Reaction (social science)

“ This is, however, a process very different from the interpolation of psychological facts as links in the chain of causation connecting social antecedents with social consequences. It is in no spirit of hostility to social psychology, but in the hope that it may help us to understand its proper place in the study of social institutions that I venture to put forward the method followed in these lectures as one proper to the science of sociology. ”

“ Such a consciousness, to be anticipated from increased knowledge, will diminish the force of this plea for prompt decision after little inquiry; since it will check this tendency to think of a remedial measure as one that may do good and cannot do harm. Nay, more, the study of Sociology, scientifically carried on by tracing back proximate causes to remote ones, and tracing down primary effects to secondary and tertiary effects which multiply as they diffuse, will dissipate the current illusion that social evils admit of radical cures. ”

“ But these influences are immensely overdone in comparison with the assistance that might be given by the influence of social judgments which operate without accompaniments of praise and blame; which enable an individual to see for himself what he is doing, and which put him in command of a method of analyzing the obscure and usually unavowed forces which move him to act. We need a permeation of judgments on conduct by the method and materials of a science of human nature. ”

“ It treats of the relation of social psychology to political science, jurisprudence, economics, history and sociology, analyzing the psychological assumptions underlying the behavior of men living in social relations. ”

“ It has been my chief object in these lectures to show that, in so far as such similarities exist in the case of relationship, they have been determined by social conditions. Only by attention to this aim throughout the whole field of social phenomena can we hope to rid sociology of the reproach, so often heard, that it is not a science; only thus can we refute those who go still further and claim that it can never be a science. ”

“ What respective shares in checking impulsiveness are taken by the feelings which the social state fosters—such as the fear of surrounding individuals, the instinct of sociality, the desire to accumulate property, the sympathetic feelings, the sentiment of justice? These, which require a social environment for their development, all of them involve imaginations of consequences more or less distant ”

“ When the positive method has been finally extended to society, as it has been to chemistry and physiology, these social facts will be resolved, as their ultimate analysis, into relations with one another, and instead of seeking causes in the old sense of the word, men will only examine the conditions of social existence. ”

“ It would be well to add the contemporary sociological studies which have shown the important part played by emotional elements, simple or complex, deliberately eliminated by the economists from their theories of social organisation. ”

“ Generalizing, and now thinking of social phenomena in terms of the psychology of the herd, he says that the trouble in modern [292] society is that capacity for individual reaction—that is for making different reactions to the same stimulus—has far outstripped the capacity for intercommunication. Society has grown in complexity and strength, but it has also grown in disorder. ”

“ A method of investigation which seeks to justify and enforce any given norm of behavior ignores the fact that a social evolution is going on in which not only activities are changing but the norms which regulate the activities are also changing. ”

“ However sceptical we may be with regard to social panaceas of all sorts, we cannot dismiss with a few hackneyed phrases a gigantic experiment in social science involving the material and moral welfare of many millions of human beings. ”

“ Turn we now from the indirect influence which Biology exerts on Sociology, by supplying it with rational conceptions of social development and organization, to the direct influences it exerts by furnishing an adequate theory of the social unit—Man. ”

“ The measurement of the influence is the definition of the situation preliminary to action.
Now the world in which we live presents to the child influences comparable with those artificially prepared in this experiment, and the first task of behavior studies is to measure these influences as shown in their effect on personality development.
There are in society organized sources of influence, institutions, and social agencies, including the family, the school, the community, the reformatory, the penitentiary, the newspaper, the moving picture. ”

“ This mental activity guides not only individual human conduct but also that of the group. Instinct impels the man to defend his family from hardship or his clan from defeat, and reason confirms the [4] impulse. His sociable disposition urges him to co-operate in industry, and reason sanctions his inclination. The history of society reveals an increasing influence of the intellect in thus directing instinct and feeling. It is a law of social activity that it tends to become more rational with the increase of education and experience. ”

“ It should be inferred that, among social causes, those initiated by legislation, similarly operating with an average regularity, must not only change men's actions, but, by consequence, change their natures—probably in ways not intended. There should be a recognition of the fact that social causation, more than all other causation, is a fructifying causation ”

“ To the restraints constituted by mental representations of the intrinsic effects of actions, which, in their simpler forms, have been evolving from the beginning, are added the restraints caused by mental representations of extrinsic effects, in the shape of political, religious, and social penalties. ”

“ The problem of the individual involves in its details the study of all the social influences and institutions,—family, school, church, the law, the newspaper, the story, the motion picture, the occupations, the economic system, the unorganized personal relationships, the division of life into work and leisure time, etc. But the human wish underlies all social happenings and institutions, and human experiences constitute the reality beneath the formal social organization and behind the statistically formulated mass-phenomena. ”

“ The sociological law that “the social process is primarily evolving in the individual not the qualities which contribute to his own efficiencyThe Claim of Sociology as the Master Science. in conflict with his fellows, but those qualities which contribute to society's efficiency in the conflict through which it is gradually rising towards a more organic type,” carries us into the innermost recesses of the human mind and controls the science of psychology. For it is thus not the human mind which is consciously constructing the social process in evolution ”

