Social Psychology: An Analysis of Social Behavior
Chapter 13: Personality and Secondary Groups
Kimball Young
Table of Contents | Next | Previous
A. Nature of Institutions.
In contrast with primary groups, secondary associations are marked by lack of spontaneous formation. They are more formalized, self-conscious organizations. In many aspects of interrelation such groups are in no way dependent upon face-to-face contacts. The more distinctly organized secondary group relations, we denote as institutions. Before we take up specific types of such groups, it will be well for us to note briefly the nature of institutions. Park and Burgess describe it admirably:
An institution, according to Sumner, consists of a concept and a structure. The concept defines the purpose, interest, or function of the institution. The structure embodies the idea of the institution and furnishes the instrumentalities through which the idea is put into action. The process by which purposes, whether they are individual or collective, are embodied in structures is a continuous one. But the structures thus formed are not physical, at least not entirely so. Structure, in the sense that Sumner uses the term, belongs, as he says, to a category of its own. "It is a category in which custom produces continuity, coherence; and consistency, so that the word `structure' may properly be applied to the fabric of relations and prescribed positions with which functions are permanently connected." Just as every individual member of a community participates in the process by which custom and public opinion are made, so also he participates in the creation of the structure, that "cake of custom" which, when it embodies a definite social function, we call an institution.[1]
From a slightly different standpoint Cooley remarks:An institution is simply a definite and established phase of the public mind, not different in its ultimate nature from public opinion, though often seeming, on account of its permanence and the visible customs and symbols in which it is clothed, to have a somewhat distinct and independent existence. Thus the
(292) political state and the church, with their venerable associations, their vast and ancient power, their literature, buildings and offices, hardly appear even to a democratic people as the mere products of human invention which, of course, they are.
The great institutions are the outcome of that organization which human thought naturally takes on when it is directed for age after age upon a particular subject, and so gradually crystallizes in definite forms—enduring sentiments, beliefs, customs and symbols. And this is the case when there is some deep and abiding interest to hold the attention of men. Language, government, the church, laws and customs of property, and of the family, systems of industry and education, are institutions because they are the working out of permanent needs of human nature [2]
Institutions may be looked upon as cultural structures which are laid down about us from the past, or they may be viewed from the angle of their inception and function in social psychological terms. It is from a repetition of crises that groups come to develop certain standardized methods of performance. Any recurrent performance, associated with images, ideas, and attitudes, and organized around fundamental life situations, may be considered as institutional behavior. From the side of group relations institutions are the subject-matter of sociology and anthropology. Family and marriage systems, kinship groupings, church and religious organizations, the political state, the economic order, educational schemes, are illustrative of major institutions. On the side of the influence of these institutions on the personality, they become of interest to the social psychologist. As we shall see, these regularized aspects of life profoundly affect the ideas, attitudes, and habits of the individual.
There are other groups which are not especially institutional in form, and which do not fit into the category of primary associations. These are temporary contact groups, such as mobs or street crowds, or the noncontiguous crowds, such as we have in the various publics. In the final section of this volume we shall examine the effects of these groups upon the personality. At present we are concerned only with the more stabilized secondary groups.
While the school and the church, which we shall discuss first, grew out of neighborhood and village relations, today they represent a formalization of procedure and a more deliberate determination of purpose than mark the primary groups of the family, playground, or neighborhood.
( 293) Nevertheless it must be borne in mind that in some aspects of function, the secondary groups carry over much the same sort of activity that is found in the strictly primary group.
B. The School and the Personality.
1. Social Functions o f Education—As an institution the school is concerned with two major functions: first, the carrying over to the child and youth of the tools, techniques, and information necessary for his adjustment to the world around him, and second, the carrying over of the social and moral codes of conduct which the group holds to be essential to its survival.
Education is transferring to him (the child) the mores. He learns what conduct is approved and what disapproved; what kind of man is admired most; how he ought to behave in all kinds of cases; what he ought to believe and reject.[3]
Genuine progress in the informational and technical fields has brought the schools in line with current practices in the industrial-commercial world around us. On the side of the second item in the school's program, the transmitting of the mores, the institutional lag [4] is very evident. The school originated in the village primary group and has never lost the hand-marks of its origin. The educational system tends to perpetuate these primary group ideals, although the individual today must modify these and in increasing measure organize his life around secondary contacts. This divergence between ancient norms and modern needs has a marked effect upon the child's personal development.
Space does not permit here an extended discussion of the effects of the school as an institution upon the child. For our purposes we may discuss the subject in terms of the intellectual training and the effects on socialization, especially on the side of docility or revolt from authority.
Our schools have come down to us bearing the stamp of medieval scholasticism. In the Middle Ages education was restricted to selected classes, but with the rise of democracy there has been a consequent tendency to apply the intellectualistic curriculum to all classes. Eighteenth and nineteenth century social and political theory gave us the notion of the
( 294) equality of native ability in all classes, and also produced the rationalization that education could wipe out any differences of information, skill, or talent that might exist in the general population.
Popular education and certain faith about popular education are in the mores of our time. We regard illiteracy as an abomination. We ascribe to book learning power to form character, make good citizens, keep family mores pure, elevate morals, establish individual character, civilize barbarians, and cure social vice and disease.[5]
As a result of the assumption of equal abilities and equal interests, all children were put through the store intellectual exercises without regard to variability in learning ability and differences in interest. It will not be necessary for us to review in detail the gradual changes which have taken place in our conceptions of individual differences and their effects on child training and on the forms of social organization. Yet in spite of the brilliant efforts that have been made in some cities, and in certain rural communities also, to reorganize the curriculum and to re-align the pupils according to intelligence and interests, in the country as a whole. the old assumptions and practices remain. The dull boy or girl who is passed along in the grades from year to year is a familiar picture to all of us. We fail to understand that often the inertia of the school system has disastrous effects on the boy or girl. Sometimes these dullards remain merely docile pupils until they become old enough to escape from school and enter some unskilled occupation. Frequently the dull boy may be a real social problem both inside and outside the classroom. Especially under the stimulation of brighter boys, the dullard may become a delinquent.
Jim H. was a docile but stupid boy with an intelligence quotient in the high sixties. He had had trouble with his school work since the third grade, but had always been rather well behaved and had escaped the teachers' attention. When Jim was about twelve, he began running around with a group of boys who soon found him a convenient tool for exploitation. He indulged in a series of minor thieveries and finally under the suggestion of another boy made off with a hundred dollars in bills from a fraternity house , where he delivered the College paper.
