An Introduction to Social Psychology

Chapter 11: The Functional Organization of Consciousness —The Forms of Consciousness

Luther Lee Bernard

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So far we have been dealing primarily with behavior from the standpoint of the types of stimulus-response or structural processes involved. In this and the following chapter we shall consider conscious behavior in the individual from the standpoint of the application of these data to the problem of effective adjustment of the individual to his environment. It is important for social psychology to include a discussion of the functional aspects of consciousness because the conscious control of social organization and adjustment is through the projection of social and public relationships which are later legislated or administered into practice. This method by which we create conceptually and projectively the collective adjustment process is of increasing importance.

THE FACULTY CONCEPT GIVES WAY TO THE FUNCTION 'L BEHAVIOR CONCEPT of MENTAL PROCESSES— In an earlier psychology the abstracted processes of feeling, cognition, and will were supposed to be concrete and specific attributes or qualities of personalities. They were looked upon by the psychologists of this older time as "faculties" which were as objective and as specific as instincts, conscience, the soul, or any of the other so-called faculties, were believed to be. The old faculty psychology has now given way to the newer behavioristic psychology, but some of these old terms persist, largely perhaps because they are convenient synthetic or conceptual symbols fir viewing highly flexible and differential processes collective or entire. We now know that such processes as feeling, willing, and knowing are not distinct and biologically integrated powers

(159) or faculties, somewhere localized in a part of the brain or body. They are abstractions covering a multitude of variable and more or less conscious behavior patterns directed towards as many separate objects and arising from an equally wide range of stimuli, but possessing in common a similarity of function or of purpose or aim, although not necessarily of form. Even consciousness itself is now interpreted in terms of behavior. We shall not enter here into a detailed analysis of the forms of consciousness. That is the work of psychology proper. We are concerned particularly with certain functional integrations of consciousness, which we shall explain briefly.

FEELING is not perceptual, like the other forms of consciousness. It probably represents the lowest functional integration of consciousness, developed as a crude method of subjectively evaluating an activity before the organism was able to perceive objects definitely or grasp in any intellectual way the significance of its relation to its environment. Feeling is merely the tone of neurally mediated behavior processes when they rise into consciousness, regardless of the cognitive quality of those processes. Its original function seems to have been to put a stop to behavior unfavorable (unpleasant) to the organism and to continue favorable (pleasant) behavior. Max Meyer has explained acceptably the neural structure back of these two tones of feeling. Pleasant feeling tone exists whenever all or practically all of the behavior and perceptual patterns of the organism are being integrated toward a single unit response or a group or chain of coöperative responses. Thus at dinner the olfactory sensations, the sight of the meal well served, the taste of the food cooked in the way we like, conversation replete with friendliness and good will, all combine to produce a pleasant mealtime. There are no conflicts. All of our behavior processes supplement one another. On the other hand, if the food is scorched, the service slovenly, and the conversation discordant, and if some one calls up over the telephone to announce bad news, our dinner is likely to be spoiled.

The behavior impulses interfere with one another. There is a blocking of behavior instead of its facilitation. Consequently we may give up altogether the attempt to dine and do something else which is not thus inhibited. Thus pleasantness

( 160) seems to arise in behavior which is facilitated and unpleasantness in behavior which is blocked.

Whether the feeling tone can control behavior or is itself the result of the type of response, is still a moot question. One functional fact, however, stands out clearly as a result of this explanation. The character of the feeling tone has no inherent relation to the individual welfare or the social and moral quality of the behavior. Any sort of behavior, however disastrous to the organism or to society in the long run, may be pleasant if it can be carried through without interruption. Thus the use of narcotics and gossip are generally pleasant for the time being. The increasing complexity and rapidly changing character of our environments and the growth of acquired dispositions in the adjusting organism render it impossible any longer to make wise decisions regarding our behavior wholly on the basis of our feelings, although in a simpler world where there were fewer acquired attitudes this may have been fairly possible. Farther down in the animal scale feeling is probably the only conscious criterion available except that of pain. Pain, which is a sensation, must of course be distinguished from unpleasantness, which is a feeling tone.

