is also presented. For example, when he is handed a ball the
word "ball" is also spoken by some one and he conditions the name of the object to the sight of
the object, to the touch of it, or to the act of reaching for it or crawling to it and taking possession
of it. In like manner he learns in time the language sets or forms which correspond to going fur
the Loll, bouncing the ball, buying a ball, and all other forms of behavior with reference to any
object whatever. Thereafter, if he desires the ball or other object it will not always be necessary
for him to go for
( 146) it himself. He may use the words descriptive of the ball together with other words, or even gestures, indicating the transfer of the ball from another person or place to himself. Thus as the result of saying "Ball" and pointing to it, or by saying "Give-ball," or "Give me (or baby) ball," some one may bring him the ball. Young children very early learn to get things, especially food and playthings, in this way by the use of words and gestures without getting them for themselves.
It is only a step beyond this process to the use of language as a method of deciding between two or more conflicting impulses without actually acting out both or all of them overtly, or on an overt trial and error basis. All of us, perhaps, have observed young children, when confronted by such a problem, make a gesture first in the direction of one trial response and then in another. Sometimes adults do the same thing, as if unable to make up their minds which direction to take or which object to pick up, which dress or hat to put on, etc. The young child also frequently "talks" the thing out with himself in the form of vocal gestures instead of larger body gestures. He says, "I will do this," or, "No, I will do this;" or "I want this," then changes his mind and says, "I want that," etc. In such cases he is merely transferring his adaptive responses from the complete overt trial and error to the symbolic or language trial and error basis of gestures or words. Later on he will make such a complete substitution of symbolic responses for total overt ones in selecting the final or most desirable response that he can settle the whole matter internally or neuro-psychically, without having recourse either to gestures or to words. That is, he can "think" out his adjustment in the ordinary meaning of that term. His speech has become subvocal. And this is the case with adults in most instances, but not in all.
Words not only make possible an internal solution of immediate adjustment problems. They also serve to facilitate objective thinking. If one's verbal symbols are accurately conditioned to objects and their behavior, lie call perform experiments symbolically, in terms of words, rather than actually and come to very much the same conclusion as though he had performed them overtly. Science is a method of getting ac-
( 147) -curate symbols, through laboratory or statistical methods of conditioning, in order to make possible the symbolic manipulation of the world. In physics and chemistry the symbols are quantitative and highly accurate. The architect does not have to fill the stadium to the point of collapse in order to know how strong to make it. He has formulas of tensions and strains and can work out the required strength symbolically.
THE GAINS FROM THIS METHOD— Thus, in cases of internal trial and error adjustment a reorganization of the internal activity or neuro-psychic technique is substituted for the immediate overt or external adjustment. Apparently the reason for this is that impulses to overt behavior so crowd upon each other under the pressures of a complex environment, or that the past behavior patterns integrated in the neural mechanisms have become so numerous, that it is no longer possible for all of the released impulses to go over into overt response simultaneously or consecutively. There is neither time nor energy for all of the responses to take place on an overt trial and error basis. The net result of such elimination of the overt trial response is, as we have just seen, that trial and error or trial and success in adaptation is transferred from overt to internal or symbolic behavior. The multitude of errors in conduct to which premature overt response would commit us are in the main avoided by means of first working out the adjustment internally in substitute neuro-psychic technique, which in its highest form is verbal or rational thought. Thus there is a very great advantage to the organism, from the standpoints of flexibility, rapidity, and accuracy of adjustment, as well as of economy of time and energy, in transferring adaptive habit technique largely from the overt to the inner sphere. It becomes neuro-psychic adjustment technique, instead of immediately muscular and glandular adaptation.
THE SUPERIORITY OF VERBAL SYMBOLS AS CONDITIONERS OF INNER BEHAVIOR— Obviously when the overt symbolic or substitute responses which condition the inner adjustment mechanisms are verbal they occur in much more rapid Succession than if they are in the nature of movements of the larger body muscles, or gestures. Likewise, the inner trial and error adaptation can be much more comprehensive, not only because
( 148) the greater rapidity of the process permits more trials to be made, but also because verbal symbols are much more condensed and inclusive. They are also more precise. Word symbols are more likely than other overt symbols to have highly developed or abstract conscious meaning value. Meaning is the consciousness, not only of the symbol which conditions the consciousness, but of the symbol as representative of the interrupted response which it symbolizes. The refinement of meaning in words, therefore, represents a refinement of their conditioning of inner behavior. Because of all of the characteristics of verbal symbols as conditioners of inner behavior, the inner adjustments which they condition are ordinarily far superior to those conditioned by any other overt symbolic mechanism or language form.