The school had some responsibility for Jim. It offered him no opportunity for training in handicrafts, his failure to do fractions was not compensated
( 295) by any success in simpler and, for him, more valuable occupations with his hands. Jim's attitude toward the social order is not yet a bitter one, but a continuation of the present policy of pushing him through a system where he does not fit may in time produce in him such a discouragement, on the one hand, and such a sense of revolt, on the other, that his whole life course may be swung into an anti-social career.
Again, take the case of Sarah N., who is apparently utterly unable to learn anything in the fifth grade:
Investigation showed that the girl had borderline intelligence and failing to handle arithmetic, spelling and reading, she was rapidly becoming introverted in thought and imagination. She spent her time day-dreaming of movie stars, of beautiful costumes and luxurious living. It was found that she had not only much interest in making clothes and hats, but considerable talent. A shift to a vocational school where she no longer had to struggle with fractions and geographical names, but could use her hands and eyes in dressmaking and in millinery work made a profound difference in this child's personal relations to her home and her teachers. More important still, the change of curriculum altered her image of herself and gave her a degree of self-confidence and a feeling of participation in social life which she had never had before.
Like instances might be multiplied, but the point is already evident. The lock-step system of education often fails to take account of individual differences in intelligence and in interest, and disregards some special talents which offset, in part, lack of traditional intellectual ability. The problem is equally serious for the child of superior ability who is held to the curriculum of the average child. As the classroom procedure is usually reduced to the level of the duller pupils, it may actually discourage the bright child in his delight in learning. Frequently the lack of something to do leaves him bored or open to activities which are unsocial or even pathological. Sometimes the bright child acquires a distinct antagonism to authority and conformity, or,, in contrast, he learns that docility is rewarded with praise and social status, and his sense of independence is lost in the maze of useless scholastic ritualism.
2. Indirect Moral Training in School. — It is clear that intellectual training is not segregated from moral and social training. There has been much discussion of moral training for children in the elementary schools: most of it has concerned the question whether there should be some sort of formal curricular lay-out, some preceptual instruction dealing with morals in
(296) the abstract. The ardent people who are at work on this problem often forget that, Willy nilly, moral training is going on at all times in the school room. In fact, the second function of the school is carried along with the first, often in unconscious but most effective ways. Observe the daily school procedure:
The little child is inducted into the schoolroom with its straight seats fastened solid to the floor, arranged in rows with the teacher's desk at the front. Often even with boasted "activity" teaching and learning, where the pupils sing, work, and play according, in theory, to their own desires, the whole matter de, generates quickly into nothing but ready compliance with the energetic suggestions of the teacher.
Throughout the elementary school period, the straight rows of seats, the formalism of teacher-pupil relationship persists. The teacher to this day carries with her the medieval notion of preacher and moral preceptor. The very arrangement of desks and seats of the pupils is borrowed from the church with its rows on rows of pews, just as the method of teaching continues in the mold of the church catechism or preaching.
Docility of attitude, quietness, and the like are in the scheme of the classroom. Noise is taboo. Silence broken only by consent of the teacher is insisted upon. The somewhat noisy hum of children working at separate projects, as seen in the experimental schools, is often misunderstood by parents and traditional teachers. Teachers are hard to convert to new points of view and new methods. It is so much easier and simpler to impose on the docility of the pupils and to produce obedience and quiet than it is to enlist the active interest of the children. The writer recently heard a first grade teacher remark: "Now, children, we'll have a story. But I won't read until you are all nice. You can't hear the story if you're not good boys and girls." The emphasis was nowhere upon positive evocation of interest but attention was purchased at the price of conformity to social standards of "nice" and "good."
Insistence on daily attendance is in the mores. Attendance officers enforce the legalized mores (the law. Tardiness, while not so serious as absences, is still frowned upon. It is against the folkways. The tardy pupil is made to feel the pressure of the docile pupils who arrived in time. "Talks" are still given by teachers and principals on the "bad habit" of unpunctuality. Stories are still told of how men failed in later life "because they did not hurry to school" when they were children. And curiously associated with this is the magic of the written excuse. By the use of a few words, the stigma of tardiness and absence, too, are wiped out. The percentages of excuses which are sheer rationalizations must run high indeed. But excuses are accepted in the mores.
In the learning process itself, ignorance is taboo. just as universal education, as a method, is part and parcel of our democratic mores, so within the educational machine proper, to show ignorance is severely frowned upon. The child
(297) reads or is told facts and instructed as to conduct and belief. Thereafter to profess "not to know" these matters is indeed serious. This produces in children, adolescents, and in adult college students, alike, certain methods of covering up any lack of knowledge through protective devices of various sorts.[6]
Thus docility and conformity to social standards are impressed upon the growing boy or girl, and this same attitude is easily transferred to other forms of authority—the state, the economic organization, and the church. Furthermore, in teaching the duties and privileges of citizenship in our schools, the emphasis is rarely laid upon an examination of the facts and situations, but upon the creation of emotional attitudes of reverence for the state and the economic order. The teaching of history and civics, the instruction in obedience, to law, in respect for the Constitution—these are valuable in settling upon the child the standards of his adult society before he himself has actually come into contact with the situations.
Occasionally the inflexibility of the school produces an outright revolt against learning and authority which may affect the child throughout life. Often enough, investigation discloses that the revolt goes back in its roots to rebellion against parent. Certainly in these cases the school does nothing to re-orient the boy or girl in the way of more adequate social adaptation. Likewise in its more purely intellectual aspects the lock-step arrangement of the school may destroy the creativeness of the child and produce in him attitudes of conformity and passivity which will color his whole reaction both to people and to problems throughout life.
Too frequently in the past the school has been dominated by the home and neighborhood. As Williams puts it:
If the child learns ideas in school that contradict the cherished beliefs and ways of doing, parents are incensed against the school, and there develops a feeling in the neighborhood against the teacher. Teachers are therefore apt to take the parental attitude instead of attempting a thorough training.[7]
From the outset the teachers are compressed into the frames of behavior in teaching laid down by the community. As a rule the teachers unconsciously follow the negative methods which the ordinary child has known at home. This simply means that the school takes over the function of the
( 298) home in a wider sphere, and the child remains in a negative, repressive atmosphere where he is inducted into the culture of the past, especially in those phases which involve social-moral conduct. In the acquirement of skills and information of a practical sort there is much more freedom than there is in matters touching conduct. Yet, in both, the negativist pedagogy continues. The usual means used to incite the child to master his materials are punishment, ridicule, blame, sarcasm, encouragement, or praise from the teacher, and ridicule, praise, and rivalry from the other pupils.