EMOTION is a functional type of consciousness which is frequently used interchangeably with feeling. This confusion of the two is due to the fact that emotion is the lowest form of objectivating functional consciousness, just as feeling is probably the lowest form of functional consciousness altogether. Consequently there is always a large element of feeling in emotional consciousness, especially of the simpler and more primary forms of emotion. But there is a very important distinction between the two. Feeling does not localize or objectivate the stimulus. It is entirely subjective and does not take into account the objective relation of the organism to its environment. It merely indicates an open (facilitated) or a closed (blocked) behavior disposition or set of the organism. But in emotion there are perceptions of the stimulus and there is, as a consequence, some degree of recognition in the animal of its relation to its environment. This constitutes emotion a higher type of functional consciousness for purposes of adjustment.

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COMPOSITE NATURE OF EMOTION— Psychological analysis indicates that emotion is a composite type of consciousness. It is made up on the one hand of feeling tones and on the other hand of sensations, perceptions, and conceptual organizations of perceptions. Thus in all emotions there is some degree of reference to or recognition of objects in the environment to which the organism is making adjustments and there is feeling tone arising out of this adjustment situation according as the behavior is facilitated or blocked in the organization of the stimulus response processes. There can be only two clear feeling tones, pleasantness and unpleasantness, and combinations of these. But there may be as many emotions as we have perceptions or recognitions of our adjustment relation to environment. Thus the cognitive factors are the chief differentiating elements in emotions.

THE PRIMARY EMOTIONS — Those emotions which have strong feeling tones and relatively primitive cognitive elements, consisting of organic sensations and of the simpler perceptions we call the primary emotions. Thus in anger, love, hate, fear, etc., there is a great deal of visceral sensory consciousness and a few simple, not always very clear, perceptions of the object to which our organic (visceral and skeletal) responses have been conditioned. It is a truism, for example, that people in love do not judge the object of their affections with clearness and discrimination. Anger is said to be blind and hate unreasoning. Likewise objects of fear are nearly always greatly distorted in our perceptions, frequently looming much larger in our vision or other perceptual apprehensions than they really are. In fact, all sorts of highly emotional perceptions and judgments are largely untrustworthy because of this tendency to unclearness and distortion. We always discount the amateur fisherman's account of his catch, the new car owner's valuation of his vehicle, the Easter girl's appraisal of her "stunningness," and the newly wed housewife's characterization of her new home as "simply perfect" or "just a dream."

THE DERIVATIVE EMOTIONS — Those emotions, on the other hand, in which the cognitive element is clearly perceptual or even conceptual are much better guides to adjustment. They are derivative rather than primary emotions, and in their

(162) higher forms they are called intellectual emotions and sentiments. Sentiments are emotional attitudes toward some object which we recognize as friendly and helpful or unfriendly and harmful. Thus we have sentiments of affection for our parents, of loyalty to our friends, of patriotism towards our country, of devotion toward or faith in our religion. Likewise we speak of the sentiments of aversion, of disloyalty, of distrust, dislike, etc., in conflict situations. An intellectual emotion is one in which the cognitive element is relatively abstract and the feeling tone is the result of this intellectual adjustment to the object of our attention and not of any gross organic adjustment. Thus we experience intellectual emotions in the appreciation of literature, pictures, and music, and even in the contemplation of the work of a great scientist, reformer, or other person of genius. Enthusiasm is a term which we apply to our emotional feeling or attitude of identification of self with the efforts, aims, or idealism of the other person or a cause. Ideals are among the most intellectual phases of emotion. The central content of an ideal is a cognitive plan or organization for some sort of worthy achievement by and for ourselves or others. About this center there is organized a feeling tone content or sanction. Thus ideals come under the general classification of sentiments, but they are highly intellectualized sentiments.

COGNITION has already been referred to in our discussion in the preceding sections of this chapter. It is the objectivating aspect of our consciousness. Its bases are the sensory mechanisms previously described, which are integrated into perceptions and concepts. Thus the most elementary forms of cognitive consciousness which we can isolate are perceptions, and these are further integrated selectively into conceptual forms. We perceive objects, but we conceive types or classes of objects. In thus apprehending types or classes we may select either a concrete "typical" representative to serve as the basis of our recognition of the type, such as "Uncle Sam," or "John Bull," or "La Belle France," or we may make a composite picture, even a word picture, of the class. In fact most concepts are verbal. Statistics is one of the most accurate and most abstract methods of following the latter procedure.

( 163) Here we deal with the average or the mean. In our less orderly and mathematical thinking we do the same thing in a more general and off-hand manner by saying or thinking, "In the long run" or "In general," etc., such a thing is true or happens. Such methods of generalizing enable us to see a much wider range of facts than is possible through direct sensory perception. It also enables us to relate things at a distance in space and time with things in the present and now. The further extension of this principle of conceptualization or abstraction leads us to the generalization of formulas, principles, scientific laws, and the whole field of science itself.