Words, especially written words, also possess other great advantages over gestures and other symbolic conditioners of inner behavior in making preliminary adjustments. They are mobile, can be stored almost anywhere, preserved indefinitely, and they are capable of almost unlimited abstraction. Consequently, they function more frequently than all other overt symbolic responses combined in conditioning internal trial and error integrations of behavior in highly literate people. This fact, incidentally, gives the literate a great advantage over the illiterate and preliterate, provided their words are symbolic of real experiences. Primarily because we carry such a large store of words in our memories and because they have been conditioned or filled with meaning by all sorts of previous experiences, almost any sort of blocking of overt adjustment processes releases an abundance of them in either our vocal or subvocal speech. The resultant conditioning of our inner adjustment behavior we call thinking, as we indicated above. This is what we mean when we say that the intelligent or trained man thinks out his adjustments before he acts them overtly or on a trial and error basis. Communication, it will readily be seen, is merely a method by which symbols of the types here mentioned, usually verbal, occurring as partial or substitute overt responses in one person condition directly internal behavior and indirectly overt behavior in another person.
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THINKING IS ESSENTIALLY HABITUAL OR ACQUIRED IN CHARACTER, although it may have an underlying groundwork of instinctive behavior patterns. Reflex or instinctive behavior is not conscious. All forms of mental experience appear with the interruption or modification of instinctive or acquired behavior patterns or responses, leading to a readaptation of the organism to its environment. Thinking is merely the highest or most flexible or verbal form of the adjustment process on the basis of internal neuro-psychic technique. In thinking, which is our name for symbolic response or substitute internal neural organization, subjective or individual habit adaptation reaches its greatest flexibility. It is thus that internal habit adjustment develops its great power of selection of adaptive responses. The organism does not respond overtly to the external stimulus until first a satisfactory organization and reorganization of behavior patterns have taken place within. Neurologically speaking, all important interferences of neuro-psychic impulses or behavior patterns have been resolved into single unitary tendencies to response which are now free to go over into overt behavior adjustment responses, so far as the actor knows, without prejudice to the effectiveness of his adjustment. We say that we think out our plan of action before we proceed. That is, we are conscious, at least in part, of the inner impulses and tendencies to action which are inhibited and of the synthetic or dominating one which finally is released from the internal inhibitions for overt expression or action. We may even say that we will it, by which we mean, in the language of neuro-psychic technique, that we are conscious of the dominant urge or impulse of the behavior pattern, viewed in the light of the response, which is freed from inhibitions and goes into overt action. Habit has become so flexible and so rational in the conscious aspect of its organization that it selects an adaptive adjustment, which we call intelligent, to the insistent and overwhelming environment.
THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE— The highest form of actual habit, therefore, is the internal neuro-psychic type, which is the most flexible in organization and which consequently offers the largest possibilities of selective and intelligent adaptive adjustment of the organism to its ever present and insistent
(150) multifold environment. We know this inner neuro-psychic habit organization objectively, especially in others, primarily through its conditioning language symbols as speech or gesture and pantomime, and only secondarily as total overt response. While the ultimate end of all thinking may be said to be action of a character appropriate to achieve the ends disclosed by the thinking process, a more immediate and preparatory— in many cases, a substitute— end or objective is communication of these ideas. The internal organization of acquired or habit processes cannot go on indefinitely in any mind without exercising the discharge as well as the receiving processes of the neuro-psychic mechanism. The forms of behavior which may be regarded as language and which serve as mechanisms for thinking and for the communication of thought or behavior patterns are total overt, partial overt, and substitute overt responses. The first is not ordinarily thought of as language. Gestures were originally partial overt responses. Merely beginning the act was sufficient to indicate what the completed act would be and thus to enable the remainder of the trial and error adjustment to be taken care of internally. The most effective substitute overt responses for purposes of thinking are vocal.
SPEECH AS PRELIMINARY ADJUSTMENT— In this way speech becomes a preliminary or preparatory adjustment process, corresponding to the internal neural and thought aspect which it symbolizes. Just as the internal or neuro-psychic organization is the indispensable first phase of any delayed overt response of an organism of a higher type, so may the second or overt phase be either total overt response or speech. In the highest or human type, it is more frequently speech than body expression, for the reasons of economy and effectiveness already mentioned, and because thinking usually occurs in a social situation and requires communication.