The formalized procedure of the past continues because the public consciousness is not yet prepared to give up the old methods and to reorganize the school in terms of present-day social, economic, and political reality. In many sections, the school has become one of our most conservative institutions. In the contest of progressive change against conservative tradition, the school is usually on the side of tradition. Williams is of the opinion that, on the whole, "the educational system is, in every civilized nation, a reactionary influence" as a consequence "of the repressive influence of the family, the church, the influential economic classes and the state" which predetermine its course. He remarks further:
There is the surviving attitude of autocracy, under which the educational system aims to inculcate throughout the state an attitude of obedience. As in an autocracy, so in the paternalistic family, the learning of facts was felt to be incidental to "discipline," that is, the inculcation of a law-abiding, custom-observing, submissive attitude to the powers that be. This attitude survives in public education today.[8]
3. Formal Moral Education.—With increased awareness of changes in moral experiences, a distinct effort has been made in recent years to bring formalized moral education into the school curriculum. Even though the home and the church have failed, in part, to maintain their control of our official morals, faith in moral education by the preceptorial method still persists. It is a nice illustration of the continuity of certain features Of our culture. In the face of the breakdown of former institutions as functionaries in bringing these moral culture patterns to the new generation, a shift is made from home and church to the school to carry on the same activity.
In some programs for character education great stress is laid on codes of virtues. The moral attitudes are believed to touch every phase of learning
(299) and life: health, arithmetic, literature, art, science, and all. Thomas remarks on this point:
The direct teaching programs usually begin with a code of virtues in some form which is developed by the addition of materials in the way of bits of poetry, slogans, proverbs, designated reading, etc., and indications to the teachers of the concrete procedure by which the same moral precepts and social virtues may be exemplified and made attractive in connection with the various subjects of instruction in the successive grades. The attempt is to give a social and moral meaning to all the subjects of the curriculum. [9]
In other schemes there is much exhortatory teaching, often in the method of the revivalist. Still common to many high school and college audiences are lurid lectures on sexual abuses. In other schools are developed projects of virtuous activities, leading to badges, insignia, and other devices of securing social status. Some of these programs call for daily records .of moral conduct to be kept by the child. In some schools there is group discussion of moral problems such as honesty, virtue and sex morality, in which the teacher raises questions to be discussed by the pupils.
In regard to all such educational devices, Thomas comments:The process of character education by means of a code . . . depends on the assumption that it is possible to superimpose a code—an assumption on which behavior materials would throw some doubt. The child's code tends to be developed in connection with the standards and behavior of his group. The superimposition of a code of moral phrases, slogans and rules of conduct will probably be effective to the degree that the child's own conception of what is admirable is utilized . . . . In many of the programs there is an anxiety to associate a moral lesson with all the subjects taught, as if the materials of study were designed to substantiate the virtues of the moral code.[10]
Two questions are raised by all these studies of moral education. One concerns the specificity of moral attitudes and activities; the other has to do with the relation of training in verbal codes to overt behavior. The evidence from sociological research and from the recent work with problem children by the visiting teacher and juvenile probation departments show that codes of conduct are the results of certain group affiliations, mid that they are directed to certain specific situations. The home, the playground group, and the gang may have codes quite different from those
(300) given in the lesson plans of the school. Unless the content of the latter touch the former—and often if they do in theory, there is a failure to bring about a transfer of training from instruction to the practical field—moral teaching is trivial if not altogether futile. One of the patent errors of most teachers of morals is the notion that there exists an entity called "honesty," "thrift," "chastity," or "virtue," which, once injected into the child, may be produced in every situation and serve as a guide to conduct. Such a notion smacks of our traditional theology and its concept of inborn conscience. At any rate the schools continue to teach virtues in this traditional manner, both directly and indirectly.
Hartshorne and May's study of the knowledge of right and wrong among children indicates how the child gets his verbal knowledge of morality, and of the specificity of group standards of conduct:
Though not extremely high, the home reveals by far the highest relationship between children's knowledge of right and wrong and that of major influence groups, viz., parents, friends, club leaders, public school teachers and Sunday-school teachers, the degree of relationship ranging from an r of .545 between children and parents to an r of .002 between children and Sunday-school teachers. The means of the scores of the various groups seem to have little to do with the relationship. Public school teachers have a mean score of 80.42 as compared with the pupil's mean score of 62.57 with an r between them of only .03; while friends have a mean of 64.79 as compared with 64.49, and an r between friends of .35.The two more natural groups of home and friends are the most significant though neither is high enough to warrant being called the predominant influence.
Within the home situation the mother's influence is considerably greater than that of the father while the children seem to influence the parent-child relationship very little.
The evidence from this study seems to suggest that in the field of moral knowledge greater results will be obtained by emphasis on education in the home and among friends than in the other groups. Undoubtedly other factors exist that influence children in this regard which need to be discovered before we can determine what the most significant influences really are. The lack of relationship between leader and led in the formal groups where moral teaching is attempted directly, especially in the club and Sunday school, indicates that the leader's ideas at least are not getting across to the children . . . .
The wide differences in means and the relatively low correlations between the scores of the same children in the different situations indicate quite clearly that a child does not have a uniform generalized code of morals but varies
( 301) according to the situations in which he finds himself. In other words, he has a Home code, a School code, a Sunday-school code, etc., or else adopts a code fundamentally his own to meet the more insistent demands of the occasion. Knowledge of right and wrong is a specific matter to be applied to specific situations which .the child encounters in his daily living. Perchance this lack of a fixed general code is due to the secularized life with which we surround our children. We may have to get more of a moral unity in the individual child.[11]
This study simply confirms in a more objective way the contentions of students of behavior that the family has profounder effect on knowledge of moral codes than secondary groups such as church or school. Likewise it throws additional light on the particularistic nature of our moral behavior. In no case is moral activity understandable outside its social-cultural frame of reference.
The other question of interest bears on the relation of verbal instruction and of verbal response to actual conduct. If it is a problem to discover whether teaching the child codes and giving him projects influences his conduct, it is still more difficult to determine whether his verbal responses mean anything as a measure of his actual conduct in any particular situation. The validity of most questionnaire studies and the various standardized verbal tests of social and moral conduct is therefore questionable. If a boy "knows" verbally what is right or wrong, does it follow that he will act one way or another? Moreover, suppose he does act in accordance with the code in some particulars, will he do so in others? The whole relation of verbal conditioning to overt conditioning is here involved. Mary Cover Jones showed that verbal conditioning might have a place but not an important one in the elimination of fears in children. It probably has a place in much positive learning, but we may doubt if the effects are very significant unless the verbal responses are in line with deeper organic trends in behavior, such as arise from desires that have strong feeling-emotional accompaniments.
