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DAVID F. WRENCH

PIYeCHOLOGY
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McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY

New York St. Louis San Francisco Toronto London Sydney
Civ GERGEK@ Ni SEiEGis
. Perspective painting by Hogarth. Courtesy of The Bettmann Archive.
. Photograph by Robert Paul, Portland, Oregon. Reproduced by kind per-
mission of Mr. Paul.
. Dr. Edward Tolman in his laboratory. Photographed by Herbert Kling,
Berkeley, California. Reproduced by kind permission of Mr. Kling.
. Spider web-building. Photographed by Dr. Peter N. Witt, North Carolina
Department of Mental Health. Reproduced by kind permission of Dr. Witt.
. Photograph taken and copyrighted by David Gahr, New York City. Repro-
duced by kind permission of Mr. Gahr.
. Damaged child, Shacktown, Elm Grove, Oklahoma, 1936. Photograph by
Dorothea Lange. Reproduced by permission of the Dorothea Lange Collec-
tion, Oakland Museum.
. Immigrant man studying for citizenship. Reproduced by permission of Wide
World.
. East German rebellion. Photographer unknown. Reproduced by permission
of Wide World.
. Slave poster. Courtesy of The Bettmann Archive.
. First World War Meuse-Argonne offensive, 1918. Reproduced by permis-
sion of the U.S. Army.
Tele Photograph by the author.

Hey AC IeIOIUGIC AN. IOI Vale TaN eI Oval

Copyright © 1969 by McGraw-Hill, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the
United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written per-
mission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 68-8667

71915

1234567890 HDMM 7543210698

to John W. Thibaut
Fad
og \ Gl

This book is entitled Psychology: A Social Approach, rather than

simply Psychology, because it emphasizes those findings and theories
of psychology which aid in the understanding of socially significant
human behavior. Most theoretical areas in psychology developed in
the hope that they would ultimately contribute to the understanding
of man as he lives in a social and cultural environment. Frequently,
however, this hope has been imperfectly realized. Research has raised
interesting questions, and they have been pursued because they were
interesting in their own right. The results of the investigations, how-

Vii
 ever, have not been brought back out of the laboratory and applied
to the more general questions about human behavior which provided
the original impetus to the research. In this book the various areas of
psychology are emphasized to the extent to which they can currently
contribute to our understanding of human behavior on a social level.
The content of the book is developed around three major themes:
man as an information processor, man as a motivated organism, and
man in relation to social groups. While all major areas of psychology
are surveyed, the strongest emphasis is on those areas which are most
related to these major themes.
Most new textbooks are written because the author is dissatis-
fied with the existing books in his field. This one is no exception. It
was first conceived when the author was teaching introductory psy-
chology at a school where the introductory course was only a single
semester long. At that time he discovered that those parts of psychol-
ogy dealing with man functioning in his environment were usually
relegated to the end of the introductory text and that the text was
often so long that the courses ended before those parts were covered.
As a social psychologist, he resolved to write an introductory text
which was either especially oriented toward complex human behavior
or else short enough so that the students would finish it. This book
is both.
As soon as the decision is made to write a book, the author
must decide for whom he is writing and what his priorities are. The
present book is very much a student’s textbook. The author has as-
sumed that the reader has no familiarity with statistics and thus has
avoided complex methodological discussions. The use of technical
vocabulary has been kept to a minimum, and the technical terms
which have been employed are defined in a glossary for the con-
venience of the reader. :
The book is intended to be used as the sole textbook for a one-
semester course in introductory psychology or used in conjunction
with other materials in a longer course. There are now many excellent
supplementary materials available for use in introductory psychology
courses. It is the author’s belief that these materials have made the
single large introductory psychology textbook outdated. The present
book is intended to provide a theoretical framework for the integra-
tion of supplementary materials when used in a longer course.

Vili Preface
 I should like to express my appreciation of the ideas which I
have obtained from my colleagues and students, often without re-
membering their original sources. My special thanks are due to my
wife, Chris Wrench, for her help in putting my ideas into words.

David F. Wrench

Preface ix
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CONTENTS

PREFACE vii

INTRODUCTION I
The Definition of Psychology vl
The History of Psychology ib
Theory and Data in Psychology 20
Summary 28

ONE | PERCEPTION 31
Perception as an Active Process 36
Organization of Perception 42
The Stimulus Error 53
Summary yA

xi
 TWO | SOCIAL PERCEPTION 61

Attention 61
Organization of Perception 65
Theories of Distortion 74
Summary 83

THREE | PHENOMENA AND THEORIES OF LEARNING 87

Pavlovian Conditioning 88
Thorndike and the Law of Effect 92
Clark Hull's Behavior Theory 99
Attitudes toward Theory Construction 105
Tolman’s Purposive Behaviorism 110
Summary LULZ

FOUR | INNATE, LEARNED, AND MOTIVATED

BEHAVIOR AY

The Blank-slate Hypothesis Reexamined WAZ

Hormones and Behavior 130
A Theory of Motivation 136
Summary 146

FIVE | PERSONALITY ISL

The Measurement of Motives 158

Conflict and Ego Defense 165
Cognitive Dissonance WHA
Summary 182

SIX | STRATEGIES AND SYMPTOMS 187

Strategies of Happiness 187

Neurosis 190
A Psychosis: Schizophrenia US
The Effects of Psychotherapy 206
Summary 2S

SEVEN | EFFECTIVE LEARNING AND REMEMBERING ile

The Nature of Memory 224

xii Contents
 Meaning and Memory
Summary

EIGHT | VALUES, ATTITUDES, AND OPINIONS

Definitions of Terms
The .Measurement of Values
Attitude and Opinion Measurement
The Transmission of Social Class
Summary

NINE |) PREJUDICE
Ideology
The Gratifications of Prejudice
The Expression of Aggression
Personality Factors in Prejudice
Situational Factors in Prejudice
The Changing of Prejudice
Summary

TEN | GROUPS IN STABILITY AND CHANGE

Acceptance and Rejection by Groups
Conformity
Role Conflict
Summary

ELEVEN | SMALL-GROUP PROCESSES

Defining the Situation
Filling Positions
Developing Interpersonal Relations
Developing Social Norms
Dealing with Self-oriented Needs
The Selection of Environments
Summary

GLOSSARY
NAME INDEX
SUBJECT INDEX

Contents xili
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 INTRODUCTION

The Definition of Psychology

A chimpanzee sits in a cage looking at a banana. The banana is on

the ground outside the cage. The chimp tries to reach it with a stick,
but the stick is not long enough. Suddenly the animal gets up and
runs to the back of the cage where there is another stick. The sticks
are made of bamboo, and the end of one will fit into the end of the
other in the same way that a jointed fishing rod fits together. The
chimpanzee fits the sticks together and pulls in the banana.
The study is a classic one done by the psychologist Wolfgang
Kohler and described in a book entitled The Mentality of Apes.’ For
 the duration of the First World War, Kohler was unable to leave the
island of Tenerife. He spent the years doing naturalistic learning ex-
periments with chimpanzees, and concluded that they did not learn
by blind trial and error as general theories of learning current at that
time proposed. Instead, he felt, they were able to analyze relation-
ships and think out solutions to problems. This type of learning he
called insight learning.
The interpretation of Kéhler’s results, however, is not a clearcut
matter. He did not know the history of his animals before he acquired
them. Is it possible that the animal was not solving a new problem,
but simply remembering something it had learned earlier, perhaps
even learned by trial and error? The issue raised is the basic one of
what it is that is learned when learning takes place, which we shall
consider at length when we look at the field of learning. For the
moment, however, let us simply look at two other studies in the field
of psychology. By seeing how they are similar to each other and how
they differ, we shall take a first step toward defining the field of
psychology.
The first of these is one of the studies which have led a majority
of psychologists to conclude that there is no evidence of racial dif-
ferences in intelligence. At first glance there would seem to be, for
some cultural groups of apparently homogeneous racial type make
higher average IQ scores than others do. These differences, however,
seem to be due to the impossibility of making a test which will accu-
rately compare individuals who have grown up under different cul-
tural conditions. The scores of different groups are thus related to
their cultures, but not to their race. This conclusion is supported by
many studies, some of which are reviewed by Klineberg in Race and
Psychology, published in 1958.” Our study under consideration here,
done by J. H. Rohrer,’ deals with the average intelligence quotient of
an American Indian group, the Osage Indians.
The history of the American Indians is long and complex, for
there existed quite dissimilar Indian cultures and each had different
experiences in its contacts with non-Indian groups. In the end, all of
them came to live on reservations which were definitely separate and
clearly not equal in terms of opportunity to learn about the dominant
culture. There they became more or less assimilated to that culture,
usually less, depending to a large extent on how compatible their
former culture was with it. Living under conditions of both cultural
impoverishment and culture conflict, most Indian groups make, on
the average, considerably lower scores on intelligence tests than do

2 Psychology: A Social Approach

non-Indian groups. (This does not mean that there are not wide indi-
vidual differences within each group.)
Are these low average scores, around 80 in comparison to 100
for the population in general, due to heredity or to environment? The
question could be answered if it were possible to find an Indian group
that did not live under conditions of cultural and physical depriva-
tion. Rohrer found such a group in the Osage Indians, who enjoy a
standard of living comparable to non-Indian groups in the United
States. Biologically, the Osage Indians are undoubtedly closely re-
lated to other American Indian groups. That they have a higher
standard of living is the result of a quirk of fate—the worthless land
they were given as a reservation was later found to have oil under it!
The discovery of oil led to what has been called a natural ex-
periment, one which has not been performed intentionally for re-
search purposes but which did what a researcher would have wanted
to do had he been able to. It eliminated for the Osage Indians the
material disadvantage that most Indian groups live under. A compari-
son is thus possible. If the low scores of most Indian groups are due
to race, then the Osage Indians should have scores averaging about
80, since they are racially similar to other Indian groups. If the low
scores of most Indian groups are due to the restricted environment of
the reservation, then the Osage Indians should average around 100,
since they do not have restricted cultural advantages. The latter is
the case: Rohrer found average scores of 100 and 104, depending on
which of two tests was used. The results are clearly consistent with a
cultural, rather than a racial, interpretation.
Already we can see some differences among the studies we are
considering. One difference is in the source of data. While the Rohrer
study deals with human beings, the Kéhler study concerns infra-
human organisms, chimpanzees. As we shall see when we look at the
history of psychology, this is one of the major factors which has in-
fluenced approaches to the field. Theories based primarily on animal
experiments have, not too surprisingly, differed from those based
largely on the study of human beings. Despite this difference, how-
ever, the studies are similar in one way as regards the source of data.
A major distinction in psychology has been whether theories were
based on the observed behavior of organisms or on their reported
experience. Both the studies we have looked at so far have been
studies of behavior as it appears to an outside observer, rather than
the experience which an inside observer reports.
However, there is a second major difference in the studies. It

Introduction 3
 concerns the extent to which they have been concerned with formu-
lating general laws which will apply to all individuals or, on the other
hand, the extent to which they are interested in studying the way
in which individuals differ. This is such a major difference in psycho-
logical theories that terms have been devised for the two types.
Nomothetic theories are theories which apply to all members of a
species, or even across different species. A simple example would be
that the rods in the retina of the eye do not perceive the differences
among colors. This generalization applies to tall people and short
people, Arabs and Eskimos, or even rats and lemurs. But it is possible
to draw generalizations about a single individual. Consider this gen-
eralization: ‘“Whenever Tom gets involved with a girl he thinks up
a good reason why he should not marry her.” The principle might
only apply to one person, but as long as it did apply to him, it could
still be a valuable generalization. It would enable us to predict his
future behavior in certain circumstances. We could, for example,
predict that he would never get married. This type of principle is
called ideographic.
It is an oversimplification to class theories as either wholly
nomothetic or wholly ideographic, for in reality there is a continuum
between these two poles. A generalization about a group of people
is more ideographic than a generalization about all people but less
ideographic than a generalization about a single person. The two
studies we have considered so far differ on this dimension. The first
study, by Kohler, attempted to discover general principles of learning
which would apply not only to all people but also to all primates.
Studies such as the second one, by Rohrer, look at differences among
various groups, rather than just ways that all people are the same.
The second is thus more ideographic, though less so than a study
investigating the behavior of a single individual. Whether theories of
psychology attempt to draw nomothetic or ideographic generaliza-
tions is again one of their major differences.
A third typical study in the field of psychology will help to
illustrate the variety of material found in the field. Some areas of
the human brain are clearly used in the representation of the senses.
If one of these areas is stimulated electrically when a person is under-
going brain surgery, the person will report a sensation, such as a
flash of light, a sound, or a taste. Those parts of the brain are thus
called sensory areas. Other parts of the brain equally clearly serve
for the control of muscular movements. If one of these motor areas

4 Psychology: A Social Approach

is stimulated electrically, the person will make a muscular movement.
Besides the sensory and motor areas, there are other areas that do
not have clearly defined sensory or motor functions. These areas
apparently serve functions in higher thought, in integrating patterns
of behavior, or in other activities which are not yet clear to investi-
gators. The third experiment we shall look at, performed by James
Olds,* investigated the functions of one of these apparently function-
less areas of the brain.
Needless to say, most studies of brain functioning use animal
subjects, for only a limited amount of information can be gathered
from human subjects during surgery. The necessity of using animal
subjects, by ruling out the possibility of the subject reporting what he
experiences, is a serious limitation on this type of research. If you
stimulate an area of the brain of an animal and the animal doesn’t do
anything, how do you know what function that area serves? Olds
conceived the interesting idea of letting the animal stimulate its own
brain. Whether it did so or not might then tell something about what
it was experiencing.
Using rats as subjects, Olds surgically implanted electrodes in
the septal region of the brain of each of them. This involves a minor
operation, carried out under anesthetic, from which the rat rapidly
recovers with no apparent ill effects. After recovery, the rat was
placed in a box with a lever in it. The lever was wired up so that
each time the rat pressed the lever, its brain would be briefly stimu-
lated. Under these conditions, the rats pressed the lever rapidly and
repeatedly, sometimes as frequently as two thousand or three thou-
sand times per hour. The results clearly supported Olds’s contention
that he had discovered pleasure centers in the brain. Further research
indicated that the rats would do work and learn things in order to
receive the electrical stimulation, so that the areas of the brain were
apparently not merely centers for lever pressing, as some people had
suggested.
So far we have seen that studies in psychology differ in whether
they use human or animal subjects and in whether they are con-
cerned with general laws or the study of individual differences. Olds’s
study is animal and nomothetic. It also illustrates a third way in
which psychological studies differ, for it has a different unit of analy-
sis than either of the other studies we have looked at. Psychology
used to be described as the study of the individual, but it has now
come to study everything from individual nerve cells through the

Introduction 5
 behavior of large groups of people. The three studies we have looked
at focus on individuals, as representatives of all primates, on cultural
groups, and on portions of the brain. Psychology is clearly broader
than simply the study of individuals.
Now that we have looked at some typical psychological studies
and the ways in which they differ from each other, we are ready to
face the problem of trying to define what psychology is. The task will
not be an easy one, for among other things psychology is an histori-
cal accident. Some areas of study are included within the field be-
cause famous psychologists in the past happened to be interested in
them, while others are excluded simply because nobody has yet
pointed out their relevance for the field. In the next section we shall
see some of the ways in which contemporary psychology is a product
of its history.
How, then, should the field of psychology be defined? The usual
definition is that it is the science of human behavior. This definition
is too broad in some ways and too narrow in others. It is too broad
in that all the social sciences study human behavior and they all
aspire to be sciences just as psychology does. The definition does not
distinguish psychology from anthropology, political science, or eco-
nomics. At the same time the definition is too narrow in limiting the
field only to the study of behavior. Despite the historical impact of
behaviorism as a school of psychology, most psychologists are still
interested in whether the mental patient feels good or bad or whether
a person would feel pleasure if his pleasure centers were stimulated.
Although the emphasis has been first on one and then on the other
during its history, psychology is apparently interested in human ex-
perience as well as human behavior.
Psychology cannot be defined in a few words in a way which
will both include the things it has historically included and distin-
guish it from the other social sciences. It can, however, be described
in terms of what it usually is. The description will not fit all studies
done by psychologists, but it will fit most of them. Psychology, then,
is the study of human experience and behavior based on research
with animals and with technologically advanced cultures. It includes
both nomothetic and ideographic approaches and units of analysis
ranging from the nerve cell to the society. It uses experimentation
and statistical control as its major research methods.
Even this description leaves some overlap with the other social
sciences, and this overlap does in fact exist. When a political scientist

6 Psychology: A Social Approach

 concerns himself with the behavior of politicians rather than ideal
systems of government or when a sociologist investigates small-group
behavior, he is working in an area and a way that could equally well
typify a psychologist. The social sciences differ in what they usually
do, but all of them overlap in their interests. Psychology usually, but
not always, uses experimental methods, studies individuals, and limits
itself to American and Western European cultures.
Is it not a limitation of psychology that it is based more on
some cultural groups than on others? It is, just as it is a limitation of
anthropology that it usually does not have representative samples of
the populations it studies, or a limitation of sociology that it seldom
uses experimental methods in checking its results. Each field, then, is
only a partial view of reality from a particular perspective. The per-
spective in this book will be that of social psychology. The primary
focus will be on human interaction, and such areas of psychology as
learning and perception will be studied primarily from the point of
view of how they influence the relations of individuals and groups to
each other.

The History of Psychology

THE BRITISH ASSOCIATIONISTS

Although it is possible to trace speculation about man’s nature back

into antiquity, probably the first group to have sufficient impact on
the emerging field of psychology to be numbered among its ancestors
was a group of British philosophers. The two most important aspects
of their beliefs are referred to in the two different names they are
sometimes given. Sometimes they are called empiricists, because they
believed that ideas are not inherited, but learned from experience,
and sometimes they are called associationists, because of their interest
in how ideas are associated with each other. It is, of course, possible
to be an empiricist without being an associationist or to be an asso-
ciationist without being an empiricist. John Locke and his followers,
however, were generally both. In being both empiricists and asso-
ciationists, they raised the central problem of the future field of psy-
chology and provided an answer to it.
The problem was where ideas come from. It became a problem
when they were not assumed to be inherited, as many earlier philos-

Introduction 7
 ophers had believed. Plato, for instance, held the position that we
had once known everything, but that our memories were a bit bad
and we needed to be reminded. This was, for him, a strong argument
in favor of believing in reincarnation: if we had not lived before,
how could we know so much? Similarly, Descartes held that there
were some ideas which did not come from experience but which yet
presented themselves to the mind with such certainty that they had
to be believed. The rejection of innate ideas is the central theme of
Locke’s “An essay concerning human understanding,” published in
1690, and is the step which made a field of psychology necessary.”
This point is made clear in the best-known quote from Locke’s essay:
2. All ideas come from sensation or reflection—Let us then suppose
the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without
any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that
vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted
on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials
of reason and knowledge? To this I answer in one word, from experi-
ence. In that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ulti-
mately derives itself. Our observation, employed either about external
and sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds,
perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our
understanding with all the materials of thinking. These two are the
fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can
naturally have, do spring.®

It will be noticed in this quotation that Locke did not carry

empiricism as far as some of the later members of the school. While
ideas were not inherited, the capacity for perceiving the world was,
and a person could learn by paying attention to the operations of his
mind. Others, such as George Berkeley and David Hartley, developed
the positions that we must learn to perceive and that all ideas are
compounds of ideas of sensations. No longer was observing the
operations of the mind a source of knowledge.
“Compounds of ideas” provides the clue to the other important
role which associationism was to play in the history of psychology.
Ideas were associated with each other, and on the basis of this asso-
ciation complex ideas were built up out of simple ones. The answer
to the question of where ideas came from was thus to look for the
laws of association. Consciousness, like a chemical compound, could
be analyzed into elements, and the laws of association were thought
to govern how the elements combined to make the compounds. On
the basis of introspection, the associationists suggested what the laws

8 Psychology: A Social Approach

might be. For Hume, for example, there were three—resemblance,
contiguity, and cause and effect. For automobile tires to make you
think of doughnuts would be an example of associating ideas because
of similarity of shape. Associating salt with pepper would follow a
law of contiguity—associating things because they are frequently
found together. If turtles make you think of turtle soup, you may be
associating cause and effect.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY PHYSIOLOGY

The associationists did not carry out experiments or carefully con-

trolled observations, but based their conclusions on thinking about
their everyday experiences. Thus, while they anticipated the subject
matter and some of the principles of later psychological theories, they
did not anticipate their experimental methods. These methods were
more a legacy from a second major forerunner of the field of psy-
chology, the investigation of the physical nature of man by anato-
mists and physiologists. A publication of Charles Bell in 1811 will
serve as an example.
While speculation about man is old, systematic study of him is
not. It is perhaps not fanciful of anthropologists to suggest that the
reason animals are represented in considerable anatomic accuracy in
cave paintings, while men are either very crudely represented or not
shown at all, is that early man had strong religious taboos against
any representation of human beings. (This type of belief can be seen
more recently in the notion that an image of a person would give a
witch power over him.) In any case, man has been the last thing
subject to scientific investigation. At the time Bell wrote, some people
were just beginning to feel that perhaps man’s anatomy might be
amenable to scientific investigation. There still are many people who
believe his thoughts, impulses, and emotions are outside the sphere
of science. The novelty of studying even man’s anatomy in the early
nineteenth century is shown in this quote from Bell’s “Idea of a new
anatomy of the brain”:
I have found some of my friends so mistaken in their conception of
the object of the demonstrations which I have delivered in my lec-
tures, that I wish to vindicate myself at all hazards. They would have
it that I am in search of the seat of the soul; but I wish only to in-
vestigate the structure of the brain, as we examine the structure of
the eye and ear. It is not more presumptuous to follow the tracts

Introduction 9
 of nervous matter in the brain and to attempt to discover the course of
sensation, than it is to trace the rays of light through the humours
of the eye, and to say, that the retina is the seat of vision. Why are
we to close the investigation with the discovery of the external organ?"

Bell is most remembered today for being one of the discoverers

of the Bell-Magendie law, which distinguished between the sensory
and motor nerves connecting with the spinal cord. The sensory
nerves, which carry impulses toward the brain, connect with the cord
through the dorsal roots (toward the back); the motor nerves, which
carry impulses away from the brain, emerge as the ventral roots from
the cord. More important than this specific discovery, however, was
the role which Bell and others like him played in introducing sys-
tematic observation and experimentation as methods of studying liv-
ing organisms. In Magendie’s rediscovery of Bell’s law, for example,
he utilized an experiment:
Magendie cut the posterior root, could get no movement by pricking
or pressing the limb, and was about to conclude that the limb was
paralyzed when the animal moved it spontaneously. Magendie con-
cluded that the limb was not paralyzed but anesthetic. Then Magen-
die tried cutting the anterior root and found that he then had
paralysis, for he could get no movement in it at all, whether the pos-
terior root was cut or not, unless he stimulated the distal end of the
anterior cut.®

PSYCHOPHYSICS

A third forerunner of the field of psychology was a growing literature

on the operation of the senses. Thomas Young had proposed a theory
of color vision as early as 1802, and it was elaborated by the physi-
cist von Helmholtz in 1860. More important, Weber and Fechner
established the area of study known as psychophysics. The impact
of their work on psychology was so great that E. G. Boring, in his
standard history of experimental psychology, views Fechner as the
founder of the field:
We come at last to the formal beginning of experimental psychology,
and we start with Fechner: not with Wundt, thirty-one years Fech-
ner’s junior, who published his first important but youthful psycho-
logical study two years after Fechner’s epoch-making work; not
with Helmholtz, twenty years younger, who was primarily a physi-
ologist and a physicist but whose great genius extended to include
psychology; but with Fechner, who was not a great philosopher nor

10 Psychology: A Social Approach

 at all a physiologist, but who performed with scientific rigor those
first experiments which laid the foundation for the new psychology
and still lie at the basis of its methodology.®

The view that Fechner founded psychology is based on two

things. He applied experimental methods such as those employed by
physics and physiology, and he applied them to problems which were
definitely psychological, rather than physical or physiological. The
problems dealt with the relationship between the physical stimulus a
person was exposed to and the sensation he experienced. Weber had
observed that the change in a stimulus which can be noticed is ap-
proximately a constant fraction of the value of the stimulus. In other
words, if a 30-ounce weight must be changed in weight by an ounce
for you to be able, on the average, to notice the difference, then a
30-pound weight would have to be changed by a pound for the
change to be equally noticeable. This can be crudely observed in
everyday life. If a room is illuminated only by moonlight coming
through the windows, turning on even a 15-watt bulb will make a
very noticeable difference in how bright the room seems. If sunlight
is streaming through the windows, the change in illumination when
the 15-watt light is turned on may not even be noticeable.
Fechner considerably extended Weber’s work, both experimen-
tally and theoretically. He extended it to other senses than those
Weber had worked with, and he conceived of using the just-notice-
able difference in stimulation as a unit in terms of which any sensa-
tion could be measured. Fechner thus did extensive work in psychol-
ogy, yet the honor of founding the field is more commonly given to
Wilhelm Wundt, who came later. This is partly because of disagree-
ment on just how important Fechner’s work was. Boring quotes
William James as having written of it:

But it would be terrible if even such a dear old man as this could
saddle our Science forever with his patient whimsies, and, in a world
so full of more nutritious objects of attention, compel all future
students to plough through the difficulties, not only of his own work,
but of the still drier ones written in his refutation. Those who desire
this dreadful literature can find it; it has a “disciplinary value;” but
I will not even enumerate it in a foot-note. The only amusing part of
it is that Fechner’s critics should always feel bound, after smiting his
theories hip and thigh and leaving not a stick of them standing, to
wind up by saying that nevertheless to him belongs the imperishable
glory, of first formulating them and thereby turning psychology into
an exact science,

Introduction 11
 “‘And everybody praised the duke
Who this great fight did win’
‘But what good came of it at last?’
Quoth little Peterkin.
‘Why, that I cannot tell,’ said he,
‘But ‘twas a famous victory!’ ?°
Probably a more important reason why Wundt is usually con-
sidered the founder of psychology, however, is that it was his stu-
dents who became the leaders in the new field. Fechner may have
created part of the field of psychology; Wundt created psychologists.
In addition Wundt, unlike Fechner, set out intentionally to create a
new field of study.
The field of psychology thus began imperceptibly. Some psy-
chological research, such as that of Weber and Fechner, was done
before Wundt founded his psychological laboratory in 1879. James
even had a laboratory at Harvard for performing psychological ex-
periments prior to Wundt’s. Wundt is usually considered the founder
of the field, however, because he defined it in a systematic way and
because he had disciples. His work was no single piece of research,
but the creation of a field. He adopted consistent positions on what
the subject matter of the field should be, what methods should be
used to study the subject matter, what assumptions needed to be
made in order to utilize the methods, and what problems it was im-
portant to attack first in terms of the theoretical approach. His psy-
chology is worthy of our attention, for even today the various
approaches to the field are based on the answers given to the ques-
tions Wundt raised. The history of psychology is largely a history of
accepting or rejecting various aspects of Wundt’s psychology.

WUNDT’S PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Wundt’s psychology was just what one would expect it to be on the

basis of its antecedents. From the associationist philosophers came
the tasks of the new field—the analysis of consciousness into ele-
ments and the determination of the laws of connection of these ele-
ments. Also from the associationists came introspection as a method,
but this was combined with the experimental method of the physi-
ologists. The method adopted was thus experimental introspection!
This method is not a contradiction in terms, for it is the method em-
ployed by Fechner. The experiment consists of creating various

12 Psychology: A Social Approach

stimulus conditions, and the subject then introspects and reports his
experiences.
Wundt was very clear about what psychology was and was not.
It was the science of experience, and concerned only with the ex-
periences of the normal, adult, human mind. Other sciences were
possible, but they would not be psychology. Similarly, the introspec-
tions of trained observers were the only source of acceptable data.
Anything else would be unscientific. Finally, the basic task of the
new science was to break down experience into elements. Wundt’s
system was a mental chemistry which hoped, like the science of
chemistry, to find lawfulness by finding basic elements and seeing
how they combined into compounds. Like chemical compounds, the
mental compounds might show properties different from those of
the elements making them up, an idea which had also been suggested
by one of the later associationist philosophers, John Stuart Mill. It
was this search for a molecular structure of consciousness which led
the derivatives of Wundt’s system to be named structuralism.
In 1859 Charles Darwin published the book of the century, The
Origin of Species.‘* That psychology today is not structuralism is
probably due more to this remarkable work than to any other single
cause. Later, Freud’s writings were to have their effect, yet even today
contemporary psychology probably shows the impact of evolutionary
theory more clearly than that of psychoanalysis. What exactly was
it that Darwin did? He was not the first to propose an evolutionary
theory—his own grandfather Erasmus Darwin had been one of those
who had proposed evolutionary theories before him. Instead, he was
the first to propose a plausible mechanism by means of which evo-
lution might have taken place, and such a wide variety of evidence
that his ideas had to be either accepted or disproved—they could not
simply be ignored.
Before Darwin wrote, men were familiar with some of the evi-
dence on which his theory was based. That some species which had
previously been found on the earth were there no longer was evident
from research in paleontology. Their disappearance was accounted
for in terms of some great cataclysm rather than unsuccessful com-
petition for survival. That new breeds of domestic animals, such as
the Percheron horse, had been created by man was undeniable. These
were merely breeds rather than species, however, and it was not
considered possible that similar selective breeding might create new
species. Species were held to have been divinely created, all at the

Introduction 13
 same time, and forever unchanging. Finally, similarities of embryo-
logical development of different species were noted and used as a basis
of classification of the species. They were not, however, seen as indi-
cating that the species had evolved from common ancestors.
Darwin brought all of these sources of evidence into focus by
showing their relationship to a mechanism of evolution—a mech-
anism of variation, differential survival, and resulting change of the
population. His doing so created three new interests within the field
of psychology. First, it led to an interest in the adaptive value of
human thought and behavior. Instead of the contents of the mind,
the basic question became the ways in which the mind helped man
compete for survival. Second, evolutionary theory led to an interest
in animal psychology. The mind of man and that of other organisms
had been previously thought so different from each other that no
comparison between them was possible. Evolution, in stating that
man and primates descended from common ancestors, stressed their
similarity and made a comparison of their mental capacities desirable.
Finally, evolutionary theory led to the study of individual differences.
If man’s intelligence had evolved through variation and differential
survival, then the variations in intelligence found among individuals
became vitally important, for they were the stuff of which evolution
was made.

FUNCTIONALISM AND BEHAVIORISM

All three of these interests in psychology primarily encouraged by

evolutionary theory soon came to characterize American psychology.
The approach which embodied them was too loose and eclectic to be
considered a system of psychology in the sense that structuralism
was; but to distinguish it from structuralism, it has been given the
name functionalism. From it developed behaviorism, which was, like
structuralism, a more rigidly defined theoretical system.
Because functionalism was more a general point of view than a
well-developed theoretical approach, it cannot be identified with one
man the way structuralism can with Wundt. It grew partly out of the
work of William James at Harvard, and was influenced by work on
individual differences done by Galton in England and Binet in France.
It developed into a distinctive approach at Chicago under John
Dewey and at Columbia under James McKeen Cattell. Even these two
schools differed somewhat in their emphasis; the theoretical develop-

14 Psychology: A Social Approach

ments at Chicago led more directly to behaviorism, while the Colum-
bia approach was more eclectic.
The central problem for functionalism, then, was how mental
activity aided in adaptation to the environment. This included such
subquestions as these: How do individuals differ in their adaptation?
How do we develop the ability to adapt? What processes are common
to the adaptation of animals and human beings? How may our
knowledge be applied to help people adapt? As is obvious from these
questions, Wundt’s nomothetic pure science of human experience was
expanded into the study of experience and behavior, of animals and
people, of individual differences and common characteristics—to be
applied as well as understood. Even this list does not exhaust the
ways in which functionalism differed from structuralism. It also op-
posed the analysis of experience into elements by stressing, as James
had, that experience is a continuous process which can only be
broken down into elements at the cost of distorting it. We not only
cannot step into the same river twice, we cannot step into it once, for
it changes while we are acting.
This opposition to analysis into elements was not shared by
behaviorism, which grew out of functionalism. Although it developed
from functionalism, behaviorism regarded it as a compromise with an
enemy which should have been slain. Behaviorism, as developed by
John Watson and his followers, had as rigid rules about what psy-
chology should be as structuralism did, even though the rules were
almost diametrically opposed. For structuralism, psychology had been
the study of experience; for Watson, only behavior was admissible
data.
The study of behavior rather than experience is a natural con-
seguence of an interest in animal psychology, since animals are un-
able to report their experiences. Watson’s primary interests were in
animal and child psychology, and he carried functionalism to its logi-
cal extreme of excluding all but behavior from psychology. The new
school was to lean so heavily on experiments with animals that there
was something prophetic in the title of Watson’s doctoral disserta-
tion, “Animal education: An experimental study on the psychical de-
velopment of the white rat, correlated with the growth of its ner-
vous system.””*”
It was also from animal experiments that the elements of the
new approach came. After winning the Nobel Prize for his research
on digestion, the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov became interested

Introduction 15
 in the role of higher mental processes in salivation. A dog would
salivate not only when meat was placed in his mouth, a simple reflex
action, but also when his food dish was rattled. This latter behavior
was not an innate reflex, but instead, Pavlov reasoned, a reflex which
was conditional upon the training which the animal had received. By
pairing a neutral stimulus, such as a bell, with the stimulus of meat
powder in its mouth, Pavlov conditioned his animals to salivate to the
bell. The extensive research which he did on these conditional, or
conditioned, responses served as a major theoretical basis of be-
haviorism. Watson conceived of all learning as responses being con-
ditioned to stimuli. The elements of the new psychology were not the
sensations and images of structuralism or the ideas of British asso-
ciationism, but the stimuli and responses of physiology.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

In tracing the evolution of functionalism, we have neglected other

aspects of it which were not central to behaviorism: its concentration
on individual differences and its applied nature. These two charac-
teristics, which had their own historical origins, led to the develop-
ment of clinical psychology.
The role which evolutionary theory played in making psychol-
ogy an ideographic science as well as a nomothetic one may be seen
by looking at the pioneer of the study of individual differences, who
was Darwin’s cousin. Sir Francis Galton was a man of science of a
type that is not found today, for today knowledge is so extensive
and specialized that it is rare for anyone other than a professional in
a field to make a basic contribution to it. Galton, on the other hand,
was a dilettante who made basic contributions to anthropology,
genetics, meteorology, psychology, physics, and statistics! He was a
genius with an independent income who was productive without
taking his work seriously. At one time he took a walking tour of the
British Isles to determine where the girls were the prettiest. At an-
other he established an anthropometric laboratory in London where
he took physical and psychological measurements of thousands of
people. While almost all psychologists since Galton’s time have had
to pay their subjects to participate in experiments, Galton charged
his an admission fee.
It was an interest in evolution which made Galton interested in
individual differences. He saw in intelligence a major factor in adap-

16 Psychology: A Social Approach

tation and survival, and was convinced that it was inherited rather
than acquired. In individual differences in intelligence he saw evolu-
tion in progress. His major work in the area, Inquiries into Human
Faculty and Its Development,** published in 1883, was the beginning
of individual psychology.
If testing of individual differences began because of Galton’s
interest in evolution, it continued for more practical reasons. Binet
and Simon published in 1905 the first practical intelligence test for
schoolchildren, prepared at the request of the Paris school authorities.
Mental testing was transplanted to Columbia by Cattell, who had
been Wundt’s first assistant but was more influenced by Galton. As
Edna Heidbreder put it in her excellent book, Seven Psychologies:
In the early days of psychology at Columbia, the dominating figure
was, beyond question, James McKeen Cattell. Cattell, it will be re-
membered, was one of Wundt’s first students at the Leipzig labora-
tory. It has almost passed into legend that, at his own suggestion, he
became Wundt's first assistant, and that in Wundt's laboratory,
where the object of study was the generalized human mind, and
where Wundt regularly assigned students the problems for their doc-
toral dissertations, Cattell suggested his own problem and included
in his plan a study of individual differences. Wundt pronounced the
program ganz Amerikanisch, and it is of great importance to psy-
chology in the United States that Cattell remained ganz Amerikanisch
and at the same time an active member of the Leipzig group.**
Clinical psychology would have had no place in the nomothetic
structuralism of German experimental psychology and at most a
questionable place in the theoretically pure behaviorism of Watson.
It was soon to play a major role in an American functionalism which
was oriented toward individual differences, mental testing, and the
application of psychology to practical problems.
Although he was a medical doctor rather than a psychologist,
Sigmund Freud changed psychological conceptions of man as a per-
sonality as much as Darwin had changed conceptions of man as an
animal. Again like Darwin, Freud was not completely original in his
work, but was original in developing a unified theory with supporting
evidence which had to be seriously considered. The use of hypnotism
in the treating of mental disorder was an accepted technique before
Freud, and William James was among those who used it to gather
data on individuals with amnesia, publishing his observations in The
Principles of Psychology in 1890."° Freud, however, made at least
three major contributions. First, and perhaps most important in the

Introduction 17
 long run, he expanded the scope of science to encompass new phe-
nomena. He did not dismiss the behavior of children, slips of the
tongue of adults, the symptoms of psychotics, and the myths of vari-
ous cultures as accidental and meaningless trivia; rather, he viewed
them as phenomena which a theory of man must explain. The second
contribution was the theory that he evolved to explain these data—a
theory stressing the motivation of behavior, the unacceptability of
many motives to the conscience of the individual, and the con-
sequent importance of repression and unconscious conflict. This the-
ory will be explored at length later in the book. Finally, Freud con-
tributed psychoanalysis, a method of treatment of mental illness
which differed significantly from the hypnosis from which it was
evolved. While hypnosis sometimes produced dramatic cures, it some-
times seemed to cure only the surface symptoms without getting at
the underlying problems. The patient soon developed different symp-
toms after one set was cured. The psychoanalytic technique of ther-
apy was evolved to lead people, while conscious, into discussing
matters that they would usually reveal only under hypnosis.
Freud’s approach served as a stimulus for the study of children,
motivation, and individual differences. It was only through the test-
ing movement, however, that clinical psychology evolved. Although
some psychoanalysts were trained who were not medical doctors, the
vast majority were, and eventually the precedent was established that
only M.D.s would receive psychoanalytic training. The mainstream
of psychoanalysis was obviously within medicine, and psychology
was influenced only in the way it had been influenced by develop-
ments in philosophy, physiology, or biology. Psychologists, however,
gradually developed two roles which were related to psychoanalysis.
Through the development of mental testing they came to play a
major role in psychiatric diagnosis, and through the development of
research methodology they became the people most concerned with
the evaluation of the effects of psychoanalytic therapy. While the
former role placed them in a role subordinate to psychiatrists, the
latter gave them an expertise which placed them at least on a basis
of equality of status with the medical specialty. From the combina-
tion of the two roles and from the shortage of trained psychiatrists,
clinical psychology developed into its present status of relatively in-
dependent quasi-medical practice. At the present time, approximately
half of all psychologists in the United States are clinicians, and it is
the clinical psychologist rather than the industrial, child, comparative,

18 Psychology: A Social Approach

social, or physiological psychologist who is popularly thought of
when the word “psychologist” is used.

GESTALT THEORY

The final school of psychology we shall consider is named gestalt

theory, after a German word which may be roughly translated as
“pattern.” As its name implies, this school grew up as a protest
against analysis and synthesis in psychology and stressed that there
are emergent properties when elements are combined. A triangle is
more than three straight lines. Triangularity is an emergent property
which appears when they are organized in a pattern.
Gestalt theory arose as a theory of perception which was a re-
action against the analysis of consciousness by German structuralism
but became the chief alternative to the elementarism of behaviorism
in the United States. In most ways the two theoretical approaches
were opposed. Gestalt psychologists, who had come to the United
States to flee Hitler’s Germany, were strong advocates of psychology
studying human values and social institutions, while behaviorism
wanted to eliminate everything subjective from the field. Watson was
a strong environmentalist, who maintained that anyone could become
anything with the proper training; the gestalt theorists were nativists
in perception, who stressed the innate organizing characteristics of
the mind. Most important, however, the mind was for behaviorism a
blank slate on which nothing but stimulus-response connections
could be impressed, while for the gestalt theorists it was something
wondrously complex. Behaviorism was simple and optimistic, with a
simple theory to account for everything. Gestalt theory concentrated
on destroying the simple explanations.
All the schools of psychology described here already existed
when Heidbreder published her Seven Psychologies in 1933. Why
have there been no new schools of thought in the field in a third of
a century? The reason seems to be that the field has become more
mature, and as it has, knowledge has become more specialized. Just
as evolutionary theory moved from early controversy over such
general questions as whether evolution had taken place and whether
acquired characteristics could be inherited to such specific research
questions as the way in which pairs of chromosomes separate, psy-
chology has moved from the clash of grand theories of human nature
to the consideration of more specific research topics. This does not

Introduction 19
 mean that there have been no new theories. Some, such as Festin-
ger’s theory of cognitive dissonance, will be discussed in this book.
It does mean that the theories have been less broad in scope than, for
example, those of Freud or William James.
In a sense, then, all the theories have been shown to be wrong.
Neither the nativism of gestalt theory nor the environmentalism of
behaviorism, the mental chemistry of Wundt nor the cultural uni-
versality of the Oedipus complex, has been supported by the very
extensive research literature of the new field. Instead, each has
proved sometimes right and sometimes wrong. The questions have
changed, so that they no longer have the general nature of “Is man
what he is because of heredity or environment?” but instead the
much more specific pattern of “How do heredity and environment
interact in the development of walking by the human infant?”
Few psychologists would be able to answer the question if asked
to what theoretical school they belong. Yet even though psycholo-
gists do not consciously hold to specific theories, they are undoubt-
edly guided by implicit theories. One man will be more inclined
toward the development of nomothetic theory, while another will be
drawn toward individual differences. One will perceive the world as
simple and incline toward explanations in terms of simple elements,
while another will be emotionally a gestalt theorist, opposed to any
simplification of the richness of human experience. The old theoreti-
cal questions, on which the schools had systematic and explicit dif-
ferences, are often the ones which are found to characterize different
explanations of more specific research findings, and theorists uncon-
sciously carry the approaches of structuralism, psychoanalytic the-
ory, and functionalism in new combinations to the problems they
tackle. It is in this sense of the unverbalized theoretical biases which
are part of the transmitted culture of psychology that the field re-
mains the accidental product of its history.

Theory and Data in Psychology

THEORY

Psychology differs from most other fields in that all people hold
psychological theories. If a superintendent of schools tries to decide
whether a school budget will be approved by the voters, a boy esti-

20 Psychology: A Social Approach

mates the probability of a girl accepting if he asks her for a date, or
a husband attempts to figure out why his wife likes dances more
than he does, each is operating on some kind of theory of human
experience and behavior. Furthermore, each could point to evidence
to support his theory. The superintendent of schools, for example,
may argue that the school budget should be reduced on the basis
that dissatisfaction over taxes is currently high and point to recent
conversations with community leaders to support this generalization.
How, then, do the theories of psychologists differ from common
sense? Some of the main ways are that they are more explicit, are
more internally consistent, and specify more clearly the relationships
between the theories and the evidence they are based on. Let us look
at each of these points in turn.
A person concerned with any area of human activity may de-
velop a great deal of ability to predict events in that area without
being able to communicate his expertise to anyone else. Thus if we
asked the superintendent of schools mentioned earlier to predict the
outcomes of ten successive budget elections, he might well predict
accurately in most if not all cases. If he were asked how he made his
predictions, he might say he predicted passage of the budget in one
case on the basis of general satisfaction with the school program,
failure in another case because of controversy over the buying of
uniforms for the high school band, and passage in a third election
because of a decline in political conservatism. The individual trying
to learn from the expert how to predict the election outcome would
be as puzzled after learning these predictions as he was before. He
would not know how to combine and weight the various factors that
seemed to be involved, or even what other factors might be involved
in different elections. What should be predicted, for example, when
people are satisfied with the educational program, there is strong
political conservatism in the state, and the high school debate team
has just won an award? The theory which has been communicated
is not explicit enough to say. The development of theories which are
explicit enough to state which variables should be looked at, how
they should be measured, and how they should be put together in
making predictions is one aspiration of the social scientist.
A second problem with commonsense theories is that they often
seem to be self-contradictory. A self-made man, for example, who
has risen from poverty to a position of wealth and power, may
ascribe his success to the obstacles he has had to overcome. In ex-

Introduction 21
 plaining his own career he may attribute his success to the lessons
learned in going hungry, fighting in the streets, and having to sup-
port himself from an early age. He may also give his children a
home in the best residential neighborhood, enough money that they
do not have to work in childhood, and an education at the best prepa-
ratory schools. Will he predict that they will be unsuccessful because
of their not having the experiences which he says success depends
upon when he explains his own career? In many areas of life, our
commonsense theories may show similar apparent contradictions.
Thus we can simultaneously believe “Out of sight, out of mind” and
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
Some of this internal inconsistency in commonsense theories
may be more apparent than real, however. If a person believed that
“Out of sight, out of mind” applied when two people did not know
each other well, but that absence did make the heart grow fonder
after there were strong bonds of affection between them, then there
would be no contradiction. In this case the commonsense theory
would simply not be explicit enough through not stating when each
principle applied.
Perhaps the greatest difference between formal and informal
theories, however, is that the formal theories specify what observa-
tions are relevant to them. The two male protagonists in Mozart’s
opera Cosi fan Tutte debated whether women are faithful or not, a
question which has been debated endlessly. They differed from others
who have argued the matter in agreeing on what evidence they would
use to settle the question—each would go away and return in dis-
guise and try to seduce his fiancée. If he succeeded, it meant she was
not to be trusted. In agreeing on just what evidence was and was
not relevant to the question, they changed it from one which could
not be answered to one which could be and formed the basis for a
scientific theory, even if it was one limited to only two people.
Psychological theories, like Mozart’s characters, specify how the
concepts in them are to be related to operations or observations in
the real world. To return to the case of the superintendent of schools
mentioned earlier, imagine that he had the simple theory that people
voted for school budgets when they had favorable attitudes toward
the schools and against them when they had unfavorable attitudes
toward the schools. After learning the outcome of any election, he
would always be able to justify the results in terms of the theory, for
he would always be able to find evidence of either favorable attitudes

22 Psychology: A Social Approach

or unfavorable attitudes. In order to make an adequate test of the
theory, he would need to specify a general method of gathering evi-
dence on attitudes which was independent of his biases or knowledge
of the outcome of the election. He might, for example, specify the
following procedure: Collect all letters to the editor of the local news-
paper (not just those printed) for the two months prior to the elec-
tion. Have someone who does not know why the research is being
done sort the letters into those favorable to the schools, those un-
favorable to them, and those either ambiguous or irrelevant. Count
the letters, and if there are more favorable than unfavorable letters,
predict passage of the budget; otherwise predict its failure. While
this might be a very crude method of assessing attitudes (the sample
is biased in favor of people who read that particular newspaper, for
one thing), it is a first step toward specifying the operations by
which a particular concept may be measured and thus a first step
toward making the theory testable.

DATA

The ideal of data gathering in psychology goes something like this:

In order to study the effects of a variable, called the independent
variable, it is experimentally manipulated. (If we wanted to study the
effects of a drug, for example, different groups of people would be
given different amounts of the drug.) The effects of the independent
variable are assessed by measuring other variables which might be
influenced by it, called the dependent variables. (In the drug study,
these might include both physical measures such as pulse rate and
psychological measures such as interpretation of ambiguous stimuli.)
The various experimental groups would be given different amounts of
the drug, while a control group would not be given the drug at all. The
effects of other variables would be controlled by making the condi-
‘tions for the experimental and control groups identical except for the
differences in the level of the independent variable. (In the drug study,
for example, the experimental and control groups should not differ
in whether they think they have been given a drug or not. The con-
trol group should thus be given some inert substance which will have
no physical effect, so nobody will know whether he has received the
real drug or not.) The results of the experiment should be based on
enough observations so that they are reliable, and would be similar if
the experiment were repeated. They should only be applied under

Introduction 23
 conditions similar to the experimental conditions, and to populations
of people similar to the population of subjects.
These conditions are obviously impossible to create. If we want
to study the effects of aspirin on people, we cannot start by getting
a representative sample of the entire population of the world. Never-
theless, let us consider why the simple experiment has served as an
ideal before we look at the ways in which actual research differs from
the ideal.
The reason for varying only one thing at a time is easy to see.
If more than one is varied, how is it possible to tell which one is
responsible for the effects that are found? In the example of the
drug study, if those who had taken the drug knew that they had
while those in the control group knew that they had not, this second
difference between the two groups might be what was responsible
for any effects that were found. Even if the drug had no physical
effect, people might convince themselves that it was affecting them.
Similarly, it is clear that the experiment should be performed on a
population of people similar to the one that the results were to be
applied to, for it might have different effects on people of differ-
ent characteristics. The drug, for example, might have quite different
effects on diabetics and nondiabetics.
A somewhat more complicated point has to do with the levels
of other variables during the experiment. All variables which influence
the effect of the independent variable need to be kept at levels typical
of the conditions the results are to be applied to. As a simple exam-
ple, suppose you were studying the effects of large amounts of nitro-
gen fertilizer on corn. You tested the fertilizer on corn which was
well watered and obtained more rapid growth. Then you applied your
result by fertilizing corn which was poorly watered and killed most
of it. Amount of water is a variable which interacts with amount of
nitrogen in influencing the growth of corn. In other words, the effect
of the nitrogen will depend on the amount of water. (Or it is equally
true to say that the effect of the water will depend on the amount of
nitrogen.) Failure to keep variables which interact with the inde-
pendent variable at levels typical of the population which is being
generalized to would, in this and many other cases, lead to very
great errors. This is perhaps the most common error of research
strategy and one which must constantly be kept in mind.
Finally, in our ideal experiment, it was specified that the results
should be reliable and not due to chance. What is meant by this? Let

24 Psychology: A Social Approach

 Ist WEST EAST
murder 50% chance 50% chance

2nd
murder

3rd
WEST EAST
murder

4th
murder

Figure 1 All four murders being on the east side of the river is one of six-
teen equally probable possibilities.

Introduction 25
 us look at a very simple example. Imagine that half the population
of Smogville lives on the east side of the river and half on the west
side. A citizen of Smogville says that it is dangerous to go on the east
side, for more murders are committed there than on the west side. In
support of this argument, he produces statistics showing that during
the preceding year four murders were discovered on the east side of
town and none on the west side. Is his theory supported? The ques-
tion is how many cases you need before you conclude that there is a
reliable difference and not just a chance one. First let us see what we
mean by chance.
By chance we mean all factors which have no relationship to
the hypothesis we are testing. Each of the four citizens of Smogville
was murdered, presumably for reasons which seemed adequate to the
murderer at the time. If these reasons had no relationship to whether
the victim was on the east or west side of town, then we may speak
of them as chance. This is the sense in which it is a matter of chance
to let the toss of a coin decide a question. Physical laws determine
whether the coin will come up heads or tails, but these laws have no
relationship to the question being decided. We can decide whether
the murders support the theory that the east side of town is danger-
ous by determining how often the observed frequencies would occur
by chance, that is, if they were determined by factors unrelated to
geography. If that were the case, any given murder would be equally
likely to occur on the east side of the river or on the west side. The
probability of any given murder being on the east side would be one-
half. On the average, half of the murders that were on the east side
would be followed by second murders that were on the east side. In
more general terms, the probability that two independent events will
both occur is the product of their individual probabilities. The prob-
ability that all four of the murders will be on the east side simply
through chance is (%) (%) (%) (4), or one chance in sixteen. This is
illustrated in Figure 1. The evidence for the theory is weak but is
some evidence. If we regularly accept theories on evidence this weak,
we will be wrong, on the average, one time in sixteen in doing so.
The example we have considered is a very simple one. In most
psychological studies, the rules of probability which must be applied
to decide whether results are statistically significant are considerably
more complicated than those in this example. These statistical models
are beyond the scope of this book and will not be discussed. Follow-
ing the usual convention, unless specified otherwise, results described

26 Psychology: A Social Approach

as significant are results which have a probability of less than one in
twenty of being a result of chance.
The importance of the simple experiment as an ideal is not that
it can be realized, but that deviations from it must be justified. Sup-
pose we were interested in the effects of extreme fear on individuals.
We could not take a representative sample of the population of the
world, divide this sample into experimental and control groups, and
force the experimental group to undergo terrifying experiences! There
are, however, a number of ways in which the problem can be ap-
proached. In each of them, the ways in which the study differs from
the ideal point out additional points which the researcher must es-
tablish to make the research valid. Since we cannot sample all cultural
groups in our research, for example, we will have to make do with
a less adequate sample. In adopting this strategy, we place the burden
of proof on ourselves to establish that cultural differences are un-
likely to influence our results. If we can show that several radically
different cultural groups react similarly, then we are probably justi-
fied in generalizing from only a few cultural groups.
Similarly, there are two basically different strategies we can
adopt to cope with our ethical unwillingness to subject people to ter-
rifying situations. One is to conduct an experiment using situations
which are only slightly frightening. If we adopt this strategy, we
must somehow manage to demonstrate that individuals do react to
slightly and extremely frightening situations in basically the same
way. The other strategy is to study individuals who are exposed to
terrifying situations by circumstances beyond our or their control.
Tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, fires, and all the ancient human
disasters provide natural experiments which can be utilized. If this
strategy is adopted, the researcher will find other ways in which his
study deviates from the ideal, and he will need to demonstrate that
differences of this type are unlikely to influence the results. It is un-
likely, for example, that the research team will be ready and waiting
at the time and place when disaster strikes. In what ways are the re-
sults liable to be influenced by the research being conducted after the
fact rather than while the disaster is in progress?
By now it should be clear why there are few critical experiments
in science, which by themselves provide conclusive evidence support-
ing or refuting a theory. While the statistical test of one hypothesis
in one experiment can be done objectively, the theoretical interpre-
tation of a body of literature remains a subjective matter of interpret-

Introduction 27
 ing each experiment in the light of all the others. To each of us,
reader as well as author, falls the fascinating task of seeking general
explanations of apparently contradictory research results.

Summary

The field of psychology has become what it is partly through inter-

nal developments and partly through being influenced by major de-
velopments in other fields. Philosophy, medicine, and biology have
had major influences through the development of associationism,
anatomy and later psychiatry, and especially evolutionary theory. As
psychology has changed partly in response to these influences, cer-
tain theoretical issues have tended to recur. Is the field primarily the
study of the normal individual or of how individuals differ from each
other? Should it be based on the study of internal experience or ex-
ternal behavior? What are the boundaries separating psychology
from other fields? How do heredity and environment interact in in-
fluencing human experience and behavior?
The answers given to these recurring questions have changed
with the dominance of various theoretical schools of psychology.
Structuralism, the first formal school of psychology, was devoted to
analyzing the consciousness of the normal adult male into elements
through experimental introspectionism. Functionalism, behaviorism,
and gestalt theory set different tasks for the field and set about solv-
ing them in different ways. Each of these schools may be partially
described in terms of the answers it gave to the major theoretical
questions listed above.
Despite the recurrence of some theoretical questions, the field
of psychology today has little resemblance to the speculative notions
about human nature from which it initially developed. During the last
quarter of a century especially there have developed large bodies of
data which theories must be able to explain if they are to be taken
seriously. The theories which have been developed to account for
these data differ from earlier commonsense theories through being
more explicit, internally consistent, and testable.
One of the main tools of the psychologist in developing a sci-
entific approach to man has been the study of experimental design.
The ideal of experimental control is one in which one independent
variable is actively manipulated, other relevant variables are con-

28 Psychology: A Social Approach

 trolled, and a dependent variable is accurately measured. Since this
ideal is sometimes inappropriate to the study of variables in real-life
situations, more complex statistical models for studying the inter-
actions of multiple variables must frequently be employed.

Notes and Acknowledgments

aL Kohler, W. The Mentality of Apes. New York: Harcourt Brace & Com-
pany, Inc., 1925.
Dis Klineberg, Otto. Race and Psychology. Paris: United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1958.
. Rohrer, J. H. “The test intelligence of Osage Indians.” Journal of Social
Psychology, 1942 (16), pp. 99-105.
. Olds, James. “Pleasure centers in the brain.” Scientific American, October,
1956.
. Locke, John. “An essay concerning human understanding” in Edwin Burtt
(Ed.), The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill. New York:
Modern Library, Random House, Inc., 1939, pp. 238-402.
. Ibid., p. 248.
. Bell, Charles. “Idea of a new anatomy of the brain” in Wayne Dennis
(Ed.), Readings in the History of Psychology. New York: Appleton-
Century-Crofts, 1948, p. 113. By permission of the publisher.
. Boring, Edwin G. A History of Experimental Psychology. (2d ed.) New
York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1957, pp. 32-33. By permission
of the publisher.
. Ibid., p. 275. By permission of the publisher.
. Ibid., p. 294. By permission of the publisher.
. Darwin, Charles R. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927.
. Watson, J. B. “Animal education: An experimental study on the psychical
development of the white rat, correlated with the growth of its ner-
vous system.” Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1903.
. Galton, Francis. Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development. New
York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1908.
14. Heidbreder, Edna. Seven Psychologies. New York: Appleton-Century-
Crofts, 1933, p. 292. By permission of the publisher.
13; James, William. The Principles of Psychology. New York: Dover Publica-
tions, Inc., 1950.

Introduction 29
 Bucur

Hogarth pros’
if BR ON
qv
‘d S PAE GES TO KERBY °

The Bettmann Arc

ONE
PeReEP TION

Let us begin our consideration of perception with a mystery. Fix your

eyes on some point ahead of you, and have a friend hold up a photo-
graph you have never seen before slightly to the left of your fixation
point. Then have him hold it to the right of the fixation point. You
will be able to recognize it as the same photograph and will probably
not be surprised by your ability to do so. Yet it really is quite a sur-
prising accomplishment, and one which commonsense theories of
perception cannot account for. The lens of your eye forms an image
on light-sensitive cells in the retina, and these receptor cells fire when

31
 stimulated. The puzzle in your recognizing the photograph is that
since it has been moved, none of the same receptor cells are stimu-
lated the second time you look at it. If different cells fire, how do you
recognize the photograph as the same?
The commonsense theory of form perception is that there are
places in the brain which correspond to places on the retina, so that
a triangular image on the retina, for example, would form a triangu-
lar image in the visual cortex of the brain. If this were the case, how-
ever, you would not recognize the photograph as being the same. At
some point in the brain’s analysis of vision, the same pattern must
be represented in the same way regardless of the part of the retina
on which the image falls. The brain is an information-processing
system, and it may transform the information into different forms,
just as sound may be stored on recording tape in the form of mag-
netic charges. Location in space does not need to be represented by
location in the brain, but may be represented in quite a different way.
The actual mechanisms by which we perceive form are just starting
to be made clear by recent research.
How the brain analyzes images can be studied in a number of
ways, but probably the most direct is to study what makes nerve
cells fire. Light falling on the retina of the eye stimulates the sensitive
receptor cells there and makes them fire. The nerve impulse from
these receptor cells is transmitted through half a dozen layers of the
retina and a structure called the lateral geniculate body on its way to
the many layers of the cerebral cortex of the brain. If the common-
sense theory were correct, all these layers would do nothing but
transmit the nerve impulse without changing it. At each level along
the pathway, one given nerve cell would correspond to one of the
receptor cells of the retina and would fire when its own receptor cell
was stimulated. If analysis of the image is already being carried out
at these levels, however, this will not be the case. If, for example, we
analyzed the image in terms of circular patches, then each nerve cell
in the cortex would correspond to a particular circular patch on the
retina. Stimulation of the receptor cells within that patch on the ret-
ina would make the cell in the cortex fire more rapidly. In a program
of research lasting over five years, D. H. Hubel and T. N. Wiesel of
Harvard Medical School have explored the relationships between
retinal stimulation and the firing of nerve cells within the brain.’ Let
us look at their research.
The basic approach of Hubel and Wiesel was to isolate a given

32 Psychology: A Social Approach

cell in the visual cortex and then try out various stimuli to see what
increased its rate of firing. Their results indicate that the first analysis
of the image which takes place is to view the world as made up of
straight lines oriented at different angles. The rate of firing of the
typical cell in the cortex is increased by stimulation of receptor cells
lying in a straight line on the retina. Furthermore, stimulation of any
of the cells surrounding this line of cells slows down the rate of
firing. Or, to use slightly different terms, the cortical cell has a cen-
tral line of cells on the retina which turn it on and surrounding cells
which turn it off. There are variations on this pattern: some cells are
turned off by the central cells and on by the surrounding ones, and
some correspond to edges with an on region on one side of the edge
and an off region on the other side of the edge. On and off regions
of typical cells are shown in Figure 1-1.
Besides these “simple” cells which responded to lines on the

Figure 1-1 Simple cortical cells have receptive fields of various types. In
all of them the on and off areas, represented by black and gray
dots respectively, are separated by straight boundaries. Orien-
tations vary, as indicated particularly at a and b. In the cat's
visual system such fields are generally 1 millimeter or less in
diameter. (Hubel*)

®
ee
@
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©
'e °
es
s

Perception 33
 retina, Hubel and Wiesel also found “complex” cells which were most
stimulated by moving images on the retina. They were differentially
responsive to movement in different directions; some, for example,
responded more to stimuli moving from left to right and others to
stimuli moving from right to left. Even in the layer of the visual
cortex which the nerve impulse enters first, then, considerable analy-
sis of the image is already taking place. Response of a given nerve
cell does not correspond to stimulation of one receptor of the retina,
but instead corresponds to a line oriented at a particular angle or
movement in a particular direction.
That some nerve cells seem to be specialized for the perception
of movement should not surprise us, for the perception of movement
is a basic function of perception, and one which has a good deal of
adaptive significance. An object which is either moving more than its
background, such as an animal in a forest, or less than its back-
ground, such as a rock in a stream, stands out immediately in our
attention. More surprising, however, is research which illustrates that
movement of our eyes is necessary for perceiving anything con-
tinuously.
Normally our eyes are in constant motion, making not only the
large pursuit motions which are easy to see but also constant small
tremor motions. While these motions cannot be stopped without
damage to the eye, investigators have recently found ways of making
a visual image remain relatively motionless on the retina. If a tiny
slide projector is mounted to a contact lens, then the lens moves with
the eyeball and the image remains at the same point on the retina,
as long as the lens does not slip. When this is done, the slide which
is projected into the eye is seen normally first, and then fades and
reappears, sometimes as a whole and sometimes by parts. The
changes in stimulation which eye movements bring are necessary to
normal perception.
In looking at evidence on how the brain begins to analyze vis-
ual images, we have seen that motion of the image on the retina is
necessary to the perceptual process and that the first steps of the
analysis involve stationary and moving lines as the units of analysis.
A question which arises at this point is the extent to which the proc-
ess of analysis is learned or innate. Is our brain somehow wired up
at birth to analyze vision in terms of lines, or do we learn how to
do so on the basis of visual experience? Again, Hubel and Wiesel’s
research provides some indications.’ They fitted a baby kitten with

34 Psychology: A Social Approach

 translucent contact lenses just as its eyes were beginning to open.
The lenses permitted diffuse light to reach the eyes but did not per-
mit pattern vision. When the kitten was sixteen days old, the retinal
on and off regions of cortical cells were mapped. The results indi-
cated that the analysis of perceptions in terms of lines is largely in-
herited, for the on and off regions were quite similar to those in
adult cats with visual experience. They were not exactly the same,
however. Many of the regions were less clearly defined than in the
case of either adult cats or kittens of the same age with visual ex-
perience. Either the innate mechanism had started to deteriorate
through lack of use, or else it is normally improved through visual
experience. The perception of lines may be both innate and learned.
Thus far we have been looking at one of the interesting ques-
tions in the area of perception not only because the question of how
we perceive form is important in its own right but also because it
illustrates several general characteristics of perception. First, we have
noted that there is more to explain in perception than there seems to
be at first glance. Vision is not a simple matter of transmitting mes-
sages from the retina to the brain, but involves complex processes of
recognizing objects when they are in different positions, turned at
different angles, and differing distances from the eye. Although we
take all these things for granted, they imply a complex system of
analysis. Second, we have noted that perception is an active process.
It involves not the mere passive recording of information, but the
active seeking of stimulation through eye movements. Without ac-
tivity on the part of the eye, the image fades. We shall see that this
is only one of the ways in which perception is a dynamic process.
Third, we have noted in looking at Hubel and Wiesel’s work that
information is transformed or coded by the nervous system. What
we perceive as location is not represented by location in the brain,
but instead in some other way. We have already noted that straight
edges are coded by the firing of individual cortical cells in the brain,
and not by any straight edge of cells. As Gibson has noted, ‘There
is a naive theory of perception to the effect that the outer world
. somehow gets into the eye. Almost the first principle the beginning
student learns is that nothing gets into the eye but light.’”*
Two of these three aspects of perception will form the remain-
der of this chapter. We shall be interested in perception as an active
organizing process, and we shall consider the ways in which the per-
ception differs from the raw excitation of the sense organ with which

Perception 35
 it starts. Besides these two major interests, we shall find one persis-
tent question, the old question of heredity and environment. To what
extent are our perceptual processes innate, and in what ways must
they be learned?

Perception as an Active Process

The most obvious function of the sense organs is the passive record-
ing of stimulation. The eye at first seems to be like a television cam-
era, impartially transforming an image of whatever is before it into
electrical stimulation for transmission to a center where the stimula-
tion may be acted upon, and it is this model of passive transmission
which was first developed in the field of psychology. At the time
when psychology was being transformed from a speculative field into
one based on data, it may be that any other conception of the sense
organ seemed too mentalistic and subjective. An eye which noted
some things and not others would be like a camera with a human
operator to direct it, and seemed at first to imply a little man some-
where inside the brain who was interested in some things and not in
others. Thus, while attention has usually been an important concept
in commonsense theories of psychology, for a considerable time the
most generally accepted position among professional psychologists
was that all stimuli falling on the receptors would be equally effective
as a basis for learning.
We can make many observations, however, which make it seem
that we do pay attention to some things and not to others. If we
think that we smell smoke, we sniff. If something moves on the right
side of our visual field, we turn our eyes toward the right. Similarly,
if we ring a bell in the presence of a dog that has not heard it before,
the dog will prick up its ears. Motor adjustments of sensory receptors
as a way of paying attention to some stimuli and not others are a
commonplace aspect of behavior.
Is it only through motor adjustments that we pay attention?
There is one well-known psychologist who is in the habit of startling
his students by remarking during a lecture, ‘Don’t look now, but
your shoes are full of feet.” Most people, on hearing this admonition,
will suddenly become aware of the sensations arising from the pres-
sure of their shoes. Myriad stimuli bombard our sense organs all the
time; we are usually only aware of a few of them at any given time.

36 Psychology: A Social Approach

This is also demonstrated in what has been called the cocktail-party
effect. If a person is exposed to several voices speaking at the same
time, it is possible to listen to one and filter out the others. There
would thus seem to be mechanisms of selective attention other than
simply motor adjustments of the receptors.

SLEEP AND WAKEFULNESS

One of the first factors influencing perception is the extent of general

alertness of the organism. While the regular alternation between
sleep and wakefulness is one of the more striking things which hap-
pen to people, it is only recently that sleep has been very extensively
studied. Two methodological developments have been important in
allowing it to become a major research topic. The first of these, some
years ago, was the development of the electroencephalograph. This is
a device making a record, EEG, of the electrical activity of the brain.
With an EEG, it is possible to objectively identify various stages of
alertness ranging from deep sleep to excited attention. The second
important methodological development was the discovery that eye
movements during sleep are an almost perfect indication of dream-
ing. By recording electrical potentials to the eye muscles and waking
the subject during periods of rapid eye movements, it is possible to
obtain much more complete accounts of dreams than those which can
be obtained if the person is permitted to finish the dream. Because
this technique makes possible the production of many dreams under
controlled conditions, it promises to provide objective data on psycho-
analytic hypotheses on dreaming which had previously seemed to be
outside the realm of experimental testability.
One of the earliest findings (1937) to emerge from the use of
the EEG was that there are characteristic patterns of electrical activity
in the brain of a person who is sleeping, awake but relaxed, or alert.®
It was thus possible to use the EEG to study what it was that led to
sleep or wakefulness, and a series of studies over a period of years
gradually made it clear that there is a specific system in the brain
which functions to maintain wakefulness. As common sense would
suggest, external stimulation produces wakefulness. It does not do so,
however, as might be suspected, because of the impulses transmitted
to the sensory areas of the cerebral cortex. Instead, other nerve path-
ways lead into an area which has been named the reticular activating
system (RAS), and it is the activity of this structure which enables the

Perception 37
 organism to wake up. Moruzzi and Magoun® showed, for example,
that stimulation of the RAS led to alertness, while Lindsley, Bowden,
and Magoun’ demonstrated that cutting the nerve pathways to the
RAS led to an unending state of sleep in an animal. Since there are
nerve pathways leading to the RAS from higher brain centers as well
as from the sense organs, wakefulness may be caused either by ex-
ternal stimulation or by internal thought. Without activation stem-
ming from one of these two sources perception could not take place.
While degrees of alertness in the waking organism may be
unambiguously identified from EEG patterns, depth of sleep is more
difficult to assess. The stage of sleep at which dreaming takes place
has been called paradoxical sleep, and the paradox is that in some
ways it seems to be the deepest stage of sleep while in others it is
most similar to being awake. It is deep sleep in that the muscles are
most relaxed and the person is more difficult to awaken than from
any other type of sleep. It is similar to waking in the rapid eye
movements which take place and in a pattern of electrical activity
which is barely distinguishable from that of the waking brain. Dream-
ing is an activity which is unlike either waking or dreamless sleep in
terms of the physical state of the organism. It should thus not be too
surprising that different anatomic systems seem to be involved from
those involved in waking activation of the nervous system, as dem-
onstrated by Jouvet.®
A survey of the rapidly growing literature on sleep and dream-
ing is beyond the scope of the present book, and the reader is referred
to Dement® for a comprehensive and readable overview of the area to
1965. Two studies, of which Dement was one of the authors, how-
ever, seem sufficiently important to consider at this point. The first
considered the relationship between eye movement and the content of
the dream.*° The correspondence between the recorded eye move-
ments and the content of the dreams was surprisingly good, especially
for dreams which the subjects felt that they were able to recall accu-
rately. In one example which the authors cited, the subject reported
walking up five or six steps and looking up at each one. Five upward
glances were clearly evident in the recorded eye movements! These
results imply that the technique of waking the subject to record his
dreams whenever he shows a rapid-eye-movement stage in sleep will
give such accurate accounts of dreams that they may be studied in
detail.
The other study implies that dreaming serves important psycho-

38 Psychology: A Social Approach

logical functions for the dreamer.’! For several consecutive nights,
each subject was awakened each time he or she started to dream, kept
awake a few minutes, and then allowed to go back to sleep again.
The procedure allowed the subject to obtain an almost normal amount
of sleep but prevented almost all dreaming. To make sure that any
results found were due to not dreaming rather than to being awak-
ened a number of times a night, a control condition was also run.
The same subjects were awakened repeatedly when they were not
dreaming, disturbing their sleep equally but not interfering with
dreaming. How did the subjects react to the dream deprivation? First,
it became more and more difficult to prevent them from dreaming as
the experiment proceeded. After several nights of dream deprivation,
they would go into rapid-eye-movement sleep soon after falling
asleep. An even more significant finding was that all the subjects
showed deterioration of psychological functioning when they were
deprived of dreaming, which they didn’t show when they were simply
awakened when they were not dreaming. In general, they became
tired, irritable, anxious, and unable to concentrate. It is this evidence
of the psychological importance of dreaming, combined with the in-
dication that dreams may now be studied in detail, which has led to
the recognition that dreaming is an important new area of perceptual
research.

SELECTIVE ATTENTION

After the question of whether the organism is generally alert, the

next important question in understanding the effect a stimulus will
have on it is the extent to which it is paying attention to that stimu-
lus. The definitive experiment illustrating the existence of selective
attention was done by Raul Herndndez-Peén, Harald Scherrer, and
Michel Jouvet.’* Their results demonstrated that attention influences
the sensations from a sense organ even before they reach the level of
the brain. The experiment was an ingenious one done with cats.
Recordings were made of electrical activity in each cat’s cochlear
nucleus, a neural center processing auditory stimuli in the brain. First
recordings were made while a click was sounded in the cat’s ear. Each
time the click sounded, there was a large change in electrical poten-
tial of the cochlear nucleus. Then the click was sounded while the
cat’s attention was attracted by a stimulus using some other sense
modality. In one case the smell of fish was used to attract the cat’s

Perception 39
 attention, in another the sight of two mice in a jar. In each case, there
was much less neural response to the sound of the click. In shifting
its attention to a sight or a smell, the cat suppressed the neural ac-
tivity resulting from the sound. (See Figure 1-2.) We are not only able
to shut our eyes when we are listening to something; to some extent
we are apparently able to shut off our ears when we are looking at
something.
Before this striking confirmation of selective attention from the
field of physiological psychology, the controversy over whether it
existed or not had centered in the area of learning theory. In Clark
Hull’s theory of learning, which was the dominant theory in this area

Figure 1-2 Direct recording of click responses in the cochlear nucleus.

(Hernandez-Peon, Scherrer, and Jouvet?*)

40 Psychology: A Social Approach

for a period of 20 years, selective perception was minimized. As
Woodworth and Schlosberg concisely summarize his position, it was
that:
1. All stimuli acting on the receptors at the moment when a success-
ful (reinforced) response is initiated become associated with that
response.
2. Every time any stimulus is present when a successful response is
being initiated, the particular stimulus-response association is
strengthened. That is, the building up of an S-R association is a
continuous, cumulative process.'*

Extensive research on the question, however, failed to support

the Hullian position. In one study by K. S. Lashley,® for example,
rats were first reinforced for choosing the larger of two circles. This
step introduced a set, or tendency, to respond in a given way—in this
case a set to choose the larger figure. A large triangle was then sub-
stituted for the large circle for 200 trials, with the rats consistently
rewarded for choosing the large triangle and not the small circle. By
this time, according to Hullian theory, the rats should have learned
to respond positively to triangles, since they had been reinforced for
200 trials for doing so. If, on the other hand, the rats had learned to
pay attention to size rather than shape during the early trials, they
might not have learned a preference for triangles even if they had
been reinforced 200 times for choosing the triangle. Lashley tested
what the rats had learned by presenting them with a choice between
a triangle and circle of equal areas. The rats showed no preference
between the two shapes. As this study and others demonstrated, rats
as well as human beings may pay attention to some aspects of a
stimulus situation and fail to learn anything about other aspects
which they have not paid attention to.
In general, change and difference are the factors which most
attract our attention. We notice a stimulus which is moving in front
of a stationary background or stationary in front of a moving back-
ground. A sound which starts and stops irregularly holds our atten-
tion more than one which continues steadily. Similarly, in looking at
a picture, we note the complex parts of the pattern which are most
irregular and carry the most information rather than looking at
straight lines and parts of the pattern which are predictable. Any-
thing which contrasts with its background, in color, brightness, loud-
ness, or rate, tends to attract attention. There are also differences
between different species, however. A few pages from the history of

Perception A1
 comparative psychology will show the importance of keeping the
nature of the organism in mind in securing his attention.
Discrimination learning, or learning to tell a correct from an
incorrect cue, was first studied in the rat by use of a simple device
patterned after one built by Yerkes around the turn of the century
for studying the mouse. The rat ran down a corridor in the middle of
a box. After some distance the corridor was divided into right and
left sides, from the rat’s point of view, by a narrow partition. At this
point, where the rat made its choice, the two stimuli were ahead of it,
one on either side of the dividing partition. The correct stimulus was
sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right so that the problem
could not be consistently solved simply by following a right- or left-
hand turn tendency. Using this apparatus, it was possible to teach a
rat to make a simple discrimination, such as between black and white,
although even such a simple problem as this usually took between
one and two hundred trials. During this period, the intelligence of
the rat was not highly thought of by psychologists.
Probably the main difficulty with the apparatus was that rats
are highly dependent upon the sense of smell, and they run with
their noses to the ground. The stimulus cards were some distance
ahead and slightly elevated—that is, in a position where they were
not likely to attract the rat’s attention. In 1930, considering this prob-
lem, Lashley devised a radically different piece of apparatus, now
called the Lashley jumping stand after him. In this device the rat
stands on an elevated platform and has nowhere else to go unless it
jumps at one of two hinged doors presented some distance in front
of it. The stimulus cards are attached to the doors, and only the door
with the correct stimulus card is unlatched. If the rat chooses the
correct card, the door opens and it finds itself on a feeding table with
food. If it chooses the incorrect one, it bumps against a locked door
and falls a short distance into a net below. With the invention of
this piece of apparatus the intelligence of the rat radically increased,
for it was now able to learn in four or five trials what had taken it a
couple of hundred before.

Organization of Perception

Not only is perception an active process in seeking out some stimuli

and ignoring others; it is active in that the stimuli which are per-
ceived are organized and transformed in the process. When we look

42 Psychology: A Social Approach

at a scene, we do not record all aspects of it impartially the way a
camera does. Instead, some central objects stand out clearly in our
awareness, while the rest of the scene recedes into a dim background.
This phenomenon, which is known as a figure-ground relationship, is
illustrated when the beginning photographer takes pictures without
being aware of the subject’s background. While he is only aware of
the person he is photographing when he takes the picture, he finds
that the tree behind the subject is equally recorded by the impartial
camera. A more striking illustration is given by reversible figures, in
which first one part and then another is seen as figure, while the
other portion becomes background. In one well-known example of
such a figure, either a vase or two profiles may be seen depending on
whether the white or black part of the design is seen as figure. A
more complex example is shown in Figure 1-3. Are the knights
marching to the right or to the left?
Even more important processes of organization are those which
enable us to perceive objects as remaining the same even though the
stimulation we are receiving from them is changing. If you look at a
plate lying on a table, you see it as round. Unless you are looking
straight down on the table, the image on your retina is not round.
Your ability to perceive an object as keeping the same shape, even
though the shape of the retinal image is constantly changing, is
known as shape constancy. Similarly, size constancy and brightness
constancy are names for the perceptual processes which make an
object seem to remain the same size even when it is moving farther
away and the same color even though brightly or dimly illuminated.
These types of organization are very important, for they enable us to
perceive a world of stable objects, rather than a wonderland in which
everything is constantly changing its size, shape, and brightness. Our
perception thus manages to go beyond changing aspects of reality and
observe stability behind them. In doing so, however, we make as-
sumptions which are sometimes in error. While we are often unaware
of the complexity of perception when it is accurate, the errors we
make in interpreting perceptual illusions give some idea of the com-
plexity of the processes which are always involved.
One of the most basic questions of perception is how we per-
ceive objects at all. I look up and see a lamp standing in front of a
bookcase. What is it that makes me assign some stimuli to the lamp
and others to the bookcase—to perceive objects rather than simply a
complex pattern of various hues and brightnesses? Part of the book-
case is hidden behind the lamp, yet I do not see it as ending where

Perception 43
 Figure 1-3 (Escher'®)

the contours meet. How do I see the part that is behind the lamp?
These questions were raised by Max Wertheimer, and were basic for
gestalt psychology.’
Some of the main factors which gestalt theorists found to cause
stimuli to be grouped together are shown in Figure 1-4. Part a illus-
trates the principle of proximity. In the absence of any other factors
of grouping, we will group together things which are close to each
other. Part a is thus seen as sets of two dots each rather than just a
row of dots. Part b, however, illustrates that other factors such as
similarity can override proximity. Even though the figure has the
same spacing as in a, the small dots are seen as going together as are
the larger 0’s. The second principle of how we organize our percep-
tions to see objects is therefore that we will perceive similar stimuli
as going together. In part c of the figure, two intersecting lines are

44 Psychology: A Social Approach

seen. In perceiving these lines, the observer assigns dots near the in-
tersection point to the pattern they are in line with rather than to the
one they are nearest. This illustrates the factor of direction in per-
ceptual organization. Finally, part d shows our bias toward perceiving
closed rather than open figures. Pairs of lines which are quite far
from each other are seen as going together, illustrating the principle
of closure.
These principles of what stimuli go together usually have eco-
logical validity. That is, the nature of the world is such that assigning
stimuli to the same or different objects on the basis of these prin-
ciples will usually lead to accurate rather than inaccurate perceptions
of where one object stops and another starts. To return to the ex-
ample of the bookcase and the light, the different parts of the book-
case are similar to each other in color and are, on the average, closer
to each other than they are to the parts of the light. There are few
sharp changes of direction of outline of either object, and of course
the outline of each forms a closed curve. By using the types of cues
which the gestalt theorists have pointed out, I will correctly perceive
the bookcase as one object and the light as another.
Where unusual conditions make the cues inaccurate, an illusion,
or misperception, may occur. Some of the most interesting of these

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Figure 1-4

Perception 45
 illusions were developed in a research program initiated by Adelbert
Ames, Jr., and are called the Ames demonstrations in perception.
One of the Ames demonstrations presented by Ittelson and Kil-
patrick utilizes playing cards held on stands.** By cutting a corner
out of a card which is near to the observer so that the cutout just fits
the corner of a card that is farther away, the impression is created
that the faraway card is obscuring the nearer one. This impression
leads to an inaccurate perception on the part of the observer of which
card is closer. The illusion is an illustration of the misguided appli-
cation of the gestalt principle of direction. The observer assumes that
the outline of the card with the cutout does not change direction at
the point where it intersects the outline of the whole card, and thus
incorrectly perceives it as a rectangular card obscured by another
rectangular card rather than an irregular card in front of a rectangular
card. The observer “sees” the missing part of the card in the same
way as I “see” the part of the bookcase which is behind the lamp.
Under most circumstances such a perception, which is called a com-
pletion effect, leads to accurate results. It is quite improbable that the
bookcase is actually nearer to me than the lamp but has a cutout to
enable me to see the lamp through it. If that actually is the case, I
will be in error in completing the bookcase.
The Ames demonstrations also make another important point
about perception. Many of our perceptual processes are unconscious.
When we look at the cards in Ittelson and Kilpatrick’s demonstra-
tion,’” we do not say to ourselves that one card must be farther from
us because another card is interposed between ourselves and it.
Instead we simply see it as farthest away and do not conceive of
there being any other possibilities. This type of unconscious inter-
pretation also characterizes social perceptions. Many qualities which
we ascribe to other people are our own interpretations of ambiguous
stimuli. When we meet someone who has a different interpretation,
we do not understand how this is possible because we incorrectly
believe that our interpretation is part of the stimulus.

