An Outline of Social Psychology
Chapter 3: The Biological Implications for Cultural Conduct
Jacob Robert Kantor
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THE PROBLEM OF PERSPECTIVES IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
The student of social psychology is confronted with perspective problems which in the same degree at least do not trouble many other investigators.[1] The complexity of psychological phenomena in general is proverbial. In addition, when an individual performs a cultural response he is at the same time acting as a biological organism, a general psychological being, and as a unit in an anthropological system. The most elementary contacts with the materials of the science, therefore, make it expedient to observe careful delimitations of the facts involved and necessitate a close scrutiny of the interrelations between social psychological phenomena proper and certain other facts connected with them. Only by observing these methodological requirements is it possible to confine ourselves to what is essentially our subject. At the same time we avoid neglecting related facts, confusing our data with other types, or indiscreetly making one type dependent upon the other for its existence or form of happening.
Another consideration. The data of social psychology are in a peculiar sense intimately connected with one's self. Owing to this circumstance one tends to inject one's own behavior
( 66) situation into the facts studied and thereby misinterprets them. Indeed it is practically impossible for students in the field of cultural phenomena to keep clear of prejudices in favor of their own civilization. We all know that speech is wholly a matter of usage and convention, yet how hard it is for us to condone the use of "bad" grammar.
Concordant with such prejudices is the assumption that the intelligence and behavior of white people are not only superior to the intelligence and behavior of other groups but also that the white culture is in a sense a standard by which all other cultural phenomena may be measured. In like fashion serious errors are made with respect to manners, ideas, beliefs, and morals of small groups within the large ethnic or national collectivities. All the more insidious is this misinterpretation when the mishandling of data in favor of one's own type of culture is perpetrated with a complete intellectual innocence on the part of those who commit such scientific traduction. The point is, that being brought up under certain cultural circumstances, and taking on certain behavior equipment through stimulation by particular kinds of institutional stimuli, one acquires fixed intellectual trends of thinking which color and shape one's attitude toward cultural phenomena.
These reflections bring us to the problem of data perspectives. Our plan is to make a preliminary survey of the facts inevitably connected with the data of social psychology. First, we deem it expedient to consider the biological implications of our data. We want to know what effects upon our cultural conduct are traceable to the circumstance that we are animals with particular morphological organizations and functions.
Secondly, we need to investigate the influences of the general facts of anthropology upon our social psychological data. The principles of the general science of man may be of great assistance in providing us with positive data that throw light upon psychological happenings. In detail it is essential for us to know what characteristics are common to all men as
( 67) cultural products and what effects cultural evolution has upon the performance of social psychological responses. Without doubt the anthropological perspective appears immediately justified. Now need we argue that as a third important requisite for successful analyses of psychological facts we require a sound psychological perspective?
Succinctly, the problem of perspectives revolves around the type of presuppositions we accept in the study of our data. For the most part this means throwing into relief the actual presuppositions with which we are working as intellectual tools. The question here is, of what facts interrelated with our social psychological data shall we take cognizance, and what use shall we make of them.' In the present chapter we are concerned with the biological implications of our data, leaving for the three succeeding chapters a consideration of the anthropological and psychological perspectives.
BIOLOGICAL FACTORS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL ACTION
Every psychological organism is an animal. Therefore it is clear that whenever psychological action occurs we also have animal action. Obviously without the animal and its behavior there can be no psychological organism nor psychological conduct. Moreover, when the animal is broken or injured in any way, all of its psychological action is thereby (made) defective or different. Furthermore, the diseased condition of an animal, its alcoholic (toxic) or febrile dissocia-
( 68) - tions, its high or low energy, influence its psychological behavior.
For our present purposes we assume there are biological influences upon subtle psychological behavior as well as upon gross movements. Even our most intimate thoughts or refined memorial reactions are conditioned by the loss of an arm, leg, or other organ. We believe we are justified in making this assumption, even though losses and defects of biological organs and functions may involve entirely negligible and even unobservable differences of action. For in the first place, we lean upon the logical proposition that any effect upon the organism must have a corresponding effect upon its behavior. And in the second place, we suggest that even if the subsequent loss of an organ has no influence upon previously acquired subtle conduct, as in the case of blindness not affecting visual imagery, such behavior would never have constituted a part of the person's equipment unless it were acquired previous to the loss. In arguing for the absolutely intrinsic relationship of the individual's biological organization and his psychological conduct we merely wish to allow each fact to preserve its own identity in our studies.
We are now prepared to consider some of the specific implications of biological phenomena for psychological conduct. First, what is the character of the influences which man's animal nature exerts upon his behavior? More particularly, what features of his action are determined by the fact that he represents a particular place on the evolutionary scale of organic beings? Does any phase of psychological conduct exist and take some particular form because of the animal nature of the individual performing the reaction?
Our first observation is that cultural conduct is impossible unless the animal has reached a certain complicated development during the course of its evolution. In order to be able to perform complicated human behavior, to develop social organization, language and social institutions, industrial (eco-
( 69) -nomic) and artistic techniques, the animal must have reached a certain level of biological development. Here we have a rather obvious proposition which no one would dispute. However, we stress this point in view of the fact that it has repeatedly been misinterpreted. Namely, what is actually a sheer biological condition with respect to psychological development has been assumed to be a source or cause of psychological phenomena. It is our special aim, therefore, to point out that the possibility of human beings to develop cultural conduct incapable of being performed by lower animals, means merely that the latter are limited by a set of conditions which include biological factors. In other words, we assume that more complex animals can perform more intricate behavior than simple animals, because of the highly developed biological organization of the former.