“ On the other hand we are driven, by equally obvious empirical considerations, to interpret the social world as a realm of conscious voluntary processes, which occur because somebody finds it worth while that they should occur. ”

“ My present object, however, is to set out some elementary—and when stated fairly obvious—considerations bearing on social evils and their remedies under present conditions of society, the recollection of which if followed by practical action, would secure greatly increased efficiency in social work. ”

“ The first step in dealing with it is to increase our detailed scientific knowledge. We need to know exactly the selective and directive force of each social situation; exactly how each tendency is promoted and retarded. ”

“ One possible line of approach to the study of these problems is by way of psychological experiment. No doubt many of the most potent influences which help to determine the nature and direction of conventionalisation in daily life are definitely social in origin. ”

“ And just as men, endlessly varied in physical appearance are to the physiologist of one general pattern and as, far more strangely, the infinite variety of mind is known by the psychologist to have its common laws of operation, so, strangest and most illusive of all, men individually unpredictable, do yet, in the main, follow laws of social behaviour which it is in the power of an observer to detect. ”

“ The tendency of that work was to show that our intervention became more efficacious in proportion as the phenomena upon which we acted had a closer relation to the life of man or society. Indeed the extensive modifications of which society admits, go far to keep up the common mistake that social phenomena are not subject to any constant law. ”

“ As the great Sociologist, Tarde, points out: "To understand thoroughly the essential social fact, as I perceive it, knowledge of the infinitely subtle facts of mind is necessary,—the roots of what seems to be even the simplest and most superficial kind of sociology strike far down into the depths of the most inward and hidden parts of Psychology and Physiology." ”

“ Page iv The book as a whole, so far as can be judged from the experience the author and others have had in using it during the past year as a text at Columbia, should fit well into any general course in social psychology. It has been increasingly realized that the student's understanding of contemporary problems of government and industry is immensely clarified by a knowledge of the human factors which they involve. This volume supplies a brief account of the essential facts of human behavior with especial emphasis on their social consequences. ”

“ Eventually the life of the individual is the measure of the totality of social influence, and the institution should be studied in the light of the personality development of the individual. And as we accumulate records of personal evolution, with indications of the means by which the wishes seek expression and of the conditions of their normal satisfaction, we shall be in a better position to measure the influence of particular institutions in the formation of character and life-organization and to determine lines of change in the institutions themselves. ”

“ From the consideration that human actions, whether honest or dishonest, social or anti-social, are always the outcome of a man's physio-psychical organism, and of the physical and social atmosphere which surrounds him, I have drawn attention to

the anthropological or individual factors of crime, the physical factors, and the social factors. ”

“ They consist of certain general tendencies which may be perceived in society; a progressive increase of some social elements, and diminution of others, or a gradual change in the general character of certain elements. It is easily seen, for instance, that as society advances, mental tend more and more to prevail over bodily qualities, and masses over individuals ”

“ That which, when we become capable of reflection, we term conscience, consists in pleasure in forms of action furthering the welfare of society—forms gradually moulded to habit with the development of social relations,—and in a corresponding pain at the realization of having failed of such action; the knowledge of the demand, by society as a whole or by a part of society, of action in accord with the general welfare, and the sense of the justice of this demand, constituting the feeling of obligation and duty. ”

“ The process by which an individual comes to act promptly and harmoniously as one of an aggregate is simply one variety of the process by which individuals come to act as members of social aggregates in general. ”

“ In fine, no competent judge will deny that these and all social scientists must ideally construct definitions which concrete facts only temporarily and indistinctly contain—unless, indeed, we are content to look in despair on that vast moving mass which we call "social life" and give up the attempt to understand and explain it altogether. ”

“ Thus far we have confined ourselves exclusively to the affective side of the mind, or subjective psychology. It is in this region that the motive power of social operations has been found to reside. However trivial the affections may seem to the metaphysician, they are of primary importance to the sociologist. But while they constitute the source of power in social events this is their entire function. They constitute the dynamic agent and nothing else. To render this power effective a directive agent is required. This is furnished by the intellect. ”

“ The modification of men's moral natures, caused by the continuous discipline of social life, which adapts them more and more to social relations, is therefore the chief proximate cause of social progress. ”

“ The motor of the social world is will. It is what I have called the dynamic agent in society. The full import of this truth will be brought out in the seventh paper. I have merely worked up to it here to show the direct manner in which sociology bears upon psychology. ”

“ Striking illustrations of individual preference for city life, even in opposition to the person's economic interests, suggest that this problem of social behavior so characteristic of our time contains important mental factors.
Since sensations give the mind its raw material, [7] the mind may be said to crave stimulation. "In the most general way of viewing the matter, beings that seem to us to possess minds show in their [Pg 138] physical life what we may call a great and discriminating sensitiveness to what goes on at any present time in their environment." ”

“ Here indeed the intimate relation to psychology seems often to be felt as an embarrassment. If, as by some, social facts are defined as psychical facts, how shall we distinguish them from the facts studied by psychology? Where draw the line between social and individual psychology? In some cases, at least, the difficulty seems due to a lack of clearness on the relation between the individual and the social, which has its counterpart in the history of thought in the controversies over the particular and the universal. ”