Among the most cultivated types of men, especially among professional thinkers, the preparatory and preliminary character of speech in the adjustment process may be so unapparent that it is riot observed. Thus the philosopher may appear to think and speak or write merely for the purpose of thinking, speaking, or writing. Such would seem to be a case of "art for art's sake." But this is an illusion due to the fact that the
( 151) preliminaries have developed to such huge proportions comparatively that the ultimate purpose in overt adjustment is lost sight of for the time being. In some cases this situation becomes pathological. Especially is this true where the litterateur, the artist, the logician, or the metaphysician piles up his technique or expresses himself merely for his own esthetic satisfaction without expectation of or desire for effective overt adjustment. His interests and activities become inverted and stand as a subjective substitute for overt or objective adjustment. Historically the scholastics and the ascetics have illustrated this tendency, as in some degree did the inverted philosophy of the Stoics. Hamlet is supposed to have suffered from this difficulty. And modern legislatures, with their investigating committees and debates intended only to investigate and debate, approach dangerously near to this classification on a collective basis. But ordinarily and under proper limitations and guidance, thought and the communication of that thought are valuable preliminaries to effective and rapid overt adjustment of the organism as a whole to its environment, paradoxical as it may seem.
SPEECH is also a means to communication on the basis of symbols representing the compression or foreshortening of total bodily response in adjustment on a large scale. It is much more economical as a means of communication than total bodily response or even than gesture. Substitute overt responses, even more than partial ones, appear to have originated primarily as means of communication, and secondarily as mechanisms of thinking or internal adjustment. Thus speech succeeds both pantomime and gesture as a means of communication as soon as adequate vocal symbols to represent total bodily response or overt behavior have been invented and have become generally understood. The mind recognizes speech as it recognizes total or partial overt responses. Speech is substituted for total overt response as a means of communication because it is more rapid, more intimately adaptive, more highly differentiated, acid, therefore more discriminative.
WRITTEN LANGUAGE performs the same general functions as spoken language, but in many respects even more effectively. With its advent the eye comes to be employed for a new pur-
( 152) -pose, that of perceiving abstract meaning symbols, a function which formerly belonged especially to the ear. Corresponding changes in neuro-psychic organization and association must be set up. Written language, furthermore, is capable of performing many preliminary or preparatory adjustment services which spoken language cannot render. Spoken language greatly increases the possibility of the coöperative or coadaptive adjustment of men to their environment, by enabling them to communicate their aims and formulate common procedure or technique. It also makes possible the assembling of technique which is of very great value in the adjustment process. The transmission of culture and technique by word of mouth is the second most sacred and honored process among primitive men. The most respected is the establishment and control of relationships between man and the supernatural. Spoken language, however, works only at short range. Speech must be relayed through other organisms, other minds or neuro-psychic technique, if it is to travel great distances or to descend beyond a single generation— hence the great relative advantage of written language in all but the most limited range of contacts. At great distances, only the written or printed word can carry the message intact and uncorrupted by the neuro-psychic media through which the spoken word must pass. Written language is superior to the spoken, both because of the greater volume which it is able to transmit and because of the greater accuracy with which the content is conveyed.
EXTERNAL STORAGE OF SYMBOLS— With the advent of written language, and even before to some slight extent, language symbols began to be organized and stored outside of the individual's behavior patterns and consciousness. This process of external storage of neuro-psychic symbols has increased to such an extent that now by far the greater portion of the stimuli or releases of acquired behavior patterns lies outside of the symbolic behavior of any one individual. It is not alone the verbal symbols and meaning completes printed in books, newspapers, and magazines, and occurring in written documents that constitute the content of stored language symbols possessing the power of releasing neuro-psychic technique
( 153) or symbolic behavior in another. These are the most important forms, but any external meaning symbol which is sufficiently standardized arid effective as a stimulus to release or reinstate behavior patterns also comes under this category. Thus the various forms of art, such as painting, sculpture, musical compositions, photography or even movie films, and various carriers of symbols, such as pottery, jewelry, archeological material, and architecture, become depositories of stored meaning content or symbolic stimuli for the release of inner habit mechanisms and of overt adjustment responses.
It is only by means of this external storage of language symbols with the power to reinstate and release symbolic and overt responses in others that we have been able to achieve civilization. Non-writing peoples have not been able to advance beyond the status of barbarism. Their wise men could not carry in their brains a sufficient volume of accurate inner habit mechanisms representing external technic processes to enable them to advance greatly in the arts and in the rational interpretation of nature and society.
THE STAIRWAY OF HABIT TECHNIQUE— The evolution of the behavior controls has now been traced briefly, and it must be apparent that there has been an increase in the flexibility of the behavior patterns from the period of the dominance of instinct to the period of the dominance of externally stored language symbols over human behavior. Along with this increasing flexibility of behavior patterns has also gone a greater degree of selectiveness in the adjustment process, so that the adaptation of the organism becomes increasingly more specialized and individualized. This development from the fixity of instinct to the flexibility of habit, making possible an intelligent adjustment of man to his environment on the basis of a rational manipulation of stored language symbols, may be represented in the diagram on the following page. Man has achieved his cultural civilization literally by means of a stairway of habit adjustment technique.