Not merely complex cultural conduct is correlated with a particular stage of evolutional development but also psychological conduct in general. Differences of biological components, similar to those we have been suggesting, occur in concomitance with variations in the types of conduct performed by human individuals in common with the simpler animals. That is, while the lower animals perform perceptual, attentional, affective, and other responses in common with human animals, their actions are simpler in accordance with their lower position on the evolutionary scale. Hence while we find the higher apes capable of contriving and using simple tools, their position in the developmental progression is such that they are distinctly limited in this direction. This more complicated organization places such organisms at once upon a higher level of behavior possibilities. These possibilities it must be insisted, however, have no reality or significance unless involved in actual events. Even though the organism has acquired the necessary biological equipment, as a possibility for language, say, he will not be a speaking organism unless he learns to speak. The learning events must be re-
( 70) - garded as a series of absolutely essential factors interrelated with the biological conditions of the organism.[3]
To the writer it seems very pertinent to point out that the whole matter of biological implications for conduct must be treated in a decidedly positivistic manner. Thus we must assume that the biological character of an organism must be traced back to a series of natural events. These events have all had their part in the development of the present status of the animal. What occurs henceforth with the organism having certain characteristics must be further correlated with various happenings. It is quite true that because of past events certain preparations or statuses [4] exist for future series of events.[5] But in no sense must we regard the status of a thing as a determining potency of some kind.
Biologists working in various specialized fields have offered us numerous suggestions concerning the biological changes which correlate with the development of a complex behavior status or with the possibility of performing complex psychological conduct. Such biological changes culminating in the human level are presumed to be centered around the development of the upright posture or evolution of an arboreal mode
( 71) of life. Morphologists who hold to this latter view [6] point out the possibility of behavior accruing to the animal from the arboreal freeing of the forearm which makes grasping and holding possible. Also they believe the arboreal mode of life has had a great influence upon the hind limbs which have become adapted for a great many different forms of movement. With the use of the fore limbs in grasping and seizing comes a recession of the snout and jaws allowing the frontal development of the eyes and the enlargement of the brain case at the expense of the mouth region. To the frontal development of the eyes and the consequent increase of their conjugate movements, as well as to the development of auditory and vocal mechanisms are ascribed important contributions to the development of human intelligence.[7]
We suggest again that we must guard ourselves vigilantly against thinking that the limitations or possibilities provided by complex evolutionary biological development are teleological processes and forces which are assumed to be responsible for the existence of specific human reactions. Even rigid scientists have been guilty of this intellectual crime. It appears exceedingly easy to ascribe all sorts of particular, human actions to hypothetical structures or functions, upon the presumed analogy of genuine biological conditions of psychological phenomena. This type of thinking always goes further than merely assuming that biological structures and functions account for psychological conduct in general. It presupposes in addition that specific actions are actually caused by or founded upon particular biological structures and their functions.
We recall a notable example of how behavior possibilities are translated into powers or forces of development. We refer to the theory that once was hailed as a revelation, namely
(72) that man in all of his conditions of behavior is influenced by two so-called fundamental forces or biological functions, namely food and sex. While such a suggestion bespeaks an abstractionistic philosophy, its insidious influence lies precisely in the circumstance that it may be easily connected with actual facts, namely, the fundamental character of alimentary and sexual phenomena in biological events.[8] More refined misinterpretations of the same general character are the enumeration of instincts, prepotent reflexes, desires and other presumably basic processes or actions, as forces in general psychological and cultural life. These forces and biological properties, whether or not regarded as connected with specific structures, are presumed to cause not only particular positive performances but also inhibitions of action. On the basis of such thinking certain social scientists, who upon discovering the exceedingly common abhorrence of incest, hit upon an explanation in terms of some power called an incest instinct.[9]
Our second type of biological implication for psychological conduct refers to the correlated differences between biological structures and function and psychological conduct found in the behavior of two similar organisms, say, human individuals. My behavior as a psychological organism as compared with some other individual, is limited or enhanced by the length of my arms and legs, by the thinness or thickness of my total animal form and weight, as well as by the perfect or imperfect functioning of my heart and other viscera.
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In the performance of psychological behavior of specialized types it is obvious that some individuals have an advantage or disadvantage over others on account of their biological make-up. Naturally such optimal biological characteristics are confined to grosser forms of behavior such as lifting, walking, running or fighting. But these biological influences are nevertheless genuine and important. Surely Napoleon at the height of his power could not have assigned a Kant, Newton, Keats, or himself, a place upon a college football team. Our illustration is well chosen if it suggests at the same time that we know of no morphological advantages for the psychological behavior of thinking or reasoning.[10] We might add that in the implication we are now considering we are not concerned with biological phenomena of different stages of evolutionary development, but merely with those found at any point on the scale.
As a third general biological implication we must mention the influence of what we may call the absolute biological characteristics of a given organism upon its behavior. By absolute characteristics we mean the individual's actual structures and functions regardless of any other animal whether of the same or some different species. In performing psychological conduct an animal is conditioned by its bilateral symmetry, the absence of more than two arms and hands, the presence of large or small hands, feet, or trunk, its upright or prone posture, etc. Such morphological characteristics not only limit the character and amount of behavior performed by an organism but also make possible certain action which could not occur were the animal differently constructed.
The physiological functions comprise a fourth type of biological limitation and possibility for psychological behavior. Along with the morphological features of an organism its internal functioning plays an intimate role in its psychological
( 74) actions. Advantages and disadvantages without doubt accrue to the animal because of the specific operations of its various internal structures. The kind of circulation, digestion, respiration, neural functioning and glandular secretions found in any given animal, has its influence upon psychological conduct. But here we must repeat again that all such biological factors must be thought of as constituent elements in psychological actions and not as their causes or bases.