INNATE AND LEARNED FACTORS IN PERCEPTION

Ittelson and Kilpatrick explained the illusions they studied by ref-

erence to the past experience of the observer. The observer of the
cards which we have been considering has many times observed

46 Psychology: A Social Approach

similar cases of the outline of one object being cut into by the outline
of another. On all previous occasions, it has been because the latter
object was between him and the former one. It is only the trickery
of the experimenter which makes the application of his past experi-
ence to the present case incorrect. One way to explain the illusion is
thus to say that the observer unconsciously interprets the stimulation
as being caused by what has most frequently caused that type of
stimulation in the past, or that he makes use of an assumptive con-
text based on past experience. Such an explanation considers the
interpretations of the subject, and thus his misperceptions, to be
based solely on the learning which he has carried out during his life-
time. This is the empiricist theory of perception.
Standing in opposition to the empiricist theory have been nativ-
ist theories, which hold that many of the organizational processes
in perception are inherited rather than acquired. The gestalt theorists
were in this tradition and held that the perception of objects on the
basis of cues such as proximity, similarity, direction, and closure is
an innate ability of human beings. If this type of explanation is
adopted, the validity of the cues we use in making accurate percep-
tions can be explained on the basis of evolution rather than individual
learning. Organisms basing their perceptions on cues which were
generally accurate would stand a better chance of surviving than
those basing their perceptions on cues which were frequently inaccu-
rate. Evolution would thus favor the use of valid cues, if the cues
used are inherited rather than learned.
The guestion of how much of our perceptual ability is learned
and how much is acquired is an old one, and many ingenious ap-
proaches to the problem have been devised. The question would be
easy to answer if it were possible for a newborn infant to describe
what he saw when he first looked at the world. Since this is not
possible, a number of other approaches have been devised. First, there
are various studies of perceptual learning. If we learn perceptual
cues in infancy, then people in radically different cultures who
have different experiences with the visual world may learn different
things. Similarly, if we use distorting lenses to change the visual
world later in life, we should be able to learn different ways of see-
ing. Along with these learning studies of human beings, there have
been studies employing restriction of opportunities for perceptual
learning which had to be done with lower organisms. Austin Riesen,
for example, studied the effect on chimpanzees of raising them with-

Perception 47
 out an opportunity to see.”° Also, natural experiments with human
beings have been employed. Some individuals who were born blind
have acquired vision through surgical operations. If the operation
took place after the person had acquired language, he was able to
describe what he saw when he looked at the world for the first time.
Finally, there have been studies of infants which utilized the limited
responses an infant can make. Even if he cannot talk, he can move
his eyes. In a properly designed experiment, we can learn much from
these eye movements. Thus, even though each of the studies has
some weaknesses, the results from all of them combined are begin-
ning to tell us how heredity and environment interact in influencing
perception.
The result which is emerging from the various types of studies
is that the truth is somewhere between the nativist and empiricist
interpretations. Some perceptual organization of the type proposed in
the gestalt principles above seems to be innate. As we will see when
we look at research by T. G. R. Bower, even young infants show
completion effects in their perception of objects. Experience, how-
ever, plays two essential roles. It not only modifies innate processes,
it also is apparently necessary simply to maintain them. The impor-
tance of both native and environmental factors is well illustrated in
a study by Gordon Allport and Thomas Pettigrew.”*
Allport and Pettigrew’s study employed one of the Ames dem-
onstrations, the illusion of the rotating trapezoid. From most points
of view, a rectangle makes a trapezoidal image on the retina. That we
still see it as rectangular is an example of shape constancy. In the
illusion of the rotating trapezoid, we incorrectly interpret a trape-
zoidal retinal image as signifying a rectangle when in fact the object
itself is trapezoidal. In interpreting the object as rectangular, we make
incorrect inferences about the relative distances from us to its long
and short sides, seeing the short side as farther from us than it is
and the long one as nearer. Finally, the effect changes as the trape-
zoid is rotated by a motor, so that the trapezoid is seen as swinging
back and forth when it is actually rotating. The illusion is a com-
pelling one, and even looking at the trapezoid and seeing its shape
before the demonstration will not prevent a person having the mis-
perception.
Allport and Pettigrew raised the question of whether we see the
illusion because of our lifelong experience with rectangular walls,
floors, windows, doors, boards, books, papers, etc., or whether the
interpretation of trapezoidal retinal images as rectangles is a result of

48 Psychology: A Social Approach

innate processes of perceptual organization. To investigate this, they
compared two groups of Zulu children between the ages of ten and
fourteen. One group was composed of rural children who had been
raised in a cultural setting where they almost never saw rectangular
forms. Their houses were beehive-shaped, with rounded doorways;
their fields followed the contours of the rolling land. In their lan-
guage there was no word for “square” or “rectangular.” Many of this
group had never seen a rectangular window before participating in
the experiment. The other group was composed of urban boys, most
of whom attended school and all of whom regularly came into con-
tact with a carpentered world. If experience with rectangular forms
viewed from an angle is what causes the illusion, then these groups
should dramatically differ in what they experienced.
Whether or not a person experiences the illusion depends on
the viewing conditions—the illumination and distance of the trape-
zoid and whether there are objects in the background. There were
two main results of the experiment. Under optimum viewing condi-
tions, all children saw the trapezoid as swinging back and forth in-
stead of revolving. Under viewing conditions which were less con-
ducive to seeing the illusion, the urban boys were more likely to see
it than the rural boys. The results thus unambiguously rule out a
purely nativist explanation. Experience has some effects, or the two
groups would not have differed. It is more ambiguous whether a
purely environmentalistic explanation is ruled out, for the experiment
cannot discriminate between two possibilities. One is that the illusion
can be caused by purely innate processes, but may be heightened by
relevant experience. The other is that it depends on experience, but
experience of a type which all people will have if they have vision.
These two possibilities are very difficult to discriminate between by
means of research. On the basis of what research there is, the most
probable explanation might be that innate organizational processes
enable rapid learning on the basis of experiences which all people
have to some extent. Two men standing different distances from the
observer form a trapezoidal image on the retina if the principles of
similarity and closure cause the observer to view them as one object.
In a sense, then, anyone with vision has had some experience with
rectangles being represented by trapezoidal retinal images.
The theory that people show rapid perceptual learning on the
basis of some built-in organizational processes is supported by re-
search with adults seeing for the first time. Many earlier cases of
individuals who had been born blind but given sight as adults were

Perception 49
 collected, but these cases need to be interpreted with caution. The
state of medicine was such at that time that the operation which gave
the person sight involved removing the lens of the eye, and vision
could certainly not be considered normal afterward. Now that corneal
transplants make it possible to give some congenitally blind indi-
viduals normal vision, the operation is not delayed until an age when
the person can report his experiences on obtaining vision. One case,
however, has been described by Gregory and Wallace,”’ and a brief
account is also included in Gregory’s excellent brief book on vision,
Eye and Brain.?* Because of doubts whether the corneal transplants
would be successful, S. B. was not given them until the age of fifty-
two. He was thus able to describe his experiences in detail when the
operation was successful. Gregory describes the results as follows:

When the bandages were first removed from his eyes, so that he was
no longer blind, he heard the voice of the surgeon. He turned to the
voice, and saw nothing but a blur. He realised that this must be a
face, because of the voice, but he could not see it. He did not sud-
denly see the world of objects as we do when we open our eyes.
But within a few days he could use his eyes to good effect. He
could walk along the hospital corridors without recourse to touch; he
could even tell the time from a large wall clock, having all his life
carried a pocket watch having no glass, so that he could feel the time
from its hands... .*4

The learning was remarkably fast, but then S. B. was really

quite unlike a child seeing from birth. He showed much transfer from
things which he had already learned by touch, even recognizing block
capital letters from having learned them by touch at blind school. On
the other hand, he had to unlearn some past experience in coming to
trust his new sense. In terms of what we have learned from visual-
deprivation experiments with lower organisms, it is surprising that
he could learn to see as well as he could. Hubel and Wiesel found
that in the cat, the nerve cells which respond to straight lines did not
function normally well if the animal had received only unpatterned
light from birth.”
Turning to direct studies with infants, we find evidence of some
quite specific innate factors in perception. Nevertheless, the amount
of plasticity in human perception is a good deal greater than in many
lower organisms. Sperry, for example,*® cross-connected the eyes of
an amphibian to the wrong sides of the brain, reversing left and right
in the animal’s vision. This caused the animal to snap toward its
right at a fly when the fly was on its left. Such animals never learned

50 Psychology: A Social Approach

to correct for this rearrangement of the nervous system. Despite
innate factors, human perception is much more modifiable than that,
and human beings adapt fairly rapidly to goggles which distort the
visual field or even turn it upside down.”’
Perhaps the most striking evidence of innate factors in percep-
tion is found in Eleanor Gibson’s work with the visual cliff.?* Mrs.
Gibson wondered why infants did not more frequently fall off cliffs
when they were old enough to crawl and wondered if there might be
an innate mechanism to prevent this, a mechanism which would
obviously have considerable adaptive significance for the species. To
find out, she constructed a visual cliff—a level area and drop-off
covered by strong glass. An infant placed on the glass can see the
drop-off just as if the glass were not there, but if he actually does
crawl over it, he will not fall and hurt himself. Using this apparatus,
Mrs. Gibson found that young animals including human infants do
avoid the cliff. Since they have not had experience of falling off
things to teach them this avoidance, it is apparently innate.
Less clearly solely innate, but still very striking, is the evidence
that young babies will spend more time looking at a representation
of a face than at another pattern, even one made up of the same
elements as the face but in a different arrangement.*® While the pref-
erence would at first glance seem to be innate, there are other pos-
sibilities. It is impossible to test infants at the moment of birth, and
we have seen evidence that perceptual learning may be very rapid.
For example, an innate mechanism of paying attention to a moving
object might cause the infant to look at faces as soon as he had any
control over his eye movements. The preference for the representa-
tion of the face might thus be learned, but still learned on the basis
of innate mechanisms of attention which would cause this particular
learning to take place given normal experience with the world. This
explanation would be consistent with what was observed in the case
of S. B. when he received his corneal transplants. He did not recog-
nize a face when he first opened his eyes, but it was the first thing
that he looked at.
Some of the most significant experiments on perception in recent
years are those of T. G. R. Bower,* who has come closer than anyone
else to solving the old problem of how to investigate the world of the
infant. Bower’s techniques, which are based on Skinnerian methods
of studying learning, make it possible to use subjects between one
and two months old in perceptual experiments. Let us look at his
procedures and results.

Perception 51
 One of the classic ways of studying perception in organisms
without language is by using the equivalent-stimulus technique. The
animal is trained to respond to one stimulus in a given way, and then
the extent to which it gives that response to other stimuli is investi-
gated. To find out whether an animal had color vision, for example,
it might be trained to respond to a red triangle. If it responded
equally frequently to triangles of different colors (but always the
same brightness), this would indicate that it did not discriminate
color. Bower used this technique with infants, but to do so he needed
to find first a response which the infant could make and then some
way of reinforcing the response to encourage the infant to make it.
(Since the topic of reinforcement will be considered at length in later
chapters, it will suffice here to consider a reinforcer to be anything
which will increase the probability of an organism making a re-
sponse.)
The response which Bower taught the infant to make was a turn
of the head to the side, which closed a microswitch and recorded the
response on a data recorder. This is such a natural response that the
infant can give it several hundred times without apparent fatigue.
The reinforcer used was the sudden appearance of a woman’s smiling
face in the infant’s field of vision, as in the game of “‘peekaboo.”
Infants as young as two weeks old found the “peekaboo” highly
reinforcing, and learned to repeat whatever behavior they were en-
gaging in when it was presented. The basic plan of Bower’s experi-
ments was thus as follows: (1) A “peekaboo” was given each time
the infant turned his head when the conditioned stimulus was pres-
ent. (2) The infant was taught to give the response to the stimulus
with the “peekaboo” only presented one time in five on the average.
(3) Various stimuli differing from the conditioned stimulus were
presented, and the frequency with which the infant responded to each
of them was tabulated. The stimulus to which the infant responded
most frequently was considered most similar to the conditioned stim-
ulus as the infant perceived the world. These procedures were so
effective that they made it possible for Bower to use infants between
one and two months old as experimental subjects.
Many of Bower’s experiments dealt with size constancy and the
perception of depth, topics which will be discussed in the next sec-
tion. Especially interesting from the point of view of organizational
processes in perception, however, was his study of completion effects.
A wire triangle which was partly obscured by a metal bar passing in
front of it was used as a conditioned stimulus. After training, the

52 Psychology: A Social Approach

 infant was tested on a complete triangle, a triangle with a gap where
the bar had been, and a triangle above a trapezoid corresponding to
the parts of the triangle which had been exposed. If the infant did
not show completion effects, he should respond most to one of the
incomplete triangles, which corresponded to what he could actually
see of the triangle during training. Instead, the infant responded most
frequently to the complete triangle. The infant also “sees” the part
of the triangle which is obscured by something passing in front of it,
even though he is less than sixty days old and has never seen a tri-
angle before! This is certainly striking evidence in favor of some
perceptual organization of the type studied by the gestalt theorists
being built into the perceptual system by heredity.

The Stimulus Error

Because of the great complexity of the nervous system, we have as

yet little understanding of just how information from sensory recep-
tors is transformed as it passes through the nervous system. What
we do have, however, is some knowledge of what the mechanisms
accomplish. When the neural mechanisms are discovered, there are
certain basic properties of perception which they will need to account
for. The most important of these are constancy phenomena and depth
perception. These have in common that they are cases where the per-
ception matches the distal stimulus rather than the proximal one, that
is, matches what is happening in the world rather than what is hap-
pening at the level of the sensory receptor. The two-dimensional
image on the retina is transformed into a three-dimensional image in
experience, and thus corresponds to the three-dimensionality of the
real world.
This amazing ability of human senses to correspond to the
nature of the real world rather than what is happening at the level
of the receptor cell is here called the stimulus error after a phrase
coined in the days of introspective psychology. At that time the task
of the experimental subject was to report his experiences in a raw and
uninterpreted form. This required considerable training, for his im-
mediate reaction was to say, “I see a book,” rather than to report the
apparent color and form of the object without the learned interpre-
tation that it was a book. For an introspector to report the nature of
the object rather than the nature of the raw sensation was to commit
the stimulus error. There is now increasing evidence that one of the

Perception 53
 most basic characteristics of perception is that it is constructed so as
to commit the stimulus error. It is the object which is immediately
given in experience, not the sensations on which the perception of
the object is based, and Bower’s experiments seem to indicate that
this is true of young infants as well as adults. The raw sensations
which introspective psychology was trying to recapture may never
have existed.
One of the simplest of the constancies is the constancy of form
when displaced. If you watch a man walk behind something which
obscures him from view and then reappear on the other side of it,
you have no difficulty in recognizing him as the same individual. Yet
entirely different receptors are being stimulated on your retina. Ap-
parently you are able to recognize the same pattern of stimulation
regardless of where in your field of vision it is presented. More sur-
prising are size, shape, and brightness constancy, which enable the
observer to recognize an object as the same even though the retinal
image changes as it moves farther away, is turned at a different angle
so that the form of the image changes, or moves between light and
shadow. The extent of brightness constancy may be seen from the
oft-quoted example that a lump of coal in the sunlight reflects more
light back to the eye than a white sheet does under dim illumination.
That we still see the sheet as white and the coal as black shows that
in brightness, as in form, we respond to relationships. As long as the
coal reflects the least light of anything in our field of vision we will
see it as black, even though the absolute amount of light reflected
may be quite high.
Size constancy is not possible without accurate perception of
depth, as is illustrated in a classic series of experiments by Holway
and Boring.*' The subject was required to adjust the size of a disk of
light to try to make it the same physical size as another stimulus pre-
sented varying distances away. The cues to distance were varied in
the various conditions. Viewing the stimuli with either two eyes or
one eye, the subject had no difficulty adjusting the standard to the
same size as the stimulus presented, even though the different dis-
tances involved meant that the retinal images of the two stimuli were
different sizes when the adjustment was made. When depth cues
were reduced by requiring the subject to view the scene through an
artificial pupil, which removed the cues which may be obtained from
head movements, then the subject was only partly able to maintain
size constancy. Under these conditions, he adjusted the standard to a
size which was between the physical size of the stimulus being

54 Psychology: A Social Approach

matched and the size which would produce the same size image on the
retina as the stimulus being matched. Some depth cues still remained,
however, in the form of reflections from doors spaced along the corri-
dor in which the experiment was conducted. When these cues were re-
moved, the subjects had little idea how far away the stimulus was.
Under these circumstances, they adjusted the standard stimulus so
that it produced a retinal image approximately the size of that pro-
duced by the experimental stimulus, even though the stimuli were
different distances away. Without adequate cues to depth, size con-
stancy had broken down.
Holway and Boring’s experiments also give indications of some
of the cues used in perceiving depth. Two important cues are binocu-
lar parallax and motion parallax. The first is the differences in the
images formed by the two eyes because of their being separated in
space. It is the cue used in making pictures which appear three-
dimensional when viewed through a stereoscope. Two photographs
are taken by lenses which are separated just as the eyes are. When
one is presented to each eye through the stereoscope, the differences
in the two images give a clear impression of depth. Motion parallax,
on the other hand, does not depend on having binocular vision. Move
your head from side to side while looking at some scene. The objects
closest to you are most displaced by the motion, while those farther
away almost seem to be moving along with you as you move. This
phenomenon also gives strong cues to depth.
Besides these two indicators of depth, however, there are many
others which people can use. The artist trying to portray depth in a
painting cannot use either binocular parallax or motion parallax in
doing so. Yet he is able to make a striking portrayal of depth by
using such cues as linear perspective, the convergence of contours
with distance; aerial perspective, increased haziness of more distant
objects; and interposition, the blocking of part of an object by some-
thing appearing in front of it. Perhaps the most complete discussion
of these varied indicators of depth is that of Gibson in his compre-
hensive book The Perception of the Visual World. He lists thirteen
ways in which depth is indicated, eight of which he regards as clearly
important!°*?
Of the thirteen possible indicators of depth, which do we really
use? There is no one answer to this question, for we use different
indicators depending on the circumstances. Size is a cue with known
objects, for example, and we will see a ball as farther away if we are
told that it is a billiard ball than if we are told that it is a ping-pong

Perception 55
 ball. Yet when size is overruled by a stronger cue, such as interposi-
tion, we will see even known objects as being of unusual size.
Even if different stimuli are used to infer depth under different
circumstances, however, it is still possible to raise the question of
which ones first signify depth as the organism develops. It seems
quite likely that not all of them become effective at the same time,
but that depth is first perceived on the basis of some cues and then
others are learned on the basis of being associated with them. This
was the major question to which Bower turned in his experiments on
the perceptions of infants. He conditioned each infant to respond to
a stimulus of a given size at a given distance. Then he tested him
with a stimulus which was farther away but larger, so that the retinal
image was the same size; one that was farther away but the same
size; and one that was the same distance away but larger. If the in-
fant had size constancy and could perceive distance, he should re-
spond to both the stimulus which was the same size and the one
which was the same distance away, but least to the stimulus which
differed in both size and distance. If the infant had neither size con-
stancy nor perception of depth, he should respond most to the stim-
ulus which differed in both size and distance from the training
stimulus, for that one projected a retinal image of the same size.
Finally, if the infant perceived distance but did not have size con-
stancy, he should respond to the object which was the same distance
as the training object. The fourth possibility, of the infant’s having
size constancy without perceiving distance, was considered impossible
on the basis that a perception of distance is necessary to size con-
stancy.
How did the infants respond? They apparently had both size
constancy and perception of distance, for they responded both to the
stimulus which was the same real size as the training stimulus and
the one which was the same distance away as the training stimulus. It
was then possible for Bower to see on what cues the perception of
depth was based by repeating the experiment with various possible
depth cues eliminated. When the cues the infant was using were
eliminated, the infant would start responding most frequently to the
object which gave the same size retinal image as the training object.
On this basis Bower found that young infants made most use of
movement parallax in perceiving depth, next most use of binocular
parallax, and least use of the types of cues which can be used by an
artist in painting a picture. Bower’s result is fascinating, for it shows
young infants making use of what would seem to be the most com-

56 Psychology: A Social Approach

 plex cues to depth. Despite the complexity of the mental processes
which must be involved, the infant perceives depth on the bases of
the differences between the views of the two eyes and the ways in
which the perception is transformed when the head is moved in space.
It is to be hoped that further research will soon reveal how this feat
is possible.

Summary

Nothing gets into the eye but light, yet we see objects in a three-
dimensional world. This and other amazing achievements of our
senses cannot be understood in terms of any simple commonsense
theory of perception, but only through viewing perceptual processes
as actively organizing information and coding it into different forms.
The active nature of perception is apparent in the role of the reticular
activating system in bringing about general alertness of the organism.
It is apparent in the psychological and physiological evidence of
selective attention which has accumulated from the early experiments
of Lashley through the recent dramatic experimental work of Her-
nandez-Peon, Scherrer, and Jouvet. It is perhaps most strikingly
demonstrated in the necessity of eye movement to normal visual
perception.
The same information is represented in different ways as it
passes through the nervous system. The first stage of the coding of
visual information has been studied by Wiesel and Hubel in pioneer-
ing work on the reactions of single cells in the brain to visual stimu-
lation of the eye. Principles of perceptual organization, such as those
of proximity, similarity, direction, and closure, show the results of the
coding processes. The use of conditioning techniques in studying the
perceptual worlds of very young infants promises to reveal more
about the contributions of heredity and environment to perceptual
organization.
When an object is viewed from a different angle, the retinal
image changes in shape. As it moves farther away and into shadow,
the retinal image becomes smaller and less bright. Despite these
changes in the image formed in the eye, the perceiver shows con-
stancy phenomena and perceives the object as retaining its size, shape,
and brightness. He also sees it as receding in depth although the
image on the retina of the eye is two-dimensional. A wide variety of
cues may be used in the perception of depth, including linear and

Perception 57
 aerial perspective and interposition. Recent research has indicated
that even young infants make use of motion parallax and binocular
parallax, two depth cues which had formerly been thought of as
among the most complex and last to be utilized.

Notes and Acknowledgments

ily Wiesel, Torsten N., and David H. Hubel. “Effects of visual deprivation on
morphology and physiology of cells in the cat’s lateral geniculate
body.” Journal of Neurophysiology, 1963 (26), pp. 978-993.
Hubel, David H., and Torsten N. Wiesel. ‘Receptive fields of cells in striate
cortex of very young, visually inexperienced kittens.” Journal of
Neurophysiology, 1963 (26), pp. 994-1002.
Wiesel, Torsten N., and David H. Hubel. “Single-cell response in striate
cortex of kittens deprived of vision in one eye.” Journal of Neuro-
physiology, 1963 (26), pp. 1003-1017.
Hubel, David H. “The visual cortex of the brain.” Scientific American,
November, 1963.
. Hubel, David H. “The visual cortex of the brain.” Scientific American,
November, 1963, bottom of p. 57. By permission of W. H. Freeman
and Company.
. Hubel, David H., and Torsten N. Wiesel. “Receptive fields of cells in stri-
ate cortex of very young, visually inexperienced kittens.” Journal of
Neurophysiology, 1963 (26), pp. 994-1002.
. Gibson, James L. The Perception of the Visual World. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1950, p. 9. By permission of the publisher.
. Rheinberger, M., and H. H. Jasper. “Electrical activity of the cerebral cor-
tex in the unanesthetized cat.” American Journal of Physiology, 1937
(119), pp. 186-196.
. Moruzzi, G., and H. W. Magoun. “Brain stem reticular formation and acti-
vation of the EEG.” EEG and Clinical Neurophysiology, 1949 (1),
pp. 455-473.
. Lindsley, D. B., J. Bowden, and H. W. Magoun. “Effect upon the EEG of
acute injury to the brain stem activating system.” EEG and Clinical
Neurophysiology, 1949 (1), pp. 475-486.
. Jouvet, M. “Recherches sur les structures nerveuses et les mécanismes
responsables de différentes phases du sommeil psysiologique.” Ar-
chives Italiennes de Biologie, 1962 (100), pp. 125-206.
. Dement, William C. “An essay on dreams: The role of physiology in un-
derstanding their nature” in Frank Barron et al., New Directions in
Psychology II. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1965,
Ppa 35=257.
10. Roffwarg, H., W. Dement, J. Muzio, and C. Fisher. “Dream imagery:
Relationship to rapid eye movements of sleep.” Archives of General
Psychiatry, 1962 (7), pp. 235-258.

58 Psychology: A Social Approach

11. Dement, W., and C. Fisher. “Experimental interference with the sleep
cycle.” Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal, 1963 (8), pp. 400—
405.
12: Hernandez-Peén, Raul, Harald Scherrer, and Michel Jouvet. “Modification
of electric activity in cochlear nucleus during ‘attention’ in unanes-
thetized cats.” Science, February, 1956 (123), pp. 331-332.
13: Ibid., p. 331. By permission of the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science.
14. Woodworth, Robert, and Harold Schlosberg. Experimental Psychology.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1958, p. 593. By permission
of the publisher.
15; Lashley, K. S. ““An examination of the ‘continuity theory’ as applied to
discrimination learning.” Journal of General Psychology, 1942 (26),
pp. 241-265. :
16. Escher, Maurits C. “Knights on Horseback.” By kind permission of the
artist.
Ife Wertheimer, Max. “Laws of organization in perceptual forms” in Willis D.
Ellis (Ed.), A Source Book of Gestalt Psychology. New York: The
Humanities Press, Inc., 1955, pp. 71-88.
18. Ittelson, William H., and F. P. Kilpatrick. “Experiments in perception.”
Scientific American, August, 1951.
19: Ibid., p. 53.
20. Riesen, Austin. “Arrested vision.” Scientific American, July, 1950.
21. Allport, Gordon W., and Thomas F. Pettigrew. “Cultural influence of the
perception of movement: The trapezoidal illusion among Zulus.”
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1957 (55), pp. 104-113.
22. Gregory, R. L., and J. G. Wallace. “Recovery from early blindness: A case
study.” Experimental Psychology Society Monograph, Cambridge, En-
gland, 1963, no. 2.
23. Gregory, R. L. Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing. New York:
World University Library, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1966.
24. Ibid., p. 194. By permission of McGraw-Hill Book Company.
25% Hubel, David H., and Torsten N. Wiesel. “Receptive fields of cells in striate
cortex of very young, visually inexperienced kittens.” Journal of Neu-
rophysiology, 1963 (26), pp. 994-1002.
26. Sperry, R. W. “The eye and the brain.” Scientific American, May, 1956.
27. Kohler, Ivo. “Experiments with goggles.” Scientific American, May, 1962.
28. Gibson, Eleanor J., and Richard D. Walk. “The visual cliff.” Scientific
American, April, 1960.
29; Fantz, Robert L. “The origin of form perception.” Scientific American,
May, 1961.
30. Bower, T. G. R. “The visual world of infants.” Scientific American, Decem-
ber, 1966.
il, Holway, A. H., and E. G. Boring. “Determinants of apparent visual size
with distance variant.” American Journal of Psychology, 1941 (54),
jo, AUS
32. Gibson, James J. The Perception of the Visual World. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1950.

Perception 59
Cr

SNE

Aim,

Robert Paul
TWO
SOCIAL
PERCEPTION

Attention

We have seen in the discussion of perception that the human infant

has a preference for certain visual objects which either is innate or
is brought about very rapidly by innate attention mechanisms. In-
fants from four days old had clear preference for looking at complex
rather than simple patterns and at the pattern of a human face rather
than a pattern made of the same features arranged not in a face."
Human perception of social events is thus given a head start from
birth by innate mechanisms. While these innate factors influence the
extent to which an individual will pay attention to various stimuli,

61
 learned interests and the characteristics of immediate situations be-
come more important as one experiences more complex social situa-
tions. Especially important are the interests and attitudes learned by
being a member of a culture, for the individual is likely to be un-
aware of these cultural characteristics since all his peers show them
also. They are well illustrated in an informal experiment conducted
by F. C. Bartlett when he was in Swaziland. To test the commonly
held notion that individuals without a written language have espe-
cially well-developed memories, he asked an eleven- or twelve-year-
old boy to carry a message to the other end of the village for him.
Although the story was repeated twice to the boy and it took him
2 minutes to cross the village, he made three important omissions in
repeating the story, about par for any eleven- or twelve-year-old boy
asked to carry a message. The results were quite different, however,
when Bartlett asked an individual to recall material in which he had
a personal interest and which was of central importance to his cul-
ture. In this case he asked a herdsman to describe the cattle his em-
ployer had bought during a sale the previous year. His account was
as follows:
From Magama Sikindsa, one black ox for £4;
From Mloyeni Sifundra, one young black ox for £2;
From Mbimbi Maseko, one young black ox, with a white brush to its
tail, for £2;
From Gampoka Likindsa, one young white bull, with small red spots,
ylOle 4
From Mapsini Ngomane and Mpohlonde Maseko, one red cow, one
black heifer, one very young black bull for £3 in all;
From Makanda, one young grey ox, about two years old, £3;
From Lolalela, one spotted five year old cow, white and black, for £3,
which was made up of two bags of grain and £1;
From Mampini Mavalane, one black polly cow, with gray on the
throat, for £3;
From Ndoda Kadeli, one young red heifer, the calf of a red cow, and
with a white belly, for £1.?

The herdsman had been with the owner during the sale and had
driven the purchased cattle back to the main farm, but there they had
been separated and the animals sent to different sections so that the
herdsman had not even seen them again. Only two details of his
description were different from the owner’s written records. One
price was wrong by ten shillings, and the color of one animal was
inaccurate. What Bartlett had demonstrated was not the superior
memories of individuals without written language but the importance

62 Psychology: A Social Approach

of interest to learning. If the Swazi herdsman could come to the
United States and test the memories of some inhabitants, he would
probably be amazed at our ability to tell at a glance the difference
between a Buick and a Pontiac and to remember what make of car
each of our friends owns.
Cultural attitudes and emphases thus have pervasive effects on
what individuals pay attention to, and these emphases are often re-
flected in the number of terms that a given language has referring to
some phenomenon. Thus the English speaker usually simply calls
snow snow and a camel a camel, while the Eskimo has a multitude
of terms in his language to refer to snow of various consistencies and
the Arab has an equally great number of words to refer to camels of
various types and in differing conditions. Besides these cultural em-
phases, however, there are also effects of long-standing interests of
individual members of a culture. The skiing enthusiast distinguishes
many types and conditions of snow even if he is an English speaker,
and what is merely an automobile engine to most of us may be
classed as a 2-liter double-overhead-cam engine with two dual-throat
carburetors, five main bearings, and wedge-shaped combustion cham-
bers by the interested individual.
The effects of differences in interest on the perception of other
people are nicely illustrated in a study by Tajfel and Wilkes.* The
individuals participating in the experiment were asked to make judg-
ments of other people. Before doing this, however, the importance of
various personal characteristics to them was investigated by having
them give spontaneous descriptions of other people. Just as an artist
might describe a person without ever mentioning his political beliefs,
while a politician might describe his political attitudes without men-
tioning his physical characteristics, the attributes used by the judges
in the spontaneous descriptions were used as an indication of the
importance they ascribed to various characteristics. It was then pre-
dicted that in making ratings of others, individuals would make more
extreme judgments on the characteristics which were important to
them and less extreme judgments on the characteristics they did not
care about.
This prediction also is in accord with everyday observations. If
we do not care about the characteristics of horses, automobiles, or
faces, we may describe a champion jumper as looking like an aver-
age brown horse, a classic Bugatti as an old-fashioned car, and the
“Mona Lisa” as a woman smiling. The prediction was supported by
the data, although more clearly for unfavorable ratings than for

Social Perception 63
 favorable ones. The judges tended to see more good characteristics
than bad ones in the people they were judging and were especially
reluctant to ascribe unfavorable characteristics except on attributes
which were important to them.
As well as having certain sets as a result of his personal beliefs
and beliefs in which he participates as a member of a culture, a per-
son may have a readiness to perceive a certain aspect of the stimulus
situation which is developed either by instructions or by the preced-
ing stimulus situations. A number of different experiments illustrate
this point. Rees and Israel,‘ using anagrams, and Luchins,’ using a
water-jug problem, showed that solving a number of problems which
can all be solved in the same manner made it more difficult for sub-
jects to see other ways of solving later problems even though they
were not aware that they had learned any generalized procedures in
solving the early problems. These studies thus show the importance
of set on perception and make the equally important point that we
are not necessarily consciously aware of all the processes involved in
perception.
The importance of unconscious processes in perception is actu-
ally one of the older findings of experimental psychology, although
it is only recently that the controversy over the use of subliminal
cues in advertising has brought much publicity to the matter. In 1910
C. W. Perky® reported an experiment which is still worth mentioning
today. She had subjects look at a white ground-glass screen and try
to imagine a series of common objects. Without the subjects’ realiz-
ing it, slides of these objects were at times faintly projected on the
translucent screen from the other side. Since the objects were pre-
sented in unusual positions in the slides, it was possible to tell from
the subjects’ descriptions that they had actually been perceiving the
slides. The images were so faint, however, that they thought they
were only imagining them. The inability of individuals to tell the
extent to which their perceptions reflect the actual situation they are
perceiving and the extent to which they represent an unconscious
interpretation based partly on their own ideas and experiences is a
central fact in understanding the relation of the individual to the
world, and one to which we shall return repeatedly in the remainder
of the book.
We see, then, that the individual’s perception of the world is
selective, and what he pays attention to is governed by interests, cul-
tural beliefs, and attitudes of which he may or may not be aware.
Even those things he does pay attention to, however, are not merely

64 Psychology: A Social Approach

 passively recorded, but are organized and, through being organized,
distorted. To these topics we must now turn.

Organization of Perception

As was seen in the last chapter, perception does not take place
through the passive recording of stimuli. Even the perception of
physical objects involves the active organization and interpretation
of information. As this is also the case with social perception, merely
knowing the extent to which an individual pays attention to various
aspects of a stimulus situation will not enable us to predict how he
will perceive that stimulus situation. It is also necessary to under-
stand how he organizes his perceptions. While an individual’s idio-
syncratic characteristics and those he shares with other members of
his culture do influence what he pays attention to, they probably have
a greater impact on his perception by influencing how he organizes
and interprets those stimuli to which he does attend.
Consider, for example, how the perception of an item of be-
havior may be influenced by the social context in which it occurs.
Some behavior is so strongly called out by the nature of the situation
that it does not seem to an observer to reveal anything about the
person who is engaging in the behavior. If someone is solemn at a
funeral or sociable at a convention, it does not seem to reveal much
about him, for our society calls for those behavior patterns in those
situations. The person who is jovial at a funeral or solemn at a con-
vention, on the other hand, may be seen as behaving in response to
his own inner needs rather than the requirements of the situation.
The expectations which a given society has about how a person
shall behave when he occupies a given position in that society are
referred to as the social role associated with that position. Each mem-
ber of the society occupies many roles, so that a man is expected to
behave differently as an employee, as a husband, and as a friend.
(Sometimes the different roles are incompatible with each other, a
problem which will be discussed in a later section of the book.) Be-
cause there are these social expectations about how individuals should
behave when they are playing various roles, we may speak of be-
havior as being “in role” or “out of role.” In-role behavior is behavior
which is expected by society from a person who is holding a given
position, while out-of-role behavior is behavior which is either op-
tional or forbidden to a person playing that role.

Social Perception 65
 The differing perceptions which individuals have of behavior
when it is in role or out of role are well illustrated in a study carried
out by Jones, Davis, and Gergen.’ The hypothesis they tested was the
one suggested above, that out-of-role behavior would be perceived as
revealing much more about the person doing the behaving than
would in-role behavior.
The subjects in the experiment listened to tape recordings of
individuals purportedly trying to obtain jobs as either astronauts or
submariners. These two occupational roles were described in such a
way that it was seen as being appropriate for submariners to be
friendly, sociable, and conforming people, but for the astronauts to
be independent and prefer solitude. It was thus in-role behavior for
the potential submariner to stress his sociability or for the potential
astronaut to stress his independence. The opposite combination, of
independence from the submariner applicant or sociability from the
astronaut, was out-of-role behavior.
As was predicted, the subjects listening to the interviews saw
the out-of-role behavior as more revealing about the individuals. The
potential submariner who stressed his sociability in the interview was
seen as predictably answering that way in a sensible attempt to get
the job, while the potential astronaut who stressed his sociability was
perceived as revealing his true preferences. These perceptions mark-
edly influenced ratings by the subjects as to how conforming and how
sociable the individuals being interviewed really were! Furthermore,
the greater impact of out-of-role behavior on the ratings was not due
to its being better remembered. Probably partly because role expec-
tations were used to guess at behavior which was imperfectly remem-
bered, the in-role behavior was in fact better remembered than the
out-of-role behavior. Cultural differences thus influence perception
by influencing the interpretation of behavior, as well as by causing
differences in attention.
The importance of the perceiver’s interpretation of the nature
of the stimulus was first investigated by Asch. Earlier research had
indicated that statements were more favorably evaluated when at-
tributed to highly thought-of authors than when attributed to authors
that the subjects thought less highly of. Asch reasoned that this
phenomenon of prestige suggestion might be due to a different per-
ception of the meaning of the statement when it was attributed to a
different author. He thus asked his subjects to respond to statements,
not by rating how much they approved of them, but rather by saying

66 Psychology: A Social Approach

in their own words what they thought the statements meant. One of
the statements used was Jefferson’s “I hold that a little rebellion,
now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world
as storms are in the physical.” When the statement was correctly
attributed to Jefferson, the subjects interpreted ‘a little rebellion” as
meaning something quite mild—social change, political agitation, or
any change in political opinions. On the other hand, when the state-
ment was incorrectly attributed to Lenin, rebellion was generally
taken to mean full-scale armed revolution and the qualifying ‘‘a little”
was ignored. An occasional person correctly denied that Lenin made
the statement, and quite a number paraphrased it without interpreta-
tion. The exact number of subjects responding in each of these ways
is shown in Table 2-1.
Asch obtained similar results for other statements attributed to
their actual authors and to other individuals. Especially interesting is
his use of a labor plank from the Republican Party Platform of 1944.
The experiment was run during the 1944 presidential campaign, using
largely Democratic supporters as subjects. The plank reads as fol-
lows: “The Republican party accepts the purposes of the National
Labor Relations Act, the Wage and Hour Act, the Social Security Act
and all other federal statutes designed to promote and protect the
welfare of American working men and women, and we promise a
fair and just administration of these laws.”
Of the subjects who were told correctly that the plank was from
the Republican Party platform, 85 percent felt that the plank con-
tradicted the principles of the party and 2 percent denied that the
statement could come from the Republican Platform. Of the subjects
who were told incorrectly that the statement was from the Demo-
cratic Platform, 83 percent felt that it was a straightforward expres-

Table 2-1 Frequency of different forms of interpretation (in percent)

JEFFERSON LENIN
(N = 71) (N = 56)

Assimilation of “rebellion” to “agitation,” etc. 59 9

Assimilation of “rebellion” to “revolution” af 68
Literal duplication* 39 23
* Included in this category were a few protocols the interpretation of which was ambiguous.
SOURCE: Asch®

Social Perception 67
 sion of the policy of the party. In this experiment, the reinter-
pretation of the meaning of the statement involved a good deal of
speculation about the motives of the authors of the statement.
Some reactions to the plank are shown in Table 2-2. In these
responses we can clearly see the search for an interpretation which
will make sense in terms of other beliefs. The image which the sub-
jects had of the Republican party at that time made them question
that the plank represented the party’s true position on the issue. They
thus interpreted the statement either as a concession to political
reality at the time or as a blatant attempt to get votes, depending
upon their political preferences.

Table 2-2. Perceptions of the Republican plank

IDENTIFIED AS REPUBLICAN PLANK IDENTIFIED AS DEMOCRATIC PLANK

After the Democratic party has I trust this statement because it was
fought to improve the lot of the the Democratic administration which
working man, the Republican brought about the passage of these
party claims to accept its pur- acts, and has been enforcing them
poses. justly.
We, the Republican party, have If the Democratic party made this state-
to accept these laws, since labor ment, they were sincere about it. But
has organized to enforce them. I do not like the word “‘accepts.”. . .

SOURCE: Asch?®

Our perceptions are thus organized around what we consciously

or unconsciously expect from our past experiences. An interesting
technique devised by Allport and Postman’ makes possible the study
of how this organization takes place. Working in the context of
civilian reaction to the Second World War, Allport and Postman were
concerned to try to find the underlying dynamics of the transmission
of the rumors which were so prevalent at that time. To do this they
created rumors in the laboratory, by describing a scene to one subject
and having him pass on the description to the next, who in turn
relayed it to a third, and so on. As the description was transmitted,
it was both shortened and distorted until it formed a concise and
sloganlike whole which could be learned by rote by the remainder of
the subjects. Three closely related types of distortion were found.
The first type of distortion, leveling, simply consisted of drop-
ping out large numbers of details in the original description. By the

68 Psychology: A Social Approach

time the message had been repeated four times, only about a quarter
of the original details remained. As many details were dropped out,
those remaining were sharpened, or further emphasized. This empha-
sis took many forms, including changing the description from the
past to the present tense, exaggeration of size, and multiplication of
the numbers of individuals involved. Sometimes the experimenters
were able to detect the basis of selection of the items which were
emphasized, as when police officers made a police officer in one scene
the central figure in the description or when a group of women chose
the dresses worn by a group of women to become central to their
description. In other cases, however, items seemed to be selected
either because they were mentioned early in the description and thus
easily remembered or because they employed unusual and attention-
getting words such as “remonstrating,” or for reasons which were
unclear to the experimenters.
The final type of distortion, assimilation, is perhaps the most
interesting, for it involves changes to make the details of the story
fit in better with the expectations of the subject and with the central
theme of the story. In one battle scene, for example, people were re-
ported as being killed, an ambulance became a Red Cross station, the
amount of devastation was increased, and a chaplain was introduced.
Assimilation to linguistic habits and to stereotypes was also found—
a drugstore in the middle of a block became a corner drugstore, and a
razor portrayed in the hand of a White man speaking with a Negro
jumped in the telling into the Negro’s hand in over half the experi-
mental groups!
The fact that earlier information serves as a basis for the organi-
zation of information obtained later is one of the reasons why the
initial impression which one person makes on another is especially
important. In this area also, Solomon Asch" did pioneering research.
In several experiments he presented subjects with a list of adjectives
and asked them to write a description of the person portrayed by
them. In one of the experiments two groups of subjects were given
identical lists except that the order of the adjectives differed. In one
list the favorable adjectives were presented first, while in the other
the first part of the list was predominantly unfavorable. The ma-
jority of subjects who read the favorable adjectives first portrayed
the individual in a basically positive manner, though with minor
faults, while those who read the unfavorable adjectives first por-
trayed him as having basic deficiencies of character, though with
some good points. In both cases the interpretation of what was meant

Social Perception 69
 by the adjectives later in the list depended upon the impression
formed by the first part of the list.
The extent to which later impressions are dominated by the first
impression depends to some extent on how basic the information
obtained in the first impression is. Even where the initial information
is not especially important, it, along with the last items of informa-
tion obtained, tends to be better remembered than information in the
middle of a message or series of encounters because of what is called
the serial-position effect in learning. Where the initial information is
trivial, however, it does not exert much influence on the organization
of later information. In one variation of Asch’s impression-formation
experiment he presented identical lists of adjectives to the two ex-
perimental groups, except that the opposite of one of the adjectives
was included in the second list. When the opposites dealt with what
most people consider a central personality trait—for example, the
words “warm” and “‘cold’’—they considerably influenced the inter-
pretation of the other adjectives. When they dealt with more periph-
eral traits—for example, the words “polite” and “blunt’’W—they
exerted much less influence.
Since the publication of Asch’s initial work, a number of similar
studies have been done amplifying our knowledge of the impact of
the initial impression. Especially interesting are studies by Luchins
and by Kelley. Luchins*® made the experimental task somewhat more
realistic by presenting the subjects with descriptions of an individ-
ual’s behavior instead of a list of adjectives for them to form their
impressions from. Two paragraphs were used, one describing activi-
ties of someone named Jim that would lead one to feel that he was a
friendly individual and one that would give the impression that he
was unfriendly or shy. Sometimes one of these paragraphs was pre-
sented first and sometimes the other, so that the extent of the influ-
ence of the first versus the second part of the message could be
assessed.
Luchins, like Asch, found a strong primacy effect, that is, the
impressions the subjects formed of Jim were generally more influ-
enced by the part of the description they read first. Two other find-
ings are noteworthy, however. One is that the primacy effect could
be overcome simply by warning the subjects that they should not
jump to conclusions but wait until all the evidence was in. There is
some difficulty about interpreting this finding, because it is possible
that since experimental subjects are generally motivated to please the
experimenter, they may have given more weight to the latter part of

70 Psychology: A Social Approach

the description simply because they thought this is what the experi-
menter wanted. Since other studies using different techniques have
reached similar conclusions, however, we may conclude that merely
knowing that there are two sides to a story will reduce the amount
we are influenced by the side which we happen to hear first.
The other interesting finding of Luchins is that many of the
subjects formed hypotheses about Jim in order to try to explain the
apparent inconsistencies in his behavior. In Allport and Postman’s
terms, these subjects did not assimilate their later to their earlier
impression of Jim, but instead sharpened the contradictory impres-
sion and sought meaning in it. Some of the descriptions which were
given are as follows:

Jim is essentially a friendly person and when he appeared to act in

an unfriendly manner it was because he was tired, or because he had
an unhappy day at school, or because the girl was a bore... . Jim is
awkward with girls and needs to mix more. Jim acts differently at
different times because he is at an awkward stage of development or
LAA Uf
because he is an adolescent, a moody person, a “nervous person,” “a
queer fellow,” or a “strange character.”’1*

Kelley’s experiment” is interesting because he managed to in-

troduce considerably more realism into it. Essentially it was a replica-
tion of Asch’s original experiment using “warm” and “cold,” but
done in a naturalistic setting. What Kelley did was have a friend
deliver a guest lecture in each of two sections of a class. The friend
had rehearsed so that he could give exactly identical lectures in the
two sections. Kelley also gave identical introductions to the speaker
in the two sections, except that he was introduced either as a very
warm person or as a rather cold person. Questionnaires administered
to the students at the end of the lecture revealed that they not only
evaluated the lecturer more highly when he had been introduced as
warm but also thought that he had given a better lecture and that
they had learned more from it.
The results were similar, but not identical, to those which would
be predicted from the well-known halo effect in judgment. According
to this effect, if we know something good about a person, we are
likely to perceive him as having other good characteristics, while if
we know something unfavorable, we are liable to see other unfavor-
able things also. This effect, however, does not predict one important
aspect of Kelley’s results: Characteristics which are thought to be
related to the favorable thing known about the individual are more

Social Perception 71
 influenced than things which are not seen as so related. A person who
is introduced as warm is more likely to be seen as friendly than he is
to be seen as, for example, a good high jumper.
The halo effect, incidentally, is a common source of error in the
grading of student papers when the students are already known by
the instructor and their names are on their papers. Without being
aware of bias, the instructor may read more meaning into the am-
biguous answer of a student who has done well in the past than he
does into the similarly ambiguous answer of a student who has pre-
viously done poorly. The manipulative student is thus well advised
to do well on the first quiz in classes where essay exams are used
and names are not concealed during the grading process.
Perhaps, however, students do not need such obvious advice.
Jerome Singer summarizes the results of a study he carried out on the
manipulative strategies of students as follows:

In an exploration of the utility and efficacy of manipulative strategies

of behavior, positive relationships were found between Machiavel-
lianism and students’ grades with abilities held constant. Further
studies demonstrated that this relationship held for men but not
women, and that there were birth order effects: later-born males are
more successful as manipulators than first-born. Evidence was pre-
sented that women also use manipulative strategies, those of phy-
sique. Again, there were birth order effects: there was a significant
partial correlation between attractiveness and grades for first-born
girls but not later-borns. It was then found that first-born girls are
more concerned about their physique and are more apt to make them-
selves noticed.’

We have been looking at some of the ways in which our expec-

tations influence our perceptions. Even where they do not influence
what we perceive, they may influence our evaluation of it. Again an
animal experiment offers a good illustration. Bananas are highly pre-
ferred food for monkeys and chimpanzees; carrots and lettuce are
less highly preferred although still readily accepted. If one of these
foods is placed under a tin cup within sight of one of these animals,
it will take it out and eat it as soon as given the chance, even if it
is temporarily taken out of sight of the cup during the intervening
time. Tinklepaugh’® tested the animals’ reaction to an unexpected
food substitution. He placed a banana under the cup within sight of
a monkey. Then, while the monkey was out of sight of the cup, he
removed the banana and substituted a piece of lettuce or carrot.
When the animal was brought back, it went straight to the cup and

72, Psychology: A Social Approach

lifted it. Instead of eating the piece of lettuce as a monkey normally
would, it reacted with signs of surprise and frustration, engaging in
such bits of behavior as continuing to search for the banana and
shrieking at the experimenter. How satisfactory a reward is here
clearly depends upon what level of reward is anticipated. This topic
has been studied in human beings under the name level of aspiration.
If you ask a person attempting a task on which varying levels
of success are possible what he hopes to achieve, he will usually cite
a level just a bit higher that his usual performance. The bowler who
usually rolls around 150 does not generally strive for a perfect game
of 300 but does hope that he will manage to achieve around 175. His
degree of satisfaction with his score depends, not on its absolute
magnitude, but rather on its relation to his level of aspiration—the
score he is trying to attain. A student who usually gets C’s may be
quite happy to get a B, while a student who usually achieves A’s
may be extremely disappointed to do so.
While the level of aspiration for familiar tasks is usually slightly
higher than the typical performance, this is not always the case.
What is the reaction of the student who usually gets D’s and F’s, the
bowler who rolls around 90, or the golf player who goes around in
a bit over double par? Such habitual failure to reach any normal level
of aspiration may be very threatening to the individual. While it is
always possible to give up bowling or golf, the student may not have
reached school-leaving age. How may he protect himself from habitual
experiences of failure? Two quite different methods may be em-
ployed. By setting an extremely low level of aspiration, failure may
be avoided by exceeding aspirations. The student who aspires to
obtain D’s will, in all probability, succeed in doing so at least some
of the time. The opposite strategy will also work, however. By setting
an unrealistically high level of aspiration, failure may not be ex-
perienced when the goal is not attained.
Consider the poor golfer who is about to drive his ball. A real-
istic level of aspiration for him might be to hit it at least 50 yards
without going out of bounds. Even achievement of this level is not
very satisfying in comparison with the performance of others, how-
ever. He may thus decide that this is the time he is going to belt it
200 yards right down the center of the fairway. Failure to achieve
this goal is not really experienced as failure, for it does not really
make a person a bad golfer that he is unable to hit the ball 200 yards
down the middle every time. The golfer, by concentrating on the fact
that he did not hit the ball 200 yards, may avoid paying much atten-

Social Perception 73
 tion to the fact that he did not hit it 100 yards either. The experience
of failure is not as great as it would have been if he had been trying
to hit it 100 yards. Thus studies by Jucknat'’ and by Pauline Sears’
have indicated that schoolchildren who have habitually experienced
failure tend to set either a very high or a very low level of aspiration.

Theories of Distortion
In the previous section we have seen that our perceptions of persons
and events are greatly influenced by our expectations. The greatest
distortions probably occur in situations which involve strong emo-
tional reactions, and a number of fairly technical theories have been
proposed to predict the types of distortion which will occur and the
conditions under which they will be found. In this section we shall
look at balance theories, which are primarily perceptual in nature,
saving until later the discussion of conflict and dissonance theories,
which are more theories of motivation.
Perceptions are balanced which seem internally consistent and
reasonable to the perceiver, and imbalanced, or unbalanced, if they
seem unreasonable. Some examples of imbalanced perceptions are:
He always imitates people he dislikes.
He hates q because q is similar to his friend o.
He avoids people he likes.*®
Another is:
They think exactly alike so they hate each other.
The essence of balance theory is that imbalanced perceptions
will be distorted by the perceiver to make them more balanced. In
order to make precise predictions, however, it is necessary to note
what perceptions will be imbalanced and how they will be modified.
Let us look at some theories which attempt to do just that and some
experiments in which their predictions have been tested out.
The single work which probably did the most to stimulate re-
search on balancing was Fritz Heider’s Psychology of Interpersonal
Relations.*® This work considers quite exhaustively the relations
which may exist between two persons, two persons and an imper-
sonal object, or three persons. (As we shall soon see, the basic ideas
have since been extended to deal with perceptions of larger social
systems.) Heider dealt primarily with two kinds of relationships that
could exist between people. Sentiment relations, as the name implies,
exist where they have positive or negative feelings toward each other.

74 Psychology: A Social Approach

Unit relations exist where two people are bound together in some
way such that they must interact with each other; marriage and busi-
ness partnership would be two examples. Sentiment relations are
consistent when they are reciprocal. Thus if George is seen to love
Ann and Ann to love George, nothing seems inconsistent to the per-
ceiver about this idyllic relationship. If, however, George is seen to
love Ann but Ann to hate George, the relationship is puzzling and
seems to need further explanation. Why should George persist in his
affection for a person who makes it clear that she despises him?
Imbalanced relationships of this type are thought to involve a strain
toward becoming more balanced both in reality and in the eye of the
perceiver. That is, in the real world, it is thought that George would
in time come to repent of so futile a passion, unless of course his
suit were successful and he managed to inspire in Ann feelings simi-
lar to his own. More important for our purposes here, it is thought
that a person observing such an imbalanced relationship between
George and Ann existing over a period of time would modify his
perception of the relationship so as to make it more symmetrical:
Maybe Ann really loves George, and it is just an unfortunate person-
ality characteristic of hers that makes her degrade him in public.
Perhaps George does not really love Ann, and it is just a fear of
women that makes him want to play the romantic role of the rejected
lover.
Sentiment relationships are thus balanced when they are sym-
metrical and imbalanced when they are asymmetric. This means, of
course, that if Ann and George both hate each other, there is no in-
consistency in the relationship from the point of view of the per-
ceiver, unfortunate as it may be in other respects.
Unit relationships are consistent when they are accompanied by
positive sentiment relationships. George and Ann mutually hating
each other may be a perfectly consistent state of affairs taken in
itself, but if it is accompanied by their being married to each other,
it again becomes a situation which doesn’t seem to hang together.
Again, the person perceiving such a situation is likely to modify his
perception to make it more internally consistent, in this case prob-
ably by deciding that the couple must really care for each other de-
spite having their little difficulties.
A strain is also involved if two persons bound together by
positive unit and sentiment relations have markedly different senti-
ments toward some other person or object of importance to them.
Returning to our unfortunate lovers, let us imagine that they are now

Social Perception 75
 both mutually in love and married to each other. The situation may
still be less than perfect if Ann loves children while George detests
them, Ann is a devout Christian while George is an athiest, or Ann
is a Republican while George supports the Peace and Freedom Party.
Important differences such as these exert strong forces toward atti-
tude change, so that in the last example it is likely that Ann and
George will either converge in their political beliefs, meeting perhaps
about the middle of the Democratic party, or will turn away from
political interests in order to avoid the area of disagreement. We
shall return to this point, and some experimental evidence on it will
be cited, when we come to the consideration of reference groups.
Useful as Heider’s model is in making predictions about two or
three people, it says nothing about larger social systems. Cartwright
and Harary*® thus extended the basic ideas to permit analysis of per-
ceptions of larger social systems, using directed-graph theory as an
analytic tool. Without going into the details of the theory, it may be
summarized briefly as follows: Letters are used to represent people
and things, and arrows between them to represent unit and sentiment
relations. If A likes B, this is represented by an arrow of one color
pointing from A to B. If dislike is being indicated, a different color is
used. Unit relationships are viewed as always being positive, and are
indicated by two-headed arrows, since if A is a unit with B, B is also
a unit with A. A semicycle is then defined as a collection of lines
which when followed successively, regardless of the direction of the
arrow, enable return to the point of origin. (A given arrow may par-
ticipate in any number of semicycles.) The sign of the semicycle is
the product of the signs of its component arrows, so that, for exam-
ple, a semicycle composed of A liking B, B disliking C, and C dis-
liking A would have a positive sign. The amount of balance in the
system is the number of positive semicycles over the total number
of semicycles in the system. From this it may be seen that our exam-
ple of A, B, and C would be perfectly balanced if they comprised the
total social system and there were no other relationships among them,
since the only semicycle would be positive. Cartwright and Harary’s
system is useful in permitting an approximation of the amount of
imbalance in various systems, but has limited usefulness because of
two weaknesses. One is that it assumes that all relationships repre-
sented are equally important, which may not be the case,”* and the
other is that the variety of means of reducing imbalance makes pre-
diction difficult for large systems.
One of the earliest and best studies of cognitive balancing was

76 Psychology: A Social Approach

Newcomb’s study of the acquaintance process.”? With a persistence
in doing the impossible which is necessary to obtain good data,
Newcomb obtained a rooming house and let students live there rent-
free in return for participation in his research. Two groups of seven-
teen male transfer students were studied, each for an entire academic
year. The students were selected so that at no time in their lives had
any two of them lived in the same city, thus guaranteeing that they
had never met.
Newcomb’s theoretical model was basically similar to Heider’s
and dealt with the relationships between two persons and the other
persons, objects, and events of importance to them. It was assumed
that a balanced state of affairs existed when persons who were at-
tracted to each other had similar orientations toward other things of
importance to them or when two persons who disliked each other
had different orientations. (The entire model is more complex than
this, for predictions of what changes in perception would take place
under conditions of imbalance involved considerations of what new
information individuals were likely to acquire given the differences
between their perceptions of events and the real nature of these events
as known to the experimenters.) On the basis of this model, New-
comb predicted that early in the acquaintance process people would
assume that the individuals they were attracted to were similar to
themselves but that since the early attraction was based on so little
information, it would be unlikely that this would actually be the case.
Furthermore, he predicted that as the students came to know more
about each other, their friendship choices would change until ulti-
mately they would be most attracted to those individuals who were
most similar to themselves in their basic value orientations.
These predictions were supported by the data on both groups
studied. At the very start of the year, the students chose as friends
the men who had been randomly assigned them as room-mates or
who lived in the neighboring room, a result which could be predicted
from Heider’s unit relationships. After a few weeks went by, they
managed to obtain superficial information about each other, and
friendship choices were at least partially predictable from similarity
in such matters as which college of the university they were enrolled
in, their religious preferences, and whether they came from a rural or
urban background. It was only after a considerable period of time
that their friendship choices became predictable from their choices
on the value-orientation questionnaires they had filled out before
meeting each other.

Social Perception 77
 Two aspects of these results are striking. The first is that it was
possible for the experimenters to predict, from the value question-
naires given before the experiment started, which men would be
friends by the end of the year. (The prediction was not perfect, of
course, but it was much better than the subjects’ own predictions
early in the year of who their friends would be later on.) The other
is that the predictions of distortion of perception made from the
model were confirmed—early in the year the subjects thought that
the men they chose as friends were similar to themselves in attitudes
and values, even though in fact there was only chance similarity;
that is, they were no more similar than the men who were not chosen.
Newcomb’s study thus provides strong evidence in favor of a balance
model of perceptual distortion, with results which were obtained in
a naturalistic setting and which were confirmed by repetition of the
study a second year.
From Newcomb’s study we can see that people will distort their
perceptions in order to make them more consistent or balanced but
also that there are constant pressures to make people modify their
perceptions to reflect reality accurately. Even though it is possible to
believe that the person you have chosen as a friend agrees with you
when you do not know much about him, ultimately he will give you
clear indications of whether he does or not. Cognitive balancing is
thus not something which is done at one time in an informational
vacuum; instead it is carried on constantly, using and responding to
new information. Just as new information may lead to more imbal-
anced perceptions and require new balancing, the way in which the
system can be most easily balanced makes us more or less willing to
accept new information. A well-known study by Rosenberg and
Abelson provides a good illustration of this point.**
Rosenberg and Abelson used three groups of subjects and con-
fronted them with a role-playing situation. Each subject was asked to
imagine that he was the manager of a large Midwestern department
store and that as a department-store manager he had the following
beliefs: (1) naturally, he strongly positively valued keeping the level
of sales by the store as high as possible, (2) he was aware of research
evidence showing that displays of modern art in department stores
made the customers buy less, (3) he had been told that Fenwick, the
manager of the rug department, intended to put up a display of
modern art there, yet (4) he believed that Fenwick was a good de-
partment manager and had increased the volume of sales of the rug

78 Psychology: A Social Approach

department in the past. Now intuitively we can see that this already
presents the subjects with an imbalanced set of perceptions. If Fen-
wick is generally good at increasing sales, why does he now intend
to do something which is bad for sales? There would not be any
problem if Fenwick were generally a bad department manager—the
store manager would simply fire him and get someone better. This
situation, however, is not so simple.
To be useful, a balance model must not only say that a given
situation is imbalanced but also point out how it is imbalanced and
predict what perceptual distortions the imbalance will lead to. Rosen-
berg and Abelson’s model does do these things, but to see how it
does them, we must leave Fenwick and the rug department for the
moment and look at the model. It is simpler than Heider’s, for Rosen-
berg and Abelson do not distinguish between unit and sentiment
relations, but instead class all the relations between cognitive ele-
ments (persons or things thought about) as simply positive, negative,
or null. Positive relations would include not only liking and support-
ing but also things which Heider would classify as unit relations—
using, being equivalent to, or bringing about. We can thus see that
there is a postive relationship between, for example, Fenwick and
modern art. Negative relations include the opposites of these terms,
such things as disliking and hindering. There is thus a negative rela-
tionship between modern art and sales. Null relations are simply the
lack of either positive or negative relations.
Because our description of the experimental conditions must
now become somewhat complex, let us look first at only the first of
the three experimental groups and use its instructions to illustrate a
simple method of diagraming cognitive structures, or views of the
relationships between persons and things. The subjects in the first
group were told, in addition to the four things already mentioned,
that they (1) liked modern art, and (2) liked Fenwick. Let us see how
this situation may be represented.
Any cognitive structure must be represented through the eyes
of the person who sees things that way, in this case the subject in
his role as department-store manager. Whether this person has posi-
tive, negative, or null relations with the various objects is represented
by where they are placed on a vertical scale ranging from positive
at the top to negative at the bottom. Since the subjects in the first
group have positive views of all three social objects—sales, modern
art, and Fenwick—all three are placed at the top of the scale.

Social Perception 79
 + | Sales Modern art Fenwick

Figure 2-1 (Brown’**)

Lines between the various objects labeled p for positive or n for

negative may then be used to represent the relations, other than
null, existing among the objects (see Figure 2-2).
Rosenberg and Abelson’s theory states that cognitive relations
are balanced where (1) concepts of identical sign are positively linked,
and (2) concepts of opposite sign are negatively linked. The theory
predicts that structures will be balanced by making the smallest num-
ber of changes which will achieve this state of affairs. Let us see then
what is predicted for the first experimental group. If the subject, in
his role of department-store manager, convinced himself that Fen-
wick did not really plan to display modern art, the system would still
be unbalanced because positively valued modern art would be nega-
tively linked to sales and Fenwick, both of which are also positively
valued. Trying out the various other possibilities, we see that there
is only one way in which the structure can be balanced by making
only one change. If the manager convinces himself that modern art

Figure 2-2 (Brown’*”)

een,
WH adm ee
+ Sales a Modern art rs Fenwick

80 Psychology: A Social Approach

is really good for sales, then all the items will be positively valued
and all will be positively linked, a state of perfect balance.
The basic design of the experiment was as follows: Each of the
three experimental groups was given a slightly different state of
affairs to imagine, so that while all were unbalanced, each could be
most economically balanced in a different manner. All three groups
were then exposed to messages, with each message designed to bal-
ance most economically the cognitive system of one of the three ex-
perimental groups. It was predicted that if people strive to balance
their beliefs with the fewest possible changes, then it should be
found that the subjects in each experimental group would be most
receptive to the message which could do this for them.
We have already looked at the cognitive structure of the first
group. Those for the second and third groups are shown below. It
may be seen that the second group differs from the first in that
here the manager does not like modern art. The cognitive structure
may be balanced by making only one change if that change is to de-
cide that Fenwick does not intend to display modern art. In the third
group the manager does not like either Fenwick or modern art. This
structure may be balanced by deciding that Fenwick is not actually
a good salesman.
All subjects were given three communications. The art-sales
(AS) communication contended that art displays actually increase
sales volume; the Fenwick-art (FA) communication maintained that
Fenwick did not plan to display modern art; the Fenwick-sales (FS)
communication indicated that Fenwick had not maintained sales vol-
ume in the rug department. As predicted, the subjects in the first
group reacted most positively to the AS message, those in the second

Figure 2-3 (Brown’’)

Pe ee

3 Sales Fenwick ++ Sales

0 n Pp 0 p n

_ Modern art — | Fenwick Modern art

| ae si
Second Group Third Group

Social Perception 81
 group to the FA, and those in the third group to the FS. This study,
like Newcomb’s, was repeated a second time with similar results, thus
providing strong evidence that people are most easily persuaded by
being told what they want to hear and that balance theory can point
out what it is that they want to hear.
Rosenberg and Abelson’s study not only supports balance theory
but also makes the equally important point that balancing does not
occur automatically. Subjects in the first group, for example, did not
decide at the beginning of the experiment that art displays were good
for sales, but waited until they had some evidence to justify that
belief. Balancing thus takes place by making us selectively perceive
our environment, accepting the evidence which will bring about a
more balanced state and ignoring that which would increase our im-
balance. In a complex and ambiguous social world, evidence in favor
of most points of view can be found. Where it cannot, Rosenberg and
Abelson propose other means of coping with imbalance. One of
these is to redefine or differentiate one of the concepts. The subject
might divide Fenwick into a competent part and an incompetent part
by deciding that while he is usually good at selling rugs, he is a fool
for modern art and this leads him into occasional lapses of judgment.
Or he might differentiate modern art, deciding that some of it is
extreme and drives away customers but some of it is good and a good
man like Fenwick will choose the latter kind. The final method of
coping with imbalance is to stop thinking and avoid being aware of
inconsistent beliefs at the same time. This idea is similar to the psy-
choanalytic concept of repression, which we shall take up in the next
chapter.
It would be pleasant to stop thinking about balance theory at
this point, leaving ourselves with a positive view of balance theory
and some evidence to support it. Unfortunately we would be ignoring
some of the evidence if we did so. In a repetition of the Fenwick
study which differed only slightly from the one described, Rosenberg
and Abelson investigated not only the receptivity of the subjects to
the three messages but also the extent to which they actually man-
aged to achieve a balanced state after hearing them. While a majority
of the subjects in the first experimental group did so, only a very few
in the second and third groups achieved balanced cognitive struc-
tures, and a majority of those who did so achieved different structures
from those which were predicted. These results are not as damaging
to balance theory in general as they look at first glance, for the failure
of the subjects in the third group to achieve balance is easily ex-

82 Psychology: A Social Approach

 plained. Rosenberg and Abelson’s initial conception of the cognitive
structure which they had created in all the subjects ignored the fact
that a unit relationship, in Heider’s terms, exists between the manager
and Fenwick—as a department manager, Fenwick stands just below
the store manager, who depends upon him for running a major part
of the store. Thus the subjects in the third group would not actually
achieve a balanced state even if they did convince themselves that
Fenwick was a poor department manager, for negatively valued Fen-
wick would still be tied to the subject by a unit relationship.
This explanation, however, does not account for the subjects in
the second group deviating from expectations. Although it is not par-
simonious to use a separate explanation for this, one is hinted at in
the description of the experimental procedure. Some subjects had to
be rejected at the start of the experiment because after receiving the
original instructions, they saw modern art as being good rather than
bad for sales. It may be that while the subjects had no prior views
about Fenwick, they liked modern art and were unable to forget this
belief in trying to play the required role, making the cognitive struc-
ture of some members of the second group more like that of the first
group.
From this single study it would be difficult to conclude that
there was any validity to balance theory. Different types of studies
have been done, however, with different types of methodological
weaknesses. In Chapter 8, on values, attitudes, and opinions, we shall
look at a study by Rosenberg, in which attitudes are changed under
hypnosis and changes occur in other attitudes as predicted by bal-
ance theory. That study suffers from the weakness that not all people
can be hypnotized, so that a selected sample is used. Nevertheless,
the frequency of positive results in tests of balance theory using
different methodologies shows the value of further investigation of
this theoretical framework. It is to the rapidly growing research liter-
ature on balance theory that the student must turn to assess the
complexity of the issues involved.

Summary

Social stimuli are even more ambiguous than physical stimuli, and
their perception is influenced by the context in which they occur. A
statement has a different meaning when it is spoken by one person
than when it is spoken by another, and the same behavior seems to

Social Perception 83
 signify different things when enacted by different people. A number
of classic experiments have demonstrated how the interests of the
perceiver, his previous knowledge about the person being perceived,
and even the order of presentation of the same information may in-
fluence the initial perception of a stranger.
Rumor transmission provides a convenient method for studying
the changes which inadequate perception and memory make in stim-
uli. These changes may be crudely described by saying that the
stimuli are reproduced as if they had been compared with expecta-
tions; some differences exaggerated and other differences ignored.
Allport and Postman described the process as involving leveling,
sharpening, and assimilation.
In recent years a number of theories of perceptual organization
have attempted to describe the ways in which perceptions change to
become more internally consistent. The first of these balance theories
was that of Fritz Heider. Heider proposed that for a perceptual sys-
tem to be balanced, sentiment relations should be reciprocal and unit
relations should be accompanied by positive sentiments. Individuals
with positive bonds between them should have similar sentiments
toward things of importance, while those with negative relations
should have divergent sentiments. These simple principles have been
extended by other theorists and applied in a wide variety of experi-
mental situations. Balance of perceptions may be restored in several
ways, and some novel results have been accurately predicted by the
theories.

Notes and Acknowledgments

ite Fantz, Robert L. “The origin of form perception.” Scientific American,
May, 1961.
2. Bartlett, F. C. Remembering. London: Cambridge University Press, 1932,
p. 250. By permission of the publisher.
. Tajfel, Henri, and A. L. Wilkes. “Salience of attributes and commitment to
extreme judgments in the perception of people.” British Journal of
Social and Clinical Psychology, 1963 (2), pp. 40-49.
. Rees, H. J., and H. C. Israel. “An investigation of the establishment and
operation of mental sets.” Psychological Monographs, 1935 (46), no.
PHAM).
Luchins, A. S. “Mechanization in problem solving: The effect of ‘Ein-
stellung.’ ” Psychological Monographs, 1942 (54), no. 248.
. Perky, C. W. “An experimental study of imagination.” American Journal
of Psychology, 1910 (21), pp. 422-452.

84 Psychology: A Social Approach

 . Jones, Edward E., Keith E. Davis, and Kenneth J. Gergen. “Role playing
variations and their informational value for person perception.” Jour-
nal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1961 (63), pp. 302-310.
. Asch, Solomon E. Social Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1952, p. 424. By permission of the publisher.
. Ibid., pp. 433-434. By permission of the publisher.
. Allport, Gordon, and Leo Postman. The Psychology of Rumor. New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1947.
. Asch, Solomon E. “Forming impressions of personality.” Journal of Ab-
normal and Social Psychology, 1946 (41), pp. 258-290.
. Luchins, Abraham S. “Primacy-recency in impression formation” in Carl Hov-
land (Ed.), Yale Studies in Attitude and Communication. Vol. I. The
Order of Presentation in Persuasion. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1957, chap. 4.
. Ibid., p. 47. By permission of the publisher.
. Kelley, H. H. “The warm-cold variable in first impressions of persons.”
Journal of Personality, 1950 (18), pp. 431-439.
. Singer, Jerome E. “The use of manipulative strategies: Machiavellianism
and attractiveness.” Sociometry, June, 1964 (27), p. 128. By permis-
sion of the author and publisher.
ie, Tinklepaugh, O. L. “An experimental study of representative factors in
monkeys.” Journal of Comparative Psychology, 1928 (8), pp. 197-236.
U7 Jucknat, M. “Leistung, Anspruchsniveau und Selbstbewusstsein.” (Unter-
suchungen zur Handlungs und Affectpsychologie: XX. Edited by
Kurt Lewin.) Psychologische Forschungen, 1937 (22), pp. 89-179.
18. Sears, Pauline S. “Levels of aspiration in academically successful and un-
successful children.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,
1940 (35), pp. 498-536.
US). Heider, Fritz. The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. New York: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1958, p. 180. By permission of the publisher.
20: Cartwright, D., and F. Harary. “Structural balance: A generalization of
Heider’s theory.” Psychological Review, 1956 (63), pp. 277-293.
21. The student should refer to Knox, Robert E. “The components of cognitive
balance.” Unpublished dissertation presented to the Graduate School
of the University of Oregon, 1963.
22. Newcomb, Theodore M. The Acquaintance Process. New York: Holt, Rine-
hart and Winston, Inc., 1961.
23. Rosenberg, M. J., and R. P. Abelson. Attitude Organization and Change.
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1960.
24. This method of illustrating cognitive structures was developed by Roger
Brown in his excellent discussion of balance and dissonance models
entitled “Models of attitude change” in New Directions in Psy-
chology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1962.
Paey, Adaptation of fig. 9 from “Models of attitude change’ by Roger Brown
from New Directions in Psychology, by Roger Brown, Eugene
Galanter, Eckhard H. Hess, and George Mandler. Copyright © 1962
by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Adapted and reproduced by per-
mission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.

Social Perception 85
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eb No OF
LEARNING

The general acceptance of John Locke’s theory that the mind is a

blank slate and that all knowledge comes from experience made
learning the central issue of psychology. If all that we know and all
that we are result from learning, then the principles governing that
learning are the most basic statements which can be made about
human beings. In the effort to discover such principles, psychologists
have engaged in half a century of intensive research. While this re-
search has not resolved all the controversies about learning, it has
built up an agreed-on body of data which any theory must be able

87
 to explain. In this chapter we shall first look at this body of data and
then turn to the paradox that there should be disagreement about
theory while there is agreement on the data which the theories are
trying to explain.
The earliest work in an area is not always the most influential,
and the two men who were most influential in shaping the develop-
ment of modern learning theory were not the first to publish exten-
sive work in the field. They were preceded by Ebbinghaus’s extensive
research on memorizing, which will be discussed in Chapter 7, and by
a number of less extensive research programs. Nevertheless, it was
with the research of Ivan Pavlov and Edward L. Thorndike that
learning theory began. Although Pavlov was the elder of the two
men, their work in psychology was roughly contemporaneous, for
Pavlov came into the field rather late in his life. His first interest was
in physiology, and in that field he won the Nobel Prize for his work
on digestion. The work on digestion, however, led into the field of
psychology, for what a person or animal thought influenced digestive
processes. That a dog would salivate if food was placed in its mouth
was a simple reflex. That it would salivate if it heard its food pan
rattle was more difficult to explain. To this phenomenon of “psychi-
cal secretion” Pavlov turned his attention. In doing so, he was en-
couraged by knowledge of Thorndike’s doctoral dissertation, pub-
lished in 1898. From 1903 to 1928, and regardless of the distractions
of the Russian Revolution taking place around him, Pavlov published
papers on the training of reflexes in dogs.

Pavlovian Conditioning

Pavlov’s basic training situation was as follows: For any reflex act,
there is a stimulus which will always call out the reflex response. A
puff of air on the eyeball, for example, will cause the response of
blinking the eye, or the stimulus of a bit of meat powder in a dog’s
mouth will cause the response of salivating. Using this latter re-
sponse, Pavlov called the meat powder the unconditional stimulus,
because its effect was invariant and did not depend on training. Be-
sides this unconditional stimulus to salivation, there are other stimuli
which may or may not cause the response depending on what train-
ing the animal has had. A stimulus of this type, which does not call
out the response initially but will after the animal is trained, Pavlov

88 Psychology: A Social Approach

called a conditional stimulus. (A conditional stimulus is also fre-
quently called a conditioned stimulus, for this is the way the term
was translated from the Russian in the earliest translation of Pavlov’s
work.) To train the animal, Pavlov first presented the conditional
stimulus—the ringing of a bell, for example—and then the uncondi-
tional stimulus—such as the meat powder. After a while, the dog
learned to salivate when it heard the bell without the meat powder
being presented at all. This is the first stage of acquisition, or learn-
ing, of the conditional response.
Pavlov’s theoretical conception of acquisition has frequently
been interpreted as a theory of stimulus substitution, as if the
animal learned to give the same response to the conditional stimulus
as it had previously given to the unconditional stimulus. That con-
ception is often shown diagrammatically as in Figure 3-1. In that
figure R stands for response, UCS for unconditional stimulus and CS
for conditional stimulus.
Stimulus substitution, however, is not complete. As Woodworth
and Schlosberg have pointed out, the dog does not start to eat the
buzzer instead of the meat. It is thus valuable to distinguish between
the response given to the unconditional stimulus and that given to
the conditional stimulus by calling them the unconditional response
and the conditional response, respectively. This distinction is shown
in Figure 3-2, where UCR stands for unconditional response and CR
for conditional response.
Even if the animal does not completely substitute the condi-
tional stimulus for the unconditional stimulus, in the sense of giving
all the same responses to the two of them, there is one phenomenon
which does seem to show a surprising amount of stimulus substitu-
tion. This is the phenomenon of higher-order conditioning. Suppose
that the dog is trained to salivate to a buzzer. Then on a number of
trials the following sequence of events is followed: a light is turned
on, then the buzzer is sounded, but no meat powder is placed in the
dog’s mouth. After a number of trials, the dog will learn to salivate

Figure 3-1
ES

UCS——.——_—————_ > R

Phenomena & Theories of Learning 89

 G5 CR

SCS GR
Figure 3-2

to the light presented alone even though the light has never been
paired with the meat powder. In first-order conditioning, then, the
animal learns to give a response to a new stimulus by that stimulus
being paired with an unconditional stimulus for the response. In
second-order conditioning, the animal learns to give the response to
a stimulus by that stimulus being paired with another conditional
stimulus which has come to call out the response through learning.
While animals are not capable of higher orders than secondary,
human beings may show even higher orders of conditioning.
Let us look at an example with human beings rather than dogs.
If a person learns to salivate when he sees tables set for dinner, this
is the first-order conditioning. If after learning this he gets a job
working in a restaurant where he salivates at seeing the tables set
even though he cannot eat at them, he is showing the effect of the
past conditioning. If the restaurant has a player piano and he learns
to salivate whenever he hears a player piano even though he never
was allowed to eat in the restaurant where he heard it, that would be
second-order conditioning. If he then went to a theater where a per-
son wore a bowler hat and played a player piano and thus learned to
salivate when he saw only a bowler hat, that would be third-order
conditioning. Higher-order conditioning may not show great logic in
this subject, but it is certainly a feat of learning. As we shall see later,
it plays a crucial role in some motivational theories.
What happens if, after conditioning, the experimenter repeat-
edly gives the conditional stimulus without ever giving the uncondi-
tional stimulus, ringing a bell without ever giving meat, for example?
As might be expected, eventually the dog stops salivating when it
hears the bell. This process of losing the conditional reflex is called
extinction. It is different from what we usually mean by forgetting,
for it depends on the presentation of the conditional stimulus with-
out presentation of the unconditional stimulus. Forgetting takes place
much more slowly. If the dog is simply not presented with the con-
ditional stimulus, it will show very little forgetting of the conditional
response over a period of years.

90 Psychology: A Social Approach

 Pavlov’s first two principles of learning were thus a principle of
acquisition and a principle of extinction. They have been concisely
paraphrased by Skinner as follows: ‘The approximately simultaneous
presentation of two stimuli, one of which (the ‘reinforcing’ stimulus)
belongs to a reflex existing at the moment at some strength, may
produce an increase in the strength of a third reflex composed of the
response of the reinforcing reflex and the other stimulus.” This was
called Type S. “If the reflex strengthened through conditioning of
Type S is elicited without presentation of the reinforcing stimulus,
its strength decreases.’”*
The second principle is somewhat ambiguous as to whether the
conditional reflex is lost or merely inactivated by extinction. That it
is not completely lost is demonstrated by one of the more interesting
phenomena of conditioning, spontaneous recovery. If an animal is
first trained and then the response is extinguished, this will make it
stop giving the response to the conditional stimulus. To use the con-
crete example of salivation, the dog stops salivating to the bell when
it is repeatedly presented without being followed by meat powder.
If, however, the animal is then given a period with no further train-
ing, the next time the bell is rung it will salivate again. It has spon-
taneously recovered the conditional response, indicating that the re-
sponse had not been permanently lost, but at least partially inacti-
vated.
The reappearance of the conditional response may at first glance
seem puzzling. If what is learned during extinction is to not respond,
however, then spontaneous recovery is consistent with other obser-
vations on learning and forgetting. Forgetting takes place most
rapidly with recently learned material. Since the conditioning took
place earlier than the extinction training, what was learned during
conditioning is not being forgotten as rapidly during the rest period.
The learning to not respond which took place during extinction, on
the other hand, is very recent learning, and much of it will be for-
gotten during the inactive period. Thus it is quite reasonable that the
tendency to not respond might be the stronger of the two at the
beginning of the inactive period, while the tendency to respond might
be the stronger at the end of it. This is illustrated in Figure 3-3.
Learning would not have much significance if it only showed its
effects in situations exactly the same as those in which it took place.
If being stung by a bee did not make us beware of wasps and yellow
jackets or if being stung while standing up did not make us also
cautious while sitting down, then learning about the world would be

Phenomena & Theories of Learning 91

 Tendency to respond Sue Tendency to not respond

Learning Extinction Rest Spontaneous

recovery
Figure 3-3

a more painful experience. As Pavlov’s work showed, learning is

applied in situations somewhat different from those in which it took
place. A dog trained to salivate to a bell of a certain pitch will show
initial generalization. That is, without further training it will also sali-
vate to a bell of a different pitch. This is generalization because the
animal responds as if it had generalized about bells, responding in the
same way to all of them. The generalization is not complete, how-
ever. The more different the pitch of the new bell is, the less probable
it is that the dog will salivate to it, and the less saliva it will produce
if it does. While an animal may show generalization initially, it may
also be trained to discriminate—to respond differently to similar stim-
uli. If one stimulus is followed by the unconditional stimulus while
another similar stimulus is not, the animal will learn to give the
conditional response to one and not the other.