INCREASING VOLUME OF EXTERNAL STORAGE AND THE EXPERT — The aggregate advantage of external storage of verbal language symbols is tremendous. It enables us to build
(154) up a body of technic adjustment processes almost without limit. No discovery, no
knowledge which can be of use to man need be lost. There is no impossible burden of keeping
the whole of the content in mind. It is safely stored and may await utilization for a hundred years,
or any length of time,
and at the end of the period be as available and as intact as at the beginning. The only limitation that may be placed to the accumulation of this stored language symbolism is that which is set by the limits of storage— which are as yet remote— and by the powers of the human mind to master the keys which will unlock the storage houses of this stored language content. N\ ,'e no longer attempt to teach people collectively all of this externally stored knowledge, nor even any one person any considerable portion of it. Long ago we began to content
(155) ourselves with teaching the key sciences or disciplines which would unlock the treasure houses. Now we teach any one person with any degree of profundity only one or two of these, although it is still our ideal to give everybody some knowledge of each of the basic sciences and arts which serve as keys to the greater whole which lies in storage. We have not yet reached that degree of specialization in learning which the social insects have achieved in function.
The most immediate consequence of this limitation upon the size of the field of knowledge which any one can cover is that we are forced to make collective use of the expert. In the future, society must be ruled by or through the expert, and for the correlation of the work of the experts we must devise some social or administrative mechanism; for no one man can carry in his actual neuro-psychic habit patterns all of the knowledge which is necessary to perform this function. Nor can all men together do it, except by the aid of some social mechanism or device. For example, in the matter of legislation we have found it necessary to provide the legislative expert with legislative reference libraries, expert bill drafters, scientific advice and information from social workers, manufacturers, farmers, etc. Lobbyists formerly did this work poorly and not always in a very public spirited manner. We are now beginning to attempt it scientifically and impartially.
The problem of organizing a proper system of educational controls becomes, therefore, after the problem of the discovery of adjustment technique and data, the most important psychosocial problem. In fact, the problem of education is itself the problem of perfecting the proper organization of neuro-psychic adjustment technique within the individuals and of inventing the proper storage symbols and meaning complexes as psychosocial and institutional environments for individuals in society. Whether it be formal education through the schools or the informal education which arises from human contacts, the press, art, and all other sources, its task is to bring the proper stimuli to behavior to bear upon the individual and to Organize theca stimuli in such ways as to secure the most effective collective adjustment responses.
AVOIDING A CLOSED SYSTEM— AS we come more and more
(156) under the domination of the written aspect of the psycho-social environment, which is itself created as the result of the functioning of our neuro-psychic technique in adjustment situations, and as this body of externally stored meaning symbols becomes constantly greater, and as it imposes itself increasingly upon us as ready made behavior patterns, there is danger that our world will in large measure lose its flexibility and become a closed system, as formerly was the case under the dominance of tradition. This danger has been imminent many times in the past. The educational system itself is peculiarly apt to become a routine method of imposing the external storage content upon new individuals without allowing for individual needs or for flexibility of adjustment. Education is at such times primarily a carrier, not a creator of adjustment technique. Especially the custom-ridden institutions, which vouchsafe more attention to tradition than to science, tend to ossify the educational mechanism and transform society into a nonprogressive closed system of psycho-social controls. As the volume of the psycho-social environment becomes greater and its power to mold behavior more compulsory this danger will increase.
The remedy lies primarily in making science, rather than tradition, the guiding spirit of education. With the ideal of discovery and the experimental attitude toward social adjustment dominant in our outlook, and in fact the chief elements in our social creed, we should be able to escape the closed system in social or collective life as well as in philosophy. Along with this we need also to keep open all avenues of knowledge. The fundamental or basic principles of all sciences would ideally be a part of the education of every individual. Holding all the keys of knowledge he should be able, with a greater degree of certainty, to find his own best adjustment, even in a highly complex and bewildering world.
MATERIALS FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING- Allport, F. H., Social Psychology, Chs. VIII, IX
- Baldwin, J. M., Mental Development iii the Child and the Race, Ch. XIV
- — ,Social and Ethical Interpretations, pp. 137-48
- Bernard, L. L., Instinct: A Study in Social Psychology, Ch. VI
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- Case, C. M., Outlines of Introductory Sociology, Ch. XII
- Dewey, J., Human Nature and Conduct, Part I, Sec. I, Part III, Sec. I
- Edman, I., Human Traits arid Their Significance, Ch. X
- Judd, C. H., Psychology, Ch. X
- Meyer, M. F., The Psychology of the Other One, Ch. XIV
- Robinson and Robinson, Readings iii General Puchology, Ch. XV
- Stern, W., Psychology of Earls, Childhood, Part III
- Watson, J. B., Behavior, An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, Ch. X
- — , Psychology front the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, Ch. IX