As a fifth and final biological factor in psychological conduct we must consider the problem of maturation. Given an animal of any species, its behavior is limited by its stage of growth toward maturity. Until an organism has achieved a certain development in its biological completion as a member of its species it cannot perform certain actions. As it happens some animals are born mature. But others go through a long period of maturation. In the human animal with its protracted period of growth we find distinct limitations upon its psychological capacities until it matures. Not until the biological organism is coordinated in its structure can it do certain things. So while it can grasp in its earliest days, only at some time later can it walk. Quite remarkable changes take place when the sexual structures mature, a circumstance which makes possible a very striking series of activities. In these five suggestions of the important place of biological factors in psychological behavior we believe the contribution of the animal's biological nature to its psychological conduct is adequately indicated.
The various misinterpretations of the relation between biological and psychological phenomena we may summarize by suggesting that they are all based upon the erroneous conception that psychological phenomena are functions of morphological structures. One of the gravest shortcomings of this conception is that it makes no allowance for any of the distinctly psychological facts pertaining to the development and
( 75) performance of responses while in contact with stimuli objects and situations. As a matter of intellectual history the conception of psychological phenomena as the functions of anatomical structures derives from those primitive days of psychology when its subject matter was presumed to be intangible psychic substances or processes. It is safe to say that no such doctrine could ever have been developed from actual observations of psychological reactions.
To the objective psychologist it is of especial interest to observe how the biologist unwittingly sponsors a rank spiritualism. An outstanding example is found in the latter's assumption of the brain as a structure whose functions are thinking and remembering, in short all of the complex psychological activities. This assumption carries over to all behavior as similar functions of neural structures. The intellectual behavior of the neurologists who develop such notions is decidedly transparent. Complex behavior is correlated with a complex animal, but since the neurologist is primarily interested in neural structures, he just assumes that the complex brain[11] is responsible for the more complex activities, as the simple brain is limited to more simple actions. It remains then for him only to assume that the subcortical neural structures have but gross movements and actions as their functions and that the subtle activities of remembering and thinking are really "mental." Once "functions" in this sense are allowed, one acquires unlimited powers of interpretation, or better said, perhaps, misinterpretation. Such inaccurate thinking does serious violence to all types of facts. A neurologist who makes use of such a conception at once ignores the fact that the nervous system has only the functions of conduction, coordination, and integration, while he at the same time converts psychological behavior into in-
( 76) -tangible if not mystic functions of the neural apparatus.[77]
While we are primarily interested only in criticizing such misinterpretations in order to safeguard the interests of psychological observation, we cannot refrain from pointing out that this interpretation is entirely false from a biological standpoint as well. Even when behavior is thought of as the functions of structures we see no justification for singling out the brain as the primary morphological element in the total biological make-up. While it is entirely true that in the comparative study of biological and psychological phenomena we find that more complex psychological activities are correlated with more complex brains, this is only a partial fact. The same comparative complexities are found in all the other structures of the organism. Moreover, who would dare assert that the complexities in the other structures are secondary to the development of complexities in the brain? Is any other viewpoint feasible than that all these structures acquire their complexity in a unitary development and presumably because of changes in the behavior life of the individual?
Furthermore it is rather anomalous how anyone can think of psychological phenomena as functions of neural or cortical structures when every neurologist knows that no psychological fact, whether considered as mental processes or faculties, or as actual organismic behavior, can be correlated with any specific neural or cortical element. We cannot do other than conclude that selecting the brain, cortex, or any neural element as a primary organ or structure of which behavior is a function, can only be the result of a philosophic bias and not a product of scientific observation. Upon no other basis can we explain the incessant futile creation of admittedly hypothetical neural
( 77) patterns to account for the workings of psychological phenomena.
From the standpoint of psychology proper the conception of behavior as a function of structures goes far beyond the mere misinterpretation of biological facts. Namely, it does not allow room for the myriads of events which occur when psychological conduct is developed and performed. In studying actual psychological phenomena, it is impossible to overlook the numerous interactions of organisms with other organisms at any level of biological development, and the reactions or traits they build up through such contacts. Indeed when cultural conduct of the human type is under investigation we may very readily accord little potency to the individual's structures and functions. For such biological factors as we have indicated serve only as limitations and possibilities. Given the human organism biologically equipped as an individual of a certain species, the important factors in his actual development and performance of conduct are his numerous contacts with objects, persons, and situations, possessing their peculiar stimulational functions in particular human groups or settings.
BIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA COMPARED
It is quite apparent that while social psychological phenomena involve the absolute concomitance of psychological and biological facts, the two orders of data must not be confused. Accordingly we must attempt to state some of the outstanding differences between them.
Briefly summarized, biological phenomena consist of specific organizations of cellular material into tissues, organs, and in general, structures which have very distinct functions. These structures and functions must be looked upon as coordinate features of biological events developed through an evolutionary process. They cannot be thought of as separable unless the morphological individual is no longer a definite
( 78) biological datum but an object of physico-chemical constitution, in other words, a cadaver. Throughout the maintenance of this morphological individual as an actual (living) biological phenomenon, it interacts with such other objects as air, water, electrical and chemical phenomena, which excite the structures to perform their functions.
These things with which the organism has been in contact, summed up for convenience as the environment, operate only through activities and changes in the individual's cellular organization. In short, biological action constitutes the excitation of some function-structure event by some environmental factor. These surrounding circumstances of the organism must be looked upon as definite natural phenomena with particular properties ascribable to their physical, chemical or geological constitutions. Such an environment must be considered as relatively stable with respect to the animals with which it is in interaction. Now while under normal circumstances the organism always operates as a whole, for investigative purposes we may study the structure-function operation of some particular organ to the neglect of the rest of the organism.
