An Introduction to Social Psychology

Chapter 18: The Integration of Personality in the Social Environment

Luther Lee Bernard

Table of Contents | Next | Previous

THE PROBLEM STATED— In Part III we shall undertake to indicate those objective processes by which the personality of the individual born into a social world with highly developed language mechanisms is integrated. We need not at this point necessarily inquire into the nature of the neuro-psychic mechanisms by which we differentiate ourselves from our environments and by which we become aware of our own behavior and that of others. Our problem is to discover and analyze the objective methods by which the individual integrates his personality and the sources from which he receives the stimuli which set up the responses which bring about the integration. The sources of his stimuli are, of course, his social environment. The objective methods which he employs are suggestion and imitation.

In assigning to suggestion and imitation this important function of integrating the personality there is, of course, no intention of treating these objective processes as underived entities, as was too frequently the practice among the Tardean social psychologists. They are not entities or ultimate socio-psychological processes at all. They are merely objective or conceptual terms used to describe the two outstanding forms which the conditioning of responses of the individual to stimuli in his social environment takes. There is nothing mystical or compulsory in either suggestion or imitation. Both are only class terms for a great many concrete instances of the conditioning of responses. From the purely psychological standpoint such terms probably have little or no value. But from the more objective standpoint of the social sciences, which must of necessity deal with conceptual and collective processes, they are practically indispensable.

(270)

All phases of the social environment offer stimuli for the conditioning of responses, especially responses by suggestion. But the chief sources of stimuli are of course the psychosocial environment. Imitative conditioning of responses must always be by the behavior of some concrete person or by the symbols of such behavior which serve as stimuli. We do not imitate institutions, although we may imitate the behavior of persons in institutions. Consequently, for purposes of the integration of personality through imitation the bio-social environment is essential. There must be models to imitate, and these are bio-social persons as well as psycho-social symbols. On the other hand, any sort of object which has become the effective substitute stimulus to conditioned responses may serve as the cue to suggested behavior. Suggestion and imitation merely name categories of conditioned responses.

THE RECIPROCAL PROCESS —  The individual and the social environment, especially the psycho-social environment, are constantly creating each other. But the process of creation is very different in the two cases. Each individual adds only an infinitesimal part to the environmental whole. For the most part, or in most cases, his contribution is with respect to mere details and influences only those ill his immediate circle. Individually he rarely transforms to any appreciable degree the great social environmental complex which we call culture or civilization. And yet the persistent and consecutive impacts of millions and billions of individuals upon the social environmental complex gradually transform it and render it somewhat different from generation to generation, and from age to age. Thus the social environmental complex is the result of growth. It has not always been of such magnitude. In the days of primitive man, before writing had been developed, even before there were voluminous and well organized traditions, and before the physical inventions had passed beyond the most rudimentary empirical stage, the social environment was relatively meager and relatively easily changed, when there was sufficient dynamic leverage in the behavior of individuals to transform it. But the personalities of men also were relatively poor and meager, with the result that they were able as

(271) individuals to exert much less transforming pressure upon environment than is possible to-day.

But the aggregate effect of their dynamic efforts was perhaps comparatively greater then than now, for we read of languages changing their form and verbal contents rapidly, sometimes so swiftly as to become unrecognizable within a period of twenty years. Religious practices and beliefs might also be transformed over night by fiat of chieftan or king, when one set of divinities was proved inferior to another in some important service to a people. Even as late as the Middle Egyptian period, recently made vivid to us by the discovery of the tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen, religions changed back and forth somewhat dizzily with the accession of new Pharaohs. But now the social environmental complex has become so extremely voluminous and it is so set in written and printed documents and so hemmed in with property and other social obligations, so verified and approved as utilitarian by scientific tests, that it changes but slowly. Not even very great men can do much to modify it as a whole. Now and then some exceptional inventive genius or group of such geniuses attacks it at its economic foundations and produces in it dynamic currents which leaven it throughout, by means of such a transforming process as the Industrial Revolution, for example. Great thinkers—philosophers or scientists— sometimes produce new philosophies of individual and collective behavior which cause a gradual transformation of the social environmental fabric and give us new stereotyped attitudes, ideals, and organizations. Such a change has perhaps been effected through the growth of the social sciences in the last century or so. But in the main such transformations as these in the social environmental complex are no longer the product of single individuals, but of many individuals working coöperatively upon the same problems. The social world is now too vast and intricate to be mastered by a single individual. It overwhelms, masters him, and he can return to it but a partial reaction which sets in motion here and there a current which adds something to the social whole. Yet no response of the individual, however slight, is without effect upon the social environments which control

( 272) him and those who come after him, although this individual effect will generally be almost imperceptible and local.

THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT AS OBJECTIFIED BEHAVIOR— Of course this social environment is not wholly external to man, however much our language may sometimes have seemed to imply this. The psycho-social environment, in the form of traditions, customs, beliefs, conventions, folkways, mores, philosophy, science, and the like, is carried about by individuals, as well as by books and other inanimate carriers of symbols. The farther back we go in the history of mankind the larger the portion of the psycho-social environment we find actually existing in the immediate behavior of individuals. While for most purposes we may not speak of the behavior of any particular individual as his own environment, the behavior of other individuals, even though it should be very similar or identical behavior, is environment to him. It is capable of exerting upon him pressures in the form of stimuli and controls which condition his responses and make his personality what it is. But with the passage of time and the accumulation of culture, especially objectified and externally stored culture, larger and larger proportions of the social environment have come to be outside of any individual or individuals. The physical inventions, which were at first largely direct extensions of man's organic personality, and which are now frequently highly indirect extensions of the personality, and the social inventions, which were and are also extensions of man's psychic as well as of his organic personality, and the method inventions, which are in our day extremely abstract and indirect extensions of his psychic personality, have all together come to constitute a vast collective extension of the individual personality and a transformation of nature and self into objective social environments— physico-social, bio-social, and psycho-social. These are together man and nature extended and transformed. But they are more than that. By reason of their relative permanence and ever growing volume their immanence and persistence, they are man's creators. They take the individual as he comes into the world, even before he arrives in the outer world of action, and mold him by

(273) means of the stimuli they offer him after patterns, according to types, from which he cannot escape.

THE SOURCES OF INDIVIDUAL PERSONALITY— But the individual is not wholly created by this social environment, at least not in any one generation. His general biological structure, form, and organization are derived from the inherited patterns in the protoplasm. That these have been selected in the inheritance in the long run or phylogenetically by the natural environment, and in some degree by the social environments, there can be no doubt. But the less general elements of his structure, much of the specific neural organization, especially in the cerebral cortex, and some of his physiology, and less of his anatomy, are selected and determined in each generation largely by the pressures and stimuli of the social environments. This molding process is going on continuously. It is greatest in infancy, childhood, and youth, but it is never absent as long as the personality remains a unit. Our beliefs, attitudes, habits, behavior generally, are molded primarily by the psychosocial environment which, as was shown above, now remains relatively intact from generation to generation. Thus the individual has his personality made for him by the social environment and his personality remains much the same throughout life because of the persistence of habits or sets and gradients. But what is perhaps equally important is the fact that our personalities are closely similar to those of previous generations, as similar in fact as our social environments are to theirs. This fact is very important for the continuity of civilization.

TYPES OF BEHAVIOR AND THE INTEGRATION OF PERSONALITY— But we must not suppose that the flexible or acquired aspects of our personalities, those portions to which we commonly applied the term character, are imposed upon us as mechanically as an impression made by a seal upon wax. The social pressures do not operate in this way. As we saw in one of the introductory chapters, behavior belongs roughly to three classes. These are reaction to material environment by impact, non-purposive Or relatively unconscious response oil the basis of an internal or neuro-psychic mechanism, and conscious purposive response on the basis also of the neuro-psychic mechanism involving choice or decision. The first type of behavior

( 274) involves little or no internal adjustment and transformation of behavior patterns and consequently it has as little effect upon the integration of personality. It is this type of behavior which would most accurately compare with impressions on wax, although such behavior does not leave traces either so lasting or so profound. Personality building responses belong to the other two types of behavior, and of these response by choice is obviously of the higher type if not of the larger volume. But even here the method by which environment influences the individual is not that of direct mechanical pressures. It works by the method of stimulus and response. Personality building is a process of personality integration in ourselves and in others under the influence of sensory stimuli, which are gradually organized into higher and more abstract recognition processes. Such integration becomes effective for social and ethical behavior Of an economical and efficient type in so far as valuable and suitable responses become conditioned to appropriate stimuli.

METHODS OF INTEGRATING THE PERSONALITY— We have already explained in Chapter VIII how the human personality is integrated through the process of conditioning old responses to new or substitute stimuli and of integrating new and more complex responses out of the random movements, reflexes, instincts, and previously integrated habits, or through both processes together. This is in the aggregate the process of integrating new habits or acquired responses to new environmental stimuli or situations. It is a method of learning to adapt ourselves to new conditions, at least to conditions which are new to us, if not to society as a whole. From our very earliest hours this is an assisted or social process. The mother or nurse who manipulates the child presents constantly to him new stimuli which condition old responses and, by providing a multitude of stimuli simultaneously and in organized form, integrates complex responses or habits in the manner just described. In this way the child soon learns to integrate his random and non-functional responses into definitely coordinated functional responses. In a similar manner he develops coordinated and definite speech forms out of his random vocalizations. He learns, in other words, to use his body as a co-

(275) -ordinated whole, to move about, to manipulate objects, and to manipulate himself as a means to manipulating external objects. All this is a part of the process of integrating his physical or organic personality.