Thorndike and the Law of Effect

In Pavlov’s principles of learning, the word “reinforcement” is used

in speaking of the strengthening of a conditional reflex. As used
there, it means simply the strengthening which takes place when the
unconditional stimulus is presented immediately after the conditional
stimulus. The use of the term in that way is rather confusing, be-
cause Thorndike’s work had the result of giving this term a more

92 Psychology: A Social Approach

specific meaning—the bringing about of a state of affairs satisfying
to the organism. Furthermore, theorists who believed with Thorndike
that some type of reward was necessary to learning came to be called
reinforcement theorists, while those who believed with Pavlov that
contiguity, or stimuli being presented together, was sufficient for
learning were called contiguity theorists or nonreinforcement theo-
rists. Thus Pavlov, although he spoke of reinforcement, meant con-
tiguity by it and was a nonreinforcement theorist! He assumed that
his animals learned because conditional stimuli and unconditional
stimuli were presented together. For a more hedonistic view of ani-
mals, let us turn to the work of E. L. Thorndike.
Thorndike’s research is a good example of the impact evolu-
tionary theory had on the development of the field of psychology.
His work started with the major question which evolutionary theory
raises—what is the relationship between the intelligence of animals
and that of human beings? To answer this question he studied a
variety of different animals, as well as adults and children. While
some earlier authors had seen animals and human beings as similar
because animals were so clever, Thorndike saw human beings as
following essentially the same simple laws of learning as lower or-
ganisms. For him, learning was a blind and irrational process
involving random variation of behavior and selection of what chanced
to prove successful. Even the mechanism of learning, then, was simi-
lar to the mechanism of evolution. It did not imply direction, but
simply variation and survival.
While Thorndike employed a wide variety of experimental
situations, he is best known for his studies with cats in puzzle boxes.
A hungry cat was imprisoned in a box which could be opened by
pushing against a lever protruding into the box. The first time the
cat was placed in the box, it engaged in various acts—spitting, claw-
ing, exploring, etc. Eventually by chance it would happen to trip the
lever, the door would open, and it would be released to find a plate
of food waiting for it. The next time the animal was placed in the
box, it would tend to do the same thing it was doing when it released
the catch the first time. If, for example, the first time it had been
sniffing in a corner and had backed into the lever, it would tend to
go to the corner, sniff, and back up. Since it would not exactly repeat
its former behavior, however, it might miss the lever and fail to be
released. With repeated trials, its behavior became more and more
stereotyped and its release more and more rapid.

Phenomena & Theories of Learning 93

 The cat in the box seemed to Thorndike to be typical of much
real-life learning in several ways. It did not involve reflexes which
are invariably called out by certain stimuli the way Pavlov’s experi-
ments did, but instead responses which are normally emitted by the
animal in the random variation of its behavior. Nor did the emitted
behaviors need to be learned, the way a motor skill such as a golf
swing does. They were normal and routine behaviors of the animal.
Finally, the solution to the problem was not obvious from an exami-
nation of the situation, but was arbitrary from the animal’s point of
view. The experiment was thus a situation similar to that of a rat
learning to go to where garbage is. Where the garbage is kept is
purely arbitrary from the rat’s point of view, but once the rat hap-
pens upon the garbage, it can go there again without learning any
new motor skills. Much human learning also seems to be arbitrary.
There is no logical connection, for example, between an object and
the word which stands for it.
On the basis of arbitrary learning situations such as that of the
cat in the puzzle box, Thorndike first formulated two basic laws of
learning. As his research led him into new areas, he abandoned one
of these principles and modified the other, as well as adding a num-
ber of subsidiary principles. The principle he abandoned was one
which has caused untold misery to students, the law of exercise. This
principle, which was widely accepted at the time when Thorndike
wrote, held that practice made perfect regardless of the nature of the
practice. Thorndike rejected this principle on the basis of experiments
such as one by Trowbridge and Cason reported in 1932.* They had
subjects practice drawing lines exactly 3 inches long without ever
being told how long the lines were which they had drawn. Under
these circumstances, there is negligible improvement with practice.
Thorndike eventually concluded that practice only causes a significant
amount of improvement through the operation of the other basic law,
the law of effect.
Thorndike was one of the earliest stimulus-response psycholo-
gists. What was learned, according to his theory of learning, was a
connection between a stimulus and a response. The law of effect
stated that when a response was followed by a state of affairs satis-
fying to the animal, then the connection between that response and
the stimulus which had preceded it would be strengthened. Con-
versely, if a response was made to a stimulus and was followed by
an annoying state of affairs, then the connection between the stimu-

94. Psychology: A Social Approach

lus and that response would be weakened. Reinforcement, in the
form of satisfying or unsatisfying consequences for the organism,
stamped in or stamped out correct or incorrect responses.
How is it possible to tell whether a state of affairs is satisfying
or annoying for an animal? Thorndike’s answer was that if the ani-
mal tries to continue it, it is satisfying, but if the animal tries to
terminate it, it must be annoying. On hearing this answer, some
critics complained that the law of effect was circular and said nothing:
Why does an animal learn to do something? Because it is satisfying.
How do we know that it is satisfying? Because he does it!
Careful inspection of this argument, however, will reveal its
weakness. In judging whether a state of affairs is satisfying or annoy-
ing to an animal, its immediate reaction is used. Thus a person might
conclude that a rabies shot was annoying to a cat because it strug-
gled to get away when it received one. That observation, however,
would be quite independent of observations on learning. After con-
clusions were drawn about what was satisfying or annoying to the
animal, it would still be equally possible that what it learned would
be dependent on its emotional state, as Thorndike proposed, or would
depend solely on what responses it made, as Pavlov’s theories would
suggest. Rather than being circular, the law of effect proposed the
very important principle that the same conditions which governed
how the animal reacted to the immediate situation would govern
what, if anything, it would learn.
In the first formulation of the law of effect, Thorndike saw
reward and punishment as having equal and opposite effects. Reward
stamped in the correct response, and punishment stamped out the
incorrect one. On the basis of his own experiments he changed this
view and decided that while reward strengthened a response, punish-
ment did little if anything to weaken it. In one experiment reported
in 1932,° for example, he had subjects guess which of five English
words was the equivalent of a given Spanish word. In order to reward
a subject on a given trial, the experimenter said “right.” To punish
the subject, the experimenter said “wrong.” It was found that while
the responses called right were more likely to be repeated on further
trials, those called wrong were just as likely to be repeated as if they
had not been punished.
Thorndike’s conclusion that punishment is not as effective as
reward in teaching has been supported by later studies, although they
have not indicated that punishment has no effect. Punishment is

Phenomena & Theories of Learning 95

 probably most effective when it leads to responses which remove the
possibility of future learning. An example of such a situation would
be avoidance training. A rat is placed in a compartment with a barrier
down the middle. A signal is given, such as a ringing bell, and then
the rat is shocked through a grid on the floor. The rat will soon learn
to climb over the barrier into the other end of the box when it hears
the bell and thus avoid the shock. If the shock is no longer given
when the bell rings, the rat will not be likely to learn this because it
will leave the shock compartment before the shock is or is not turned
on.
In the conditioned-avoidance situation just described, the animal
has no positive motivation to remain in the compartment where it is
shocked. Punishment is less effective where it is in conflict with re-
ward. In one of a series of experiments on punishment, Estes first
trained rats to press a lever in order to receive a pellet of food and
then started extinguishing the response by not reinforcing it with
food.® At this point the rats were divided into two groups, one of
which was punished a number of times when they were near but not
pressing the lever. The other group was not punished. The main
effect of the punishment was a temporary suppression of the lever
pressing. The animals that had been shocked pressed the lever less
often immediately afterwards but made up for it by pressing the lever
more later on. It took approximately the same number of responses
for the response to extinguish, regardless of whether the animals had
been punished or not. While some of Estes’s other experiments indi-
cated that responses may extinguish more rapidly if punished under
some conditions, the main effect of punishment is to lead to a tem-
porary suppression of the behavior, and not to eliminate it. If the
temporary decrease in the punished activity is used to teach a new
competing response, however, the punishment may serve a purpose.
An analogy to child behavior may help illustrate these principles. A
child at the seacoast who is punished for going into the water would
be expected to show a temporary suppression of this behavior and
stay away from it for a while. If there is nothing else to do, however,
he may be expected to return to the water. If, on the other hand, he
discovers something else to do while avoiding the water, he may not
return to it. The effect of punishment depends upon the circum-
stances.
Perhaps the most striking effect punishment may have is to
increase the probability of the punished response. This effect was

96 Psychology: A Social Approach

demonstrated by Muenzinger and various colleagues’ in a long series
of experiments. The results of Muenzinger, Bernstone, and Richards
provide an excellent example. Rats were run in a T-shaped maze.
On each trial, one arm of the maze was lighted and the other was
dark. If the rat ran to the lighted side, it found food. If it ran to the
unlighted side, it reached a locked door instead. There were three
groups of rats. One group received no electric shock; one group was
shocked for the incorrect response of choosing the dark alley; and
one group was shocked for the correct response of choosing the
lighted alley. While the group which was shocked for errors learned
more quickly than the group which was not punished, the group
which was punished for making correct responses did also. The no-
shock group required 107 trials to learn, on the average. The group
which was shocked for errors only required 35 trials, and the group
which was shocked for correct responses required 45. Punishment
does not seem to have stamped out responses in this situation.
The explanation which Muenzinger gave for his results and
which was supported by further research was that the shock made
the rats engage in vicarious trial and error. That is, the shocked rats
stopped at the junction of the T-maze and looked both ways before
making their choices. The unshocked rats ran through more rapidly
and paid less attention to the cues. Again the importance of attention
in learning may be seen. The effects of punishment are not the
opposite of the effects of reward, but instead seem to consist of (1)
directing attention, (2) suppressing behavior, and (3) altering oppor-
tunities to learn. The way these factors will interact will depend upon
the situation.
Learning theorists are in agreement on the phenomena described
by the later version of the law of effect. Organisms do learn to be-
have in ways which are reinforced. Various theorists disagree, how-
ever, on two aspects of how this comes about. First, there is disagree-
ment about what makes something a reinforcer, a question which will
be discussed in the next chapter. Second, it is unclear just what it is
that is changed by reinforcement. According to Thorndike’s theory,
it was the connection between a stimulus and a response which was
strengthened by reinforcement. Some other theorists, such as Edward
Tolman, believed that it was motivation which was changed by rein-
forcement rather than learning. A study by Tolman and Honzik®* will
help illustrate this position.
Tolman and Honzik ran rats through a multiple-unit T-maze in

Phenomena & Theories of Learning 97

 which each choice point was followed by a one-way door. That is, at
the first choice point the rat would turn either left or right. If it made
an incorrect choice, it would go into a blind alley and need to retract
its steps. If it made a correct choice, then it would go through a door
which would prevent its going back toward the starting point, and
would proceed to the next choice point. Three groups of rats were
run. Each rat in the first group always found food when it reached
the end of the maze. Each rat in the second group never found food
when it reached the end of the maze. Each rat in the final group ran
through the maze ten times without finding any food and then found
food every time after that. The important comparison is between the
rats which always found food and those which did not find it until
the eleventh day. If reinforcement simply strengthened the connec-
tion between a stimulus and a response as Thorndike believed, then
the delayed-reinforcement group would not learn anything until the
eleventh day. On the eleventh day it would start learning and would
learn at the same rate as the group which had been reinforced from
the beginning had learned.
That was not what happened. On the twelfth day, after being
fed in the maze only once, the delayed-reinforcement group made as
few errors as the group which had been fed in the maze eleven times.
The delayed-reinforcement group had obviously been learning things
during its first ten days of running the maze which had not shown
in its performance until it was motivated. Reinforcement cannot have
its effect solely by strengthening connections by stimuli and re-
sponses, but must act at least partly to motivate behavior. Experi-
ments such as that of Tolman and Honzik are called latent-learning
experiments, because the learning is latent rather than apparent in
performance in the early part of the experiment.
There are two questions raised by latent-learning experiments,
one of which is easier to answer than the other. The easy one is,
“Does reinforcement only strengthen connections between stimuli
and responses?” As we have seen, there is clear evidence from latent
learning that reinforcement also has an incentive effect, making
learning show in behavior which might otherwise go unobserved.
The more difficult question is, “Can learning take place without rein-
forcement?” At first glance this question too would seem to be an-
swered by Tolman and Honzik’s experiment. The rats which did not
receive food during the first ten runs through the maze did learn some-
thing during that period. While this is true, it is also true that they

98 Psychology: A Social Approach

 probably received some reinforcement. Their performance actually
did increase a little bit before they started getting any food, and it
may well be that being removed from the maze at the end was rein-
forcing to some extent. It is the difficulty in saying for sure that no
reinforcement was present in any given situation that makes the
second question about latent learning almost impossible to answer and
accounts for the presence of both reinforcement theorists and non-
reinforcement theorists. Reinforcement theorists such as Thorndike
and nonreinforcement theorists such as Tolman agreed that animals
came to do things for which they were reinforced. The reinforcement
theorists believed this happened through reinforcement strengthening
the connections between stimuli and responses. The nonreinforcement
theorists believed it happened through reinforcement directing atten-
tion and altering motivation. They believed that if an organism
noticed something, it would learn from that experience even though
the learning might not show in performance until there was appro-
priate motivation.

Clark Hull's Behavior Theory

While the theories of Thorndike and Pavlov differed in a number of

essentials, they had in common that they were stimulus-response
theories. In each, what was learned was thought to be a connection
between a stimulus and a response. While they were challenged by
the expectancy theory of Tolman, which held that it was ideas which
were learned rather than S-R connections, the two theories of learn-
ing which came to replace Thorndike’s and Pavlov’s were stimulus-
response theories which combined various aspects of Thorndike’s and
Pavlov’s approaches. These were the theories of Clark Hull and B. F.
Skinner.
The most important combination of Pavlov and Thorndike in
Hull’s theory was the concept of secondary reinforcement, which
combined the higher-order conditioning of Pavlovian theory with the
law of effect. To appreciate the significance of this rather complex
concept, it is necessary to look at the problem it was designed to deal
with. Hull was a reinforcement theorist. To the question of what was
reinforcing, his initial answer was that things were reinforcing which
reduced biological drives such as hunger and thirst. Since he believed

Phenomena & Theories of Learning 99

 that reinforcement was necessary to all learning, the problem was to
explain how learning took place in situations where drive reduction
was not immediately apparent.
Consider a rat in a multiple T-maze where it must learn a series
of perhaps a dozen different turns to reach the goal box. It is easy to
explain the learning of the last turn in terms of reinforcement theory.
The animal varies its response as Thorndike suggested. On those oc-
cations when it makes the correct turn at the last choice point, the
response is soon followed by eating, which reduces the hunger drive
and is thus a reinforcer. On those occasions when it makes the
wrong turn, its response is not reinforced for a much longer period
of time. The response of making the correct turn is thus stamped in
more than the response of making the incorrect turn, and the animal
learns.
Explaining the learning of earlier turns in the maze is more diffi-
cult, for studies have indicated that reinforcement must come quite
close in time to a response if it is to strengthen it. How can the rat
learn the first turn, when it will not reach the food for quite a while
whether it makes the right turn or the wrong one? The solution of
the contiguity theorist would be to say that reinforcement is not
necessary to learning and that the animal acquires expectancies about
what leads to what in the environment. Hull proposed a solution
which was consistent with his theoretical position that reinforcement
is necessary to learning and that all learning is the strengthening of
stimulus-response connections.
The solution was based on Pavlov’s observations on higher-
order conditioning, which Hull interpreted in terms of Thorndike’s
law of effect. The meat powder in the dog’s mouth was obviously a
reinforcer. If a conditional stimulus, such as a light, has acquired the
ability to reinforce a new conditional response, as happens in sec-
ondary conditioning, then that conditional stimulus must itself have
become a reinforcer—a satisfying state of affairs, in Thorndike’s
terminology. Speaking less precisely, it has become a symbolic reward
which is valuable because of what it stands for, food. Hull felt that
secondary reinforcers of this sort were what reinforced most learning.
Except in learning experiments, it is very seldom that an action is
immediately rewarded by, for example, food being placed in the sub-
ject’s mouth.
Secondary reinforcement, because it was responsible for most
human learning, was central to Hullian theory. To return to the rat

100 Psychology: A Social Approach

running through the maze, the learning of earlier turns was accounted
for in terms of secondary reinforcers. If the proposed mechanism had
simply been that the sight of certain parts of the maze was rewarding
to the organism because they were seen immediately before eating,
then the model would be easy enough to understand. The explanation
was more complex, however. As the animal approached the goal, it
started prematurely giving the responses it would give when it got
there. If it was running toward food, for example, it would start
chewing and swallowing while it was still running through the maze.
These fractional anticipatory goal responses were believed to serve as
the secondary reinforcers. In Hull’s system the stimuli arising from
these anticipatory goal responses had the interesting properties of
both reinforcing behavior, which would seem to imply that they re-
duced a physiological drive, and at the same time increasing motiva-
tion. This paradox is not as self-contradictory as it seems. What
happens if you eat one salted peanut? Eating it is satisfying, yet your
motivation to eat another may well be increased. It is perhaps per-
fectly reasonable that secondary reinforcers should at the same time
be reinforcers and increase drive.
His development of a theory of secondary reinforcement is but
one of the ways in which Hull modified the type of simple stimulus-
response theory held by Thorndike in order to make it fit a wider
range of phenomena. Hull’s great achievement was that while only
using relatively few concepts, such as drive, incentive, habit, and
reaction potential, he developed a theory which gave a reasonably
good approximation to the phenomena of learning in hundreds of
different situations. It is difficult to devise a theory which will predict
such diverse things as the tendency of a chicken to eat more if there
is a large pile of grain in front of it rather than a small pile, the
elimination of errors more rapidly at the start and finish of a long
maze rather than in the middle, the speed at which a rat will run
down a straight alley in order to reach food, and the learning of
verbal material by human beings. To all these situations, and hun-
dreds more, Hullian theory applied reasonably well.
In extending stimulus-response-reinforcement theory to apply to
such diverse phenomena, however, Hull and his students made drastic
modifications in all three basic terms of the theory. We have seen
that reinforcement stopped being the simple matter of a cat getting
or not getting a plate of salmon to eat, as it had been for earlier
theorists, and became instead a complex matter of such unobservable

Phenomena & Theories of Learning 101

 things as fractional anticipatory goal responses. If the advantage of
behaviorism is that it deals with observable phenomena, how are
unobservable responses giving rise to unmeasurable stimuli superior
to ideas as explanatory mechanisms?
Not only reinforcement was changed drastically from what it
had been in early stimulus-response theories; the natures of the
stimulus and the response were also. Both these changes made the
theory a more accurate fit to the real world, but they did so at the
cost of also making it more ambiguous and more difficult to apply.
Stimulus-response ideas about the nature of the stimulus
changed to take account of experiments such as the transposition
experiment. In this type of experiment, first reported by Kohler, an
animal appears to respond to the relations between different stimuli
rather than their absolute values.? While many variations on this type
of experiment have been run, the basic design is as follows: An ani-
mal is trained to choose the lighter of two shades of gray. It is then
tested with the lighter of the two shades used in training paired with
a still lighter shade. The animal does not respond to the shade which
was reinforced during training, but rather chooses the new lighter
shade. This result is called transposition because the animal seems to
be responding to the relationships between the stimuli regardless of
changes in their absolute values, just as a musician keeps the relation-
ships between notes constant in transposing music to a different key.
A simple stimulus-response theory, of course, would predict
that the animal would choose the stimulus which it had been rein-
forced for choosing during training. Spence, however, developed an
explanation which was consistent with a Hullian position.*® In dis-
cussing Pavlov’s work, we have seen that animals show stimulus
generalization. That is, they respond to a lesser extent to stimuli
which are somewhat different from those they were trained on.
Spence used this phenomenon to evolve an explanation for the trans-
position phenomenon. During training, the animal would learn not
only to approach the positive stimulus but also to a lesser extent to
approach similar stimuli. Similarly, it would learn not only to avoid
the negative stimulus but also to avoid to a lesser extent stimuli
which were similar to the negative stimulus. By making assumptions
about the extent to which learning fell off as the stimulus was
changed, Spence devised a theory which predicted the transposition
effect without assuming that the animal responded to the relationship
between the stimuli. In fact, Spence’s theory was able to explain

102 Psychology: A Social Approach

something that Kohler’s had not been able to, the decline in trans-
position when test stimuli considerably different from the training
stimuli are used.
Spence’s theory, however, was still not able to account for all
the phenomena. An experiment by Baker and Lawrence," for exam-
ple, found that the transposition effect disappeared if the stimuli were
presented one after the other instead of at the same time. According
to Spence’s theory, there is no reason why this difference in proce-
dure should make any difference in the results. A different theory
was thus proposed by Donald Riley, who provided strong experi-
mental evidence in favor of it.'* Riley pointed out that earlier work
had ignored the background against which the stimuli were pre-
sented. The decline in the transposition effect which was found when
stimuli far from the training stimuli were used might be due, not to
the factors suggested by Spence’s theory, but to the brightnesses of
the stimuli having different relationships to the brightness of the
background. Riley tested this idea by changing the brightness of the
background, so that it had the same relationships to the brightnesses
of the test stimuli as it had to the brightnesses of the training stim-
uli. When this was done, the transposition effect was just as strong
with stimuli greatly different from the training stimuli as it had been
with stimuli only slightly different from the training stimuli. The
effective stimulus was in fact a relationship, as proposed by Kohler.
Rather than being the relationship between the two stimuli, however,
it was the relationship of each to its background.
The stimulus in stimulus-response theory has thus changed from
being a concrete physical object which the experimenter designates
as a stimulus to being instead the aspect of the situation which the
organism perceives. This change has made the theory much more
able to account for phenomena of attention as well as transposition
but has also made the theory less concrete and explicit. A similar
change has taken place in the conception of the response. In Wat-
sonian behaviorism, a response meant a contraction of specific muscle
fibers or secretion by a specific gland. A number of different types of
study, however, show that the phenomena of learning cannot be
accounted for in any simple way by the learning of simple muscular
responses. Two of these types of study are studies of motor impair-
ment and studies of place learning. A typical motor-impairment study
is one by Lashley and Ball.** Rats were first trained on a maze, and
then underwent an operation in which the nerve fibers carrying sen-

Phenomena & Theories of Learning 103

 sation from the muscles of the trunk and legs were cut. As a result of
this operation, the rats not only lost the normal kinesthetic cues from
the position of their limbs but also developed a very strange manner
of walking. They dragged their legs and stepped on the back of the
feet instead of the sole. Despite this change in method of locomotion,
which made necessary very different muscular movements from those
they had used in running the maze before, the rats were able to drag
themselves through the maze with virtually as few errors as before.
This result is very difficult to account for in terms of learning specific
muscular responses, as is the result of a similar study by Macfar-
lane.** Macfarlane used a maze which could be flooded with water
and tested the result of the rat changing between swimming and
running through the maze. One group of rats was trained to swim
through the maze and then tested running through it, while another
was trained running and tested swimming. In neither case did the
change markedly interfere with the rats’ performance. Since very
different movements are involved in swimming and running, the evi-
dence is again strongly against the position that it is simple muscular
movements which are learned.
The place-learning experiments were a series of studies, many
of them carried out by Edward Tolman and his students, in which
animals seemed to learn to go to the same place even though getting
there might require different movements. Perhaps the most interest-
ing of these is a more recent study by Gleitman’® which is reported
in a Scientific American article. In this study the animals did not run
through the maze at all, but instead rode through the air in Plexiglas
trolley cars. The journey was 10 feet long and took about 20 seconds,
and they were given an electric shock all the way until they reached
the end. After a number of such trips, the trolley line was dismantled
and a T-maze was set up in its place, with one end at the starting
point and the other at the ending point of the former trolley line. If
the rats had learned anything from their previous experience, then in
the maze they should have run to the end where the electric shock
had stopped rather than the end where it had started. The vast ma-
jority of them did this, showing that they had learned the difference
between a “good” place and a “bad” place without making appro-
priate responses at all.
While all these results would clearly contradict a simple
stimulus-response theory of the Watsonian type, they could be rea-
sonably well explained by the more sophisticated theory of Hull. The

104 Psychology: A Social Approach

 concept which enabled Hull’s theory to deal with this type of result is
that of the habit-family hierarchy. The idea of the habit-family hier-
archy is that an organism learns multiple routes from the same start-
ing point to the same goal, the quickest and easiest being preferred
over the longer and more time-consuming. The different routes from
A.to B thus make up a whole family of habits, and they are called a
hierarchy because the most preferred one will be tried first, then the
next most preferred, and so on. The habits are transferred to situa-
tions similar to those in which they were learned. This concept en-
ables Hullian learning theory to account for results such as those of
Macfarlane on the basis that walking and swimming to a goal are
alternate ways of getting there which have been learned in the past.
When the most preferred habit of walking cannot be used, the animal
falls back on the less preferred method of swimming.
Even conditioning cannot be explained as the learning of a sim-
ple response. Liddell’® conditioned a sheep to flex its foreleg in order
to avoid an electric shock. The sheep was then turned on its back, and
the signal was given. Under these circumstances it did not flex its leg,
but instead stiffened all four legs as it attempted to get up.
In summary, then, stimulus-response learning theory has been
greatly modified to fit the results of experiments run by its critics. As
a result of the modifications, it is now able to account for the experi-
mental findings. This has been achieved, however, at the cost of
making the theory both more complex and more ambiguous. The
three fundamental concepts of stimulus, response, and reinforcement
have all had to be changed. John Watson would hardly recognize
contemporary behavior theory.

Attitudes toward Theory Construction

While there are still theoretical differences between stimulus-response

theorists, who believe that only responses to stimuli may be learned,
and cognitive theorists, who believe that people can learn ideas, these
differences have become less differences about the nature of learning
and more differences of opinion about the construction of scientific
theories. A theory is essentially a set of symbols and rules for their
manipulation. In order to translate events in the real world into the
concepts of the theory, rules of correspondence are necessary, and
these frequently take the form of a description of operations to carry

Phenomena & Theories of Learning 105

 out. Counting is an operation to map objects in the real world into the
concepts of arithmetic. Not feeding a rat for 24 hours is a way of
making the condition of the rat and the concept “hunger drive” cor-
respond to each other.
Besides the rules for translating between the real world and the
symbols of the theory, there must also be rules for how the symbols
may be manipulated. The statements 2 + 1=3 and 1+ 2=3 are
statements about the manipulation of the symbols rather than about
the real world. They will permit deductions about the real world
which will be accurate if that part of the world follows the theoretical
model of arithmetic. Not all aspects of the real world do. A pint of
alcohol mixed with a pint of water gives less than a quart total of
liquid. If two parts of concentrated sulfuric acid are poured into one
part of water, there is less likely to be a violent reaction than if one
part of water is poured into two parts of acid. These examples should
make clear that arithmetic principles are not true or false by them-
selves, but only when applied to some aspect of the world. The sym-
bol system, however, can be criticized on two bases without knowing
whether any aspect of the world corresponds to it. (1) It might be
self-contradictory, or (2) it might be unclear.
When it is proposed that some aspect of the world corresponds
to some theory, this may be tested by deducing things from the
theory, carrying out the corresponding operations on the real world,
and seeing if the results of the two processes correspond. To take a
simple example, suppose that someone has proposed that the addi-
tion and subtraction of golf balls follows the rules of ordinary arith-
metic (a proposition that no one is likely to disagree with). To test
the theory, we might carry out a number of experiments. The theory
suggests, for example, that two golf balls plus one golf ball give three
golf balls. This is a deduction from the theory. How do we carry out
corresponding operations on the real world to get an experimental
result? First we create the situation of two golf balls and one golf ball
by counting them into separate piles. We consider the “plus” to be
the operation of combining the two piles. We then count the golf
balls in the one resulting pile, and “Eureka!” there are three of them.
We have been unable to disprove the theory that golf balls follow
the rules of arithmetic.
While the example of the golf balls is so absurdly simple that it
is difficult to conceive of the experiments as actually being experi-
ments, the same principles apply to complex theories. We may see,

106 Psychology: A Social Approach

for example, that the theory only says things about the real world to
the extent that there are clear rules about what in the real world cor-
responds to what in the theory. We may also understand why it is
that it is said that a theory may be disproved but cannot be proved.
It is generally impossible to test all the deductions which may be
drawn from any particular theory, so all that can be said is that the
theory fits the facts that are known so far. Some new deductions and
new theoretical results may be found to not correspond, so that the
theory needs to be revised.
The classic example of theories which appeared to be perfect
needing revision is the breakdown of the conservation of mass and
conservation of energy with the advent of nuclear fission. The law of
the conservation of mass, which said that matter could be trans-
formed but not destroyed or made, and the law of the conservation
of energy, which similarly said that energy could change from one
form to another but could not be made or destroyed, both held for
the facts which were known during the nineteenth century. In nuclear
fission, however, mass is transformed into energy, violating both
laws. They thus needed to be revised by being combined into a more
general law of the conservation of mass and energy, which indicated
that they could be transformed into each other. This new principle
describes all the phenomena which were described by the earlier
formulations, plus some which were not. More than one theory may
explain the same results, and any theory may be superseded by a
more general one.
While research has forced changes in Hullian theory, its sup-
porters have pointed out that this could not have happened if the
theory had not made explicit predictions. With a theory which is not
as precisely stated as Hull’s, it is not clear what the theory would
predict, and any results may be made to seem in agreement with it.
They hold that even a theory which is wrong is better than one
which is ambiguous, for research will improve the inaccurate theory
but not the ambiguous one. Critics of stimulus-response theory, on
the other hand, maintain that it is not really all that precise and that
decades of research have just started to bring it into agreement with
what they have been saying all along. The difference really amounts
to differences about when it is better to patch up a theory and when
it is better to throw it out completely. The history of science is am-
biguous on the point, so some theorists continue to hold each position.
These two positions do not exhaust the possibilities, for there

Phenomena & Theories of Learning 107

 is the third point of view that theories are neither necessary nor
desirable. This has been most forcefully put by B. F. Skinner” and
supported by some interesting evidence. Skinner’s contention is that
many of the concepts developed by learning theorists do not corres-
pond to anything observable in reality and that greater progress
would be made by keeping interpretations closer to the data. To
emphasize this point, he has indicated that the abbreviation CNS,
which psychologists have used to refer to the central nervous system,
should really stand for “conceptual nervous system’’—the nervous
system which exists only in their own imaginations.
Skinner’s position makes him in one way the most radical be-
haviorist, for he alone would report behavior with no theoretical in-
terpretation at all. The conditions of the experiment would be
described, the data would be illustrated in a graph, and there would
be no hypothesis testing at all! Yet in another way, Skinner is similar
to critics of radical behaviorism, who have objected to the overelabo-
rateness of such theoretical concepts as fractional anticipatory goal
responses and habit-family hierarchies.
Skinner may well be right that theorizing in learning theory has
been more elaborate than was justified by the data. The neurologizing
of early learning theorists did not stand up, for as more knowledge
of the nervous system has been acquired, it has been found to be
very different from the telephone switchboard between stimuli and
responses which had first been imagined. It is therefore worthwhile
to look briefly at Skinner’s work to see where an atheoretical ap-
proach led him.
It may have been partly Skinner’s aversion to a Procrustean bed
of theorizing which led him to make the distinction which is most
basic to his work, that between respondent and operant behavior.
Respondent behavior is already familiar to us, for it is made up of
responses which are called out by known stimuli—the unconditional
responses of Pavlovian conditioning. While some learning theorists
tried to make all behavior fit a Pavlovian model and proposed that
there were always unconditional stimuli even when they did not
know what they were, this seemed an unwarranted assumption to
Skinner. Instead, he proposed separate laws of learning for behaviors
which were simply emitted for unknown reasons. These behaviors,
which are more common in everyday life than reflexes, he called
operant.
While operant behaviors are not initially called out by any

108 Psychology: A Social Approach

known stimuli, they eventually come under the control of stimuli. If
a pigeon, for example, is reinforced for pecking a key when a light is
on but not when the light is off, it will learn to peck the key when
the light is on, a response which is called a discriminated operant.
Rather than being similar to Pavlovian conditioning, operant condi-
tioning is similar to the trial-and-error learning of Thorndike, for the
initial stimuli calling out the behavior are unknown, but the behavior
is strengthened through reinforcement. Much of Skinner’s work may
be viewed as the elaboration of the law of effect.
Skinner’s research has indicated the value of remaining open to
novel observations, for some of his most important discoveries re-
sulted partly from laboratory accidents.’* Failures of equipment to
deliver food pellets to his animals and reluctance on Skinner’s part to
spend his time making the food pellets led him to the study of ex-
tinction and of the effects of only reinforcing the animals part of the
time. There are many different methods of reinforcement, and they
lead to characteristic patterns of response on the part of the rein-
forced animal. On a fixed-interval schedule, for example, the animal
is reinforced for the first response made after a given length of time
has passed since the last reinforcement, while on a fixed-ratio sched-
ule the animal is reinforced once each time it runs off a certain num-
ber of responses. Variable-interval and variable-ratio schedules are
possible, as well as combinations of different schedules either with or
without discriminable stimuli to tell when the schedule is changing.
Skinner became so involved in studying the effects of different sched-
ules that he coauthored an entire book entitled Schedules of Rein-
forcement.”®
While, as suggested by Skinner, theories may be overly elabo-
rate and far removed from the data, it is important to remember that
they also have great value in presenting information in concise form.
One equation may summarize thousands of experimental observa-
tions, and to simply acquire lists of everything any organism could
possibly do under any conceivable circumstance would seem to be a
hopelessly laborious task.
Unfortunately, if everything has not been observed, then con-
clusions will be drawn about specific situations which have not yet
been observed. It is at this point that theorizing is taking place,
whether consciously or not. When Skinner presents graphs of the
operant behavior of his experimental animals, he is avoiding this; he
is not making theoretical inferences. When he applies his results to

Phenomena & Theories of Learning 109

 human beings operating in a social environment, as he does in his
book Science and Human Behavior,?° he is assuming that the same
variables control the behavior of complex organisms in a complex
environment as control simple organisms in a simple environment.
The only way to draw conclusions about human social behavior,
without generalizing far beyond the data, is to study human beings
in a social environment directly.

Tolman’s Purposive Behaviorism

While stimulus-response theorists held that all learning was a matter

of learning responses to stimuli, cognitive theorists believed that ideas
could be associated directly with each other without any response
intermediary. Perhaps the most influential of the theorists holding
this position was Edward Tolman,°’ whose work on latent learning
and place learning has already been mentioned. Tolman believed that
there were half a dozen different kinds of learning, the majority of
which had been largely neglected by psychologists. These included
the learning of cathexes, that is, preferences for objects that reduce
drives; field expectancies, or principles of what leads to what in the
world; and motor patterns, the learning of skills rather than ideas.
Similarly, behavior is purposive. Tolman disagreed with Thorn-
dike that learning was a blind mechanical process, feeling that it was
instead motivated and guided by perception toward goals. To some
critics of a cognitive point of view, it did not seem scientific to con-
sider behavior as being purposive. It seemed to be reminiscent of
earlier animal psychology, which had made unjustified inferences
about what animals were thinking and feeling, and used them to
argue that there was a divine purpose in life. Tolman had no such
meaning in mind, but merely meant that behavior comes in sequences
which are terminated by goals. Within each sequence it is predictable,
but not from one sequence to another. A person who enters a res-
taurant at lunchtime will almost always obtain food and eat it. The
whole of the sequence is quite predictable from its first steps. What
sequence of behavior he will engage in after reaching the goal of
satisfying his hunger is much less predictable.
In reaching goals, behavior is dependent upon perception. One
difference between the learning studies run by Tolman and those run
by Hull and his students was in the type of learning situation used.

110 Psychology: A Social Approach

While Hull and his students used alley mazes in which a rat ran
down a narrow corridor and could not see anything, Tolman’s group
used elevated mazes which enabled the animal to look around. Each
group was using a situation which would make more likely the type
of learning it believed in. It is difficult to learn much more than a
sequence of right and left turns while running through corridors with
no distinguishing features, while it is much easier to learn general
principles about the nature of the environment from an elevated
viewpoint.
Tolman did not have a theory in the sense that Hull did—a
highly formalized set of mathematically stated laws. His work is
more a proposal for a theory, a framework in which the details are
not yet filled in. Does it make sense to work out constants in equa-
tions dealing with reinforcement to four decimal places if we do not
know whether reinforcement is necessary to learning? Should an
entire learning theory be based on the learning of responses without
first considering whether other kinds of learning are possible? Tolman
started with some general principles about behavior to guide the
development of theory. Since he did not live to elaborate the theory
himself, the extent to which the program will be realized will depend
upon his students.
Let us look at a typical piece of behavior as an illustration of
some of the general properties of behavior which Tolman described.
A man is going downtown to buy a phonograph needle. If his car
won’t start, then he will take the bus. If the street he plans to take is
closed, then he will take a different one. What does this simple ex-
ample illustrate?
First of all, behavior is molar. By this term, Tolman meant that
behavior was more predictable when viewed in terms of large units
than when viewed in terms of small ones. When the man sets out
for the record store, the muscular movements he will use in getting
there are not predictable, nor is his exact route. His reaching his
destination is much more predictable. This is the same point which
was made by the studies on place learning. The response is not a pat-
tern of muscular responses, but the achievement of a goal.
Another general principle of behavior is that it is modifiable. If
the man’s car will not start, he will not continue trying to start it
forever, but will turn to some other means of transportation or call
the garage to come repair the car. This aspect of human behavior is
so obvious that it would not be worth mentioning, except that the

Phenomena & Theories of Learning 111

 instinctive behavior of some species is not modifiable to any signifi-
cant extent. The naturalist Fabre studied a type of pine caterpillar
which follows a silken trail left by the first caterpillar in the line. By
an accident, the leader laid down a circular path around the top of a
large vase, and the entire troop of caterpillars walked around in a
circle for over a week before managing to break out of the circle!*
We shall see more examples of the rigidity of instinctive behavior in
the next chapter. Human beings, however, are much more flexible
than the caterpillars and modify their behavior more easily on the
basis of experience.
Finally, behavior differs from one species to another. Tolman
believed that these differences were not just differences in degree, but
differences in type of learning. Simple learning tasks are not carried
out any more efficiently by human beings than they are by lower
organisms, yet human beings are capable of feats of learning which
other species cannot duplicate. Caution must therefore be used in
generalizing from one species to another.
While Tolman did not devise a detailed theory of learning, his
work is perhaps more relevant to the study of social behavior than
any other learning theorist’s. In order to consider the interaction of
groups of individuals and not be overwhelmed by detail, it is neces-
sary to describe behavior in molar rather than molecular terms.
Molecular theories can only be applied by analogy. For that reason
the point of view in this book is probably closer to that of Tolman
than to that of any other learning theorist described in this chapter.

Summary

While there is still considerable disagreement among psychologists

over theoretical interpretations of learning, much is known about the
empirical phenomena which the different theories attempt to explain.
The accumulation of empirical knowledge began in earnest with
Pavlov’s work on conditioning, which provided a model of behavior
taken over by American behaviorism. Some of the important phe-
nomena of learning which Pavlov investigated are conditioning, ex-
tinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, and discrimination.
Pavlov’s work, however, concentrated on reflex responses which
were elicited by known stimuli. The study of responses which are not

112 Psychology: A Social Approach

 called out by any known stimuli represents a second line of develop-
ment in learning theory, pursued by Thorndike and more recently
Skinner. While there is disagreement among different theorists as to
whether positive reinforcement is necessary to learning or whether it
has its effects in other ways, such as by modifying motivation, there
is no doubt that organisms learn to behave in ways that are rewarded.
The effects of negative reinforcement are more complex. They are
not, as Thorndike initially thought, equal and opposite to the effects
of positive reinforcement.
The most ambitious attempt to develop a comprehensive learn-
ing theory to date has been that of Clark Hull. While basically a
stimulus-response theory, Hull’s modified the nature of the stimulus,
the response, and reinforcement from the meanings these terms had
in earlier and simpler theories. The concepts of secondary reinforce-
ment, fractional anticipatory goal response, and habit-family hier-
archy enabled the theory to relate to diverse phenomena of learning,
but at the expense of some loss of concreteness. One’s appraisal of
the theory depends to a great extent on one’s attitudes about the
development of scientific theory, and this topic was discussed at some
length in this chapter.
An approach to learning theory which stresses the complexity
of human behavior is that of Edward Tolman, whose picture appears
at the beginning of this chapter. The studies he and his students did
of such phenomena as latent learning and place learning have con-
tributed much to our understanding of human behavior, even though
the theoretical position he held has not yet been as completely elabo-
rated as that of Hull.

Notes and Acknowledgments

1. For a history of learning theory the student is referred to Boring, Edwin G.
A History of Experimental Psychology. (2d ed.) New York: Appleton-
Century-Crofts, Inc., 1957.
For data on which learning theory is based he should see the somewhat
outdated but extremely comprehensive Woodworth, Robert S., and
Harold Schlosberg. Experimental Psychology. (Rev. ed.) New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1958.
For the theories of learning he should read Hilgard, Ernest R., and Gordon
H. Bower. Theories of Learning. (3d ed.) New York: Appleton-
Century-Crofts, Inc., 1966.

Phenomena & Theories of Learning 113

 . Boring. Op. cit., p. 637.
. Skinner, B. F. The Behavior of Organisms. New York: Appleton-Century,
1938, pp. 18 and 19. By permission of the publisher.
. Trowbridge, M. H., and H. Cason. “An experimental study of Thorndike’s
theory of learning.” Journal of General Psychology, 1932 (7), pp.
245-258.
. Thorndike, E. L. The Fundamentals of Learning. New York: Bureau of
Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1932.
. Estes, W. K. “An experimental study of punishment.” Psychological Mono-
graphs, 1944 (57), no. 263.
. Muenzinger, K. F. “Motivation in learning: I.” Journal of Comparative
Psychology, 1935 (17), pp. 267-277.
Muenzinger, K. F., A. A. Bernstone, and L. Richards. “Motivation in learn-
ing: VIII.” Journal of Comparative Psychology, 1938 (26), pp. 177-
186.
Muenzinger, K. F., and R. F. Powloski. “Motivation in learning: X.” Jour-
nal of Experimental Psychology, 1951 (42), pp. 118-124.
. Tolman, E. C., and C. H. Honzik. “Introduction and removal of reward,
and maze performance in rats.” University of California Publications
in Psychology, 1930 (4), pp. 257-275.
. A history of this type of experiment is given in Riley, Donald A. “The
nature of the effective stimulus in animal discrimination learning:
Transposition reconsidered.” Psychological Review, January, 1958
(65), pp. 1-7.
10. Spence, K. W. “The differential response in animals to stimuli varying in a
single dimension.” Psychological Review, 1937 (44), pp. 430-444.
ad: Baker, R. A., and D. H. Lawrence. “The differential effects of simultaneous
and successive stimuli presentation on transposition.” Journal of
Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 1951 (44), pp. 378-382.
WR, Riley. Op. cit.
ae Lashley, K. S., and J. Ball. “Spinal conduction and kinaesthetic sensitivity
in the maze habit.” Journal of Comparative Psychology, 1929 (9),
pp: 71-105:
14, Macfarlane, D. A. “The role of kinesthesis in maze learning.” University
of California Publications in Psychology, 1930 (4), pp. 277-305.
1S: Gleitman, Henry. “Place learning.” Scientific American, October, 1963.
16. Liddell, Howard S. “The conditioned reflex” in F. A. Moss (Ed.), Compara-
tive Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1934, p.
PHY
WI, Skinner, B. F. “Are theories of learning really necessary?” Psychological
Review, 1950 (57), pp. 193-216.
18. Skinner, B. F. “A case history in scientific method.” American Psychologist,
1956 (11), pp. 221-233.
iy Ferster, C. S., and B. F. Skinner. Schedules of Reinforcement. New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1957.
20. Skinner, B. F. Science and Human Behavior. New York: The Free Press of
Glencoe, 1953.

114 Psychology: A Social Approach

21. A systematic statement of Tolman’s position will be found in Tolman, E. C.
Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men. Berkeley, Calif.: University
of California Press, 1949.
A collection of his work, sponsored by his students and his colleagues, is
Tolman, E. C. Collected Papers in Psychology. Berkeley, Calif.: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1951.
22. Teale, Edwin Way (Ed.). The Fascinating Insect Word of J. Henri Fabre.
Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1956.

Phenomena & Theories of Learning 115

Peter N. W
FOUR
INNATE,
BeeNINED-& -
MOTIVATED
Bemay 1OK

If the ability of man to learn is incredible, perhaps it is no more

incredible than the inherited behavior patterns of lower organisms
which rely on instinct rather than learning. Let us join the great
French naturalist J. Henri Fabre’ in the middle of the nineteenth
century as he observes the behavior of a solitary wasp, the Langue-
docian sphex. In doing so, we may broaden our view of learning and
motivation from what it would be if we considered only human
beings.
When ready to lay an egg, the sphex searches out a female of

117
 a grasshopper known as an ephippiger. It stings the grasshopper in
the thoracic ganglia, an operation which removes the grasshopper’s
ability to use its legs without harming it in any other way. The sphex
then drags the ephippiger toward the sphex’s burrow. If the grass-
hopper struggles too much, the wasp may perform another delicate
operation on it. Forcing open the nape of the grasshopper’s neck, the
wasp reaches in with its mandibles and squeezes the grasshopper’s
brain. This brings on paralysis but does not do permanent injury. An
ephippiger which Fabre took home in that state recovered from the
paralysis in a few hours.
Upon reaching its burrow, the sphex lays one egg at the root of
the ephippiger’s thigh. Although the ephippiger may live for a period
of weeks, it is unable to dislodge or damage the egg because of the
damage to the thoracic ganglia. In time the egg hatches, and the
sphex grub proceeds to eat the still living but powerless ephippiger.
The young wasp is guaranteed a supply of fresh food, and its chances
of survival are increased.
How does the sphex learn to perform the delicate and complex
acts necessary to providing its young with food? It has no oppor-
tunity to learn them, for as we have seen, the young wasp is born in
isolation and is not reared by its parents. The entire pattern of be-
havior is innate. It is to this type of complex, unlearned behavior
shown by all members of the species under appropriate conditions
that the term instinct is properly applied.
Amazing as instinctive behavior may be, it does not have the
flexibility of behavior which is learned. Fabre demonstrated this by a
number of experiments which he performed with the insects he was
observing. One of these experiments utilized a different variety of
sphex which left a paralyzed cricket for its grub to eat. When the
wasp had the cricket almost to the mouth of its burrow, it would
leave the cricket for a moment and inspect the burrow. Fabre took
advantage of its absence to move the cricket a little distance away
again. When the wasp returned, it again dragged the cricket near to
the burrow and then again went into the burrow. Each time Fabre
moved the cricket away while the wasp was gone, and each time the
wasp went mechanically into the burrow again as soon as it drew
the cricket near. The instinctive behavior was not completely unmodi-
fiable, for occasionally Fabre would find a wasp which would even-
tually abandon the final inspection and drag the cricket directly into
the hole. The vast majority, however, would simply keep repeating

118 Psychology: A Social Approach

the instinctive pattern even when it was no longer appropriate. This
rigidity of behavior was also clear in other examples. In one, Fabre
stole the sphex’s egg and prey just as the wasp was about to close the
entrance to the burrow. Although the wasp inspected the inside of
the burrow after it was emptied, it then proceeded to close the en-
trance just as if the burrow had not been disturbed.
Some organisms obviously have brains which are far from being
blank slates at birth. It may be that the caution of psychologists in
regarding anything as innate in man is a result of psychological
theorizing having gone too far in the other direction at one time.
With complex instincts having been described in animals during the
nineteenth century, a strong trend developed to explain human be-
havior in similar terms. Instincts were an important part of the theo-
rizing of William James, and were given further impetus as an ex-
planatory concept by the work of William McDougall. In a number
of ways, McDougall was one of the important pioneers of the field
of psychology. He was the author of one of the first two social psy-
chology texts, published in 1908, and was a behaviorist before Wat-
son, calling his general psychology text Psychology: The Study of
Behaviour’ in 1912. It is thus unfortunate that McDougall is remem-
bered today only as a discredited instinct theorist.
McDougall used the term “instinct” in a more general way than
we would today, so that in some ways it was more equivalent to what
we would call a drive. He conceived of man as having a limited num-
ber of instincts, such as curiosity and gregariousness, and character-
istic sentiments associated with these instincts. Since the expression
of the instinct could be modified by learning, the instinct in McDou-
gall’s theory was something much less rigid than the behavior of one
of Fabre’s wasps. The ease of explaining behavior by attributing it to
instinct, however, led to overuse of the term. L. L. Bernard,’ in a
survey of the literature in 1924, found that several thousand human
actions had been described as instinctive by one writer or another!
It soon became apparent that the explanation and labeling of behavior
were being confused in saying that one boy fought because he had
an instinct of pugnacity while another ran away from home because
he suffered from too much wanderlust. As cross-cultural evidence
was by then accumulating which showed that everything in human
behavior varied radically as a result of different learning experiences
in different cultures, instinct theory was discredited.
Reacting to the proliferation of endless numbers of instincts to

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 119

 account for human behavior, psychologists next reduced the number
of human motives to an absolute minimum. The model of motivation
which came to be generally accepted was that motives had their
origins in the efforts of the organism to maintain a constant internal
environment. While this view had earlier advocates, it was worked
out in the most convincing detail by the physiologist Walter B.
Cannon in his book The Wisdom of the Body.* For a human being to
continue living, there are many internal conditions which must re-
main relatively constant. The temperature can only vary within fairly
narrow limits, similarly the salt, water, and sugar contents of the
blood. Each of these levels, as well as many others, is maintained by
a combination of internal mechanisms and behavior. When blood
sugar level falls, stored sugar is released into the bloodstream to re-
store it. Besides this internal adjustment, however, behavior plays a
role in maintaining the level. The organism eats. Because of the active
nature of this process of keeping conditions inside the body relatively
stable despite changes in the external world, Cannon gave the process
the name homeostasis.
Ideas of homeostasis were accepted and extended by other theo-
rists. Virtually all human motivation came to be viewed as having its
ultimate object in the maintenance of homeostasis. That behavior was
influenced by such factors was shown by experiments such as those
of Richter,? who showed that rats which had had their parathyroid
glands removed would eat much more calcium than rats normally did
and thus stay alive, while parathyroidectomized rats which were not
given a chance to eat extra calcium would die in a few days. Simi-
larly, an experiment by Davis® had shown that human infants allowed
to choose their own foods over a period of months maintained a
well-balanced diet. (Learned preferences for nonnutritious foods may
break down this adaptive pattern in human beings, however.)
Obvious as it is that homeostasis plays an important role in
human survival, how could all the various activities which human
beings engage in be explained in these terms? What physiological
balance is maintained by looking at a painting, going ice skating, or
writing a letter to the editor? The solution to this problem which be-
came widely accepted was that of secondary reinforcement in Hullian
learning theory. As the young infant is cared for by his mother,
satisfaction of his hunger need is associated with the presence of his
mother’s smiling face. Social approval by his mother, and by gener-
alization by other people, should then become able to reinforce other
actions which could be learned by higher-order conditioning.

120 Psychology: A Social Approach

 The explanation was an ingenious one and was in accord with
observations which show social approval to be a very important fac-
tor in human learning. It probably oversimplified, however, the basis
of human motivation. If we look at human beings from an evolution-
ary point of view and expect them to have characteristics in common
with other animals, then we will expect them to show some homeo-
static drives, which do serve important functions in adaptation. There
is no reason why all motives should be homeostatic, however. We
have already seen in looking at Fabre’s wasps that there are forms of
animal behavior which are very adaptive for the species which have
purposes quite different from the maintaining of an optimal level of
some internal physiological system. Why should human beings be
the exception in which all motives are based on homeostasis?
An ingenious experiment by Harry Harlow’ casts serious doubt
on the traditional explanation of the child’s learning to love his
mother on the basis of her feeding him. Harlow raised baby monkeys
in the laboratory with surrogate mothers made of wire. One wire
frame was covered with soft terrycloth, while the other was simply
bare wire. Each of the frames was constructed so that a feeding bottle
could be attached to it and so that the baby monkey could climb on
it. According to the usual theory based on homeostatic drives, the
baby monkeys should have preferred the ‘“mother’” which fed them.
Instead, they preferred the cloth-covered frame regardless of which
one they were fed on. Not only did they spend much time climbing
on the cloth “mother” while they only climbed on the wire “mother”
to eat, they also ran to the cloth “mother” for comfort when they
were frightened! The contact comfort of the soft cloth was a more
effective reinforcer than the drive-reducing food.
Harlow’s study not only raised problems for the homeostatic
drive model of motivation but also supported studies showing the
importance of contact in developing social motivation in human in-
fants. One of the better known of these was a study by Spitz* com-
paring nursery children with foundling-home children. While the
children in both institutions had good food, housing, and medical
care, the foundlings had only a minimum of contact with an adult.
Each nurse was in charge of eight to twelve children and had little
time to devote to each. In the nursery setting, each child had close
relations with his own mother during a part of the day.
Because the children were compared at too young an age to per-
mit the use of intelligence tests, they were compared on the Hetzer-
Wolf baby tests. These test skills which infants normally develop

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 121

 during the first years of life. Because there is little relationship be-
tween a skill such as grasping a block of wood and what we mean by
intelligence in adults, there is no relationship between developmental
quotient at, say, age two and intelligence quotient at age twenty. On
the other hand, the tests do measure the types of skills which are
being developed during the early years.
The nursery children and the foundlings were first measured
when they were only a few months old, and the foundlings had a
slightly higher developmental age on the average, making an average
score of 124 as compared to the nursery children’s 102. With small
groups of children and with scores quite variable at that age, the
difference would not be significant, but it does make it very unlikely
that the foundlings were initially retarded compared with the nursery
children.
The longer the children stayed in the foundling home, however,
the more their developmental quotients dropped. At the end of
1 year, the average developmental quotient of the foundlings was 72.
At the end of 2 years it was only 45! They were hardly able to do
anything at the age of two which they had not been able to do at the
age of one. In contrast, the nursery children stayed about the same
in developmental quotient, which, of course, is what people usually
do. The severely deprived environment had radically retarded the
development of the foundlings.
While there are some methodological questions about some of
the early studies and some doubts as to which variables are most
important in causing the effects, there is considerable evidence that
severe early social deprivation has extremely deleterious effects on
child development. A survey of studies by Bowlby’® indicated that the
effects of the deprivation were reversible if it did not last for too
long a period but that social deprivation continued over a period of
years could result in permanent mental retardation. These effects, like
the results of Harlow’s study, do not fit a homeostatic model of
motivation.

The Blank-slate Hypothesis Reexamined

The homeostatic-drive model of motivation was the natural accom-

paniment of the blank-slate theory of learning. It provided an ex-
planation of behavior based on a mind in which nothing was built in
except the mechanisms for recognizing and correcting physiological

122 Psychology: A Social Approach

imbalances. Furthermore, the research findings inconsistent with the
homeostatic model are usually also inconsistent with the blank-slate
theory. Whether it is a preference for soft objects, a tendency to
explore a new environment, or a pattern of sexual behavior, some-
thing more than homeostatic drives is built into the organism accord-
ing to each of the lines of research critical of the homeostatic-drive
model of motivation. The accumulation of such research is thus an
adequate reason to reexamine the question of what is innate in
human behavior.
The question of the relationship between heredity and environ-
ment in human development has generally been disposed of by not-
ing that an interaction of heredity and environment is always neces-
sary for development. A human infant would not be human if it did
not have the genetic composition of a human being rather than of
some other organism. Equally, however, it would not be human with-
out an environment within the uterus adequate for the development
of its genetic potential. Without this initial interaction of heredity
and environment no infant would result.
Despite the closeness of this interaction, however, it is still pos-
sible to ask the extent to which either heredity or environment usu-
ally limits development given certain developmental conditions. An
analogy to a chemical reaction may help clarify this point. If hydro-
gen and oxygen are combined to form water, two gram molecular
weights of hydrogen will combine with each gram molecular weight
of oxygen. In any given reaction, if you know how much hydrogen
and how much oxygen are present, it is possible to say whether the
amount of water produced will be limited by inadequacy of one ele-
ment or of the other. Similarly, just as both hydrogen and oxygen
are necessary to form water but one may be the limiting factor in a
given case, both heredity and environment are necessary for human
development, but either one may limit development in a particular
situation. Saying that heredity and environment interact does not say
everything there is to be said about that interaction, for it does not
say which is normally the limiting factor. For example, what we mean
when we say that the grasshopper-stinging behavior of the sphex is
innate is not that it will develop without any environmental supports,
but that most of the time the environment will provide adequate
supports. In that way it is radically different from behavior we call
learned, which is behavior depending on environmental conditions
which often do not exist. Most people, for example, never are ex-
posed to the necessary conditions for learning Japanese.

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 123

 The main impetus for the consideration of innate factors in the
behavior of animals, as well as much of the data on these factors,
has come from a group of biologists studying animal behavior and
calling themselves ethologists. Since it sprang from a field different
from comparative psychology, ethology has stressed both a different
subject matter and a different methodology from comparative psy-
chology, which is also devoted to the study of animal behavior.
Ethologists have been more interested in behavior as adaptation and
in studying a wide variety of organisms in their natural habitats.
Psychologists have been more concerned with trying to find general
principles of learning and with the control which laboratory experi-
ments can give. While the two fields have become more similar as
they have started to influence each other, there are still differences in
point of view, and one of the most important differences is in the
attention devoted to unlearned behavior. As Tinbergen has com-
mented, “Ethologists consider that learning is a change in something,
and that it must pay to study this something before the change
occurs.””"® Let us look at some of the research of ethologists on the
something before the change occurs in order to see what might be
built into human beings if the slate should turn out to have writing
on it.
The two most basic concepts of the ethologists in their work on
instinct are the fixed motor pattern and the innate releasing mech-
anism, The first, as its name implies, is an organized muscular re-
sponse which is inherited rather than learned. The second is a general
mechanism enabling stimuli of a certain type to call out a response.
(To speak of calling out a response perhaps gives the wrong impres-
sion. The ethologists speak of its being released instead, because the
tendency of the animal to give the response is so great that it will
sometimes go off in the absence of appropriate stimulation. They thus
conceive of it as merely having to be released instead of called out.) A
number of excellent examples of both fixed motor patterns and innate
releasing mechanisms are given in a paper on the interaction of
unlearned behavior patterns and learning by Eibl-Eibesfeldt.’’ Since
they all are drawn from the behavior of mammals, they represent be-
havior more similar to that of human beings than the behavior of
Fabre’s wasps.
One of the examples dealt with nest building in rats. Earlier
research had maintained that nest building and retrieving of young
by rats were learned, as rats which had not had any opportunity to
manipulate solid objects did not show these behaviors. Eibl-Eibesfeldt

124 Psychology: A Social Approach

noted that in the earlier research the animals had been tested in a
strange cage, where exploration would be expected to take precedence
over other types of behavior. When tested under more appropriate
conditions, the vast majority of the inexperienced rats did build nests.
To ask whether nest building as a whole is innate is inappro-
priate, however. The nest building of inexperienced rats is different
from that of experienced rats. Both use a number of specific motor
patterns which are the same in a number of species and which are
unlearned and may therefore be called fixed motor patterns. These
patterns include several motions which are used for digging in the
earth, such as scratching, kicking backward, pushing, and pushing
with the snout. While these motions are inappropriate to building a
nest out of strips of paper on a cage floor, they often appeared in the
inexperienced animals’ nest-building activities. More appropriate were
the grasping of materials, pulling them free, biting them loose, and
carrying them to the nesting site and depositing them there. A num-
ber of other specific motions are then made in transforming them
into a nest. The ability to carry out each of these motions seems to
be innate, but their integration into a functional pattern of nest
building improves with experience. The inexperienced rats eventually
manage to fumble nests together, but they often employ motions out
of sequence and when they are inappropriate to the conditions. Nest
building as a whole should not be regarded as innate, but rather as a
learned integration of innate elements.
While the rats displayed a number of fixed motor patterns, the
killing of prey by polecats provides a better example of an innate
releasing mechanism. Studies by Eibl-Eibesfeldt indicate that the
killing itself is initially called out by the prey running away. An in-
experienced polecat will not attack a rat, for example, as long as the
rat stands its ground. When the rat runs, the polecat kills it. The
sight of the fleeing prey thus seems to be the innate releaser for the
instinctive attacking behavior. With experience, however, the cat
learns to attack whether the rat runs or not. The learned behavior in
this case extends the range of the more specific innate mechanism.
The interaction of innate and learned factors is also seen in the part
of the body in which the polecat bites its prey. A wild polecat may
initially grab its prey anywhere it can, but then it rearranges its hold
and kills it with repeated bites to the back of the neck. The motor
pattern of repeated sharp stabbing of the killing bite is innate, but
the location of the bite on the back of the neck is learned. Polecats
which only have experience with defenseless prey, such as baby

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 125

 chickens, do not learn to locate the bite in a particular place. As soon
as they have experience with an animal which can bite back, such as
a rat, the cats learn to locate the bite on the back of the neck, a
position which leaves the animal unable to bite them.
Many other examples of innate releasing mechanisms have been
studied by the ethologists. Escape reactions of the type which ducks
and geese have to birds of prey, for example, are released by the
short neck of the predator as its shape passes overhead. A cardboard
model of a bird with a long protuberance on one side of the wings
and a short protuberance on the other side will call out escape re-
actions if moved through the air with the short extension going first
so that it is shaped like a hawk, but will not call out the reactions if
moved the other way so that it resembles a bird with a long neck and
short tail such as a goose.’® Similarly, fighting and courtship behavior
of the three-spined stickleback (a small fish) are released by quite
specific stimuli. Fighting is called out in males by the red abdomen
and threatening vertical posture of another male, while courtship is
called out by the swollen abdomen of the female. The male will court
a model with little resemblance to a stickleback except for having a
swollen abdomen and will not court a model of a female stickleback
which is realistic in all ways except for lacking this one sign.’®
These examples and others which have been studied indicate
that there may be innate behaviors other than the sort of simple
stimulus-response link represented by the salivation of Pavlov’s dogs.
It is possible for a sensitivity to a particular stimulus configuration to
be built in, such as the stickleback’s sensitivity to the swollen abdo-
men or the duck’s reactivity to neck length. On the other hand, it is
possible for an organized motor-reaction pattern to be built in with-
out being closely tied to any releasing stimulus, such as the scratch-
ing reaction of the rat or the killing bite of the polecat. These innate
motor patterns may go off with little environmental support, as in
the case of the rat deprived of objects to manipulate which carries
its tail around in its mouth.
This position is more consistent with a cognitive position in
learning than with a stimulus-response position. Rather than all
knowledge being a matter of stimulus-response connections, it im-
plies that the mind of even a lower organism is more like a computer,
having separate routines built in for stimulus identification and
for response patterns, as well as for connecting stimulus with re-
sponse. Both the stimulus-identification process and the motor-
response organization may be either learned or innate. In the case of

126 Psychology: A Social Approach

a duck reacting to a bird of prey, for example, the effective stimulus
pattern is built in. For a child reacting to words, the effective stimulus
pattern is learned. The killing bite of the polecat is an innate motor
pattern, while the one we use in tying our shoelaces must be learned.
Learning to give a response to a stimulus, far from being the simplest
possible type of learning it was once thought to be, is actually quite
complex, since it involves stimulus recognition, a response pattern,
and the connection of the two. A simpler type of learning is the
simple stimulus-recognition learning involved in realizing that a stim-
ulus is familiar.
Motivation, then, is a way of bringing about behavior which is
more complex and more flexible than that which can be programmed
completely in advance. A motive, in the sense of goal-oriented be-
havior, would not be necessary for a simple reflex such as a knee
jerk, for in that case the connection between one stimulus and one
response could be innate. A motive would be necessary to bring
about behavior which needed to change in unpredictable ways with
changing circumstances, such as the finding of varied sources of
different foods.
An interesting case of a behavior pattern in which almost, but
not quite, everything is innate is imprinting. The young of some
birds, such as the greylag goose, typically follow the mother bird
around. While the reaction is innate, the recognition of the appro-
priate stimulus is not. Instead, the young gosling learns to follow the
first moving object of approximately the right size which it sees after
birth. The learning takes only one trial, does not extinguish, and does
not lead to any reinforcer in the usual meaning of the term. It is a
behavior pattern, however, which would generally be quite adaptive.
As Deutsch has pointed out, building in the stimulus-recognition
pattern would result only in the gosling recognizing geese in general
and not its own mother, and might lead to some geese which most
closely approached the ideal pattern being followed by all the gos-
lings. Adaptive as imprinting usually is, it becomes maladaptive when
the conditions it normally occurs in are changed. If the first moving
object the gosling sees after hatching is Dr. Lorenz, it will follow him
around and show the normal instinctive behavior toward him in-
stead of toward geese.**
A process similar to imprinting may account for some of Har-
low’s observations on his monkeys raised with terrycloth surrogate
mothers. When the monkeys reached maturity, it was almost impos-
sible to get them to mate. The few that did succeed in mating did

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 127

 not show the normal instinctive mothering patterns toward their off-
spring. If monkeys, like birds, depend upon an early learning experi-
ence for recognizing the proper object of their instinctive reactions,
then the failure of these reactions in Harlow’s monkeys would not be
surprising.
The research of the ethologists has been significant for a theory
of motivation in at least three ways. First, it has demonstrated that
there is much behavior which, while it clearly is of adaptive signifi-
cance, equally clearly does not fit a homeostatic model. Second, the
research has shown that both the stimulus-recognition and motor-
organization functions in many instinctive acts are too complex to be
taken for granted under the rubric of an S-R formulation. Finally, the
research has shown an interaction between the internal and external
control of behavior, in which these two factors assume differing
amounts of importance in different instinctive acts. To this third
contribution we must now turn.
Perhaps the best summary of the ethological research on the
interaction of internal and external factors in behavior is a chapter by
Tinbergen entitled ‘“The internal factors responsible for the ‘spon-
taneity’ of behavior.” This discusses such examples as the fanning
of newly laid eggs by the three-spined stickleback.”
The fanning is adaptive, since it provides a better supply of
oxygen to the developing eggs. The amount of fanning normally in-
creases gradually from spawning until the eggs hatch just over a
week later. Is this pattern due to internal programming or to the
perception of the condition of the eggs? It is partly controlled by
external conditions, for artificial lowering of the oxygen content of
the water increases the amount of fanning. Internal factors also play
a role, however. If half-developed eggs are removed and replaced by
freshly laid eggs, the fanning reaches a peak when the original clutch
would have hatched, apparently showing a running off of an internal
pattern of behavior. After this initial peak of fanning, a secondary
peak is reached corresponding to the hatching of the second clutch of
eggs, showing responsiveness to external conditions. If repeated sub-
stitutions of eggs are carried out, the stickleback eventually stops
exhibiting the fanning behavior, apparently in response to internal
changes. The control of even quite simple behavior may thus involve
a fairly complex interaction of internal and external factors, and the
relation of these factors must be discovered in each separate case of
motivated behavior.

128 Psychology: A Social Approach

 One type of relationship between internal and external factors
which is observed is that some behaviors are more and more easily
called out with increasingly long periods of time since they were last
released. In some cases, such as hunger and thirst, the increasing
motive may be fairly clearly ascribed to homeostatic imbalance. This
is less clearly the case with sexual behavior. Male rats, for example,
need less and less instigation to mating behavior with longer and
longer deprivation, although there is no known physiological imbal-
ance which is corrected by the mating behavior.*® Especially interest-
ing are instinctive behaviors which, after a sufficiently long period of
not being released, will go off in the absence of any apparent releas-
ing stimulus. Lorenz observed this phenomenon in a captive starling
which ran off the entire pattern of catching, killing, and swallowing
insects without any insect being present!*’ Similarly, Tinbergen ob-
served a male stickleback going through the elaborate rituals of court-
ship while alone in a tank. These and other examples cited by Tin-
bergen are more complex examples of something which may be easily
observed in everyday life. The play of animals, such as stalking and
pouncing by kittens, carrying objects in the mouth on the part of
dogs, and butting by young goats, usually involves the practice of
motor patterns which are involved in adult instinctive behavior.
All the examples of instinctive behavior which have been con-
sidered so far are drawn from animals considerably less intelligent
than human beings. Everyone knows that insects have instincts but
that human beings have only a few simple reflexes! There are, how-
ever, patterns of human activity which do seem to have large innate
components. These include the movements made by infants when
held upside down or when placed in water, the development of
grasping, and especially the development of locomotion. An excellent
summary of the role of maturation in human development is that of
McGraw.*®
Maturation of some human activities shows two gradients of
development of which the first seems to correspond to the develop-
ment of subcortical control of the behavior and the second seems to
correspond to its control by cortical areas of the brain. Young in-
fants, for example, make well-coordinated swimming motions when
placed in water. This innate pattern of behavior seems to be under
control of subcortical areas of the brain. As the infant grows older,
he stops showing the innate pattern and instead makes disorganized
and random motions when placed in water. This change seems to

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 129

 correspond to increasing control of his behavior by the cerebral
cortex; this change culminates in well-controlled voluntary move-
ments.
Some aspects of behavior eventually come under more cortical
control than others do. Innate factors in behavior are probably most
marked for those activities which are oldest in terms of evolution and
under control of the most primitive parts of the brain. These are
generally functions which are similar over a wide range of living
organisms. For example, routine maintenance functions such as the
regulation of temperature, blood pressure, and blood sugar level are
fairly similar in different species and are generally controlled at a
subcortical level. Besides these internal activities, there are some gross
body movements which are necessary to a wide variety of organisms
and which have thus evolved control patterns at subcortical levels.
Probably the most important of these, and thus the best candidates
for being considered instinctive in human beings, are the control of
posture and locomotion. The pattern by which human infants develop
the ability to crawl has been intensively studied, and seems to depend
on maturation much more than learning. As pointed out by
McGraw,” the sequence of stages in the development of crawling not
only is similar in different human beings but is almost identical in
human beings and salamanders.
Postural adjustments also may have large innate components.
This is illustrated more effectively for dogs than for human beings by
a case observed by Katz.*° A dog, because of being in an accident,
needed to have one of its front and one of its hind legs amputated.
As soon as the dog had recovered from the operation and was al-
lowed to stand up, it was able to stand and run with no practice at
all! Photographs of the dog are shown in Figure 4—1 and Figure 4-2.

Hormones and Behavior

In some cases the varying thresholds for release of a form of be-

havior have been traced to hormones, chemicals released into the
bloodstream by the endocrine glands. These glands include the pitui-
tary, the gonads, the thyroid and parathyroid glands, the adrenal
cortex and adrenal medulla, and the placenta and corpus luteum in
pregnant women. The chemicals produced by these glands influence
many aspects of adaptation, but there is generally not a simple cor-

130 Psychology: A Social Approach

Figure 4-1 Dog which had lost two legs. (Katz*°)

Figure 4-2 The same dog running at top speed. (Katz?°)

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 131

 respondence of one gland to one form of behavior. Most hormones
have a number of effects, and generally more than one hormone is
involved in any given piece of behavior. The maintaining of preg-
nancy, for example, involves hormones from the pituitary, corpus
luteum, and placenta. The pituitary gland, especially, is involved in
many functions and secretes hormones influencing several other
glands.
The situation is further complicated by the wide variety of ways
in which the hormones could act. As both Lashley*’ and Beach** have
pointed out, it is possible that the hormones might (1) have general
effects upon the excitability of the organism, (2) influence the de-
velopment of the structures involved in response patterns, (3) stimu-
late sense organs so as to make them send afferent impulses to the
central nervous system, or (4) act directly on portions of the central
nervous system. The action on the central nervous system could be
of any of three types: (a) the hormone might be necessary to the
development of a nerve structure involved in producing the behavior,
(b) it might lead to the periodic growth and decline of the structure,
or (c) it might increase its sensitivity at the moment it was stimulated
by the hormone. Nor are these possibilities logically exclusive of each
other, so that it is not simply a matter of which one way hormones
operate. Instead, they act in different ways in different mechanisms
and often in more than one way in the same mechanism.
An example of a gland which has general effects throughout the
organism rather than effects confined to some specific target organ
is the thyroid. As is widely known, the secretions of this gland regu-
late the rate at which the cells of the body carry on metabolism. In-
sufficient output of the gland produces disorders related to too slow
metabolism—apathy and reduced intelligence, dry skin, and puffy
flabby muscles. On the other hand, hyperthyroidism, or an excess
production, causes nervousness, a racing heart, and weight loss.
The hormone secretion of the thyroid gland consists of a mix-
ture of compounds, and at least half a dozen major enzyme systems
are involved in their production.** There are thus a number of differ-
ent ways in which their synthesis may be inadequate, ranging from
insufficiency of iodine in the diet to failure of the usual control of
thyroid production by the pituitary gland and including failure of
synthesis at each of the many steps involved. As this one example
illustrates, simply the diagnosis and treatment of disorders of any one
endocrine gland is an extensive field by itself.

132 Psychology: A Social Approach

 Besides the effects which varying thyroid output has on the
adult, there are different effects of thyroid insufficiency during devel-
opment. In extreme cases, such as individuals born without any thy-
roid gland at all, hypothyroidism may cause a form of mental defi-
ciency called cretinism, which is characterized by dwarfism and a
very low level of intellectual functioning. While the effects of hypo-
thyroidism in the adult are generally reversible by the administration
of thyroid extract, the effects of insufficiency during early develop-
ment are largely irreversible. The thyroid gland thus has two differ-
ent types of effects.
Many of the endocrine glands are concerned primarily with
maintenance of the proper internal environment. Such functions as
regulation of the sodium and calcium levels in the blood, or even the
maintenance of pregnancy, need not concern us here. More interesting
is the study of the effects of the gonads, which are the most directly
influential in controlling behavior.
The migration of birds is an activity which seems to be quite
directly under hormonal control. While there are still unanswered
questions about it, the general pattern seems to be that the length
of the day influences pituitary activity, which causes seasonal changes
in gonad development on which migration depends. Artificial manip-
ulation of day length may cause migration out of season.** A number
of other studies show the specific control of some forms of behavior
by hormones in birds. Male chicks injected with testosterone propi-
onate develop all the sexual-behavior patterns of adult cocks. Male
hormones also cause aggressive behavior, which may result in an
animal ranking higher in a dominance hierarchy.”
Sexual behavior, however, is not completely under hormonal
control even in birds. While pigeons usually cease mating after cas-
tration, mating may be induced by particularly active female pi-
geons.”° This continuation of sexual activity in the absence of the
supporting hormone is more common in higher mammals than in
pigeons. Similarly, sexual receptivity in women is not as dependent
on variations in hormone level during the menstrual cycle as is the
case with lower mammals. As we go up the phylogenetic scale,
learned central-nervous-system control of behavior becomes more im-
portant. The most striking effects of hormones on behavior are thus
shown by animals other than mammals.
The effects of sex hormones on behavior seem to involve not
only current activation of structures but also differences in develop-

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 133

 ment. Animals castrated before maturity do not exhibit sexual be-
havior, while those castrated after maturity may continue to show
it.27 Similarly, capons and poulards behave differently after the same
hormone treatment. These and other similar observations suggest that
many of the more important influences of hormones on behavior are
mediated not just by current activation but by the development of
structures in the central nervous system. Later in this chapter a model
of motivation will be presented which provides one explanation of
how these two types of effect might come about.
In human beings, the study of hormones has led to dramatic
explanations of physiological phenomena, which tend to support the
view that there is no one-to-one correlation between a specific gland
secretion and a certain emotion. Instead there is a growing awareness
of the interaction between the endocrine system, the divisions of the
nervous system, other body tissues, and the environment. Increasing
knowledge of the constant interplay of physiological processes which
adapt an organism to the demands of its environment has led to
widespread adoption of a new view of medicine and disease de-
veloped by Hans Selye,’* based on the whole-body reaction to ex-
tremely severe stress. He called this reaction the general adaptation
syndrome (GAS). It means the body’s physiological reaction to all
severe threats to its continued existence, whether the stress is caused
by burning of its flesh or by conflict in its central nervous system.
The entire mechanism of the general adaptation to stress has not
been completely discovered, just as knowledge of the hormone system
as a whole is far from complete. The initial alarm message which
calls it out may be, for example, a hormone secreted by the hypo-
thalamus and received by the pituitary, or it may be a chemical state
of the total body. But the clearest endocrine relationship in this stress
adaptation is the upsetting of normal feedback between the pituitary
secretion adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and the corticosteroid
hormones which are produced by ACTH stimulation of fatty globules
on the adrenal glands. Normally the ACTH stimulation of corticoste-
roid production is regulated by the presence of the hormones
themselves in the blood. The general stress adaptation somehow stim-
ulates the production of ACTH regardless of the volume of corti-
costeroids in the blood, allowing them to increase. They have the
ability to wall off the sites of invading destructive microorganisms
and perform other defensive functions, while some of them produce
anti-inflammation effects. Prolonged reliance, however, on the very

134 Psychology: A Social Approach

complex general adaptation syndrome causes physical damage to the
organism, of a sort different from what would be caused by the
stressor itself; e.g., burning of the animal’s feet causes bleeding le-
sions in its stomach. Let us look at rats exposed by Selye to pro-
longed cold.*? A hundred rats were put into living quarters kept at
near-freezing temperature. After 2 days ten animals were sacrificed,
and their physical changes were noted. The corticosteroid-producing fat
bodies on their adrenals had been consumed, and their adrenal
glands were enlarged by the process of making more. Their thymus
glands were decreased, and they all had stomach ulcers. At this time
twenty more of these rats were put into an even colder room with
rats which had been living at comfortable temperature. The rats
which had had the 2 days at near-freezing temperature were not able
to stand this as well as the rats put straight into it from room tem-
perature. Yet after 5 weeks in it, the rats from the original cold
chamber were able to withstand conditions of extreme cold which
rats directly from room temperature could not. Were they adapted to
cold? Apparently they were adapted only in the sense that they were
depending on their general adaption to stress mechanisms. Ex-
haustion eventually killed them.
The degree of stress which calls out this stress syndrome varies
from a fatal shock to an amount which will call it out in one indi-
vidual but not in another. Studies of the degree of psychological
stress which produces the general adaptation syndrome in human
beings have necessarily been difficult, from the point of view of rigid
experimental controls. Many controlled observations of the phe-
nomena have nevertheless been made.*® One such study was done by
Bunney et al.,*1 using level of corticosteroids as the dependent vari-
able. Patients in a mental hospital who had depressive psychoses
were tested for daily corticosteroid levels and independently rated on
their state of psychological well-being. Experiences of the patients
which they reacted to as being severely ego-threatening were also
recorded, separately. When the patients were suffering a severe de-
pressive psychotic crisis as observed by the psychological raters,
coinciding on the record with at least three separate violently ego-
threatening experiences, such as being told that they were not going
to be relased from the hospital on their expected release date, their
corticosteroid levels were almost three times the level of their average
for the previous 3 months.
An unusually carefully controlled field experiment by Sachar

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 135

 et al.*? gives a glimpse into the possible physical-survival value of
mental illness. Corticosteroid levels in six psychiatric patients hos-
pitalized for psychosis jumped to high levels during the active psy-
chotherapeutically induced “working through” of a problem which
they had been unable to face alone. Corticosteroid levels after resolu-
tion of the psychological conflict and subsequent recovery of a nor-
mally functioning mental state were very similar to levels while the
patients were still psychotic but before the psychiatric disruption of
their psychotic fantasies. One possible interpretation is that being in
a state of organized psychosis—severe mental illness characterized by
denial of reality—gives temporary protection from the physiologically
destructive GAS. Another study on this topic will be discussed in
Chapter 6.
Causality is usually regarded as a one-way street in which
physical events cause psychological events. The regarding of physical
events as somehow more basic than psychological events is some-
what similar to early attempts to reduce all medicine to anatomy. To
the untrained observer, anatomy may seem more real than physi-
ology—where there are physical structures of flesh and bone, no one
can have any doubt about their reality. How much more concrete and
satisfying they seem than gradients of ion concentration, which can
only be inferred from sophisticated measurements. Yet it is now clear
that anatomy is no more fundamental than physiology. In the de-
velopment of the embryo, differences in ion concentration, which
cannot be directly observed, cause anatomical differences which
can. Similarly, psychological events can cause physical events as well
as be caused by them. Sexual behavior provides a good example.
Sexual excitement, from environmental stimulation, causes the pitui-
tary to release gonadotrophins, which stimulate the production of
androgens (male sex hormones) by the gonads.** A psychological
state thus influences hormone production just as the hormones influ-
ence psychological states. This is especially clear in the case of anxi-
ety, where a psychological state can call out stress reactions which
have profound physical effects on the organism.