When we come to psychological phenomena we find an entirely different type of situation. Here we investigate the interactions of the organism with objects on the basis of an historical relationship between the two. In other words, psychological organisms perform reactions built up in contact with objects with greater or lesser independence of the individual's morphological organization. For example, with the same sound-making organs or structures the individual may develop an infinitely large number of different forms of linguistic action.[12] Thus the psychological behavior of an organ-
( 79) -ism is decidedly not the functions of its organs but is the result of historically acquired modes of mutual interaction with objects. With the growth and development of such behavior traits through the historical processes, the individual acquires capacities of performing particular actions upon the presentation of certain stimuli. These actions comprise complex behavior, intricate operations of manipulating things, thinking, or dreaming, that may be regarded as the ways in which the organism conducts itself with respect to objects which have certain stimulational functions.
The psychological organism therefore does not interact with sheer environmental objects as the biological organism does. That is to say, what we call stimuli in biology are bare qualities or conditions (irritants) of objects which functionate structures. Contrariwise, what we call stimuli in psychology are objects which have particular stimulational functions of eliciting certain responses because of the historical interaction of the individual with those objects.
These stimulational properties are connected not only with the same qualities and conditions of things which function as irritants, namely electrical, chemical and pressure contacts, but also with the color, shape, and size of things, in addition to qualities which they have as elements of human situations.
While the reacting organism acquires specific responses to objects the latter take on stimulational properties functioning in succeeding excitations of those activities. Psychological stimuli, therefore, as over against biological stimuli, constitute functions of objects, which the latter assume through interaction with the individual. Any specific object may take on a large number of these properties through many successive contacts of the same or different persons with it. The cumulative development of stimulational functions in an object may be illustrated by the increasing significance (function) of a rifle which comes for the first time into the possession of a primitive man. With the successive develop-
( 80) -ment of responses (holding, grasping, loading, aiming, shooting, taking pride in, valuing, etc.,) to such an object [13] it takes on the function of arousing each of these reactions under specific conditions. The stimuli features and specific reactions are absolutely reciprocal phases of unique events.
This process of increasing stimulational function of objects is excellently manifested when the objects become endowed with such functions under group auspices. For example, besides being a weapon, an ornament, as well as a piece of personal property, the rifle also becomes something to offer a member of a neighboring tribe in settlement of a dispute of some sort. Here it takes on a series of stimulational functions through the cumulative activities of a group (series of persons) rather than through the behavior of a single individual.[14] Now granting that psychological phenomena are markedly different from biological data and should be kept distinct, the question still remains whether psychological data should not be regarded as biological facts for explanatory purposes.
Here we have a serious methodological question. Can a satisfactory explanation of any event in nature be achieved by reducing it to some other kind of fact, even if the process seems to afford rigid propositions? What benefit, we may ask, can accrue to a science which gains rigidity at the expense of losing its data? The problem is raised as to what is, meant by explanation. Can valid explanation be anything more than an elaboration of description? Description we take to be the specification and symbolization of qualities and conditions of objects and events as they actually exist or occur by themselves, insofar as this is possible. When this description is
( 81) elaborated by correlating or comparing an event with other events we may consider the process as explanatory. Clearly no explanation is worth much that dissipates or ignores the original descriptions. To reduce an event to other events can only be accomplished by conceptual, if not verbal, manipulation. When this enterprise is esteemed to yield better results than the restricted description or more extended explanation it becomes a faulty procedure and partakes more of philosophic interpretation than scientific description. To illustrate, the biologist (physiologist) must describe his phenomena in terms of tissues and organs functioning through stimulation. These functions he may divide up into partial (and therefore different) events and then assume that physiological facts are at bottom physico-chemical or electrical action. But he can never assume that the original event is electrical.[15]
That psychological phenomena are reduced for explanatory purposes to functions of animal structures is probably to be accounted for in the following manner. When psychological happenings (thinking, remembering, etc.) are not treated as interacting responses but as intangible functions they obviously cannot be matters of observation. Consequently those who hold to such a conception attempt to make it scientific by connecting such intangible things with the nervous system. Naturally their aims are defeated, for the net results of such a procedure are not only the perpetuation of mystic functions located in the operation of neural structures, but also the neurology becomes questionable. Instead of conceiving of
( 82) neural structures as biological elements performing conducting, coordinating, and integrating functions they are made into master tissues dominating the whole organism.
On the whole we must regard psychological phenomena as more complex types of interaction between an organism and the objects around it than is the case with biological phenomena. It is fair, too, to say that psychological processes begin where biological processes end. This means that after a genuine human animal has evolved as a result of evolutionary changes, then we must study its development of personal and social conduct through the infinite details of its contacts with cultural and non-cultural objects, including persons, events, and situations. In our present organization of the sciences the study of the historical details of such an evolution of distinctly human circumstances falls within the domain of ethnology or cultural anthropology. The study of the development of an individual within particular groups which have reached a certain position in this cultural evolution is the function of social psychology.