Nevertheless the school continues to teach morals in an intellectualistic manner. Only in few places have we developed the situational approach to such teaching, but there are indications that alterations ill method arc ill prospect. The picture of the school is not altogether bad. There are many indications that the institution is changing as we are becoming aware of
( 302) the importance of individual differences and especially of emotional variability, and as we realize the importance of social and moral experience in the schoolroom, on the playground, and elsewhere as it affects the behavior trends of the child. The school, like the church, takes the young child from the home at an increasingly early age, and although the major lines of reaction are laid down in the home, the school can either enhance or modify the effectual or ineffectual aspects of home training. Visiting teacher and child guidance programs may effect a correlation of home and school which in time will change the patterns of education for child, parent, and teacher.[12]
C. Religious and Fraternal Institutions.
1. The Church and Personality.—The organized religious life of the community takes the child in hand very early and begins to impress upon him certain fundamental beliefs and attitudes which will color ever afterwards his view of life and manner of behavior. It is true, of course, that the church attitudes originate in the home itself. The parents instruct the small child in fear of evil beings. There is talk of sin and wickedness, usually before the child has any concept of these matters clearly in mind. Though the family begins the instruction in morality and gives the basic information and habits, the church strengthens and extends this training.
No one would deny that the religious institutions with which a child or youth comes into contact profoundly influence his future attitudes and habits. In the majority of Christian churches, he is filled with the stereotypes and legends of Biblical and Church history. These create a mental content for him which he may later have considerable difficulty in unloading. A good instance is the orthodox, fundamentalist view of creation. In late adolescence or in adulthood a person brought up with a profound faith in the Hebraic story of creation may encounter severe difficulties in adjusting himself to the ideas brought to him by modern geology, biology and anthropology. The change involves no mere shift in ideational content; around these stories told to children are hung all sorts of emotional reactions and feelings Lit finality of things in this world and the next. High school and college teachers everywhere have seen the sad effects on personality in young men and women brought up in very primitive ideas re-
(303) -garding biological creation, the nature of God and sin, who find themselves in terrific emotional conflict over the whole meaning of life. There is the simple case of the moral taboos on women smoking or on the use of alcoholic beverages. Here the church may have spoken with an authority all-sufficient for the early years of the boy or girl living in a settled, isolated village. Such absolute codes may later run counter to others, and the person is drawn between two fires. As the great teachers of ethics point out, there is in these cases no preparation for the self-discovery of a philosophy which grows out of inner trends and is synchronized with one's intellectual ideas, one's artistic sensibilities and one's emotional values. Instead, we have with the breakdown of the older, more rigid code, a throw-back to the more primitive, untrained emotions of the individual. The result may be personal disintegration. There may be undue indulgence in the use of narcotics or alcohol; these over-indulgences may lead to excesses in other fields. The whole inflexible code, once it begins to go. to pieces, is likely to break down everywhere. There often accompanies this a distinct feeling of opposition to the older authorities of family and church, and this rebellion against authority may, in fact, carry over into all sorts of situations. The writer knows a number of men who form a rather radical wing of social science and psychology, and whose fundamental antagonism to older philosophy, psychology, and social science is probably an outcome of their profound revolt from the narrow limitations which their family and church training put upon them.
This conflict of ideas and this resistance constitute one type of outcome for the personality from his contact with the specially primitive types of church organizations. There remains, however, a great mass of persons for whom the church offers just the solace, just the outlet in times of crises, which preserves one's emotional balance. If it is true, as it seems to the writer to be, that the emotions and feelings are more powerful than the intellectual ideas and habits which man has built up, then the place of churches in organizing the religious life of man can not be underestimated. The symbolic nature of the ritual, the appeal to infantile and childhood impulses iii adult, socially-accepted terms, is of great importance. At present, the appeal of the symbolic, dereistic formulas, the organization of thought and conduct along socially acceptable, but nevertheless emotional lines, is of great significance for the personality in offsetting the materialistic, objective, scientific world of every-day affairs. In religion we replace the
( 304) world of predictability of behavior with a world of indeterminate satisfactions-wish fulfilments without work, joys contemplated from infancy but denied us by the exigencies of earning a living, in short, of comforts without pain or hardship. One is reminded of the following epitaph found on a tombstone in the Chiswick churchyard in England:
Her last words on earth were, Dear friends, I am going
Where washing ain't done, neither sweeping nor sewing:
But everything there is exact to my wishes,
For where they don't eat there's no washing of dishes.
I'll be where loud anthems will always be ringing.
But having no voice, I'll be out of the singing.
Don't mourn for me now; don't mourn for me never;
I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever.
The following comment on the function of religion is in point:
The writer believes that religion furnishes, as do art and invention, for that matter, opportunity for integration of personality trends: emotions and prepotent drives, which might otherwise be left ragged and loose in one's development. This is what F. L. Wells means apparently by calling religion a "balancing factor" in personality. That is to say, religion affords one a means of taking up much emotional slack which otherwise might find its outlet in anti-social conduct or perhaps in a neurosis.