A Theory of Motivation

While there have been many theories of motivation proposed and

probably no existing theory can account for all the data in the area,
one of the most successful seems to be one proposed by Deutsch.**

136 Psychology: A Social Approach

Because it provides for separate systems for perceptual analysis and
response pattern, it is more compatible with the observations of the
ethologists than some theories. Similarly, it provides mechanisms for
the activating of motives, which are at least not contradictory of the
ways in which hormones operate. It has been applied by Deutsch
specifically to some research areas, such as that of thirst, and is es-
pecially able to account for some of the effects of electrical stimula-
tion of the brain which cause difficulties for other theories.
This great compatibility with the data, however, has come about
to a large extent because the theory is not yet very complete or ex-
plicit. It is, rather, a schematic overall model which needs to be com-
pleted with more precise formulations of how it applies in different
areas. Given the present state of knowledge of motivation, the pro-
grammatic nature of the theory is probably not a disadvantage. The
whitening bones of discarded theories of motivation along the road-
side should perhaps warn the theorist to proceed cautiously in this
area.
Two distinctive features of Deutsch’s model of motivation, be-
sides its separate perceptual and response systems, are its proposal
that it is some positive stimulation which terminates motivated be-
havior and its suggestion of separate arousal and reinforcement mech-
anisms. The former of these features is just the opposite of the latest
revision of Hull’s motivational model, which suggests that drive
stimuli initiate and maintain motivated behavior while their absence
terminates it, but is more similar to Tinbergen and Lorenz’s*® instinct
model. Tinbergen noted that at least for some instinctive acts, the
extent to which the act was performed would be a function of the
length of time since the behavior was engaged in. In his system, then,
it was not a reduction of drive stimuli which terminated the goal
response. Instead, the response was simply run off in proportion to
the amount of accumulated drive. Deutsch’s model differs in speci-
fying that feedback from the goal object is necessary to terminating
the drive. In both theories the consummatory act may end independ-
ently of the ending of the stimulation which initiated that consum-
matory act.
For thirst, at least, it is clear that separate mechanisms initiate
and terminate the drinking activity. First it was demonstrated that
water entering the stomach was not necessary to the terminating of
drinking. A dog with a fistula which prevented the water from enter-
ing the stomach still drank the appropriate amount of water for the
length of time it had been deprived of water and then stopped

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 137

 drinking.*® After a time of not drinking, the animal would again
drink the appropriate amount of water. This result suggests that
(1) the drinking is terminated by a mechanism which does not de-
pend on the water actually being absorbed, but (2) the drinking is
initiated by a mechanism which does depend on the absorption of an
adequate amount of water to meet the body’s needs, so that drinking
will be initiated again when the fistula prevents the absorption of the
water.
The separate mechanisms for initiating and terminating drink-
ing are shown even more directly by the results of placing water
directly in the stomach of a thirsty dog.*’ If the dog is allowed to
drink right away, before the water can be absorbed, it will drink the
same amount as it would have if the water had not been placed in its
stomach. If there is time for the water to be absorbed before the
animal is allowed to drink, then it will not drink at all. In the former
cases the stimulation from drinking terminates the activity, while in
the latter the mechanism initiating drinking is inactivated by removal
of the water deficit.
Knowledge of thirst was furthered when Zotterman discovered
the sensory structure involved in the termination of drinking. It is a
fiber in the tongue which responds to salt and to water in the follow-
ing ways: The fiber has a high spontaneous rate of discharge, and is
thus constantly sending nerve impulses to the central nervous system.
When salt, a hypertonic solution, is placed on the tongue, the fiber
increases its rate of firing. When water, a hypotonic solution, is
placed on the tongue, the fiber decreases its rate of firing.
Combining his own theory and Zotterman’s findings, Deutsch
suggested the following mechanism of thirst:** Drinking is initiated
by the central nervous system in response to a deficit state. A separate
mechanism terminates drinking, and this mechanism depends on a
message indicating that water is being taken in, arriving at the brain
in a sufficient amount to overcome the activity initiated by the deficit.
In the case of drinking, however, the message is a negative one—the
lack of stimulation from a structure which normally sends afferent
impulses to the brain. Since Deutsch sees this mechanism as consis-
tent with his theory, it is apparent that the message which terminates
motivated behavior in his theory should be interpreted as a change
from the normal state of stimulation, whether that change is an in-
crease or decrease in the rate of firing of nerve cells.
Applying this model of thirst, Deutsch pointed out that it could
explain the puzzling observation that rats would drink more dilute

138 Psychology: A Social Approach

saline solution than they would pure water. This finding had pre-
viously been interpreted in terms of the rat preferring salt water.
Deutsch pointed out that it could be due to the greater quantity of
dilute saline needed to give the same amount of water message to the
brain during drinking. Since the firing of the water-salt fibers is not
inhibited as much by dilute saline as it is by plain water, more drink-
ing of dilute saline would be necessary. From this point of view, then,
salt water is diluted water.
Deutsch and Jones*’ tested this explanation by a series of ex-
periments in which thirsty rats ran through a T-maze with plain
water in one arm and salt water in the other. They learned to run to
the plain water, showing that their greater drinking of salt water was
not due to a preference for it. These results, as well as those of the
earlier research, thus strongly support Deutsch’s model as applied to
thirst. Unfortunately, less is known about many other drives, and it
is not yet clear that stimulation from the goal object is necessary to
terminate all drives. It might be the case, for example, that some
actions were terminated by feedback from performance of the act or
even by the sending of the neural messages to perform the act with-
out any feedback that this had been done. This latter case would
most closely approximate the ethological model.
One example showing that different drives may act differently
is that of hunger as contrasted with thirst. As we have seen, a dog
with a fistula so that water does not enter its stomach will still stop
drinking after lapping an amount of water appropriate to its water
deficit. However, it does not stop eating when it has swallowed an
amount of food appropriate to its hunger. In an experiment reported
by Hull,4° a dog weighing 10 kilograms and having a fistula ate
8 kilograms of food before pausing. In contrast to the case with
thirst, apparently the mere act of chewing and swallowing food does
not terminate eating. This result does not contradict Deutsch’s theory,
for appropriate feedback for terminating eating may be initiated at a
later stage than the passage of food through the mouth. It should
make us leery, however, of assuming that all drives necessarily oper-
ate in the same way. Instead they may have evolved different mech-
anisms on the basis of adaptation. It would be interesting to study
hunger comparatively in different animals, for example. Is eating
terminated in the same way in a dog and in a herbivore? An animal
which makes an occasional kill and must eat as much of it as possible
to maintain itself until the next one might well have a different
mechanism for controlling eating than an animal in which intake of

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 139

 food was more gradual and steady. In terms of our present knowl-
edge, it is thus quite possible that some motivated behavior may con-
form to the model proposed by Tinbergen and Lorenz rather than
that proposed by Deutsch.
Deutsch’s model is illustrated in Figure 43. It functions as fol-
lows: The basic unit of the system is a link, which is connected with
an analyzer and with the motor system. Each analyzer is sensitive to
one environmental cue which sometimes precedes reinforcement. At
the end of the chain of links there is a primary link which is acti-
vated by some physiological factor, such as dehydration or testoste-
rone, and which has its activity terminated by some specific message
such as that we have considered for thirst.
When the primary link is activated by a motive, the excitation
travels down the motivational pathway to the links connected with it.
At each link, if the link is not being activated by its own analyzer,
the impulse simply continues on to other links. If, however, the
analyzer is responding to its environmental cue, then the link causes
the nerve impulse to travel into the motor system connected with
that link. That will usually cause the analyzer connected with the
next link in sequence to become activated by its environmental cue,
and the motor activities will continue in order until the analyzer of
the primary link is activated, causing reinforcement.
Let us apply the model to a thirsty rat which is dropped into a
maze with which it is familiar. The maze has ten turns, with turn 1
closest to the starting point and turn 10 closest to the goal box, and
the rat is dropped in at turn 4. The rat will have developed, through
past running of the maze, analyzers corresponding to the turns in
sequence. The analyzer corresponding to turn 4 will be activated by

Figure 4-3 Deutsch’s model of motivation.

Reinforcement Reinforcement
pathway pathway

Motivational Motivational
pathway pathway

MeO Analyzer Motor Analyzer Mos Analyzer

system system system

ENVIRONMENT

140 Psychology: A Social Approach

the rat’s recognition of its location in the maze. That will cause it to
move forward in the maze until it sees turn 5, which will activate the
analyzer corresponding to turn 5, and so on until the rat reaches the
end of the maze and drinks.
Obviously, the system is dependent for its operation on the
links being connected in the sequence in which their analyzers are
likely to become activated on the route to reinforcement. Deutsch
assumes that (1) the stimulus for terminating activity of the primary
analyzer for each drive is innate, (2) all links are connected by poten-
tial pathways at birth, and (3) pathways between links become func-
tional on the basis of the links becoming activated in turn. (The
reinforcement pathway serves to communicate from one link to an-
other when one is being activated and thus makes this third type of
learning possible.) The system is able to account for phenomena such
as place learning and latent learning because links may be built up
into chains (of knowledge about the environment) before any primary
link fires (reinforcement).**
In the introduction we looked at research by James Olds on
pleasure centers in the brain.*® Olds found that if electrodes were
implanted in the septal region of a rat’s brain, the rat would press a
lever almost indefinitely in order to receive the electrical stimulation.
What do these results imply about a theory of motivation? At first
glance, they would seem to eliminate a homeostatic theory and argue
for a hedonistic one. According to the most widely accepted homeo-
static model, it was reduction in drive stimuli which was reinforcing,
while hedonism has always assumed that it was some sort of positive
stimulation which was pleasurable, and thus sought out by the or-
ganism. Because it was this sort of positive stimulation which was
found to be reinforcing in Olds’s research, it seemed to argue for a
hedonistic model.
On further consideration, the interpretation of the experiment
becomes less clear. The same information may be carried by either a
positive or a negative message. It is quite common for neurons to
inhibit the activity of other neurons. Olds’s results thus do not neces-
sarily rule out a homeostatic model. It could be that drive stimuli
inhibited the action of the pleasure centers, which were otherwise
active. In that case, pleasure would correspond to a lack of homeo-
static imbalance.
While almost any theory of motivation is compatible with the
existence of some sort of center for reinforcement, there are more
specific properties of these centers which most theories have diffi-

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 141

 culty in accounting for. One of these properties of the pleasure cen-
ters was shown in an experiment by Wyrwicka, Dobrzecka, and
Tarnecki.*® They found that animals which had been trained to
perform a habit for food began to perform it if they were given
intracranial stimulation. Animals which had not been trained on
the habit did not perform it when they were given the electrical
stimulation. In this case, as is pointed out by Deutsch and Howarth,**
the stimulation seems to be activating a motive rather than merely
reinforcing behavior. The result makes sense in terms of Deutsch’s
model, which assumes that reinforcement involves both arousal
through the motivation pathway and reinforcement through the re-
inforcement pathway. In the naive animals, there are no functional
connections between the various links involved in the learned be-
havior. The motivational and reinforcement pathways connecting the
links are developed as a result of the training the animals receive.
The electrical stimulation is assumed to activate both the motivational
pathway and the reinforcement pathway. It therefore not only acts as
a reinforcer but also activates the links involved in the learned be-
havior and calls it out in the trained animals. It does not call out the
behavior in the naive animals, of course, because they lack the func-
tional pathways necessary to performing the behavior in response to
the motivation.
The results of the Wyrwicka, Dobrzecka, and Tarnecki experi-
ment are especially interesting because they hint at how endocrines
could have some of the results they do have. While the current-
activation role of endocrines is built into Deutsch’s model in the form
of activation of primary links, which he explicitly states to be due to
such physiological factors as increases in testosterone level, it is more
difficult at first to see how early hormone levels could have perma-
nent effects on adult behavior. (This phenomenon was pointed out
earlier in the chapter, where it was noted that there are differences in
the behavior of animals castrated before and after maturity.) In
Deutsch’s model, the presence or absence of hormones would deter-
mine whether the primary link became activated, and activity of the
primary link would be necessary to chains of secondary links becom-
ing connected with it. This model thus seems able to account for hor-
mone influence on the development of structures involved in response
patterns.
While Deutsch and his coworker Howarth have done a number
or experiments applying Deutsch’s theory to intracranial electrical
stimulation of pleasure centers,*® perhaps one of the simplest will best

142 Psychology: A Social Approach

illustrate why it seems necessary to postulate separate motivational
and reinforcement pathways. Habits learned and performed for intra-
cranial stimulation differ from other motivated behavior in at least
two ways. One of these is that the animal does not become satiated.
An animal pressing a lever for food pellets will stop when its hunger
drive has been satisfied; one pressing it for electrical reinforcers never
seems to become satisfied. This result would make sense if, as
Deutsch proposes, the electrical stimulation stimulated a motivational
pathway and aroused the motive each time it was received. The
second unusual characteristic of the habit performed for intracranial
stimulation was demonstrated by Deutsch and Howarth. The extinc-
tion of the habit depends on the mere passage of time rather than on
unreinforced trials. ;
Normally, an animal which has learned to press a lever for a
reinforcement will need to press it many times without receiving the
reinforcement before it will extinguish the habit. If it does not have
extinction trials but is merely removed from the situation, it will
show little diminution of the habit with the passage of years. As soon
as it is returned to the box with the lever, it will, if hungry, begin to
press the lever.
Deutsch and Howarth tried the simple experiment of training a
rat to press a lever for intracranial stimulation and then removing the
lever for 7 seconds. The lever was then returned, but pressing it no
longer brought about brain stimulation. (That is, the animal was then
given normal extinction trials.) Under these circumstances, the animal
only pressed the lever the number of times it would have pressed it
if it had also been pressing it during the 7 seconds. The animals
stopped pressing the lever, not because the habit had extinguished
from unreinforced trials, but simply through the passage of time.
How could behavior which is insatiable also be forgotten in less than
a minute? It probably could not be forgotten, but it could temporarily
disappear if the motive on which it was based was inactivated. Ap-
parently the electrical stimulation not only serves as a reinforcer but
also arouses the motive which the reinforcer satisfies, as proposed by
Deutsch’s model. Many other more complicated experiments by
Deutsch and Howarth support the same conclusion.
That the same electrical stimulation should both arouse and
satisfy a motive seems paradoxical. The paradox, however, is not
new to us. In the discussion of Hull’s concept of secondary rein-
forcement, it was noted that according to his theory the same condi-
tions aroused motives and reinforced them. Except that it does not

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 143

 propose that all motives are homeostatic, Deutsch’s model illustrates
how the paradoxical nature of secondary reinforcement could be
brought about.

PHYSIOLOGY AND EMOTION

In looking at physiological mechanisms of motivation, which are

essentially the same for all people, we have perhaps raised as impor-
tant questions as we have answered. Different cultures, and even
different individuals, are notoriously different in the motives on
which they act. If their motives are based on the same physiological
mechanisms, how can people be driven to such different ends? Ernest
Hemingway, for example, used to amuse himself by putting the lions
in someone else’s lion act through their paces. Since lions are prob-
ably less easily managed by a stranger than by their usual trainer, it
is perhaps not surprising that most novelists manage to find other
ways of amusing themselves. How are we to account for the differ-
ences?
One way in which people come to be motivated differently has
already been pointed out. They learn preferences for different incen-
tives on the basis of experience, or, in the terms of Deutsch’s model,
secondary links connected to analyzers recognizing different environ-
mental cues become connected to their primary links. Thus it is
possible to learn to want to eat such diverse foods as roots and
berries, uncooked meat, and raw mollusks. As well as the carrots,
blueberries, steak tartare, and oysters eaten in our own culture, peo-
ple have come to like eating a surprising number of things.
A second basic way in which motives can differ although based
on the same physiological mechanisms was demonstrated in a study
by Schachter and Singer.*® Essentially, their findings show that physi-
ological arousal is an ambiguous stimulus which may be perceived
differently. The same physiological state may be interpreted as dif-
ferent emotions, depending on the social context in which it occurs.
What Schacter and Singer did was to have a physician inject
subjects with either epinephrine or a placebo, a dilute saline solution
having no physiological effects. The placebo treatment acted as a
control and enabled the experimenters to be sure that the effects they
were observing were not just due to the subjects knowing that they
had been given a drug and feeling that it should have some effect.
Some subjects who were given the epinephrine were correctly told

144 Psychology: A Social Approach

what its physical effects would be—shaking hands, a flushed face,
and a pounding heart. Others were misinformed as to its effects and
told that it might make their feet feel numb. The prediction was
that subjects who were misinformed about the effects of the epine-
phrine would ascribe their physiological arousal to an emotion
aroused by the social situation they were in, while those who knew
that the epinephrine caused their arousal would not experience any
strong emotion.
An essential part of the experiment, then, was to create different
social situations which the physiological arousal could be ascribed to.
Two such situations were created, one in which the subject might
reasonably expect to feel euphoric and one in which he might feel
angry. Each involved the use of a confederate who was supposedly
also a subject in the experiment. In one situation the confederate
acted in a wild and silly manner, playing a game of basketball with
scraps of paper and a wastebasket, making a slingshot, and playing
with a hula hoop. In the anger situation, on the other hand, the con-
federate objected to a questionnaire which he and the real subject
were filling out, eventually tearing it up and leaving the room. It was
predicted that where the subject was misinformed about the effects of
the epinephrine, he would report feeling the same as the confederate
—happy or angry depending on the behavior of the confederate—
but that he would not report these emotional reactions when he
realized that his physiological arousal was due to the drug.
In general the results supported the hypothesis very strongly.
In the euphoria treatment, the subjects who had been misinformed
about the effects of the hormone not only reported more happy emo-
tion than those who knew what the hormone did, they even behaved
differently. The misinformed subjects significantly more often started
playing the wild games with the confederate! Thus the subjects in
the different treatments, although they were experiencing the same
physiological arousal, attributed it to happiness or anger depending
on the social context in which it occurred. Having interpreted the
ambiguous stimulus of their physiological state as due to an emotion,
they then behaved in a way appropriate to the emotion. The person
who fights and the one who runs away, for example, may differ, not
in physiological state, but in whether the physiological state is attrib-
uted to fear or anger. By interpreting individuals’ emotions for them,
cultures may call out radically different behavior from the same
physiological base.

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 145

Summary

Some animal species show behavior which is complex, unlearned, and

properly described as instinctive. Earlier in the history of psychology
a futile attempt was made to describe most human behavior in in-
stinctive terms. Later human behavior was viewed as virtually entirely
learned, perhaps overlooking some innate features.
Research by ethologists has added several important concepts to
our attempt to understand the interrelations of heredity and environ-
ment. These are the fixed motor pattern, the innate releasing mech-
anism, and imprinting. The meanings of these concepts were illus-
trated in studies of the behavior of rats, polecats, geese, monkeys,
and small fish called sticklebacks. The ethological approach of not
asking whether a behavior pattern is innate, but instead asking
whether portions of it are innate, seems to lead to a clearer under-
standing of much animal behavior.
Following Lashley and Beach, four effects of hormones may be
distinguished. They may influence the general excitability of the
organism, the development of structures involved in behavior, the
sensitivity of the sense organs, or the functioning of specific portions
of the central nervous system. That the interrelationships among
hormones, learning, and behavior are complex has been illustrated by
studies of sexual behavior, the effects of stress, and psychiatric
patients.
A model of physiological motivation developed by Deutsch
seems to be more compatible with the ethological data than most.
Two distinctive features of this model are that behavior is initiated
and terminated in different ways and that separate pathways are
involved in motivation and reinforcement. Consistent with Deutsch’s
model and especially significant in understanding human motivation
is research by Schachter and Singer on emotional states.

Notes and Acknowledgments

1. Teale, Edwin Way (Ed.). The Fascinating Insect World of J. Henri Fabre.
Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1956.
2. Additional material on McDougall and instinct theories in psychology may
be found in Edwin Boring, A History of Experimental Psychology,
and C. N. Cofer and M. H. Appley, Motivation: Theory and Re-
search.

146 Psychology: A Social Approach

 . Bernard, L. L. Instinct: A Study in Social Psychology. New York: Henry
Holt and Company, Inc., 1924.
. Cannon, W. B. The Wisdom of the Body. (2d ed.) New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 1939.
. Richter, C. P. “Total self-regulatory functions in animals and human be-
ings.” Harvey Lectures, 1942-1943 (38), pp. 63-103.
This is summarized in Cofer, C. N., and M. H. Appley. Motivation: Theory
and Research. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1966, pp. 306-
33;
. Davis, D. M. “Self-selection of diet by newly weaned infants.” American
Journal of Diseases of Children, 1928 (36), pp. 651-679.
. Harlow, Harry F. “Love in infant monkeys.” Scientific American, June,
1959, and “The heterosexual affectional system in monkeys.” Ameri-
can Psychologist, 1962 (17), pp. 1-10.
. Spitz, R. A. “Hospitalism: An inquiry into the genesis of psychiatric con-
ditions in early childhood” in Anna Freud et al. (Eds.), The Psycho-
analytic Study of the Child. Vol. I. New York: International Univer-
sities Press, 1945, pp. 53-74.
Spitz, R. A. “Hospitalism: A follow-up report on investigations described
in vol. I” in Anna Freud et al. (Eds.), The Psychoanalytic Study of
the Child. Vol. II]. New York: International Universities Press, Inc.,
1946, pp. 113-117.
. Bowlby, J. Maternal Care and Mental Health and Deprivation of Maternal
Care. New York: Schocken, 1966.
10. Tinbergen, Nicholas. Preface to Claire H. Schiller (Ed.), Instinctive Be-
havior. New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1957, p. xvi.
By permission of the publisher.
1 Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Irenaeus. “The interactions of unlearned behavior patterns
and learning in mammals” in the symposium, Brain Mechanisms and
Learning. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C Thomas, Publisher, 1961, pp.
53-73.
Md. Tinbergen, N. The Study of Instinct. Fair Lawn, N.J.: Oxford University
Press, 1958, p. 78.
ie), Ibid., p. 39.
14, Lorenz, Konrad. “Companionship in bird life’ in Claire H. Schiller (Ed.),
op. cit.
iS; Tinbergen. The Study of Instinct, pp. 58-60.
16. Ibid., p. 61.
17. Ibid., pp. 61-62.
18. McGraw, Myrtle. “Maturation of behavior” in Leonard Carmichael (Ed.),
Manual of Child Psychology. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
1949, chap. 7.
UG). Ibid.
20. Katz, David. Animals and Men. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1953, figs. 19
and 20. Photographs by kind permission of Dr. Rosa Katz.
Ne Lashley, K. S. “Experimental analysis of instinctive behavior.” Psychologi-
cal Review, 1938 (45), pp. 445-471.

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 147

 22. Beach, F. A. Hormones and Behavior. New York: Paul B. Hoeber, Inc.,
1948.
23. Wilkens, Lawson. “The thyroid gland.” Scientific American, March, 1960.
24. Rowan, W. “Experiments in bird migration: III. The effects of artificial
light, castration, and certain extracts on the autumn movements of
the American crow.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sci-
ences, 1932 (18), pp. 639-654.
2d. Allee, W. C. “Social dominance and subordination among vertebrates.”
Biological Symposia, 1942 (8), pp. 139-162
26. Carpenter, C. R. “Psychobiological studies of social behavior in Aves: II.
The effect of complete and incomplete gonadectomy on secondary
sexual activity, with histological studies.” Journal of Comparative
Psychology, 1933 (16), pp. 59-98.
WY Tinbergen. The Study of Instinct, p. 65.
28. Selye, Hans. The Physiology and Pathology of Exposureto Stress. Mon-
treal: Acta, 1950.
Selye, Hans. The Stress of Life. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company,
1956.
29. Ibid., pp. 88-89.
30. Bliss, E. L., et al. “Reaction of the adrenal cortex to emotional stress.”
Psychosomatic Medicine, 1956 (18), p. 56.
Hamburg, D. A. “Plasma and urinary cortico-steroid levels in naturally
occurring psychological stresses.” Ultrastructure and Metabolism of
the Nervous System, Proceedings of the Association for Research in
Nervous and Mental Diseases, 1962 (25), p. 426.
Sachar, E., et. al. “Psychoendocrine aspects of acute schizophrenic reac-
tions.” Psychosomatic Medicine, 1963 (25), pp. 510-537.
Sachar, E., et al. “Psychoendocrinology of ego disruption and reintegration
in schizophrenia.” To be published.
Bunney, W. E., and J. A. Fawcett. “Possibility of a biochemical test for
suicidal potential.” Archives of General Psychiatry, 1965 (12), p. 232.
SIF Bunney, W. E., John W. Mason, John F. Roatch, and David A. Ham-
burg. “A psychoendocrine study of severe psychotic depressive
crisis.” American Journalof Psychiatry,July, 1965, pp. 72-80.
32. Sachar, Edward J., John M. Mackenzie, William A. Binstock, and John E.
Mack. ‘Corticosteroid responses to psychotherapy of depression: I.
Evaluations during confrontation of loss.” Archives of General Psy-
chiatry, April, 1967 (16), pp. 461-470
33. Klopfer, Peter H., aud Jack P. Hailman. An Introduction to Animal Be-
havior: Ethology’s First Century. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-
Hall, Inc., 1967, pp. 120-121.
34. Deutsch, J. A. The Structural Basis of Behavior. Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1960.
30; Tinbergen, The Study of Instinct.
36. Bellows, R. T. “Time factors in water drinking in dogs.” American Journal
of Physiology, 1939 (125), pp. 87-97.
37. Adolph, E. F. “The internal environment and behavior: III. Water content.”
American Journal of Psychiatry, 1941 (97), pp. 1367-1373.

148 Psychology: A Social Approach

38. Deutsch, J. A., and A. D. Jones. “Diluted water: An explanation of the
rat’s peference for saline.” Journal of Comparative and Physio-
logical Psychology, 1960 (53), pp. 122-127.
39% Ibid.
40. Hull, C. L., F. R. Livingston, R. O. Rouse, and O. N. Barker. “True, sham,
and esophageal feeding as reinforcements.” Journal of Comparative
and Physiological Psychology, 1951 (44), pp 236-245.
41. Deutsch, J. A. Op. cit.
42. Olds, James. “Pleasure centers in the brain.” Scientific American, October,
1956.
43. Wyrwicka, W., C. Dobrzecka, and R. Tarnecki. “On the instrumental con-
ditioned reaction evoked by electrical stimulation of the hypothala-
mus.” Science, 1959 (130), pp. 336-337
44, Deutsch, J. A., and C. I. Howarth. “Some tests of a theory-of intracranial
self-stimulation.” Psychological Review, 1963 (70), pp. 461-470.
45. Ibid.
46. Schachter, Stanley, and Jerome Singer. “Cognitive, social, and physiological
determinants of emotional state” in R. J. C. Harper et al. (Eds.), The
Cognitive Processes: Readings. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1964, pp. 426-449,

Innate, Learned & Motivated Behavior 149

David Gahr
FIVE
PERSONALIT Y

In the last two chapters we have looked at the areas of learning and
motivation. Personality is often approached as an adjunct to these
areas. To attempt to account for the complex phenomena of person-
ality in terms of inadequately established principles from other areas,
however, leads to a neglect of some of the major phenomena of per-
sonal and social behavior. While principles of learning, motivation,
and personal and social adjustment must someday become consistent
with each other, it is by no means clear which theories will need to
change for this rapprochement to come about. Recent studies by

151
 learning theorists of learning through observing others seem to be
bringing learning theory closer to psychoanalytic theory in its point
of view.' In this chapter personality will therefore be approached
primarily from the point of view of psychoanalytic theory. It is felt
by the author that this theoretical approach, not guided by theories
drawn from other areas of study, has most clearly concentrated on
the major attributes of personality as such.
There are, however, difficulties in presenting psychoanalytic
theory in an introductory text. The most important of these difficul-
ties is one which is common to the presentation of any highly de-
scriptive approach. It is that the raw data upon which the theory is
based are not easily summarized. Just as it is probably true that it
is impossible to understand an ethological approach without observ-
ing animals in the wild, it is also difficult to understand a psycho-
analytic approach without observation of analytically oriented psy-
chotherapy. It will not be possible to do this. Instead it will only be
possible to present a few experiments providing evidence on psycho-
analytic hypotheses and some anecdotes to illustrate how the theory
might be applied.* The reader will have to judge the usefulness of the
theory largely on the basis of whether it gives him additional insight
into himself. Let us look, then, at the three basic assumptions of
psychoanalytic theory and a somewhat oversimplified account of the
theory itself.
The first and most basic assumption of Freudian theory is that
experience and behavior are caused, by the interaction of the individ-
ual’s motives and the environmental forces on him. If this point of
view is accepted, then even such apparently accidental occurrences
as a slip of the tongue, inability to remember a name, and a nocturnal
dream represent actions that are in some way and on some level
motivated. As motivated behavior they are facts which a theory of
behavior must account for and just as important as whether Lashley’s
rats chose the triangle or Harlow’s monkeys preferred the cloth
“mother.”
The second of Freud’s assumptions arose from the first. If all
mental phenomena are motivated yet we are unaware of the motives
for some of them, then some of our mental processes must be un-
conscious. Furthermore, this unconsciousness must be of a peculiar
type. It is not the unconsciousness which results from not being pro-
vided with sensory receptors to make us able to be aware of some-
thing, as in our unconsciousness of the activities of the pace setter in

152 Psychology: A Social Approach

our heart. Instead it is an unconsciousness of something which yet
influences our mental life and which, under the right circumstances,
we can become conscious of. It is thus, in light of the first assump-
tion, a motivated unconscious—a keeping something from awareness
because we do not want to be aware of it.
A number of phenomena vividly demonstrate the operation of
unconscious processes. While most people are familiar with some of
these in the area of hypnotism, such as the carrying out of post-
hypnotic suggestions without remembering that they have been sug-
gested during a trance, the clearest evidence from hypnotism is less
well known. It has recently been discovered that under hypnosis sur-
gical patients will remember their experiences while they were under
a general anesthetic.* There can be no doubt that such memories are
unconscious under normal circumstances.
Another dramatic illustration of unconscious processes is the
spontaneous occurrence of states of amnesia, sometimes with devel-
opment of a new life and new personality during the amnesic period.
One of the cases summarized by William James in 1890 provides a
good example:
The Rev. Ansel Bourne, of Green, R.I., was brought up to the trade
of a carpenter; but, in consequence of a sudden temporary loss of
sight and hearing under very peculiar circumstances, he became con-
verted from Atheism to Christianity just before his thirtieth year, and
has since that time for the most part lived the life of an itinerant
preacher. He has been subject to headaches and temporary fits of
depression of spirits during most of his life, and has had a few fits of
unconsciousness lasting an hour or less... .
On January 17, 1887, he drew 551 dollars from a bank in Providence
with which to pay for a certain lot of land in Greene, paid certain
bills, and got into a Pawtucket horse-car. This is the last incident
which he remembers. He did not return home that day, and nothing
was heard from him for two months. He was published in the papers
as missing, and foul play being suspected, the police sought in vain
for his whereabouts. On the morning of March 14th, however, at
Norristown, Pennsylvania, a man calling himself A. J. Brown, who
had rented a small shop six weeks previously, stocked it with station-
ery, confectionary, fruit and small articles, and carried on his quiet
trade without seeming to anyone unnatural or eccentric, woke up in
a fright and called in the people of the house to tell him where he
was. He said that his name was Ansel Bourne, that he was entirely
ignorant of Norristown, that he knew nothing of shop-keeping, and
that the last thing he remembered—it seemed only yesterday—was
. drawing the money from the bank, etc., in Providence... .

Personality 153
 This was all that was known of the case up to June 1890, when I
induced Mr. Bourne to submit to hypnotism, so as to see whether, in
the hypnotic trance, his “Brown” memory would not come back. It
did so with surprising readiness. .. .*

The third basic Freudian assumption is also illustrated in the

example just cited, for it is that the self is not unitary, but instead
composed of conflicting parts. This is quite clear in the case of Mr.
Bourne, but what is meant by saying that the normal person is made
up of conflicting parts? Another example, this one hypothetical, may
help make the point clear.
Imagine that you have just come home, late in the evening, from
a large dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Tired, and well filled with
shrimp curry and other exotic dishes, you go to bed. Just as you are
about to go to sleep, however, it becomes clear to you that you have
overindulged in curry powder, soy sauce, or both, for you find your-
self consumed by a raging thirst. If you were not so nearly asleep,
you would get up and get something to drink. If you were not thirsty,
you would go to sleep. As it is, you lie there in a conflict situation,
with part of you wanting to get up and get a drink and part of you
not wanting to bother. As you lie there almost asleep, you are likely
to imagine mountain brooks, luscious watermelons, and frosty bottles
of beer. These dreams, unfortunately, do not do much to satisfy the
thirst.
This example is chosen to illustrate that not all psychological
conflicts are the life-and-death struggles between unreconciled parts
of a personality that may be found in highly disturbed individuals.
Instead, psychological conflict is something which we all experience
every day but which we may not pay attention to or recognize as
such. The division of the personality into conflicting parts by Freud-
ian theory is simply a generalization about what impulses are most
frequently in opposition to each other when this conflict is experi-
enced. Let us look, then, at what these parts of the personality are
and how they develop from each other according to the theory.
The infant, according to Freud, is all id. What does this mean?
Id is the name Freud gave to the basic, innate drives or impulses of
the individual. It would include not only those of known physiologi-
cal basis, such as hunger and thirst, but also those such as the
contact-comfort drive of Harlow’s monkeys that we do not know the
basis of. By saying that the infant is all id, Freud meant that the
infant is not aware of anything except his own biological drives.

154 Psychology: A Social Approach

Having no experience with the world, the infant is not aware of the
nature of reality or, in fact, of the difference between himself and the
rest of the world. It is only later that the child learns that he can
move his fingers by willing it but cannot move the dresser by doing
so.
At this earliest stage the infant thinks in what is called—be-
cause it comes first in development—primary process thinking. Be-
cause he is unacquainted with the real world, he cannot distinguish
between real and imagined satisfaction of his desires. He thus at-
tempts to satisfy his desires by imagining the object he desires. His
fantasy gratification has the advantage of being immediate but has
the grave disadvantage that it does not actually reduce the physio-
logical drive the desire is based on. In this sense it is like the thirsty
person’s imaginary watermelon, which would be, in fact, an example
of primary process thinking. This type of thinking thus characterizes
all the thinking of the infant, while it is only found in some of the
thinking of the adult—in dreams, and in humor.
It is the failure of the imagined gratification to provide long-
term satisfaction that accounts, in Freudian theory, for the origin of
the second major subdivision of the personality—the ego. It is only
by learning about the nature of the world and by postponing gratifi-
cation in order to work for real rewards that the child is able to
obtain objects that will really reduce his drives. Ego is thus a name
for those of our thought processes that show awareness of the nature
of the world and make decisions accordingly, a type of process called
secondary process thinking. To return a final time to our hypothetical
example, it is the ego which knows that you must get out of bed to
get the drink of water.
The ego thus corresponds approximately to the self we are con-
sciously aware of, that sensible fellow who knows that you cannot
get something simply by wishing for it. While the ego provides real
objects for the impulses of the id, these drives are satisfied only in a
modified form, modified so that the things that are consciously de-
sired are things that are realistically possible. The unrealistic and
irrational desires of the id are kept from consciousness. Besides being
censored by the ego, these impulses of the id are being modified in
another way by the process of development. What it is that is desired
is being influenced by what objects have proved satisfying. One
person comes to prefer eating potatoes, a second rice, and a third
poi because of cultural differences in diet. The object choices, or

Personality 155
 objects desired by the young child for gratification of drives, may
thus influence the desires of the adult in ways that the adult will not
be consciously aware of, although this influence may be shown in
behavior, as in the case of the man who marries a woman who has
striking similarities to his mother which he himself does not recog-
nize. In a sense, then, all motives are social motives from a psycho-
analytic point of view, for the motives we act on as adults have been
transformed by our social experiences in development.
Besides being influenced by what he wants to do and what he
realistically thinks he can get away with doing, an adult is also in-
fluenced by considerations of what he has learned he ought to do.
These considerations make up the third major component of the per-
sonality, the superego, and its origin is somewhat more complex ac-
cording to Freudian theory.
According to the theory, the child at about the age of three or
four falls in love with the parent of the opposite sex and develops a
rivalry with the parent of the same sex, a phenomenon which Freud
called the Oedipus complex (or Electra complex in the case of girls).
While the highly Victorian culture in which Freud worked was scan-
dalized at this imputation of sexuality to children, we should not be
so easily shocked now that anthropological investigations have re-
vealed that young children do engage in quite a bit of open sexual
play in cultures where it is not forbidden. In fact, the observant par-
ent can easily observe the Oedipus complex in his own children.
When my eldest girl was four and my son was two, for example, they
would only ride in the back seat of the automobile if the girl could
sit on the side of the car closest to me and the boy on the side closest
to his mother. As they grew older, this preference reversed, as indeed
it should according to the theory.
The boy who has fantasies of winning his mother from his
father’s embraces, however, is up against apparently insuperable
odds, even if his fantasies are not as complete or blood-chilling as
the Oedipus myth. His father is simply too large and powerful a
rival for him, so that the Oedipus complex is normally resolved by
the child identifying with the parent of the same sex and getting
vicarious satisfaction from the affection which his mother bears his
father. (That this may not be the resolution in certain cases where
the parent is a weak figure and does not enjoy the affection of the
spouse need not concern us here, crucial as it may be for the child.)
This process of identification is much more than a copying of the

156 Psychology: A Social Approach

parent of the same sex, although this is one of its important results.
It is a breakdown of the newly learned distinction between self and
other, so that the boy actually feels himself to be his father and his
father to be him. A much more superficial example can be found in
an audience watching a boxing match. The man who ducks “his”
opponent’s blows and throws punches in the air from his seat in the
audience has experienced a similar, if momentary, identification.
With the identification of the boy with his father, or girl with
her mother, comes a transformation of the child to become the parent.
The boy then becomes to the best of his ability what the father is, at
least as he perceives the father, and incorporates his image of the
father into his personality as his standard of right and wrong—the
superego. This third major component of personality has two parts
which are nicely distinguished in the service of the Episcopal Church:
“We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and
left undone those things which we ought to have done, and there is
no health in us. .. .”” The image of the things which ought to be done
was called by Freud the ego ideal; the rules of what ought not to be
done he called the conscience.
While the major significance of a Freudian theory of personality
for social psychology is in the theory of conflict and ego defense, one
interesting study may be cited at this point to show the usefulness of
an identification theory of learning in accounting for social behavior.
Sears, Maccoby, and Levin’ interviewed almost four hundred mothers
of five-year-old children to investigate the relationships between
child-rearing practices of the mother and aggressive behavior on the
part of the child. Two aspects of the mother’s behavior were rated
separately—the extent to which she tolerated aggression by the child
and the amount of physical punishment she used to prevent aggres-
sion by the child. (While it might be thought these two indices mea-
sured the same thing, this was only true to a limited extent. Some
mothers would not tolerate aggression by the child and used physical
punishment to deter it, others would not tolerate it but used other
means to avoid it, and so on.) Let us look at how the index of amount
of punishment should be related to aggression by the child.
According to the usual learning theory, the more children are
punished for aggressive behavior, the less they should engage in it.
While there is some indication that punishment is not as effective as
reward in learning, still it should exercise a deterrent effect which
would enable the child to practice and learn other behavior instead.

Personality 157
 A straightforward learning-theory approach would thus predict that
the mothers who used more punishment for aggressive behavior by
their children would have children who acted less aggressively. The
opposite prediction, however, is made by a theory of identification.
When the mother uses physical punishment on the child, she is serv-
ing as a model for aggressive behavior. If the child identifies with
her and takes over her patterns of behavior, then the more the child
is punished for being aggressive, the more aggressive he should
become!
This latter possibility is exactly what the data showed. The
mothers who had the fewest aggressive children were those who
would not tolerate aggression but who managed to avoid it without
showing aggression themselves. Those who had the highest propor-
tion of aggressive children were those who were quite tolerant of
aggression on the part of the child and who also used physical pun-
ishment on the child for aggressive behavior. The results thus sup-
port a theory of role learning and directly contradict a theory of
learning based upon the learning of rewarded rather than punished
responses. While the results of this, as of any single study, must be
interpreted with caution, other studies using other methods again
provide supporting results.°

The Measurement of Motives

By now the reader may have obtained the impression that it really is
quite easy to understand the motives of the adult, reasoning that they
would simply mirror the motives of the parent of the same sex,
taken over through identification. It must thus be confessed at this
point that this is by no means the case and that the account so far
has been greatly oversimplified by the neglect of three complicating
factors. The first of these factors is that the child develops over a
considerable period of time and learns different modes of adjust-
ment to the world at different stages. According to a psychoanalytic
point of view, earlier modes of adjustment are never forgotten, but
are instead simply denied expression as newer contradictory adjust-
ments are learned. The young child, for example, who has learned to
adjust to the world by complete dependency on his mother, does not
forget this mode of adjustment as he grows older and learns a more
independent role. As an adult he may relapse into it when later

158 Psychology: A Social Approach

learned modes of adjustment do not work, a phenomenon known as
regression. The adult is thus viewed as a series of personalities laid
one on top of the other, stemming from different developmental
periods and with only some of the layers apparent from the surface.
While intensive study of the single individual may bring the various
layers to light, the almost infinite variety of possible patterns makes
it difficult to draw generalizations about all individuals or even all
that on the surface seem similar.
The second complicating factor is that in presenting a strictly
Freudian description of identification with the parent of the same sex
as the source of the superego, more recent developments in psycho-
analytic theory have been overlooked. The discerning reader may
have noticed that while the Sears et al. study cited provides evidence
in favor of a theory of social-role learning, it does not provide evi-
dence unambiguously supporting the rather simplified Freudian posi-
tion which has been described. In the first place, it is questionable
that the Oedipus complex would be resolved by the age of five, so the
positive results are in a sense surprising. Furthermore, even if we
assume that the Oedipus complex has been resolved, classical Freud-
ian theory would lead us to expect different results for the boys and
the girls in the sample. After the resolution of the Oedipus complex,
the girls should have internalized the behavior of the mother, and the
results obtained would have been predicted. The boys, however,
should have identified with their fathers, and their aggressive behav-
ior should have been unrelated to the behavior of their mothers.
In fact, observations such as those cited, and especially studies
in cultural settings other than the one in which Freud worked, have
led psychoanalytic theorists to change and expand on Freudian theory.
For example, Freud’s emphasis on the early development of the
child should not make us overlook the fact that socialization con-
tinues throughout the lifetime of the individual. From a sociological
point of view, society can only continue to exist if it manages to fill
the essential positions in the society and motivate individuals to carry
out the roles associated with those positions. All the necessary learn-
ing for the performance of adult roles cannot take place in childhood,
and the internal voice of conscience is supplemented by the external
voice of authority in ensuring compliance with the demands of
society.
Social control may be viewed as made up of two different mech-
anisms, although they usually work together. One mechanism for

Personality 159
 ensuring compliance with social standards is that emphasized by the
phrase “man in society.” The individual member of a society usually
belongs to a family, a work group, a neighborhood, a church, an
occupation, a class, and a nation. If he attempts to violate the
strongly held sanctions of his society, he can expect to be berated by
his wife, shunned by his work group, rejected by the neighbors, lec-
tured to by his minister, sanctioned by his union or profession, told
that he is letting down the members of his class, and arrested on
criminal charges by the representatives of his nation.
The other basic method of ensuring compliance to the norms of
society is that implied in the phrase ‘society in man.” Despite the
ubiguitous forces waiting to punish the man who deviates from the
dictates of his society, man has the illusion of being free, for he
usually does not want to violate the norms. His socialization has been
successful to the point of building into him the desire to act in the
ways demanded by his society, and he is unaware of the various
mechanisms waiting to punish him for deviation because it would
never occur to him to deviate. This is the aspect of social control
which is more emphasized by psychoanalytic theory. The other as-
pect, dealing with the effects of immediate pressures on the indi-
vidual, will be considered at length in the chapters on small group
processes.
The ways in which psychoanalytic theory has been changed to
become more consistent with the results of cross-cultural studies are
well exemplified in the work of Henry Murray,’ who has been deeply
involved in such studies himself. Murray differs from Freud in his
views of both what makes up the superego and how it is formed.
While parents, and most especially the parent of the same sex, are still
viewed as especially important to its formation, it is recognized that
children may identify with other important figures in their lives—not
only teachers and other parent substitutes but also friends and even
fictional characters—and that these other individuals also shape the
values which children develop. Furthermore, the developing indi-
vidual does not just internalize absolute oughts and ought nots, the
ego ideal and conscience, but conditional prohibitions reflecting the
norms of the culture. According to Murray, these deal with the time,
place, mode, and object appropriate for the expression of an impulse.
For example, while eating is an acceptable activity in our culture,
there are prohibitions against eating human flesh (the wrong object),
with the fingers of both hands (the wrong mode), or in church (the
wrong place).

160 Psychology: A Social Approach

 Because of the complexity of the development of social motives
in any one individual, social psychologists have to a great extent left
the study of the origins of these motives to psychotherapists, who
can go into individual cases in great detail, and instead concentrated
on measuring the motives after they have developed and relating
them to social behavior. One of the first major steps in this direction
was also taken by Murray with his development of the well-known
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Let us look at this test and at a
typical experiment applying the measurement of social motives to the
prediction of social behavior.
The Thematic Apperception Test is based on the idea, which
was discussed in Chapter 2, that individuals will interpret ambiguous
situations in terms of their own beliefs, values, and interests. This is
especially true of strictly fantasy material, so that the interpretation
of dreams is for the psychoanalyst one of the most important sources
of information about the individual. Dreams have serious disadvan-
tages for the systematic measurement of social motives, however.
First, many people have difficulty in remembering them, which is not
surprising since they reveal motives which are kept from conscious-
ness. Equally important, the incident stimulating each dream differs,
and is by no means always easily discoverable. Related to this is the
final point that the dreams from any one period tend to depend upon
the conflicts which the person is wrestling with at that period, and a
considerable time may elapse before even a person’s major motives
appear in his dreams.
These factors argue for the advantages of using some type of
known stimulus to trigger fantasy production. By the use of stimuli
related to the more important social motives and conflicts, the fan-
tasies can be led into areas that will provide a more systematic and
complete picture of social motivation in a shorter period of time than
completely unguided fantasy. Also, by knowing the stimulus which
started the fantasy, changes and omissions may be more easily noted
than where the stimulus must be recreated by inference. Just as it
was easier in Allport and Postman’s rumor-transmission study to
identify distortions because the initial stimuli were known than it
would have been if the initial stimuli had had to be inferred from
the diverse end products of the rumor-transmission process, social
motives are easier to measure from interpretations of known rather
than unknown stimuli. Murray thus constructed the TAT as a series
of pictures that the subject is to tell stories about. Twenty pictures
are used, and they differ depending upon the sex and age of the

Personality 161
 subject so that situations likely to arouse emotional conflicts can be
used.
The interpretation of the TAT is too complex to be discussed in
a brief introduction such as this, and is not always equally rewarding,
since the telling of brief conventional stories may enable the subject
to reveal not very much about himself. At other times, however, a
story will touch on central problems and adjustments of the indi-
vidual. One such example is given by Holt, who uses it to outline the
basic ideas in interpretation of the test. Let us look briefly at the
story and refer to Holt* for a more detailed discussion of it.
In the card to which the story was told, ““An adolescent boy
looks straight out of the picture. The barrel of a rifle is visible at one
side, and in the background is the dim scene of a surgical operation,
like a reverie-image.” The story told to it by a young college man,
here called Nailson, was as follows: “Gee, it looks like a young
fellow, (pause.) Oh, fellow is about fifteen, I guess. It’s (pause). He’s
either seen or read about some operation in which the patient has
gone through all kinds of tortures, and he decided he’s going to
become a doctor. He’s going to fix things, they’re not going to happen
like that any more. These are old doctors, very old, long time ago, I
guess. They’re going to town, probably no ether or anything else.
The kid was probably just a young baby at the time, maybe. Looks
like he had a nightmare or two. And (pause) that determined his life
for him. He’s going to spend his whole time trying to be a doctor and
not have any more operations like this. He’s going to (pause). Well,
it could be that he’s something like Bliss or some one of the great doc-
tors that invented anaesthetics, something to bring ease to the patient
during the operation. Probably spend his whole life trying to develop
something like that. Anyway, he’s going to be a doctor, he’s not
going to have anything like this happen again.’”
While there are a number of things that could be noted in the
story, such as not mentioning the rifle, the confusion about the boy’s
age, and even that the boy is going to spend his time trying to be a
doctor, let us look at just a portion of the story. The subject says,
“He’s either seen or read about some operation in which the patient
has gone through all kinds of tortures,” and immediately follows this
with “and he decided he’s going to become a doctor.” What he ap-
pears to have said at this point is that the boy is going to become a
doctor so that he can torture people! The rapidity with which this is
denied, by saying, ‘“He’s going to fix things, they’re not going to

162 Psychology: A Social Approach

happen like that any more,” suggests that this same thought is going
through the mind of the subject and supports rather than denies the
interpretation.
Most stories are not as revealing as this one. Nailson had gone
through a period of overt sadism, during which he tortured the ani-
mals on his father’s farm. After that, he had become very concerned
over the welfare of the animals and had taken over all the slaughter-
ing on the farm so that it would be done as humanely as possible.
This particular mode of handling a motive, appearing to act on just
the opposite motive (humaneness) while giving covert expression to
the denied motive (sadism) by taking pleasure in the slaughtering, is
called reaction formation. It is the same mechanism as that shown by
the hero of the story.
Can behavior in social situations actually be predicted by tests
such as the TAT? Yes, though certainly not perfectly. Let us look at
an experiment by Birney, Burdick, Caylor, O’Connor, and Veroff*®
as an illustration, first describing it as it appeared to the subjects and
then as it appeared to the experimenters. Subjects arrived at the
laboratory in pairs, each having been told to bring one friend as a
fellow subject. It was explained that one of each pair (the encoder)
would have the task of putting messages into a code and that the
other (the decoder) would have the task of translating the code mes-
sages back into English. The encoder would be scored on how many
of the messages he managed to put into code within a limited period
of time, and the decoder would be scored on what proportion of the
code messages he received he managed to decode within a limited
period of time.
For each coder, the task proceeded smoothly for the first few
trials. After the second and third trials he was shown scores which
indicated that his partner was not keeping up with him very well,
and after the fourth trial he received a message from his partner ask-
ing him to “please slow down.” At this point he had to decide
whether to make the best score he could by continuing to work fast
or to help his partner by slowing down. (Since the partner was being
scored on the proportion of code messages decoded, the fewer code
messages there were for him to decode, the easier it was for him to
make a high score.) Finally, on the last trial, the coder was told that
his partner would not have to decode the messages coded on that
trial.
The reader may have guessed by now that the experiment was

Personality 163
 rigged, for otherwise how could we know what messages the coder’s
partner would send him? In fact, there were no decoders. Each per-
son was told that he was the coder and his partner was the decoder,
and the message to slow down came from the experimenter. The
purpose of this deception was to place each subject in the same rather
common conflict situation—a situation where the person must decide
between achieving the most that he can himself or helping a friend.
(For the good student, the conflict is likely to occur whenever there
is a course examination. Should you review for the exam with a
friend who has less good notes although this will help him more than
it helps you, or should you leave him to founder and study on your
own?)
The experiment thus presented the subject with a conflict be-
tween an achievement motive and a motive of affiliation, or maintain-
ing close relations with others. Predictions were made on the basis
of measures of these motives which had been taken before the ex-
periment began, using a technique which is similar in principle to the
TAT. It was predicted that subjects who were high in need for affilia-
tion but not high in need for achievement would slow down and that
those who were high in need for achievement but not high in need
for affiliation would continue working rapidly. No predictions were
made for subjects who were high in both needs or not high in either.
At this point the complicating factor of sex must be mentioned.
The norms in our culture generally develop more achievement moti-
vation in men, and less achievement motivation but more affiliation
motivation in women. Because of this, situations must arouse stronger
affiliation motivation to make men resolve conflicts in terms of affilia-
tion than to make women do so. (This difference is reflected in the
results of experiments on conformity, which invariably show women
as conforming more than men.) In the present experiment, the affilia-
tion motives were not sufficient to make the men deviate from their
desires for achievement—they did not slow down to help their part-
ners. The women, however, often did so. Three-quarters of the
women with strong affiliation motives and weak achievement motives
slowed down. Only a quarter of those with strong achievement mo-
tives and weak affiliation motives did so. These results are highly
significant, although prediction of course is still not perfect—the
wrong prediction was made for a quarter of the women. This should
not surprise us, for our measures of motives are not perfect and
there are other complicating factors. Prediction might have been

164 Psychology: A Social Approach

 better, for example, if we had known how close friends individual
pairs of subjects were.

Conflict and Ego Defense

The third reason why the motives of the adult do not simply mirror
those of the parent identified with leads us into a new and extended
area. According to the theory, the internalized image of the parent
only makes up one part of the personality, the superego. To under-
stand social motivation, it is necessary to look at how conflicts among
all three components of the personality are resolved, the subject
matter of the theory of ego defense.
Freudian defense mechanisms have long ago found their way
into popular terminology, and it is common to hear a person say that
someone else is “repressing” or “projecting.” In this everyday use of
the terms, it is recognized that defense mechanisms involve a distor-
tion of perception, that the person who is repressing or projecting is
somehow not viewing the world as it really is. Other than this, how-
ever, it is often unclear just what a defense mechanism is and what
function it serves for the individual. Since defense mechanisms play
a central role in a psychoanalytic view of personality, it is well to
try to be more precise about these matters.
Defense mechanisms exist, according to Freudian theory, to pro-
tect the ego from anxiety. Anxiety is a state that may be recognized
introspectively. Everyone is familiar with the nervous reactions which
precede trying and important situations, such as an employment
interview. The pulse races, clothes become damp with perspiration,
and there may be feelings of nausea and need to urinate. The feel-
ings are those associated with fear, and in this case the cause of the
fear is quite plain, just as it is in the more extreme situation of being
exposed to combat in wartime. In other situations, however, the cause
of the fear is less clear to an outside observer. Even after he was
widely acclaimed as a great playwright, for example, Moss Hart spent
the opening night of each of his plays in the men’s room being sick.
Finally, at the other end of the continuum, comes the case where the
individual experiences the physical symptoms without either himself
or anyone else being able to see anything fear-inspiring in the situa-
tion. This is a clear example of anxiety, for anxiety is simply the
experience of fear without a conscious admission of what it is that

Personality 165
 one is afraid of. Fear and anxiety may thus be mixed in any particu-
lar situation, for the person may be aware of what the threat is in
the environment, but not completely aware of what the forces are in
himself that make him react so violently to it. This was probably the
case with Hart. Most established playwrights do not react so vio-
lently to the possible failure of one new play.
Initially, according to Freudian theory, anxiety was caused by
the helplessness of the child. Totally dependent upon the mother for
satisfaction of basic needs and knowing nothing about the real world,
the infant would have no way of knowing when a drive such as
hunger arose whether it would ever be reduced. The inability to cope
with his own needs without the parent was thus the source of the
original, or traumatic, anxiety. Extreme anxiety in the adult is thus
viewed as a recapitulation of this early anxiety, an unconscious re-
acting to the situation as the child had reacted to his apparently
hopeless state of powerless frustration. The source of anxiety in the
adult is viewed as being similar to its source in the child—a fear of
loss of love of the parent on whom the child was dependent. For the
adult, however, it is not loss of love of the real parent that is feared,
but loss of love of the parent image internalized in the superego.
Anxiety is thus caused by indications that we have violated, or are
liable to violate, our superego. It is classified according to the way
impulses are being handled and the consequent nature of the threat
into moral anxiety, reality anxiety, and neurotic anxiety.
Impulses which may be openly expressed without violating the
superego do not, of course, give rise to anxiety. Since Freud empha-
sized the importance of sexual and aggressive impulses as those most
likely to be denied direct outlet by society, let us take as a hypotheti-
cal example an aggressive impulse. Suppose that for some reason I
had strong hostile impulses toward one of my colleagues, with whom
I had to associate regularly in the course of my work. If I adjusted
to this by deciding to act on the basis of the impulses, I would fear
the feelings of guilt which I knew would follow my actions. This
fear of punishment by the superego is called moral anxiety. If the
impulses were sufficiently antisocial, I might well also fear the pun-
ishment which society would inflict on me for my behavior, a fear
known as reality anxiety.
On the other hand, it is more likely that I would not plan to
either murder my colleague or commit mayhem on him, but instead
plan to check my impulses and behave in a socially acceptable manner

166 Psychology: A Social Approach

toward him. In choosing this course of action, however, I would be
running a risk that my impulses would prove too strong for me and
that on some future occasion they might get out of hand and cause
me to act in the way that I had decided not to. Fear of this possibility
would be called neurotic anxiety.
Hypothetical examples in the area of defense mechanisms, like
dreams and TAT stories, may well reveal the hidden motives of
authors. At the risk of my perhaps revealing antisocial impulses of
which I am only partially aware, let us continue the example to illus-
trate one of the defense mechanisms. Of the three types of anxiety,
reality anxiety, or fear of the real world, would seem to be the easiest
to cope with. If I suffer from uncontrollable hostile impulses, I must
admit that I have a problem, for no matter where I go or what I do,
there is always the danger that they will get out of hand. If, on the
other hand, I can convince myself that it is not I but a part of my
environment which is at fault, then the problem seems easier—I have
to avoid only that part of my environment to keep out of trouble.
Thus if I did have hostile impulses toward someone, I could conceal
my unacceptable impulses from myself if I could convince myself that
it was he who was aggressive. If he said “Good morning” to me
when I arrived at work, I could question the way in which he was
saying it and see his statement as sarcastic and provocative. I could
thus convince myself that I was not hostile, but that my colleague
behaved in such a manner that he would cause a saint to lose his
temper. By seeing my own unacceptable impulses in others rather
than myself, I would not only be able to conceal them from myself
but also be able to convince myself that I only had to avoid contact
with Dr. X in order to lead a happy and well-adjusted life. This
mechanism of seeing one’s own unacceptable impulses in others is
called projection, and like all the defense mechanisms it serves to
protect the self from anxiety.
Among the defense mechanisms a central role is played by
repression—the forcing and keeping of perceptions out of awareness.
This is true because all defense mechanisms involve distortion of
reality, so repression must be used with other defense mechanisms. In
the example of projection just given, the mechanism can only work if
the individual manages to keep his own hostile impulses from his
awareness. In reaction formation, discussed in the case of Nailson,
anxiety over the unacceptable nature of the impulses being given
covert expression can only be avoided by repressing the existence of

Personality 167
 the impulses from consciousness. The same is true in the case of
rationalization, the giving of reasons other than the real ones to ac-
count for behavior of the self because the real motives are not con-
sciously admitted—rationalization works with repression to try to
avoid anxiety.
Many defense mechanisms could be listed, and any list involves
problems of classification, for individual examples often show a mix-
ture of mechanisms. When Nailson took over the slaughtering of ani-
mals on the farm, for example, he saw other people who might do
the slaughtering as not being sufficiently concerned with avoiding
unnecessary pain in the animals. This could be viewed as projection,
although we have considered his general adjustment in this situation
to be reaction formation. Thus only one more defense will be con-
sidered here, and readers will be referred to Anna Freud’s™ work for
a more complete discussion of defense. James Joyce, in Dubliners,
has a short story about a father who spends an unsatisfactory day at
the office and comes home to beat his child. As any welfare worker
knows, such cases are not as uncommon in the world as we would
like to think. They illustrate the mechanism of displacement, the
turning of a drive toward a substitute object because its expression
on the original object is effectively prevented by society. When we
turn to the topic of prejudice, we will see the importance of displace-
ment in that social phenomenon.
It is indicative of the increase of interest in psychoanalytic the-
ory as a source of experimental hypotheses that there are now too
many good studies to be summarized in an introductory text. That
was not the case only a few years ago, and the chapter on psycho-
analytic theory in the Handbook of Social Psychology, published in
1954,”° is almost completely devoted to a presentation of the theory
with very few supporting studies cited. Current research using psy-
choanalytic theory as a source of hypotheses deals with such diverse
areas as conformity, creativity, the expression of aggression, the ex-
perimental production of dreams, and the childhood origins of vari-
ous defense mechanisms. Some of these areas will be discussed in
later chapters of this book. For the present, because of its centrality
to the theory, let us look at a study on repression. Then, only touch-
ing lightly on developmental research, which is so complex as to need
an entire book to deal with it adequately, we can proceed to consider
the research on cognitive dissonance, which was done to test a dif-
ferent theory but is largely applicable to psychoanalytic theory as
well.

168 Psychology: A Social Approach

 As Sears’* has pointed out, many of the early studies of repres-
sion were “completely irrelevant to the problem,” for they dealt with
whether pleasant or unpleasant experiences are better remembered.
According to Freudian theory, it is not whether an experience is
pleasant or not that determines whether it will be subject to repres-
sion, but whether it is anxiety-arousing. If two college students spent
the weekend quite differently—one studying for an exam, the other
getting drunk and seducing the wife of a friend—it is quite possible
that the second might have a more pleasant weekend than the first,
but it is the second rather than the first who might be anxious to
forget what he had done. An experiment on repression must thus
compare memory under anxiety-arousing and non-anxiety-arousing
conditions. A more extended theoretical treatment of this idea and
relevant experimental data are presented by Rosenzweig.’* (That it
was necessary to do the study without either getting the subjects
drunk or involving them in amorous intrigues points out one of the
difficulties in doing research on defense mechanisms.) Rosenzweig’s
study was similar to one done by a student of Lewin’s named Zeigar-
nik. According to Lewinian theory, the forming of an intention to
carry out some action involves setting up a force within the person-
ality directed to that end. Zeigarnik’® had reasoned that if that were
the case, uncompleted tasks should be better remembered than com-
pleted ones, and did a series of experiments to demonstrate such
differential memory. Giving children a series of tasks to work on,
she did indeed find that those they were forced to leave before com-
pletion were better remembered than those they were given enough
time to complete. (The design was of course counterbalanced so that
we know that it was not that the tasks they were not allowed to com-
plete just happened to be more interesting or noteworthy.) One thing
which Zeigarnik had observed was that subjects who saw the experi-
mental task as a memory test and thus as a test of their personal
merit tended to remember better the tasks which they had success-
fully completed. This is what would be expected on the basis of re-
pression. Since under these circumstances failure to complete the task
would be anxiety-inducing, memory for the uncompleted tasks should
be forced out of consciousness. This psychoanalytic hypothesis was
directly tested in experiments by Rosenzweig.’® Using tasks similar te
those used by Zeigarnik, he ran different groups of subjects under
threatening and nonthreatening instructions. Sometimes subjects were
told that the experimenter merely wanted to learn how long the tasks
took so that he could use the tasks in later experiments. These sub-

Personality 169
 jects were not threatened and showed the Zeigarnik effect—they re-
membered the uncompleted tasks better than the completed ones.
The other subjects were given instructions which implied that failure
to complete the tasks was evidence of low intelligence. Since it is part
of the ego ideal of most people that they have at least average in-
telligence, these instructions make failure to complete the tasks sub-
ject to repression. Rosenzweig found that under these conditions the
subjects remembered more of the completed than of the uncompleted
tasks.
There are, of course, individual differences in how easily people
are threatened and the extent to which they resort to repression as a
defense. One interesting recent study’’ not only reproduced Rosen-
zweig’s results on the effect of instructions on repression but also
showed that volunteers for experiments showed less repression than
subjects who had to participate as a part of a course requirement.
People who lack confidence in their own abilities and are easily
threatened are less likely to volunteer.
Especially interesting is the question of why a person chooses
one defense mechanism rather than another. That the reasons are
linked to social variables is shown by studies such as those of Faris
and Dunham,'* which show that the incidence of schizophrenia is
high among children raised in the slum areas of cities, while in the
high-rent districts the incidence of schizophrenia is low and that of
manic-depressive psychosis is high. From the point of view of psy-
choanalytic theory, this is a very suggestive relationship. Schizo-
phrenia involves a breakdown of the discrimination between fantasy
and reality, and would be expected to be related to threat to the indi-
vidual at the very early stage of the differentiation of the ego from
the id, leading to a continued dependence on fantasy as a source of
gratification. Manic-depressive psychosis, on the other hand, seems
to be most closely related to the development of an especially de-
manding superego, a development which cannot take place if the
young child has already taken refuge in fantasy. That children in
working-class homes and especially in slum areas may be exposed
earlier to a threatening world while those in middle-class homes are
more likely to be taught unrealistically high standards corresponds
quite closely with commonsense observations on social-class differ-
ences in child rearing.
Unfortunately, there are complex problems involved in relating
social class or urban residence to type of mental illness. There is still

170 Psychology: A Social Approach

 controversy, for example, over whether the high prevalence of schizo-
phrenia in the core of the city could be partly or entirely due to
migration of adult schizophrenics to that area. Furthermore, child-
rearing practices vary not only with social class but also by ethnic
group, and have changed considerably over time—partly because of
the impact of changing psychological theories! Stronger evidence of
the relationship between child socialization and adult personality
comes from studies comparing different cultures, which frequently
vary dramatically from each other and have remained quite stable for
considerable periods of time. One of the best of these studies was
carried out by Whiting and Child,?® who found strong evidence of
the effects of child rearing on adult personality.
A psychoanalytic theory of motivation may now be briefly sum-
marized as follows: Children experience ways of gratifying their
impulses in playing social roles and, in doing so, modify what their
impulses will be as adults. They also identify with important figures
in their lives and internalize standards of behavior. As adults they
act in ways which will gratify their impulses while also trying to
satisfy their internalized moral standards. To the extent that their
impulses and moral standards are incompatible, they will try to work
out ways of surreptitiously gratifying the impulses while denying
the true nature of the impulses to themselves, again depending, in
doing so, on the socially acceptable roles which they have learned.
While defense mechanisms may distort perception in the attempt to
defend the self from anxiety, they can never be completely successful
where the demands of the id and the superego are sufficiently in-
compatible.

Cognitive Dissonance

As an introduction to another theory which is closely related to psy-

choanalytic theory, Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance,” let
us look at a strange but fairly common human institution, the initia-
tion ceremony. In many cultures, individuals are only admitted to full
adult status in the society when they have gone through an extensive
and often quite painful initiation ceremony. Perhaps the most severe
of these ceremonies is that practiced by the Thonga, which involves
circumcision with a flint knife.*! (This ceremony is so traumatic that
anthropological films of the ceremony have been used to arouse

Personality 171
 physiological symptoms of stress in studies in the United States.)
While not all cultures have initiation ceremonies at puberty, many
have milder forms of initiation practiced on more limited groups. In
the United States, pledges may have to be beaten with paddles or
have to eat nauseating mixtures to be admitted to a fraternity, despite
the efforts of university administrations to end such ceremonies. The
new recruit in the armed forces, and especially the first-year man at
one of the armed forces academies, is put through a regime which is
so strenuous as to constitute an ordeal.”
If you talk to a person who has been to a school or joined a
fraternity where initiation ceremonies are practiced, it is very rare to
find that he regrets having been put through the ordeal. He is most
likely to think that the experience “molds character” and that it made
him more, rather than less, attracted to the group he was joining.
Two interesting questions about initiation ceremonies are whether
they do in fact increase group solidarity and, if so, why. An experi-
mental study of this subject was done by Aronson and Miills.
In the Aronson and Mills study,”* a girl comes to the laboratory
to participate in a psychological experiment. She is told that the ex-
periment consists of a frank discussion of sexual matters and that only
people who are not easily embarrassed by such discussions can par-
ticipate. In order to qualify, she must demonstrate that she can talk
frankly about sexual matters by reading sexual materials aloud to a
male research assistant. The materials she is required to read are a list
of highly taboo Anglo-Saxon words and a passage from an author
widely regarded as obscene. After going through this ordeal, she joins
the discussion group only to find that they are having a very dull
discussion of the sexual behavior of the rat and that she is not al-
lowed to say anything anyway. Nevertheless, she rates the group as
well worth joining and the discussion as highly interesting.
In other experimental treatments, girls either went through a
milder initiation or none at all. The milder the initiation, the less
attracted to the group they were, and the girls who went through no
initiation at all rated the whole experience as a dull waste of time.
The experiment thus clearly supports the commonsense belief that
going through an initiation ceremony to join a group increases the
attractiveness of the group for us. Why should this be the case?
From the point of view of psychoanalytic theory, somewhat
different processes are involved, depending upon whether we are con-
sidering the relatively mild initiation rites of voluntary organizations

172 Psychology: A Social Approach

or the more severe trials to which individuals may be subjected with-
out any choice on their part. The latter case would include such ex-
treme cases as the initiation rites of the Thonga and the treatment
received by Jews in Nazi concentration camps. Let us consider the
more severe rites first and then return to the milder initiations of our
own society. In the extreme situation, the individual is in a situation
where he is completely powerless with respect to his tormentors. All
the social supports to the normal functioning of the personality have
been removed, and all actions by which the person might maintain
feelings of personal worth and identity have been blocked. This leads
to anxiety because the most elementary demands of the superego
cannot be met, and the individual is reduced to a state of passive
dependency upon others which is similar to the condition of the
young child. The situation is similar to that of the child in another
respect, for the only source of gratification which is left open is the
vicarious pleasure which may be obtained by identifying with the
aggressor and turning hostile impulses inward. Through this disinte-
gration of the existing personality and identification with the aggres-
sor, a new superego is created incorporating the standards of the
aggressor. The most dramatic support for this view comes from
Bruno Bettelheim’s observations on his fellow prisoners in a Nazi
concentration camp during the Second World War.** Even some
Jewish prisoners eventually came to identify with their SS guards.
Those who reacted this way remade their prison uniforms to make
them similar to those of the guards, took pride in their ability to
withstand punishment, and administered severe beatings to each
other as a game.
In the milder hazing practiced by voluntary organizations in our
own society the individual is not reduced to suck a state of helpless
dependency, although the tendency to identify with the aggressor
may exist to some extent. More important is the fact that the organi-
zation is voluntary—the individual has submitted himself to ill-
treatment by his own choice. Any indications that the organization
was not worth having gone through the ordeal for would thus be
anxiety-arousing, since they would indicate that the individual had
not lived up to his ego ideal of being a sensible and rational person.
In order to avoid this anxiety, the individual should find ways of
justifying his choice by discovering attractive characteristics of mem-
bership in the organization. The finding of reasons for having joined
the organization would then be considered as rationalization, the giv-

Personality 173
 ing of reasons other than the real one for having done something
because the real reason is anxiety-inducing. The results of the Aron-
son and Mills experiment would thus be predicted from psychoana-
lytic theory from considerations of anxiety and ego defense. The
same prediction was made by the experimenters, but from a different
theory, Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance. Let us look at this
theory and see in what ways it is similar to, and different from, psy-
choanalytic theory.
The theory is called a cognitive theory because it deals with
cognitions, the ideas and relationships among ideas which exist in the
mind of an individual. Unlike the balance theories, where a person
or thing is an element for the purpose of the theory, dissonance the-
ory is constructed so that an element is a belief about something.
Thus “I like chocolates’” would be a single element in dissonance
theory, while in balance theory it would be a relationship between
two elements, the self and chocolates. Each idea in the mind of the
person being considered is an element, and each element has one of
three relationships to each other element—they are either consonant,
dissonant, or irrelevant to each other. Take, for example, the ele-
ments “I like chocolates” and “Alan always wears his Oxford tie.”
It is difficult to see any relationship of any kind between these two
ideas. My liking for chocolate is not influenced in any way by my
friend’s sartorial habits, and the two elements are simply irrelevant
to each other.
Elements are dissonant if, given the assumptions of the indi-
vidual, one belief is inconsistent with the other. To use one of Fes-
tinger’s favorite examples, consider the person whose mind contains
the elements “I smoke” and “Smoking is bad for health.” For most
people these elements would be dissonant, because most people would
also believe that they should avoid doing things which are bad for
their health. For a person whose goal in life was to end it as rapidly
as possible, the elements would be consonant rather than dissonant,
for it would then be perfectly consistent for the person to smoke
because it was bad for his health.
While dissonance may be aroused by any inconsistent percep-
tions, it is generally only aroused in sufficient amounts to be impor-
tant in situations where one of the elements is a perception of the
person’s own behavior. If I believe that women usually hang clothes
out to dry during fair weather and yet I perceive a woman doing so

174 Psychology: A Social Approach

just as it starts to pour down rain, this would theoretically arouse a
slight amount of dissonance. This dissonance, however, could be re-
solved very easily. I could decide that not all women pick fair weather
to hang out their washing, that maybe the weather will clear up later,
or that she may be hanging them out to get wet rather than to dry.
The amount of dissonance would be slight because the matter was
unimportant to me and because there were few other elements keep-
ing me from changing my beliefs in the area. In perceptions of my
own behavior, on the other hand, dissonance may be high and diffi-
cult to reduce. What I do is important to me, behavior is often hard
to change, and perceptions have a stubborn resistance to change. It
would be difficult for me to believe, for example, that I did not smoke
while I was smoking.
Dissonance is thus most often aroused in situations that involve
an individual’s perception of his own decisions and behavior. When
aroused, it acts as a drive which can cause an individual to change
not only his perceptions of the world but also his actions in order to
reduce the dissonance. To see how this may be done, it is necessary
to look at what determines how strong the dissonance is. Festinger has
proposed that the amount of dissonance is a function of the number
of dissonant elements, the proportion of the elements in a given area
that are dissonant, and their importance. Again some examples should
help to make the theory clear. For most people, the perception that
they had just badly burned their hands by picking up a red-hot piece
of metal would be dissonant with their beliefs that they avoided
unnecessary pain. For a soldier in combat, the amount of dissonance
would be negligible if he also perceived that he had just saved his
own life by the action. In this case, the consonant element would be
considerably more important than the dissonant one. Similarly, a
large number of consonant elements will reduce the dissonance re-
sulting from a few dissonant elements. While I might suffer some
dissonance if I perceived that a used car I had just bought needed the
valves reground, the dissonance would certainly be less if I also noted
that I had bought it for a very low price and it was satisfactory in
other ways.
The factors which influence how great dissonance is also imply
the ways in which it may be reduced. There are widely various ways,
including changing behavior, changing the evaluation of the environ-
ment, and adding new consonant elements. Widely diverse experi-

Personality 175
 ments have been done demonstrating these various methods, and we
will look at some of them as soon as we have returned to the Aron-
son and Mills experiment. In the Aronson and Mills experiment, the
perception on the part of the subjects that they have gone through
an unpleasant initiation in order to join a group is dissonant with
their perception that the group is not worth joining. How can this
dissonance be reduced? It can’t be done by changing behavior, for
the person has already been through both the initiation and the group
discussion. For a girl to try to change her perception of the world
by thinking that she had not participated in the experiment when
she actually had would border on the psychotic. It is possible, how-
ever, to add consonant elements, by deciding that some things said
in the group discussion were really very interesting and informative.
In this way the evaluation of the group discussion can be changed,
so that the discussion seems worthwhile and the people participating
in it seem nice. This is the change which Aronson and Mills pre-
dicted and found for the girls who had gone through the severe
initiation, while the girls who went through less initiation had less
dissonance and thus less reason to perceive the experiment as in-
teresting.
Besides changing your own evaluation of something in order to
reduce dissonance, as the girls did in this experiment, it is possible to
reduce it by changing social reality. The person who has doubts about
how good his expensive new car is may reassure himself by reading
the glowing advertisements for it put out by its maker, as a study
by Ehrlich and others indicates.*? Another strategy would be to try
to convince all his friends that it is the best car in the world and that
they were very unfortunate not to own one. Then how could he
doubt the wisdom of his choice, when it was universally acknowl-
edged that he had bought the best car there is? This mechanism of
dissonance reduction may lie behind the glowing accounts of married
life which newlyweds give to unmarried friends and those of parent-
hood which new parents give to childless couples.
Festinger and his colleagues have done one fascinating, if highly
controversial, study of the operation of this means of dissonance
reduction. Their account was published in a book, When Prophecy
Fails.°° History abounds in examples of new religious movements
springing into being, often millenial movements—movements which
believe that the day of judgment is at hand. Occasionally one of these

176 Psychology: A Social Approach

sects will survive and undergo a transformation into a more bureau-
cratic and less evangelical church, a process described by Max Weber
as the routinization of charisma. The majority, however, do not sur-
vive the death of their founder. From a study of the history of such
movements, Festinger theorized that dissonance reduction played an
important part in their evolution. In essence, his theory was that it
was doubt about the validity of one’s religious beliefs which first led
religious groups to try to convert others to their views. He thus pre-
dicted that in a millenial movement, the attempt to convert others to
the views of the sect would first occur when the prophecy was not
fulfilled and the world did not come to an end on the appointed day.
He and his colleagues tested this idea by joining such a move-
ment. A small item appeared in many newspapers in the United
States telling of a woman in “Lake City” who believed that the world
would soon come to an end and that she and a few other true be-
lievers would be picked up by craft from outer space while all others
would be destroyed. When Festinger and his colleagues heard of this
prediction, they went to ‘Lake City” and joined the movement, pro-
fessing to share the woman’s faith, a bit of deception for which they
have been much criticized and which would have been especially
troublesome for them had the prophecies of the sect proved accurate.
(In Festinger’s defense it should be noted that his description of the
movement was much more sympathetic than any other published,
after the appointed day passed without anything out of the ordinary
happening.)
When the appointed hour approached, the members of the sect
were divided. Some, in “Lake City,” were met together in the house
of their chief prophet. The others, largely students at a university
where a faculty member had been converted, were home for Christ-
mas vacation. Festinger’s prediction was that the members who were
gathered together would get social support from each other and
would thus find some way to maintain their faith in the face of the
disconfirmation of their chief prophecy. This group he predicted
would then begin to try actively to convert others to the faith. On
the other hand, he predicted that the isolated student believers would
not be able to get any support for their beliefs when the prophecy
failed and would thus give up their faith. This was, in fact, just what
happened. The members of the sect meeting together decided that the
world had been saved because of their faith and that they had a duty

Personality 177
 to tell others of this miraculous happening. They called the press and
set out to convert others. The other members, however, returned to
school rather shamefaced with no desire to discuss the matter further.
Dramatic as the support is which this study gave to dissonance
theory, two postscripts should be added to it. One is the observation
that the husband of the chief prophet did not share his wife’s faith
and spent the period when the visitors from outer space were ex-
pected soundly asleep. A consideration of how much dissonance
would be involved in having married a woman who believed that you
faced certain and immediate damnation would suggest that there
must be large differences in tolerance for dissonance. The other post-
script is more serious. A replication of the study by Hardyck and
Braden*’ on a religious group whose members moved into fallout
shelters because they expected a nuclear attack failed to obtain the
results predicted from dissonance theory. While the group members
did not give up their faith when the attack did not occur, they also
did not set out to convert others to it. The authors of the study point
out that there were differences between the group they studied and
the group Festinger studied and conclude that dissonance theory
needs to be further elaborated to be able to explain when proselytiz-
ing will or will not be the means used to reduce dissonance.
In the few years since dissonance theory was first described it
has generated a vast wealth of experimental investigation which can-
not be surveyed in an introductory text. Not all the studies have been
well controlled, and the theory does in fact have sufficient ambiguity
that precise predictions are sometimes difficult to make. The methodo-
logical problems of some of the studies supporting dissonance theory
are reviewed in an article by Chapanis and Chapanis, who are led
to the following: “In conclusion, all of the considerations detailed
above lead us to concur with Asch’s (1958) evaluation of the evidence
for cognitive dissonance theory, and return once more a verdict of
NOT PROVEN.”** The conclusion of Chapanis and Chapanis, how-
ever, seems overly harsh on dissonance theory. While there are weak-
nesses in some of the studies supporting dissonance theory, that fact
does not invalidate the positive results of the studies which are with-
out such weaknesses. Even Chapanis and Chapanis concede that some
methodologically sound studies do provide support for the theory,
saying, ““To test a theory like this, it is up to the experimenter to
create various degrees of dissonance by introducing various dis-

178 Psychology: A Social Approach

crepant cognitions within an individual. Whenever contradictory
statements or syllogisms or opinions are used, there is not likely to
be much controversy about the fact that they must lead to discrepant
internal cognitions, and so, by definition, to dissonance. Indeed,
studies on cognitive dissonance of this type have yielded results
which are well-established, clear-cut, and consistent.’””® If it is the
case, as it does seem to be, that clear support for the theory is pro-
vided by those studies which are well designed, then it would seem
unreasonable to reject the theory because some poorly designed
studies have also obtained results supporting it.
While dissonance theory is somewhat ambiguous, it is consid-
erably less ambiguous than the psychoanalytic theory of defense
mechanisms; yet the two theories make very similar predictions in a
wide variety of social situations. In psychoanalytic theory, anxiety is
aroused by an indication that a person has violated or is liable to
violate the dictates of his superego. In dissonance theory, dissonance
is aroused by indications that this behavior is inconsistent with his
beliefs. There seems to be little difference between these two causes
of disquietude other than the words used to describe them. The de-
fense mechanisms and the means of reducing dissonance are also
largely equivalent. Let us see if we can make a rough mapping of the
mechanisms of one theory into those of the other.
The three basic ways of reducing dissonance are to change an
element of behavior; to change the environment, or at least the per-
ception of it; and to add new consonant elements. What are the
psychoanalytic equivalents of these strategies? Bringing beliefs and
behavior into agreement by changing the behavior would seem to be
the most rational way of reducing dissonance, but even this alterna-
tive is likely to involve irrational elements. Even though the new
source of action is less dissonant than the old one, some beliefs will
undoubtedly support the old rather than the new behavior. The
person who quits smoking because of the dissonance involved in its
being bad for his health does not become free of all dissonance be-
cause of making the change, for memories of how much he enjoyed
smoking will be dissonant with his new behavior. He is thus likely
to try to cope with this new dissonance by using the other means of
dissonance reduction at his disposal. He is likely, for example, to add
consonant elements by assiduously studying literature indicating how
bad smoking is for people. He might also try to gain social support

Personality 179
 by telling all his friends how much better he feels since quitting and
trying to convince all his friends that they should quit also. This type
of fervor from the new convert to an idea is easily observed in every-
day life, not only in former smokers but also in people who have
changed their political party, their religious beliefs, or their citizen-
ship. Hansen’s law, for example, points to the ways in which second-
generation Americans renounce the cultural ties and characteristics of
their national origins, although the third generation may again be-
come interested in these ties to its cultural past. This method of dis-
sonance reduction is quite equivalent to reaction formation, in which
a person especially strongly condemns certain ways of obtaining
pleasure precisely because of his difficulty in renouncing these im-
pulses in himself.
Because the world is difficult to change, changing the environ-
ment is usually not a satisfactory way of reducing dissonance. Fes-
tinger gives the example of a person who has a compulsion to avoid
stepping on a particular part of the floor although he can perceive
that it is just as solid as any other part. This person could reduce his
dissonance by taking an ax and chopping a hole in the floor at that
point. Usually, however, the world is not so easily changed to make
it consistent with our behavior. For that reason it is usually more
practical to change our perception of the world without changing the
world itself. This can be done by changing our evaluation of aspects
of the world and by getting social support for our views. The first
of these alternatives is illustrated in the Aronson and Mills study,
the second in When Prophecy Fails. While there is no precise equiva-
lent to these strategies in psychoanalytic defense mechanisms, a
similar mechanism of a more limited sort is involved in projection.
In this mechanism we manage to conceal the nature of our own mo-
tives by changing our evaluation of the meaning of the behavior of
others.
The third major way of reducing dissonance is by adding new
cognitive elements. This may involve reconciling apparent inconsis-
tencies in our beliefs by adding new elements about the differences in
the situations in which they are involved. A person who believed in
American nationalism but not Chinese nationalism, for example,
might add the element that he believed in national movements when
they represented the will of the people as expressed in democratic
institutions but not when they represented the actions of an arbitrary

180 Psychology: A Social Approach

government. There seems to be no precise equivalent of this mech-
anism in psychoanalytic theory, although it is very close to the con-
cept of differentiation in balance theory. Adding new elements may
also involve coming to view the consonant beliefs as more important
and the dissonant ones as less so, a mechanism which seems to be
especially important in the creation of new political movements. As
shown in studies such as The People’s Choice,*° political parties do
not differ so much in the stands they take on issues as they do in
what issues they consider important.
The cognitive changes which dissonance theory considers under
the heading of adding new elements would be considered as repres-
sion and rationalization by psychoanalytic theory. Dissonance theory
stresses that the force is taken out of some dissonant ideas by coming
to consider them as relatively unimportant, while psychoanalytic
theory stresses that they are actively forced out of consciousness.
The two mechanisms differ only in degree, and the reinterpretation
of the personality which takes place in psychotherapy involves chang-
ing ideas about what is important, as well as uncovering completely
repressed material. The adding of completely new elements in disso-
nance theory is more similar to rationalization, in which new reasons
are invented to support a course of action because the actual reasons
are too anxiety-inducing.
While there is not a complete correspondence of the mechanisms
of personality defense set out in psychoanalytic and dissonance the-
ory, there is enough similarity to argue that they are in general talk-
ing about the same phenomena. Festinger has differentiated disso-
nance theory from conflict theory by arguing that conflict theory is
describing the cognitive processes preceding commitment to a course
of action, while dissonance theory is describing the cognitive changes
which follow making a decision and becoming committed to it. While
this distinction differentiates dissonance theory from experimentally
based conflict theory, which is based upon isolated decisions, it will
not serve to distinguish the domain of dissonance theory from that of
the defense mechanisms, for these are based on observation of on-
going lives in which previous commitments to courses of action al-
ready exist. People do not generally seek psychotherapy because they
are facing a difficult new decision and cannot make up their minds,
but because of the problems arising from the decisions they have
already made. This observation does not decrease the importance of

Personality 181
 the work of Festinger and his colleagues. In describing the same
phenomena which psychotherapists have previously observed in more
precise and testable terms and in providing a wealth of experimental
evidence on them, they have contributed to clinical as well as social
psychology.