BIOLOGICAL CAUSE VERSUS BIOLOGICAL PARTICIPATION
We have already indicated that biological factors in the ordinary sense of that term, influence psychological action. It will doubtless add to our present investigation to differentiate sharply between biological influences operating in a causative manner[16] or as correlatives or participants. It is in the latter form only that biological conditions are closely involved with psychological phenomena. In detail, this means that a long animal is able to cover a certain space quicker than a short one with similar locomotor mechanisms. If the animal's morphology includes hands it can grasp when stimu-
( 83) -lated; if it has a pneumo-laryngeal-buccal arrangement of a given type it is a sound making animal. To a great extent, we might look upon such anatomical or biological characteristics as conditions contributing to the general character of the psychological phenomenon (response to stimulus). For example, the contribution of my total length to the character of my tennis playing is an actual influence upon my tennis conduct. But it must be observed that this is a similar influence to and not generically different from my financial condition which enables me to purchase a fine racket or play on a good court, or indeed the cultural influence of my belonging to a tennis playing group or living where tennis playing occurs. In every case biological factors operate and influence behavior because they are (parts of) the acting [17] organism and not because as biological factors they have a determining influence upon its behavior. We must not ignore the fact that we are always dealing with a single organism in action, but its action is both biological and psychological in the same complex of behavior.
When we think in terms of biological functions as comprised in behavior situations we are on the way to an accurate description of facts, while in considering the two as separable and causally related, valid analysis of what actually happens in human behavior is completely forestalled. In other words, when we regard the organism's anatomical features (which have a place in every action) as parts (actually indivisible of course and therefore only logical parts) of an act going on, then we can account for the specific variations of action because of the size, weight, and other biological factors of a person. On the other hand, when we regard such anatomical
( 84) features, whether definite organs, structures, or hypothetical biological factors, as determiners or foundations of conduct, then our psychological facts are inevitably misinterpreted. By all means must we avoid here the logical error of confusing a necessary condition with a cause. Surely if I am to meet my friend in Madrid next week I must be carried there by a ship, but the ship is in no sense the cause of my going or even of my getting there. As to the latter point we have a nice problem of the degrees of relevancy of contributing or participating conditions.
Let it not be overlooked either that the necessity to consider the biological functions as integral factors analyzable out of a total psychological action is only found in very simple psychological conduct. Beyond the operation of the reflexes such mention of the animal or biological contributions of the organism's make-up to psychological behavior is superfluous. When we come to any sort of distinctly social conduct the biological factors operating are negligible in description, although absolutely present in the event. The whole matter may be illustrated by a linguistic example.
A man and a woman [18] each are stimulated to perform a language response to some very specific type of stimulus. In describing minutely their reactions we may be obliged to mention pitch variations because of the varying lengths of their vocal cords, etc. On the other hand, the vocabulary used, the syntax employed as well as the expressive content and other features of the responses will be precisely alike. Now it is these latter factors that may be thought of as the distinctly psychological ones. Language responses as a whole may be studied from several different angles, a psychological, a social or institutional, and a biological angle. Even great biological variation may have no effect upon a complex, con
( 85) -ventional, psychological action such as language. For language as psychological conduct is decidedly not a function of biological structures. Rather it is a complex historical fact of the interaction of an organism with its cultural and individual stimuli surroundings (persons and institutions). The same is true for all complex psychological facts. What validity can attach then to the idea that specific biological structures are found in the make-up of particular individuals, which determine such individuals to develop and perform unique action?
Where shall we look for specific anatomical bases, whether regarded as hereditary or acquired, for politeness, intelligence, sentimentality, inventiveness, honesty, patriotism, musicianship, calculativeness, etc. Now when we think of these names as the symbols of psychological action and not of social institutions we must consider them as class names involving thousands upon thousands of specific actions, each of which we insist is a particular event coupled with certain stimulational facts. The discovery of specific biological determiners of such action is impossible, howsoever easy it may be to conceive of them.
What is true for psychological activity in general is of course true for cultural conduct, and perhaps always in a more intense degree. Accordingly we may be fairly certain that biological influences upon cultural behavior are practically nil. We repeat again that what count above all, both in simple reactions to stimuli and more complex forms of cultural responses, are the reactional histories of the specific organisms concerned. These reactional biographies, to the extent we have indicated, are limited of course by concomitant biological circumstances, but are really built upon a higher level of activity. The psychological level is almost purely accidental from a morphological and physiological standpoint.
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THE PROBLEM OF DEEPLY-ROOTED ACTION
A source of considerable misinterpretation concerning the connection between biological and psychological phenomena is found in the behavior facts which we shall call deep-seated action. Because we may assume that certain forms of conduct are fairly constant features of the general behavior life of human beings, writers have always believed they found support for their biological theories of psychological happenings. Thus behavior which appears with a fair degree of constancy and frequency is supposed to be a function of human nature. Furthermore, since such actions are presumed to be shared with infrahuman animals the conduct becomes not only a function of human nature but of animal nature as well. The next step is easy. The belief is accepted that at least some behavior of the human individual, constitutes properties of biological organisms. Before proceeding to investigate the fallacy of this mode of thinking we must point out that while here the structures of organisms are not especially stressed, their place in the total scheme of behavior is regarded as important. In this particular train of thought the complete organism, and not merely its structures, is emphasized.
The primary form of conduct upon which such thinking is based may be illustrated by actions of rapacity, which human individuals are presumed to perform in common with the lower animals.[19] Now we may ask if rapacity is really a universal mode of human or even animal conduct. There is no doubt that statements to this effect are among those little disputed propositions which pass with some individuals as truth. Such a statement, however, exhibits an extraordinary generalization of all kinds of conduct to fit the imposed
( 87) category. How could anyone compare even the severe exactions of the mild mannered and philanthropic banker or industrial captain, with the conduct of a hungry wolf? We need not stop to enumerate the thousands of complex species of animals whose behavior could never be described by the term rapacious. We do suggest, however, that even the existence of a few self-sacrificing human beings, who are confirmed altruists, negates the proposition of the biological characteristics of preying behavior.[20] No one would deny the existence of many such persons in every age and period. Rapacity, then, is clearly not a constant form of human conduct.