Social pressures in the form of negative attitudes surround us from infancy. These attitudes are what the psychoanalysts call the "censor." They leave very much in the way of infantile and primitive impulses in the backwaters of the behavior patterns. Often these impulses and habit trends take on the form of vague wishes and attitudes which come only to the margin of consciousness, but which continue to affect the personality in its choices and conscious behavior much more than is obvious at first sight. Thus, while the socially-inducted negative attitudes repress overt responses, the emotionally-toned attitudes of the infantile mind do not so easily disappear. They may lie dormant for years to appear in some adult crisis such as produces a neurosis. Or if they come to the surface in normal living it is in the form of dreams, daydreams, witticisms, in fanatical social reform programs or emotional social conservatism as the case may be. Hates, antagonisms, childish egocentrisms, sadistic impulses. desires for superiority, wishes to "get something for nothing"—these and many other trends are held in check by social-cultural pressures. If, therefore, these are not rather fully worked over into adult substitutions and sublimations, they may result in complexes or emotionally-toned groups of attitudes which may become more or less dissociated from the main course of the personality and lead to inefficiency in living or to actual disease.(305)
The meaning factor in religion is highly symbolic. Although the basic emotional-instinctive appeal of these symbols is usually lost on the naïve worshipper, this fact does not make the functions of the symbols any the less significant. It is the present contention that religious rituals and ceremonials function to give an outlet for many of these crude and selfish impulses upon a rather socially-acceptable level and thus feed the individual with a substitute experience which removes the emotional surcharge that might otherwise damage his social responses to his fellows. And certainly in Christian communities, as elsewhere, song has played an important part in religious ceremonialism.[13]
In analyzing the content of nearly three thousand Protestant hymns as one clue to the function of religion in personality, the writer found that the dominant appeal was some form of infantile return to the father or mother situation, that is, back to the home and family circle. One-third of the total had this as the most striking motive. In nearly 25 per cent of the hymns the appeal was to some form of future reward, another distinctly childlike fantasy. The future-reward motif is doubtless related to the forward projection of the wish. In brief, infantile return to parents and the desire for future reward together constituted the central theme of nearly 58 per cent of the total number of hymns studied. Sinfulness, inferiority feelings, masochistic and sadistic projection and purification, while present, did not make up altogether so large a bulk as the two first noted. As the writer summarized the matter:
Psychologically the persistent motif of symbolic coördination of unrequited infantile wishes with adult living is noticeable. The simple themes, their constant repetition, the use of stereotyped phrases and, in practice, the use of musical accompaniment, all make for a ceremonial usage of first-rate significance in stabilizing the personality. While the student of social ethics may maintain that the highest form of individual and social living is not attained by the continuation of these infantile symbolizations and their expression under social approval, the fact remains that by this very method human nature has found a socially-acceptable means of ridding itself of the otherwise burdensome weight of unrequited infantilisms. The present author can not fully agree with E. D. Martin that in the future we must more or less consciously set out to determine our religious ideals and symbolisms and thus outgrow by conscious control the appeal of the more puerile and primitive to our natures. It seems to him that while we may hope for a development in our symbols and religious formulations generally, these improvements will grow out of the more adequate unconscious
(306) adjustment of our physiological needs, emotions, and intellect to the 'world of reality which surrounds us. This is the only adequate method by which art develops. How can we hope to better or improve on that method in the case of religion? [14]
The range of emotional appeal through the church varies from the rather primitive untrained emotionalism and dereistic forms found in more divergent sects, like the various groups looking for a sudden cataclysmic end of the world, to those which depend upon a more controlled emotional or intellectual appeal. Some churches run to elaborate ritualism, while others permit the emotions rather full sway without establishing any framework in which the emotionalism is to operate. Various religious activities correspond to these cultural forms. The individual divergences in'emotional tone and in personal-social conditioning represent the different levels at which people find themselves in regard to the institutionalized patterns of religion. The range from the crude emotionalism of an old-time revival to the highly esthetic sensibilities of a Cardinal Newman in the presence of the ritual of his church is enormous. Yet in this way, at every level, personalities find balance and comfort in a world which otherwise is too much with them. To attempt a judgment on the absolute values of different types of religious experience is to miss the whole point of social psychology. We are concerned with the various ways in which the personality develops upon the background of social interaction and culture. What is superior or inferior in any ultimate sense we leave to the ethical philosophers!
a. The Lodge.—One of the most interesting developments in our own country has been the rise of secret fraternities in great abundance. The secret society is a pretty common type of institution in many cultures. Its distribution among primitive and ancient peoples is sometimes looked upon as evidence of their intellectual inferiority as compared with, modern man. As we shall note in Chapter XVI, autistic thinking and acting is â common phase of all life. We have it current today in religion and secret orders just as it exists among native peoples and as it existed among the classic civilizations from which so much of our culture comes.
The lodges of today, like any other institutions, can not be understood alone in terms of the psychology of their members. There is a long history back of them which reaches at least into the Middle Ages. The Masons, for example, have a kind of guild background and in the political history of
( 307) some European countries they have played a considerable rôle. The interesting thing to consider, however, is that with the development of religious sects in this country which did not emphasize ritualism and ceremonial costumes, there gradually arose numbers of secret orders. As Protestantism, especially, has tended to give up its emotionalism and has steadily opposed the growth of ritualism and formalism, there has been an increasing spread of lodges of all sorts. It is not only the organized religious depreciation of ritualism which has been a factor in this growth; perhaps more important has been the fact that with modern engineering, there has been such a standardization of life and habits, such a loss of romance and adventure, that the American populace has turned to the secret society for compensation through its colorful ritualism, as a means of securing mystical status and affording substitute stimuli and responses denied by the ordinary humdrum life.
The upshot of the matter is that men of business acumen, who make the greatest practical application of science through engineering, indulge in the hocus-pocus of secret ritualism with the enthusiasm of native peoples or of boys in a gang. In truth, primitive peoples are often no more taken in by their ceremonials than are the members of the Rotary Club, the Elks, Moose, Redmen, or Owls. Just as organized religion affords group-approved, infantile patterns of behavior, so in Protestant America, which prides itself on its practicality, men parade in curious garbs resembling Arabs, Knights of Invisible Empires, or the native tribesmen of their own land.
These puerile antics amuse the cynical critics, but the solid psychological fact remains that this is human nature at a certain stage of life organization and culture. For our purposes the point is that the lodge is an institution which affords the ego an expansion which is denied it in other realms. We wonder, for example, why the American is so standardized, so commonplace, so lacking in color in much of his every-day life. We forget that to offset this drabness we have the mystic, fantastic rites of initiation in dozens of orders. We have, in addition, the Ku Klux Klan, The American Protective Society, and other organizations which afford adventure and escape. As some religious institutions are rather stabilized and esthetic in character, and others are cruder and more primitive in appeal, so secret societies differ. Some are really constructed upon intellectual and artistic bases which catch the finer feelings and the more socialized sentiments of
( 308) men. Others are primitive and more infantile organizations designed to regulate the morals and manners of people, without individual responsibility for any corporate action. As in some religions, the psychology of mob action is apparent. Under the guise of secret organizations, men may let loose their most violent emotions against those whom they both hate and fear. As the levels of secret societies differ, the personalities in them take on much the standpoint and pattern of belief and action which the orders prescribe. Here again phases of personality represent or reflect the various groups to which one belongs. In some group relations the individual is one type of person, in another a different one. Man is chameleon-like as he moves from one group to another. As James succinctly put it:
A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their mind . . . . Many a youth who is demure enough before his parents and teachers, swears and swaggers like a pirate among his "tough" young friends. We do not show ourselves to our children as to our club-companions, to our customers as to the laborers we employ, to our own masters and employers as to our intimate friends.[15]
Therefore, we reveal a side of our personality in our lodge membership as truly as we do in our family, our church, our business organization, or in the political state. The identification of ourselves with mystical and secret things is extremely pleasant, and any intellectual pooh-poohing of this pleasure is not likely to offset or gainsay its importance for thousands of persons who do not find other ways to take up their emotional slack. Like organized religious activity, such behavior is to be interpreted as a socially-accepted and culturally-determined form of adult-child day-dream or fantasy life.