Unquestionably of all of the functional organizations of consciousness the cognitive is the most important for men. In its various forms it enables them to objectivate their environments and to see themselves in adjustment relations with the environments. As a result of this insight men are able in large measure to control their environments and to make adjustments which we call progressive. In fact the whole structure of our civilization came out of the exercise of the cognitive functioning of conscious processes. We shall now consider a few of the cognitive processes which are most frequently used in making conscious adjustments to our environments or responses to definitely perceived stimuli.

Reason or the rationality processes, like feelings, imply nothing as to the nature or content of the behavior processes to which we impute rationality. It is the conscious processes of adjustment which we ordinarily think of as rational or as irrational, but even in the subconsciousness, processes analogous to the rational and conscious ones may go on with so much effectiveness that they are sometimes termed rational. Rational is merely a general term used to indicate that under the circumstances the behavior is to be expected rather than unexpected, or that the responses are the ones ordinarily and conventionally conditioned to the stimuli which we recognise as existing. Therefore, behavior may be called rational when it is "expected" behavior, whether conscious or other wise. The function of reason can be exercised quite as well with respect to the consciousness which arises from one stimulus or ends in one response as from another stimulus or in

( 164) another response. But both in overt action and in inner behavior or thinking there is no necessary correspondence between the content of the behavior, or its source or objective, and the form of the correlation of stimulus and response here emphasized. That is, anything may seem reasonable if such conduct is familiar to us, or if our responses have been effectively conditioned to the stimuli in the manner prevalent. The essence of rationality is the existence of an agreement between the actual and the expected occurrence in behavior as the result of the conditioning of responses by stimuli. If the response which is traditionally or logically associated with or conditioned by a stimulus is forthcoming in behavior we say the behavior is rational. Reason is the process of inner behavior by which we make the response, either in the overt form of action or as a verbal response, correspond in an expected way to the stimulus.

Logic as a formal discipline is the verbal statement of traditionally or otherwise expected correspondences between stimuli and responses. The tendency of logic is to reduce its statements of the expectedness of the response to standardized statements of principles and to quantitative or mathematical form. In this way logic protects itself against undue change in meaning or conditioning by accepting the established evidences of the senses and by utilizing statements of relationship, both quantitative and qualitative, which have become in a measure axiomatic. Thus we have both qualitative and quantitative logic, or the logic of verbal values and principles and of formulas and equations. Logic, as distinguished from rational overt behavior, is an inner or symbolic discipline. Logic has nothing to do with the determination of the validity of the facts or conditionings of responses with which it deals. It is merely the mechanism of discovering relationships of responses conditioned to the same or related stimuli or environmental facts.

Judgement is merely the conscious process by which we summarize or otherwise state the correlation or conditioning of stimulus and response in behavior. If the conditioning is an expected or conventional one, or can be justified hypothetically on the grounds of an acceptable quantitative or qualitative an-

( 165) -alysis, we term the verbal announcement of the correlation or expectedness a rational judgment or conclusion. But if it violates the accepted canons of expectancy we condemn the judgment as irrational. And here again we do not expect to find any inherent relationship between the subject matter, source, aim, or the function of the behavior under consideration and the character of the judgment. Judgment is the process of exercising the reason as described above within the limits of fact or expectancy to which we are accustomed or conditioned. It operates on the basis of accepted facts and does not seek to create new facts.

Investigation is the method by which we expand the range of our conditioned responses to environmental stimuli. Every new fact which we discover with regard to ourselves or our environment means in the last analysis a revision of our behavior or new conditionings of responses. It is in this way that we systematically reorganize our environment and revise our adjustment to it.

Invention is the highest form of cognitive consciousness. All conceptual thinking is inventive, because it is a method of projecting or conditioning new meaning through the abstract and verbal integration of old meanings. But we ordinarily apply the term invention to the integration of something more complex and frequently more tangible than ordinary conceptual thinking.