Even the most saintly person might have been an extremely rapacious individual had he been exposed to the circumstances favoring such behavior acquisition. But this is merely to asseverate that rapacity or any other kind of behavior is a function of one's reactional biography and reciprocal surrounding circumstances. Obviously, rapacious human beings have always existed and such behavior will always persist as long as the stimulational circumstances for such conduct are present. It will be of advantage here, as in all investigations of behavior, to study this type of conduct as a particular form of actual response. When this suggestion is followed we are led to two conclusions. First, rapacious conduct is an entirely different sort of fact in human and infrahuman animals. Secondly, the behavior predicated as rapacious in the human being is under ordinary circumstances and for the most part cultural.
As for the cultural characteristics of human rapacity, it is only possible to think of such conduct as a constant type of behavior by allowing that it is exhibited only in the form and degree which a particular civilization permits. Sometimes this term merely covers what is technically only legal preemption
( 88) of property. In very extraordinary situations (shipwreck, starvation) the type of action on the part of the rapacious individual is very like the non-cultural ferocious conduct of a beast, but this is so unusual a happening that it may be readily regarded as an abnormality instead of a characteristic human trait or mode of conduct.
Reverse the shield for a moment. What shall we say of the innumerable deep-seated reactions of a more temperate sort which are continuously changing? What of our religious, moral, language, and artistic attitudes and beliefs which are being constantly modified by alterations in human circumstances? Can we not accept such evidence as refuting the theory of biological characteristics? While the changes in such psychological action are extremely variable, the human animal's biological character has not materially altered in the course of hundreds of centuries.
One of the greatest differences between human and irfrahuman rapacity is its constancy among the latter animals when it is actually found there. Why this is the case is clear of course from the comparatively simple circumstance of infrahuman animals. For one thing, they live upon a simple plane. That is, among them biological and psychological phenomena are very close together. But even here it is in no sense true that psychological phenomena are functions of the biological structures. For the skill in stalking the prey, the frequency of doing so, and the actual movements involved, are conditioned by ecological or environmental circumstances (presence of danger, the form of other animals, day or night conditions, presence of prey) as well as by biological structures.[21]
In refuting the notion of the biological character of psychological phenomena, based on the ground of the uniformity
(89) of some behavior among human and infrahuman animals, we may point out the infirmity of an absolutistic continuity doctrine. While man very distinctly shows in his anatomical and physiological organizations direct continuity of animal existence with the infrahuman organisms, this does not mean that he is not different. It certainly is impossible for man in any way to belie his relationship or continuity of development with other animals. But this relationship does not obliterate the fact that after all man is also his own particular type of animal, namely the kind which upon finding itself in a distinctly human environment, can build up corresponding human types of behavior. This being the case how can we suppose that the uniformity of behavior doctrine helps to establish the biological basis of conduct?
Far from providing evidence for biological bases of cultural behavior the facts of deep-seated conduct do quite the opposite. In other words, in an examination of the phenomena we call deeply-rooted behavior, we find compelling evidence that such conduct is decidedly cultural in origin and character. We discover that among the activities of individuals there are thousands of responses which in a thoroughgoing way constitute the fundamental components of mentality and which are decidedly acquired and performed by the individual through cultural conditions. Our illustrations already offered may all be used as examples of this point. We may regard the fundamental attitudes, manners, and mannerisms of persons belonging to different cultural collectivities as definite constituents of their psychological nature. There is no question, moreover, that these activities are anthropic in character. Probably the best illustrations of deep-rooted psychological activity which is at the same time admittedly cultural in character are linguistic responses. Language reactions in a genuine sense typify all the deep-seated forms of human conduct.
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BIOLOGY AND RACIAL CONDUCT
From the study of the general biological implications for psychological behavior we may now turn to a more specialized problem. Summing up our general investigation we have found that psychological phenomena constitute a level of facts differentiated from biological phenomena. Further, there appears to be a progressively diminishing influence of biological factors upon psychological data the more complex the latter become. We assume that the largest biological conditioning upon psychological phenomena is that which makes for a differentiation between human and in.frahuman animal conduct. Within the field of either human or animal behavior, however, slighter biological influences condition the actual performance of reactions. The least dependence of psychological conduct upon biological phenomena as we have seen, is found in the domain of cultural behavior. Now our special problem is whether we can find biological traits that inevitably condition types of cultural phenomena. Our present study, therefore, is essentially a practical application of this principle that we have worked out.
At once, we face the question of races. Let us ask whether just as we have a scale of animals upon which man stands as a higher development than, for example, anthropoid apes and still lower animals, do we find the same differential continuity existing within the domain of human animals? For purposes of understanding cultural conduct, perhaps we must avoid the implication that biological differentiation between human beings exists, such that some of them are higher in evolutionary development than are others. If so, is there any biological basis for the belief in the superiority of groups or aggregations of individuals? Is it possible for us to say that different types of minds exist because human organisms
( 91) have different biological properties? [22] Those who answer these questions affirmatively in our opinion fall into the error of believing in the existence of evolutionally higher and more gifted forms of human animals as well as lower ones, which are denominated higher and lower human races.[23]
Clearly, the evolution of the human animal as he is today has proceeded through a very definite series, so that in considering the human being intermediate between anthropoid apes and the present human animal we discover the existence of many different stages. Doubtless the Neanderthal man is a lower type of species in the biological scale than the CroMagnon, for example. Hence the question whether there is such a relative difference in the men inhabiting the globe today. We have no doubt that existing evidence on this point argues entirely against the acceptance of this proposition. If this attitude is verified then we must condemn the use of hypothetical biological variations to explain differences in the cultural development and conduct of races. Instead we must account for the diversities in existing developments of cultural groups on a single plane, a plane moreover involving a minimum of influencing biological factors.