Summary

Psychoanalytic theory makes three fundamental assumptions about

personality. It is assumed that human experience and behavior are
not accidental, but caused by the interaction of the individual with
his environment. If this is the case, then many of the determinants
of human behavior must be unconscious. Finally, personality is
viewed as made up of conflicting processes rather than as being
unitary.
Approaching individual development in terms of these assump-
tions can reveal much about social motivation. However, because of
the difficulty in tracing the development of the motives of even one
individual, it is often more practical to approach motivation from the
point of view of current functioning than from a developmental
perspective. The Thematic Apperception Test, developed by Henry
Murray, illustrates this approach to social motivation. To understand
the forces acting on an individual at a given time, it is necessary to
consider the situation in which he is found as well as his motives.
Defense mechanisms develop to protect the individual from
anxiety. The most basic of these is repression, the active keeping of
material out of consciousness. Other defense mechanisms involve the
use of repression as well. In displacement, for example, in which a
motive is expressed against a substitute object, the individual is not
aware that the object toward which the motive is being expressed is
not the one which aroused the motive.
While a number of research studies bearing on psychoanalytic
hypotheses have been carried out, the theory has not been as pro-
ductive of research as some simpler and more clearly stated theories
have been. Closely related to a theory of ego defense and more pro-
ductive of experimental research is cognitive-dissonance theory.
Studies of initiation and of disconfirmation provide typical examples
of the research on this theory.

182 Psychology: A Social Approach

Notes and Acknowledgments
Aly Bandura, Albert, Dorothea Ross, and Sheila A. Ross. “A comparative test
of the status envy, social power, and secondary reinforcement theories
of identificatory learning.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychol-
ogy, 1963 (67), pp. 527-534.
Bandura, Albert. “Vicarious processes: A case of no-trial learning’ in
Leonard Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.
Vol. 2. New York: Academic Press, Inc., 1965, pp. 1-55.
. Useful and readable books for obtaining an elementary knowledge of
psychoanalytic theory are:
Brenner, Charles. An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis. Garden
City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1955.
Thompson, Clara. Psychoanalysis: Evolution and Development. New York:
Grove Press, Inc., 1957.
Freud, Sigmund. An Outline of Psychoanalysis. New York: W. W. Norton
& Company, Inc., 1949.
Freud, Anna. The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. New York: Inter-
national Universities Press, Inc., 1961.
Good, brief accounts are also given in:
Hall, Calvin, and Gardner Lindzey. Theories of Personality. New York:
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1957.
Cofer, C. N., and M. H. Appley. Motivation: Theory and Research. New
York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1966.
. Cheek, D. B. “Can surgical patients react to what they hear under anes-
thesia?” Journal of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists,
February, 1965 (33), pp. 30-38.
. James, William. The Principles of Psychology. Vol. I. Dover Publications,
1950. Copyright 1890 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright 1918
by Alice H. James, pp. 391-392. By permission of the publisher.
. Sears, R. R., Eleanor Maccoby, and Harry Levin. Patterns of Child Rearing.
New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, 1957.
. Sears, R. R., J. W. M. Whiting, V. Nowlis, and P. S. Sears. “Some child-
rearing antecedents of aggression and dependency in young children.”
Genetic Psychology Monographs, 1953 (47), pp 135-236.
Berkowitz, Leonard. “The effects of observing violence.” Scientific Ameri-
can, February, 1964.
. A good brief account of Murray’s theoretical position is given in Hall and
Lindzey. Op. cit.
. Holt, Robert R. “The thematic apperception test” in Harold H. Anderson
and Gladys L. Anderson (Eds.), An Introduction to Projective Tech-
niques. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1951.
. Ibid., p. 184. By permission of the author.
10. Birney, R., H. Burdick, J. Caylor, P. O’Connor, and J. Veroff. Research
summarized as chap. 6 of Edward L. Walker and Roger Heyns, An
Anatomy for Conformity. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
1962, pp. 54-68.

Personality 183
 ila Freud, Anna. Op. cit.
12. Hall, Calvin S., and Gardner Lindzey. “Psychoanalytic theory and its ap-
plications in the social sciences” in Gardner Lindzey (Ed.), Handbook
of Social Psychology. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing
Company, Inc., 1954.
13: Sears, R. R. “Functional abnormalities of memory with special reference to
amnesia.” Psychological Bulletin, 1936 (33), pp. 229-274.
14. Rosenzweig, S. “An experimental study of ‘repression’ with special refer-
ence to need-persistive and ego-defensive reactions to frustration.”
Journalof Experimental Psychology, 1943 (32), pp. 64-76.
Rosenzweig, S. ‘The investigation of repression as an instance of experi-
mental idiodynamics.” Psychological Review, 1952 (59), pp. 339-345.
Rosenzweig, S. “The experimental study of repression” in Henry A. Mur-
ray (Ed.), Explorations in Personality. New York: Science Editions,
Inc., 1962, pp. 472-490.
AUS). Zeigarnik,Bluma. “Uber das behalten von erledigten und unerledigten
Handlungen.” Psychologische Forschungen, 1927 (9), pp. 1-85. An
English description may be found in Dorwin Cartwright (Ed.), Field
Theory in Social Science. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers,
Incorporated, 1951, pp. 6-20.
16. Rosenzweig, S. “An experimental study of ‘repression’. ...
wy

17. Green, Donald Ross. “Volunteering and the recall of interrupted tasks.”
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1963 (66), pp. 397-401.
18. Faris, R. E. L., and H. W. Dunham. Mental Disorders in Urban Areas.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1939.
Faris, R. E. L. “Demography of urban psychotics with special reference to
schizophrenia.” American Sociological Review, 1938 (3), pp. 203-209.
19. Whiting, J. W. M., and I. L. Child. Child Training and Personality. New
Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1953.
20. A very readable description of Festinger’s cognitive-dissonance theory may
be found in his article by that title in Scientific American, October,
1962.
For a fuller account see Festinger, Leon. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.
New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, 1957.
For recent experimental studies utilizing the theory, see Brehm, J. W., and
A. R. Cohen. Explorations in Cognitive Dissonance. New York: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1962.
21. Whiting, John, Richard Kluckhohn, and Albert Anthony. “The function of
male initiation ceremonies at puberty” in Harold Proshansky and
Bernard Seidenberg (Eds.), Basic Studies in Social Psychology. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1965.
22. Dornbush, S. “The military academy as an assimilating institution.” Social
Forces, May, 1955 (33), no. 4.
23. Aronson, Elliot, and Judson Mills. “The effect of severity of initiation on
liking for a group.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,
1959 (59), pp. 177-181.
24, Bettelheim, Bruno. “Individual and mass behavior in extreme situations.”

184 Psychology: A Social Approach

 Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1943 (38), pp. 417-452.
29. Ehrlich, D., I. Guttman, P. Schdnbach, and J. Mills. “Post-decision exposure
to relevant information.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,
1957 (54), pp. 98-102.
26. Festinger, Leon, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter. When Prophecy
Fails. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1956.
27. Hardyck, J. A., and M. Braden. ‘Prophecy fails again.” Journal of Abnor-
mal and Social Psychology, 1962 (65), pp. 136-141.
28. Chapanis, N. P., and A. Chapanis. ‘Cognitive dissonance: Five years later.””
Psychological Bulletin, 1964 (61), pp. 1-22.
4S). Ibid., p. 3. By permission of the publisher.
30. Lazarsfeld, Paul F., Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet. The People’s
Choice. New York: Columbia University Press, 1948.

Personality 185
Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museun
OLX
pie) EGIES &
BY IMPTOMS~

Strategies of Happiness

Although he may not always be conscious of making a choice, each

person selects to some extent his own strategy in seeking after hap-
piness. To what extent, for example, should a person permit himself
to care about another person? On the one hand, the person who re-
mains indifferent to others guards himself against pain and disap-
pointment. Enduring loneliness by isolating oneself from others, as
Freud observed, is the surest safeguard against the unhappiness that
may arise from human relations.’ On the other hand, the gratification
which loneliness brings is merely the negative one of absence of

187
 disappointment. To achieve the more positive satisfactions which
come from having close relations with another person, one must take
the risk of letting oneself care. It is a risk, because the person upon
whom one becomes dependent may prove undependable. The lover
who has just been rejected experiences more anguish than the person
who has not yet loved at all. In the song, Frankie wouldn’t have shot
Johnny if he hadn’t been “her man.”
The problem of dependency is most clearly seen in courtship,
and an excellent discussion of it is provided by Thibaut and Kelley.’
As a couple become more and more deeply involved with each other,
they neglect alternate relationships with others which they could fall
back on; in short, they become dependent on each other. Each con-
ceals his or her dependency from the other, however, because of
what has been called the principle of least interest. This principle
states that the person who cares least about maintaining the relation-
ship is able to exploit the other. Consider a simple example. A boy
with a car and a boy without a car are going to a restaurant together.
Probably the boy with the car will have the most say about which
restaurant they go to, for he is least dependent on the relationship.
He could always get someone else to go out in his car to eat with
him, while his friend could not always get someone with a car to
take him out to eat. Similarly, in a courtship situation, the partner
who cares the least about the other can use the threat of terminating
the relationship to obtain what he or she wants, while the one who
cannot get along without the other is more likely to give in. The
emotionally detached and manipulative person, however, pays the
price of not obtaining the rewards which only emotional involvement
can bring.
While only involvement with the real world can bring gratifica-
tion of our impulses, there are many ways of trying to deaden the
pains of life. Some of the major ways are the use of drugs and in-
toxicants, developing forms of gratification which cannot be easily
frustrated by the outside world, and escape into fantasy. Under
stress, each way of adjusting may develop into well-developed symp-
toms. The occasional use of alcohol may become alcoholism. The
person who takes pleasure in music may so completely escape into
this world as to neglect all else. The person who daydreams may
come to spend the greater part of his life in a world of fantasy.
In a sense, then, mental disorders develop as unsuccessful at-
tempts to cope with life. The symptoms people develop, unpleasant

188 Psychology: A Social Approach

as they may be, develop as the person’s attempt to protect himself
against something he sees as being worse. Although they may not be
adaptive, symptoms are an attempt to adapt.
Let us look at a strategy which at first glance seems completely
improbable—that of seeking failure. It can be observed in many situ-
ations. One example is cited by John Holt in How Children Fail:

Can a child have a vested interest in failure? What on earth could it

be? Martha, playing the number game, often acts the same way. She
does not understand, does not want to understand, does not listen
when you are explaining, and then says, “I'm all mixed up.”

To a person who fears failure, not trying and taking failure for
granted can be less threatening than investing effort and perhaps
failing anyway. More than that, being punished can help to relieve
guilt. Without punishment, the person must face that he feels bad be-
cause of his own guilt about what he feels are his shortcomings. If he
is punished, however, it is possible for him to convince himself that
he feels bad because of the punishment rather than his own guilt.
Externalization of the guilt relieves some of the anxiety, and it may
even be possible for the person to convince himself that the punish-
ment was undeserved. “I hate myself’ can thus become “My wife
does not understand me.”
This particular mechanism seems to be a central one in alcohol-
ism, and it is thus important to the alcoholic that he find someone to
play the role of ““persecutor.” A good example of this is given by
Eric Berne in Games People Play:

In one case a female alcoholic in a therapy group participated very

little until she thought she knew enough about the other members to
go ahead with her game. She then asked them to tell her what they
thought of her. Since she had behaved pleasantly enough, various
members said nice things about her, but she protested: “That's not
what I want. I want to know what you really think.” She made it
clear that she was seeking derogatory comments. The other women
refused to persecute her, whereupon she went home and told her
husband that if she took another drink, he must either divorce her or
send her to a hospital. He promised to do this, and that evening she
became intoxicated and he sent her to a sanitarium. Here the other
members refused to play the persecutory roles White assigned to
them; she was unable to tolerate this antithetical behavior, in spite
of everyone's efforts to reinforce whatever insight she had already
obtained. At home she found someone who was willing to play the
role she demanded.*

Strategies & Symptoms 189

Neurosis

Some of the mechanisms which an individual may use to defend him-

self against anxiety were presented in the last chapter. All people
make some use of such defenses, but most people do not need to use
them a great deal. As we pass from occasional anxiety routinely
handled by mild defenses to debilitating anxiety and well-developed
symptoms, we pass over the hazy boundary between mental health
and neurosis.
Neurotic symptoms all seem to be effects of anxiety, ways of
acting out impulses that cause anxiety, or attempts to cope with
anxiety. Still there is much variety in the particular symptoms de-
veloped. One individual may experience anxiety directly, with feelings
of panic and dread and physical symptoms such as heart palpitation
and muscular tremor. Another may not complain of anxiety, but
instead show selective memory loss and physical symptoms which
mimic those of a physical illness. Each person has his own idiosyn-
cratic pattern of symptoms, and even the classification of the patterns
is a matter of some doubt. While there is thus no such thing as a
typical neurotic pattern, a psychiatric case study’ may give some
impression of the way in which neurotic symptoms may represent
an attempt to adapt: Following a minor accident a twenty-eight-year-
old married man was admitted to a hospital claiming that the accident
had made him blind. Since physical examination could reveal no
injury which would have caused blindness, he was referred to the
psychiatric department for an interview, where it was discovered that
he had suffered the accident while on the way to the hospital to see
his wife and newborn first child. He explained to the psychiatrist that
since he was now blind, his first duty would have to be to divorce
his wife as he could not keep her tied down to a blind man. Further
interviews indicated that the man’s symptoms made sense in terms
of both his childhood and his current situation. His mother had been
extremely domineering and his father submissive. The son had thus
strongly resisted his own dependency longings, for giving in to them
would symbolize unwilling submission to his mother’s domination.
He left home and resolved never to marry. Eventually he became so
involved with a woman that he did marry her, but with the agree-
ment that they would never have children. When she became preg-
nant and was unwilling to have an abortion, he saw his escape closed.
Psychosomatic blindness was a last-ditch fight to escape, although he
was not consciously aware that that was what it was. (Discussions

190 Psychology: A Social Approach

with the psychiatrist about this background and its implications for
his marital situation resulted in a cure of his blindness, and continued
therapy with both the patient and his wife resulted in a much-
improved marriage. It is unfortunate that not all patterns of symp-
toms are as easily understood.)
That the development of symptoms may serve a real function
for the individual is most clearly shown in a study by Wolff et al.°
This study differs from most studies of psychological disturbance in
that it was predictive, and the individuals were studied while they
developed the symptoms rather than after they had become disturbed.
Wolff studied the parents of children who were dying of leukemia,
an experience which often has very serious consequences for the
mental health of the parent, as we shall see in looking into the causes
of psychosis. Wolff predicted that those parents who actively faced
the reality of the child’s dying and dealt with the psychological
stresses involved as they presented themselves would show the physi-
ological general adaptation syndrome as measured by higher levels
of excreted corticosteroid hormones. Those parents who developed
psychological (reality-denying) defenses against this threatening per-
ception of their child’s dying were expected to have lower stress-
corticosteroid symptoms. By assessing, by psychological methods, the
degree to which each parent was facing the reality of the impending
death, he estimated their level of corticosteroid excretion. His pre-
dictions were upheld by the evidence. The student will remember
from the chapter dealing with endocrines that the general adaptation
syndrome puts a severe physiological strain on the organism.
Neurotic symptoms have been variously classified. A typical
categorization is that of Lazarus,’ who lists anxiety states, hysteria,
obsessive-compulsive reactions, neurotic depression, and psychoso-
matic disorders. Under anxiety states are included not only simple
anxiety but also asthenic reaction, characterized by feelings of fatigue
which the person assumes to have an organic basis; hypochondriacal
reaction, with anxiety focused on particular physical symptoms; and
phobic reaction, with fear of some particular type of situation or
object. Each of these types of reaction represents an attempt to ex-
plain the anxiety that the person feels. Of course a person would feel
upset if he had some physical basis for being so fatigued that he
could not work, had a serious illness, or was exposed to a dangerous
threat from outside. By ascribing his anxiety to one of these causes,
the individual explains it to himself and makes it less threatening.
Under hysteria are classed conversion reactions, in which anxi-

Strategies & Symptoms 191

 ety is transformed into a physical symptom such as paralysis or
blindness, and dissociative reactions, in which some of the individual’s
memories are split off from consciousness. The young man in the
motor accident mentioned at the beginning of this section is an exam-
ple of the former of these reactions, while the Rev. Ansel Bourne
discussed in the last chapter is an example of the latter. While the
dissociative reaction is not common and the alternation of separate
well-developed personalities is actually quite rare, the disorder is still
especially interesting because of the light it throws on the role of
unconscious processes in neurosis. Two cases which have been de-
scribed at length are that of Christine Beauchamp, studied by Morton
Prince® before the publication of Freud’s first major work and thus
uninfluenced by psychoanalytic theory, and the more recent case of
Eve.”

A CASE STUDY

Prince’s study is a psychological classic, and even today is perhaps

as interesting a book as the introductory student may find to read.
Who could resist a book which begins:
Miss Christine L. Beauchamp, the subject of this study, is a person
in whom several personalities have become developed; that is to say,
she may change her personality from time to time, often from hour
to hour, and with each change her character becomes transformed
and her memories altered.’°
The book is not only exciting, however; it is also the work of a
patient and skeptical investigator. Over the years that he treated Miss
Beauchamp, Prince conducted many small experiments to test his
hypotheses about her case. It was only reluctantly that he came to
believe that it was a true case of alternating. The skepticism of the
author adds to the convincingness of the description.
The Miss Beauchamp who came to Prince for treatment was a
proud, sensitive, diligent, and self-sacrificing young lady—a model
in many ways of what society applauds. If she had not suffered from
headaches, insomnia, bodily pains, and fatigue, she might have been
thought highly successful. As it was, she remained an outstanding
student despite her difficulties and avoided imposing them on her
friends. One appreciates Prince’s difficulty in trying to do psycho-
therapy with a woman whose attitude was:
“IT have never been in the habit of talking about my private affairs."

192 Psychology: A Social Approach

 Prince treated Miss Beauchamp for her physical symptoms by
using hypnotic suggestion, with the usual amount of success. Each
symptom could be temporarily cured in this manner, but either it or
a similar one would recur. Miss Beauchamp’s personality under hyp-
nosis was no different from her waking personality.
Then one day another personality appeared under hypnosis.
At first, Prince considered it merely another hypnotic state, but
eventually it became clear that this particular state differed in mood,
interests, abilities, and memories from the Miss Beauchamp Prince
knew. The alternating personality, who eventually took the name
Sally, sometimes controlled the activities of Miss Beauchamp, and at
the end of these periods Miss Beauchamp had amnesia for what had
happened during them. Sally, however, did not have amnesia for the
periods when Miss Beauchamp was the dominant personality.
The first clue that Sally represented a different portion of the
personality from Miss Beauchamp was that Sally referred to the con-
scious Miss Beauchamp as “She.” Miss Beauchamp referred to the
conscious Miss Beauchamp as “I.” Here is an exchange between
Prince and Sally on the subject of “She”:
i VOUsaTeaones alusaid:
“No, I am not.”
aA
“T say you are....
“Why are you not ‘She’?”
“Because ‘She’ does not know the same things that I do.”
“But you both have the same arms and legs, haven't you?”
“Yes, but arms and legs do not make us the same.’’'”

Miss Beauchamp did not know who “She” was:

“Well, you know who you are?”
“Yes, Miss Beauchamp.”
“Exactly. You have got over the idea of being different from other
persons—that there is a ‘She’?”
(Surprised and puzzled) “What ‘She’? I do not know what you
HICON: wo
“You used to tell me that you were not Miss Beauchamp.”
‘Tidid pot”
“That when you were awake you were a different person.”
(Remonstrating and astounded) ‘Dr. Prince, I did not say so."**
Sally differed from Miss Beauchamp in many ways. She was impul-
sive, childish, and enthusiastic. She spent the last of Miss Beau-
champ’s money on candy and gorged herself, regularly made dates
with a man who did not at first know of the existence of the staid

Strategies & Symptoms 193

 personality of Miss Beauchamp, played practical jokes on her friends,
smoked and drank. She then left Miss Beauchamp to awake with
a hangover and amnesia for the previous day! Sally also differed
from Miss Beauchamp in one way which was instantly apparent.
Sally spoke with a bad stutter, while Miss Beauchamp was com-
pletely free of it.
The relationships of the various personalities shown by Dr.
Prince’s patient are not easy to describe. Any person may be re-
minded by some sensation of something he has not thought about
for years, and memories and feelings may come back which had been
in a sense unconscious. Under the influence of these memories he
may show insights which he would not normally show, remembering,
for example, what it is like to be a four-year-old. The process might
strongly influence both his feelings and his behavior. Miss Beau-
champ seems to have differed from this normal type of alternation of
consciousness by (1) having kept many aspects of herself from ex-
pression because they did not live up to the high ideals she had for
herself and (2) allowing these aspects to become sufficiently orga-
nized and autonomous, partly through experiences with hypnotism,
to come to the fore. In a sense, the development of Sally was a stage
in the cure of Miss Beauchamp, for the unconscious aspects of her
personality first found expression as secondary personalities and were
then integrated into a new and more complete self.
That the processes involved in the formation of secondary per-
sonalities such as Sally are essentially similar in kind to processes
taking place in all people does not mean that all people have sub-
merged secondary personalities. In most people unconscious processes
are simply that—isolated processes. They are not organized into a
secondary personality. From the rare case such as that of Miss Beau-
champ where they are organized, we may gain interesting insights
into the nature of the self. Sally was not only able to produce various
neurotic symptoms in Miss Beauchamp, such as obsessive thoughts
which Miss Beauchamp did not know the origin of. She was also able
to give much more complete accounts of her dreams and experiences
than most people can give. The following is Sally’s account of how
Miss Beauchamp lost some money. Miss Beauchamp did not yet
know that it was lost at the time Sally told about it:
“She yesterday received a letter from a photographer. She had it in
her hand while walking down Washington street, and then put it
into her pocket (side pocket of coat) where She kept her watch and

194 Psychology: A Social Approach

 money (banknotes). As She walked along She took out the money
and tore it into pieces, thinking it was the letter from the photog-
rapher. She threw the money into the street. As She tore up the
money, She thought to herself, I wish they would not write on this
bond paper.”’14

The case of Miss Beauchamp also illustrates the rather artificial

nature of the distinctions made among different types of neurosis,
for she showed all the different types at one time or another. She had
attacks of anxiety, obsessive thoughts, compulsions to act in bizarre
ways, and physical symptoms with psychological causes. She suf-
fered from depression to such an extent that she almost succeeded in
killing herself. Clearly we should not think of patterns of symptoms
as discrete disease entities, but varying mechanisms which may be
shown by the same person. Rather than classifying types of neurosis,
we need to study the dynamics of the individual case.

A Psychosis: Schizophrenia

Besides neurosis there are a number of other varieties of mental dis-

order. Some are clearly the result of organic deterioration or damage
of the brain. Others are as poorly defined as “character disorder,” a
category which includes alcoholism, drug addiction, and an apparent
ability to not live up to the expectations of society without feeling
guilt. Also familiar to most people are psychosomatic disorders, with
symptoms such as ulcers and high blood pressure, which are real
organic illnesses even though they result from psychological stress.
Within this broad range of types of disorder, schizophrenia is
especially important to understand. It is one of the psychoses, serious
disorders which involve major disturbances in the perception of
reality, in speech and thought, and in mood and social relations. It is
also quite a common disorder in our culture, accounting for approxi-
mately half the hospital beds which are occupied by psychiatric
patients.
Psychoses are generally divided into schizophrenia, in which the
disturbance involves thought processes, and manic-depressive psy-
chosis, in which the emotions are more disordered. While there does
seem to be some tendency for symptoms to cluster into syndromes,
we have seen that the categories also represent a good deal of over-
simplification. Some individuals have patterns of symptoms which

Strategies & Symptoms 195

 have some of the characteristics of schizophrenia and some of those
of manic-depressive psychosis. There is probably about as much
oversimplification in summing up a person’s pattern of symptoms by
calling him a schizophrenic as there is in summing up all his attitudes
by calling him a Democrat. Any particular description of symptoms
is thus an idealized model which no particular case would fit.
Perhaps the most striking symptom of schizophrenia, and one
which is shown very frequently, is a basic disturbance of the use of
language. Rather than words being selected which will make com-
munication possible, they are combined on the basis of idiosyncratic
and illogical associations or common associations that are out of place
in that particular communication. This may lead to varying amounts
of language disturbance, from slightly idiosyncratic use of language
to a word salad which is completely incomprehensible. An example
of the former would be the sentence, “I like coffee, cream, cows,
Elizabeth Taylor.’”’* While each association is clear enough, the over-
all direction of the sentence is not.
Concept-formation tasks show similar disturbances of the think-
ing of schizophrenics. If asked to classify objects, they will do so in
idiosyncratic ways which are difficult to describe. A knife might be
classed with an apple, an orange, and a banana because it could be
used to peel the apple. Similarly, the experimenter and furniture in
the room may be classified along with the experimental objects. These
and similar types of distortion have led some investigators to con-
clude that the basic problem in schizophrenia is a failure of attention
processes and consequent inability to exclude irrelevant material from
consciousness.*°
Loss of contact with reality is shown in a variety of ways. De-
lusions, unshakable beliefs that are clearly mistaken, are held by
many schizophrenics. These may take many forms, with feelings of
being persecuted, delusions of grandeur, and sexual delusions the
most common. Disordered perceptions are shown in responses to
projective tests such as the Rorschach, and sometimes in distorted
perceptions of one’s own body. One study found that a majority of
schizophrenics were unable to recognize photographs of their own
bodies.”
Besides showing disturbance of langauge and thought, schizo-
phrenics also show changes in their emotions and behavior. Their
emotions often seem inappropriate, with the person showing great
anxiety or rage for no apparent reason. Certain cther emotions seem

196 Psychology: A Social Approach

to be blunted, so that joy and sadness are absent even when they
would be appropriate. An experience of great emotional meaning,
such as the death of a parent or child, will be described with no
apparent feeling. This emotional withdrawal mirrors a social with-
drawal from the world. One common early symptom of schizo-
phrenia is a withdrawal from normal social contact with others.
The wide variety of symptoms described do not all develop at
the same time, and the course of symptom development differs from
one person to another. In some cases the onset of symptoms is fairly
sudden, they are clearly related to extraordinary stresses on the indi-
vidual, and the individual is depressed and confused. These indi-
viduals are unlikely to have well-developed delusions. Their illness is
clearly a reaction to specific stresses, and the chances of their recover-
ing are relatively good. Because their symptoms are clearly related to
a reaction to particular stresses of life, these individuals are fre-
quently described as having reactive schizophrenia. On the other
hand, other individuals develop their symptoms more gradually over
a longer period of time and without the symptoms being as clearly
related to extraordinary stress. Perhaps because they have a longer
period of time in which to develop secondary symptoms in the at-
tempt to understand the effects of the primary symptoms, they are
more liable to develop systematic delusions. These individuals gen-
erally were less well adjusted before the onset of their symptoms,
and have a poorer chance of recovering. Because their symptoms re-
flect processes which have continued for a considerable period of
time, they are sometimes described as showing process schizophrenia.
Rogler and Hollingshead, in a study which throws much light
on the origins of schizophrenia, provide a good example of its onset.
Although the woman, whom they gave the pseudonym of Mrs.
Padilla, was expecting another child, her husband was keeping a
mistress:
“When the birth pangs began my husband could not be found. He
had put on his guayabera (fancy shirt) and gone out into the street.
The midwife had to be rounded up. (The midwife delivered twins to
Mrs. Padilla in their one-room shack.) Two days after the birth my
husband went out into the street again. He was not concerned at all
about my condition. In addition to having to care for four children,
I was not feeling well at all.”
Mr. Padilla rejected the twins, which hurt Mrs. Padilla; to complicate
the situation, one of the twins was not healthy; he vomited black
and green fluid. Mrs. Padilla became so distraught she took the baby

Strategies & Symptoms 197

 to the municipal hospital. The doctor recommended that the baby be
left there, and although Mrs. Padilla wanted to stay with the infant
she was told that she could visit the child only twice a week.
One day she went to visit the infant and left a sister to care for the
other children and to look after the house. She related:
“When I returned from the hospital I found the house in a turmoil.
My sister was sitting in the middle of the mess reading a cheap
novel. I became very angry. I grabbed a broom and began to hit her.
I threw her out of the house. Then I became very sleepy and I went
to bed and I woke up late at night. It was only then Irealized what
I had done.”
(Mrs. Padilla had knocked her sister unconscious and thrown her out
of the house. The unconscious girl was lying in the muddy street
when a neighbor revived her.)
After ten days the baby was brought home from the hospital in a
city-owned ambulance, but Mrs. Padilla worried still more because
he had diarrhea and continued to vomit. When ten more days passed
and the child did not appear to be improving, Mr. Padilla insisted
that they consult a curandera (folk healer) who prescribed castor
Ol etee?

The parents gave the child castor oil, and the child died. At that
time Mrs. Padilla became psychotic.

A THEORY OF SCHIZOPHRENIA

The evidence on what causes schizophrenia is still so unclear that it

is possible for intelligent and well-informed people to see the dis-
order as being due to a wide variety of different factors. Different
theorists have viewed it as entirely due to hereditary factors, as a
failure of motivation resulting from inadequate childhood training, as
a breakdown of the ego resulting from a disturbed relationship to the
parents in early childhood, as a result of social disorganization in
modern industrial society, and as a disorder of thinking resulting
from inconsistencies between verbal and nonverbal communication.
Even this list does not exhaust all the theories which have been pro-
posed, and various combinations are possible, so that it is possible to
see the disturbance as, for example, having a genetic basis but being
aggravated by certain environmental conditions. Each theoretical
approach has some evidence to support it, and no theory is able to
account for all the evidence. The theory to be presented here should
thus be viewed as incomplete and speculative even though it is con-

198 Psychology: A Social Approach

sistent with a number of research findings. Even an incomplete ex-
planation, however, represents a good deal of progress over what
was known about the disorder a decade or two ago. Since a great deal
of research is now being done on schizophrenia, it is quite possible
that in a few years we shall have a much more comprehensive expla-
nation of it.
It would seem that any explanation of schizophrenia would
need to account for at least three things: which people develop the
disorder, when they develop it, and the particular symptoms they
develop. Although we shall see that the situation a person is in at the
time he develops schizophrenia has a good deal to do with his be-
coming psychotic, yet there are people who come through adverse
circumstances without becoming psychotic. The difference needs to
be explained. Similarly, the person who does become schizophrenic
does so at a particular time, often after many years of an apparently
normal adjustment to life. Why did it happen at that time? Finally,
some people become so severely disturbed as to be classed as psy-
chotic, but their symptoms are not those of schizophrenia. Why do
some people develop one disorder and other people another? Until
we can answer these questions, we cannot say that we really know
the causes of schizophrenia.
In some ways, the immediate reasons for becoming psychotic
at a particular time are the easiest to study. When a person develops
schizophrenia, there are many people around who are easily located
and can report on what happened to him at the time. It is much more
difficult at that time to get adequate reports on childhood events
which occurred many years before. Let us thus start with the easiest
question to answer, the events which push a person over the brink
into schizophrenia. These may help to give us insight into the nature
of the disorder and hint at the answers to the other questions.
An especially informative study is the one by Rogler and Hol-
lingshead from which the example of Mrs. Padilla was taken. By
studying schizophrenics who were still living with their families, they
could be certain that the symptoms they were studying were char-
acteristic of the illness and not reactions to having lived in a mental
hospital. Furthermore, they were able to match a control group to the
sample of schizophrenics, so that they could discover the ways in
which the psychotics differed from other individuals living under the
same conditions.
The study was carried out in the slums and public housing

Strategies & Symptoms 199

 projects of Puerto Rico, an environment in which schizophrenics
generally continue living with their families. The first step was to
locate a sample of schizophrenics, a step which involved visiting 300
families and obtaining psychiatric diagnoses on fifty-five individuals.
The extremely good cooperation the researchers obtained is indicated
by the fact that no person who was asked to undergo a psychiatric
examination refused to do so! In this way twenty families were lo-
cated in which at least one spouse was schizophrenic. Another twenty
families were chosen from adjacent residential areas, similar to the
first group except that there was no psychosis. The two groups of
families were then intensively studied and compared.
The results were striking. The study revealed few differences in
the childhood experiences of the sick and well individuals and virtu-
ally no differences in their adjustment to life prior to the crises which
culminated in the illness. Up until about a year before becoming ill,
schizophrenics did not show social withdrawal, difficulty in earning a
living, or interpersonal conflicts with others. They were normal, inso-
far as individuals living a marginal existence in a slum can be normal.
What did distinguish the schizophrenics from the nonschizo-
phrenics was a series of crises which threatened the schizophrenic’s
conception of himself and with which he could not cope. This was
most clearly demonstrated in the relationship between schizophrenia
in women and the death of a child. As the authors put it:
The death of children is linked significantly to the mental status of
the mother. Twelve children died in seven families. Ten of the twelve
deaths were in families in which the mother is suffering from schizo-
phrenia. Six of the seven families who have faced the death of a child
are in the sick group. All deaths preceded the onset of mental symp-
toms in the parents.’®

The self-conception of a woman who is a mother probably de-

pends more upon her ability to care for her children than upon any
other factor. The death of one of the children represents a failure
which destroys the purpose of life. A massive denial of reality is one
of the few alternatives left open. Similarly, a man’s ability to support
his family is probably the role most necessary to his preserving his
good opinion of himself. It is thus not surprising that difficulty in
earning a living is one of the factors associated with the onset of
schizophrenia in men. In that case, however, it is more difficult to
say whether the symptoms of schizophrenia or the economic difficul-
ties come first, for they augment each other. A person who is out of

200 Psychology: A Social Approach

work for reasons not associated with personal symptoms may develop
symptoms, and the symptoms may make it more difficult for him to
find work.
In many ways the observations of Rogler and Hollingshead
suggest that a vicious cycle is involved in the development of schizo-
phrenia. Continued stresses, such as illness and unemployment, re-
duce the person’s ability to cope with the world. Reactions to the
stress, such as Mrs. Padilla’s beating her sister, estrange others and
cut the person off from normal sources of consolation and social
support. Finally some especially threatening event pushes the person
over the brink of being able to face reality. From that point on,
symptoms develop in an attempt to understand the effect of other
symptoms. A person who was unable to remember things because of
repression, for example, might imagine a physical explanation of the
symptom.
The interaction of stress and the disturbance of interpersonal
relations is reflected in the variety of factors which Rogler and Hol-
lingshead found to be associated with the onset of schizophrenia:

Systematic comparisons of the six types of perceived personal prob-

lems reported by the sick persons (and families) with those of the
well persons (and families) demonstrate that each of the diagnostic
family types in the sick group encountered many more problems than
the well families during the problematic year. There are more eco-
nomic difficulties and more severe physical deprivation in the sick
than in the well families. There are far more interspouse conflicts
among the sick families than the control families; difficulties with
members of the extended family are more frequent and more severe.
The sick families report more quarrels and fights with the neighbors.
There are more physical illnesses in the schizophrenic families. Fi-
nally, more sick persons than well persons, male as well as female,
note a disparity between their own perception of the difficulties they
encountered and the ways they think their spouses viewed these same
problems. Stated otherwise, the schizophrenic men and women think
their spouses do not understand the personal difficulties they face, as
well as the men and women in the control group do. In general, the
person who is diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia perceives
himself as bombarded by a multiplicity of personal and family prob-
lems he is not able to handle. The behavioral evidence shows, how-
ever, that he struggles to solve them by every means available to
him.?°

The final and precipitating cause of schizophrenia thus seems to

be a threat to a person’s conception of himself which is so pervasive

Strategies & Symptoms 201

 and overpowering that he must escape from it into fantasy. This does
not, however, solve the problem of why some people seem to break
down more easily under stress than others. The underlying causes
leading to these individual differences still need to be investigated.
It has been widely accepted that individuals inherit a suscepti-
bility to schizophrenia. Because of methodological errors in the
studies which led to that conclusion, many of them pointed out in an
excellent review of the literature by Jackson,** it is by no means
clearly established that there is a genetic factor. Some of the method-
ological errors which were made are instructive. In one study, which
concluded that there was a genetic factor because schizophrenia ran
in families, a family history of schizophrenia was one of the bases
for classifying an individual as schizophrenic! A great deal of con-
fusion also stemmed from the study of identical twins. One study
referred to twins who were “separated,” and many people thought
that the investigator meant that they had been separated early in
life. Since there was a very strong tendency for both the twins to
have schizophrenia if one of them did, this seemed to point to a
genetic factor. Actually, the investigator merely meant that the twins
had been separated for at least five years before becoming schizo-
phrenic. Since they averaged thirty-three years of age at that time,
that clearly did not mean that they had not been raised together.
It is quite possible that a tendency to schizophrenia may be
inherited. The observations, however, are in some ways more com-
patible with a social-learning explanation of individual differences in
susceptibility. Let us look at two pieces of evidence which have been
used to support a genetic explanation. One is that identical twins are
more likely to be similar to each other in whether they are schizo-
phrenic than are fraternal twins. Since identical twins have exactly
the same heredity while fraternal twins are no more similar to each
other genetically than are any other siblings, this seemed consistent
with a genetic explanation. However, similarity between twins who
have been raised together could be partly due to similarity of social
environment. This would be greatest for identical twins and fraternal
twins of the same sex, and less for fraternal twins of opposite sex.
Where sex of fraternal twins has been reported, the same-sexed fra-
ternal twins are almost as similar to each other in whether or not
they have schizophrenia as the identical twins.** This is clearly not
consistent with a genetic explanation.
Sex also is a factor in the relationship of schizophrenia in par-

202 Psychology: A Social Approach

ents and schizophrenia in children. A child is approximately three
times as likely to become schizophrenic if his mother is schizophrenic
as he is if his father is schizophrenic. As this is true regardless of the
sex of the child, it is not consistent with any known mechanism of
genetic inheritance. It is consistent with the fact that the mother has
much more social influence on the child than the father.
The evidence on schizophrenia in parents and children thus
seems to be at least as consistent with a social explanation of schizo-
phrenia as with a hereditary explanation. If, as our discussion so far
has indicated, schizophrenia results from a threat to the self, then it
may well be that the very earliest years when the child is first form-
ing an impression of himself as an autonomous being are especially
important in making him more or less resistant to threats to the self
later. A relationship to a disturbed mother in early childhood seems
to make the child more likely to develop schizophrenia later, regard-
less of whether it is schizophrenia or some other pattern of symptoms
which the mother shows. Again the observations are more consistent
with a social explanation than a biological one.
If the precipitating cause of schizophrenia is an overwhelming
threat to the self, what alternative does the person have besides be-
coming schizophrenic? Not everyone who becomes psychotic does
become schizophrenic, even though schizophrenia is the most com-
mon psychosis in our culture. Let us look briefly at the other major
psychotic reaction, manic-depressive psychosis, and consider what
makes some people show one set of symptoms and other people show
another. Manic-depressive psychosis involves two syndromes which
seem, at first glance, to be exact opposites of each other.
The manic is bubbling over with energy and good humor. His
mood is one of boundless optimism and enthusiasm, and he throws
his energy into one ambitious project after another, although he never
finishes any of them. His behavior is characterized by wild silliness,
with an inability to sit still. His clowning and joking would be en-
joyable if he did not carry them so far, but he is liable to have more
sexual and aggressive content to his humor than society will tolerate.
Thinking is not disordered as in schizophrenia, although thoughts
jump rapidly from one topic to another and there may be a good deal
of grandiosity in both thought and behavior. An example of manic
behavior which illustrates both its wildness and its sexual and aggres-
sive content is a university professor who began to punctuate the
points in his lecture by throwing articles of clothing at his students.

Strategies & Symptoms 203

 Psychotic depression, on the other hand, involves the opposite
of many of these characteristics. Movements are slow and occur
rarely. The individual’s mood is one of black despair. Rather than
the self-pity which may characterize neurotic depression, the de-
pressed psychotic has a pitiless hatred of himself which may lead to
suicide. In some ways, however, the depressive is similar to the
manic. He has a similar inability to concentrate, and may have similar
delusions. The two disorders are classed together because there are
some individuals who alternate between the two states, lending sup-
port to the view that mania is a way of trying to ward off depression
by throwing oneself into other activities.
Manic-depressive psychosis differs from schizophrenia in both
the cultural circumstances and family situations in which it occurs.
Schizophrenia occurs in conditions of cultural disorganization. It is
seldom found in nonindustrial cultures unless they are undergoing
rapid change after contact with industrial cultures. It has an espe-
cially high incidence in the center of the city in American cities
where that area is a melting pot for different ethnic groups, but does
not have an especially high incidence in the central areas of older
European cities which are not trying to assimilate new minority
groups. Similarly, schizophrenia occurs in disorganized families, as
we have seen. Manic-depressive psychosis, on the other hand, occurs
in cultures and families which are, in some senses at least, well in-
tegrated.
Schizophrenia seems to involve an identity crisis which may be
brought about by threats to the self in maturity, which may also
reflect doubts about the self stemming from living in cultural anomie,
and which may even go back to problems of the initial formation of
the self in infancy. The blotting out of reality and escape into fantasy
shown in schizophrenia constitute the crudest and most primitive
defense, and may be learned in response to threats occurring at such
an early age that no more adequate methods of coping with anxiety
have yet been learned.
The following example of childhood schizophrenia, taken from
Erik Erikson, gives an idea of the extreme inadequacy of early sociali-
zation which has more often been observed in schizophrenia than in
manic-depressive psychosis. In this case the family disorganization
was due to the mother being quarantined but remaining within the
home, and she was able to observe and describe with unusual clarity
the situation that preceded the baby girl’s illness:

204 Psychology: A Social Approach

 Her mother told me that Jean’s extreme disorientation had begun
after the mother had become bedridden with tuberculosis. She was
permitted to stay at home in her own room, but the child could speak
to her only through the doorway of her bedroom, from the arms of
a good-natured but “tough” nurse. During this period the mother had
the impression that there were things which the child urgently
wanted to tell her. The mother regretted at the time that, shortly
before her illness, she had let Jean's original nurse, a gentle Mexican
girl, leave them. Hedwig, so the mother anxiously noticed from her
bed, was always in a hurry, moved the baby about with great energy,
and was very emphatic in her disapprovals and warnings. Her favo-
rite remark was, “Ah, baby, you stink!” and her holy war was her
effort to keep the creeping infant off the floor so that she would not
be contaminated by dirt. If the child were slightly soiled, she
scrubbed her “as if she were scrubbing a deck.” :

When after four months of separation Jean (now thirteen months

old) was permitted to re-enter the mother’s room, she spoke only in
a whisper. “She shrank back from the pattern of the chintz on the
armchair and cried. She tried to crawl off the flowered rug and cried
all the time, looking very fearful. She was terrified by a large, soft
ball rolling on the floor and terrified of paper crackling.’’?°

In babyhood the manic-depressive, on the other hand, appears

to have an adequate socialization up to the time when he begins to
find independent movement getting him into trouble. Then he learns
that he is rejected or accepted by the adults of the family according
to extremely forceful standards which have little or nothing to do
with him as an individual. The manic-depressive patient tends in
childhood to have been successful in living up to the stereotyped
patterns of behavior visualized by the strongest of the adults who
raised him, and it is only when he reaches the quite different and
more complex demands of adulthood and society at large that he has
the catastrophic reaction of manic-depressive psychosis. This is illus-
trated in a study by Gibson** comparing manic-depressives’ family
backgrounds with those of schizophrenics which concludes that fam-
ilies of manic-depressive patients make stronger efforts to raise or
maintain their social prestige, have stronger aspirations that the pa-
tient will raise the family prestige, and are more concerned about
what various social groups think of them. Similarly, the families of
manic-depressives were characterized by strong envy among the
children, which the future manic-depressive responded to by failing
to utilize his individual and personal abilities to the utmost. The
pressure on the child to both maintain a traditional way of life and
succeedin terms of it was great.

Strategies & Symptoms 205

 These observations on the families of manic-depressives fit in
well with cross-cultural indications of the incidence of the disorder.
It is common in well-integrated traditional societies which would be
expected to be successful in transmitting their beliefs and values to
the new generation. Among the Hutterites, for example, a religious
group with highly integrated communal living arrangements, it is
more than four times as frequent as schizophrenia.”
This is just about the opposite proportion from that generally
found in the United States. Manic-depressive psychosis thus does
seem to occur more in well-integrated cultures and families, while
schizophrenia characterizes disorganized cultures and families.
We have thus arrived at first approximations of the answers to
our three questions of which people develop schizophrenia, when
they develop it, and why they develop the symptoms they do. The
answers suggest that the people who are most likely to develop it are
those who were least well integrated into a family and homogeneous
culture during early childhood, that they develop it as a result of re-
peated threats to the self with which they are unable to cope, and
that the symptoms represent both the immediate effects of escape
into fantasy and the development of explanations of what is hap-
pening to the individual. As research on schizophrenia continues,
these answers will undoubtedly be modified in many ways.

The Effects of Psychotherapy

Individuals who are mentally disturbed have open to them a wide

variety of different methods of therapy, although their choice is
limited by their socioeconomic status. As Hollingshead and Redlich
demonstrated in Social Class and Mental Illness,°° psychotherapies
such as psychoanalytic treatment tend to be more available to wealth-
ier patients, while organic methods of treatment tend to be more
employed on those who cannot afford to pay. Excluding such organic
treatments as the use of drugs and electric shock, there is still a wide
variety of types of psychotherapy. Psychoanalytically oriented ther-
apy has as its goal making the unconscious conscious. In Rogerian
client-centered therapy, the therapist’s expressing unconditional posi-
tive regard for the patient is felt to be essential. According to
learning-theory approaches, the symptom is the disease—-a concept
strongly in disagreement with the psychoanalytic view that it is a

206 Psychology: A Social Approach

superficial indication of a much deeper problem. Despite these very
differing views of psychotherapy, however, different therapists may
proceed in much the same manner. Is what they do effective?
Every field of knowledge seems to have myths which grow up
around its history. The history of the field is not of great interest to
most people, yet everyone knows something about it. The result is
that, through a process similar to rumor transmission, there grows
up a history of the field as it should have happened. Psychology, too,
has a history similar to the history of England presented in the
humorous book 1066 and All That.
One of the tenets of this fictitious history of psychology is that
Freud was the first person who was interested in unconscious proc-
esses. From the case studies done by William James and Morton
Prince before they were familiar with Freud’s work, we have been
able to see that that was not the case. Here we must turn our atten-
tion to a second item of pseudo history which asserts that ‘“Eysenck
demonstrated in the 1950s that psychotherapy does not work.”
What Dr. H. J. Eysenck did, in an article in 1952 and a popular
paperback book in 1953,’ was to compare four groups of patients.
Two of these groups received various forms of psychotherapy; one
was a “control” group consisting of neurotics admitted to state men-
tal hospitals; and the fourth was another “control” group consisting of
individuals receiving disability payments for neurosis treated by
general practitioners. Eysenck found that within each of these groups
about two-thirds of the patients were “cured.” From this he con-
cluded, not that it had been demonstrated that psychotherapy was
worthless, but that it had not been demonstrated that psychotherapy
was of value. This was an understatement, for if we look at the
methodology of the comparison we may easily see that no conclusions
of any kind may be drawn from the figures presented.
In an excellent review of the literature on learning-theory ap-
proaches to psychotherapy,** Breger and McGaugh break down the
common methodological errors in evaluations of psychotherapy into
(1) sampling biases, (2) observer biases, and (3) lack of experimental
controls. Let us look at these three general types of research weak-
ness, for the figures presented by Eysenck exemplify all three types.
On the matter of sampling, the four different groups are so
different from each other that it is very difficult to compare them.
Eysenck assumes that the patients at state mental hospitals must be
the most disturbed initially, as no one in his right mind would allow

Strategies & Symptoms 207

 himself to become a patient in such an institution. The argument does
have some force. Equally likely, however, is the possibility that in-
dividuals become patients in state mental hospitals if their behavior
shows a sudden and radical change—in other words, if their illness
would be classed as reactive rather than process. Such individuals
have a higher probability of rapid recovery than individuals whose
disturbance is longer in developing and less clearly a reaction to
specific circumstances. The main thing is that we just do not know
what types of patients the four groups represent and thus cannot
make meaningful comparisons among them.
A more important difficulty is that of observer biases. Instead
of concluding that two-thirds of neurotics will be cured no matter
what type of treatment they receive, perhaps we should conclude
that the people treating others will assume that they have cured
two-thirds of them regardless of the amount of improvement shown.
State mental hospitals do not like to spend money on custodial care.
If they can get a patient back into the community, they will do so.
As an indication of this, let us look at the control group in an experi-
mental study of therapy done by Fairweather. The control group
represented psychiatric patients who were discharged by a veterans’
hospital after receiving the usual therapy offered by that institution.
They are probably roughly comparable to the discharged patients in
Eysenck’s comparison, and were carefully studied 6 months after dis-
charge. At that time it was found that 46 percent had been rehos-
pitalized some of the time, 62 percent were unemployed, and 14
percent were living with their wives.°® These few figures should help
in the interpretation of what it means to be “cured” if the criterion
of cure is being discharged from a mental hospital.
Psychoanalytically oriented psychiatrists have generally set
much higher standards of mental health. Some of those discussed by
Jahoda in Current Concepts of Positive Mental Health are “resistance
to stress,” capacity for “independent behavior, AIS,
perception free from
need distortion,” and “adequacy in love, work, and play.’’*° The
“cured” group above could hardly be considered cured by these
standards.
Perhaps the least meaningful Eysenck figures were those from
the medical practitioners who had no special training in psychiatric
diagnosis or therapy. They considered that they had helped two-
thirds of their patients. It is to be hoped that they had.
The greatest problem in the comparison Eysenck makes, how-

208 Psychology: A Social Approach

ever, is the problem of experimental control. A commonly held ideal
of experimental psychology, a field which Eysenck would like to see
clinical psychology emulate, is that experimental and control groups
should only differ from each other in a limited number of known
ways. It is adherence to this ideal which makes it possible to draw
some conclusions about the differences found between the groups.
We have seen that the four groups compared by Eysenck differed in
the populations they were drawn from and in the criteria of being
cured. They also differed in a variety of ways in the therapy which
they had received. Neither the patients at the state mental hospitals
nor those going to general medical practitioners were allowed to
continue without help of any sort. The therapies which were used
were almost as various as the practitioners: drugs, occupational
therapy, control of the environment, electric shock, stern lectures,
and sympathetic listening were probably all employed—in what pro-
portion no one can tell. It may well be that if widely various pro-
cedures are tried on neurotic patients, many of the patients will im-
prove. Without better experimental control it is impossible to tell
why.
Eysenck’s comparison obviously did not demonstrate that psy-
chotherapy is not effective. It is true, however, that there is still only
incomplete evidence that therapy is effective. There seem to be sev-
eral reasons for this. One, which has already been hinted at in dis-
cussing Eysenck’s work, is that the evaluation of its effectiveness is
an extremely complex and difficult research problem. Many of the
studies in the area, whether purporting to show that therapy is effec-
tive or that it is worthless, suffer from the kinds of methodological
problems that have been discussed.
A second problem is that “people receiving psychotherapy” is
probably much too crude a category to be amenable to research, for
it covers such a wide variety of different types of problems. What
would be improvement for a psychopath who seemed to feel no guilt
in violating any of the laws and customs of his society would be the
opposite of improvement for a person who was suffering from guilt
and depression. To look for general criteria of improvement which
would apply equally to all is probably as futile as to look for criteria
of improvement which would apply equally well to a person with
measles, one with a broken leg, and one with a toothache.
A third reason, however, seems to be that some therapists make
their patients improve more than they would without therapy, and

Strategies & Symptoms 209

 some make them improve less than they would without therapy!**
Psychologists will have to take what comfort they can from the re-
lated finding that it seems to be the more experienced therapists who
make their patients better and the less experienced ones who make
them worse.
An extremely interesting study which may help to clarify why
some therapists may actually interfere with the recovery of their
patients was done by Richard Cutler. Ideally, therapists should be
able to perceive accurately the problems of their patients and respond
to them in ways that are motivated by the needs of the patient rather
than the needs of the therapist. Cutler*? studied the possibility that
unresolved conflicts on the part of the therapist led to inaccurate
perception of the patient and inappropriate action by the therapist.
While only two therapists were intensively studied, the results are
extremely suggestive.
Areas where the therapist had unresolved conflicts were iden-
tified by comparing the therapist’s own ratings of the extent to which
he showed various characteristics with the ratings made of him by
nine judges who knew him well. Large discrepancies were taken as an
indication of unresolved conflict. If, for example, the therapist saw
himself as very low in submissiveness while others saw him as high
in this characteristic, this discrepancy would be considered an indi-
cation of unresolved conflict in that general area. It was predicted
that in areas where the therapist had unresolved conflicts he would
(1) consistently misperceive how much his own behavior showed
those characteristics he had conflict about, (2) misperceive the extent
to which the patient’s behavior showed those characteristics, and
(3) act in ways which were more motivated by his own need to de-
fend his ego than by the therapeutic task. These predictions were
strongly supported by the data. To the extent that therapists mis-
perceive their patients and act toward them in ways that are moti-
vated by their own problems, it is not surprising that some “therapy”
is found to have negative effects.
“Psychotherapy” is thus a word which covers a multitude of
conditions. Rather than ask, “Is psychotherapy effective?” we need
to ask, “Is this type of treatment effective with this type of person?”
Even though all methods of treatment have not been shown effective
under all circumstances, there is unambiguous evidence that some
forms of treatment are effective under some circumstances. Let us
look at two studies, one dealing with severely disturbed hospitalized

210 Psychology: A Social Approach

patients and the other dealing with individuals who are normally well
adjusted. While they differ in other ways, the studies are similar in
that both use group processes as a change technique and both employ
more adequate criteria of change than most studies.
The first study, by Fairweather and his colleagues, explored the
effects on hospitalized patients of participating in task-oriented prob-
lem-solving groups. Life in a hospital usually requires the patient to
play a dependent role which may ill prepare him for life outside the
hospital. The experimental treatment program which Fairweather and
his colleagues introduced rewarded the patients for playing a more
normal adult social role. As they put it:
In the traditional program, all problems regarding the patient are
taken up with him as an individual matter. His role is very clearly a
subordinate one in which he relies upon the staff for their final deci-
sions without any voice about possible courses of action. On the
other hand, the social system of the small-group treatment program
clearly delineates the patient's role as that of participant in group
discussion and recommendations. Although the final decision regard-
ing such recommendations rests with the staff, each patient's task
group has the responsibility and is rewarded for recommending real-
istic and meaningful courses of action for each of its members, with
particular emphasis on daily living and future plans.%*

Conditions were carefully controlled so that differences between

the treatment and control groups could be clearly attributed to the
experimental treatment program, and the two groups were studied in
a variety of different ways. Two general findings clearly emerged:
(1) The experimental treatment program led to better adjustment on
the part of the patients after they left the hospital. Those who had
participated in the small-group program were significantly more
likely to be employed, to talk with other people, and to have friends
after leaving the hospital than those who had not. (2) Adjustment
after leaving the hospital had very little relationship to other mea-
sures taken while the patient was in the hospital. Most importantly,
it had almost no relationship to whether the patient’s attitudes
toward the treatment program were positive or negative. If the treat-
ment program had been evaluated in terms of the attitudes of the
patients rather than their adjustment to community life, its effective-
ness would not have been discovered. Since some studies of the
effectiveness of therapy have relied on patients’ statements about
how much they have been helped, this is important to note.
Miles’s study** differs from Fairweather’s in dealing with a

Strategies & Symptoms 211

 group of individuals with normal psychological adjustment rather
than a severely disturbed population. It is similar, however, in the
careful attention to providing relevant control groups and adequate
criteria of change. The experimental group was composed of thirty-
four elementary school principals who attended a two-week training
laboratory in human relations. Their change was evaluated not just
through self-report techniques and ratings by the laboratory staff but
also by their associates on the job. In follow-ups after 3 and 8
months, they were found to have become more sensitive to the needs
of others, more egalitarian in their ways of doing things, and more
skillful leaders as a result of the laboratory experience. While this is
impressive evidence of the effectiveness of the human relations labo-
ratory, it is even more interesting to note what did and did not cor-
relate with change. Long-term change was unrelated to personality
factors. However, individuals who were more secure in their jobs
changed more. Most important, there was no relationship between
how much an individual perceived himself as having changed and
how much he had changed according to external judges. Those who
expected to change the most through taking the program actually
changed the least. These results underline the importance of develop-
ing objective criteria in evaluating psychological change rather than
relying on the individual’s own report. As such criteria are developed,
psychotherapy may for the first time be intensively and adequately
evaluated.

Summary

While they are not usually adaptive, psychological symptoms fre-

quently are attempts to adapt. This adaptation may be necessary be-
cause of a situation which is untenable for the individual, sometimes
not for obvious, external reasons, but because of an interaction be-
tween an idiosyncratic combination of personal developmental experi-
ences and the situation. In attempting to adapt, individuals must cope
in some way with anxiety. Neurotic symptoms represent effects of
anxiety, ways of acting out anxiety-arousing impulses, or attempts to
cope with anxiety. All individuals show some neurotic symptoms, and
the lines separating neurosis from complete mental health on the one
hand and from psychosis on the other cannot be perfectly drawn.
Similarly, different patterns of symptoms have been described, but

212 Psychology: A Social Approach

 these are abstractions which are not perfectly descriptive of actual
individual human beings.
Among psychotic patterns, the manic-depressive and schizo-
phrenic were discussed. Schizophrenia is especially important to
understand because of the large numbers of people it disables. It is
characterized by inappropriate emotional responses and disturbances
of language and thought. The manic-depressive psychoses are charac-
terized more by deep emotional changes and less by disordered think-
ing and language than schizophrenia.
Any explanation of a psychosis should be able to explain which
people develop the disorder, when they develop it, and why they
develop that pattern of symptoms rather than a different one. While
a certain amount is known about the origins of psychoses, no ex-
planations exist which would meet all these criteria. The work of
Rogler and Hollingshead on schizophrenia seems to be an especially
promising lead in the understanding of this disorder.
Until very recently there has been no well-controlled research
on psychotherapy. While it is not true, as is commonly believed, that
it has been proved that psychotherapy does not work, it is also true
that there has been little well-controlled research which demonstrates
that it does. Exceptions to this generalization are recent studies by
Miles dealing with normally well-adjusted individuals and Fair-
weather dealing with severely disturbed individuals. Both studies
point out the importance of the social environment in individual
change.

Notes and Acknowledgments

1. An excellent discussion of strategies in adaptation to life makes up the
second chapter of Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents.
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1958.
2. Thibaut, John W., and Harold H. Kelley. The Social Psychology of Groups.
New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1959.
3. Holt, John. How Children Fail. New York: Pitman Publishing Corporation,
1964, p. 3. Used by permission of the publisher.
4. Berne, Eric. Games People Play. New York: Grove Press, 1964, p. 78. Used
by permission of the publisher.
5. White, Robert W. The Abnormal Personality. New York: The Ronald
Press Company, 1956, pp. 263-264.
6. Wolff, C., et al. “Relationship between psychological defenses and mean
urinary 17-hydroxycorticosteroid excretion rates: I. A predictive study

Strategies & Symptoms 213

 of parents of fatally ill children. II. Methodological and theoretical
considerations.” Psychosomatic Medicine, 1964 (26), pp. 576-609.
. Lazarus, Richard S. Adjustment and Personality. New York: McGraw-Hill
Book Company, 1961, pp. 337-347.
. Prince, Morton. The Dissociation of a Personality. New York: Longmans,
Green & Co., Inc., 1913.
. Thigpen, C. H., and H. M. Cleckley. The Three Faces of Eve. New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1957.
. Prince, Morton. Op. cit., p. 1. Used by permission of David McKay Com-
pany, Inc.
. Ibid., p. 9.
Wibids p.27-
. Ibid., pp. 28-29.
mibidep.s0:
. Maher, 8. A., K. O. McKean, and B. McLaughlin. “Studies in psychotic
language” in P. J. Stone, D. C. Dunphy, M. S. Smith, and D. M.
Ogilvie (Eds.), The General Inquirer. Cambridge, Mass.: The M.LT.
Press, 1966, p. 489.
16. McGhie, A., J. Chapman, and J. S. Lawson. “Effect of distraction on schizo-
phrenic performance.” British Journal of Psychiatry, 1965 (111), pp.
383-398.
WY, Arnhoff, F. N., and E. N. Damianopoulos. “Self-body recognition and
schizophrenia.” Journal of General Psychology, 1964 (70), pp. 353-
361.
18. Rogler, Lloyd H., and August B. Hollingshead. Trapped: Families and
Schizophrenia. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1965, pp. 194—
195. Used by permission of the publisher.
19, Ibid., pp. 171-172.
2.0) Ibid., pp. 409-410.
2A Jackson, Don D. (Ed.). The Etiology of Schizophrenia. New York: Basic
Books, Inc., Publishers, 1960.
22. Ibid., p. 60.
23. Erikson, Erik. Childhood and Society. New York: Copyright 1950 © 1963
by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1963, pp. 196-197. Used by
permission of the publisher.
24. Gibson, R. W. “The family background and early life experience of the
manic-depressive patient.” Psychiatry, 1958 (21), pp. 71-91.
PN) Eaton, J. W., and R. S. Weil. Culture and Mental Disorders. New York:
The Free Press of Glencoe, 1955.
26. Hollingshead, A. B., and F. C. Redlich. Social Class and Mental Illness.
New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1958.
De Eysenck, H. J. Uses and Abuses of Psychology. Baltimore: Penguin Books,
Inc., 1953.
Eysenck, H. J. “The effects of psychotherapy: An evaluation.” Journal of
Consulting Psychology, 1952 (16), pp. 319-324.
28. Breger, L., and J. McGaugh. “Critique and reformulation of ‘learning-
theory’ approaches to psychotherapy and neurosis.” Psychological
Bulletin, 1965 (63), no. 5, pp. 338-358.

214 Psychology: A Social Approach

28). Fairweather, George (Ed.). Social Psychology in Treating Mental Illness.
New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1964, p. 164.
30. Jahoda, M. Current Concepts of Positive Mental Health. New York: Basic
Books, Inc., Publishers, 1958, pp. 41, 47, 49, and 55.
oil, Cartwright, R. D., and J. L. Vogel. “A comparison of changes in psycho-
neurotic patients during matched periods of therapy and no-therapy.”
Journal of Consulting Psychology, 1960 (24), pp. 121-127.
32. Cutler, Richard. ‘“Countertransference effects in psychotherapy.” Journal
of Consulting Psychology. 1958 (22), pp. 349-356.
33: Fairweather, George. Op. cit., p. 31. Used by permission of publisher.
34. Miles, Matthew B. ‘“Changes during and following laboratory training: A
clinical-experimental study.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science,
July, 1965 (1), no. 3, pp. 215-242.

Strategies & Symptoms 215

Lo;
-
SEVEN
Pree
LEARNING &
REMEMBERING

For almost a century psychologists have been studying learning, and

their results have done much to clarify the processes involved in this
complex activity. Some of the results, having to do with rather tech-
nical questions of learning theory, are primarily of interest to other
psychologists. Other results, which can be applied in everyday life,
are of interest to all. In the latter category come questions of how to
learn and remember most efficiently. Interestingly, many of the most
important discoveries about learning and remembering efficiently
were made in the first extensive study of learning, that of Hermann

217
 Ebbinghaus.’ Using himself as his only subject, Ebbinghaus spent
some time each day for over 2 years memorizing, remembering, and
testing himself on lessons. The monograph in which he described his
results was such an important contribution to our understanding that
an English translation of it is still in print, although the original work
was published in 1885.
Because learning had not been studied experimentally, Ebbing-
haus had to devise his own methods for studying it. He needed, for
example, some way of measuring how much he had learned. There
are a number of ways in which we show the effects of past learning
which he might have used. If I look at a face and say to myself, “Oh,
yes, I have met this person before,” then it is an example of recog-
nition. Exemplifying a type of memory less frequently studied in ex-
perimental investigations of learning, I may remember the circum-
stances under which I met the person before and reexperience in
memory the events of that time. This type of memory is called rein-
tegration. If I can call the person’s face to mind when the person is
not present, it is an example of recall. These various types of mem-
ory differ in how sensitive they are in showing the effects of learn-
ing. It is easier to recognize something than to recall it, and a
multiple-choice exam may thus show more evidence of past study
than an essay test.
More sensitive than any of the other measures of learning is
the one which Ebbinghaus devised, relearning. Even after you have
forgotten something so completely that you no longer recognize it,
you can still learn it a second time more rapidly than you learned it
the first. The saving of time on relearning is such a sensitive measure
of the effects of learning, in fact, that it can even show the effects of
hearing Greek before the age of three on testing at the age of four-
teen!?
Ebbinghaus thus measured the effects of previous learning by
means of a saving score. This score was calculated to show what
percent of the time it took to learn the material a first time was saved
when it was being learned for the second time. If, for example, it
took 30 minutes to learn the material the first time and only 20
minutes the second time, then the person would have saved ten-
thirtieths of the time, or 33% percent. This measure gave Ebbinghaus
an indication of the effects of practice which was comparable for
learning tasks which differed somewhat in difficulty.
As well as a way of measuring learning, Ebbinghaus needed
material to learn which would meet two requirements: different les-

218 Psychology: A Social Approach

sons should be approximately equal in difficulty, and learning one
lesson should not be any help in learning a different lesson. To pro-
vide such material, he invented the nonsense syllable—two conso-
nants with a vowel between, such as “gub,” “xil,” etc. Not all such
syllables are exactly equal in difficulty, for some remind us of words
more than others. They are close enough, however, so that averaged
out over a number of lists they soon approximate equality. More
important, they are not interconnected with each other the way words
in a sentence are. A person who reads “The name of the killer .. .”
can predict with almost complete confidence that the next word will
be “is.” The person who reads one nonsense syllable knows no more
than he did before about what the next one will be.
Using these methods, Ebbinghaus discovered many interesting
things about learning and remembering. What, for example, is the
course of forgetting? Do you forget at a steady rate, or do you forget
more or less in the first hour after learning than you do in an hour a
week later?
Ebbinghaus found that much forgetting takes place immediately
after learning and then there is less and less forgetting as time pro-
ceeds. If he rememorized a lesson after only an hour, it still took
him half as long as the original learning had. If this rate of forgetting
were to continue, we would remember nothing by the end of 2 hours!
How much Ebbinghaus had forgotten after varying periods of time
is illustrated in Table 7-1.
While other studies of learning have supported Ebbinghaus’s
finding that forgetting is most rapid immediately after learning, there

Table 7-1 The course of forgetting over time

TIME BETWEEN PERCENT PERCENT OF MATERIAL

LEARNING AND OF ORIGINAL FORGOTTEN IN TERMS
RELEARNING TIME SAVED OF TIME TO LEARN

20 minutes oor 41.8

1 hour 44.2 55.8
8.8 hours 35.8 64.2
1 day 33,7 66.3
2 days 27.8 WERE)
6 days 25.4 74.6
31 days 211 78.9
SOURCE: Ebbinghaus*

Effective Learning & Remembering 219

 were two reasons why his data showed this phenomenon in a more
extreme form than some studies. The first of these has to do with his
use of nonsense syllables as material to be learned. Although the for-
getting curve has the same general shape with more meaningful
material, it does not fall off as rapidly. If Ebbinghaus had learned
poems instead of nonsense syllables, he would not have lost half the
effects of his learning within the first hour. He would, however, still
have forgotten quite a bit during that time.
The second reason why Ebbinghaus forgot the nonsense sylla-
bles so rapidly has to do with how he spent his time while waiting
to test himself. He spent it learning other lists of nonsense syllables.
Imagine that you were to spend 2 hours studying foreign languages—
the first hour learning Italian vocabulary, the second learning French
vocabulary. As you can imagine, you would probably get the two
languages thoroughly confused with each other, and in doing so you
would illustrate two basic phenomena of learning, retroactive inhi-
bition and proactive inhibition. Retroactive inhibition refers to the
way in which new learning makes us forget old learning which pre-
ceded it in time. At the end of the first hour you might know the
Italian vocabulary, but then studying French might confuse you and
make you forget the Italian. This would be an example of retroactive
inhibition. In general, the more similar the activity following learning
is to the learning itself, the more the learned material will be for-
gotten. A person forgets least if he sleeps immediately after learning,
somewhat more if he thinks about a subject quite different from the
one he has just studied, and most if he studies a similar type of ma-
terial. By studying more nonsense syllables, Ebbinghaus engaged in
the one activity which would make him most rapidly forget the non-
sense syllables he had already learned.
Ebbinghaus also suffered from proactive inhibition, but this
showed up in difficulty learning nonsense syllables rather than diffi-
culty remembering them once learned. Returning to the example of
learning the foreign-language vocabulary, we can see that you would
not only forget the Italian through studying the French; you also
would find it more difficult to learn the French through having
already studied Italian. The material you had already learned, being
similar to the new material you were trying to learn, would intrude
and cause difficulty in learning the new material. This is the phe-
nomenon of proactive inhibition.
Another interesting result of Ebbinghaus’s research had to do
with the effects of overlearning. The question which he answered

220 Psychology: A Social Approach

may be put as follows: ‘Does it do any good to continue studying
material even when you have already learned it well enough to recite
it?” Such learning is called overlearning because it is additional study
even after the material seems to have been mastered. Ebbinghaus
studied its effects by comparing learning to a criterion of one error-
less repetition with learning to a criterion of two errorless repetitions.
A criterion of learning is the level of performance which must be
reached before we say that the material has been learned. The cri-
terion of one errorless repetition (being able to recite something once
without making an error) is what we usually take as evidence of hav-
ing learned something. In setting a criterion of two errorless repeti-
tions, Ebbinghaus was requiring overlearning, or additional study
after he seemed to have learned the material. He found that the addi-
tional study did pay off. He remembered the material better if he
continued to study it beyond the point where he could recite it cor-
rectly.
His memory for the material was improved even more by re-
peated learning of it on different days. The first time he learned a list
of twelve nonsense syllables, for example, he had to repeat it on the
average 16% times. Relearning it the next day took 14 repetitions.
The day after that took on the average only 10%. Each time that he
learned the material it took less work to do so, until eventually he
reached the point where he forgot very little of the material in a
24-hour interval. While much of what we learn is forgotten in the
first hour after learning it, this is only true the first time that we
learn it. If we are learning it for the third time, we will forget very
little in an hour—or even in a day.
While most of his research used nonsense syllables, Ebbinghaus
also tried memorizing stanzas of Byron’s poem Don Juan. He found
that this material, being meaningful, required much less work to
memorize. This result also is important in understanding how to
study effectively, for it implies that anything which can make material
more meaningful to the learner can make it easier to learn. Later in
the chapter we shall look at some of the ways in which material can
be made more meaningful, but for now let us look at just one of
these ways—by actively anticipating the material rather than pas-
sively reading it.
How can active recitation make material more meaningful? If
we look at our own experiences while we read something or try to
recite it, we may see a marked difference. Imagine, for example, that
you are trying to learn where you are not supposed to park a car in

Effective Learning & Remembering 221

 Britain. The highway code, which you will need to know to obtain a
driving license, reads as follows:
54. Do not park or let your vehicle stand
(a) at or near a road junction, a bend, the brow of a hill or a
humpback bridge;
(b) on a footpath;
(c) near traffic lights or a pedestrian crossing;
(d) in a main road or one carrying fast traffic;
(e) opposite or nearly opposite another standing vehicle, a refuge,
or other obstruction (e.g. road repairs);
(f) alongside a standing vehicle;
(z) where there is a continuous white line, whether it is accom-
panied by a broken line or not;
(h) at or near a bus stop, school or hospital entrance, or where it
will obscure a traffic sign;
(i) on the “wrong” side of the road at night.4

Now, if you try to learn this material by reading it over and

over again, your mind will be filled with the things you are reading,
and each of them will seem perfectly reasonable at the time. Of
course you should not park on a footpath! If you cover up the ex-
ample and try to recite the material, however, you will make an in-
teresting discovery. There are many other places where you would
not dream of parking a car that are not mentioned in the code, and
you will start naming them as well as the places listed. What did the
rules say about parking in front of a police station, fire station, rail-
way station, or hospital? Only the hospital was mentioned. What
about parking on footpaths, bicycle paths, sidewalks, or in a minor
street carrying only slow traffic? Only the footpath is explicitly ex-
cluded, although the sidewalk would probably be counted as a foot-
path. By now you can see that the difference between reading and
reciting is that in reciting you have in your mind not only those
things which you have just read but also similar things with which
you were familiar before. Confusing the old material with the new
is one of the major problems in memorizing. By trying to recite early
in the learning process, you can relate the material you are trying to
learn to what you know already and specifically notice how the new
material is similar to, or different from, what you expected. It is in
this sense, then, that the material becomes more meaningful. Rather
than just trying to memorize “hospital” and remembering library,
police station, and ferryboat landing as well, you can make the ma-
terial more meaningful by noticing that hospitals and schools are
mentioned and no other institutions are.

222 Psychology: A Social Approach

 If making material more meaningful makes it easier to learn and
if attempted recitation is one way of making the material more mean-
ingful, then we would expect that it would be useful to spend quite
a bit of study time reciting. An experiment by Gates’? compared the
efficiency of spending varying proportions of study time on reading
and on reciting. He found that it was most efficient to spend four-
fifths of the time reciting and only one-fifth of the time reading!
From these few research results, we may draw a number of
conclusions about how to study most efficiently. It is possible to
learn much more in the same amount of time if the usual practice of
reading and underlining is abandoned. Instead, it is more efficient to:

1. Avoid retroactive and proactive inhibition by varying the type of

studying being done. Rather than do all studying in a solid block
of several hours, intersperse study periods with other activities
throughout the day. Avoid studying similar materials one right
after the other.
2. Take advantage of less rapid forgetting of material which is
being learned for the second time. Rather than try to learn every-
thing in the last few days before the test, try to have learned it
once before and to relearn it just before the test.
3. Last-minute cramming can be both helpful and harmful. The ma-
terial which is studied at the last minute is better remembered.
Because of retroactive inhibition, material which is not included
in the last-minute review is forgotten through the effects of study-
ing the material which is reviewed. In other words, last-minute
review is an unmixed blessing only if everything can be reviewed
at the last minute. If the material is being learned for the second
time and an entire evening is available for studying, this may well
be possible. In that case, last-minute cramming should be quite
efficient and should also have the advantage of being followed by
sleep, so that new learning will not interfere with it. On the other
hand, studying during an hour or two before an exam is generally
harmful, as this is not a long enough period of time to cover all
the material. (An exception to this is where only a very short les-
son is being learned.) A good general principle is thus to review
on the night before an exam, but not on the day of the exam.
4. Perhaps the most important point is that material is learned most
efficiently if the majority of the time is spent on active self-quiz.
Imagine, for example, that you are trying to learn the material in
this book and that you have neglected all the other principles of

Effective Learning & Remembering 223

 efficient study which have been given. It is the night before the
final exam, and you are just picking up the book for the first time.
How should you approach your task?

If you spend the night reading, you will probably have just
about enough time to read the book through once. After one reading,
however, you would not remember much of the material. If time were
so short that you could not both read the book and quiz yourself on
the material, you would probably learn more by not reading the book.
Instead, you could skim it and quiz yourself on it in the same length
of time. The procedure is to ask questions and look for the answers,
working from general to specific points: What is the title of the
book? If you were writing a book of that title, how would you break
the material down into chapters? How do the chapter titles in this
book compare with those you would have used?
After learning the chapter titles, you would then work on each
chapter. Using this chapter as an example, what are its main sections?
Again, how do those sections differ from those you would have used
if you had been writing on “Effective learning and remembering’’?
By relating the material which you are trying to learn to what you
know already, it is easier to learn it. You can also find cues to what is
important in section headings, italics, names and dates, numbered
points, tables and diagrams, and the first and last sentence in each
paragraph. Using these cues, you would in this chapter learn such
things as four types of memory and how Ebbinghaus tested his mem-
ory, the course of forgetting over time, what retroactive and pro-
active inhibition are, and four principles of efficient study, of which
this is the fourth.
By active self-testing, then, one may learn much more material
in the same amount of time than one could by simply reading it over
and over again. While it is not recommended, at least by the author,
that you avoid reading this book, it is recommended that you actively
ask yourself questions about the material as you read.

The Nature of Memory

One of the most interesting research endeavors of the present time is

the attempt to discover the biological basis of memory, and it is quite
likely that within a few years we shall have a good idea how infor-

224 Psychology: A Social Approach

mation is stored in the brain. Biologists and psychologists are equally
involved in this endeavor. As one researcher put it privately, the
biologists know what is there but do not know what they are looking
for, while the psychologists know what they are looking for but do
not know what is there! He expressed confidence that the psycholo-
gists would be more likely to find the seat of memory than the biolo-
gists, for he felt that a person has a better chance of finding some-
thing if he knows what he is looking for even if he does not know
where to look.
In this section we are going to consider what it is that the
psychologists and biologists are looking for, that is, the basic charac-
teristics of memory which would need to be accounted for by any
biological mechanism of memory. These include limited central proc-
essing capacity and differences between long- and short-term mem-
ory.
Let us try an experiment. As soon as you finish reading this
sentence, close your book and try to recite as much as you can of the
Gettysburg Address before reading on. How much of Lincoln’s fa-
mous address were you able to remember? Or didn’t you ever learn
it? Now that you have thought about it for a while, are you still able
to remember the two basic characteristics of memory listed in the
last paragraph? This sentence is here to confuse you if you looked
ahead to the end of the paragraph for a moment before trying to
remember the Gettysburg Address.
Have you ever looked up a telephone number, such as 9637597,
and then had someone speak to you just as you were about to start
dialing it? If so, the interruption of your attention probably made
you forget the number. Similarly, if our little experiment was suc-
cessful, trying to remember the Gettysburg Address will have made
you forget that limited central processing capacity and differences
between long- and short-term memory are what this section will deal
with. These two examples illustrate the first difference between long-
and short-term memory: short-term memory is easily disrupted by
anything that takes your attention from it for a moment, while long-
term memory is not dependent on continuous attention. You probably
managed to remember some of the Gettysburg Address, although it
may have been years since you last paid any attention to it. It is
stored in long-term memory.
The way we remember a telephone number for just a moment
before dialing it is quite unusual, for it represents an ongoing process

Effective Learning & Remembering 225

 rather than storing the information in any permanent way. We may
even recite it over and over again quite consciously. In all other types
of memory, where material is remembered over a longer period of
time, it is organized in ways to make it more meaningful. The tele-
phone number given above, for example, may be remembered quite
easily if it is viewed as three numbers decreasing by threes, followed
by two sets of two numbers decreasing by twos. The initial set of
three numbers starts with three times three: 963. The first set of two
numbers starts with two less than the first series started with: 75.
The last set of two numbers starts with nine again: 97. The number
is thus 9637597. Ways of organizing material in order to remember
it more easily will be the subject of the last section in this chapter.
Because long-term memory involves coding the material in
some way, that is, changing the material in order to store it, there is
one quite clear distinction between long- and short-term memory. In
long-term memory, the more slowly the material is presented, the
better it is remembered, for this gives the most time for coding. In
short-term memory, the faster the material is presented, the better it
is remembered, for otherwise the material presented first is forgotten
while the last material is being presented. The rapidity with which
material which has been noticed is forgotten is well illustrated in ex-
periments by Sperling.® Twelve symbols are flashed on a screen for
a fraction of a second. If the subject is asked to remember any one
row of four symbols, he generally manages to remember three of the
symbols in that row. He would seem to be able to remember nine of
the twelve symbols all together. But if he is asked to remember as
many of the twelve as he can, he forgets some while he is giving the
others, so that he can only remember four or five. In other words,
forgetting seems to be even more rapid than Ebbinghaus thought—
we may forget half of what we notice within the first second!
This is true because we must pay attention to the material and
work on it in order to store it in long-term memory, and the amount
which our central nervous system can process in this way at any one
time is very limited. This is illustrated in a study by Posner.’ Posner’s
subjects tried to remember a series of numbers while at the same
time carrying out certain arithmetic operations on them. The opera-
tions were viewed by the researcher in terms of how many bits of
information reduction took place, so we must now digress for a
moment to consider what a bit is: A bit is the amount of information
required to divide the number of alternatives in half. Suppose, for

226 Psychology: A Social Approach

example, that you were trying to guess a number between 1 and 100
inclusive. You might ask, “Is it 50 or less?” Whether the answer to
this question was “Yes” or “No,” it would reduce the number of
possible answers in half. You would have obtained one bit of infor-
mation. You may thus see that the number of bits of information
contained in choosing, for example, one number from eight possi-
bilities is three bits. Eight divided by two three times gives only one
remaining alternative. The bit is thus a relatively precise measure
even though it does not sound as if it were. The amount of informa-
tion in any given message may be measured in terms of it.
To return to Posner’s research, the importance of the bit in his
study is that it enabled a precise measurement of the amount of cal-
culation which the subjects needed to carry out while remembering
the numbers. A very orderly relationship was found between that
measure and how many numbers the subjects forgot. The more their
attention was taken up in carrying out the operations on the num-
bers, the more numbers they forgot.
The overall picture we get of memory is thus of two different
ways of storing information. Material is initially remembered for
short periods of time by means of some sort of ongoing process. The
amount of material which can be held in attention in this way is very
limited, and any distraction will cause it to be forgotten. While the
material is being remembered in this way, it is also being transformed
in some way in order to store it for longer periods of time. The trans-
formation takes time and work, but when it is complete, the material
is stored in a different way. Now it can be allowed to drop out of
consciousness for long periods of time and yet can be called back
again. Forgetting takes place only very slowly once the long-term
storage has taken place. Information at this stage is probably no
longer stored by means of an ongoing process, but instead by means
of structural changes in the nervous system.