D. The Community and Political Institutions.The political organization of the community constitutes another framework toward which the person comes to take certain attitudes and around which he normally builds up certain values. Division of labor, development of capitalistic enterprise, urbanization and mobility of population, made possible by changes in transportation and communication, and the whole breakdown of the primary group organization of life have produced a marked strain in our political institutions. On the side of personality,
(309) this stress is reflected in divergent attitudes and habits built up around these institutions. We cannot discuss the whole field of political psychology, but we may mention some features of present-day political behavior.
1. Old Frameworks and Modern Life.—Under the influence of the dogma of political and economic equality which was especially dominant in the eighteenth century, and which rested on the more homogeneous life of pre-industrialism, arose the theory of individual responsibility for political government. As the last vestiges of the medieval order disappeared, class and property qualifications for active citizenship were abandoned. Constitutional equality of citizens was established. The town meeting and personal participation in political life in the community became the rule. Here the individual was aware of the needs of his village. He knew his neighbors well. He had a common interest in schools, roads, fire and police protection, and moral control. It was assumed that the person could make adequate judgments on political questions and decide issues through voting directly on them or by choosing representatives to settle these matters for him and his fellow-citizen. The basic interest was the immediate locality. People in a certain area had common concerns. Our present-day precinct and ward organization for voting grew out of the geographic unit of government in the neighborhood and village. Out of these early practices arose two basic ideas: equality of ability in citizenship, and locality (not class, property, or intelligence) as the basis for expression of political judgments.
The modern complex community life has destroyed the economic and social foundations of this old order, but the form continues. Biological differences in ability which are not wiped out by education and social-cultural experience, but are merely conditioned by them, are not yet provided for in our antiquated system. The intelligent citizen often grows indifferent to his public duties when he comes to believe that his vote may be offset by that of any moron who votes with the same "right" as he does.Perhaps more serious than the question of divergence in ability and training is the fact that the modern citizen is confronted with questions in his political activity which never faced man in the simpler, pre-industrial past. In contrast with the immediate perceptible items in the every-day world around him which occupied his attention as a member of a village and neighborhood, the present citizen is affected by the behavior of men far removed from him in space. The regulation of public utilities, deter-
( 310) -mination of tariff problems, questions of social legislation, like child labor, public health, and prohibition of liquor and drug traffic, and the whole relation of government to business, both nationally and internationally, are of profound importance for the common man. Yet he has little or no means of knowing intimately about any of these problems. He may be lacking in technical skill to learn about them, or his sources of information may be so distorted that he can make at best inadequate if not quite faulty judgments on men and policies. Post-war agriculture in America is a gigantic instance of just this kind of thing. Over-production, poor marketing, and the general business relations of the farm population with national and especially international readjustments are complex problems not understood by the usual run of farmers. Some of these matters are best left to the expert in economics and law. Other matters of general political policy are difficult to grasp because they are badly phrased or confused with older ideologies. A persistent faith in the power of a legal fiat to change more basic foundations of life is very strong in the mass of the people. Politicians play upon this faith and by myth-making and other propaganda often promise some political legerdemain which can end only in magical word formulas and final disappointment to the citizens. We all know the various political utopias which are constantly dangled before the voters. The same applies equally well to all phases of problems with a wide reach of social-political-economic implications. In the end, many intelligent persons grow indifferent to participation in political life. Others become the pawns of propaganda for special vested interests. Our older theory of the common man deciding deliberately and rationally how he shall vote disappears when we see how emotionally-toned prejudices control our attitudes and direct our actions, though we are without any genuine understanding of the larger public problems.
2. Political Parties and Political Machines.—Our Constitution does not provide for political parties or political machines. Yet both have become definitely associated with democratic political practice. In an earlier day distinctly divergent interests were represented by major political parties. In our own country we still retain the dual-party system, At the outset the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans represented different views and varied local and financial interests. Later the Whig and Democratic parties represented these divergences, and still later the Republican and Democratic parties. Part of the divergence was one of political philosophy.
( 311) More fundamentally, the deviations rested on rural-urban conflicts, and on local versus centralized government, and on differences of viewpoint in regard to monopolies, free trade, and competition.
Under these earlier conditions men aligned themselves with parties which represented their interests and life organization. The Republican had certain attitudes toward a protective tariff, toward business, toward the centralization of government. The Democrat had other notions about the same things. Today, while the old ideologies persist, the real differences between our two major parties have virtually disappeared. As witness of this is the development of extra-political, extra-legal forces in our modern political and community life. The very complexity of life has led to political indifference because of our inability to cope with the technical problems of government in a satisfactory way.
Within the political parties a certain professionalism and institutional form of control known as the "machine" has developed. The machine is a kind of feudal organization inside the larger political party. It is a form of in-group within a more amorphous in-group. The machine has many of the characteristics of the gang. Like .the gang, it is integrated through conflict. This conflict is of three sorts: conflict between rival factions within the machine itself, such as existed between Boles Penrose and the Vare brothers for the control of Philadelphia politics; conflict between two local machines for control of the state party; conflict of one party with another in a political campaign.
The forms of political machines differ somewhat. On the whole they tend to produce a hierarchy of dominant officials. This insures a continuity of operations for years, as with Tammany Hall. Usually there is one man or a close-knit clique which controls the operation of the group. The leading figure in the organization is called the "Boss." Mark Hanna of Ohio, W. M. Tweed and Richard Croker of New York City, Senator Platt of New York State, Matthew S. Quay and Boies Penrose of Philadelphia, Tom L. Johnson of Cleveland, "Big Bill" Thompson of Chicago—all are names familiar in the history of machine politics. Not only do leaders arise, but there develops a code of conduct within the group and a method of conflict with the outsiders. Sometimes the organization has certain autistic trappings of a fraternal order, as in Tammany Hall. In other cases, the machine is free from these formal rituals, but has, nevertheless, distinctive codes and techniques of social control.