TYPES OF INVENTIONS — Thus we have physical inventions, as in the case of a primitive club or a modern toothpick or a Hoe printing press. There are also social inventions, such as a primitive ceremony or a modern state or system of education. Finally, there are method inventions, which consist of the concepts, principles, formulas, scientific laws, and the like, which we have already discussed. In all of these cases, overt and symbolical responses have been reconditioned in new and previously unknown combinations, with the consequence that something appears as the result of or in this new behavior which Previously did nut exist. The physical inventions, and to some extent .the social, appear as the result of this newly conditioned or reconditioned behavior. The social inventions occur as the result of the new behavior of the inventor and in

(166) the behavior of those who act out the invention. The method invention occurs in the behavior of the inventor, especially in his inner or symbolic behavior. The method invention is a symbolic invention and its function is to assist in the making of more complex physical and social inventions.

We may distinguish two degrees of abstractness in inventions. Those inventions which appear as the result of conditioning new responses directly in the presence of concrete objective stimuli are properly called empirical inventions. That is, they appear as the relatively direct result of immediate experiences of needs for readjustment to our environment. Empirical inventions may thus be so concrete and so immediately conditioned that they are accidental. For example, the first use of a stick as a club (as an extension of the arm), or of a stone as a hammer (to give weight and hardness to the fist) was probably purely an accident. The hollowing of a log for a boat may have been at first an accident, as the result of burning, and later a purposive act in the presence of the stimulus of actual need. Empirical inventions are still made, some of them by accident, but the most important inventions for modern civilization are not empirical, even when accidental, but highly abstract and synthetic in character. The conditioning of the new responses which constitute or produce the invention in such cases is both symbolic and indirect. The inventor does not merely elaborate an old object or practice by observing that he can make an improvement in it empirically here and there in response to a pressing and immediate need.

The great modern inventions like radio transmission, printing presses, synthetic chemical products, scientific laws and systems of science, were constructed first of all verbally or symbolically. That is, the inventor conditioned his psychic responses in a complex manner to a vast number of data and as a result produced a new integration or system of data which could in turn be used as a means to much more efficient adjustment to environment. Thus the invention of a great bridge occurs first in the form of a complex integration of physical formulas all organized into a functional unity by the adjustment function which the bridge is to serve. Likewise, TNT was integrated in the form of chemical formulas before it

( 167) was made in the laboratory. The bridge, which first appeared as an integration of formulas was next transformed into blue prints with specifications, and finally into a physical structure. The invention of a new school system goes through analogous processes. First there is an integration of principles and data from psychology, sociology, hygiene, etc. Next, these are transformed into a code, a formal statement, treatise, resolutions, or other written form which corresponds to the specifications and are finally put into practice by an administrative organization.

By such abstract and indirect inventive methods as these we are able to transform our environments and our adjustment to our environments both radically and rapidly. This is the supreme functional service of cognitive thinking to modern civilization.

WILL— Finally, will is not, as some have supposed, any more a directive faculty of the brain or mind than is judgment or reason. Will merely represents the final direction which a dominant impulse to behavior takes. Where there are several conflicting impulses in consciousness contending for mastery in the cortical mechanisms we are likely to be conscious of the struggle of each one. Usually each impulse presents itself to our consciousness either in such vague emotional forms as desire, or uneasiness and strain, or in the more definitely intellectual forms of what we call reason, that is, verbal consciousness of objectives which are recognized as more or less conventional expectancies of relationship between stimulus and response, or as rational. The relative claims of each set of conflicting factors is likely to be passed in more or less conscious review if the subject is self-conscious about the situation, and when finally one set of impulses becomes dominant over the others the result is looked upon as an act of conscious choice or, as we say, of will. Our consciousness of the dominant impulse is transformed into a recognition of the greater reasonableness or expediency or practicality of the behavior which finally becomes dominant and obtains overt expression, and thus we mistake the consciousness of the greater strength of this impulse for the cause of its successful issue. Such an erroneous conclusion is a method of putting

( 168) the cart before the horse, as the saying is, which arises from the confusion of conscious effect with unconscious cause, one of the most common errors of the old introspective psychology.