THEORIES OF FORGETTING

There have been four popular theories of how forgetting takes place,
and at various points so far in the book we have considered three of
them. Let us look at them again, for there would seem to be evidence
that they all take place. The three which have been considered, either
directly or indirectly, are the repression, interference, and consolida-
tion theories. (The consolidation theory has not been introduced by

Effective Learning & Remembering 227

 name, but is essentially the idea that information is forgotten while
it is being changed from short-term to long-term storage.) The the-
ory which has not yet been considered is the passive-decay theory,
which holds that memories simply deteriorate with age.
As we have seen in an earlier chapter, there is considerable evi-
dence that material which is threatening to the self is actively forced
out of consciousness. Even if this is true, however, it would be a
mistake to believe that if it were not for repression, we would be able
to remember everything which had ever happened to us. The vast
majority of things which a person forgets, such as what he ate for
dinner a week ago last Wednesday, are probably forgotten by proc-
esses other than repression. It is even doubtful that repression is
responsible for one effect which is commonly explained in terms of
it, the loss of memory following an accident. An individual who has
been knocked unconscious by a blow to the head commonly loses all
memory for the period just before the blow as a result of the con-
cussion. It is tempting to assume that this is a case of repression and
that it is the anxiety associated with the experience which causes
forgetting. As I. M. L. Hunter points out in his very interesting
paperback book Memory,* however, there are at least two reasons to
doubt that this is the explanation. The first is that the memory can-
not be brought back under hypnosis or drugs the way a repressed
experience usually can. The second is that equally painful injuries of
a different type, such as gunshot wounds to the head, generally do
not cause amnesia. Rather than repression causing momentary retro-
grade amnesia, it seems to be caused by a disruption of short-term
memory before that memory has been consolidated in long-term
memory. We shall thus return to it again when we consider consoli-
dation theory.
The interference theory of forgetting holds that it is learning
new things which makes us forget those we had learned before. In
looking at the phenomenon of retroactive inhibition, we have seen
some of the evidence that this is, in fact, the basis of much forget-
ting. But how could learning one thing cause a person to forget an-
other? A look at the area of concept learning may provide some clues
to the answer.
When psychologists began to study learning, it seemed that
learning to give a response to a stimulus was about the simplest form
of learning possible. Yet when you stop to think about it, a con-
ditioned response is really quite a complex thing. Before any other

228 Psychology: A Social Approach

learning can take place, the organism must pay attention to certain
aspects of the environment and recognize these aspects as being dif-
ferent from other aspects. Perhaps learning to recognize a stimulus is
really a simpler form of learning than learning to respond to it. Re-
cent interest in the area of perceptual recognition is at least partly
based on the belief that it is.
Most learning, however, does not involve just learning to rec-
ognize one stimulus, but instead involves responding to classes of
stimuli. This is especially true of human beings because language
identifies classes. A person classifies an object as a chair and responds
to it as one of a class made up of all chairs, rather than simply learn-
ing to recognize that particular object. People learn concepts, that is,
classes into which dissimilar objects are placed. “Mammal” is an
example of such a concept. Even though it includes such diverse ani-
mals as mice, orangutans, and whales, it is still not an arbitrary col-
lection of organisms. There are general principles which will enable
a person to tell whether a new example of an organism should be
classed as a mammal or not.
What is learned in learning a concept? As current theory con-
ceives it, the learning is partly the developing of a series of questions.
Is it alive? Is it an animal? Warm-blooded? And so on. Such a series
of questions is called a decision tree, and each of the end points of
the tree is a concept. Two simple examples of such trees taken from
Earl Hunt’s Concept Learning’ are presented as Figure 7-1.
Looking at concept learning as involving, among other things,
the development of decision trees will help us to see how new learn-
ing may cause apparent forgetting of things which were known be-
fore. Consider the fragment of a decision tree shown in Figure 7-2.
At one time, MGs were the only sports cars commonly seen in
the United States, and the simple decision tree above would enable a
person to recognize them. If asked, “What kind of car is that?” he
would be able to give a correct response every time the car was an
MG. Other cars were being built, however, and sooner or later the
person was bound to be exposed to a Morgan. At that time he learned
something new—that not all squarish sports cars were MGs. How-
ever, his performance at naming sports cars probably deteriorated,
for it would take time to learn what new questions would have to be
added to the decision tree to reliably distinguish the MG from the
Morgan. For a while his decision tree would look like that in Figure
7-3,

Effective Learning & Remembering 229

 Is the card black?
No

Is it a club? Is it a diamond?

No Yes

Is ita Is ita Tsaital Isuta

face card? face card? face card? face card?

Yes No Yes No Yes No Yes No

Class Class Class Class Class @lassi Glass Class

A B a D je F G H

Is it black?

Is ita Is ita Is ita

diamond? club? diamond?

Yes No Yes No Yes No Yes No

Class Glassman @lacs @lascmuG@lass Class Class Class

A Cc Ig G B D F H
Figure 7-1 Two decision trees for grouping playing cards (Hunt?)

Figure 7-2
Is the car small?

Yes No

Is it sort Not an MG
of square?

Yes No

An MG Not an MG

230 Psychology: A Social Approach

 Is the car small?

Yes No

Is it sort Not an MG
of square?

Yes No

Maybe an MG? Not an MG

Maybe a Morgan?
What?
Figure 7-3

Through further learning, then, his performance would have

deteriorated. In fact, we would say that he had forgotten something
he had once known, for he would no longer be able to identify MGs
reliably. Much forgetting is probably of this type.
Another cause of forgetting has become apparent in recent years
as a body of research has developed supporting the consolidation
hypothesis. This hypothesis proposes that it takes some time after
something is learned for the memory of it to consolidate and become
permanent. A crude analogy is given by saying that the hypothesis
proposes that memory is like concrete—learning gives it form but it
takes time to set. This hypothesis was apparently first stated by
Burnham,’ but modern interest in it stems largely from a review of
the literature by Glickman in 1961."
The consolidation hypothesis has two important implications for
forgetting. The first is that anything which disrupts the newly estab-
lished memory before it has consolidated will lead to permanent for-
getting. The memory will not be simply repressed or unavailable; it
will be gone completely. The second implication is more exciting than
the first, for it is that anything which improves the consolidation
process can improve memory. Let us look at studies of these two
phenomena in turn.
As was mentioned earlier, retrograde amnesia was the first
phenomenon which hinted at the necessity of consolidation of the
memory trace. Events immediately preceding unconsciousness result-

Effective Learning & Remembering 231

 ing from a blow to the head seem to be permanently forgotten, al-
though memories for earlier events which are forgotten right after
the blow gradually come back. It is the permanent loss of the most
recent memories which seems to argue that the process of storing the
information in memory was interrupted before the material had been
adequately stored.
While observations of this type had been made on amnesia, it
was the development of electroconvulsive shock (ECS) as a technique
of treating mental disorder which led to more extensive study of
consolidation. In this form of treatment, which is becoming less used
as drugs with psychological effects are developed, a seizure is induced
in the patient by means of electric shock. Like a blow to the head,
the shock induces amnesia for immediately preceding events. The
amnesia again does not seem to be due to repression, and strangely
enough a single shock treatment is not remembered as a painful ex-
perience, although repeated treatments may cause an experience of
unpleasant anxiety. The use of this type of treatment with people led
to an interest in studying its effects with animals.
By now, a considerable body of literature has developed on the
effects of electroconvulsive shock. The studies taken together indi-
cate that (1) ECS does cause permanent loss of some memories,
(2) there is not one period during which all memory will be lost and
another during which no memory loss will occur, but instead a gradi-
ent of amount of loss with time, (3) ECS also has punishing effects
when administered repeatedly, and (4) the period of consolidation
depends on a number of factors, not all of which are yet understood.
Because the data on consolidation have been criticized on the
basis that the effects could be due to punishing effects of ECS, let us
look at the data on that issue first. Some of the earliest studies on
consolidation were studies in which the animal was rewarded for per-
forming some act and then for various groups ECS followed after
varying lengths of time. The poor performance which was found in
those animals who received the shock shortly after learning could, in
these experiments, have been due to the shock being a punishment.
The animals would not be as likely to repeat the rewarded response
if it was also severely punished.
This criticism, however, would not apply to experiments in
which the animals were learning not to do something instead of
learning to do it. Many of the more recent experiments have been of
that type. Consider, for example, the following experiment by Mad-

232 Psychology: A Social Approach

sen and McGaugh.” A rat is placed on a platform above a metal
floor. When the rat steps off the platform, a mild shock is delivered
to its feet. After this happening only once, it is much less likely to
step off the platform within 10 seconds of being placed on it in a
second test. It has shown one-trial learning.
Now another rat is placed on the platform. It too receives a foot
shock when it steps off. It is then removed from the apparatus and
given an electroconvulsive shock. What behavior do we expect from
it? If the effect of the ECS is due to punishment, the second rat
should be even less likely to step off the platform the next time than
the first rat was, for it has received more punishment. If, on the other
hand, the ECS interferes with consolidation of memory for immedi-
ately preceding events, the second rat should be more likely to step
off the platform the next time than the first rat was, for it would
have less memory of the foot shock. This latter effect is what Madsen
and McGaugh found. Over half of the rats in the first condition
stayed on the platform in the second test, while less than one-fifth of
the rats in the second condition did so. In this case, the ECS has in-
terfered with consolidation rather than simply serving as a punish-
ment.
Repeated ECS, however, does act as a punishment or negative
reinforcer, and animals learn to avoid it. This is perhaps best illus-
trated by another study by McGaugh and Madsen."* The procedure
of this study was as follows: A T-maze was used, with the goal
boxes at the two ends of the T distinctively different from each other.
Thirsty rats were given a number of trials in the maze, with water in
each of the goal boxes. Following that, the rats were divided into two
groups. Each rat in one group was placed in one of the goal boxes
and given a painful but not convulsive shock. The next day the
animal was allowed to run through the maze, and it was noted what
percentage of the rats avoided the side of the maze where they had
been shocked. The next day the rat was again shocked in the same
goal box, the following day it was tested again, and so on.
This procedure provides quite a sensitive test of the aversive
effects of the shock. After being shocked only once, over three-
quarters of the animals avoided the side of the maze where they had
been shocked. After being shocked twice, all of them did.
What about the other group of rats? They were given the same
treatment, but electroconvulsive shock was used instead of noncon-
vulsive shock. If the ECS is punishing, they too should learn to avoid

Effective Learning & Remembering 233

 the goal box where they were shocked. In time they do, but there is
little evidence of any learning for the first few trials. After one shock,
half the rats run to each side. After a second shock, only 40 percent
run to the side where the shock was. After a third shock, however,
over half the rats again run to the shock side. Apparently the pun-
ishing effects of a small number of electroconvulsive shocks are not
great enough to be readily apparent in behavior. After a large num-
ber of ECSs, however, the punishing effects are sufficient to cause the
rats to avoid the shock side of the maze. These results are shown in
Figure 7—4.'* That it takes a series of electroconvulsive shocks to be
sufficiently punishing to have observable effects on behavior may at
first seem surprising, since the shock is obviously painful when it is
received. The result makes sense, however, in terms of the other
effect of ECS in preventing consolidation. Most of the memories of
ECS are probably obliterated before they are stored, and only memo-
ries of discomfort at the moment of its cessation retained.
The processes of memory would seem much simpler and easier
to understand if a fixed period of time were necessary for information
to be placed in long-term memory storage. If, for example, consoli-
dation took 5 minutes, then ECS less than 5 minutes after learning
would cause complete forgetting of the material learned, and shock

Figure 7-4 Percent of rats avoiding one of two goal boxes in which ECS
(solid line, closed circles) or subconvulsive (2 ma) shock
(dashed line, open circles) was received. Median running times
are shown in parentheses. Treatments and test trials were
given on alternate days. (McGaugh and Madsen'*)
cP)
a}
a (117) (297)(219)
2 100 Le Hee a

a f 14) (23
& 20 i Subconvulsive eae’)
aI Me shock (16) (22)
3 80
o)
> 65 24
WN

xa)
Ge (e30)
-o
re)
Ss (7) (39)
& 40
S
0

234 Psychology: A Social Approach

more than 5 minutes after learning would have no effect. Unfortu-
nately, the world is not that simple. The closer in time the ECS is to
the learning, the more forgetting it causes. In a study by Hudspeth,
McGaugh, and Thomson,” for example, an almost negligible amount
was remembered if ECS came immediately after learning. A good deal
more was remembered if the shock came 20 seconds later, but con-
solidation was still not complete after half an hour—ECS at that time
still caused some loss of the learned material. Apparently some in-
formation is stored in permanent memory almost immediately, and
some takes a great deal of time to be stored there. Just how that
could come about may be part of a more general question that we do
not yet know the answer to: just what is learned when something is
partially learned, or remembered when something is partially for-
gotten?
Imagine, for example, that you are trying to remember the name
of Hansen’s law, which was discussed in Chapter 5. You remember
that it was a law or a principle or a theory or a generalization or
something like that. Also it was named for some Scandinavian. Was
it Svensen, Olson, or what? This process of hunting in memory for
something which is partially remembered gives some hint as to the
nature of the process. To return to the concept of the tree structure
which was discussed earlier, the person who is searching in memory
seems to remember which way to go at some of the junctions in the
tree structure but not at others. The name is classed as being Scandi-
navian and ending in either “sen” or “son,” but the actual name is
Mh

forgotten.
Even this type of anecdotal evidence, however, gives us no clues
as to what is happening when forgetting is more complete. Consider
Ebbinghaus relearning a list of nonsense syllables. He has forgotten
them so completely that he cannot recall when he looks at the list
that he has ever seen it before. Yet he learns it more rapidly than he
did the first time. Obviously, introspective evidence is of no use here,
for in terms of introspection there is no effect of previous learning.
What is remembered that results in a saving of time in relearning
remains a mystery. It also remains one of the important phenomena
of memory which must someday be accounted for.
That certain insults to the central nervous system will cause
amnesia is interesting evidence in favor of the consolidation hypothe-
sis but is not particularly striking. Amnesia has, after all, been known

Effective Learning & Remembering 235

 for a long time. The really exciting evidence on consolidation comes
from studies showing facilitation of consolidation rather than inter-
ference with it. Suppose an animal is injected with a central-nervous-
system stimulant and then given learning trials. It will, not too sur-
prisingly, learn the material faster. Now consider a different type of
study. The animal first carries out the learning trials. After the learn-
ing trials are over, it is injected with the stimulant. Finally, after the
effects of the stimulant have worn off, it is tested on the learning.
Now if the animal shows better performance than a control animal
that did not receive the drug, this result cannot be due to either more
efficient learning in the first place or more efficient performance due
to effects of the drug at the time of testing. It is difficult to see any
explanation other than a facilitation of consolidation.
A number of studies of this type have been done, and the re-
sults strongly support the consolidation hypothesis. Data from one
of these studies, done by McGaugh and his colleagues, are shown as
Figure 7-5. Note that injection of strychnine sulfate (which is a
stimulant in nonconvulsive doses) improved performance just as much
if it took place shortly after learning as it did if it took place before
the learning.
We have thus seen at least three bases of forgetting. Repression
is the most important in understanding personal conflicts and psycho-
logical disturbance but probably does not account for the majority
of forgetting. Interference from other learned material is probably
the most important in terms of the amount of forgetting due to it,
but consolidation is undoubtedly more significant in helping us to
understand the biological basis of memory. We may even see, in the
near future, some disorders of memory effectively treated with drugs.
One question, however, still remains. Does memory deteriorate
simply through the passage of time? We may never have a complete
answer to that question. Some processes which can take place with
the passage of time, such as the damage of tissue resulting from
rupture of blood vessels, can undoubtedly cause forgetting. Whether
there is any passive decay of the memory trace in the absence of this
type of accident cannot be determined simply because of the effects
of the types of forgetting we have already considered. New learning
causes too much old material to be forgotten for us to be able to tell
whether any old material would have been lost without the new learn-
ing. We thus know of three types of forgetting—or perhaps four.

236 Psychology: A Social Approach

 Strychnine Sulfate
1.0 mg/kg
N per Group = 24:
25

12 S; (60769)
12 S3 (6076Q)
20 ap

15

10
trials
Lashley
HI
Maze
2-8.
total
of
number
Mean
on
errors

6min Imin 15min 30min 90min

before after after after after

Time of injection
Figure 7-5 Effect of strychnine sulfate on maze learning as a function
of time of injection (either before or after each daily trial).
Vertical lines indicate plus and minus one standard deviation
from the mean of each group. (Kimble’® based on data from
McGaugh, J. L., C. W. Thomson, W. H. Westbrook, and
W. J. Hudspeth. “A further study of learning facilitation with
strychnine sulfate.” Psychopharmacologia, 1962 (3), pp. 352-
360).

Meaning and Memory

Is there more than one way to learn the same thing? Pioneer work on
this question was done by George Katona and discussed in his book
Organizing and Memorizing."’ Organizing was not, for Katona, a
step in memorizing. Instead he conceived of the two processes as
being quite different, a matter of looking for patterns in the case of
organizing or of simply repeating the material over and over again
in the case of memorizing. He did a series of experiments to compare
the results of these different types of process.

Effective Learning & Remembering 237

 So that the two processes could be compared, it was necessary
that (1) the same material be learned by each process, and that (2) it
be learned equally well. If this is the case, how could the results of
the processes differ at all? Katona considered two different ways. It is
possible that the material learned in one way might be remembered
longer than the material learned in the other, even though learning
seemed to be equal in an immediate test. Also it is possible that
there might be differences in the extent to which the material learned
could be applied in a new situation. Let us look at two of Katona’s
experiments which demonstrated differences of these types.
The difference in retention of principles and memorized material
is beautifully demonstrated in the first of these experiments, dealing
with learning a table illustrating an economic principle called the
acceleration principle. It may be briefly stated as follows: slight
changes in demand for consumer goods will cause great changes in
demand for the machinery to make these goods. The principle was
illustrated with a hypothetical example of demand for shoes and for
machinery to make the shoes. Imagine that you had a stable demand
for 1,000,000 pairs of shoes each year and that the shoes were made
on machines that could make 2,000 pairs of shoes each per year. You
would thus need always to have 500 shoemaking machines. Assume
further that each machine lasted 10 years. To replace the machines
which became worn out, you would need to produce just 50 shoe-
making machines each year.
Now imagine that the demand increased from 1,000,000 pairs
of shoes each year to 1,100,000 pairs. This is an increase in demand
of only 10 percent. Yet look at the effect this would have on demand
for the shoemaking machines. You would now need 550 machines
instead of 500, so you would have to make not only 50 new machines
to replace ones which had worn out but also an additional 50 to meet
the additional demand for shoes. An increase of only 10 percent in
demand for shoes thus leads to an increase of 100 percent in demand
for shoemaking machines.
In Katona’s experiment, one group of subjects was given an
explanation of the above principle and a table illustrating it. These
subjects were not asked to learn the table, but merely to understand
the economic principle. (The table is presented as Table 7-2.) The
other group of subjects was given the table but not the explanation.
These subjects were asked to memorize the table, and repeated it
until they could reproduce it without error.

238 Psychology: A Social Approach

Table 7-2. Katona’s example

NUMBER OF SHOES NUMBER OF MACHINES

YEAR PRODUCED (PAIRS) REQUIRED PRODUCED

I 1,000,000 500 50
II 1,100,000 550 100*
III 1,150,000 575 sot

*50+ 50.
55+ 25.
SOURCE: Katona’

After a month, subjects from both experimental treatments were

asked to reproduce the table. Not one of the subjects who had memo-
rized the table was able to reproduce it accurately enough for it to
illustrate any principle. A typical reproduction, for example, had the
columns of the table standing for how many shoes were produced
and how many were sold and the rows standing for the quarters of
the year. (This incidentally, is a good example of assimilation. The
table became more similar to a company’s annual financial report.)
On the other hand, half the subjects who had tried to understand
the principle reproduced the table well enough to illustrate it, even
though they had not been asked to learn the table and certainly did
not expect to be tested on it a month later. This is an excellent illus-
tration of what may be the most important principle of effective
learning, that material is most efficiently learned by understanding it.
Often, of course, finding general principles in material to be
learned greatly reduces the amount of material there is to be learned.
An old rule of spelling, for example, states that a word ending in a
single consonant following a single vowel must double the consonant
before adding a suffix beginning with a vowel. Learning the principle
involves storing much less information than learning the hundreds of
thousands of cases which follow the rule. Even where there is no
apparent information reduction through organizing, however, it still
seems to make material easier to learn. Especially interesting in the
results of the preceding experiment is that the subjects who studied
the general principle even remembered specific details better than the
memorizers. Such words as “shoes” and “machines” were remem-
bered much more frequently by those who had learned the material
in an organized way.
Another of Katona’s series of experiments dealt with the extent

Effective Learning & Remembering 239

 to which material learned in different ways could be transferred to
a new situation. For these experiments he used what he called match
tasks, as the tasks required moving matchsticks to form various pat-
terns. For example, how could you transform the five squares shown
below into four squares by moving only three matches? (Note that
each match must be used to form a side of a square and that sides
cannot be formed of double matches lying side by side.)
Some of the subjects memorized rules for solving each task,
while others were taught in various ways that emphasized general
principles. These principles may be conceptualized in different ways.
The same number of matches will make the most squares if the
squares are bunched together so that one match can serve as a side of
two squares at the same time. Or, to view it differently, a minimum
number of squares constructed from a maximum number of matches
will present an appearance of being full of holes and having a very
long perimeter.
By now, you may have been able to solve the example. If not,
try removing the two matches making up the lower right-hand corner
square and the match making up the bottom of the second square
from the left. Use these three matches to form a square on top of
what used to be the second square from the left. Can you see how
this solution exemplifies the general principles? You have made four
matches which formerly served double functions come to serve only
single functions.
In a series of experiments using problems of this type, Katona
reached two main conclusions. One is similar to the one we have
already discussed: the subjects who learned with understanding re-
tained their knowledge longer. The other should not be surprising
either: the more the subjects learned general principles rather than
specific solutions, the better they were able to transfer their knowl-
edge to a new task.

Figure 7-6 (Katona'®)

5 —> 4 with 3

240 Psychology: A Social Approach

MNEMONIC DEVICES

Besides general approaches to learning material of the types which

we have been considering, individuals have also devised various
specific systems of memorizing. To what extent are these systems
effective? Are there various tricks by means of which we can greatly
improve our ability to learn? The evidence so far seems to be that
memory systems, or mnemonic devices, do work but have only limited
usefulness in most real-life situations.
The demonstrations of memory systems by performers are often
very impressive. The man who can stand on a stage and learn, for
example, the names of a large number of strangers seems to have a
memory far superior to that of the rest of us. How many strangers
can you meet at a party and not get their names mixed up? The
memory expert, however, has at least one advantage. He is not ex-
pected to do anything else while he is learning the names. He stands
on the stage, the center of attention. The names are presented to
him, and he learns them. What do you do at the party? As your
hostess takes you around the room introducing you to the strangers,
you are careful not to trip over tables, dogs, loose rugs, other people,
and so on. Your hostess addresses a stream of irrelevant comments
to you, and the people to whom you are introduced say various things
to which you are expected to respond. A number of interesting
conversations continue throughout the process, and you probably do
not hear a quarter of the names at all. In other words, the memory
expert has the advantage that he can give undivided attention to the
material he is learning, while much of your attention is on your own
behavior and other irrelevant matters. Attention is the first require-
ment for learning, and part of learning to have a better memory is
probably a matter of learning to manipulate the situation so that you
can pay attention to what you are supposed to be learning. People
such as politicians who must meet many people and remember the
names of at least some of them probably learn to program their be-
havior to a great extent. By learning to run off the required social
responses automatically, they free their attention for learning names.
The memory systems themselves, although they differ in de-
tails, usually seem to operate on two bases, through the use of visual
imagery and through learning a code which reduces the amount of
information which must be learned. Of these, the visual imagery is
the more puzzling. The more striking and bizarre the way in which
the information is visualized, the more easily it is remembered. It may

Effective Learning & Remembering 241

 thus be that the process is effective for two reasons: associating the
material with the image may make it more meaningful and thus
easier to learn, and the improbable nature of the image may make the
material less subject to interference from similar material. This latter
phenomenon has been observed in studies with nonsense syllables
and is known as the von Restorff effect. If some syllables are made
to stand out in the list by printing them in red ink or a different
typeface, they will be better remembered than the rest of the list.
One of the simplest mnemonic systems, called the successive-
comparison system, relies solely on the use of visual images. In learn-
ing a list of objects by means of it, each one is visualized in combina-
tion with the one following it. Suppose, for example, that you were
to learn the list “tree, hat, barn, faucet.” You would first try to form
a visual image in which “tree” and “hat’” were combined, making it
striking and unusual. You would not want to simply visualize a hat
in a tree, for that would be too commonplace. Instead you would
want to imagine something unusual, such as the hat inverted and
used as a pot with the tree growing out of it, or a tree which had hats
growing all over it as fruit. Next you would form an image combin-
ing “hat” and “barn,” then one combining “barn” and “faucet.” Note
that each item takes part in two images, one with the item before it
and one with the item after it. If you simply learned an image com-
bining “tree” and “hat” and then another combining “barn” and
“faucet,” you would have no way of knowing that “barn” followed
have:
Even this very simple system is apparently quite effective. Wal-
lace, Turner, and Perkins had subjects employ it in learning, not a
list, but paired associates.*° The subjects were first instructed in the
use of the system, then given a list of 500 pairs of words. In each
case, they were to learn to give the second word in response to the
first. After going through the list only once, they were able to re-
member 99 percent of the words! This performance is far superior to
what is usually found in paired-associates learning.
More complex mnemonic systems involve learning a code and
using it to reduce the amount of information which must be learned
or at least put it in a more meaningful form. In some ways the most
interesting of these systems is one devised by an English school-
master named Brayshaw and discussed in I. M. L. Hunter’s interest-
ing paperback book entitled Memory.** Brayshaw’s system was used
for translating dates and other numerical facts into words, and the
students in the school of which Brayshaw was headmaster attempted

242 Psychology: A Social Approach

to learn over two thousand numbers by means of it. The code which
needed to be learned is given in Table 7-3.
Once the student had learned the code, he learned a verse for
each date. The word in which the date was coded was accented in the
verse, and the content of the verse described what happened on that
date. (In learning dates, the initial 1000 was not coded, so 1000 had
to be added to each number.) Some examples are given below:

1066 By men, near Hastings, William gains the crown:

1087 A rap in forest New brings Rufus down.
1100 Gaul’s coast first Henry hates, whose son is drowned:
1135 Like beagle, Stephen fights with Maude renoun’d.”?

The code could only work because vowels, which appeared very fre-
quently, did not stand for any numbers. With long practice, the stu-
dent could learn to translate the word back into the date quite easily.
“Coast” stands for 1100, for example, because the ‘“c” stands for
1 and the “st” for 00. This 100 is added to the already assumed base
of 1000, making 1100. Because few people want to learn very many
dates these days, Brayshaw’s system has fallen into disuse. It is,
however, a well-thought-out system, and uses rhyme and meter to
make the material easier to learn.
For learning certain things, then, mnemonic systems do seem to
work. Another study illustrating this was done by S. Smith, and is
discussed by George Miller in a provocative article entitled “The
magical number 7, plus or minus 2.’”* The study also illustrated some
effects of the limit on human information-processing capacity which
has already been mentioned.
Smith’s study involved the memorizing of binary digits. In our
normal base ten number system we have ten symbols to stand for
numbers from zero through nine. After nine, we have run out of
symbols, so we must use position combined with the various symbols
to stand for larger numbers. Ten is the first number for which we

Table 7-3 Brayshaw’s code

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 00

B G ] L M P R T W oh
G is H K N Q V x
S Z

Effective Learning & Remembering 243

 must employ a new position, one place to the left of that symbolizing
single units. Every grade school child learns about the ones column,
the tens column, the hundreds column, and so on. Binary digits differ
from base ten numbers in that only two symbols are employed, a
symbol standing for zero and a symbol standing for one. Position
must thus be used to symbolize any number larger than one. Rather
than a ones column and a tens column, binary notation has a ones
column, a twos column, a fours column, an eights column, and so on
by multiples of two. In binary notation the number “10011001”
stands for one times 128, plus no times 64, plus no times 32, plus
one times 16, plus one times 8, plus no times 4, plus no times 2,
plus one times 1. In base ten numbers, this is 128 + 16+ 8+1= 153.
Awkward as binary notation seems at first glance, it is useful in
working with computers because numbers may be symbolized simply
by the presence or absence of electrical charges.
Smith’s experiment involved transforming binary digits back
into base ten digits to make them easier to learn. He first tried learn-
ing lists of binary digits and found that he could remember twelve of
them with a single repetition. He then tried grouping the digits by
twos, so that instead of learning “11” he learned “3,” and so on.
This doubled the number of digits he could remember, for he still had
to learn only twelve of the new digits to stand for twenty-four of
the old digits. Next he tried coding the information by transforming
the digits three at a time. That is, he translated “111” into “7,” “110”
into “6,” and so on. Again he could remember twelve of the trans-
formed digits, and now they enabled him to reconstruct thirty-six of
the original binary digits. Is there no end to the process?
There is. When he coded the digits four at a time, he could only
reproduce forty digits, rather than the forty-eight which might be
expected. When he coded them five at a time, he could still only
recreate a list of forty. The reason is obvious if one imagines himself
in Smith’s position. Five digits must be kept in mind and translated.
While this translation is going on, new digits are being read which
must be stored in short-term memory until they are translated. A
person can only pay attention to just so much at any one time. The
improvement of Smith’s digit span from twelve digits to forty, how-
ever, shows the effectiveness of the recoding of information which
he did.
The studies which have been cited to show the effectiveness of
mnemonic systems, however, also show their limitations. Most of
them are only good for quite specialized purposes. How many people

244 Psychology: A Social Approach

want to remember for a short time long lists of binary digits? Even
systems which do have some generality, such as Brayshaw’s, are only
useful for rote memorization. As we have seen in looking at Katona’s
research, material is remembered most efficiently when it is organized
in a meaningful way. It is only when no meaningful organization is
possible and there is no alternative to rote memorization that mne-
monic systems are really useful.
A second limitation is related to the first. The material can only
be reproduced in exactly the form in which it is learned. Imagine, for
example, that you devised some system to enable you to learn the
names of the members of some organization in alphabetical order.
The system would enable you to recite “Aitken, Allen, Anderson,”
etc. It would not enable you to remember that Aitkin tended to drink
too much at meetings, that Allen flirted with the secretary, and that
Anderson was a karate champion.
Another interesting thing to note is that while mnemonic sys-
tems do work, they probably do not work quite as well as the re-
search on them seems to indicate. Experiments on them generally in-
volve teaching the subjects new methods of memorizing and then
testing them with these new methods before they have used them to
learn very much. This procedure minimizes the effects of proactive
inhibition. The material learned by means of the memory system is
unlike any other material which has been previously learned, so old
learning does not get confused with the new material learned. Per-
haps if the subjects regularly used the mnemonic system in their
daily lives for a few years prior to the experiment, the system would
be found to be much less effective.
Despite these limitations, however, mnemonic systems illustrate
two more general principles of effective study which may now be
added to our list. (Can you remember the first four?) They are as
follows:

5. Use visual imagery to make the material to be learned more vivid.

The more unusual the image, the more helpful it will be in re-
membering the material.
6. Look for ways of recoding information to reduce the amount which
must be learned. A general principle involves less information to
learn than a series of examples. Whether the information to be
learned is reduced by the use of a code, as in Brayshaw’s system,
or by finding general principles, as in Katona’s research, it is
easier to learn a small amount of information than a great amount.

Effective Learning & Remembering 245

Summary

Memory may be tested in a number of ways. Sometimes when a per-

son says that he remembers something, he means that he recognizes
it when he encounters it again, while at other times he means that he
can recall it when it is not present. In his pioneering work on re-
membering, Ebbinghaus used the method of relearning to test his
memory. The results of his study and similar more recent studies
enable us to draw generalizations about effective memorizing. Some
of these principles deal with the avoidance of interference, the rate of
forgetting at different lengths of time after learning, the advantages
of relearning, and the value of active self-quiz.
Of the four major theories of forgetting, there is one which is
extremely difficult to obtain evidence on. This is the passive-decay
theory, which proposes that material is forgotten simply through the
passage of time. The other three theories, dealing with forgetting
through interference, repression, and the loss of material as it is
transferred from short-term to long-term memory, are all supported
by considerable research evidence. Rather than there being one cause
of forgetting, there are apparently several different ways in which
material is forgotten.
While Ebbinghaus’s research dealt with the memorizing of non-
sense syllables, material is more easily learned if it can be made more
meaningful. Sometimes this may be done simply by becoming aware
of an internal structure which is actually in the material, a process
which Katona described in his book Organizing and Memorizing.
Some other material which lacks intrinsic structure may be artificially
organized through the use of mnemonic devices, or artificial aids to
memory. Two important ways in which such devices aid memory
seem to be through the reduction of the amount of information which
needs to be learned and through the use of visual imagery.

Notes and Acknowledgments

1. Ebbinghaus, Hermann. Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychol-

ogy. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1964.
2. Burtt, H. E. “An experimental study of early childhood memory.” Journal
of Genetic Psychology, 1941 (58), pp. 435-439.
3. Ebbinghaus. Op. cit., p. 76.

246 Psychology: A Social Approach

 . The Highway Code. Issued by the Ministry of Transport, Great Britain.
Published by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1964. By permission
of Director of Publications, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
. Gates, A. I. “Recitation as a factor in memorizing.” Archives of Psychol-
ogy, 1917, no. 40.
. Sperling, G. “The information available in brief visual presentations.”
Psychological Monographs. 1960, whole no. 498.
. Posner, Michael I. “Immediate memory in sequential tasks.” Psychological
Bulletin, 1963 (60), pp. 333-349.
. Hunter, I. M. L. Memory. Baltimore: Penguin Books, Inc., 1966.
. Hunt, Earl B. Concept Learning: An Information Processing Problem. New
York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1962, p. 226. By permission of the
publisher.
10. Burnham, W. H. “Retroactive amnesia: Illustrative cases anda tentative
explanation.” American Journal of Psychology, 1903 (14), pp. 382-
396.
dal, Glickman, S. E. ‘“Perseverative neural processes and consolidation of the
memory trace.” Psychological Bulletin, 1961 (58), no. 3, pp. 218-233.
12. Madsen, M. C., and J. L. McGaugh. “The effect of ECS on one-trial avoid-
ance learning.” Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology,
1961 (54), pp. 522-523.
IWS McGaugh, J. L., and M. C. Madsen. ““Amnesic and punishing effects of
electroconvulsive shock.” Science, 1964 (144), pp. 182-183.
14. McGaugh, J. L., and M. C. Madsen. “Amnesic and punishing effects of
electroconvulsive shock.” Science, Apr. 10, 1964 (144), Fig. 1., p. 182.
Copyright 1964 by the American Association for the Advancement
of Science. By permission of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science.
Aley, Hudspeth, W. J., J. L. McGaugh, and C. W. Thomson. “Aversive amnesic
effects of electroconvulsive shock.” Journal of Comparative and
Physiological Psychology, 1964 (57), pp. 61-64.
16. Kimble, Daniel P. (Ed.). The Anatomy of Memory. Palo Alto, Calif.: Science
and Behavior Books, 1965, p. 276 (based on data from McGaugh
et al.). By permission of the publisher.
LY. Katona, George. Organizing and Memorizing. New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1940.
18. Ibid., p. 210. By permission of the publisher.
19: Ibid., p. 58. By permission of the publisher.
20. Wallace, Wallace H., Stanley H. Turner, and Cornelius C. Perkins. Pre-
liminary Studies of Human Information Storage. Signal Corps Project
132c. Institute for Cooperative Research, University of Pennsylvania,
1957.
Pal Hunter. Op. cit., pp. 298-299.
22. Ibid., p. 299. By permission of the publisher.
23. Miller, George. “The magical number 7, plus or minus 2: Some limits on
our capacity for processing information.” Psychological Review, 1956
(60), pp. 81-97.

Effective Learning & Remembering 247

Wide Worl
Pier
7 eles,
ATTITUDES &
OPINIONS

Social psychology, along with the other social sciences, has been
concerned with the nature and causes of social problems. In at-
tempting to explain matters of such urgency, it is perhaps not sur-
prising that social psychologists have turned to a theoretical concept
which combines both motivational and perceptual aspects. This
concept is that of attitude, a relatively enduring tendency to respond
to an object in some way. Attitudes, like learning, cannot be observed
directly, but must instead be inferred. They are usually, but not
always, inferred primarily on the basis of verbal statements.

249
 It is interesting that while people often do not tell the truth,
and in fact where their own impulses are concerned may not know it,
we can learn a great deal about them by what they say. This is true
partly because individuals may share views of the world to such an
extent that they are not aware of holding them. What “everybody
knows” differs from group to group and class to class and reflects
underlying characteristics which the respondent may not be aware of.
A simple example should help make this point clear.
One of the things which “everyone knows,” but is not always
willing to talk honestly about, is the nature of the social-class dis-
tinctions made in his community. That we do not discuss these dis-
tinctions openly is not surprising, for we have an underlying suspi-
cion that it is wrong of us to make them. While the American public
is becoming more sophisticated, it is still widely believed that, as
Warner and his associates have written:
In the bright glow and warm presence of the American Dream all
men are born free and equal. Everyone in the American Dream has
the right, and often the duty, to try to succeed and to do his best to
reach the top. Its two fundamental themes and propositions, that all
of us are equal and that each of us has the right to the chance of
reaching the top, are mutually contradictory, for if all men are equal,
there can be no top level to aim for, no bottom one to get away
from; there can be no superior or inferior positions, but only one
common level into which all Americans are born and in which all of
them will spend their lives. We all know that such perfect equality of
position and opportunity does not exist.*

While everyone knows that social-class distinctions are made,

not everyone knows how the distinctions he makes are influenced by
his own social position. The entire hierarchical social structure is not
equally visible from all positions in it. In general, we have the clearest
view of social levels close to our own and a better view of those
below us than those above. Only the systematic investigator succeeds
in learning what everyone knows—the variety of different class dis-
tinctions made by people in different castes, classes, and ethnic
groups. These principles are well illustrated by Figure 8-1, taken
from Deep South, a study of the social structure of a Southern city
in the 1930s done by Allison Davis and Burleigh and Mary Gardner.
Only the upper-upper and lower-upper classes agree in the distinc-
tions which they make, and the person they see as “nobody” is
“way-high-up” from another point of view. Nor is it surprising, in
terms of what we know about the importance of self-esteem, that

250 Psychology: A Social Approach

 UPPER-UPPER CLASS LOWER-UPPER CLASS
_
“Old aristocracy” | UU “Old aristocracy”

“Aristocracy,”” LU “Aristocracy” but

-
but not “old” not “old’’

“Nice, respectable UM “Nice, respectable

people” | people”

“Good people, but LM “Good people, but

‘nobody’ ” ‘nobody’ ”

i | UL
‘Po’ whites” LL “Po’ whites”
=

UPPER-MIDDLE CLASS LOWER-MIDDLE CLASS

|
“Old families” |
“Society” Es | pa
“Society” but LU “Old | “Broken-down
not “old families” aristocracy” |! aristocracy”
(older) 3 (younger)
“People who should be 7 SR
upper class” RMA People who think they are
somebody”

“People who don’t have LM Bie poor follea’’

much money” P
=A Sees eee eee
=| UL “People poorer than us”

“No ‘count lot” ba ele “No ‘count lot’

UPPER-LOWER CLASS LOWER-LOWER CLASS

2 ows ls 7
LU
“Society” or the UM “Society” or the
“folks with money” “folks with money”

“People who are up because LM “Way-high-ups,” but not

they have a little money” “Society”

“Poor but honest folk’”’ UL “Snobs trying to push up”

“Shiftless people” LL “People just as good as

anybody”

Figure 8-1 The social perspectives of social classes. (Davis, Gardner, and
Gardner’)

Values, Attitudes & Opinions 251

 each person’s view of the social structure assigns his own class a
position equal in dignity to that of any other. Although members of
the upper-lower class (regularly employed laborers) were a “no “count
lot’ to the upper-middle class and “snobs trying to push up” to those
below them, they viewed themselves as “poor but honest folk.” Thus
the individual, in giving his own perception of the social-class struc-
ture, also reveals where he fits into it.
From the point of view of a psychoanalytic approach to per-
sonality, attitudes represent ego functioning, a distinction which may
help to clarify both their usefulness and their weaknesses in predict-
ing behavior. While the more punitive restrictions of the superego
may be represented only in a disguised form and some of the more
ego-alien impulses of the id may not be apparent at all in attitudes,
attitudes still represent views about the nature of reality which play
an important role in structuring behavior. They cannot be unrelated
to moral standards and impulse, for they serve to justify the indi-
vidual’s behavior to himself. They are not the only determiners of
behavior, and they decrease in usefulness as predictors when strong
forces in either the environment or unconscious portions of the per-
sonality are brought into play.
An example of strong environmental factors combining with
unrecognized impulses is found in many cases of religious conversion.
The desire to be able to be dependent upon an all-good and all-
powerful authority, just as once we were dependent upon our parents,
is an impulse which is present to some extent in even the most irre-
ligious. The person in whom this impulse is weak may remain rela-
tively indifferent to religion; the one in whom it is stronger may need
to fight against it by the reaction formation of openly belittling and
defying authority. Powerful preachers have thus frequently had the
experience of converting their hecklers more easily than those who
were listening to them in respectful silence. J. A. C. Brown, who has
an interesting discussion of this topic in his Techniques of Persuasion,
gives, among others, the following example from the career of John
Wesley:
A few weeks later another woman who had come to scoff remained
to pray; she had been “remarkably zealous against those who had
cried out and made noise, being sure that any one of them might
help it if they would. And the same opinion she was in still, till the
moment she was struck through, as with a sword, and fell trembling
to the ground. She then cried aloud, although not articulately, her
words being swallowed up. In this pain she continued twelve or four-
teen hours, and then her soul was set at liberty.’

252 Psychology: A Social Approach

 Under most circumstances, however, unconscious impulses do not
cause this much distortion of one’s perceptions of his own attitudes.

Definitions of Terms

For the purpose of analysis, it is possible to consider the ideas which

people have as composed of beliefs and sentiments. A belief is a
prediction about the nature of the real world. If I believe that pi is
approximately 3.1416, this does not say anything about whether I
would like it to be this large or not. It simply means that whether I
like it or not, I will expect the circumference of a circle to be about
3.1416 times its diameter. A sentiment, on the other hand, is a posi-
tive or negative feeling toward something. If I dislike solving prob-
lems of solid geometry, this says nothing about the nature of the
world. It simply tells of one of my emotional reactions to something.
Although we can distinguish between beliefs and sentiments in
this way, in reality most of our ideas are composed of a mixture of
the two. I would not have a sentiment toward solid geometry prob-
lems unless I had beliefs about their nature, for example. We thus
react to the world, not in terms of pure beliefs and sentiments, but
in terms of opinions, attitudes, and values—in which our beliefs and
sentiments are inextricably bound up together. Nor do opinions, atti-
tudes, and values differ from each other in kind. All are evaluative
statements, differing only in how general is the significance they have
for the individual. If I say that I like ice cream, this is probably a
statement of opinion, for my ideas about ice cream probably do not
influence my ideas about anything else. An opinion, then, is an evalu-
ative statement without much significance for the organization of the
cognitive structure of the individual.
At the other end of the continuum of significance is the value.
A value is a positive or negative sentiment toward something which
is broad enough to serve as a criterion for evaluating attitudes and
courses of action in a wide variety of areas. If democracy is a value
for me, then my ideas about democracy are not isolated from most of
my other ideas, as my opinion about ice cream is. Instead, this value
will influence what I think about a very wide range of things, from
poll taxes in Mississippi to communism in Romania and from the
Athenian city-state to Castroism in Latin America.
Between the opinion and the value in generality lies the atti-
tude. Attitudes do not have the general significance for evaluating

Values, Attitudes & Opinions 253

 most situations that values do, nor do they represent isolated reac-
tions to things the way opinions do. Instead they are evaluations of
things broad enough to structure important areas of an individual’s
cognitive structure. Examples would be attitudes toward the role of
women, organized religion, and war. Of course, individuals differ in
how their cognitive systems are organized. Some people may have
only isolated opinions on the role of women, seldom think about the
matter, and ascribe little importance to it. Others may have an atti-
tude in this area, influencing how they view dating and marriage cus-
toms, women working outside the home, and female political candi-
dates. For an early suffragette, on the other hand, equality for women
might be a value which influenced how she reacted to most other
things.
The way in which attitudes are organized around values is well
illustrated in a study by Milton Rosenberg.‘ In the first stage of the
study, he measured the attitude positions of a large sample of under-
graduate students on the question of whether members of the Com-
munist party should be allowed to address the public. He also mea-
sured the importance of a wide range of values for these individuals
and the extent to which allowing members of the Communist party
to address the public would serve to attain or block the achievement
of these values. His prediction was that there would be a strong rela-
tionship between seeing a course of action as furthering an important
value and endorsing that course of action. This prediction was
strongly borne out by the data. The students who saw their values as
furthered by allowing Communists to speak favored doing so, while
those who saw their values as hindered by this policy generally did
not.
Even more interesting was the second part of the study. Using
individuals who could be deeply hypnotized as subjects, Rosenberg
looked at the effects of experimentally changing an individual’s atti-
tude toward some topic of importance to him. The first part of the
study had shown that we endorse attitudes which we see as further-
ing our values and disagree with those we see as blocking our values.
What will happen if our attitudes are changed under hypnosis so
that we now endorse an attitude which we see as being in opposition
to our basic values? Two ways of resolving the inconsistency are
possible. We could change the value, or we could change our beliefs
about the relationship between the attitude and the value. Both these
types of reactions were found. Some subjects changed their values to

254 Psychology: A Social Approach

 make them more consistent with the attitudes they had acquired
under hypnosis, while others maintained their previous values but no
longer saw their attitude as being related to their more general value
position. Rosenberg’s study is one of the more striking demonstra-
tions that our attitudes are organized around our values and that a
change in our cognitive structure necessitates other changes to restore
consistency.

The Measurement of Values

While the majority of our research techniques have been devised to

measure attitudes, we should not thus forget about the more general
cognitive structuring which takes place around values. It may well
be that the measurement of values lags behind that of attitudes be-
cause of the paradox that while values are vitally important to an
individual, he often is not aware of them. One reason for this is that
many of an individual’s most important values are shared by virtually
all members of his culture. Because they are shared, they are not
questioned, and the individual is likely to assume that they are shared
by all people and are a part of human nature. Only by a comparison
of different cultures can the basic values of any one become clear.
To the Zuni Indians, for example, the preservation of human life was
such an important value that murder was virtually unknown and
suicide inconceivable. If you look at things from their point of view,
it certainly seems obvious that the desire to live is such a basic part
of human nature that it is inconceivable that a person should take his
own life. Yet from a different value position, such as that in tradi-
tional Japanese culture, it is just as inconceivable that a person should
choose to continue his life in dishonor. Neither view is a part of any
universal human nature; each represents the value position of a
culture.
People, then, can generally not say what their basic values are
simply because they are so basic that they cannot conceive of anyone
not holding them. How, then, can we identify what the values of a
culture are? One way is implied in the example just given. Even
though people may not be able to state their values, the values which
they leave unstated because they seem self-evident may be very in-
formative. In other words, in a cross-cultural study an informant
may be able to give a number of reasons why a particular custom is

Values, Attitudes & Opinions 255

 practiced. It is only when the reason seems so self-evident that no fur-
ther reason is possible that a statement of a basic value may have
been reached.
Another way in which verbal materials can be used to infer
values is through the analysis of the characteristics shown by the
heroes of the myths, legends, and stories of a culture. This is a tech-
nigue which is essentially similar to the clinical analysis of projective
tests except that it is applied at the cultural rather than the individual
level. In either case, the desires and values of the individual or the
culture are reflected in the problems, characteristics, and behavior of
the characters described. The characteristics of the hero of a myth
are often so stressed as to impress even the casual reader, and it is
probably not possible to read The Odyssey, for example, without
seeing that cunning is more highly valued in it than honesty.
While a casual reading may reveal much, however, content
analysis, or the systematic categorization of verbal materials, may
reveal much more. This is nicely illustrated by a study by Leo Lowen-
thal’ which represents one of the earliest uses of content analysis to
infer values. Lowenthal studied American culture at the start of the
Second World War, using as his materials the 125 popular biogra-
phies appearing in The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's at the
end of 1941 and start of 1942. The values he found reflected in these
stories strikingly anticipated the characteristics which Riesman was
later to describe in The Lonely Crowd and Individualism Reconsid-
ered. In contrast to the self-made men and captains of industry who
had been the heroes of an earlier period of biographical literature, an
overwhelming proportion of the individuals described were important
in the sphere of consumption rather than that of production. Even
more striking was the uniformity of the characteristics which were
approved and disapproved in the individuals portrayed, a uniformity
which is succinctly described by the author:
When we turn to a study of the approval and disapproval our authors
attach to the various character traits they describe, we find a striking
and simple pattern.
In tone the catalogue of these traits, like the mythology of success,
resembles a digest of military orders of the day; brusque laudations
and reprimands. There is no room for nuances or ambiguity. In con-
tent it is on a very simple level and the criterion of approval or dis-
approval is also very simple. The yardstick is social adjustment. Once
we realize the subconscious and conscious opinions of present-day
society on what an adjusted person should or should not be, we are

256 Psychology: A Social Approach

 thoroughly familiar with the evaluation of character traits and their
owners. The yardstick has three scales: behavior toward material
tasks; behavior toward fellow men; and behavior in relation to one’s
own emotions. The one who is efficient scores in the first sphere; the
one who is sociable, in the second; the one who is always restrained,
in the third.

In a separate study of all passages mentioning character traits, we

found that of a total of seventy-six quotations referring to a hero’s
commendable behavior toward “things to be done’ not fewer than
seventy, or over 90 per cent, mentioned competence, efficiency, and
energy; the remaining six referred to ambition... .

Out of a total of forty-eight quotations mentioning commendable be-

havior in relation to people all forty-eight quote “cooperation,” wet “so-
ciability,” and ‘“‘zood sportsmanship.”. . . ‘

The number of quotations pertaining to disapproved character traits

is very small, but conspicuous among them are criticisms of the unre-
strained expression of emotion. It is virtually horrible that one of our
baseball heroes “is no man for a jest when losing a game... .’”°

While the characteristics of our heroes have changed somewhat

since the period Lowenthal studied, his characterization has the ring
of truth to anyone who can remember reading American magazines
during the Second World War.
Values may be inferred not only from verbal statements but
also from behavior itself. The difficulty in doing so is that the same
item of behavior may serve many different values. Consider, for ex-
ample, a person who spends a good deal of money to build a new
house. He may be trying to make life easier for his wife, provide
better study and play areas for his children, provide space for enter-
taining which will impress his friends, get himself accepted by a
higher social class, bolster his view of himself as a creative person,
or provide himself with a large mortgage in order to reduce his in-
come tax!
Since the same bit of behavior can be used in the service of
many different values, what is necessary is to find different behaviors
which are functional equivalents. Different items of behavior are
functional equivalents if one will serve as a substitute for another.
Let us look at a simple example. Suppose that Andrew takes Mary
Jane out and necks with her every weekend, but then Mary Jane goes
on a trip lasting for several weeks. What does Andrew do? We will
draw very different conclusions about what it is that he values de-
pending on whether he now spends his weekends writing letters to

Values, Attitudes & Opinions 257

 Mary Jane or spends them necking with her room-mate. In other
words, the behaviors that are equivalent from the point of view of
the person who is being studied indicate what it is that the person
values.
Values are especially clearly revealed when a person has an
urgent and difficult choice to make. To a large extent we manage to
organize our lives in order to avoid difficult choices. A man’s job and
his family both have claims on his time, but these claims are usually
kept from seriously conflicting by devoting certain hours of every
day to each. The ways in which roles and schedules are worked out
may keep a man from even being aware of the great potential for
conflict which exists until his boss schedules an important meeting
for the evening of his wife’s birthday. In crisis situations, however,
the norms of society may break down and the individual may feel the
full conflict of his different value commitments, and it is at these
times that a person’s values are especially clearly revealed. The norms
of the Comanche Indians specified that if the camp was attacked by
a hostile tribe, it was the warrior’s duty to save his mother-in-law
first. This cultural prescription argues for a very different relative
valuing of human relationships from that existing in our own society.
That men may not be aware of their values until they are
threatened and that crisis situations may call them to make choices
which reveal these values, sometimes to their own surprise, are points
which are well illustrated in a journalist’s account of something
which has been quite rare in American political life, a revolution. The
account, “The battle of Athens, Tennessee,” was written by T. H.
White before he became famous for writing The Making of the
President 1960, and is reprinted in Outside Readings in Sociology."
Most Americans probably seldom think about the fact that they
do not believe armed force should be used to resolve political differ-
ences. Although assassinations have taken place, they cause shock
and bewilderment. The willingness to accept the legitimacy of the
government in power, whether or not one happens to have voted for
it, is a fairly recent development in human political institutions, and
a belief in the rule of law is one of the more important American
values (although a value which is seriously threatened by the dis-
criminatory treatment of black Americans). In describing this value
as held by the British, A. C. Dicey considers it to have three charac-
teristics, of which the first two more obviously apply to the United
States than the third:

258 Psychology: A Social Approach

 That “rule of law,” then, which forms a fundamental principle of the
constitution, has three meanings, or may be regarded from three dif-
ferent points of view.
If means, in the first place, the absolute supremacy of predominance
of regular law as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power, and
excludes the existence of arbitrariness, of prerogative, or even of wide
discretionary authority on the part of the government. Englishmen
are ruled by the law, and by the law alone; a man may with us be
punished for a breach of the law, but he can be punished for nothing
else.
It means, again, equality before the law, or the equal subjection of all
classes to the ordinary law of the land administered by the ordinary
law courts; the “rule of law’ in this sense excludes the idea of any
exemption of officials or others from the duty of obedience to the law
which governs other citizens or from the jurisdiction of the ordinary
tribunals. ...
The “rule of law,” lastly, may be used as a formula for expressing
the fact that with us the law of the constitution, the rules which in
foreign countries naturally form part of the constitutional code, are
not the source but the consequence of the rights of individuals, as
defined and enforced by the courts... .*
In 1946, Athens, Tennessee, was not ruled by the rule of law.
Instead it had a splendid example of arbitrary authority, a political
machine which could not be voted out of office simply because the
members of the machine always counted the votes to show them-
selves reelected! There are safeguards against this simple expedient
in American political institutions. Poll watchers from both parties
must be present when votes are cast and counted, and irregularities
are investigated by the courts. In Athens, however, the officials were
important members of a statewide political machine, and the courts
always decided in favor of the machine. White described the county
machine as follows:
Paul Cantrell, state senator from the McMinn area and boss of the
county, was a medium-sized, bespectacled man of sallow complexion,
a big head, and little neck. Cantrell loved two things: money and
power. He had a nervous fidgety way about him; he rarely looked
directly at a man when he talked to him; towards the end, an armed
deputy accompanied Cantrell as guard when he strolled through
Athens, the county seat. Pat Mansfield, his sheriff, was a tall, hand-
some man from Georgia. Pat was kind to his family and gave money
to his church. He might have been popular but many people resented
the sour troop of plug-uglies he had recruited to be his deputy sher-
iffs. Pat did Cantrell’s bidding... .

Values, Attitudes & Opinions 259

 The machine bossed the county with a rough hand. The sheriff had
sixteen regular deputies and about twenty or thirty other men he
would deputize in “emergencies.” Three of the deputies had served
penitentiary terms. One of them had been convicted of taking a little
girl out and violating the age of consent. It wasn’t rape, but then it
wasn’t good, either; and God-fearing people like those who farmed
and worked in McMinn didn’t like it. When the deputies arrested a
man they often slugged him until he was sensible. Nobody talked
back much in public because it wasn’t safe. The deputies threatened
to kill people they didn’t like. ... One GI who was home on leave
during the war was shot and killed by a deputy at a public entertain-
ment house near Athens; a sailor home on leave was killed at the
other end of the county.®

When the veterans came home from the Second World War,
they formed a nonpartisan opposition group to oppose the machine
in the 1946 elections. The state of politics in the county at that time
is perhaps best shown by their campaign slogan, ‘“Your vote will be
counted as cast.” When it came to making good this promise, how-
ever, the GI party had difficulty:

Election day saw Athens an armed camp. As the voters came to the
polls, they found the Cantrell machine in ominous demonstration of
force. Almost two hundred armed deputies strutted about, pistols and
blackjacks dangling from their belts, badges gleaming. The deputies
were strangers....

Bob Hairell, another GI watcher at the twelfth precinct, was in

trouble. The machine wanted to vote a nineteen-year-old girl; Hairell
objected. One of the deputies settled the argument by pulling his
blackjack and laying Hairell’s head open. Hairell was off to the hos-
pital. The Daily Post-Athenian sent a reporter to get the story on
Hairell. He, too, was slugged and told not to ask questions. At four,
the polls closed. In the eleventh precinct, the two GI watchers,
Charles Scott, Jr. and Ed Vestal, were thrust to one side as the
machine prepared to count the vote. Through the plate glass door of
the polling place, the people could see the two boys penned in their
corner of the large room. By this time, Jim Buttram, the campaign
manager, had decided that the vote of the eleventh precinct wasn’t
worth trading off against the lives of two of his men... .1°

When the armed deputies took the ballot boxes away to the
security of the jail to count the machine back into power, the GIs
knew that they were in trouble. While the precincts that had been
fairly counted gave them a three-to-one lead, the ballot boxes in the
jailhouse would be sufficient to put the machine back in power. Then
none of them would be safe, especially as some of their men had

260 Psychology: A Social Approach

 gotten a bit carried away and had disarmed some of the deputies.
There was only one thing to be done and they did it—they took arms
from a National Guard armory and laid seige to the jailhouse. Their
rifles and tommy guns weren’t much use against the brick jailhouse,
but dynamite was, and the jail fell at 3:30 a.m. Four deputies and
ten GIs had been wounded during the day. The courts threw out all
the votes except those that had been counted with watchers of both
parties present, putting the GI slate into office. Armed force had
been necessary to restore Athens to the rule of law, and so ordinary
law-abiding citizens had used armed force.

Attitude and Opinion Measurement

While the technicalities of attitude-scale construction are beyond the

scope of this book, a brief look at some of the problems which any
scaling technique must overcome should help develop sophistication
in interpreting the results of studies using these techniques. Not only
poorly constructed attitude scales but also poorly understood ones
can be quite misleading. Consider, for example, the apparently simple
matter of finding out whether a person is for or against something.
Surely this is something which we may find out simply by asking
him one question, the approach of opinion polling. But what question
should we ask? Let us take for example an area of considerable con-
troversy at the moment of writing, American involvement in Vietnam.
A few of the questions which might be asked about this topic are as
follows:
1. Do you favor continuation of the war in Vietnam?
2. Do you support the policies of the Johnson administration in
Vietnam?
3. Do you favor U.S. intervention in Vietnam?
4. Do you favor meeting our treaty obligations to the government of
South Vietnam?
5. Do you favor resisting communist aggression in Vietnam?
6. Do you favor dropping napalm bombs on the people of Vietnam?
The proportion of the population found to support existing
policy will obviously differ a great deal depending on which of these
or many other possible questions is asked. At first glance it would
seem that we could reject a number of the questions as biased and
misleading and agree on one as being unbiased. People holding dif-

Values, Attitudes & Opinions 261

 ferent attitudes, however, will feel that different questions are un-
biased. A strong supporter of the war might well feel that the central
question is whether or not to resist communist aggression and that
question 5 is thus the least biased. A strong opponent of the war would
point out that napalm bombs are being dropped and that the contro-
versy is over whether this should continue. Each might well conduct
an opinion poll, using his own preferred question, and find strong
public support for his position. The supporter of the war would find
that most people favor resisting communist aggression, while its
opponent would find that most people disapproved of dropping
bombs on other people.
Ruling out these obviously biased questions, can we find one
which is not biased? Probably not. Whatever is happening in Viet-
nam, it is not technically a war, since war has not, at the time of this
writing, been declared by Congress. The word “intervention” in the
third item implies an outside power interfering in the internal affairs
of another country—an implication which is either true or untrue
depending on your attitude toward the Vietnam conflict. Finally
there is the question of whether the policies should be linked to the
Johnson administration. On the one hand, they are the policies of
that administration; on the other, mentioning Johnson’s name makes
the response to the question influenced by attitudes toward Johnson
as well as toward the conflict. In short, there does not seem to be
such a thing as an unbiased question. The question we ask depends
on what we really want to know. If it is the amount of support that
President Johnson is getting for his policy, we should mention him
by name. If it is the extent to which a policy is supported, we should
not. While public-opinion polls may tell us much of value, their
results are quite misleading unless the effects of emotionally loaded
terms, group norms, and forces toward cognitive balance are taken
into account in interpreting their results.
Because of the difficulty in writing an unbiased question in opin-
ion polling, attitude scaling is often used even if the research problem
is to decide how many people are in favor of something and how
many are opposed to it. Attitude measurement does not attempt to
find one unbiased item, but depends upon assigning numerical values
to various items and then interpreting the pattern of the individual’s
agreements and disagreements. The zero point on the scale (divid-
ing the people who are for from those who are against) may then
be decided upon in various ways and without being dependent on
writing any item which falls exactly at it. A comparison of two

262 Psychology: A Social Approach

common methods of attitude-scale construction, Thurstone’s equal-
appearing intervals and Guttman’s scalogram analysis, should help to
clarify the strengths and weaknesses of this approach.
Equal-appearing-intervals scaling depends upon judges to assign
numerical values to items and to decide upon the zero point. A very
large number of attitude statements are collected from a variety of
sources, and a number of judges sort them into categories ranging
from most favorable toward the object of the attitude to most un-
favorable toward it. The categories are not named; instead the judge
defines them for himself so that they seem to him to be equally
spaced along the favorable-unfavorable continuum, with the center
category representing neutral items.
Items are eliminated on which the judges are in great disagree-
ment. Thus if a scale were being constructed on attitudes toward the
war in Vietnam, it is quite possible that judges would place the item
“We should resist communism aggression” in different categories.
Some might see agreement with this item as constituting endorsement
of the war and sort it toward the pro end of the scale, while others
might see it as essentially measuring a different attitude from support
of this particular war and thus place it in the middle category. If this
were the case, this item would be eliminated in constructing the scale.
In equal-appearing-intervals scaling, then, the neutral point on
the scale is represented by items which the judges agree represent a
neutral attitude. Two questions may be raised about the meaningful-
ness of this as a criterion. The first is that since irrelevant items are
generally sorted into the neutral category, it is difficult to know that
any particular item which the judges place in that category is really
neutral rather than irrelevant. The second is equally serious. Will
judges who hold different attitudes themselves be in agreement on
what a neutral attitude is?
This second question has been the subject of some interesting
research. Early studies, such as that of Hinckley, seemed to indicate
that judges sorted items in the same way regardless of their own
views. Hinckley, however, had screened his judges for “carelessness,”
excluding any who placed a large proportion of the items in any one
category.* Hovland and Sherif later investigated the possibility that
it might well be that these judges were not careless, but that it was
the holding of strong attitudes in the area which led judges to dis-
place the items. Using judges with strong attitudes, Hovland and
Sherif found that they markedly displaced neutral items away from
their own position and only judged a few items as being toward the

Values, Attitudes & Opinions 263

 end of the scale where they themselves fell.’ Thus a person who is
himself black, for example, is likely to judge most of the items on
Hinckley’s scale of attitudes toward Negroes as being anti-Negro.
While there are more refined methods of scaling such as suc-
cessive-intervals and paired-comparisons techniques which can assign
scale scores which are independent of the attitudes of the judges,
these methods do not solve the problem of finding the neutral point.
However, if the results of Hovland and Sherif’s study are taken
seriously, then perhaps we would be misguided to say that the prob-
lem is that we cannot identify the neutral point. What an individual
understands us to mean when we tell him that 54 percent of a popu-
lation are in favor of something is that 54 percent are on the pro side
of what he considers to be a neutral attitude. Perhaps, then, there is
no such thing as a neutral attitude, but only various points along a
continuum which different groups consider to be neutral. If this is
the case, then we can only communicate with an individual by using
his own frame of reference. We would then need to use different
neutral points to communicate our results to different groups in lan-
guage they would understand. We might well have to tell segrega-
tionists that the vast majority of some population were pro-Negro,
in terms of what they considered to be pro-Negro, while telling civil
rights workers that the majority of the same population were anti-
Negro, as they understood that term.
Guttman’s scalogram analysis uses quite a different approach to
attitude scaling and even uses a different type of item. The equal-
appearing-intervals scales we have been discussing use items such as
“T think we should call a temporary halt to bombing North Viet-
nam.” The person who favors increasing the scope of the war would
obviously not agree with this item; but then neither would the one
who wanted to withdraw from Vietnam completely. In other words,
each item represents a point on the attitude continuum, and people
will be more likely to endorse the item the closer that point is to their
own view. The approach is analogous to asking individuals a series of
questions such as “Are you about 5% feet tall?” The person who is
either much taller or much shorter will answer “No.”
Guttman’s approach uses questions which are much more like
asking ““Are you over 5 feet tall?’”” No matter how much over 5 feet
tall the person is, he will answer the question “Yes.” By using items
of this type, Guttman has managed to develop a method of attitude
scaling which does not require any judges. Let us look at how this is
done.

264 Psychology: A Social Approach

 Consider the following set of items, which illustrates an im-
perfect Guttman scale:

Are you over 4 feet tall?

. Are you over 4% feet tall?
Do you wear shoes larger than size 9?
Are you over 5 feet tall?
. Are you over 5% feet tall?
. Are you over 6 feet tall?
. Are
NOAM
HR
PWN you over 6% feet tall?
It is obvious that if it were not for item 3, individuals would
agree with all items up to a certain point and disagree with all from
then on. When an extraneous item is introduced, such as item 3, this
ceases to be true. While there is some relationship between height
and shoe size, some people less than 6 feet tall wear size 10 shoes
and some people over that height do not. Thus when we use the
type of items used in a Guttman scale, we should be able to tell
whether the items are all measuring the same thing by whether or
not we can arrange them in an order such that agreement will change
to disagreement at one point and not change back again. If this is not
the case, we have extraneous items such as 3 above.
In using this approach, then, it is not necessary to use judges to
eliminate extraneous items. The investigator selects items which he
thinks all measure the same thing. If he is right, the answers which
the individuals in his sample give to the questions should come very
close to fitting into the pattern we have described. Individuals can
then be scored by the point at which they stop answering ‘“Yes’”’ and
start answering “No.”
Two points are worth mentioning about this approach. One is
that you never get an absolutely perfect scale pattern. Consider, for
example, a Bogardus social-distance scale. In the scale, individuals
are asked how close relations they are willing to have with members
of a minority group—will they accept the minority-group member as
a fellow citizen, as a neighbor, as a friend, and as a relative by mar-
riage? While there are few people who would, for example, admit a
Negro as a friend but not as a neighbor, it is possible that a person
who defined friendship as very casual acquaintance and who was
very concerned with property values in his neighborhood might give
this answer. A small proportion of answers deviating from the ex-
pected pattern is thus not enough to make the scale considered in-
valid. —

Values, Attitudes & Opinions 265

 The other point is that it is an important question whether the
attitude items get at a good sample of all the important attitudes in
an area. Guttman’s view here was that if the investigator understood
the structure of the attitude area, the items which he selected would
scale on the first try. If it were necessary to eliminate some items to
make the rest scale, such as our item 3 above, this was an indication
that the investigator did not know what he was trying to measure.
In this case, he was advised to throw his data away and study the
area further before trying to construct a scale! Understandably, few
investigators have been willing to abide by this injunction, and there
are serious questions about scales constructed by eliminating large
numbers of items. If many have been thrown out, what do the rest
measure? (Thurstone methods try to deal with this problem by using
a large sample of items to begin with, but again it is unclear whether
the items which scale may not represent a subset which differs in
important ways from those which do not.)
To return to the question with which we started, how does
scalogram analysis define the neutral point of the scale? In this case
a neutral attitude is considered to be represented by the person who
just doesn’t care one way or the other. The neutral point is thus de-
fined as the attitude held by people who have the weakest feelings
about the issue. It is likely that this approach also would show dif-
ferent attitudes as being neutral in different groups.
From this brief discussion we may see that many useful tech-
niques have been devised in the area of opinion and attitude measure-
ment but that a number of cautions should be observed in interpret-
ing their results. In the case of opinion polling, special attention
should be paid to the wording of the question. What social forces
influence what answer will be given, and how might these forces be
changed by slight changes in wording? In the case of attitude mea-
surement, the methods by which the scale was constructed should be
examined: Does the scale contain a good sample of the important
attitudes in the area it purports to measure? What items were elimi-
nated, and are they different in some important way from those that
were included? How well do the remaining items scale? How is the
neutral point defined, and for what groups is this a valid definition?
In the case of either attitude or opinion measurement, of course, it is
also necessary to consider the sample of people upon whom conclu-
sions are based. For the individual who intends to actually do attitude
measurement himself, useful treatments of the topic (in increasing
order of difficulty) may be found in Edwards, Techniques of Attitude

266 Psychology: A Social Approach

 Scale Construction;** Green, “Attitude Measurement” in Lindzey’s
Handbook of Social Psychology; and Torgerson, Theory and Meth-
ods of Scaling.*®

The Transmission of Social Class

The factors which influence an individual’s attitudes and values will

form a large portion of the remainder of this book. As a preliminary
introduction to this area, let us look at one specific question—how
social-class differences are transmitted from one generation to an-
other.
As indicated by the quotation from Warner given earlier, the
United States has strong norms of social equality, and it is considered
un-American to make distinctions among people based upon wealth,
family background, education, and style of life. In fact, such distinc-
tions are harder to make than in some societies, yet people make
them all the time. Thus Vidich and Bensman in Small Town in Mass
Society describe the public norm that specifies that:
With the exception of a few “old cranks” and ‘no goods,” it is
unthinkable for anyone to pass a person on the street without ex-
changing greetings. ... The pattern of everyone talking to everyone
is especially characteristic when people congregate in groups. Meet-
ings and social gatherings do not begin until greetings have been
exchanged all around. The person who feels he is above associating
with everyone, as is the case with some newcomers from the city,
runs the risk of being regarded a snob, for the taint of snobbish-
ness is most easily acquired by failing to be friendly to everyone.'®

Yet even in this egalitarian community, distinctions are made in

private, and in fact make up a major topic of conversation, as shown
by a few of the comments made about others when they are not
present:

“I'd say that he’s worth at least $30,000. Why the cows and buildings
are worth that alone.”
“You'd think a man with his money would give more than $50 to the
church. 5
“There's a guy making $2,800 and he’s got a new Pontiac... .
ut

“Lend him a cent and you'll never see it again.”

“He cleaned up during the war... .”
“He could be doing well if he stopped drinking.
IVT

These comments imply more than simply distinctions based

upon wealth, although that is one important part of the assessment

Values, Attitudes & Opinions 267

 of social class. Judgments are also made on how the wealth was ac-
quired and how it is used. As a first approximation, social-class dis-
tinction may be considered to be the awarding of prestige to indi-
viduals on the basis of the role they play in society.
The reality of social-class distinctions is perhaps best shown by
the great correspondence between the social-class distinctions made
by the residents of a community and those made by research workers
on the basis of quite different criteria. In his monumental study of a
Midwestern community, Elmtown’s Youth,* A. B. Hollingshead as-
signed families to social-class levels by a laborious but thorough
procedure. First he asked twenty-five members of his sample of the
community to assign thirty families to their classes, without giving
any indication of how many classes should be used. After eliminating
families about which there was great disagreement and checking the
class assignment of the remaining twenty on a second sample of
townspeople, he was able to assign the remaining families to five
classes. He used this list to find out the class position of the 535
families in his sample by having thirty-one new raters compare each
of the families with other families on the list of twenty of known
class position. In short, he found out the distinctions which residents
of the town actually made in assigning prestige to their fellow resi-
dents.
Elmtown was also studied by Lloyd Warner,’ ®° whose six-class
system is perhaps the most widely used in studying social class. (It
was Warner’s classification scheme which was used in Deep South,
from which Figure 8-1 is drawn.) While Warner uses a six-class
system, the highest, or upper-upper, class is only found in old cities
with long-established wealth, so Warner was in agreement with
Hollingshead in finding five classes in Elmtown. Of the 134 families
rated by both methods, approximately 80 percent were placed in the
same social class by both,’® which is really quite high agreement
when different procedures are used to assess anything as subjective
as social class.
Social class, as measured by sociological techniques, thus seems
to agree quite well with social class as used by individuals in assess-
ing their fellow townspeople. What are the characteristics which the
sociologists or the townspeople use in making their judgments? Hol-
lingshead found that the things mentioned by his informants could
be grouped into five categories:
(1) The way a family lived—this included place of residence, type of
dwelling, and furnishings; (2) income and material possessions; (3)

268 Psychology: A Social Approach

 participation in community affairs, politics, religion—“civic minded,”
“radical,” “conservative,” “good community man,” “don’t give a
damn about education”; (4) family background, including ancestry,
kin, and national origin; (5) reputation or prestige.”'

Warner found that he could predict most of the variation in

social-class level from the four factors of occupation, house type,
source of income, and dwelling area.
Much could be written about social class, for it influences most
aspects of our lives, from dating patterns”? through the chances of
being admitted to a college fraternity” to income after graduation,”
the exertion of political influence,2> whom we go to see if our chil-
dren have difficulties at school,?° and even the type of disorder we
are liable to develop if we become mentally disturbed.”” What is most
interesting about it, however, is that the perceptions, attitudes, and
behavior characteristics of social-class position are passed on from
generation to generation. In a society with strong ideals of equality,
where the very existence of class distinctions is often denied, how is
it possible for this to happen? In this section we shall look briefly at
two characteristics of society which help to make it possible—the
support of social-class distinctions by restrictions in who associates
with whom and differential treatment of individuals from different
class backgrounds by social institutions.
As has been seen, both Warner and Hollingshead point to
dwelling area as one of the more important indicators of social-class
status. Since young children usually play with others who live very
close to them, early relationships outside the family are drawn largely
from individuals of similar social class. These neighborhood differ-
ences are reflected in the differences existing among neighborhood
elementary schools. As James Conant wrote:

The contrast in money available to the schools in a wealthy suburb

and to the schools in a large city jolts one’s notions of the meaning
of equality of opportunity. The pedagogic tasks which confront the
teachers in the slum schools are far more difficult than those which
their colleagues in the wealthy suburbs face. Yet the expenditure per
pupil in the wealthy suburban schoc' is as high as $1,000 per year.
The expenditure in a big city school is less than half that amount. An
even more significant contrast is provided by looking at the school
facilities and noting the size of the professional staff. In the suburb
there is likely to be a spacious modern school staffed by as many as
70 professionals per 1,000 pupils; in the slum one finds a crowded
often dilapidated and unattractive school staffed by 40 or fewer pro-
fessionals per 1,000 pupils.**

Values, Attitudes & Opinions 269

 There is thus ample opportunity for children to learn the class-
linked attitudes of their parents during the years when they associate
largely with others of similar class position. What happens, though,
when they move on to the high school where, especially in a small
town with only one high school, they are brought into contact with
youths from all class levels? Do they associate freely with all, or have
they already learned to choose their friends on bases that are related
to their class background?
Hollingshead investigated this question in his extensive study of
high-school-age youth in Elmtown. He found that the distinctions
made by high school students did not perfectly correspond with
those made by adults, for they used only three categories—“the
elite,” “the good kids,” and “the grubby gang.” As shown in Table
8-1, there was nevertheless a very strong relationship between place-
ment in these categories and social-class position of parents using
Hollingshead’s five-class system.
A more crucial question is whom the boys and girls actually
associated with. Hollingshead looked at the leisure-time association of
the students in groups. The results for boys are shown in Table 8-2.
It is important to note, in reading the table, that there are more
boys in classes III and IV than in I, II, or V. Thus it was possible for
the relatively small number of boys in classes I and II combined to
have 38 percent of their clique associates in class III, while the larger
number of boys in class III only drew 11 percent of their associates
from classes I and II. The influence of social class on leisure-time
association is very clear, so clear in fact that no boy from classes I
and II associated with any boy from class V. The association between
class and friendship was even more marked for the girls, but less
marked in the case of boys dating girls. In general, boys sometimes
dated girls from social classes lower than their own, who were re-

Table 8-1 Peer rating of students from five different social classes

1 AND II Il IV Vv
PEER RATING NO. % NO. % NO. % NO. %

The elite Pf Vi. 30 Aull 9 5 0 (@)

The good kids Ghel 2S-al) 114 Zee iasinne73 4 15
The grubby gang 0 0 2 | 41 22 ee 85
Total BS) 100 146 100 183 100 26 100

SOURCE: Hollingshead”?

270 Psychology: A Social Approach

Table 8-2 Percentage of clique relations observed within and between
classes for males

BOYS FROM DREW THIS PERCENTAGE OF THEIR ASSOCIATES FROM CLASS

CLASS I AND II Ill IV Vv

I and II 49 38 UE:
ITI ID 61 27
IV 5 38 60 2
V 0 TS ST 56
SOURCE: Hollingshead*®

puted to be “fast.” Girls did not date boys from classes lower than
their own. Thus we see one way in which social class is perpetuated.
Even in the high school of a small town, individuals associate with
others from social classes near their own, who hold attitudes similar
to their own in those areas where class predicts attitude.
Besides associating with people who hold attitudes similar to
their own, individuals born into different social classes carry on class
differences because they have different experiences with the world
which give them attitudes characteristic of their class position. The
upper-class individual learns to give commands and have them
obeyed; he learns that situations can be changed for the better by
taking an active part in changing them. The lower-class individual
learns that he has no power and that it is best to be inconspicuous.
Again Elmtown’s Youth provides good examples, in accounts of what
happened when a class IJ and a class IV boy were late for school:
The following Wednesday morning, Frank Stone, Jr. (class I), parked
his father’s Cadillac in front of the high school at a quarter after
eight, climbed out leisurely, picked up his notebook, and walked into
the office and casually remarked, “I guess I’m late again.”
The principal looked hard at him and spoke firmly, “What's the story
this time?”
...T didn’t wake up, I guess.”
“This time you are going to detention like everyone else.” He wrote
young Frank an excuse, placed his name on the detention list, and,
as he handed him the excuse said, “This means one hour in deten-
tion. I want to see you there at three-fifteen tonight.”
Frank Stone did not go to detention, however, and the principal
called his father. The principal told the superintendent what he had

Values, Attitudes & Opinions 271

 done and left for a choir rehearsal. When Mr. Stone brought his son
in, the superintendent met Frank and asked:
“Haven't you gone home yet?” Young Frank, burning with rage, re-
torted, “Mr. [Principal] made me come back for detention. Dad is
really sore.”
The superintendent talked with Frank and had him wait for a
while in his outer office (not the detention room). Some days later he
explained to the researchers:
“I did not want to put young Frank in the detention room with the
rest of the kids; so I sat him there in the outer office, and I deliber-
ately worked around in my office until about five-thirty. Then I came
out and said, ‘Frank, I guess you have been here long enough. You
go on home and let's not have any hard feelings.’ I talked to his
father later about the whole thing, and I think we have come to an
understanding.”

Following this incident, many class I and class II students man-

aged to avoid being sent to detention when they were late. “Boney”
Johnson, a class IV boy, did not fare so well. His English teacher re-
fused to admit him late to class, so he went to the principal's office
for an excuse:
Before “Boney” could say a word, he barked, in a sarcastic tone: “So
my pretty boy is late again! I suppose it took you half an hour to put
on that clean shirt and green tie! [The principal arose from his desk,
walked around, and looked at Boney’s trousers and shoes and went
on.] Ha, you have your pants pressed today! I suppose you took a
bath last night, too. New shoes, and they're shined.”

Like Frank Stone, “Boney” tried to skip detention. He, however,

did not succeed in getting out of the building:

The Superintendent rushed out of his office and stood at the head of
the stairs. The principal pushed and shoved “Boney” up the stairs as
he repeated, ‘You can’t get away with that stuff.” As they neared the
top, “Boney” broke from his grasp and started down the hall toward
the side door. The Superintendent blocked his path, and “Boney” ran
upstairs. The principal leaped and grabbed him by the coat collar
with his left hand. “Boney” turned and started to fight. The principal
spun him around, seized the visor of his cap with his right hand and
yanked it down over his eyes. While “Boney” was fighting to get the
cap off his face, the principal hit him three times with the heel of his
hand on the back of the neck near the base of the skull. “Boney”
cursed, struggled, and hit in all directions. Soon he broke free and
ran towards the Superintendent, who shook and slapped him three or
four times. Both men then grabbed him by the arms and shook him

272 Psychology: A Social Approach

 vigorously. The Superintendent angrily screeched, ‘You're going out
of this building. You're never coming back until you bring your
father and we talk this over.”*)

“Boney” Johnson did not come back—he dropped out of school.

The example does not illustrate what is best in American education,
or even, it is to be hoped, what is typical. There have been too few
studies to indicate yet what is typical, and that the incidents de-
scribed are not unique to Elmtown is made clear by Jonathan Kozol’s
observations on teaching in the Boston public school system. The
case of “Boney” Johnson and those reported in more detail by Kozol
in his book* illustrate how social institutions teach different atti-
tudes to individuals from observably different backgrounds.
Because political attitudes are closely related to social class, a
study of political socialization by Edgar Litt** is particularly interest-
ing. Although class is related to neighborhood, it is rare to find an
entire community which is uniform in its social-class composition.
Where communities are not independent, but actually parts of a
major metropolis, however, they often do represent very restricted
samples on the spectrum of class, status, and power. Litt studied
three such communities in the Boston metropolitan area to see
whether schoolchildren in the different communities were taught
different things about politics. The upper-middle-class community he
called Alpha, the lower-middle-class community Beta, and the work-
ing-class community Gamma. Some of their characteristics are shown
in Table 8—3, where it will be noted that one of their most striking
differences is in voter turnout.** This difference is in line with national
trends. The higher an individual’s socioeconomic status, the more
likely it is that he will vote.
To find out whether the nature of the community influenced

Table 8-3 Socioeconomic and political characteristics of Alpha, Beta, and

Gamma

CHARACTERISTIC ALPHA BETA GAMMA

Percent of working force in professions 38 IS) Wf

Median family income $5,900 $4,250 $3,620
Median voting turnout (percent)
for five gubernatorial elections 67.8 43.8 Syapil

SOURCE: Litt®4; from U.S. Bureau of the Census, General Characteristics of the Population:
Massachusetts, 1960, and Secretary of State, Compilation of Massachusetts Election Statistics:
Public Document 43, Boston: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1950-1960.