But he also learns to use language to ask for things, to give commands, to state relationships, to express emotions, to think. In this way he develops attitudes towards things, including himself and other persons, without actually performing the behavior organically or in complete overt adjustment. He substitutes symbols for completed overt behavior, and thus in large part meaning takes the place of action. It is this meaning which he conveys to others through his language symbols, which they also understand, instead of acting out his impulses or attitudes in complete overt behavior before them. One of the main functions of language is to convey meaning or attitudes and intentions or desires as a means to securing the cooperation— positive or negative— of others in fulfilling our wishes. In this way, through the understanding of language symbols, we develop our inner or attitudinal personalities.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CONDITIONED RESPONSE— From the brief treatment of the conditioned response in Chapter VIII an important conclusion for social science can be drawn with reference to the functioning of environment. The conditioning process is always accomplished through the manipulation and functioning of stimuli. No acquired response is ever self-conditioned. Since stimuli are in all cases environmental in origin, the extreme importance of environment in conditioning responses is immediately obvious. It is this fact which leads us to the view that the conditioned responses or habit mechanisms are environmentally induced or conditioned behavior patterns which are stored within the individual's neural organization.

It will also readily be seen that all we have learned from experimental evidence about the conditioned response has long been known in a vague and non-scientific sort of way by intelligent thinkers about behavior. Scientists are always extending the scope ûf knowledge and rendering it more detailed through further analysis. In psychology this has been done by applying the concept pŁ the conditioned response to the ex-

(276) -planation of the development of acquired behavior as a means to the adaptation of the organism to its environment. In one way, it does little more than name a process already known, and still falls short of giving us a complete account of the actual mechanics of the process of acquiring habit adjustments. We must, therefore, avoid making a fetish of the concept of the conditioned response and of ending our investigations into the habit building process with the adoption of this term, as some of the psychologists apparently do.

SIGNIFICANCE FOR THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL CONTROL— The ease with which responses, both overt and internal or attitudinal, may be conditioned and the extent to which the conditioning may occur (there is almost no limitation to the process) render the conditioning mechanism of the greatest importance for individual and collective behavior. No other socio-psychic process which we know anything about is perhaps of so great importance. It is the ever ready mechanism by means of which a constant fluidity and flexibility are introduced into social life and institutions. Not only may stimuli, or environmental pressures, which are similar to each other in form or in functioning, or which are related to each other genetically or causally, vary the causation of individual or collective behavior by replacing other associated stimuli, but even the most unlike and antagonistic stimuli may condition one another by mere contiguity in time or place, and thus change the moral and social implications of behavior completely. By means of such a shift of effective stimuli a person may be transformed from a good citizen to a criminal or from a loyal spouse or lover to the most inconstant sort of individual, and this change may occur without any act of choice, or indeed any clear understanding of the significance of the change on the part of the changing personality.

On the other hand, the responses, considered from the standpoint of concrete overt behavior mechanisms, may remain much the same or even identical with previous ones, but morally and socially they may have changed character altogether because of a change in the behavior values. The abstract or abbreviated conditioning of psychic responses makes it possible to bring into existence new types of value responses

( 277) without changing the old positive and negative overt responses. Thus overt behavior may easily and does constantly acquire new social and moral significance. It is because of this fact that it becomes necessary in modern life, where the environments are so complex and highly social and moral in their significance or consequences for us, to regulate the character and extent of stimuli. Especially is it necessary to control rigorously the commercial application of stimuli as environmental pressures for the purpose of providing amusement for private profit. It is not alone the traditional economic relationships that we need to control in the interest of society, but equally as much the exploitation of the psychic behavior which largely ends in itself as psychic satisfaction or pleasure and amusement.

IMITATION AND PERSONALITY LEVELS— But we not only convey our meaning to others through language; we also use language as a means of interpreting the behavior of others and of making their behavior a part of our own. This is what we call imitation. Strictly speaking verbal language is not prerequisite to imitation. Köhler has shown that chimpanzees imitate without the use of language. It is necessary only to perceive clearly the form of the act in order to repeat or imitate it ourselves. We cannot imitate anything which we do not perceive clearly. But we can imitate overt behavior, which we saw in Chapter XI is relatively easily perceived, more readily than we can imitate or copy symbolic or attitudinal behavior. But, as was shown in Chapter XII, we can perceive in a social or personality or human behavior sense only what we have ourselves in some measure experienced. Consequently, all imitation has to await a corresponding integration of our own personalities.