(312)
It is sometimes naïvely assumed that boss control and machine politics exist only in urban centers. While permanence of organization may be more easily maintained there, rural counties and even states come to have bosses and machine organizations. The following paragraph describes a fairly typical situation in a village of 1200:
A. J., who is one of the wealthiest citizens, an elder in the dominant church, a member of the county school board, is the political "boss" of Y. He has a group of close friends in the Republican party who always choose his delegates to the county convention, who support his ticket for local elections and who follow his lead in voting on various issues in referenda elections. By persuasion, by the use of his church affiliations, by promises of contracts on school buildings or the roads, he is able to retain his power. Some of his intimate friends had property which they wished to sell for the building site of a new elementary school. The town is dependent upon artesian or surface wells for water for culinary purposes. On the proposed site the obtainable water was not good for drinking, as it contained a marked percentage of distasteful minerals in solution. A good deal of agitation arose to place the school in another section of the town where the water was good, yet within a convenient distance. A. J. marshalled his clique to thwart the opposition. His position on the county school board gave him a distinct advantage. By threatening to block the construction of the building, by cajolery and promise, he obtained the community's support for the original site. His opponents say that he was financially interested in disposing of the site first suggested. At any rate certain of his close political henchmen were.
Within the machine itself and within the larger political parties a certain type of professional grouping occurs. The men who work in these organizations are called politicians. Through the spoils system many of them are supported by political appointment or they may actually be elected to public office. These are the individuals who actually control, in large part, the direction of political activity. Through the press, public assemblies, and other devices they secure the support of the voters.
Certainly the political reality of democratic control is not that pictured in the traditional accounts of political science. While we have an institutional framework of three major branches of government with function of various sorts, the actualities of political behavior are frequently those of closely formed in-groups within the larger structure which dominate the political attitudes and activities of the citizens.
3. Political Indifferentism. — Dewey remarks in his incisive analysis,(313) The Public and Its Problems (1927) : "Political apathy, which is a natural product of the discrepancies between actual practice and traditional machinery, ensues from inability to identify oneself with definite issues." Merriam and Gosnell have made a systematic study of the "reasons" for non-voting in one of our largest urban communities, Chicago. While doubtless the causes for not exercising the political franchise given by the persons interviewed may be largely rationalizations, this investigation throws light on the political opinions of large numbers of people. The following summary presents the principal facts:
Method.—The opinions of 250 party experts on the reasons for non-voting were secured. Then nearly 6,000 non-voters were interviewed in person following the municipal election of April 3, 1923. Certain data were secured from control groups made up of registered voters and adult citizens who lived in the same neighborhoods as the non-voters who were studied. Statistical data were taken from registration books and the census figures.
Results.—Sex and registration status were closely correlated with non-voting. Twice as many women as men failed to vote. Three times as many adult citizens could not vote from failure to register as "there were registered voters who had failed to vote in the particular election." It was also evident that this local election lacked the dramatic aspects apparent in the previous presidential election. "The most striking decreases in the proportions of adult citizens registered and of registered voters taking part in the local election were found in the most prosperous neighborhoods where those of native American parentage predominated."
Certain social data showed that old age or youthfulness kept many from voting. Other factors were newness to the city and unfamiliarity with local political affairs. Foreign birth or foreign language kept many women who had citizenship from registering. Illness or absence accounted for one-fourth of the cases. Disbelief in woman's voting was found both among men and among the women themselves. "Mrs. Ratlike, a young woman of German parentage, thought women should not stick their noses in politics." Mrs. Sobozak, a middle-aged Hungarian woman, greeted -the interviewer with this tirade: "Was better times when women did not vote. As soon as women started to vote, things went sky high, even in the old country when women started to mix in the affairs of men folks there was a change for the worse. If it was not for the women here, it would not be dry here. They spoiled the men's liberty." Not only foreign-born women or women of foreign parentage or negro women are opposed to woman's voting. "In the Hyde Park district Mrs. Harris, a young wife living in a $65-a-month apartment, said that her husband's vote was sufficient for the family. Mrs. Spalding, living in a $90-a-month apartment just outside a very wealthy section, said emphatically: "I'm a lady and I do not want
(314) to be anything else but a lady. I was raised in Virginia and promised mother not to break any of my promises. Mama always thought politics was men's business." Husbands also objected to their wives' voting, especially in Italian, German, Slavic and negro groups. Husbands of native American stock and of the better neighborhoods also objected to their wives' participation in politics. However, no such cases were found in the wealthiest sections of the city.
Disgust with politics arose from a wide variety of "reasons." Some were offended at prohibition enforcement, one way or another; others were disgusted with the schools, the police, and the courts. Others were angry over taxation, or believed all candidates to be equally corrupt, or were disgusted with their own party. Some said "one vote counts for nothing, so why vote?" Still others thought the ballot box corrupt. And some had developed a disbelief in all political action: A young Italian woman from the Ghetto district said, "Taxes and rents are high. The alley has not been cleaned twice in the summer and the children have no place to play but in the streets and alleys. It does no good to vote. You are always told to see somebody else and nothing is done." A colored junk-man 36 years old, born in Tennessee, who had been in Chicago six years, said, "Day by day the world is getting worse and worse. Down South you can't vote and you haven't got anything; up here you can vote but still you haven't got anything. What's the use?" Mr. A., an elderly native American who lived in an apartment renting for $6o per month or more, did not vote, though he was registered, because he believed in "occupational rather than political representation" and hence had no use for the present kind of political action.
Other forms of indifference and inertia restrained both men and women from voting.
Certain sex differences were revealed upon analysis of the "reasons" for nonvoting. "Only one-third of the male non-voters as compared with one-half of the female non-voters were indifferent to elections." In contrast, three-fifths of the men and only three-tenths of the women who failed to vote said they were kept from the polls by physical or administrative obstacles. One-eighth of the women non-voters were anti-suffragists.
Other differences were found among registered voters who failed to exercise their franchise and those who had not even registered. Nationality backgrounds, legal obstacles and illness all weighed differently in these two groups. Illness and absence were three times as important with registered as with non-registered, while indifference and inertia were significant in the non-registered nonvoters. Table 14 on Page 315 summarizes their statistical findings."'