Values, Attitudes & Opinions 273

 what children were taught about politics in its schools, Litt looked at
three things—the attitudes of community leaders in the three com-
munities, the contents of the textbooks used in civic education courses
in the three school systems, and the attitude changes shown by stu-
dents who took the courses in the three communities. Let us look first
at the textbooks.
Litt content-analyzed all the civic education textbooks from each
of the three communities for the preceding 5 years, using the follow-
ing categories:

1. Emphasis on citizen political participation—references to voting,

norms of civic duty, political activity, and the effectiveness of citi-
zen action in influencing the behavior of public officials.
2. Political chauvinism—references to the unique and nationalistic
character of “democracy” or “good government’ as an American
monopoly, and glorified treatment of American political institu-
tions, procedures, and public figures.
3. The democratic creed—references to the rights of citizens and
minorities to attempt to influence governmental policy through
non-tyrannical procedures.
4. Emphasis on political process—references to politics as an arena
involving the actions of politicians, public officials, and the use of
power and influence contrasted with references to government as a
mechanistic set of institutions allocating services to citizens with a
minimum of intervention by political actors.
5. Emphasis on politics as the resolution of group conflict—references
to political conflicts among economic, social, and ethno-religious
groupings resolved within an agreed-upon framework of political
rules of the game.**
The results of the content analysis are shown in Table 8—4.
From the content analysis we may see that all the textbooks
emphasized the democratic creed, and none of them had any signifi-
cant amount of chauvinistic material. However, only in Alpha and
Beta is activity emphasized. Only in Alpha is there any significant
emphasis on the political process or conflict resolution, the two types
of material which probably best serve to give a realistic picture of
how politics really works. Also noteworthy is the increase in unclas-
sified material as we go down the socioeconomic scale. This material
may perhaps best be described as a recitation of historical facts which
do not illustrate any principles but which can be memorized.
The differences in the textbooks were partially, but not com-
pletely, in line with differences in what the leaders of the communi-
ties thought should be taught in civic education courses. Only in

274 Psychology: A Social Approach

Table 8-4 References on salient political dimensions in civics textbooks
(in percent)

POLITICAL DIMENSION ALPHA BETA GAMMA

Emphasis on democratic creed 56 52 47

Chauvinistic references to
Americal political institutions 3 6 2
Emphasis on political activity,
citizen’s duty, efficacy 7, a3 5
Emphasis on political process,
politicians, and power 11 2 i
Emphasis on group conflict-resolving
political function 10 1 4 2
Other 3 26 43
Totals 100 100 100
Number of paragraphs (501) (367) (467)

SOURCE: Litt**

Alpha did a majority of the leaders feel there should be emphasis on

the process of politics or its conflict-resolution function, so this im-
portant difference in the textbooks did reflect the attitudes of com-
munity leaders. However, leaders in all the communities thought
there should be an emphasis on participation (they would probably
not be leaders if they did not believe in participation), and this em-
phasis was lacking in Gamma texts. Also, a number of leaders in
both Beta and Gamma felt that chauvinistic material should be in-
cluded.
The differences in the textbooks thus reasonably well reflect the
differences in the communities. Did they have any effect on the stu-
dents? With one exception, students in the three communities
changed in the directions we would expect from the textbooks they
were exposed to. The exception is belief in political participation,
which was not significantly changed in any community. The students
in all communities, however, increased in their belief in the demo-
cratic creed and decreased in their political chauvinism. Reflecting the
differences in the textbooks, only the students in Alpha came to see
politics as involving people and power and as resolving group con-
flict. Different attitudes were in fact taught to students from different
social-class backgrounds. As Litt concludes:

Values, Attitudes & Opinions 275

 In sum, then, students in the three communities are being trained to
play different political roles, and to respond to political phenomena in
different ways. In the working-class community, where political in-
volvement is low, the arena of civic education offers training in the
basic democratic procedures without stressing political participation
or the citizen’s view of conflict and disagreement as indigenous
to the political system. Politics is conducted by formal govern-
mental institutions working in harmony for the benefit of citizens.
In the lower middle-class school system of Beta—a community with
moderately active political life—training in the elements of demo-
cratic government is supplemented by an emphasis on the responsi-
bilities of citizenship, not on the dynamics of public decision making.
Only in the affluent and politically vibrant community (Alpha) are
insights into political processes and functions of politics passed on to
those who, judging from their socio-economic and political environ-
ment, will likely man those positions that involve them in influencing
or making political decisions.*"
Alexander Hamilton would have been delighted.

Summary

Although individuals do not always tell the truth and sometimes do

not know it, what they are willing and able to say still reveals a great
deal about them. Their verbal statements reveal their values, atti-
tudes, and opinions. These are similar in that they are all composed
of mixtures of beliefs and sentiments, but differ in how general they
are. Values are the most general and opinions the most specific.
Because most of our values are shared by most of the people
with whom we associate, we are often not aware of holding them, for
we cannot conceive of anyone being different. On the rare occasions
when our basic values are challenged, we may behave in ways that
surprise ourselves, as was illustrated in “The battle of Athens, Ten-
nessee.” There are not as well-standardized ways of measuring values
as there are of measuring attitudes, but values may be inferred in a
number of ways, the most important of which is content analysis of
verbal materials. An early study by Leo Lowenthal illustrates the
technique.
Two of the problems which must be solved by any method of
attitude scaling are the assigning of numerical scores to items and
defining the point which separates a favorable from an unfavorable
attitude. These two problems are approached differently by the Thur-

276 Psychology: A Social Approach

 stone methods and Guttman’s scalogram analysis. An understanding
of the difficulties which the various methods have in solving these
two problems will enable the reader to better evaluate published
attitude surveys. If adequate methodological safeguards are not em-
ployed, attitude surveys and opinion polls may produce extremely
misleading results.
Attitudes are highly related to the positions which the individual
occupies in the social structure, and the transmission of social-class
differences in attitude from generation to generation is one of the
basic processes of society. Two studies centering on public education
investigated the role the school system plays in this transmission of
attitudes from generation to generation. There has not. yet been
enough research to indicate the extent to which the findings of the
two studies are typical or atypical of American education in general.

Notes and Acknowledgments

. Warner, W. Lloyd, Marchia Meeker, and Kenneth Eells (Eds.). Social Class
in America. Chicago: Science Research Associates, Inc., 1949, p. 3.
. Davis, Allison, B. B. Gardner, and M. R. Gardner. Deep South: A Social
Anthropological Study of Caste and Class. Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1941, p. 65. Copyright © 1941 by The University
of Chicago. By permission of the publisher.
. Brown, J. A. C. Techniques of Persuasion. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963,
p. 234. By permission of the publisher.
. Rosenberg, Milton. “An analysis of affective-cognitive consistency” in
M. Rosenberg et al., Attitude Organization and Change. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1960, chap. 2.
. Lowenthal, Leo. “Biographies in popular magazines” in William Petersen
(Ed.), American Social Patterns. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday &
Company, Inc., 1956, pp. 63-118.
. Ibid., pp. 96-97. Copyright 1944 by Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Frank Stan-
ton. Reprinted by permission.
. White, Theodore H. “The battle of Athens, Tennessee” in Edgar A. Schuler
et al. (Eds.), Outside Readings in Sociology. New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell Company, 1952, pp. 737-749. Copyright by Theodore H.
White. First printed in Harper's Magazine, January, 1947, pp. 54-61.
. Dicey, A. V. Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution.
London: Macmillan, 1939, pp. 202-203, 9th ed., by permission of
Thorold, Brodie, Bonham-Carter, and Mason, Solicitors.
. White, Theodore H. Op. cit., p. 739. Reprinted by permission of the author.
10. Ibid., pp. 742-743. By permission of the author.

Values, Attitudes & Opinions 277

 LL. Hinckley, E. D. “The influence of individual opinion on construction of an
attitude scale.” Journal of Social Psychology, 1932 (3), pp. 283-296.
Wr, Hovland, C. I., and M. Sherif. “Judgmental phenomena and scales of atti-
tude measurement: Item displacement in Thurstone scales.” Journal
of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1952 (47), pp. 822-832.
is: Edwards, Allen. Techniques of Attitude Scale Construction. New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1957.
14. Green, Bert F. “Attitude measurement” in Gardner Lindzey (Ed.), Hand-
book of Social Psychology. Vol. 1. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company, Inc., 1954.
1S, Torgerson, Warren S. Theory and Methods of Scaling. New York: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1958.
16. Vidich, Arthur J., and Joseph Bensman. Small Town in Mass Society:
Class, Power, and Religion in a Rural Community. Copyright © 1958
by Princeton University Press, published by Anchor Books, Double-
day & Company, Inc., Garden City, N.Y., 1960, p. 40. By permission
of Princeton University Press.
IW, Ibid., p. 44. By permission of Princeton University Press.
18. Hollingshead, A. B. Elmtown’s Youth. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
1949,
iy, A good comparison of Hollingshead’s and Warner’s research may be found
in: Kahl, Joseph A. The American Class Structure. New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1960,
pp. 33-40.
20. Warner, W. Lloyd, et al. Democracy in Jonesville. New York: Harper &
Row, Publishers, Incorporated, 1949.
Dale Hollingshead, A. B. Elmtown’s Youth. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
1949, p. 29. By permission of the publisher.
Die Ibid., p. 231.
23). Levine, G. N., and L. Sussman. “Social class and sociability in fraternity
pledging.” American Journal of Sociology, January, 1960, pp. 391-
399.
24. West, Patricia Salter. “Social mobility among college graduates” in Rein-
hard Bendix and Seymour Martin Lipset (Eds.), Class, Status and
Power. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1960, pp. 465-480.
Lion Vidich, Arthur J., and Joseph Bensman. Op. cit., pp. 211-227.
ZO: Charters, W. W., Jr. “The social psychology of educational administration”
in Perspectives on Educational Administration and the Behavioral
Sciences. Eugene, Oreg.: The Center for the Advanced Study of
Educational Administration, 1965, p. 75.
27. Hollingshead, A. B., and F. C. Redlich. “Social stratification and psychi-
atric disorders” in N. J. Smelser and W. T. Smelser (Eds.), Person-
ality and Social Systems. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1963,
pp. 314-322.
28. Conant, James. Slums and Suburbs. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Com-
pany, 1961, p. 10. By permission of Conant Studies, Educational Test-
ing Service.

278 Psychology: A Social Approach

29, Hollingshead, A. B. Elmtown’s Youth. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
1949, p. 222, table XIV. By permission of the publisher.
30: Ibid., modified from table XI on p. 214. By permission of the publisher.
Sil. Ibid., pp. 188-191. By permission of the publisher.
32. Kozol, Jonathan. Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and
Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967.
33. Litt, Edgar. “Civic education, community norms, and political indoctrina-
tion.” American Sociological Review, February, 1963 (28), pp. 69-75.
34. Ibid., p. 70. By permission of the publisher and the author.
35. Ibid., p. 70. By permission of the publisher and the author.
36. Ibid., p. 72. By permission of the publisher and the author.
BW Ibid., p. 74. By permission of the publisher and the author.

Values, Attitudes & Opinions 279

TOBESOLDS LET BY PUBLIC AUCTION,
18th of M1). 3829,
On MONDAYv NDEthe
R THE TREES.

SALE,
FOLA@ WINGS=<
FOR

_ THE THREE

HANNIBAL, about 30 Years old, an cxce ent House Servant, of Good Character.
WILLDAM, about 85 Years old, a Labourer.
NANCY, an excellent House Servant and Nurse. a
The MEN | lonaing to “LEECR’S” Estate, and the WOMAN to Mra BD. @MxY
ESTES ao en EW EE SPOT 2S SESENCATTOLLS SO AMDT

TO BE LET,
On the uaual conditions of the Hygr finding . ~ Fo od, Clot
a and
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ROBERT
SLAVES,
BAGLEY, about 20 Years
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old.
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Servant.
-
WILLIAM BAGLEY. about 18 Years of) a Labourer
JOHN ARMS. about Is Years old
JACK ANTOSIA, about 40 Years old, a Libourer.
VPuRILIP. su Excellent Fisherman. TA,
HWARRY. about 27 Years old.a aod Servant. : a
LUCY, » Young Woman of ¢ Characi +,usedtoHouse Work and the Narsery. “>
FLIZA, ae Exeelilent Washerwoman. §
CLARA, an Excellent: Washerwoman. t
FANNY, about 14 Year old, House Servant. H
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Atso for Sale, at BleveneClock, ery

Fine Rice, Gram, Paddy, Books, Muslins,
Needles, | Pins, Ribbons, &e, &e.
AT ONE OCLOCK, ‘Tit\T CELEBRATED ENGLIGH HORSE,

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:

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5S t2 approx. Addison. Place unknown,
his leatler announcing the sale of slaves presumably
comes trom the United States of (meric a, from one
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The Bettmann Archit

NINE
ealcea)Oo

Ideology

In the vast majority of situations an individual confronts in living,

his culture prescribes the general outline of how he shall behave.
Although an individual may decide for himself what he shall eat for
breakfast, his culture has already decided the tools he may eat it
with. Although he may choose what he wants to say, the language
he may say it in has been provided to him. As Berger’ points out, it
is this circumstance which gives truth to the statement, ‘The dead
are more powerful than the living.” Although individuals have
learned the values and behaviors of their culture, however, the way

281
 in which the lessons of the past should be applied to the new situa-
tions of the present is not always clear, and one of the major func-
tions of leaders is to define situations in such a way that courses of
action are justified in terms of the traditions and values of the past.
The leader succeeds largely through defining situations in a way that
will be satisfying to his followers. To be satisfying, the definition
must not only provide a potentially rewarding course of action but
also justify this course of action. In other words, the leader defines
ambiguous situations in a way that provides a course of action satis-
factory to his followers and justifiable in terms of past cultural values.
This function of leaders of justifying new courses of action in
terms of old and accepted values is perhaps most clearly seen in the
area of political leadership. Consider the following three statements
of political philosophy:?
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with
another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate
and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God
entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires
that they should declare the causes which impel them to the sepa-
ration.®
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guildmaster
and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in con-
stant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now
hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revo-
lutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of
the contending classes.*
If men wish to live, then they are forced to kill others. The entire
struggle for survival is a conquest of the means of existence which in
turn results in the elimination of others from these same sources of
subsistence. As long as there are peoples on this earth, there will be
nations against nations and they will be forced to protect their vital
rights in the same way as the individual is forced to protect his rights.
There is in reality no distinction between peace and war. Life, no
matter in what form, is a process which always leads to the same
result. Self-preservation will always be the goal of every individual.
Struggle is ever-present and will remain.®

In the first statement, from the Declaration of Independence,

that independence is seen as being sanctioned by the laws of God and
nature. The second statement, from the Communist Manifesto, sees

282 Psychology: A Social Approach

revolutionary class struggle as having the sanction of all previous
human history. The third, from a speech of Adolf Hitler on March 15,
1929, justifies German military conquest in terms of a Darwinian
struggle for survival. Yet we would never imagine that the Declara-
tion of Independence was inspired primarily by the religious beliefs
of its signers, that Marx became a revolutionary because he felt so
strongly about historical issues, or that it was Hitler’s interest in
Darwinism which inspired his political career.
These comprehensive views of the world, composed of beliefs
and values and serving to justify the actions of those holding them,
are known as ideologies. Less comprehensive examples are easily
found. Morticians tend to believe that the quality of the funeral ar-
rangements paid for by the bereaved indicates the amount of affec-
tion he had for the deceased; most medical doctors in the United
States believe that adequate medical treatment can only be provided
if it is financed primarily by the payments of individual patients;
teachers such as myself believe that the whole quality of human exis-
tence would be improved by providing more money for education.
Since ideological positions prescribe how situations shall be
viewed and what values applied to them, the greatest human conflicts
involve opposing ideologies. Again the views which Americans have
of the war in Vietnam will serve as an example. The “hawks” and the
“doves” define the situation quite differently. Those who favor the
war point to the aggressive expansionism in statements of communist
ideology, the infiltration of South Vietnam by North Vietnamese
Communists, the history of aggression of China against India, and
the support which China is giving to the Vietcong, and argue that the
situation is one of the United States defending South Vietnam against
external aggression. Those who oppose the war point to the inten-
tion of the Geneva Conference that elections should be held in a
unified Vietnam, the role of the United States in establishing and
maintaining a separate government in South Vietnam, the proba-
bility that Ho Chi Minh would have won elections held in a unified
Vietnam, and the large number of South Vietnamese fighting on the
side of the Vietcong, and argue that the United States is intervening
in the internal affairs of another country. The differences between the
two points of view are partly differences about facts and partly dif-
ferences about what should be valued. The differences about fact can
be resolved by appeal to evidence; those about value cannot.
Most importantly, the ideologies do not necessarily state the

Prejudice 283
 things which make individuals support them. Their function is to
justify a position, and this may frequently be done more effectively
by appeal to reasons other than those for which the position is actu-
ally held. For example, I might support the war because I was em-
ployed by a weapons supplier and feared that I would lose my job if
it were concluded. I might oppose it because I feared that I might be
drafted and killed in combat. It is unlikely that I would publicly give
either of these reasons for my position.
In looking at prejudice, then, it might be a mistake to seek the
source of prejudiced behavior in stereotyped views of other groups or
the ideology of White supremacy. While ideologies serve a useful
function for the individual in justifying his behavior to himself and
others, they are probably not the most important source of that be-
havior. To find that, we must look at those impulses which he does
not completely admit to himself but which are covertly gratified by
his behavior.

The Gratifications of Prejudice

For individuals defined as White, the maintenance of a system of

domination over those defined as Negro has served three main ends—
economic exploitation, sexual exploitation, and the expression of ag-
gressive impulses. These three goals have interacted in such complex
ways that at the present time fear may be a major motive impelling
the maintenance of the inequality. Slavery was first and foremost a
system of economic subjugation, and the complex barriers of unequal
employment opportunities, unequal pay for equal work, and residen-
tial segregation have served to maintain this economic subjugation.
The economic gains to be had from such a system have been declin-
ing, however, with the spread of industrialization and automation.
Exploiting a group as unskilled laborers led to large economic gains
for the exploiting group with a system of plantation agriculture which
had need of a vast army of unskilled laborers. It has become less and
less profitable as even in agriculture unskilled labor has become un-
able to compete with rational mechanized farming. Tenant farmers,
whether White or colored, no longer make substantial profits for the
man who owns the land.
While societies have complex institutions to permit the gratifi-
cation of sexual impulses, not all impulses may be gratified within the

284 Psychology: A Social Approach

bounds of these institutions. That slavery as an institution allowed
the White man wide latitude in gratifying these impulses and did not
maintain “racial purity” is attested to by the 348,847 mulattoes living
in the slave states in 1850.° The continuation of sexual exploitation
beyond the end of slavery has been one of the main factors shaping
the development of the ideology of White supremacy and has had
complex psychological consequences for those defined as White and
those defined as Negro alike. A classic study of these consequences
was carried out by John Dollard in 1937.’
For the White man, access to colored women was provided by
his greater wealth and his control of the legal system. He justified it
to himself by the strong component of the White-supremacist ideol-
ogy which portrays Negroes, whether male or female, as “primitive”
and sexually insatiable. It would seem at first glance that whether he
had a long-term liaison with a mistress or casual affairs with prosti-
tutes and others, he at least stood only to gain as far as impulse grati-
fication went. This, however, was not the case, for his ideology had
consequences for his sexual relations with White women. One com-
mon sexual problem which is intensified by such an arrangement is
to divide women into two classes—those who are “good” but there-
fore must be sexually pure, and those who are “bad” but sexually
desirable—a split which lies behind the popularity in fiction of the
heroine who appears to be sexually loose and thus has the attractive-
ness of the “bad” girl but who turns out to be pure after all.° In
attaching sexuality primarily to colored women, the White suprema-
cist lost the capacity to enjoy marriage fully, to have a relationship
which combined intellectual and emotional closeness with sexual
gratification.
Beyond this, he was liable to suffer from guilt over his sexuality
and from fear of Negro men. The stereotypes he developed of the
Negro as oversexed led him to fear their approaches to White women,
whom he feared would find them as irresistible as he found colored
women. Also he feared, not without some justification, the retribution
which Negro men might seek for past insults should they ever be in
a position to inflict it. To a great extent, the elaborately subservient
role which Whites have demanded from Negroes has been demanded
to reassure the Whites that the Negroes do not intend to attack them.
This fear is undoubtedly a major factor in the resistance to complete
equality today.
The easy access of White men to colored women is becoming

Prejudice 285
 more and more a thing of the past. Even in 1937 Dollard reported
that:

An upper-class woman reported on old-time concubinage as it existed

in her town. The white man, a judge of the supreme court of the
state, had a Negro mistress living in a cabin in his back yard. He had
three daughters by her whom he treated well... . The white wife of
the judge lived in seclusion at their home. Informant added that this
was antebellum practice and does not happen often in these times.
She repeated the assurance that respectable people condemn such
things strongly now and that only low-grade white people have
sexual traffic with Negroes.®

The White man who dreams of having a Negro mistress is more

and more likely only to dream of it. The major significance of such
dreams today may well be in the fear they give him of complete
equality.

The Expression of Aggression

While both economic and sexual interests may be involved in preju-

dice, there is mounting evidence that aggressive impulses are more
important. Let us look at an experiment’ and then consider its results
from a psychoanalytic point of view.
An individual comes to a laboratory in response to a newspaper
advertisement for subjects to participate in a study of learning. He is
greeted by a thirty-one-year-old man dressed in a gray technician’s
coat, who introduces himself as the experimenter, and is introduced
to a fellow subject. Both subjects are paid in advance, and then the
experiment is explained to them. It is on the effects of punishment
on learning. One subject is to serve as the teacher, reading pairs of
words to the other, who is to learn them. Slips of paper are drawn,
and the individual finds that he has been assigned the role of teacher.
The experiment is then explained in more detail. The second
subject is strapped into a chair in the adjacent room, and electrodes
are attached to him. The teacher is taken back into the main room,
where he is shown the shock generator with which the learner is to
be punished for incorrect responses. This instrument bears an en-
graved panel reading “Shock Generator, Type ZLB, Dyson Instru-
ment Company, Waltham, Mass. Output 15 Volts—450 Volts.” It has
thirty lever switches set in a horizontal line, ranging from 15 volts to

286 Psychology: A Social Approach

450 volts by 15-volt increments. In addition, each group of four
switches has a verbal designation. These designations are “Slight
Shock, Moderate Shock, Strong Shock, Very Strong Shock, Intense
Shock, Extreme Intensity Shock, Danger: Severe Shock.’”!? The
last two switches are simply labeled “XXX.”
The teacher is given a 45-volt shock to demonstrate how the
shock generator works, and is instructed to shock the learner each
time he makes an error. He is also instructed that with each error, the
shock level should be raised by 15 volts. He is reassured that al-
though the shocks can be extremely painful, they will not cause per-
manent tissue damage. After a few preliminary trials to make sure
that the instructions have been properly understood, the experiment
begins.
If the teacher continues to carry out his instructions, he will ad-
minister increasingly strong shocks to the learner, who makes quite
a few errors. If this happens, the learner will pound on the wall and
then stop answering the questions after receiving the 300-volt shock.
The experimenter will instruct the teacher to consider the absence of
response incorrect and to continue raising the shock level. After 315
volts the learner will again pound the wall, and then will not be
heard from again, nor will he answer any further questions.
As you may have guessed by now, although none of the sub-
jects did so, the “learner” is a confederate of the experimenter and is
not receiving any shocks. The experiment was designed to see what
level of shock the “teacher” would administer before refusing to
obey the instructions of the experimenter.
Clearly the subject has been placed in a conflict situation. On
the one hand, he has been told that he should continue administering
greater and greater shocks right up to the maximum on the scale. On
the other, there are very strong cultural prohibitions against causing
great pain to an unwilling victim, even in the interests of science.
How would the subject be expected to react to this conflict? Judging
from the replies of other individuals who had the experiment de-
scribed to them and were asked how they would expect it to come
out, most people would expect the majority of subjects to refuse to
give any higher shock at a relatively low level. No one in this sample
expected more than 3 percent of the subjects to go to the maximum
shock level.
As may be seen from Table 9-1, the results were very different
from these expectations.’ Out of forty subjects, five refused to give

Prejudice 287
 Table 9-1 Distribution of break-off points

VERBAL DESIGNATION AND NUMBER OF SUBJECTS FOR WHOM

VOLTAGE INDICATION THIS WAS MAXIMUM SHOCK

Slight shock
U8)
30
45
60 1S)
(ey,
oy
fey

Moderate shock
Ths)
90
HO5
120 SOROS

Strong shock
UES
150
165
180 Stoo

Very strong shock

195
210
220)
240 Sr
SS
eee,

Intense shock
255
270
285
300 S
MSS

Extreme intensity shock

BS)
330
345
360 bw
mR

Danger: severe shock

Oe)
390
405
420 |S)
isy
(sy
iy

XXX
435 0
450 26

SOURCE: Milgram”?

288 Psychology: A Social Approach

further shock after the learner pounded on the wall and stopped an-
swering questions after 300 volts. Another nine became defiant some-
where between this point and the maximum shock level. Over half
the subjects, twenty-six in all, continued to the maximum shock on
the scale.
This continuation did not come easily for them, and there were
marked signs of internal conflict. As the experimenter, Stanley Mil-
gram, reports:

In a large number of cases the degree of tension reached extremes

that are rarely seen in socio-psychological laboratory studies. Subjects
were observed to sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, groan, and
dig their fingernails into their flesh. These were characteristic rather
than exceptional responses to the experiment.

One sign of tension was the regular occurrence of nervous laughing

fits. Fourteen of the 40 subjects showed definite signs of nervous
laughter and smiling. The laughter seemed entirely out of place, even
bizarre. Full-blown, uncontrollable seizures were observed for 3 sub-
jects. On one occasion we observed a seizure so violently convulsive
that it was necessary to call a halt to the experiment.**

Three facts are significant about this experiment. The first is

that individuals are quite inaccurate in predicting how they will react
to some situations. Although everyone is confident that he would
defy the experimenter, few of the individuals actually in the situation
did so. Second, the experiment is interesting in giving evidence on
the signs of internal conflict. Most important, however, the experi-
ment gives frightening evidence on the extent to which individuals
may follow the commands of authority even when those commands
require them to violate their own moral standards. To understand
these findings, we must digress for a moment and consider a psycho-
analytic view of aggression.
Freud’s view of aggression was that it is a drive second in im-
portance only to sex in explaining human behavior. Like sex, it is
denied free expression by the demands of society as internalized in
the superego, and thus may be repressed and expressed in an indirect
manner. As the question of repression is central to the question of
aggressiveness, let us consider how a repressed drive may be distin-
guished from the absence of a drive. If John does not behave in an
aggressive manner, is there any way to know whether he is repress-
ing aggressive impulses or simply does not have them?
The first way of making this distinction is in terms of reactions

Prejudice 289
 to forces toward change. To draw an analogy, imagine that you are
looking at a tall fir tree which has been cut almost through at the
base. Attached high up on the trunk are a number of ropes, and a
controversy has arisen as to whether these are very weak ropes with
no force being exerted on them or are all under a great deal of ten-
sion, attempting to pull the trunk in opposite directions. If the tree is
left alone, there may be no way to decide between these views. It is
easy to decide the controversy, however, by attaching a strong cable
and attempting to pull the tree over. If the ropes are having no effect
on it, it will fall easily. If they are exerting strong forces, you will
not be able to pull it over.
Similarly, if a force induced on a personality does not have an
effect, it may safely be assumed that there are other forces holding
the personality constant, a point which Lewin’* developed in analyz-
ing social norms. Let us take a social example. Imagine that for some
unknown reason you are trying to start a quarrel with a stranger in
a bar. First you bump his elbow and spill his beer. Then you criticize
him for being so clumsy as to spill the beer on you. Next you com-
plain loudly that he smells so bad that you must move to another
seat. In getting up, you grind your heel into his foot. These stimuli
represent increasingly strong instigations to an aggressive response
on his part, and it would be normal to expect increasingly hostile re-
sponses by him to each of your actions. If, on the other hand, you
obtained no normal aggressive response from him—if he apologized
for spilling the beer, for being clumsy, for smelling bad, and for
having large feet—you could safely assume that he had strong forces
within him holding any aggressive impulses in check. The individual
with strong defenses against the expression of an impulse, then, will
not express the impulse even when we can be certain from the stim-
ulating conditions that it is present, while the person who does not
employ these repressive defenses will express the impulse freely
when circumstances call it out. This difference is illustrated in Figure
9-1.
Figure 9-1 illustrates the possibility of another more dramatic
demonstration of the existence of repression. Even strong restraining
forces may break down under sufficient instigation. Consider another
example. You want to discriminate between a man who does not
drink alcoholic beverages because he does not care for them and one
who does not drink them because he is a reformed alcoholic who
keeps himself away from alcohol with great difficulty. Each may re-

290 Psychology: A Social Approach

 — Nonrepressor
Repressor

of
Extent
aggressive
response
Strength of instigation to aggression
Figure 9-1

fuse a drink if it is offered to him. What will happen, however, if

circumstances exert such strong pressures on the two men that each
takes a drink? (To choose a farfetched example, it might be imagined
that they are in a lifeboat on the North Atlantic in midwinter with
nothing to drink but Scotch.) The man who actually dislikes alcohol
should have little difficulty in taking one drink and stopping. The
former alcoholic, if he once starts, may well find it impossible to stop.
In other words, repression may be broken down by strong insti-
gation. If it is, the person who has strong defenses to hold his im-
pulses in check will find the impulses he was holding in check added
to those arising from the situation, and thus express the impulses to
a much greater extent than the individual who had neither the strong
impulses nor the strong defenses. It is for this reason that Figure 9-1
shows the person who represses aggressive impulses as behaving in a
more aggressive manner under very strong instigation than the per-
son without such defenses. The defenses would not be employed if
there were not impulses to be controlled.
Next, the same result might be obtained if it were possible to
remove the controls of the superego. In the case of the ropes attached
to the tree, it would be possible to see if one was exerting any force
by cutting the one opposite it. In the case of the individual, large
quantities of alcohol may cause an individual to do things that he not
only would normally not do but would not normally be aware of
wanting to do.
Finally, impulses which are denied direct expression may make
themselves apparent in other ways. They may be expressed in a dis-
guised manner or against a substitute object. The man who apolo-

Prejudice 291
 gized when you provoked him in the bar may have incorporated a
good deal of sarcasm in his replies, perhaps even without awareness:
“I’m so sorry.” (Like ———— I am.) “I always spill my beer.” (When
some clumsy oaf jostles me.) The provoked man may also go out and
express his aggression against someone who is less able to retaliate
than you are. Both these tendencies may be apparent in response to a
projective test such as the TAT. It is the latter which is of the great-
est significance in understanding racial prejudice.
We are now in a position to better understand two of the results
of Milgram’s experiment. If people do have strong aggressive im-
pulses which they keep from awareness, we should not be surprised
that they cannot correctly anticipate how they will act in a situation
designed to give free expression to these impulses. Similarly, it should
not surprise us that since these impulses are forbidden, much conflict
and anxiety should be experienced when they are expressed. Why,
however, should this particular situation cause people to act on the
basis of motives which are usually kept well under control?
Authority figures play an especially important role in a psycho-
analytic theory of personality, for the restraining forces of the super-
ego are seen as the internalized voice of authority. While later the-
orists have stressed more than Freud that it is not solely parents but
also peers, teachers, and other significant figures who contribute to
the formation of the superego, parents are still generally regarded as
its most important source in most cases. This has two especially
important consequences. The first is that the way in which an indi-
vidual copes with his impulses may be at least partially understood
from knowledge of his childhood relationships with his parents, a
point which we shall return to when we consider personality factors
in prejudice. The second consequence, which has received less atten-
tion, is the role which authority can play in freeing the individual
from the dictates of his conscience.
Let us return to viewing the individual in Milgram’s experiment
as subject to conflicting forces. On the one hand, he has aggressive
tendencies which are repugnant to him and which he denies from his
own consciousness. On the other hand, he has a well-developed moral
code which keeps these tendencies constantly in check. Finally, he has
the remains of a childlike fear of violating the dictates of authority
figures and his peers, the elements which initially shaped that moral
code. Under most circumstances his peers and nearly all authority
figures will be acting in support of his conscience, restraining him

292 Psychology: A Social Approach

 from actions condemned by society. An additional voice of authority
added to what he carries inside himself—for example, his employer
urging him to greater effort in his work—may do little to make him
abide even more closely by the dictates of his conscience, for this
force is opposing the strong forces of his impulse. But a voice of
authority telling him to do what his conscience considers it wrong to
do—say, a superior telling him not to bother working hard—may
have dramatic effects on his behavior, for this voice of authority
undermines the force of the superego, which is founded on authority,
and encourages him in doing what his impulse wants him to do. Simi-
larly, an authority giving tacit acquiescence to inhuman acts against
minority groups calls out those acts.
This explanation of Milgram’s experiment manages to explain
the result while also explaining the obvious fact that people do not
do everything that authority figures tell them to do. It does so, how-
ever, at the cost of assuming that people have strong aggressive im-
pulses which are gratified by inflicting pain upon others. Evidence for
this view will be provided in the section on situational factors in
prejudice. Let us briefly consider one piece of evidence from Mil-
gram’s research at this point, however. One of the variations which
Milgram ran on his basic experiment was a control group in which
the “teacher” chose the level of shock to be given with no suggestion
from the experimenter.’® As would be expected, the level of shock
given was considerably lower on the average than in the experimental
condition. Two out of forty control subjects, however, gave the maxi-
mum possible shock!

Personality Factors in Prejudice

The relationship between personality factors and prejudice has been

extensively studied by Adorno and his colleagues in their monumental
work The Authoritarian Personality..° While a number of difficult
methodological questions are involved in the interpretation of their
study,’’ it also has a number of strong points and is probably the
single most informative work in this area. Furthermore, some of its
main findings have been supported by more recent research using
different techniques. Epstein,’* for example, studied the relationships
among authoritarianism as a personality characteristic, the amount
of displaced aggression a person has toward others, and the social

Prejudice 293
 status of the victim of the aggression. Using an experimental situa-
tion in which aggression was expressed by the subject’s administra-
tion of an electric shock to someone instead of merely verbal expres-
sion of attitudes, he obtained results which supported two of the
findings of the original study of the authoritarian personality. (1) In-
dividuals high in authoritarianism expressed more aggression toward
the experimental victim, and (2) turned their aggression toward vic-
tims lower in social status than themselves.
In the 990 pages of The Authoritarian Personality there is much
more material than can be summarized in an introductory text. In
this section we shall look at just a portion of the study, the intensive-
interview study of forty highly prejudiced and forty relatively un-
prejudiced individuals drawn from a broad cross section of American
society and roughly matched on demographic characteristics. The in-
dividuals were rated by persons with a variety of theoretical orienta-
tions, and without the raters’ knowing whether a particular individual
was high or low in prejudice.
The overall theoretical view of the authors, which was highly
influenced by psychoanalytic theory, was that prejudice, like other
attitudes, develops partly through direct learning and partly as an
expression of personality needs. That the former of these two ways
is not the only way of acquiring prejudiced attitudes is nicely demon-
strated in a study by Hartley.'® If people are prejudiced against mi-
nority groups simply through having learned to be prejudiced against
them, then they should have no prejudice against a group which does
not exist and which they have thus never heard of. In Hartley’s re-
search, subjects were asked social-distance questions about both real
and imaginary groups. While some subjects refused to express opin-
ions about “Danerians,” “Wallonians,” and “Pirenians,’” most of
them did so without hesitation. Considerable prejudice against the
nonexistent groups was found, and in general the people who re-
jected them most strongly were the same people who rejected real-life
groups.
To the extent that prejudiced attitudes are not the result of so-
cial learning, but an expression of personality needs, they should be
found in individuals who have strong aggressive needs but also strong
superego controls on the direct expression of aggression, for it is in
this predicament that an individual would be likely to turn his aggres-
sion against a more socially approved object. Who would we expect
these people to be?

294 Psychology: A Social Approach

 In the Sears, Maccoby, and Levin®® study of the socialization of
aggression, which was referred to in Chapter 5, we saw evidence that
aggressiveness may result from identification with an aggressive
parent. A boy with a strict, aggressive, and punitive father would be
expected to develop the type of conflict about the expression of ag-
gression which may result in the expression of his aggression against
a substitute object. He would develop strong aggressive impulses
partly through the resentment he might feel at the punishment which
was inflicted on him and partly through the model of successful
aggression which was constantly before him. The punishment would
not result in his not identifying with his father, however; through
the mechanism of identification with the aggressor, it would result
in his idealizing him. To the extent that the superego represents an
internalization of the parent, the child would develop a moral code
which was as harsh and punitive as the parent.
In contrast to the child with milder and more lenient parents,
then, the child with harsh and punitive parents should develop both
stronger aggressive impulses and stricter internal controls on the
direct expression of those impulses. He should consciously idealize
his parents, while unconsciously being resentful of them. His aggres-
sive impulses should be anxiety-inducing to him because of his strict
moral code, and various defenses would need to be employed in deal-
ing with them. These defenses would make him less in contact with
his own emotional reactions, and raise the possibility of his express-
ing the resentment he was not consciously aware of against substitute
objects which were not as strictly outlawed by his moral code as the
initial source of the resentment.
Viewing the prejudiced individual as a person who is express-
ing aggressive impulses against a substitute object thus leads us to
make several predictions about him. He should, first of all, have had
aggressively punitive parents. He should consciously idealize these
parents but unconsciously feel resentment against them which is ex-
pressed indirectly. Finally, he should be out of contact with his own
emotional reactions. Evidence that all these characteristics are found
in prejudiced individuals, and thus strong support for this view of the
personal origin of prejudice, is found in The Authoritarian Person-
ality.
Evidence on the first two of the expectations is provided in Else
Frenkel-Brunswik’s chapter, ‘Parents and childhood as seen through
the interviews.’”* More prejudiced men, significantly more often than

Prejudice 295
 less prejudiced, described their fathers as distant and stern rather
than relaxed and mild and described their homes as dominated by
their fathers. Even more interesting are the questions of what the
child was punished for and the type of punishment which was used.
The first comparison was between punishment for violating rules and
punishment for violating principles. As Frenkel-Brunswik puts it:
In particular, discipline for violation of rules, primarily “moralistic,”
was contrasted with discipline for violation of principles, primarily
“rationalized” (Category 10). As the first of two variables to be con-
sidered in this context, the choice between these two opposite alter-
natives on the part of the parents would seem to be crucial for the
establishment of the child’s attitude toward what is considered right
or wrong: it probably decides the externalization vs. internalization of
values. These two types of discipline further imply different resultant
attitudes toward authority.
In the first case, discipline is handled as “vis major,” y as a force out-
side of the child, to which at the same time he must submit. The
values in question are primarily the values of adult society: conven-
tions and rules helpful for social climbing but rather beyond the
natural grasp of the child. At the same time this type of value lays
the foundation for an attitude of judging people according to external
criteria, and for the authoritarian condemnation of what is considered
socially inferior.
The second type of discipline invites the cooperation and understand-
ing of the child and makes it possible for him to assimilate it.”

In somewhat simpler terms, demands that the child conform to

arbitrary rules which he cannot understand are liable to lead to the
child’s developing a moral code which is similarly arbitrary and ego-
alien. Unable to express his impulses directly because of his arbitrary
conscience, the child would need to express aggression against sub-
stitute objects who could be moralistically condemned on the basis
of these principles. This variable again significantly distinguished
between the more and less prejudiced subjects, with more prejudiced
men and women having been disciplined for the violation of rules,
rather than of principles.
The most significant variable, however, was the type of punish-
ment used. More and less prejudiced subjects were differentiated at
the .01 level of statistical significance by whether the punishment
used was traumatic or assimilable. The distinction is not simply a
matter of the extent of physical punishment, although references to
“whipping,” “not sparing the rod,” and “beating the life out of me”

296 Psychology: A Social Approach

were common in the protocols of the more prejudiced subjects. Also
considered in making the ratings was arbitrariness through not mak-
ing clear to the child what he or she was being punished for as well
as the use of threats and methods of punishment with which the
child could not cope. Examples of the latter are the following:
“But mother had a way of punishing me—lock me in a closet—or
threaten to give me to a neighborhood woman who she said was a
witch, ...I1 think that’s why I was afraid of the dark.”
“Father picked upon things and threatened to put me in an orphan-
hee,

“T was kind of temperamental when I was little. I had temper tan-

trums if I didn’t get my way. My mother cured them—she dunked
me under the water faucet until I stopped screaming.’”**
We thus see considerable evidence that the use of harsh and
arbitrary punishment is an important factor in the development of
prejudice. Another possibility, however, must be considered. Is it
possible that the more prejudiced subjects are simply prejudiced
against their parents, as well as against minority groups, and thus
describe them as distant, arbitrary, and cruel? This possibility must
be ruled out, for the more prejudiced subjects actually idealized their
parents more than the less prejudiced, a point which supports a the-
ory of identification with the aggressor. On the variable of ‘“Con-
ventional idealization vs. objective appraisal of parents,” the more
prejudiced men and women idealized their parents more than the less
prejudiced (significant at the .01 level in each case). The same indi-
viduals who described their parents as “beating the life out of me”
could find nothing to say against those parents when asked to de-
scribe them. Although holding their parents up to admiration, how-
ever, these subjects often found it difficult to pick out specific charac-
teristics to admire:
One of the outstanding features in the above quotations ...is the use
of superlatives in the description of parents, such as “excellent man in
every way,” “best in the world,” “most terrific person,” etc. If more
detailed and specific elaborations are made at all, they refer to material
benefits or help given by the parents. Where there is no readiness to
admit that one’s parents have any weakness in them it is not sur-
prising to find later an indication of repressed hostility and revenge-
ful fantasies behind the mask of compliance.”°
Some support for the view that the more prejudiced individuals
had repressed aggression against their parents was also found in the

Prejudice 297
 Thematic Apperception Test protocols of these individuals. An ex~-
ample of such feelings from the interview study is as follows:
F 32: Altogether she thinks her ‘father is a grand person.” When
asked whether, since no one is perfect, there were any little faults
that she could name, she said that she couldn't think of any. He
never drank; well, he swore a little bit. And he was argumentative.
(However, in discussing her vocation, subject had mentioned that the
father had been willing to finance the education of the boys, but that
he expected the girls to stay home and be ladies, so what the girls
got they got on their own. In another connection, subject remarked
that she had got nothing out of her father. He provided them with
the necessities of life, but would not give them anything extra. He
never allowed the girls to entertain boys at home. Nevertheless, sub-
ject stated that she was closer to her father than to her mother.)
When the interviewer broached the topic of her brothers and sisters,
subject replied, “I’m right in the middle—don’t they say middle chil-
dren are forgotten children!” When asked if she thought that was so,
subject closed up, merely remarking that her parents showed no
partiality.*°
The evidence on the final question about more prejudiced peo-
ple, whether they are less in contact with their emotional reactions, is
less easily summarized, for it was not so much singled out for analy-
sis by the authors as a constant theme running through a number of
separate parts of the study. Perhaps it emerges most clearly in what
more and less prejudiced women were looking for in a marriage
partner.

The traits which the typical high-scoring woman tends to desire in

men are likewise primarily instrumental in getting the things she
wants. They are: hard-working, “go-getting,’” energetic, “a good
personality,” (conventionally) moral, “clean-cut,” deferent toward
women.
By contrast, low-scoring subjects tend to emphasize as desired traits
companionship, common interest, warmth, sociability, sexual love,
understanding, presence of liberal values. Sometimes their quest for
love is so intense and unrealistic that it becomes a source of disap-
pointment to them.**

This divorce of the individual from impulse also comes out, for
the men, in the drawing of a dichotomy between “good” and “bad”
women, which we considered in the discussion of how a White wife
and Negro mistress may be cast in these different roles. ‘Dichotomy
vs. fusion of sex and affection” discriminated between high- and low-
scoring men at the .01 level.

298 Psychology: A Social Approach

 While not all the predicted relationships were found in the work
on The Authoritarian Personality and only a very small part of the
evidence which was found can be summarized in a brief account, a
clear picture does emerge from the work as a whole which is strongly
supportive of a psychoanalytic view of prejudice. While more or less
prejudiced behavior may be called out in the same person by different
circumstances and while the object of his aggression may depend on
cultural opportunities, prejudice seems to consist primarily of unrec-
ognized aggressive impulses turned against a relatively powerless
victim.

Situational Factors in Prejudice

While different childhood experiences may make a person more or

less likely to express his aggressive impulses against a member of a
minority group, it is a concrete social situation which calls out those
impulses. Prejudice, like rumor, “serves the twin functions of ex-
plaining and relieving emotional tensions felt by individuals.’’’* It is
when social conditions provide a threat to the self that the emotional
tensions are created which are expressed and explained through
prejudice. Thus personality differences may help explain who will
participate in a lynch mob and who will not, but it is social forces
which primarily determine when and where lynch mobs will come
into being.
Of the various sources of self-esteem available to American
men, the occupational role is perhaps the most important. While the
family is undoubtedly the most important group for most men, with
occupational groups definitely secondary in importance (a point
which was dramatically demonstrated by Killian’s*® research on dis-
asters), it is the peculiarity of the man’s occupational role that his
relations with his family are also extremely dependent upon it. The
husband and father who is not also the provider for the family not
only has failed in his occupational role; he is unable to play a tradi-
tional masculine role in his family, a point which is illustrated by the
matriarchal family structure which characterizes many underem-
ployed segments of the population. A threat to a man’s means of
earning a living is thus one of the most important threats which may
be made to his conception of himself and to his role in society.
If hostility to minority groups is displaced aggression in re-

Prejudice 299
 sponse to frustrating situations, then economic insecurity and threats
to employment should be among the major factors calling it out. If a
man loses his job, the anxiety which he feels through not living up
to his self-conception could be both explained, by blaming his failure
on a minority group, and also relieved, by venting his hostility
against it. Evidence in favor of this view is presented by John Dollard
et al.*° For the years analyzed, from 1882 to 1930, there was a sig-
nificant negative relationship (a correlation of —.67) between the
number of lynchings per year and the price for cotton crops. Al-
though individuals do not say that they have lynched another person
because the price of cotton is low, the number of such incidents is
certainly predictable from this index of economic insecurity.
Even stronger evidence of the role of occupational threats to the
self as a factor in ethnic prejudice is provided by a study of Second
World War veterans carried out by Bettelheim and Janowitz.** It is
stronger evidence, since in considering a correlation between changes
in two variables over time, we must keep in mind that rather than
one causing the other, they might both be caused by other historical
changes.
A correlation may be due not only to causation but also to the
two factors which are correlated being related to a third factor. There
is, for example, in the Netherlands, a correlation between the number
of nesting storks in a given locality and the human birth rate. This
correlation does not indicate that storks do bring babies after all, but
simply reflects the relationship of both factors to urbanization. Rural
families in the Netherlands, as in many other countries, tend to have
more children than urban families. Since storks nest in rural areas
rather than large cities, the correlation between stork nesting and
birth rate results. But the Bettelheim and Janowitz study, through
showing a relationship between personal economic frustration and
prejudice for people in the same area at the same time, demonstrates
that the relationship found by John Dollard et al. was not simply
an artifact of other historical events during the period covered.
Bettelheim and Janowitz based their study on a sample of 150
veterans of the Second World War residing in Chicago. The sample
was random except that former officers were not included, since they
would have had quite different experiences in the armed forces, and
members of discriminated-against minority groups were excluded,
since they would be expected to have different prejudices from those
of the dominant cultural group. Prejudice was measured in a way

300 Psychology: A Social Approach

which is interesting because it comes closer to measuring prejudiced
behavior than many attitude-measurement techniques.
A person who spontaneously tries to convince others that the
rights of a particular group should be restricted, without the person
he is trying to convince even having mentioned the subject of that
group, is not only reflecting attitudes but also engaging in political
behavior against the interests of the group. Bettelheim and Janowitz
thus classified a person as intensely prejudiced against a particular
group if he advocated such restrictive actions against the group when
he was simply asked about his experiences in the armed forces. Next
most hostile in his behavior toward the group is a person who comes
out in favor of action against the group but only does so when he is
questioned about it. This reaction was classified as outspoken preju-
dice. While it represents behavior which is politically hostile to the
minority group, it does not represent the degree of hostility which
spontaneous behavior does. Classed as less prejudiced than either of
these individuals is the person who holds unfavorable views about
the minority group but does not favor political action against it. His
views were classified as stereotyped. Finally, a person was classed as
tolerant of a particular group if he held only isolated stereotypes, not
all of which were unfavorable. Subjects were classified into these four
categories with respect to each minority group on the basis of an
interview lasting between 4 and 7 hours.
No significant relationship was found between the degree of
prejudice expressed against Negroes or Jews and a person’s position
in the social structure at the time he was interviewed. His age, salary,
religious affiliation, socioeconomic status, and education had no con-
sistent relationship to his views. Quite a strong relationship emerges,
however, when his occupational mobility is examined, as will be seen
from Table 9-2.
For 130 of the sample of 150 it was possible to find out about
prior civilian employment. They were classified as upward mobile if
their employment at the time of interview was one or more steps
higher on the Alba Edwards socioeconomic scale than their previous
employment, classified as downward mobile if their present job was
one or more categories lower than their previous job, and of course
considered to show no mobility if the two jobs fell at the same point
on the scale. As would be expected from our previous consideration
of the importance of a man’s occupation to his conception of himself,
the most prejudice was shown by those who were downward mobile,

Prejudice 301
 Table 9-2. Intolerance and mobility
DOWNWARD UPWARD
MOBILITY NO MOBILITY MOBILITY TOTAL
NO. % NO. % NO. % NO. %

Anti-Semitic
Tolerant 3 IL PX 7A Dye 50 49 38
Stereotyped Smee, 261) 38 8 18 Eye en PAs}
Outspoken and intense 13 72 ee Wa Bw 44 34
Anti-Negro
Tolerant and stereotyped 5 28 13a 26 PENIS) 45 34
Outspoken oO) 28 40 59 17 39 62 48
Intense 8 44 10 ILS) oS) ati Ze 18
Total 18 100 68 100 44 100 TOO LOO

SOURCE: Bettelheim and Janowitz**

while the greatest tolerance was found among those who achieved
upward mobility.
On one important point, however, Bettelheim and Janowitz
obtained results which differed markedly from those of the research
on The Authoritarian Personality. When they investigated the reac-
tions of the more and less prejudiced men to the controlling institu-
tions of society, they found that the least prejudiced men were most
accepting of social authority. As they put the matter:
When acceptance or rejection of the four representative institutions
was compared with the degree of anti-Semitism . . ., it appeared that
only an insignificant percentage of the tolerant men rejected them,
while nearly half the out-spoken and intense anti-Semites did so. This
is in marked contrast, for example, to studies of certain types of col-
lege students, in whom radical rejection of authority is combined with
liberalism toward minority groups.**
It seems unlikely that the difference between the results of
Bettelheim and Janowitz’s study and the research on The Authori-
tarian Personality is actually due to differences in the samples used,
for as has already been pointed out, the research on The Authori-
tarian Personality was not simply based upon college students. In-
stead the difference in results may be due to the type of questions
asked. As Frenkel-Brunswik et al. put it, “ “Authoritarian submission’
refers to an inability seriously to criticize, reject or actively rebel
against one’s main ingroup (particularly the family) figures and
values.”** The controlling institutions which Bettelheim and Janowitz
obtained reactions to—the Veterans Administration, the political-

302 Psychology: A Social Approach

party system, the federal government, and the economic system—
probably did not represent the ingroup to their subjects. As those
guys in Washington who run our lives, the controlling institutions
which Bettelheim and Janowitz investigated are probably just as good
candidates for the displacement of aggression as minority groups.
Sometimes an individual case will dramatically illustrate a gen-
eral trend, and this has happened with respect to the relationship
between threats to the self and the expression of aggression. While
this chapter was being written, James Meredith was shot while mak-
ing a protest march through Mississippi. According to his friends, the
man who admits to having shot Meredith has never taken a strong
stand on any political issue. What does distinguish him from most
men is that his business failed a short time before the shooting. He
states that he has no idea why he shot Meredith.
So far we have been considering the role of prejudice in ex-
pressing aggression. Does it also serve to explain anxiety-causing
perceptions? It is easy to see how some stereotypes could do so. The
most common stereotypes of Jews which Bettelheim and Janowitz
found, for example, are as follows:

They are clannish; they help one another....

They have the money... .
They control everything (or have an urge to control everything); they
are running the country....
They use underhanded or sharp business methods... .
They do not work; they do not do manual labor.*°

It is not difficult to see how holding such views could help a

person to rationalize his own economic failure. It is more difficult,
however, to see how the common stereotypes of Negroes could do so.
These stereotypes seem to be related to deeper impulses than economic
competitiveness, for the tendency here seems to be to see the minority
group as dominated by those impulses which the prejudiced person
has difficulty in controlling. This, then; would be a case of projection,
with the individual explaining the anxiety which he feels by attrib-
uting threatening intentions to others. An excellent experimental
demonstration of this method of coping with anxiety was carried out
by Bramel, Bell, and Margulis.*°
Subjects were shown either slides or a movie dealing with the
Soviet Union. Half the subjects seeing each were led to believe that
high readings on a dial indicated that they were showing physiologi-
cal fear reactions to the stimuli dealing with the Soviet Union but
not to other stimuli. Through necessarily elaborate deception, their

Prejudice 303
 atittudes toward the Soviet Union were measured both before and
after exposure to the stimuli without their realizing that this was
part of the same study. There were thus four groups of subjects.
They were (1) those who were led to believe that they had shown
marked fear responses to very innocuous and peaceful slides dealing
with the Soviet Union, (2) those who believed that they had shown
fear responses to a film portraying the Soviet Union in a very threat-
ening manner, (3) those who saw the slides without being led to believe
that the slides had frightened them, and (4) those who saw the film
without being led to believe that the film had frightened them.
On the basis of dissonance theory the experimenters predicted
that those subjects who thought they had been frightened by the
innocuous slides would explain their fear to themselves by deciding
that the Soviet Union was actually more dangerous to the United
States than they had previously thought. Those who had seen the
film were not expected to show this reaction, as they would be able
to explain their fear reactions in terms of the threatening nature of
the film itself. These predictions were supported by the results. The
subjects who had been led to believe that they were frightened by
the slides, in comparison with those who were told nothing about
their physiological reactions to the slides, changed more in the direc-
tion of seeing the Soviet Union as dangerous on the postexperimental
questionnaire. They also changed significantly more than the subjects
who had seen the apparently more threatening film. This result shows
quite clearly that views of the world may change to explain anxiety-
inducing self-perceptions.
The predictions of the experimenters were drawn, however, not
from psychoanalytic theory but from dissonance theory. In this as in
many other situations the two theories seem to make identical pre-
dictions. As the authors of the study conclude:

Let us consider one final potential alternative interpretation of the

experimental results. Suppose that finding an explanation of one’s
anxiety is itself anxiety reducing. Not knowing the cause of one’s
emotional state is perhaps a source of discomfort (anxiety), and this
discomfort is reduced when the person thinks he has found an ex-
planation for his feelings. This hypothesis is so akin to the disso-
nance interpretation that it is very difficult to distinguish between the
two. Both hypotheses focus upon the discrepancy between one’s emo-
tional state (or cognitions concerning it) and the surrounding situa-
tion. According to one point of view, this discrepancy produces an
uncomfortable state called dissonance, which the person can reduce
by believing there is danger in the environment. According to the

304 Psychology: A Social Approach

 other hypothesis, the discrepancy produces an uncomfortable state
called anxiety, which can be reduced in the same way. It is doubtful
whether a profitable distinction can be made at this time between the
two approaches.**

The Changing of Prejudice

In this chapter we have been considering prejudice as an example of

the ways in which impulses, perceptions, and behavior interact in
social behavior. At the risk of some oversimplification, we might
generalize that the current social conditions influence the pressures
brought to bear on individuals and are thus the main factor influenc-
ing the amount of prejudice present in the society at a given time and
place, that individual differences in personality influence how differ-
ent individuals are likely to react to the social pressures, and that
cultural beliefs and values as expressed in ideologies influence the
targets against whom impulses may be turned. In this type of analy-
sis, then, behavior is not viewed simply as the expression of attitude,
but to at least an equally great extent attitudes are seen as developing
to justify behavior. If the ideology of White supremacy did not exist,
man would have to invent it, as, in fact, he has.
If this point of view is correct, it has important implications for
the changing of behavior, for it implies a secondary role for attitude.
Rather than change attitudes and assume that behavior will then
change also, it implies that it would be more effective to change the
social forces which influence behavior and assume that attitudes
would then change to justify the new behavior. Support for this point
of view comes from the work of dissonance theorists on forced com-
pliance.
Any behavior which is inconsistent with the beliefs of the per-
son engaging in it should generate dissonance. As will be recalled
from the discussion in Chapter 5, its amount is thought to be a func-
tion of the number, proportion, and importance of the dissonant
elements. Even a frugal man would feel little dissonance in observing
that he had just handed a ten-dollar bill to a stranger if he also ob-
served the consonant element that the man was an armed robber. Be-
havior which is inconsistent with some of our beliefs thus arouses
little dissonance if it is consistent with other, more important beliefs.
This observation has important implications for the changing of be-
liefs. If a person can be induced to behave in a way inconsistent with
his beliefs, the amount of dissonance aroused should depend upon his

Prejudice 305
 perception of how much choice he had in acting as he did. If he per-
ceives himself as having been forced by circumstances to act in that
way, there should be little cause for him to change his beliefs. If he
perceives himself as having acted in that way of his own free will,
then dissonance will be aroused which can be reduced by changing
his beliefs to agree with his behavior.
One of the best-known studies of this point was carried out by
Festinger and Carlsmith.** Each subject spent 1 hour in an extremely
boring psychophysical experiment, making repeated judgments of
weights. At the end of the hour, the experimenter told the subject
that the purpose of the experiment was to see whether individuals
would perform better if they were told beforehand that the experi-
ment was interesting than if they were told nothing beforehand. The
subject was then enlisted as a confederate and was asked to tell the
next subject that the experiment was interesting and fun. For per-
forming this service, the subject was paid one dollar in one experi-
mental condition, twenty dollars in another. Control subjects were
not asked to lie to the waiting subject. After the subject had carried
out his instructions, he was asked by another experimenter to rate
how interesting the experiment actually had been.
The prediction which was made was that the subjects who were
paid only one dollar for lying would have little justification for hav-
ing done so and that to justify their behavior to themselves, they
would thus have to change their evaluation of how interesting the
experiment was. (If the experiment really was interesting, of course,
they would not have told a lie at all.) It was thought that the sub-
jects who received twenty dollars for telling the next subject that the
experiment was interesting would have less dissonance. It was a
small matter, after all, and in the interests of science, and who
wouldn’t do it for twenty dollars? It was thus predicted that since
they would not have to reduce dissonance by changing their evalua-
tion of the experiment, they would continue to rate it as uninterest-
ing. These predictions were supported. The control subjects and those
who were paid twenty dollars for telling the next subject that the
experiment was interesting both rated the experiment as unenjoyable.
The subjects who were paid only one dollar rated it as significantly
more enjoyable. By inducing these subjects to act in a way contrary
to their beliefs, the experimenters had induced them to change their
beliefs.*°
This and similar studies by dissonance theorists thus provide a

306 Psychology: A Social Approach

new point of view on the material from The Authoritarian Personality
dealing with parental discipline. In that work the point was made
that harsh and arbitrary discipline led to standards of behavior in the
child remaining ego-alien and an important source of conflict, while
milder discipline with a stress on principles led to a greater assimila-
tion of standards into the self. From a dissonance point of view,
changing behavior because of strong threats would not create disso-
nance and would not lead to attitude change, while a milder threat,
if it was sufficient to produce behavioral compliance, would result in
the child changing his attitudes to support his new behavior. Evidence
in favor of this view is provided in an experiment by Aronson and
Carlsmith.*® Children who were prevented from playing with a toy
for a period of time by a mild threat evaluated it as less desirable
afterward. Those who were prevented from playing with it either by
a strong threat or by having it removed from the room found it more
desirable than they had before.
Applying these theoretical ideas to the area of prejudice, it
would seem possible that prejudice may develop not so much because
children of the dominant cultural group are told stereotypes about
minority-group members as because they are required by their par-
ents to act in certain ways toward them. Evidence in favor of this
interpretation comes from the work of the Sherifs** on the production
of intergroup conflict. When the activities at a boys’ camp were
structured so that the members of two clubs, created for the pur-
pose, had to compete with each other for rewards, the boys in each
club developed hostility toward, and stereotypes of, the members of
the other. Since the clubs were set up so that each boy initially had
as many friends in the other club as he had in his own, these stereo-
types must have been created rather than learned.
Perhaps the most interesting demonstration of the effects of
behavior on attitudes in the area of prejudice, however, is the work
of Deutsch and Collins*® on interracial housing. The study was a
natural experiment—one in which the experimenters did not create
the conditions they observed but did manage to find conditions such
as they would have liked to create for the purposes of the study.
They studied housing projects which were similar in the ratio of
Negro to White families, the socioeconomic level of the inhabitants,
the nature of the staff, and other relevant variables but which dif-
fered in the pattern of occupancy. Two projects were chosen in New
Jersey in which all the Negro families were housed in one area and

Prejudice 307
 all the White families in another, and were compared with two simi-
lar projects in New York where families were assigned to housing
units without regard to color.
Striking differences were found in the behavior and attitudes
which developed in the two types of housing project. In the inte-
grated projects, it was common for Negro and White women to asso-
ciate with each other and choose each other as friends, while in the
segregated projects this was virtually unheard of. More interesting,
community norms developed such that in the integrated projects there
were social pressures on the two groups to be friendly toward each
other, while the norms in the segregated projects specified that they
should have nothing to do with each other. As might be expected
from this, over half the White women in the integrated projects re-
ported having developed more favorable attitudes toward Negroes
since moving to the project, while only a small percentage of the
White women in the segregated projects did so.
These results might not have been found if hostility between
the two groups had been so great that violence had erupted when
they were brought together. Sherif tested the theory that more con-
tact is the solution to intergroup conflict in his camp study by bring-
iing the two clubs together. A free-for-all fight developed rather than
more favorable attitudes. The difference between these two results is
consistent with dissonance theory, which holds that it is not contact
as such which changes attitudes, but behavior. In a situation such as
that studied by Deutsch and Collins, where minimal social pressure
is sufficient to bring about tolerant behavior between two groups,
increased contact should bring about more favorable attitudes. In a
situation where hostile attitudes are so strong that extreme coercion,
such as armed intervention, is necessary to ensure behavioral com-
pliance, no dissonance would be generated, and no attitude change
would take place. So far the evidence would seem to indicate that in
many places in the United States integration could be carried out
peacefully and that stateways thus can change folkways.

Summary

While attitudes are the most easily measured aspect of prejudice,

they probably are not the most important in causing prejudiced be-
havior. As suggested by dissonance theory, attitudes not only cause
behavior but also develop to justify it. Many motives may be served

308 Psychology: A Social Approach

 by prejudiced behavior, including economic, sexual, and aggressive
motives. In strong prejudice, aggression is perhaps the most im-
portant.
The study of aggression has been approached from the point of
view of psychoanalytic theory, emphasizing the control of aggression
by both conscience and external authority. Adorno and his coworkers
found prejudice so intimately bound up with attitudes toward author-
ity that they entitled their monumental study of prejudiced individ-
uals The Authoritarian Personality. More recent research by Milgram
has indicated that individuals will express a surprising amount of
aggression toward a protesting victim at the command of an author-
ity, a finding which may be interpreted in terms of authority as an
external conscience. u
The expression of aggression is influenced by both the indiv-
idual’s personality and the environmental forces acting on him at the
time. Research on authoritarianism has shown relationships between
identification with harshly punitive parents and prejudice, while
Bettelheim and Janowitz found the threats to the self involved in
downward social mobility to be especially important. Prejudiced atti-
tudes help the individual explain to himself anxiety which actually
comes from other sources, a phenomenon which was investigated in
an ingenious experiment by Bramel, Bell, and Margulis.
Just as prejudice develops partly to justify aggressive behavior
toward minority groups, tolerant attitudes may develop in order to
justify acting in a friendly manner toward members of these groups.
The influence of behavior on attitudes was investigated in the forced-
compliance studies of dissonance theorists such as Festinger, Aron-
son, and Carlsmith. Dissonance theory was used in this chapter to
explain the results of a field study by Deutsch and Collins. Their
study indicated that under certain conditions, public policy can change
private attitudes.

Notes and Acknowledgments

1. Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. Garden
City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1963.
2. These three quotes and their complete sources may be found in Carl Cohen
(Ed.), Communism, Fascism, and Democracy. New York: Random
House, 1963. By permission of Carl Cohen.
3. The Declaration of Independence in ibid., p. 481.

Prejudice 309
 . Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “The Manifesto of the Communist Party”
in ibid., p. 90.
. Hitler, Adolf. “Man must kill” in ibid., p. 410. Reprinted by permission of
the Public Affairs Press, Washington, from G. W. Prange (Ed.),
Hitler’s Words: The Speeches of Adolph Hitler from 1923-1943.
. Figures given by Abraham Lincoln in a speech made answering Douglas in
1857. From Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln. Vol. I. The Prairie
Years. New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1959, p. 227.
. Dollard, John. Caste and Class in a Southern Town. Garden City, N.Y.:
Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1949.
. Wolfenstein, M., and N. Leites. Movies: A Psychological Study. New York:
The Free Press of Glencoe, 1950.
. Dollard, John. Op. cit., pp. 150-151. By permission of the author.
. Milgram, Stanley. “Behavioral study of obedience.” Journal of Abnormal
and Social Psychology, 1963 (67), pp. 371-378.
. Ibid., p. 373. By permission of the author and the publisher.
. Ibid., p. 376. By permission of the author and the publisher.
. Ibid., p. 375. By permission of the author and the publisher.
. Lewin, Kurt. “Group decision and social change” in E. Maccoby et al.
(Eds.), Readings in Social Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, Inc., 1958, pp. 197-211.
Al's), Milgram, Stanley. “Liberating effects of group pressure.” Journal of Per-
sonality and Social Psychology, 1965 (1), pp. 127-134.
16. Adorno, T. W., Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and Nevitt R.
Sanford. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper & Row,
Publishers, Incorporated, 1950.
W7: See Christie, Richard, and Marie Jahoda (Eds.) Studies in the Scope and
Method of “The Authoritarian Personality.” New York: The Free
Press of Glencoe, 1954.
18. Epstein, Ralph. ‘“Authoritarianism, displaced aggression, and social status
of the target.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1965 (2),
NOs Pps Oooo OF.
LO? Hartley, E. L. Problems in Prejudice. New York: King’s Crown Press, 1946.
20. Sears, Robert R., Eleanor E. Maccoby, and Harry Levin. “The socialization
of aggression” in Eleanor Maccoby et al. (Eds.), Readings in Social
Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1958, pp.
350-359.
Zils Frenkel-Brunswik, Else. ‘Parents and childhood as seen through the inter-
views” in Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford, op. cit.,
Ppass7—659:
22. Ibid., p. 372. By permission of the publisher.
Zon Ibid., p. 373. By permission of the publisher.
24. Ibid., p. 375. By permission of the publisher.
2S: Ibid., p. 343. By permission of the publisher.
26. Ibid., p. 347. By permission of the publisher.
De Frenkel-Brunswik, Else. “Sex, people, and self as seen through the inter-
views” in Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford, op. cit.,
p. 401. By permission of the publisher.

310 Psychology: A Social Approach

28. Allport, Gordon, and Leo Postman. “The basic psychology of rumor” in
E. Maccoby et al. (Eds.), Readings in Social Psychology. New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1958, p. 55.
29. Killian, Lewis M. “The significance of multiple-group membership in dis-
aster.” American Journal of Sociology, 1952 (57), pp. 309-314.
30. Dollard, John, et al. Frustration and Aggression. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1939, p. 31.
onl Bettelheim, Bruno, and Morris Janowitz. “Ethnic tolerance: A function of
social and personal control.” American Journal of Sociology, 1949
(55), pp. 137-145.
32. Ibid. Copyright 1949 by American Journal of Sociology. p. 140. By per-
mission of The University of Chicago Press.
OSs Ibid. Copyright 1949 by American Journal of Sociology. pp. 142-143. By
permission of The University of Chicago Press.
34, Frenkel-Brunswik, Else, Daniel J. Levinson, and Nevitt R. Sanford. “The
antidemocratic personality” in Readings in Social Psychology. (3d ed.)
Edited by Eleanor E. Maccoby, T. M. Newcomb, and E. L. Hartley.
Copyright 1947, 1952, © 1958 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.,
p. 641. By permission of the publisher.
ha), Bettelheim, Bruno, and Morris Janowitz. “Ethnic tolerance: A function of
social and personal control.” American Journal of Sociology, 1949
(55), p. 145 (excerpts from Table VII). Copyright 1949 by American
Journal of Sociology. By permission of The University of Chicago
Press.
36. Bramel, Dana, J. E. Bell, and Stephen Margulis. “Attributing anger as a
means of explaining one’s fear.” Journal of Experimental Social Psy-
chology, 1965 (1), pp. 267-281.
7s Ibid., p. 281. By permission of the authors and the publisher.
38. Festinger, Leon, and J. M. Carlsmith. “Cognitive consequences of forced
compliance.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1959 (58),
pp- 203-210.
39. Dissonance reduction is not the only factor influencing how much attitude
change will take place when a person espouses a position different
from that he previously held. For a recent survey of this complex
research area, see Carlsmith, J. M., B. E. Collins, and R. K. Helm-
reich. “Studies in forced compliance: I. The effect of pressure for
compliance on attitude change produced by face-to-face role playing
and anonymous essay writing.” Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 1966 (4), no. 1, pp. 1-13.
40. Aronson, E., and J. M. Carlsmith. “Effect of the severity of threat on the
devaluation of forbidden behavior.” Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology, 1963 (66), pp. 584-588.
41. Sherif, Muzafer, and Carolyn Sherif. An Outline of Social Psychology.
New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, 1956.
42. Deutsch, Morton, and Mary E. Collins. Interracial Housing. Minneapolis:
The University of Minnesota Press, 1951. Also to be found in Wil-
liam Petersen (Ed.), American Social Patterns. Garden City, N.Y.:
Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1956.

Prejudice 311
:
TEN
GROUPS IN
STABILITY &
CHANGE

One striking thing about human beings is that they usually change
so little. Although superficial preferences and behaviors change, there
seems to be a hard core to the personality which is quite resistant to
change. The boy scout who was always working for merit badges
becomes a businessman striving for awards from service clubs. The
trusting person remains trusting despite experiences similar to
Candide’s, while his friend remains suspicious of the world despite
being treated well by it.
Such everyday observations of ourselves and others might well

313
 lead us to believe that all important characteristics of human beings
were fixed early in life, if we did not know of exceptions. Some people
do become radically different people. Not only cases of multiple per-
sonality but the more common events of religious and _ political
conversion show that radical change in the beliefs, values, and be-
havior of an individual is possible. Why, then, is it so rare?
Some clues are given by cases of individuals who have changed
drastically. Let us look at one case described by Zorbaugh in The
Gold Coast and the Slum.’ It is the case of a girl from a small town
who moved to Chicago:

“Emporia, Kansas, was my home until I was twenty-two. My father

had a small business there. He was an upright, God-fearing man... .
He taught us to obey the Ten Commandments, to go to church on
Sunday, to do all the things the ‘respectable’ do in a small, gossiping
place.’”””

She was highly thought of in Emporia, where she was regarded

as something of a musical prodigy, playing Chopin and Bach in public
recitals at the age of ten. Her father thus spent the money to send
her to college, although this was difficult for him to manage as he
had quite a number of children. When she finished college, she went
to Chicago to continue her musical career. Her life there was not easy,
for she had to earn all the money for her own support and her music
lessons, as well as find a good deal of time to practice. A combination
of this demanding program and the environment of the cheap room-
ing house soon cut her off from almost all human contact.

“One gets to know few people in a rooming house, for there are con-
stant comings and goings, and there is little chance to get acquainted
if one wished. But one doesn’t wish. . . . There were occasional little
dramas—as when a baby was found in the alley, and when the
woman in the ‘third floor back’ took poison after a quarrel with her
husband, or when police came to arrest a man who had eloped from
Pittsburg with his wife’s sister, and a new trio of roomers robbed
most of the ‘guests’ on the second floor; there were these occasional
little dramas when the halls and bathrooms were the scenes of a few
minutes’ hurried and curious gossip. But the next day these same
people would hurry past each other on the stairs without speaking.’

Although she had to get up at six to be at work by eight, work

as a waitress until five, walk a mile to get home, and work on her
music until eleven, she was kept going by her ambitions. She had
nothing else—she had made no friends in Chicago, her mother had

314 Psychology: A Social Approach

died, and she had broken off with the rest of her family, who dis-
approved of the way she was living. Then her music teacher told her
that there was no hope of her ever realizing her ambitions.
“What did I have? I had no clothes, no shows, no leisure—none of
the things all girls are supposed to love. My health was breaking
under the strain. I was in debt. The answer was Nothing—absolutely
nothing! And there stretched ahead of me long years of nothing, until
I married an honest but poor clerk or salesman and tried to make ends
meet for a brood of hungry mouths, or until I became one of those
broken-down, old working women I had patronizingly pitied that first
week at the Y.W.C.A.
“Of course, there were two ways out: I might slip into the lake,
there, and end it all. But somehow I didn’t think seriously of that. Or
I might do as some of the girls in the house, become a ‘gold digger,’
play life for what there was in it, pay with what there was in
Pee

She chose the latter alternative and became the mistress of a

man who picked her up in the restaurant where she worked. Thus a
very proper young lady, who had shortly before felt above even
speaking to the other people in the rooming house where she lived,
became changed into something which she could never conceive of
being.
When we look at how little people usually change, we are liable
to forget the very great extent to which they are maintained the same
by the roles they play and the people they know. This may perhaps
be most easily experienced by attending after a number of years a
reunion of a high school or college graduating class. Now you may
be a pillar of the community, the terror of your competitors and
subordinates, or a distinguished artist. To them you may remain the
unpleasant fat boy whom the girls didn’t like or the daring prankster
who set off the stink bomb in the chapel. This too is one of your
selves, and what is disturbing about the reunion is the ease with
which you slip into the role and become the old self again. This was
very well described by William James in his description of reference
groups.
Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are in-
dividuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their
mind. To wound any of these his images is to wound him. But as the
individuals who carry the images fall naturally into classes, we may
practically say that he has as many different social selves as there
are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares. He

Groups in Stability & Change 315

 generally shows a different side of himself to each of these different
groups. Many a youth who is demure enough before his parents and
teachers, swears and swaggers like a pirate among his “tough” young
friends.°

In a sense, then, we exist only through the eyes of others. Ref-

erence groups are vitally important to the individual’s self-esteem, for
it is they that judge whether he is living up to his idealized picture of
himself. By interpreting what moral standards are applicable to any
given situation, they function as external parts of the individual’s
conscience and are important agencies of social control, as mentioned
in Chapter 5. However, as can be seen in the case described by Zor-
baugh, a person only cares about the opinions of others in regard to
what he aspires to be. Again James put the matter well:

I, who for the time have staked my all on being a psychologist, am

mortified if others know much more psychology than I. But I am
contented to wallow in the grossest ignorance of Greek. My defi-
ciencies there give me no sense of personal humiliation at all. Had I
“pretensions” to be a linguist, it would have been just the reverse... .

So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back

ourselves to be and do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities
to our supposed potentialities; a fraction of which our pretensions are
the denominator and the numerator our success: thus, self-esteem =
Success_
Pretensions®

This description, which anticipates the work on level of aspira-

tion cited in Chapter 2 even to the extent of pointing out how self-
esteem may be protected by lowering aspirations, helps to understand
the case of the woman described by Zorbaugh. She had staked her all
on being a musician just as James had staked his all on being a psy-
chologist. Cut off from all relevant sources of social support, she
became completely dependent upon the evaluation of her teacher in
maintaining her conception of herself. An indication that she could
not succeed as a musician destroyed the self for which she had lived
and made radical reorganization of her self necessary.

Acceptance and Rejection by Groups

Although not easily susceptible to experimental manipulation, the

importance of groups in maintaining or changing the self is dra-
matically illustrated in a number of observational studies. Let us

316 Psychology: A Social Approach

look at some of these studies now and then return again to the
question when we consider social norms in the final chapter.
Shils and Janowitz’ carried out an extensive interview study on
Germans surrendering on the western front in the Second World War
to try to determine why German resistance remained so effective in
what was militarily a hopeless situation. They investigated such ques-
tions as who surrendered, when they surrendered, how they surren-
dered, and what they were concerned about after doing so. Essen-
tially, what they found was that:

1. The men who surrendered were those who were not effectively
integrated into their fighting unit, such as those from ethnic mi-
nority groups. Those who were accepted by their comrades tended
to go on fighting even if they were strongly opposed ‘to both Na-
tional Socialism and the war.
2. If individuals did surrender, it was generally when they had been
isolated, either physically or psychologically, from their groups.
Thus surrendering took place not only when an individual was
isolated from his comrades by the contingencies of battle but also
when he had just returned from home leave. Contact with his
family tended to loosen his ties to his army unit.
3. To a great extent, soldiers surrendered as groups rather than as
individuals.
4, After surrendering, they expressed a good deal of guilt, not about
having failed their country, leaders, or political beliefs, but about
letting down their comrades in arms.

All these observations supported the view that the men fought,
not primarily for ideological reasons as had been earlier imagined,
but out of loyalty to the small group to which they belonged. We
should not, perhaps, expect such strong group influences under all
circumstances. An army group differs from most other social groups
in being part of a total institution, one which meets all the needs and
provides all the social contacts of its members. Under most circum-
stances the potential for conflict through belonging to different groups
with different views is stronger.
Just as loyalty to a reference group may be an extremely im-
portant social motive, failure on the part of an individual to make
members of his reference groups accept his perceptions of himself
may be a devastating experience. Participants in social interaction cast
each other in roles, while each endeavors to get the other to accept
him as the person whom he believes himself to be, playing the role

Groups in Stability & Change 317

 which he believes himself to be playing.* Trying to reach agreement
on the identity of the interacting individuals and the roles they are
playing may involve a good deal of bargaining. When a parent pun-
ishes a child, for example, the parent may perceive himself as “do-
ing what is good for the child,” while the child defines the interaction
as “being mean.” Similarly, in an interaction between two profes-
sional colleagues, the elder may define the situation as one in which
he is an older and wiser individual giving sage advice to his less ex-
perienced junior. The younger may perceive the situation as one in
which two equals are making idle conversation or even as one in
which he is humoring an old bore. To the extent that the individual
is forced to admit that he has failed to get important individuals to
accept his views of himself, he is aware that he is not living up to
his ego ideal and suffers anxiety.
Prisoners, hospitalized patients, armed forces recruits, and mem-
bers of cultural minority groups share the predicament that those
with whom they must associate do not acknowledge the qualities
which they see in themselves. A Jewish immigrant who was revered
as a Talmudic scholar in his village in Eastern Europe may be recog-
nized only as another impoverished immigrant by many of the Amer-
icans he meets in his new home, and one of the main protests of
black Americans is that “nobody knows my name.” As an example
of a similar problem arising from social-class differences, let us look
at a long-term study of Stanford students carried out by Robert Ellis.°
As is well known, Stanford is an institution of high academic
standing and high tuition charges. Schools in wealthier neighbor-
hoods better prepare students to meet the high admission standards
of such an institution and the high tuition keeps out those who might
be qualified but cannot afford to go, and both these factors serve to
ensure that the social-class distribution will be heavily weighted
toward the upper end of the continuum. The social-class breakdown
of the students in Ellis’s sample is shown in Table 10-1."°
What happens to working-class students who attend such an
institution on scholarships? First, let us look at what the scholarship
students are like when they reach Stanford. They are an even more
highly selected group than most Stanford students—not only out-
standing in terms of aptitude scores and high school achievement but
even more likely than normal Stanford students to have held impor-
tant positions of leadership in high school. The average scholarship
student at Stanford was not only near the top of his class in high
school, he was also captain of the football team or president of the

318 Psychology: A Social Approach

Table 10-1 Percentage distribution of undergraduate students at Stanford

CLASS PERCENT

Upper 12
Upper-middle 49
Middle 27
Lower-middle 10
Upper-lower I
Lower-lower 0

SOURCE: Ellis’®

student body. Furthermore, he was prepared for Stanford in another

way, for he had taken over a pattern of values and aspirations more
typical of the middle class than of his class of origin, a type of an-
ticipatory socialization often observed among the socially mobile.
For the individual who finds his high school work so easy that
obtaining outstanding grades still leaves him sufficient time to excel
in extracurricular activities, success must seem a relatively easy mat-
ter, and it is not surprising that these boys had even higher expecta-
tions of success at Stanford than the students who won national
scholarships which were simply based on academic achievement. The
schools which they had attended, however, had not prepared them
for the academic competition at Stanford, and for the scholarship
students as a whole there was no relationship between how high
grades they expected to get in college and how high grades they
actually got.
The situation in which they found themselves is familiar to
anyone who has been an adviser to students in a college with high
academic standards. Coming from schools where they were clearly
superior to the other students in academic performance, many stu-
dents suddenly found themselves competing for the first time with
others of equal ability. The point may perhaps be best illustrated by
the case of one such student I have known. In his home town, Mill-
stone, New Jersey, he was regarded as a prodigy—excelling scholas-
tically and in extracurricular activities. When he won a scholarship
to an outstanding liberal arts college, he arrived with expectations
which were realistic in terms of his past experience. He expected to
be at the top of his class without having to do much work, and to
win a Rhodes scholarship without its interfering with his having a
good time. In terms of the group he was now competing with, how-

Groups in Stability & Change 319

 ever, such aspirations were quite unrealistic. He did graduate quite
high in his class, but he had to work unexpectedly hard to do so, and
he did not win a Rhodes scholarship.
The self-disconfirmation of the scholarship students at Stan-
ford, however, was made more severe by their reception by other
students. While they had been popular student leaders before, they
were not accepted by the upper-middle-class Stanford students. Sig-
nificantly more of them than of the general student body were con-
sidered unpopular or social isolates by their dormitory counselors.
By the time they graduated, more of them than of the general student
body were diagnosed as being personally disturbed. Like the woman
described by Zorbaugh, they had been unable to get the world to see
them as they saw themselves, with serious consequences for their
mental health.
While rejection by an important reference group has devastat-
ing effects upon the individual, acceptance into a group holding dif-
ferent beliefs and values from that of the individual may be an im-
portant source of attitude change. This is dramatically illustrated in
a study carried out by Newcomb" at Bennington College from 1935
to 1939, Bennington was, at that time, a very atypical academic in-
stitution, for the faculty believed that ‘one of the foremost duties of
the college was to acquaint its somewhat oversheltered students with
the nature of their contemporary social world.’’'* While the girls at
Bennington, like the Stanford students in Ellis’s study, came from
prosperous and politically conservative homes, they encountered, un-
like the Stanford students, a faculty who saw it as their social duty
to communicate to them their own progressive political beliefs.
In performing this duty they were apparently very successful,
for the political views of the girls changed a great deal while they
were at Bennington. This is best illustrated by the way in which
girls who had been at the school varying numbers of years voted in a
mock presidential election in 1936. While 62 percent of the freshmen
supported the Republican candidate, a proportion which reflects the
political preferences of the families from which they had come, the
percentage fell to only 14 percent for those girls who had been at the
school more than 2 years. These results are illustrated in Table 10—2."*
The dramatic change shown by students at Bennington was
probably largely due to its being a small, isolated, and cohesive com-
munity. The student body at that time only numbered about 250 girls,
and the college community was so self-sufficient that there was no
need for the students to go off the campus—it had its own store, post

320 Psychology: A Social Approach

Table 10-2 Votes in the mock election (in percent)

VOTE BY
VOTED FOR FRESHMEN JUNIORS AND SENIORS

Republican 62 14
Democrat 29 54
Socialist or Communist 9 30

SOURCE: Newcomb"

office, beauty parlor, and recreational facilities. These conditions all

favored the development of the college community as the major
reference group for the students. ;
Nevertheless, not all the students accepted the college com-
munity as their major reference group, and not all of them changed
their political preferences. Let us look at the characteristics of those
who remained politically conservative and those who became or re-
mained nonconservative in terms of balance theory.
Since Newcomb had not yet devised his A-B-X balance model at
the time of doing this study, he did not describe his results in terms
of it. The distinctions he did draw, however, can be reasonably well
represented in terms of a balance model. He described the students
in terms of the following: (1) Their community identification, the
extent to which they accepted the college group. This will be repre-
sented in our analysis as having positive sentiments toward the col-
lege group. (2) Their awareness of their own radicalism or conserva-
tism. This will be represented in balance terms by the accurate or
inaccurate portrayal of the relationships between the political opin-
ion of the college group and parents. (3) Their acceptance or non-
acceptance of the college group as a reference point for political
opinions. This will be represented as having positive or negative
sentiments toward “college political views.” (4) Their acceptance or
nonacceptance of parents as positive reference points for political
affairs. This will be represented as positive or negative sentiments
toward “parents’ political views.”
Using this mapping, let us portray the cognitive structures of
the girls who did and did not change in terms of Rosenberg and
Abelson’s balance model as described in Chapter 2. It will be imme-
diately apparent that all students who have positive sentiments to-
ward both their left-wing college group and their conservative parents
will suffer from imbalance, as these two cognitive elements have

Groups in Stability & Change 321

 p

College nn Political
ar Parents :
group conservatism

Figure 10-1 Imbalanced cognitive structure of conservative student.

different relationships with conservatism. The cognitive structures of

a conservative girl and radical girl in this predicament are shown in
Figures 10-1 and 10-2, respectively.
Rosenberg and Abelson propose that imbalance may be dealt
with by attitude change, differentiation, or stopping thinking about
the issue. Each of these methods could be useful to the Bennington
girl in reducing her imbalance. By becoming radical and rejecting her
parents or by remaining conservative and rejecting the college group,
she could reduce imbalance, although not remove it completely if she
retained a unit relation with each group. Differentiation provides a
more elegant solution. By deciding that she liked the college group
but that they had little experience with the world and had thus ac-
cepted some silly notions about politics, the conservative girl could
reduce imbalance without dissociating herself from her friends. Simi-
larly, the girl with progressive political views could reduce imbalance

Figure 10-2 Imbalanced cognitive structure of nonccnservative student.