What extreme differences in anatomical and physiological function do we find between different individuals in our mass of present day mankind? Let us emphasize the wide variations in color, shape, size and general appearance as biological characteristics and properties. But now the question arises how much influence do such characteristics of a distinctly
( 92) biological sort exert upon man's cultural behavior and social development.
Our investigation at this point involves two types of data. In the first place, we must determine whether in reality different qualities of human biological organisms exist. After eliciting the facts relevant to this issue we may then inquire concerning the influence of these anatomical and physiological factors upon the psychological behavior of individuals.
How can we study the question whether there are genuine biological differences in people? First, we may ask concerning the relative standing of the three distinct and widely different types of human organisms with respect to the apes. On the other hand, we may question whether there are genuine and well-established physiological and hygienic differences between the different types of existing men.[24]
As to the first point, we find that students of this particular problem are unable to discover a continuous line of development from the apes upward through different types of men. If the black type of individual has the most prognathous jaw, the receding forehead, the broad low nose, and the short hair which appear to place him closer to the apes than the yellow and the white types, he is farther than the latter are from the lower animals in other characteristics. When it comes to relative amounts of hair it is the white type of human animal that is more like the apes than either the yellow or the black. So far as hair texture is concerned the white type, while not the closest to the ape, stands between the yellow type and black, which is farther from the lower animals in this respect. In width and color of lips, the black type of man, who usually is looked upon as closest to the apes, appears to be less like them than either the yellow or white types. The results from such observations favor the view that there are no significant differences between the different types of men. If one is more
(93) like the lower animals in one respect he is less so in others. With reference to physiological and hygienic variations much the same conditions prevail. There are no well-grounded observations to indicate clear cut differences between the different types of people with regard to normal physiological functioning, or incidence of and resistance to disease. Whatever data are available here argue for environmental and cultural differences which account for the facts observed. Certain it is that our evidence so far gives us negative results with respect to the existence of different biological levels among human organisms, which can be correlated with inevitably different types of psychological conduct.
Our next step then is to consider whether there are any positive data to indicate the lack of biological influence upon psychological phenomena. Such evidence exists in great quantities, although the task of gathering and utilizing it is quite difficult. As substantiating examples we cite the well demonstrated fact that individuals of different racial groups are quite competent to acquire and perform any kind of psychological activities which are possible for the members of any other biologically different group. In other words, who with a fair reading of history can deny that the members of the black and yellow races are competent to develop aesthetic, intellectual, moral or other types of psychological action? Without doubt the most satisfactory and convincing data we have upon this point comprise the fact that what are probably the largest biological differences among human animals, namely the sex differences, militate in no sense against the development and performance of equal psychological activity[25]
( 94) by both sexes. It is idle then to ask concerning group superiority within the same level of biological evolution. Hence we may only deem groups superior because their members have been in contact with [26] and have acquired a large amount of superior cultural activities. We cannot go beyond this to native superiority of mentality.
An important result of our study of the biological implications of psychological conduct is the light it throws upon the hypotheses of the unilinear development of cultural phenomena. Ethnologists working upon the erroneous conception that human groups represent different stages in biological evolution have assumed that culture develops in a unilinear fashion just as biological organisms descend one from the other. If cultural behavior is activity developed through stimulational circumstances and the individual's reactional biography, and not a function of biological factors, then it is at once clear that there can be no unitary development of cultural conduct on a single line of evolution. It appears to be false, as some white anthropologists have supposed, that the cultural phenomena of the white civilizations represent end points of a development which has passed through and beyond the cultural stages of the colored races.
We may now turn to heredity as another feature of biological phenomena and inquire into its influences upon general psychological and cultural conduct.
BIOLOGICAL HEREDITY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDUCT
Man like all other animals is subject to the phenomena of heredity. In man as in other animals, likenesses or differences are found that are determined by his descent from his animal parents. Moreover, certain rigid and inevitable conditions
( 95) prevail with respect to the character of this descent and distribution of traits as the animal develops and lives beyond the generation of his bipartite ancestry. Heredity thus being a central factor in the individual's biological make-up, we may trace out its influence upon behavior. This study clearly is concerned with the question of possible parallelism between the inheritance of animal characteristics and the performance of psychological conduct.
No field of scientific inquiry teems so much with inaccuracies of thought as the domain of heredity. In approaching our problem therefore we must be strictly warned to adhere to facts and avoid fictions. What do we understand by heredity? In its most rigid description, heredity means that we have a condition of stability of the characteristics or traits of organisms during the course of the parent-offspring continuity. In other words, as the life cycles of individuals continue through the process of reproduction we find characteristics of a morphologico-functional sort maintaining themselves through the stabilizing influences of a relatively constant environment. This balancing relation between individual organisms and their strictly biological environment must be considered as existing at all points of the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of animal organisms.