This summary of one fairly objective study of political attitudes and behavior presents some of the reasons which men and women give for non-
(315)
| Table 14: Summary of Findings of Study of Non-Voting in Chicago: 1923 | ||
| Reasons for Not Voting | Number | Per Cent of Total Non-Voters Interviewed |
| Physical Difficulties | ||
| Illness
Absence Detained by helpless member of family Total |
647
589 115 1.351 |
12.1
11.1 2.2 25.4 |
| Legal and Administrative Obstacles | ||
| Insufficient legal residence
Fear of loss of business or wages Congestion at polls Poor location of polling booth Fear of disclosure of age Total |
274
289 44 45 14 666 |
5.2
5.5 0.8 0.8 0 .3 12.6 |
| Disbelief in Woman's Voting | ||
| Anti-suffragist
Objections of husband Total |
414
54 468 |
7.8
1,0 8.8 |
| Disgust with Politics, Voting, etc. | ||
| Disgust with politics
Disgust with own party Belief that one vote counts for nothing Belief that ballot box is corrupted Disbelief in all political action Total |
230
105 79 40 22 476 |
4.3
2.0 1.0 0.7 0.4 8.9 |
| General Indifference or Inertia | ||
| General indifference
Indifference to particular election Neglect-intended to vote but failed Ignorance or timidity about elections Failure of party leaders Total |
1,347
tag 448 378 47 2,349 |
25.4
2.5 8.4 7.1 0.9 44.3 |
| Grand Total | 5,310 | 100.0 |
participation in political life. Other worth-while studies might be made of why people vote. Detailed analyses of the degrees of political participation might be worked out in reference to ecological factors and personalsocial and cultural conditioning. Certainly the investigation of Merriam and Gosnell indicates the wide variety of factors which determine opinions and action in this one form of social action. Any mere psychological analysis in terms of instincts, wishes, or even habits which ignores the conditioning forces is bound to be faulty and particularistic.
(316) It is increasingly evident that the cultural frameworks of political activity are no longer accommodated to the other features of the total social life. Modern division of labor, urbanization and mobility of population, easy means of communication, and shifting of interests point to the crisis which we face in the political sphere. Whether or not we wish it, changes in the framework are bound to take place at points where the strain and dislocation between present needs and old practices are most evident. Graham Wallas, Charles H. Cooley, John Dewey, Walter Lippmann, Arland D. Weeks, and others have touched on various wider sociological and ethical implications of these changes.
4. Other Aspects of Community Life.—Aside from political participation, the modern community gives a situational clue to other changes in the personality. Urbanization furnishes mobility, fosters diffusion of ideas, affords increased stimulation, and tends to destroy the neighborhood and village form of communal existence. Even family life is profoundly altered. These changes are rapidly reaching the rural population also with the spread of newspapers, magazines, cheap books, the motion picture, the radio, and easy transportation. We have already discussed various aspects of these changes in the present chapter. The industrial, occupational aspects will be dealt with in the following chapter. While our material culture has been modified most profoundly, these changes ultimately reverberate upon all other aspects of life. As Thomas puts it:
As the result of rapid communication in space, movements of population (concentration in cities, immigration), changes in the industrial order, the decline of community and family life, the weakening of religion, the universality of reading, the commercialization of pleasure, and for whatever other reasons there may be, we are now witnessing a far-reaching modification of the moral norms and behavior practices of all classes of society. Activities have evolved more rapidly than social structures, personalities more rapidly than social norms. This unstabilization of society and of behavior is probably no more than a stage of disorganization preceding a modified type of reorganization. When old habits break down, when they are no longer adequate, there is always a period of confusion until new habits are established; and this is true of both the individual and society.[17]
This change is apparent in the personalities of rural persons who move to an industrial or business city, or, more so, in the changes brought about
(317) in immigrants and their children upon their settling in our urban centers. The animation, the liveliness, the breakdown of primary group controls, and the lack of standardization of personal conduct all make for a new form of individualization which the rural or immigrant person finds it difficult to acquire. Sophistication, extroverted forms of life organization, commercialized leisure, the impersonal money nexus in all sorts of human relations that formerly were based on more personal, sympathetic contacts in small groups—all these play a part. Park has shown that out of this shift, for one thing, arises what he terms "the marginal man," who, freed from the culture norms of older group relations, may go off into disintegrated attitudes and behavior, or may, in turn, develop new attitudes and action patterns which enhance and modify the forms of social relations. The Lynds in their book, Middletown (1928), make mention of this fact in various dimensions of behavior: sexual, recreational, and otherwise. The casualness, the "touch and go" contacts, the instability of personal relations may produce superficiality, but they also encourage versatility and cosmopolitanism.
Much of the hue and cry raised by conservative members of the church and political parties is directed against these new tendencies. People with conservative attitudes and values feel that something especially important is being lost to our civilization in these new ways of life. Through persuasive propaganda, through the fiat of law, through education, and by other means, they attempt either to stop these changes or at least to confine them and direct them in predetermined channels. Only the future can decide whether or not they can accomplish this. Certainly the apparent increase of mental disorders, the demoralization of young people, as measured by the older standards, crime, juvenile delinquency, poverty, the decay of religious beliefs, the increase of community and especially political indifferentism, betray the violent conflict of one set of attitudes, habits, and values with another.
CLASS ASSIGNMENTS
A. Further Reading: Re-read Source Book for Social Psychology, Chapter IV, no. 17, PP. 72-75
B. Questions and Exercises.
1. What makes an institution?
2. Distinguish between institutions and crowds. Illustrate.
(318)
3. What are the functions of the school aside from strictly intellectual training?
4. Show how religion furnishes a balancing factor for the personality.
5. Indicate how culture patterns formalize the dereistic features of religious and lodge life.
6. Show how the political machine takes on many of the features of primary groups.
7. What factors account for the growth of political indifferentism in our modern society?
8. It has been said that democratic political organization is so bound up with primary group life that as the neighborhood and village or town life disappear our democratic political order will also go out of existence. Discuss this problem.
C. Topics for Class Reports and Longer Written Papers.1. Report on Riordan, Senator Plunkett of Tammany Hall, for a frank realistic picture of our modern political life.
2. Report on modern religious problems. (Cf. Freud, The Future of an Illusion; Martin, The Mystery of Religion; Whitehead, Religion and Modern World; Barnes, The Twilight of Christianity.)
3. Report on effects of modern urban life on personality. (Cf. Park, Burgess, et al., The City; Thomas, "The Problem of Personality in the Urban Environment," Publications American Sociological Society, 1926, vol. XX, pp. 30-39.)4. Report on the present tendencies in education: Washburne, Better Schools; Rugg and Shumaker, Child Centered Schools; Thomas and Thomas; The Child in America (especially Chapters V, VI, VII).
5. Report on some definite aspect of contemporary American life. (Cf. Merz, The Great American Bandwagon; Siegfried, America Comes o f Age.)
6. Recent Changes in Community Life in America. (Cf. Steiner, The American Community in Action; publications of The Inquiry (New York), e. g., Community Conflicts; Lynd, Middletown.)7. Changes in Political Life in Modern World. (Cf. Wallas, The Great Society; Dewey, The Public and Its Problems; Lippmann, The Phantom Public and other writings.)