FREE WILL —  This confusion is responsible for the erroneous metaphysical doctrine of free will. This theory assumes that there is some underived entity or faculty in the personality, called will, which arbitrarily decides a course of behavior. We have just seen that such is not the case. Not even the consciousness of motivation is the cause, but it is a part of the resolution of the conflict of motivations which is taking place and is therefore itself a part of the resulting internal behavior preliminary to the final or overt stages of adjustment response. The real causes of the act lie back of the consciousness of strain or conflicting motives and impulses, partly in the observable stimuli operating through the senses, but more particularly in the neural sets and organization of the personality which have themselves been acquired and built up primarily under the influence of previous stimuli and environmental pressures. In part the personality is also the product of inheritance, as well as of environmental pressures and acquired integrations or sets of behavior. But whether the personality, as the chief cause of the behavior which our self-consciousness presents as willed, is the product of heredity or environment, it is itself "caused," and the so-called willed act is caused in a normal and perfectly natural way. There is nothing mystical or metaphysical or supernatural about will, and it is no more and no less free than any other causal event in our experience. It should also be noted that the consciousness of will in ourselves appears only in connection with self-consciousness and is closely coördinate with this phase of personality.

DEGREES OF EASE OF THE APPREHENSION OF TYPES OF BEHAVIOR— Professor Ross has pointed out an important distinction with reference to the differences of ease with which we apprehend different phases of the behavior of others. We grasp the meaning of action or overt behavior by others with the greatest facility and we understand flit significance of their expression of emotions with the next greatest ease, while their ideas are much more difficult to apprehend than either of the other two types of behavior. The reasons for these differences

( 169) in ease of apprehension are easy to understand. We perceive best what comes most directly within the range of our senses. Overt behavior in others is immediately and clearly within the range of the sense of sight, and to some extent also of hearing. While the emotions are deep seated within the consciousness, and therefore not directly perceptible by the senses, they nevertheless have their overt or symbolic expression aspects, which are easily seen by the eye or heard by the ear, or in other ways detected, as in some cases by odor.

Ideas, on the other hand, can with difficulty be detected by viewing the surface expression of the thinker. There are no instinctive, or very definitely standardized acquired, organic expression symbols for ideas. Those ideas that go over into overt behavior may be inferred from that behavior, but it is never possible for the observer to judge whether all of the idea content has become overt in behavior. Ideas must be communicated primarily by means of words, which are more abstract than other language symbols. Consequently it is more difficult for one's responses to be successfully conditioned to ideas, expressed through concepts and even formulas and principles, than it is for them to be conditioned to emotional and overt behavior symbols.

The significance of these facts regarding the relative ease of communicating these three forms of behavior for psycho-social organization and control is very great. It explains why fiction is more interesting and more often read than books of abstract facts, and why books of travel or adventure appeal more than books of science. It also serves to indicate the reason why superficial social contacts, or "social life," so-called, appeal more to the young, and frequently to those advanced in years, than do the more sober and intellectual contacts. The sentimental nearly always have the edge on the intellectual, a fact which is partly to be explained by the greater power of the organic drives as contrasted with the acquired intellectual ones, as well as on the grounds of difference in ease of perception. The chief themes in literature, on the stage (including the movies), and in life, are sex, fear, and successful action in the pursuit of an end. Here strong organic drives and training combine with ease of perception to make these themes domi-

( 170) -nant in our interests. Love and melodrama, or in cheaper stage performances just sex display and the exhibition of motion (dancing and gymnastics), hold the boards. Usually, by common consent, a more or less moralized population will insist that these themes be sublimated and somewhat conventionalized, but in an age like ours, where there is a strong reaction towards primitive frankness and the deification of the natural impulses in behavior, even this phase of idealism is largely dispensed with.

WHY PROGRESS IS DIFFICULT— Consequently, it is always difficult to carry forward the task of civilization. Social progress demands that we rise above our crude primitive impulses, our instincts, and lower traditional values, and make our adjustments on the basis of abstract values or ideas. The great moral and social values of our civilization are abstract and can be carried only through abstract verbal communication. We can perceive them in others and imitate them into our own behavior only through this abstract verbal process of communication. The lower values, often anti-social in our acquired civilization, are however much more easily communicated, because they can be expressed in relatively simple and easily understood overt behavior and emotional symbolism. Our lower selves and the lower social values are therefore at a great advantage in their competition with our higher selves and the higher intellectual and moral values. Consequently progress is uphill work and we are never quite certain that civilization can continue to maintain its lead over savagery and barbarism. Without the aid of numerous institutional organizations, such as education and religion and government, which are devoted to the support of the higher intellectual and moral values, we should most probably sink back quickly into a lower order of culture. This eternal struggle between the higher and lower values in man's own personality and in his culture has been symbolized dramatically in the theological tradition and dogma of the struggle between the powers of evil and of good, of darkness and of light, as portrayed in the great moral epics of practically all lands and peoples of a fair degree of culture, dealing with the fall and the ascent of man.

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