This is why very young children do not imitate. They have not experienced sufficient personality integration to enable them to perceive the behavior of others in terms of their own behavior mechanisms or to assimilate the behavior of the other person to their own consciousness. After they have achieved sufficient personality integration— either overt or inner, that is, organic or attitudinal— they may proceed to imitate on the level of the personality integration which they

( 278) have achieved. Consequently, thereafter their rate of personality integration is rendered much more rapid. The rate is especially increased when the child reaches the plane of symbolic or attitudinal personality integration. He is then a language using animal and can imitate another on the basis of his perceptions of the meaning of the other person as expressed in his symbolic or language behavior. It is no longer necessary for the child to see his model make complete overt adjustments in order to imitate him. He can reproduce in himself the same attitudes by perceiving the symbols of the attitudes of the other person, and these attitudes may even go over into total adjustment responses in the imitator without the same overt behavior ever having occurred in the model. In fact the object imitated may even be the symbolic or language content of a book, which could not behave in this overt manner. Thus, while the child begins by imitating the complete overt behavior of another on the organic personality level, the chief content of his imitation soon comes to be symbolic imitation or imitation through language symbols.

SUGGESTED RESPONSES ARE CONDITIONED ON ANY LEVEL— The largest part of our personality content, therefore, is integrated through the vicarious process or method of imitation. We take over through conditioning by analogy the personality content which others have already integrated. In this way we may extend our own personalities indefinitely. But, as was stated earlier, our human bio-social or personality environment also conditions in us responses which are not imitative. It is not necessary for us to perceive the character, or meaning of the behavior of another which serves as stimuli to condition in us new responses. In fact the stimuli which condition these new responses are not necessarily personal ones at all; they may be any sort of object to which we have learned to react or to which we have been conditioned to respond. But personality stimuli offer us much more complex and therefore much more effective controls for the integration of socially effective responses of a non-imitative character in ourselves than do non-personality objects. These non-imitative responses, when they have become automatic, are usually referred to as suggested responses. Automatic imitated respon-

(278) -ses are also called suggested responses. The automatic character of the suggested response probably accounts for the fact that suggestion is ordinarily considered to be of a lower order psychologically than imitation. The suggested response also appears earlier in the behavior of the individual, and it will be discussed earlier in Part III of this volume. The initial conditioning of the suggested response differs in no wise from that of any other response whatever. The distinguishing quality of the suggested response is the completeness of the conditioning which renders the response automatic and relatively immediate upon the perception of the stimulus or the cue.

DIRECT AND INDIRECT, OVERT AND SYMBOLIC, IMITATION— We do not imitate society as a whole, except by a process of abstraction and indirection. Concrete imitation is always of persons, or of specific aspects of the behavior of persons. And these are persons and activities which we can hear or see. They are recognizable directly by one or more of the senses and we do not have to depend upon the abstract or indirect symbolical method of perceiving and recognizing their behavior. This sort of imitation we may call direct overt imitation in contrast with that which we call abstract or indirect symbolic imitation.

The person who is imitated may be called a model, because his behavior is copied. Models are both immediate and remote and the imitation of them is direct and indirect, but concrete models are always imitated directly or through the medium of some other model who is to us the direct object of imitation. We do not always come in direct contact with the great personality models of our own time, much less with those of previous times. We perhaps have seen or known but few of the personalities who have done most to shape our own characters through the process of imitation. We can imitate only those who have imitated them or who have imitated others in a series of imitations which leads back ultimately to those personalities who have served as models for a considerable portion of mankind. This also is a form of indirect imitation, and it is concrete rather than abstract or symbolic. We do not always know who originally served as model for any particular type of personality imitation. Few know who invented the type of

(280) handshake or the form of salutation, or the dance which they perform. They imitated it from some undistinguished person near by who had in turn imitated it in an equally anonymous manner. But some of the great original models, such as outstanding religious teachers, the military heroes, the movie stars, and the popular leaders of politics, business, fashion, and thought, in our own times, are known to us. We may even recognize that, although we have imitated directly an intermediate personality or their symbolic extensions we are copying the overt behavior of others indirectly. Thus the stimulus to imitate may travel over long distances, or through a vast period of time, and reach us indirectly through the medium of many personalities, but where imitation is based upon direct contact with and analysis of a personality we always imitate some one who is known to us.

Direct, concrete, overt imitation is, as we said above, the first type experienced by the child. Indirect symbolic or abstract imitation comes later and its highest form, that of imitating abstract meanings in books and treatises, comes only after the child has already integrated a large personality content through more concrete and direct methods of imitation. Because of this fact we shall present the actual processes of personality integration through imitation in Chapters XXII-XXIV in the order of increasing abstractness. Chapter XXII will deal with the concrete direct imitation of personalities; Chapter XXIII with the indirect imitation of concrete personalities; and Chapter XXIV with symbolic imitation of nonpersonal values. But before taking up these themes we shall investigate more thoroughly the nature of suggestion and imitation in the following three chapters.

MATERIALS FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Notes

No notes

Valid HTML 4.01 Strict Valid CSS2