Now it follows from this statement that the phenomena of heredity have to do with nothing but actual and specific biological characteristics, with structural forms and their functions. Heredity as the fact of the continuity of animal life processes, has no other connection with psychological phenomena than we have indicated. We may therefore correlate what we have said in discussing the general connection of biological and psychological phenomena with the specific facts of heredity. In detail we expect that because of the continuity of the individual animal through the parent-offspring life cycle, the potentiality always exists that a human offspring will be capable of developing behavior traits similar to those pos-
( 96) - sessed by the parent. We speak of this potentiality in a thoroughly empirical fashion, for we reiterate our assertion that the actual development and operation of cultural conduct require in each instance a definite set of circumstances (stimulational factors and reactional history) in order that these behavior happenings may occur. Furthermore, the behavior of the individual to a specific stimulus is conditioned by its participating structures and functions insofar as they constitute continuities of the organism's biological properties. But we have already observed how slight a contribution is made by the biological characteristics of the individual to his psychological conduct.[27] We may be reminded, however, that if this is the case with the individual's personal psychological behavior, his cultural conduct has very little connection with hereditary phenomena.
An exact study of hereditary facts should obviate the employment of false conceptions in the study of human behavior. To adhere rigidly to the actual facts of heredity means that we will not assume the existence of hereditary powers, forces, and processes which determine the development and existence of psychological behavior. A study of the actual phenomena of biological heredity leaves no room for the inheritance of psychic processes or forces of any type.[28] There are no facts indicating the transmission of individual qualities of mind, howsoever one may insist upon the general possibility of performing psychological behavior attributable to species or
( 97) phyla.[29] Since heredity factors can only operate through the transmission of actual biological structures and their correlated functions, we find only a slight concomitance [30] of actual biological characteristics with the performance of behavior.
How little the exact implications of biological phenomena are appreciated is apparent in the belief that general psychological and cultural phenomena must have a basis in inherited as well as in acquired characteristics. Even when these inherited characteristics are thought of as actual biological structure-function facts (as unfortunately is not always the case) the question is in order as to what good they are. One might just as well find a basis for psychological phenomena in the chemical constitution of the acting organism. The cultural fact of rolling and lighting cigarettes is no more based upon the fact that we inherit two hands than upon the circumstance that we have oxygen and carbon in our chemical constitutions. To insist upon the inclusion of really significant factors in one's description is not merely a question of relevance, but in the present instance also a problem of avoiding the danger of translating actual biological phenomena into various forces and determiners.[31]
BIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF PATHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA
As a final consideration of the implications of biological phenomena for cultural behavior we will look into some facts concerning the injuries and abnormalities of organisms. We have already pointed out that the injury and disfunctioning of the biological organism affect its behavior. Now the question is how shall we interpret these facts? Shall we assume
( 98) with the mentalistic psychologists that in such cases the pathological organic conditions are correlated with faulty mental or psychic functions? By no means can we accept such an explanation. In no sense does any such dualism exist, even in those situations where it seems most feasible to assert it. Even when we find gross lesions of the brain, musculature and nerves, these are not the causes of the loss of psychological action. Rather we have here a condition in which the defectiveness of the total organism precludes it from performing certain responses to stimuli. We must insist once more that psychological phenomena are not psychic concomitants of biological actions.
Although owing to the morphological construction of the individual some structures are strategic factors in the performance of an action, the legs, for example, in walking, we can in no sense think of the behavior as centered '.n those structures. This proposition may be generalized for all organs and actions. Seeing responses, for example, are no more localizable as functions of the eyes or cortex than walking can be so located within the legs, although the fact of greater or lesser participation of certain structures in an action is of course a genuine one. This means nothing more than to say that always in the normal state, one performs reactions as a total organism. And so having one's legs amputated means that one cannot see landscapes unless one is carried to them.
Our behavior can be just as effectively interfered with by the absence of the stimulus object, by holding or tying the individual, by poverty, fear, etc. The student of mental pathology knows full well that anaesthesias, analgesias, and paralyses of all kinds occur in dissociated persons without any specific anatomical lesions, the trouble being due entirely to psychological circumstances. In all such cases we hasten to add, however, that the difficulties concern the complete organism. From the standpoint of objective psychology the
(99) conception of a psychogenetic origin of mental pathology is not a bit more acceptable than the theory that mental disturbances are the effects of anatomical or physiological causes. In both cases psychological phenomena are thought of as psychic processes rather than concrete stimulus-response interactions.[32] Whenever a psychological phenomenon is in question we should always insist upon the investigation of the relevant stimulus and response circumstances involved.
One more point. It is possible to overemphasize the permanence of serious behavior defects on the ground that the loss or degeneration of structures implies a biological basis for psychological conduct. But this attitude is erroneous. The factor of permanence is certainly of no greater significance than the intrinsic defect itself. Furthermore, it is not true that the permanence of a behavior defect is always correlated with an organic lesion. The permanent deprivation of stimuli is just as potent a factor in the continuance of the defective psychological condition.
Now if it is true that the pathological phenomena of behavior, along with the other facts of psychology that we have been studying in this chapter, do not permit the interpretation of ordinary psychological behavior as functions of separate structures or even of the total biological organism then we have further evidence of the independence of cultural conduct of biological conditions.
SELECTED REFERENCES
THOMPSON, Heredity, 1908.
THORNDIKE, The Original Nature of Man, 1913.
GOBINEAU, The Inequality of Human Races, 1915.
CONKLIN, Heredity and Environment in the Development of Allen, 1916.
JONES, Arboreal Man, 1918.
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OAKSMITH, Race and Nationality, 1919.
HOLMES, The Trend of the Race, 1921.
GATES, Heredity and Eugenics, 1923.
MACCURDY, Human Origins, 1924.
SMITH, The Evolution of Man, 1924.
JENNINGS, Prometheus, 1925.
HANKINS, Racial Basis of Civilization, 1926.
WILDER, Pedigree of the Human Race, 1926.
OSBORN, Man Rises to Parnassus, 1927.