=F Parents College group

- Political conservatism

322 Psychology: A Social Approach

ata Parents

— College group

Figure 10-3 Rejection of college group by conservative student.

by deciding that she loved her parents but that they were out of
touch with the contemporary world and too uninformed about poli-
tics for their views in this area to have much value. Finally, the girl
who had little enough contact with the more radical students or who
never talked politics with her parents might be able to keep herself
in ignorance of the conflicting views of these two groups.
These various possibilities correspond reasonably well to the
cognitive structures which Newcomb found, although not preserving
all the richness of his descriptions of individual students. Let us look
first at the views of the students who did not change their political
views, but remained conservative. These are portrayed in Figures
10-3 to 10-6, corresponding to groups 1 to 4 in Newcomb’s descrip-
tion. The girls represented in Figure 10-3 rejected the college group
and were in turn rejected by it. They were aware of their relative
conservatism in comparison with the other students. Those repre-
sented in Figure 10-4, on the other hand, had managed to remain
ignorant of the views of the rest of the community by only associat-
ing with a few other conservative students, a type of stopping think-
ing reflected in behavior. The differentiation solution is represented
by Figure 10-5, representing students who liked the other members
of the college group but considered their political views not worth
listening to. Finally, the girls represented in Figure 10-6 had so little
to do with the college group that its political views simply were not
a part of their cognitive structures.
The cognitive structures of the girls who did change toward the
political left are similarly consistent with their attitudes. They are
represented in Figures 10-7 to 10-10, corresponding to groups 5 to 8
in Newcomb’s analysis. The girls portrayed in Figure 10-7 again used

Groups in Stability & Change 323

 + Parents ae Conservative
friends

Figure 10-4 Unawareness of views of college group on part of conserva-

tive student.

a differentiation solution. In their own words, they “agreed to differ”

with their parents on political matters. They differ from the next
group, represented in Figure 10-8, in that the latter achieved inde-
pendence of their parents earlier and with less conflict. Having been
independent for some time, they are not aware of how much their
parents’ political views differ from their own.
The girls represented in Figure 10-9 represent a rather interest-
ing case. Rebelling against conservative parents, they became so radi-
cal that they rejected the college group as being too conservative.
They developed off-campus reference groups which were more radical
than the dominant position at the college. Finally, Figure 10-10 por-
trays a group of students who were extremely dependent upon the
college group for social support. They were unaware of how their
nonconservative political views differed from those of their parents.

Figure 10-5 Differentiation of college political views from college group

by conservative student.

af College group Parents

0 n

= College
political views

324 Psychology: A Social Approach

+ Parents

Figure 10-6 Self-isolation from college group by conservative student.

We may see, then, that political attitudes developed by the

Bennington students were consistent with their relationships to im-
portant reference groups. While the analysis of these relationships in
terms of balance theory has been somewhat simplified in that unit
and sentiment relationships have not been analyzed separately, it may
have been sufficient to demonstrate that reference-group phenomena
may be portrayed in balance-theory terms and that this portrayal
leads to predictions of attitudinal stability or change. A similar analy-
sis could be carried out to predict what would happen to the political
views of the girls after they left Bennington. After the consideration
of small-group processes we shall return to them again, as Newcomb
did after a period of 20 years, to see how their beliefs changed and
developed.

Figure 10-7 ‘Agreeing to differ’ with parents on political matters by

nonconservative student.

ae Parents College group

0 n

ts Parents’
political views

Groups in Stability & Change 325

 + College group

Parents

Figure 10-8 Lack of awareness of parents’ political views on part of non-

conservative student.

Conformity

As we can see from the discussion above, the extent to which a group
can influence a person depends to a very great extent on its impor-
tance io him. Much socialization consists of teaching a person who
he is, and thus what groups he must care about the opinions of. The
elaborate ceremony which marks initiation into a fraternal organiza-
tion, for example, teaches the initiate that he is now a member of a
select group and has special obligations to its members. Even tempo-
rary groups, to which the individual has no important ties, may exert
some influence, however. One answer to the question, ““Who am I?”
is the very general one, “A human being.” The approval and dis-
approval even of a group of strangers thus serves, to some extent, to
support or undermine the self. This importance of other people, sim-

Figure 10-9 Rejection of college group as too conservative by radical

student.

=F Radical friends

College group
p
— Parents

326 Psychology: A Social Approach

=F College group

Figure 10-10 Conformity to college group by nonconservative student.

ply as people, is illustrated in Killian’s research on the effects of

multiple reference groups in disaster. While loyalty to the family was
the most important influence on behavior—so important that even
firemen left their jobs to look after their families—feelings of re-
sponsibility for strangers were more important for many individuals
than their occupational roles. As Killian reported:
For people whose usual occupational roles bore little or no relation-
ship to the needs created by the disaster, identification with the com-
munity as a whole and disregard of their occupational roles came still
more easily. Many merchants and clerks rushed from their stores to
aid in rescue work, leaving both goods and cash on the counters. The
postmaster in one tornado town left the post office completely un-
guarded, even though the windows were shattered and mail was
strewn about the floor."*
Similarly, laboratory studies of conformity have shown the
great effects which even ad hoc groups, simply brought together for
the purpose of the experiment, may have on individual behavior.
Best known in this area is the classic research of Asch.
The subjects in Asch’s experiments were brought together to
participate in an experiment on perceptual judgment. On each trial
one standard line and three comparison lines were presented, and the
task of each subject was to tell which comparison line was of the same
length as the standard. The perceptual task was easy, and subjects in
a control group where there was no deception made almost no errors.
In the experimental groups, however, all the subjects except one were
confederates, instructed to give certain agreed-on incorrect answers
on some of the trials. Since the one naive subject was always seated
so that he would give his judgments last, he was preceded on each of

Groups in Stability & Change 327

 these critical trials by the unanimous choice of an incorrect alterna-
tive. The question to be investigated was the extent to which his
judgments would be influenced by the group.
In a typical experiment,’® which employed seven confederates,
considerable conformity was found. While 26 percent of the subjects
made no incorrect judgments despite the group pressure, the remain-
der ranged from one to eleven errors out of the twelve critical trials.
In variations on the experiment two other interesting findings
emerged. While the amount of conformity depended upon the num-
ber of individuals unanimously giving incorrect judgments up through
three, a larger group had no more effect than the three confederates
did. Even more interesting, the provision of even one other individual
who gave correct judgments greatly reduced the effects even of a
majority of seven. The unanimity of the judgments seems to be a
critical factor in group pressure.
One question which might be raised about the early conformity
experiments, such as those of Asch, is whether the results have been
influenced by the triviality of the judgments being made. Thus it
might be argued that it is not surprising that individuals will go
along with the crowd in judging the length of lines, which they
couldn’t care less about, but that that is no reason to expect them
to do so on an issue which is important to them. That conformity is
not confined to trivial issues, however, is well demonstrated by Mil-
gram’s more recent research.”® By slightly varying the experimental
conditions in his experiment on obedience to authority which was
described in the last chapter, Milgram transformed it into a con-
formity experiment. By further variations, he was able to create mu-
tually supporting or mutually opposed authority and conformity
pressures.
Conformity pressures were created by having not one “teacher”
but three. The first was to read the stimulus words, the second to
inform the subject whether he was correct or incorrect, and the third
to administer the punishment. Instead of the experimenter suggesting
the level of shock to be used as punishment, this decision was left to
the three teachers. The instructions to the teachers were that the level
of shock to be administered was to be the lowest level suggested by
any of the three teachers. The real subject was always assigned the
role of third teacher, while the first two teachers, like the “learner,”
were confederates. By the first and second teacher always suggesting
raising the shock one level when the learner made an error, group

328 Psychology: A Social Approach

pressure was put on the real subject which was comparable to the
authority pressure in the first experiment. Nevertheless, he had effec-
tive control of the level of shock administered, for according to the
instructions he had only to suggest a lower level for that to be the
level administered.
Because of other variations in experimental procedure, the re-
sults are not strictly comparable to those obtained in the first experi-
ment. In this experiment, the victim gave verbal feedback, including
grunts, screams, and a protest that he suffered from a weak heart!
Despite this, considerable conformity was found in comparison with
a control group, and fifteen out of forty subjects in the conformity
situation continued raising the shock level after the victim had
stopped answering the questions.'* Since the victim had stopped
answering the guestions at the 300-volt shock level, it is clear that
conformity is not limited to trivial decisions.
The experiment was varied further.** Mutually supporting or
conflicting authority and group pressures were created by combining
the conditions in the two experiments already described. Three teach-
ers were used, but the experimenter instructed them in the level of
shock to be employed. By having the first two teachers go along with
the experimenter’s instructions, conformity pressures were added to
authority pressure. By having them successively defy the experi-
menter and refuse to continue participating in the experiment, group
pressures were made to conflict with authority pressure. The results
of these variations support Asch’s observations of the relatively small
effect of increasing pressures by enlarging the group and the rela-
tively great effect of destroying the unanimity of the group. Adding
conformity pressure to authority pressure did little to increase the
compliance of the subjects above that found with authority pressure
alone. Defiance of the experimenter on the part of fellow subjects,
on the other hand, greatly reduced the level of shock which the real
subject was willing to administer. These results, like Asch’s, suggest
that it is the lack of any reference-group support which make it diffi-
cult for the individual to engage in an idiosyncratic course of action.
Research on conformity, like that on prejudice, illustrates how
situational pressures and personality factors interact in the determi-
nation of behavior. Even though Milgram found striking differences
between experimental and control groups in his simple conformity
experiment, for example, there were three subjects in the experimental
group who refused to give over 30 volts shock despite the group

Groups in Stability & Change 329

 pressure, and there was one subject in the control condition who
thought he was administering 450 volts to a man with a heart condi-
tion without any group pressure.
This finding of great individual differences in response to group
pressure is in agreement with Asch’s earlier findings which led to a
good deal of research on the personality characteristics associated
with yielding or not yielding to group pressure. The most important
findings of one quite extensive research program of this type, carried
out by Tuddenham and his colleagues at Berkeley, are summarized
as follows:
The most consistent and significant finding is that of a marked nega-
tive correlation between intelligence and measures of intellectual
achievement and drive on the one hand, and yielding on the other....
A second group of variables negatively correlated with yielding seems
to contain a common element of psychological sensitivity and percep-
tiveness, both of self and of others. Here are found ratings Percep-
tive, Imaginative, Trait-Introspection, and questionnaire scales with
such titles as Psychological Mindedness, Self Acceptance, Tolerance,
Flexibility, and Intraception. Crutchfield’s finding of lack of rigid
self-control or authoritarianism among his nonyielders, and Barron's
belief that nonyielders are intraceptive and empathic, are congruent.
However, these variables can not be taken to imply that the inde-
pendent-minded subject is “well-adjusted” socially in the conven-
tional sense as compared with the yielder. Correlations between
yielding and ratings of adjustment are close to zero, a result also
reported by Crutchfield and Barron.*®
If we speculate a bit upon these findings, we can see that the
first may represent different learning experiences of different indi-
viduals. A person of high intellectual potential and achievement is
likely to find, in a number of situations, that he is more likely to be
right than other individuals. Learning to trust his own judgment and
to a great extent ignore the opinions of others would be for him
an adaptive thing to do. For the less intelligent person, this would not
be the case. He is much more likely to learn that things may not be
what they seem to be to him and that it is safer to go along with the
judgments of the crowd.
More interesting psychologically is the other group of variables.
They seem to portray the nonconformer as being in more direct con-
tact with his own impulses. This does not lead to his being better
adjusted socially, for some of the impulses may be quite antisocial.
It does lead to greater self-awareness and, by analogy from himself
to others, to greater awareness of the emotional responses of others.

330 Psychology: A Social Approach

 Support for this view of conformity as the result of certain
types of ego defense is found in an interesting study by Breger. His
theoretical approach was psychoanalytic:
Conformity is conceptualized as stemming from a more pervasive
ego-defensive process, centering around the repression of hostility,
and consisting primarily of the ego defenses of repression, denial,
reaction-formation, and turning against the self... . The assumption
is made that individuals who conform when faced with group pres-
sure do so because at some level of awareness they perceive opposi-
tion to the group as an act of defiance and aggression which arouses
anxiety and calls into play one or more of the above defense mech-
anisms. ... As is characteristic of all defense mechanisms, these in-
volve an unwarranted overgeneralization on the part of the individual
employing them such that situations not necessarily involving hos-
tility (e.g., giving an accurate judgment in an Asch situation) are
reacted to on the basis of this latent perception.”°

Two predictions were made from this theoretical orientation,

and both were supported by the results of the experiment. First, it
was predicted that people who conformed more would express less
hostility in a direct manner and more in an indirect manner on a
Thematic Apperception Test. Just as the highly authoritarian subjects
in the research on The Authoritarian Personality did not express their
hostility directly against parent figures in the TAT cards, but did
tend to tell stories in which these figures were injured, blinded, sick,
and killed, it was predicted that the more conforming subjects would
express their hostility in a similarly disguised manner. A “TAT total
defended hostility” score was computed by scoring all responses
which indicated indirect expression of hostility, against the self or
others, and subtracting scores for responses indicating direct expres-
sion of hostility. This measure was correlated with conformity scores
at the .01 level.
The second prediction was that the subjects who conformed
more would express less aggression against an authority figure in a
situation where aggression was a reasonable response. The subjects
were given an impossible experimental task (placing pegs in holes
which they fit tightly without the peg’s touching the sides of the
hole, while working against a stop watch) and were constantly criti-
cized by the experimenter for their poor performance while they
were working. At the end of this frustrating experience, a confederate
tried to induce each subject to be critical of the experimenter. As was
predicted, the subjects who were willing to criticize the experimenter
were those who conformed less in the conformity task.

Groups in Stability & Change 331

 It is important to note that Breger’s results do not indicate that
high conformers are unable to express aggressive impulses at all, but
that they do not express them as directly as low conformers or
against a high-status experimenter. If high conformers were unable
to express aggression at all, no conformity would be found in Mil-
gram’s situation where the subject must act in an aggressive manner
in order to conform. Unrecognized aggressive impulses may not only
be expressed in an indirect manner or turned against the self, they
may also be turned against other low-status individuals. From the
positive correlation of conformity with authoritarianism and its nega-
tive correlation with tolerance, it would be expected that more con-
forming individuals would actually express more hostility against
low-status minority groups. More research on this topic would be
useful in understanding the relationships of ways of handling im-
pulses, conformity, and prejudice.

Role Conflict

Individuals occupy many different positions in society, as was indi-

cated by the quotation from James contrasting the way a young man
may act in the presence of his parents and the way he may act among
his friends. For each of these positions—father, electrical engineer,
Baptist, Democrat, South Carolinian, etc.—there is one or more refer-
ence groups holding expectations about how a person in that position
will behave. As was illustrated in Newcomb’s Bennington study, these
expectations are enforced by sanctions—rewards for conforming to
expectations and punishments for violating them. The Bennington girl
who held to conservative political beliefs, or the Stanford boy who
dressed and acted in accordance with his working-class origin, was
not accepted to the rewards of friendship with fellow students. These
expectations about the behavior of a person holding a given position
are referred to as the role associated with that position.
It is thus clear that roles may easily be in conflict. As the daugh-
ter of a wealthy and conservative family, the Bennington girl is
expected to support conservative political candidates. As a Benning-
ton student, she is expected to support nonconservative candidates.
This is a conflict between two different roles—the differing expecta-
tions come through her holding two different positions, daughter and
Bennington student. Her plight is thus similar to that of a person of
fundamentalist religious faith who was a biologist or an account

332 Psychology: A Social Approach

executive for an advertising firm. As a fundamentalist, a man would
be expected to believe in special creation. He would not be expected
to believe in the widespread use of strong alcoholic beverages. If he
were also a biologist, he would be expected to support those beliefs
in evolution which have been supported by biological data. If he
were an account executive, he would be expected to treat his clients
to strong drink. This type of conflicting expectation, stemming from
holding two different positions, is referred to as interrole conflict. It
may be avoided to some extent by a judicious choice of positions, so
that the individual does not join groups which have conflicting ex-
pectations about his behavior. Members of fundamentalist sects who
are either biologists or account executives are relatively rare.
More difficult to avoid is intrarole conflict, conflicting expec-
tations held by different groups about the occupant of the same posi-
tion. A classical case of this is the foreman in industry. He is not
clearly a part of either labor or management. The workers expect him
to represent their interests to management, while management ex-
pects him to represent it in overseeing the workers. It is clearly im-
possible to do both at the same time. This type of conflict is very
common. Anyone who represents a company in dealing with the
public, a man who performs a job involving liaison between two de-
partments of a company rather than being clearly assigned to one, or
even a university professor divided between research and teaching
is in a situation involving conflicting loyalties between the expecta-
tions of different groups.
In the extensive research on which their book Organizational
Stress was based, Kahn et al. found that 48 percent of their national
sample suffered from some role conflict in their occupational role.
The greater the frequency of contacts outside the company in per-
forming a job, the more stress was involved. Similarly, the greater an
individual’s contact with people outside his department in the com-
pany, the more stress was involved. Furthermore, for people occupy-
ing positions involving similar interdepartmental responsibilities,
those who most restricted their contacts outside their own department
experienced the least anxiety. These findings support the view that
inability to meet conflicting expectations is an important source of
anxiety for individuals. (The last one, incidentally, also illustrates the
fallacy of the common view that all the problems of organizations can
be solved by providing “better communications.”) Let us thus look
at two other research studies for further indications of how individ-
uals react to role conflict.

Groups in Stability & Change 333

 The first of these studies is one of the classical investigations of
voting behavior, published as The People’s Choice, by Lazarsfeld,
Berelson, and Gaudet.** It is based on a sample of one person from
every fourth house in Erie County, Ohio, during the presidential
election of 1940, and employed a panel design.
In all studies of changing attitudes, such as those of voters
prior to an election, one basic problem is whether each person should
be interviewed only once or more than once. If each person is inter-
viewed only once, there is no way of knowing the extent to which
individuals change their minds. A poll in June might show 45 percent
in favor of the Republican candidate, 48 percent in favor of the
Democratic candidate, and 7 percent undecided. If another poll the
next month showed 47 percent in favor of the Republican, 48 per-
cent in favor of the Democrat, and 5 percent undecided, this would
not necessarily mean that 2 percent who had been undecided had
made up their minds on the Republican. Instead, it might well be that
some who had been in favor of the Democrat had switched prefer-
ence to the Republican, a smaller number had made the opposite
change, and some of the undecided individuals had come out in favor
of each of the candidates. Only the repeated interviewing of the same
individuals will clearly reveal such changes.
The use of a panel of respondents, who are interviewed repeat-
edly, also has disadvantages, however. If the only people interviewed
are the members of the panel, there is no way of knowing whether
the process of being repeatedly interviewed has sensitized them to
political phenomena in a way which makes them atypical of other
voters. This problem may, to a large extent, be avoided by the use of
control groups. The procedure used by Lazarsfeld et al. provides a
good example. The initial sample was divided into four groups
matched on characteristics related to voting behavior. One of these
groups served as the panel, and was repeatedly interviewed through-
out the course of the campaign. The other groups were used to check
on whether the panel had become atypical of the population of
voters. One of these samples was interviewed each time the panel was
reinterviewed. The lack of any significant difference in voting inten-
tion between the panel and the other sample at each of these times
provided a strong argument that reinterviewing of the panel members
had not made them differ from other voters in the election.
The result of applying this method clearly showed the impor-
tance of class and group affiliations of individuals in determining

334 Psychology: A Social Approach

how they would vote. Interviewers’ ratings of the socioeconomic
status of the respondent were good predictors of voting, but state-
ments by the respondents themselves of whether they felt they be-
longed more to “business” or “labor” were better. Similarly, religious
affiliation and urban or rural residence were good predictors of voting.
Catholics were found more likely than Protestants to favor the Demo-
cratic candidate even when socioeconomic status was held constant.
Also, as might be expected, rural residents were more likely to favor
the Republican candidate than were urban residents.
Great events were taking place during the election campaign of
1940, and the role which the United States was to play in these
events was the major issue of the campaign. During the campaign
France accepted Hitler’s peace terms, the first 14 days of air raids on
London were carried out, and Italy invaded Greece. During such a
time as this, could voting actually be predicted from such variables as
a person’s socioeconomic status, religious affiliation, and place of
residence?
Because the way an individual views events is influenced by the
groups to which he belongs, perhaps it should not surprise us that it
could. This is made most obvious by comparing individuals whose
various affiliations reinforced each other. Of wealthy, Protestant
farmers almost 75 percent voted for Willkie, while 90 percent of
urban Catholic laborers voted for Roosevelt.
Even more interesting is the way in which voting intentions
changed over the course of the campaign. For each member of the
panel, the researchers constructed an “Index of political predisposi-
tion’”” based on the three factors mentioned above. By the end of the
campaign, voting intention was in greater agreement with the predic-
tions from this index than it was at the beginning. In other words,
one major effect of discussing the issues was to make people vote
more as other people like themselves voted. As the authors com-
mented:

Knowing a few of the respondents’ personal characteristics, we could

tell with fair certainty how they would finally vote: they would join
the fold to which they belonged... . Thus about two thirds of the
crystallizers with a Republican predisposition decided by October to
vote Republican, and about three fourths of those with a Democratic
predisposition decided for the Democrats. From a simple three-factor
index we could predict with considerable accuracy the outcome of
deliberations that the deciders themselves could not foresee. What the
political campaign did in these cases was not to form new opinions

Groups in Stability & Change 335

 but to raise old opinions over the thresholds of awareness and deci-
sion. Political campaigns are important primarily because they acti-
vate latent predispositions.”*
For the wealthy Protestant farmer or the Catholic laborer it is
easy to see how the reference groups with which he associated might
show him where his political interest lay over the course of the cam-
paign. What happened, however, to the poor Protestant farm laborer
or the wealthy Catholic businessman? Such an individual would be
subject to interrole conflict. The Catholic businessman, for example,
would be expected to support the Republican candidate by his
wealthy business acquaintances but expected to support the Demo-
cratic candidate by his fellow Catholics. That these cross pressures
would be strong is illustrated in Figure 10-11, which shows that
while 76 percent of Protestants at the two highest socioeconomic
levels supported the Republican candidate, only 29 percent of com-
parably wealthy Catholics did so.**
The dilemma of the potential voter exposed to cross pressures
is similar to that of the Bennington girl in Newcomb’s study, and
similar ways of resolving imbalance are possible. The Catholic busi-
nessman might differentiate, for example, by deciding that while his
business acquaintances were fine people with excellent judgment
about most things, they were biased about political matters through
all being wealthy, and that his Catholic reference group thus pro-
vided a better guide to political decisions. For most people, however,
avoidance of political affairs is easier than it was for students at
Bennington, and the stopping-thinking solution of avoiding political
commitment was the main effect of cross pressures observed in this
study. Voters who were subject to cross pressures showed less in-
terest in the campaign, made up their minds whom to support at a
later date, and were less likely to vote than those who were not sub-
ject to cross pressures.
Besides showing the importance of reference groups and role
conflict in political affairs, The People’s Choice thus somewhat modi-
fies the idealized picture of the election process which is presented in
campaign oratory. Instead of elections being decided primarily by
independent voters, who decide whom to support on the basis of
issues presented in the campaign, they are largely decided by the
activities of people who are committed to one party at the time the
campaign starts. These individuals, not subject to cross pressures, are
the most active and influential throughout the campaign. While the
“independent voters” who are subject to cross pressures do have

336 Psychology: A Social Approach

 ie Republicans Total cases

Exotestant ee %< x
oe
A+B
(42)
of
eae =
| -
Protestant -
Gar :
Catholic

Protestant | (386)
-

Catholic |)
oo

Protestant z
D
Catholic

Figure 10-11 Voting preference by socioeconomic level and religion.

(Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet**)

more apparent choice, as Milgram’s work on the liberating effects of

group pressures would indicate, these same cross pressures are liable
to lead to a stopping-thinking resolution to their imbalance. The in-
dependent voter is typically uninterested in the campaign and unlikely
to vote.
If political decisions may be avoided by voters, it is not so easy
for the person who holds a politically relevant position to avoid them.
The city manager, the chief of police, or the superintendent of schools
is expected to make recommendations about issues as a part of his
job. Each is, like the foreman in industry, a man in the middle be-
tween the conflicting interests of various organized groups. Consider
the plight of a superintendent of schools about to make his annual
recommendation about salaries for teachers in his district. The teach-
ers expect him to press for as high salaries as possible—and because
they believe in good education and obtaining highly qualified indi-
viduals to provide it, they feel that they are morally right in expect-
ing him to do so. Members of the city council of a major city in the
district, however, in viewing the various services competing for tax
funds, are likely to feel equally morally justified in expecting him to
keep salaries as low as possible. Labor unions, business organizations,
the parent-teacher association, newspaper editors, veterans’, church,
farm, and fraternal organizations—all are likely to have similar ex-

Groups in Stability & Change 337

 pectations one way or the other. Whatever the superintendent rec-
ommends, he will have to face his friends and his wife, who have
their own ideas about what he should do.
Gross, Mason, and McEachern™ studied this type of intrarole
conflict, using approximately half the school superintendents in the
state of Massachusetts as their sample. They found that the differ-
ences in the real-life decisions made by these men were explainable in
terms of a combination of the social pressures they perceived em-
anating from various community groups and the personality charac-
teristics of the men.
When a group holds expectations about your behavior, there
are two especially important questions which you may raise about
the expectations—whether they are justified and whether they can be
enforced. A request for aid by an injured person might seem morally
justified to an individual, but it could not be enforced by sanctions.
A request for money by a robber might not seem morally justified,
but could perhaps be enforced by the ultimate sanction of death.
Similarly, the expectations of community groups differ in whether
the superintendent sees them as legitimate or not and whether he
perceives a group as able to apply sanctions against him if he does
not comply with it. The authors reasoned that superintendents dif-
fered in the extent to which they paid attention to these two different
considerations. They classed superintendents as having a moral ori-
entation if they felt that there were many things which they should
always or never do, having an expedient orientation if they felt that
whether they engaged in most behaviors should depend upon the
circumstances, and having a moral-expedient orientation if they felt
that there were quite a number of things which they should always
or never do but many others which depended upon circumstances. To
choose examples outside the range of professional behavior of school
superintendents, a person would seem to have a moral orientation if
he believed that he should never smoke, drink, dance, swear, or be-
tray a confidence. On the other hand, we would not have much hesi-
tation in classing a person as having an expedient orientation if he
felt that whether or not he engaged in such activities as theft and
murder should depend upon the circumstances. Use of such extreme
examples, more extreme than those used by Gross et al., would result
in classifying most people as moral-expedients.
It was thus expected that superintendents with a moral orienta-
tion would pay more attention to whether expectations were legiti-
mate, those with an expedient orientation would pay more attention

338 Psychology: A Social Approach

 to whether they could be enforced, and those with a moral-expedient
orientation would try to consider both. Specific predictions were made
on this basis, although these are too complex to consider here. (A
simplified example would be that a moralist might retain a teacher
whom he personally thought to be good despite powerful community
groups demanding that the teacher be fired, while an expedient would
never do so.)
The predictions were strongly supported by the results. For the
issue of teachers’ salaries, for example, correct predictions were made
for 88 percent of the moral-expedients, 91 percent of the expedients,
and 95 percent of the moralists. The decisions superintendents had
actually made were highly consistent with the researchers’ expecta-
tions from the superintendents’ personality characteristics and their
perceptions of reference groups in their communities. /
One important question remains unanswered by the research,
however. Were the superintendents accurate in their perception of
the community pressures? The superintendents’ decisions were made
before the community pressures were reported. From the work on
dissonance theory, we might expect that they would distort their per-
ceptions after making their decisions in order to justify the decisions
they had made. An expedient superintendent might decide after he
had asked that salaries be kept the same that the city council would
have employed sanctions against him if he had not done so, for this
would justify his behavior to himself and perhaps even to some ex-
tent to his staff. The question is whether he thought that the council
would do so at the moment of making the decision.
While this question points to an interesting area for further
research, it does not seriously detract from the value of the Gross
et al. study. Whether groups only influence decisions or both influ-
ence and rationalize them, there can be no doubt about their vital
importance to the decision maker.

Summary

Individuals usually show remarkable stability in their attitudes, be-

havior, and personality characteristics. That this stability is not due
to personality being rigidly fixed in early childhood is shown by
those cases where dramatic change does occur. Rather than person-
ality being unchangeable, it usually remains the same because the
individual’s reference groups support him in continuing to act the

Groups in Stability & Change 339

 way he has acted before. By interpreting what moral standards are
applicable to a given situation, a reference group or authority figure
may function as a part of an individual’s conscience.
Because the individual sees himself through the eyes of his
reference groups, rejection by the group amounts to self-rejection,
raises anxiety to intolerable levels, and prepares the ground for dra-
matic personality change. The dynamics of this change were illus-
trated in a case study of a woman in Chicago and in a long-term
study of scholarship students at Stanford. Similarly, by applying
existing beliefs and values to new situations, the group which accepts
the individual changes him. Balance theory is an aid in the analysis
of the dramatic changes shown by Bennington College students in a
study by Newcomb.
The dramatic effects which groups have on individuals can to
some extent be reproduced in the psychological laboratory. While
there are great individual differences in how much individuals con-
form to group pressure, some individuals will show considerable
conformity even when they must violate important values in doing
so. Similar dynamics seem to be involved in conformity to the pres-
sures of a group or an authority figure, and the conformity pressures
are greatly weakened by anyone refusing to go along with the au-
thority or group.
Individuals cannot always conform to group pressures, for they
belong to many groups which have conflicting expectations for them.
Intrarole conflict is caused by different groups having differing ex-
pectations for the individual occupying some one position, while
interrole conflicts result from holding different positions with different
expected behaviors. Studies of voting and of decision making by
school superintendents have shown the very great extent to which
an individual’s behavior may be predicted from an analysis of the
role expectations of his reference groups.

Notes and Acknowledgments

1. Zorbaugh, Harvey W. The Gold Coast and the Slum: A Sociological Study
of Chicago’s Near North Side. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1929.
2. Ibid., Copyright 1929 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
p. 76. By permission of The University of Chicago Press.
3. Ibid., pp. 78-79. By permission of the publisher.
4. Ibid., p. 80. By permission of the publisher.

340 Psychology: A Social Approach

 . James, William. Principles of Psychology. New York: Dover Publications,
Inc., 1950, p. 294.
. Ibid., p. 310.
. Shils, Edward A., and Morris Janowitz. “Cohesion and disintegration in the
Wehrmacht in World War II.” Public Opinion Quarterly, 1948 (12),
pp. 300-306 and 308-315.
. An interesting book extending the theory of self and reference groups be-
yond what is possible in an introductory text is McCall, George J.,
and J. L. Simmons. Identities and Interactions. New York: The Free
Press of Glencoe, 1966. Their analysis emphasizes the extent to which
individuals improvise interaction within the broad latitude permitted
by social roles.
. Ellis, Robert A. “The cognitive failure of the upwardly mobile.” Paper pre-
sented at the West Coast Conference for Small-Group Research,
1964.
. Ibid., from Table I. By permission of the author.
. Newcomb, Theodore M. “Attitude development as a function of reference
groups” in E. Maccoby et al. (Eds.), Readings in Social Psychology.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1958, pp. 265-275.
. Ibid., p. 265. By permission of the publisher.
. Ibid., p. 266. By permission of the publisher.
. Killian, Lewis M. “The significance of multiple-group membership in dis-
aster.” American Journal of Sociology, 1952 (57), p. 313. By permis-
sion of the publisher.
ills), Asch, Solomon E. “Effects of group pressure upon the modification and
distortion of judgments” in Maccoby et al. (Eds.), op. cit., pp. 174-
Sse
16. Milgram, Stanley. “Group pressure and action against a person.” Journal
of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1964 (69), pp. 137-143.
Milgram, Stanley. “Liberating effects of group pressure.” Journal of Per-
sonality and Social Psychology, 1965 (1), pp. 127-134.
7. Milgram, Stanley. “Group pressure and action against a person,” p. 141.
18. Milgram, Stanley. “Liberating effects of group pressure.”
119" Tuddenham, Read D. “Correlates of yielding to a distorted group norm.”
Journal of Personality, 1959 (27), p. 281. By permission of the author
and publisher.
20. Breger, Louis. “Conformity as a function of the ability to express hostility.”
Journal of Personality, 1963 (31), p. 248. By permission of the pub-
lisher.
Dili Lazarsfeld, Paul F., Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet. The People’s
Choice. New York: Columbia University Press, 1948.
22. Ibid., pp. 73-74. By permission of the publisher.
23: Ibid., p. 22. By permission of the publisher.
24. Gross, Neal, W. S. Mason, and A. McEachern. Explorations in Role Analy-
sis: Studies of the School Superintendency Role. New York: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1957.
Gross, Neal, A. McEachern, and W. S. Mason. “Role conflict and its reso-
lution” in Maccoby et al. (Eds.), op. cit., pp. 447-459.

Groups in Stability & Change 341

Py

By the author
Bice w-EN
SMALL-GROUP
POE ESSES~*

Although psychology is often defined as the study of the individual,

roughly half the research in contemporary social psychology is con-
cerned with the study of small groups rather than of individuals.
There are two reasons for this. One, which has been touched on in
the last chapter, is that it is largely through small groups that indi-
viduals interact with societies. From the young child, who is socialized
not by his culture but by his family, through the adult, who does not
have contact with religion, employment, and politics but with a

343
 church group, a work group, and a local political party, small groups
mediate the contact of the individual with his society.
The second reason for studying small groups is that they are
the smallest social units in which many social processes can be ob-
served. Such basic social phenomena as communication channels,
power relationships, differentiation of status and role, and the crea-
tion of norms simply do not exist in isolated individuals. While care
must be exercised in applying the results of studying these phe-
nomena at the group level to phenomena at the level of institutions
or cultures, there is at least less discontinuity in doing so than there
is in extrapolating from individuals to cultures. It is for this reason
that even a general psychology text is not complete without some
consideration of the processes in which an individual participates as
a member of a group.
The present chapter, then, is intended as both a review and an
extension of the principles developed in the earlier portions of the
book. It is a review, because if the concepts which have been dis-
cussed are useful, they should help us to understand group processes
also. It is also an extension, however, because some new concepts
will have to be introduced to extend the theory to a new social level.
Since an extended discussion of group processes would be the subject
matter of another book, the discussion here will be limited to the one
topic of the ways in which functioning groups differ from arbitrarily
assembled conglomerations of individuals.
While many important things may be learned about individuals
by studies such as those by Asch and Milgram where individuals are
brought together only for the purpose of participating in the experi-
ment, it is important to keep in mind that such a collection of people
differs in many ways from a functioning social group. To avoid con-
fusion, let us follow the precedent of Sherif and refer to the former
situation as a togetherness situation and reserve the term group situa-
tion for the latter." That togetherness situations and group situations
may have strikingly different effects on behavior is nicely illustrated
in a study by French.’
Subjects came to the laboratory five at a time. In order to create
a group situation, members of fraternity basketball teams came to the
laboratory together. For the togetherness situation, five strangers
were used in each experimental session. In either case the subjects
were set to work on a problem-solving task, and the experimenter left
the room, locking the door behind him. Shortly after he left, sirens
were sounded, “Fire!” was shouted in the hall, and smoke began to

344 Psychology: A Social Approach

 filter up between the floorboards of the laboratory. How did the
subjects react to this novel stimulus situation?
To see if we can guess, let us try to place ourselves in the posi-
tion of one of the quite sophisticated Harvard students who partici-
pated in the experiment. He would probably know that psychologists
may try almost anything as an experiment and that in all probability
the fire was a hoax. Why, otherwise, would he have been locked in the
laboratory, and why would the experimenter have left? The problem,
of course, is that he might be wrong in this analysis. Even if the
chance were only one in a million that the fire was real, would he
want to take this chance of being trapped in the laboratory? On the
other hand, since the fire was probably not real, would he want to
appear foolish by taking the hoax seriously? ‘
As was indicated in the discussion of The Acquaintance Process,
individuals on first acquaintance usually do not reveal deeply per-
sonal information about themselves. While a person might not mind
revealing to a close friend that he was frightened or had been made
a fool of by the experimenter, he would generally be more reluctant
to reveal this to a fellow student whom he had just met but whom
he might expect to meet again. These considerations enable us to
predict the outcome of French’s experiment—an outcome which dif-
fers from what common sense would lead most people to predict. In
general, the groups of friends showed goal-directed activity designed
to get them out of the laboratory. Some of this was quite effective.
When, for example, they used the table as a battering ram to knock
down the door, the experimenter had to intervene. The strangers, on
the other hand, ignored the alarms. They continued working on the
problem-solving task which they had been set.

Defining the Situation

One of the first things a group must do in coming together for the
first time is to attempt to define an ambiguous situation. Social orga-
nizations do not operate simply on the basis of formal rules but also
on the basis of innumerable shared conventions. Consider, for exam-
ple, a work group in which management has attempted to define the
situation by setting a piece-rate method of payment for production.
This method of payment does not succeed in compelling the workers
to accept the situation as a competitive one in which each person

Small-group Processes 345

 should maximize his economic gains by producing as much as possi-
ble. It is equally possible, as much industrial research has shown, for
the group to set standards as to how much each man should produce.
By punishing individuals who exceed the quota, it is possible to keep
the production rate down to one which is easy for any member of
the group to fulfill. Nor does this exhaust the possibilities. Each man
might produce at a rate which he found comfortable, but each mem-
ber of the group report an equal share of production.
The importance of group definitions of ambiguous situations is
demonstrated in a study of an employment agency carried out by
Peter Blau.’ The rules of the employment agency were designed to
select the best-qualified applicant for each available position. To
achieve this end, the specified procedures called for obtaining detailed
information from each applicant and selecting the best-qualified ap-
plicant from those for whom this information was on file. The de-
partment Blau studied, however, was primarily concerned with
placing individuals in the clothing industry, in which slack periods
alternated with periods of feverish activity. When a company was
hiring, it did not want the best-qualified man the next day—it wanted
any reasonably qualified person immediately. Employers not only
called the employment agency to fill positions—they placed signs in
front of their shops advertising them and often hired the first person
who walked in off the street.
To meet these changed conditions, not foreseen in the general
rules of the employment agency, the workers in the department
adopted their own procedures. Applicants were reinterviewed fre-
quently, so that a large pool of available manpower was always in
the office. Interviews were kept short to deal with this flood of ap-
plicants, for it was not necessary to know much about a person in
order to place him. By following these procedures, the interviewers
were able to fill certain positions immediately with someone who was
waiting in the office at the time the vacancy was reported. While the
applicant who was sent might not be the best qualified, he at least
had a good chance of arriving before a passerby was hired.
The importance of different definitions of the situation is shown
in the same study by how two different work groups within the de-
partment reacted to a new evaluation procedure initiated by a new
department head. While evaluation of interviewers had previously
not been taken very seriously and had been based simply on the
number of interviews carried out, the new department head instituted

346 Psychology: A Social Approach

a complex method of evaluation based on eight different criteria,
including such considerations as the proportion of interviews result-
ing in placements.
The interviewers in one group had been employed by the em-
ployment agency for a considerable period of time. During the earlier
period of their employment they had developed an approach which
stressed, as the overall policy of the employment agency did, the
goals of recommending the best-qualified man for the job and of
providing extensive counseling for applicants. They had become ac-
customed to working together toward those goals in a cooperative
manner. Finally, since they had been employed for more than 1 year,
they had tenure with the agency and could only be fired for cause.
The new evaluation procedure did not have much impact on their
methods of work.
The members of the other group, however, were almost all new
employees. They had not had time to establish cooperative ways of
doing things, and they were on probationary 1-year appointments.
They were quite concerned to maximize their ratings and devised
some ingenious ways of doing so.
Blau used as a measure of competitive practices the extent to
which an individual was more likely than others to fill with his own
applicants positions that he had been the first person to hear about.
The noncompetitive interviewer might let other interviewers find out
about the position so that the best man might be recommended for it.
The competitive interviewer could raise his own rating by placing
one of his own applicants in the position. Some of the ways of doing
so were given by one of the interviewers:
“When you take an order, instead of putting it in the box, you leave
it on your desk. There was so much hiding of orders under the blot-
ter that we used to ask, ‘Do you have anything under your rug?’
when we looked for an order.
“You might leave an order you took on your desk, or you might
leave one you pulled from a box on your desk, even though you
made no referral... .
“Or you might take an order only partially. You write the firm's
name, and a few things; the others you remember. And you leave it
on the pad of order blanks. You keep on doing this, and all these
orders are not in the box.
“You can do some wrong filling out. For instance, for a rather low-
salary job, you fill out ‘experience required.’ Nobody is likely to make

Small-group Processes 347

 a placement on that except you, because you know that experience
isn’t required.

“Or, if there are several openings on one order, you put the order
into ‘referrals’ [file category for filled job openings] after you made
one placement. So you have a better chance of making the next
placement than somebody else. Time and again, you see four, five,
openings on one order filled by the same person.”*

In the more competitive group, the most competitive individuals

were most productive, for they were best at the practices needed for
success in that situation. In the less competitive group, on the other
hand, competitive individuals were excluded by their colleagues from
information which all the others shared. They were unable to com-
pete effectively with an organized group, so they were less productive
than the others. Because of its better organization, the noncompeti-
tive group was more productive as a whole than the competitive
group.
One of the major problems of the developing group, then, is to
agree on how the situation should be defined. In doing so, members
are likely to import definitions from similar situations with which
they have been familiar in the past, just as the members of the non-
competitive group carried over the ideas they had developed in their
early years with the agency into the period of the new department
head. Another way of looking at the research on The Authoritarian
Personality which has been discussed is to see it as showing indi-
viduals carrying over into adult relationships the relationships to
authority figures which they learned in childhood. Nor is the group’s
task of defining the situation ever complete. As was indicated in the
section on ideology, groups constantly encounter new situations, and
one of the main functions of leaders is to help define the way in
which they should be viewed.

Filling Positions

Division of labor is the most obvious characteristic of formal organi-

zation and, as was pointed out by Max Weber in his analysis of
bureaucracy, enables ordinary people to perform extraordinary tasks.
One man, no matter how gifted, could not produce a Chevrolet, nor
could one man make the decisions which must be made to keep a
Chevrolet plant running. Dividing up difficult tasks into manageable

348 Psychology: A Social Approach

pieces is essential to large-scale organization and is what makes large-
scale organization complex.
That a similar division of labor takes place in small informal
groups is not so immediately apparent, for the positions in the struc-
ture are not named and delimited by a job description as they are in
a formal structure. Careful analysis, however, reveals a similar struc-
turing of groups. Consider, for example, what happens on a camping
holiday where camp is broken each morning and established each
evening. On the first day it may take 2 hours to pitch camp. First
everyone tries to set up the tent, getting in each other’s way and ac-
complishing very little. Then all realize that nobody has gathered
wood for a fire. By the time the fire is finally started and dinner cook-
ing, they are probably very tired and hungry.
As the holiday proceeds, the process becomes more and more
efficient. Without anything being said, some people take over the
responsibility of pitching the tent each evening, while others build a
fire and do the cooking. Although individuals may not be designated
as “chief supply officer,” “head cook,” and “billeting officer,” division
of labor has been established.
The positions which exist in a group going camping and the
roles associated with them, however, are largely specific to the activi-
ties of the group. Are there any group roles which are general in the
sense that they will be found in virtually any organized group re-
gardless of its purpose? Psychiatric observations, such as Bion’s,’ on
therapy groups would suggest the existence of at least a crude leader-
ship role. Members of the group cast the therapist in roles with which
they are familiar, such as “father” or “teacher.” They seem to expect
to be told in an authoritative way what they should do to improve
their relationships with other people, and if the therapist refuses to
play this type of role, they exert considerable pressure on him to
induce him to do so. Bion’s comments on what may be going on
beneath the surface conventionalities of groups are a provocative
source of hypotheses about group functioning. He considers, for ex-
ample, the possibility that failure to attend some meetings and silence
during others may be one way of asserting leadership over a group.
The person who comes late to some meetings, fails to come to others
at all, and sits back looking quietly disdainful of the proceedings of
those which he does attend makes his sentiments quite clear to the
other members of the group and acts out feelings which others may
share. If the feelings are widely shared, he may become the emo-

Small-group Processes 349

 tional leader of the group. It is not only in formal elections that ab-
stention may be a form of protest.
Using well-standardized observational procedures and both real-
life and laboratory groups, Bales® and his associates have done ex-
tensive studies of both the stages of problem solving and the nature
of leadership in small groups. While not showing identical leadership
roles in all small groups, the results did show certain roles to occur
quite frequently and others to be rather rare. The first possibility to
be investigated was that the typical small group has one leader who
fits our conception of what a “great man” should be—active, efficient
in getting tasks accomplished, and also extremely popular with the
members of the group. While early research gave some support to a
belief in the existence of such individuals, further research revealed
that they are quite rare. Despite the efforts of group members to cast
the leader as the great man, revealed in group therapy, most groups
do not succeed in maintaining such a structure over a period of time.
While ratings of productivity and popularity are positively correlated
during the first meeting of the group, the correlation disappears with
time. It becomes increasingly difficult for the same man to be the
severe taskmaster and the jolly good fellow as time goes on.
Dual leadership roles in groups were thus found to be extremely
common, with one leader stimulating efficiency in dealing with tasks
which the group had to perform and the other, socially the most
popular, dealing with interpersonal conflicts which arose within the
group. This type of division of labor is common enough that research
on American families has shown strong tendencies for the father and
mother to be cast respectively in these two roles. As in the family,
productivity and satisfaction both tend to be higher in groups with
this structure if the task leader and socioemotional leader are on good
terms with each other than if they are in conflict.
Not all groups have a duai leadership structure, however, and
not all are harmonious. Another common role identified by Bales is
that of the overactive deviant, a person who is very active in inter-
action and attempts to dominate the group, but is rated by the group
members as low on both task ability and likability. Another way of
viewing such an individual is as a contending leader. While his ideas
are deviant in the group in which he is participating, he might play a
leadership role in a group in which they are shared.
Finally, individuals were identified who were unpopular, thought
to have little task ability, and inactive. These individuals were fre-

350 Psychology: A Social Approach

quently cast in the role of scapegoat by the group. Bales and his col-
leagues thus showed the generality of the development of role dif-
ferentiation in groups, and found some similarity in the types of
leadership roles which are usually developed.
In an interesting study using three confederates, Schachter’ ex-
plored the relationships of agreement or disagreement with the ma-
jority, communication within a group, and acceptance or rejection by
the group. One confederate, the deviant, took a position at variance
with the group majority and maintained it throughout the group dis-
cussion. The second, the slider, started out by disagreeing but allowed
himself to be convinced by the other group members. The third, the
mode, always supported whatever position the majority were in
favor of at that moment. The groups were also systematically varied
on both how attractive they were to their members and whether the
topic on which the confederates agreed or disagreed with the group
was relevant to the main purpose of the group.
As might be expected, the majority of communications in the
group were devoted to trying to persuade the deviant to agree with
the rest of the group. Within the time limits of this study, most of
the groups never gave up this effort, although in groups to which
the members were highly attracted and in which the deviant was
disagreeing about something vital to them, the group members fre-
guently ended up ignoring him. Even more interesting is the relation-
ship between agreement with the rest of the group and selection for
a position of leadership.
At the end of the meeting, each group elected members to vari-
ous committees, varying from the executive committee, which had
much authority but little repetitive work to do, to the correspondence
committee, which involved little power but a good deal of drudgery.
Both the mode, who simply voted with the majority, and the slider,
who allowed himself to be convinced, were frequently elected to the
important leadership positions in the groups. The deviant was al-
most inevitably elected to a position which gave him a great deal of
work to do but no authority to make decisions.
Without too much distortion, this result may be summarized in
everyday language in the lyrics of H. M. S. Pinafore:
I always voted at my party’s call
And never thought of thinking for myself at all.
I thought so little they rewarded me
By making me the ruler of the Queen’s Navy.

Small-group Processes 351

 There was one exception to assigning the most odious position
to the deviant, however, and it supports Bion’s observations on ob-
structionism as a path to leadership. In the groups where the mem-
bers were not attracted to the group and where they had been tricked
by the experimenter into discussing something which was irrelevant
to the purpose of the group meeting, deviation would be a good way
of expressing disgust with the whole proceedings which was probably
quite generally felt by the group members. In these groups only, the
deviant was generally elected to the executive committee.

Developing Interpersonal Relations

As a togetherness situation develops into a group, specific relation-

ships develop among its members, a process involving at the start
inaccurate perception of inadequate information. Thibaut and Kelley,°
in an excellent analysis, have shown the importance of the production
of behavior as well as its perception at the early stages of the rela-
tionship. According to their analysis, which explains a number of
interesting research findings, individuals generally first produce be-
haviors which can be produced at relatively low costs to themselves
and which do not reveal much about themselves to others. Cultural
patterns often provide materials for such superficial interaction, as
in discussion of the weather and the latest baseball results. Less
stereotyped topics of conversation, while perhaps potentially more
rewarding for the future relationship, have the danger of giving the
other person power to hurt the individual by revealing material which
he might not want generally known. To pick an extreme example,
even the most confirmed masochist might be reluctant to tell a
stranger about the collection of whips he had at home, even though
by his silence he might pass up a possibility of finding out about his
new acquaintance’s sadistic tendencies.
One result of this initial caution in interaction is that the way
in which two strangers perceive each other can be influenced by what
they are told about each other before meeting. Individuals who are
told that they will probably not like each other are not only inclined
to see the undesirable characteristics in each other; they also behave
in a fashion which makes them less attractive to each other. Indi-
viduals who are told, as part of an experiment, that they will like
each other behave in ways which make them do so. These phenomena

352 Psychology: A Social Approach

are closely related to the mechanism of projection, in which the
attribution of one’s own forbidden impulses to others is probably
aided by behavior which calls out the expected response from the
other.
Because of the biasing in the initial acquaintance which people
have of each other, the long time it took the students in The Acquain-
tance Process to form accurate perceptions of each other is not sur-
prising. On the other hand, as Newcomb’s study showed, in a group
where people will continue to interact with each other for a long
period of time whether they like each other or not, there is the op-
portunity for perceptions to become more accurate. Initial impressions
are thus probably less important in social groups than they are in
social situations where the relationship may be terminated on the
basis of the first inaccurate information. ;
As friendship patterns develop in the group, one important
function they serve is to provide channels of communication. This
was demonstrated in the negative relationship between competitive-
ness and productivity in the cooperative work group in Blau’s study,
which resulted from the competitive members of the group being
excluded from information shared by the others. It is even more
dramatically demonstrated on the community level in Vidich and
Bensman’s Small Town in Mass Society: Class, Power and Religion
in a Rural Community.® In the community which they studied, a
small group was able to dominate local politics simply through its
members’ being the only ones who knew when nominating petitions
for the positions were due. (The local newspaper carried a statement
of who had been nominated after nominations were closed.) Since
their candidate was the only one nominated, he was regularly elected.
Besides serving as a communication channel, a friendship also
gives one person power to influence another. Kurt Back,*® for exam-
ple, varied attraction to a two-person experimental group in each of
three different ways. In one case, interpersonal attraction was varied
by telling the subjects that they would like each other. In other treat-
ments, the prestige of the group and the potential rewards of belong-
ing were manipulated. Regardless of the basis of attraction to the
group, it was found that individuals were more influenced by groups
to which they were more attracted than by groups to which they were
less attracted. These results support the balance studies and studies
of reference groups we have considered, which show interpersonal
attraction to be an important source of social power.

Small-group Processes 353

 They also show that there are other sources of power besides
personal attraction, however. Both the prestige offered by group
membership and more mundane financial rewards give the group
power to influence members. French and Raven" have discussed five
bases of social power, while Thibaut and Kelley have provided a
theoretically more elegant treatment in which all social power is
reducible to changes in the costs and rewards to the person over
whom power is being exerted. Of French and Raven’s sources of
power, reward power and coercive power are self-explanatory. Legiti-
mate power stems from the holding of a position which is accepted
as giving an individual the right to make decisions influencing others.
It would seem to operate in terms of both internal and external re-
wards. As was seen in Milgram’s study of obedience, the internal
punishments of the superego may exert very powerful pressures on
the individual to ensure his obedience to an authority regarded as
legitimate. Supplementing these internal forces, however, are the
sanctions which other people employ to enforce the unwritten laws
of their culture. The operation of these sanctions was illustrated in
the consideration of the rule of law.
As Thibaut and Kelley’® have pointed out, expert power may
operate largely in terms of the expert’s ability to cut costs for others.
An individual who has the ability to tell another how to manufacture
a product at less cost, win an election, play the oboe, or catch trout
clearly has the ability to increase the rewards or decrease the frus-
trations of others. Finally, referent power, which Raven and French
assume to operate in terms of identification, would lead to reward or
the lack of it through the operation of balance theory.
It is doubtful whether this or any other list of sources of power
in social relationships is completely comprehensive. Control of chan-
nels of communication, for example, does not seem to clearly fit any
of French and Raven’s categories. The secretary who allows some
people to see a decision maker on short notice and makes others wait
may not have any special expertise and may not be using her position
in a way regarded as legitimate, but there can be no doubt that she
is exercising power.
In many of the studies which we have considered in this book
we have seen the importance of social power. The effects of differ-
ences in social position have been considered in discussing Elmtown’s
Youth and the differential transmission of political indoctrination.
Referent power has been the most extensively discussed, in consider-

354 Psychology: A Social Approach

 ing the formation of the superego, dissonance and balance theory,
and reference groups. The topic is an important one, and further
study of the exercise of power in group and community settings is
one of the more important tasks before the field of social psychology.

Developing Social Norms

Closely related to the definition of the situation in the development

of a togetherness situation into a group situation is the emergence of
shared expectations about how group members should act. These ex-
pectations, which are called social norms, are similar to roles in that
they are enforced by sanctions. They differ from roles in that they
are expectations which apply to all members of a social grouping, not
just to those occupying certain positions. While there are differences
in the behavior expected of the chairman of a group and other group
members—differences in role—there are some expectations which
apply to all members, such as that they should wear clothes to meet-
ings. Because these expectations are enforced by rewards and punish-
ments by group members, they are one of the main forces accounting
for group influence on individuals.
Group expectations about the behavior of group members have
been referred to in many of the studies cited in this book. That Ben-
nington students should espouse the political left, that soldiers in the
Wehrmacht should be loyal to their comrades, that residents in the
integrated-housing-project studies by Deutsch and Collins should in-
teract with their neighbors regardless of skin color, and that mem-
bers of one of Blau’s work groups should cooperate with each other
are all social norms, for they are all enforced by sanctions on the part
of group members.
Let us now look more closely at these group standards which
have such a great influence on our lives.
One of the most important properties of norms is that they are
generally enforced by all group members regardless of their personal
preferences. This is dramatically demonstrated in a study by Merei.*®
Merei first observed boys in a free play situation and observed some
who were dominant. When one of these boys (who might be called
either a leader or a bully) made a suggestion to one of the other boys,
it was generally carried out. Merei then formed the less dominant
boys into small groups to facilitate the development of shared stan-

Small-group Processes 355

 dards. The dominant boys were excluded from these groups for from
three to six meetings of 30 or 40 minutes each in order to allow the
group to establish traditions about what games were played with the
toys provided.
After this period, one dominant boy was introduced into each
group. Instead of being able to assert his dominance as before, he
was now forced by the group to conform to its traditions. He en-
gaged in the activities which the group had established in his ab-
sence, while his own suggestions were either ignored or needed to be
modified to conform to the group’s norms. This change from the
previous relationship of the boy to the group came about because all
the members of the group enforced its new norms. Before, a com-
mand from a dominant boy might be opposed only by the person to
whom it was directed; after the establishment of norms, the members
of the group all united in opposing the violation of their traditions.
Once the groups had established social norms, very few of the
dominant boys ever succeeded in reestablishing their dominance over
the groups. The formerly dominant boy might obtain use of some of
the toys and might even give commands; but the group structured
his activity rather than him structuring its. The one strategy which
was successful in reasserting dominance is especially interesting. If
the formerly dominant boy played the role of a “diplomat” and ac-
cepted the new group traditions, it was possible for him to become
an interpreter of those traditions. Once established in the position of
the chief authority on the traditions, he could interpret them so as
to structure the activities of the group. In this case change was ini-
tiated by using the norms rather than by changing them."*
The importance of social norms as a force resisting change was
perhaps most clearly revealed in a series of studies by Kurt Lewin"
and his students. The initial studies were concerned with the chang-
ing of food preferences during the Second World War. Lewin rea-
soned that if forces to bring about changes in food preference, such
as attempts to get mothers to give their babies orange juice and cod-
liver oil or to get adults to eat cuts of meat such as kidney, had no
effect, then they must be calling out forces opposing change. If social
traditions or norms dealing with how babies should be fed or whether
kidneys are a proper food for human consumption were preventing
change, then change could be brought about more effectively by
changing the norms than by simply opposing them with more propa-
ganda. Lewin and his students thus did a number of studies contrast-
ing different ways of inducing change.

356 Psychology: A Social Approach

 Group decision was used as a method of changing social norms.
In a lecture situation, norms cannot be changed because individuals
cannot communicate with each other about the ideas given in the
lecture. Even if convincing arguments were presented that kidneys
could be cooked in ways that made them very appetizing (an idea
which would be considered as obvious in Britain as it was considered
absurd in the United States), a woman who heard the lecture would
still wonder what other people might think if it were known that she
fed kidneys to her family. If, on the other hand, the members of a
group should decide that kidneys were a suitable food, they would
have the social support of their fellow group members in their new
norm.
Lectures were thus contrasted with group discussions in their
effect on use of cod-liver oil, orange juice, and new meats. In all cases
the group-discussion techniques had greater effects. In the case of
using new meats, for example, only 3 percent of the subjects tried
one of the new meats after the lecture, while 32 percent of those who
had participated in the group discussion did so. The mothers were
more willing to give their children orange juice—55 percent did so
after the lecture and 100 percent after the group discussion.
Unfortunately, the exact variables which made the group dis-
cussions a more effective method of social change than the lectures
were not made completely clear by the research. The group and
lecture situations differed in a number of ways—in that discussion
took place, that a decision was reached, that a public commitment
was made to try the innovation, and that there was complete group
consensus on the decision. Which of these factors was responsible
for the difference, or are all of them necessary? Although a study
has been done by Edith Bennett Pelz'® to answer this question, the
answer still remains in some doubt. In the Pelz study, in contrast to
those of Lewin, there were no significant overall effects. That is, as
many members of control groups who were not exposed to any in-
fluence attempt engaged in the suggested behavior as did subjects in
lecture or group-decision treatments. Since within the varieties of
group-decision treatments which were used there were significant
differences, it would seem that some of the influence attempts had
negative effects. Why should this be the case?
The answer may lie in the topic of the persuasion attempt and
the experimenters and subjects who were used. The decision which
the subjects had to make was whether to participate in psychology
experiments; the experimenters were psychology graduate students

Small-group Processes 357

 with teaching experience, and the subjects were psychology students.
In these circumstances, it would not be surprising if some of the sub-
jects at least should suspect that they were being coerced rather than
convinced. Whatever the reasons, Lewin’s discussion leaders seem to
have been more like the “diplomats” in Merei’s experiment, who
managed to be accepted by the groups and then change the norms,
while Pelz’s seem to have failed as completely as the majority of
Merei’s formerly dominant boys to change group standards. Further
research is still necessary to make clear the conditions under which
group discussion is an effective method of changing group norms.

Dealing with Self-oriented Needs

In our treatment of motivation the existence of motives which are not

fully admitted to awareness and the role of group support in bolster-
ing the individual’s perception of himself have been emphasized. The
relationships between lack of social support and one motive, aggres-
sion, have been explored in the chapter on prejudice. Both these
emphases point to potent sources of disruption of the interaction of
problem-solving groups. The expression of motives which are not
socially acceptable, such as aggression or dependency, would call out
negative reactions in others and weaken attraction to the group. As
indicated in the discussion of the work of Bion and of Schachter,
individuals may even be chosen as leaders on the basis of their effec-
tive interference with the tasks in which the group is nominally en-
gaged. Sufficient interpersonal hostility would eventually lead to the
disintegration of the group. We would thus expect the maintenance
of individual self-esteem and mutual attraction to be major problems
with which any group must cope.
These tasks would be made more difficult simply because group
members generally disagree about the task decisions which confront
them. Let us look at an example in terms of balance theory. Mr.
Smith and Mr. Jones are friends who are members of the planning
commission of their city, which is considering the case of Mr. Wilson,
who has just built a carport on his property. The city laws state that
any construction with a roof must be set back 5 feet from the side
property line of a lot, and Mr. Wilson, who has built the carport
himself without obtaining a building permit, has built to within 1 foot
of the line dividing his land from that of Mr. West. The question

358 Psychology: A Social Approach

before the planning commission is whether Mr. Wilson will be re-
quired to tear down his illegal construction or it will be made legal
after the fact by the planning commission giving him a variance for it.
Since Mr. West does not object to the carport coming so close
to his lot, Mr. Smith is in favor of letting it stay up. Mr. Jones, on
the other hand, notes that some of the people who live on the street
do object and feel that construction right up to lot lines “ruins the
neighborhood.” Mr. Jones does not want to set a precedent of legal-
izing illegal construction done without a building permit for fear that
many similar cases will arise, and thus he favors making Mr. Wilson
tear the carport down again.
Both Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones will suffer from imbalance, for
each has a high opinion of the other but a low opinion of the ideas
which the other is advancing. While the issue on which they disagree
might at first glance seem a trivial one, it can involve important ideo-
logical differences. Whether an individual favors letting Mr. Wilson
keep his carport is likely to depend on conceptions of the nature of
private property and of the rights of individuals versus obligations
to the community as a whole. Discussion is liable to be lengthy and
heated, and if Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones wish to remain friends, each
will have a difficult time deprecating the ideas of the other without
saying anything which might be considered a personal attack. It is
easy to make the transition from “He is attacking my ideas” to “He
is attacking me,” and balance could always be restored by the two
men lowering their evaluations of each other.
The importance of dealing with the disruptive emotions aroused
in group situations is clearly revealed in studies of group interaction.
It may be seen in the types of leadership positions in groups found
by Bales and his colleagues, for the “social specialist” is essentially a
person who specializes in dealing with problems in this area. In his
interaction, such categories as “shows solidarity,” “shows tension
release,” and “shows agreement” are especially high.
The stages of problem solving observed by Bales also show the
importance of maintaining group cohesion. After a decision is made
on a problem or at the end of a meeting, the group typically engages
in social interaction irrelevant to the task. Joking and laughing to-
gether serve to reestablish the social relations which have been
strained by the interaction on the task.
Perhaps the strongest evidence of the importance of self-ori-
ented needs, however, comes from a study of decision-making con-

Small-group Processes 359

 ferences in business and industry carried out by Fouriezos, Hutt, and
Guetzkow."’ The use of real-life decision-making groups meant that
there was necessarily a good deal of variety in the composition of
the groups and the nature of the tasks with which they were con-
fronted. Despite these important sources of variation due to other
sources, sizable correlations were found between behavior expressing
self-oriented needs and the presence of group conflict, low group
solidarity, and lack of satisfaction on the part of the participants.
Group productivity was also measured by a very crude index based
largely on the proportion of the items on the agenda which each
group managed to deal with. Though this index could only be a very
rough indication of productivity, since items would differ widely in
their difficulty and importance, even it showed a relationship to the
expression of self-oriented needs. Groups in which individual mem-
bers expressed more personal needs finished less of their business.
From studies of group interaction, then, we may see the impor-
tance of personal motives to the functioning of groups and the efforts
made by organized groups to deal with their disruptive effects. Like
the other characteristics of groups which we have considered in this
chapter, the ways of dealing with these needs point to the existence
of important differences between togetherness situations and group
situations. Individuals in a togetherness situation are less dependent
upon their fellow members for support to the self. On the other
hand, they have not developed the interpersonal relations, norms, and
leadership structures for dealing with their needs which exist in an
organized group.

The Selection of Environments

In Chapter 10 the question of why people change so little was raised.

The material considered in this chapter makes this question even
more puzzling. We have seen, from research by Asch and Milgram,
that even togetherness situations can have important effects on indi-
viduals, and we have seen that real-life groups differ from these
situations in ways which should make their impact upon individual
members even greater. How, then, do people manage to remain rea-
sonably constant over a period of years? For an answer to this ques-
tion, let us now return to the Bennington girls. What happened to
them over a period of 20 years after leaving Bennington?**

360 Psychology: A Social Approach

 If we look at their demographic characteristics, we see that in
terms of financial success they came to resemble their well-to-do
parents. The follow-up study revealed that of the 117 respondents
who were or had been married, 77 percent had annual incomes of
twenty thousand dollars or more. This income was also reflected in
their style of life. Of those who were parents, 65 percent had sent
some of their children to fee-paying private schools.
In terms of their political beliefs, on the other hand, they had
not on the whole returned to the views of their parents. In the 1960
presidential election, for example, more than 75 percent of the voters
with the income and religious preferences of the Bennington gradu-
ates preferred Nixon over Kennedy. Yet of the Bennington graduates,
only 40 percent preferred Nixon. Their political differences from
others of their socioeconomic status were shown in other ways—
76 percent of them were in favor of Medicare, and 61 percent in
favor of admitting Red China to the United Nations.
The effects of their experiences at Bennington were thus clearly
evident after a period of 20 years. This is even more clearly shown
by a look at individual differences. If attitude scores on political and
economic progressivism (PEP) obtained while they were at Benning-
ton are compared with political preferences in 1960, a strong rela-
tionship is apparent, as shown in Table 11-1. Of the girls who were
least conservative when they left Bennington, thirty out of thirty-
three favored Kennedy in 1960. Of those who were most conservative
on leaving Bennington, twenty-two out of thirty-three favored Nixon.
This is surely strong evidence for the stability of attitudes and the
predictive value of attitude scales.
Why did the women change less in 20 years after leaving Ben-

Table 11-1 Presidential preferences in 1960, according to quartiles of PEP

scores on leaving college in the late 1930s

PEP QUARTILE NIXON PREFERRED KENNEDY PREFERRED TOTAL

I (least conservative) 3 30 33
7 8 25 35
3 18 13 sl
4 (most conservative) oy 11 33
Total on 79 130

SOURCE: Newcomb’?

Small-group Processes 361

 nington than they did in the 4 years while they were there? The
answer was hinted at in our discussion of Elmtown’s Youth and of
the initial Bennington study, for in both these discussions it was
emphasized that individuals select those with whom they will have
close personal relations. While at Bennington the majority of the
girls had been placed in an environment where their previous politi-
cal beliefs had little support, after leaving Bennington they were able
to select groups which supported their political ideology. Especially
important in this respect were the men they married, for we have
seen evidence that the family is the most important reference group
for most individuals.
The husbands of the women who went to Bennington turn out
to be an unusual group. They have highly paid jobs, and half of
them went to Ivy League colleges, yet to a great extent they share
their wives’ political preferences. There is even a highly significant
correlation between the husband’s voting record over the period from
1940 to 1960 and the wife’s political and economic progressivism
score before marriage. On the whole, then, the women married men
who had the economic characteristics of their parents but the political
preferences which they themselves had learned at Bennington. These
men, in turn, were able to support their wives’ political views and
keep them from changing over time. The women who married men
whose political views differed from their own were the women who
most changed their political views over time.
This fascinating long-term study does much to explain the para-
dox that individuals may be dramatically changed by their reference
groups, yet usually remain much the same over long periods of
time. With some exceptions, such as prisons, the armed forces, hos-
pitals, and prisoner-of-war camps, individuals generally have a good
deal of freedom to choose their environments. While groups may
have great influences on us, by choosing the groups we are able to
select the influences to which we will be exposed.

Summary

Small groups are both important in their own right and the smallest
units in which the basic processes of social interaction may be ob-
served. It is small groups which shape the individual personality, on
the one hand, and which serve as the building blocks of social insti-

362 Psychology: A Social Approach

tutions, on the other. In this chapter we have looked at five inter-
related processes taking place as an arbitrary collection of individuals
develops into a functioning social group. In doing so, we have re-
viewed much of the content of the book from a new perspective.
One of the first tasks of individuals meeting together is defin-
ing the nature of the situation. As discussed in the preceding chapter,
it is necessary for the interacting individuals to agree both on who
each of them is and on what role each of them is playing. A variety
of alternate definitions of any situation could be drawn from the
same cultural heritage, but the individual is likely to import defini-
tions from his own experience. Cooperative and competitive work
groups in an employment agency studied by Blau provide examples
of similar situations being differently defined by different groups.
Even in small informal groups where there are not named posi-
tions such as “production manager” and “copywriter,” different indi-
viduals come to specialize in playing different roles. Some leadership
roles are more concerned with the external production of the group,
while others are more concerned with maintaining internal social
relations. Different situations place different demands on a group and
require different types of leadership. There is thus no such thing as
a “natural leader,” for the attitudes and personal characteristics which
make a person a leader of one group might lead to his being rejected
or put to death by another.
Besides developing a division of labor which is generally recog-
nized by all members of the group, the participants also develop
personal relations with each other which may not be widely known
or recognized. Friendship ties serve as channels of communication, a
role that is apparent in French’s experiment in which the subjects
thought the building was on fire. This function becomes especially
important in understanding larger-scale organizations, where informal
friendship ties may be as important as formally defined relationships
in communicating information in the organization. Friendship ties
also provide a basis for interpersonal influence, for attraction is one
basis of social power.
Social power is used to enforce the norms or traditional ways of
doing things arrived at by the group. The tendency of group members
to uphold norms whether they represent their personal preferences
or not gives norms great power to influence behavior. As they are
transmitted from one generation to another, it is norms which make
true the statement, “The dead are more powerful than the living.” In

Small-group Processes 363

 the creation of new norms by the group we see the prototype of the
evolution of cultural institutions.
For a group or culture to succeed, it must evolve norms which
enable its members to satisfy their needs. Especially difficult for the
group to cope with are the needs of its members to preserve their
self-esteem. Disagreement about a task is easily interpreted as per-
sonal attack, and one of the major leadership functions is maintain-
ing harmony within the group. As the group constantly faces new
situations which must be defined and dealt with, the social processes
described in this chapter are continuing ones.

Notes and Acknowledgments

ak Sherif, Muzafer, and Carolyn Sherif. An Outline of Social Psychology.
New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, 1956.
. French, J. R. P., Jr. “Organized and unorganized groups under fear and
frustration” in University of Iowa Studies: Studies in Child Welfare.
Vol. 20. Studies in Topological and Vector Psychology III, 1944, pp.
229-308.
. Blau, Peter. The Dynamics of Bureaucracy. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1955.
. Ibid., Copyright 1955 by The University of Chicago. p. 59. By permission
of The University of Chicago Press.
. Bion, W. R. Experiences in Groups and Other Papers. New York: Basic
Books, Inc., Publishers, 1961.
. Bales, Robert F. “Task roles and social roles in problem-solving groups” in
Eleanor Maccoby et al. (Eds.), Readings in Social Psychology. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1958, pp. 437-447.
. Schachter, Stanley. “Deviation, rejection and communication.” Journal of
Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1951 (46), pp. 190-207.
. Thibaut, John W., and Harold H. Kelley. The Social Psychology of Groups.
New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1959, pp. 64-79.
. Vidich, Arthur J., and Joseph Bensman. Small Town in Mass Society:
Class, Power and Religion in a Rural Community. Garden City, N.Y.:
Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1960.
10. Back, Kurt. “Influence through social communication.” Journal of Abnormal
and Social Psychology, 1951 (46), pp. 9-23.
ial. French, J. R. P., Jr., and Bertram Raven. “The bases of social power” in
D. Cartwright (Ed.), Studies in Social Power. Ann Arbor, Mich.: In-
stitute for Social Research, 1959.
12. Thibaut, John, and Harold Kelley. Op. cit., p. 109.
i). Merei, Ferenc. “Group leadership and institutionalization.” Human Re-
lations, 1949 (2), pp. 23-39.
14. Ibid., p. 25.

364 Psychology: A Social Approach

15. Lewin, Kurt. “Group decision and social change,” in E. Maccoby et al.
(Eds.), op. cit., pp. 197-211.
16. Pelz, Edith B. “Discussion, decision, commitment and consensus in ‘group
decision.’ ’” Human Relations, 1955 (8), pp. 251-274.
7 Fouriezos, N. T., M. L. Hutt, and H. Guetzkow. “The measurement of self-
oriented needs in the discussion situation, and their relationship to
satisfaction with group outcome.” Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology, 1950 (45), pp. 682-690.
18. Newcomb, Theodore M. “Persistence and regression of changed attitudes:
Long-range studies.” Journal of Social Issues, October, 1963 (19),
pp. 3-14.
ily). Ibid., p. 7. By permission of the author and of the publisher.

Small-group Processes 365

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 GLOSSARY

A-B-X model: a balance model devised plish things which are valued in one’s
by Newcomb relating two people and culture.
a thing. acquired: developing only through ex-
acceleration principle: the economic posure to certain environmental con-
principle that slight changes in de- ditions. Speaking the English language
mand for a consumer good cause great is an acquired characteristic, for ex-
changes in the demand for the ma- ample.
chinery to make the consumer good. ACTH: adrenocorticotropic hormone.
achievement motive: a desire to accom- ad hoc group: individuals brought to-

367
 gether for a particular purpose, such through their having acquired connec-
as to participate in an experiment. tions with each other.
adrenal cortex: the outer portion of the assumptive context: the assumptions
adrenal gland, an endocrine gland made about what in the real world is
found at the end of the kidney. most likely to be causing the stimula-
adrenal medulla: the inner portion of tion of the sense organ.
the adrenal gland, an endocrine gland asthenic reaction: a reaction to anxiety
found at the end of the kidney. characterized by feelings of fatigue.
adrenocorticotropic hormone: a_ hor- attention: the selection of some of the
mone secreted by the pituitary and available stimulation for central proc-
controlling production of corticoste- essing.
roids. attitude: a relatively enduring readiness
aerial perspective: increased haziness to respond to an object in some way,
of something which is farther away. composed of both beliefs about the
afferent: carrying impulses toward the object and sentiments toward it.
brain. attitude scaling: the development of
affiliation motive: a desire to have close questionnaires composed of sets of
interpersonal relations with others. interrelated opinion items, yielding
amnesia: a person’s inability to remem- more extensive information than opin-
ber a period of his life experience. ion polling.
analyzer: in Deutsch’s model of moti- authoritarianism: a constellation of at-
vation, a perceptual system respond- titudes and personality factors related
ing to a particular set of environ- to sympathy toward fascist ideology.
mental stimuli. Similar to a releasing authority: anyone seen as having a le-
mechanism except not innate. gitimate right to apply sanctions.
androgen: male sex hormone.
anomie: the lack of norms. balance theory: a theory proposing that
anticipatory socialization: taking on the people modify their perceptions to
apparent characteristics of a group or make them more internally consistent.
class one desires to join. Consistent perceptions are called bal-
anxiety: a state similar to fear except anced and inconsistent ones imbal-
that the cause of the fear is not anced.
known. A central concept in a psycho- behavior: what an organism does from
analytic theory of personality. the point of view of an external ob-
artificial pupil: a hole in a surface server.
placed in front of the eye eliminating behaviorism: a school of psychology
many depth cues. maintaining that psychology is the
assimilable discipline: discipline which study of behavior.
is not highly threatening to the child. belief: a cognition about the nature of
assimilation: perceiving something as the world.
more similar than it actually is to binocular parallax: the difference in the
something the perceiver expects or is retinal images of objects resulting
familiar with. from the two eyes being located at
associationist: a member of a school of slightly different points in space.
philosophy which explained the suc- bit: the amount of information needed
cession of ideas in consciousness to divide the number of alternatives

368 Psychology: A Social Approach

 in half. If a person was trying to cards and selecting the person who
guess the name of one resident of the draws the highest one is a way of
United States, telling whether the per- leaving the selection to chance, for
son was a male or a female would give example.
approximately one bit of information. character disorder: a wide variety of
blank-slate hypothesis: the idea that no different types of symptom having in
important components of human common that the individual does not
thought and behavior are innate. live up to the expectations of his
Bogardus social-distance scale: a device society.
for measuring attitudes toward mem- chronological age: what is usually
bers of a minority group by finding meant by age, the length of time since
out how close a relationship to them the person was born.
the subject is willing to accept. closure: a gestalt principle of percep-
brightness constancy: seeing an object tual organization indicating that stim-
as remaining the same in brightness uli which form closed forms are likely
even though the amount of light re- to be seen as going together.
flected from it varies. cochlear nucleus: a collection of cell
bodies within the brain processing
capon: a castrated rooster. auditory stimulation.
carpentered world: a world in which cocktail-party effect: filtering of stimu-
there are many straight lines and rec- lation so that one voice is attended to
tangular corners because it is filled and others are ignored.
with man-made structures. coding: changing the form in which in-
caste: a rigid and endogamous social formation is transmitted or stored.
class. coercive power: the ability of one per-
catalyst: a substance which helps a son to influence another by being able
chemical reaction to take place al- to punish or compel him.
though it is not permanently changed cognitive: concerning ideas.
in the reaction. cognitive balance: mutual consistency
cathexis: a learned liking or aversion. among one’s beliefs and sentiments,
centrality: the number of similar items in a series of theories proposed by
to which an item is related. A central Heider, Rosenberg and Abelson, and
personality trait is related to many others.
other traits, and a central member of a cognitive dissonance: an _ unpleasant
group has interpersonal relations with state resulting from discrepancy be-
many members of the group. tween a person’s beliefs and his be-
central nervous system: the brain and havior. The central concept in a theory
the spinal cord. by the same name first proposed by
cerebral cortex: the surface of the two Festinger.
large hemispheres of the brain which cognitive learning theory: a theory tak-
lie immediately under the skull. The ing the position that not all learning is
portion of the brain which is most en- the learning of responses to stimuli,
larged in man as compared with other but that instead some learning in-
animals. volves associating stimuli or ideas
chance: factors having no relationship with each other.
to those under investigation. Drawing cognitive structure: a person’s ideas

Glossary 369
 about the world and their relation- conscience: one’s standards of what
ships to each other. one ought not to do.
cohesion: forces holding a group to- conservation of energy: the principle,
gether, such as mutual attraction. now superseded, that energy cannot
completion effect: perceiving an object be created or destroyed but only
as being continued behind something changed into different forms.
which is interposed between the ob- conservation of mass: the principle,
server and the object. now superseded, that matter cannot
compulsion: a feeling that one must do be either created or destroyed.
something without understanding of consolidation hypothesis: the idea that
the underlying motives. it takes some time for memories to be
concept: a class of stimuli which may permanently stored.
be described in general terms so that consonant: consistent, given the indi-
a person could recognize a novel ex- vidual’s assumptions about the world.
ample. Campaigning for a political candidate
conditional reflex: a type of learning and having a high opinion of him are
first studied by Pavlov, in which a consonant.
new stimulus comes to call out a re- constancy phenomena: tendencies for
sponse similar to a reflex response. objects to be perceived as remain-
conditional response: a response simi- ing the same even though the stimuli
lar to an unconditional response which coming from them change. See bright-
comes to be called out by a stimulus ness constancy, shape constancy, size
paired with the unconditional stim- constancy.
ulus. contact comfort: Harlow’s term for the
conditional stimulus: a stimulus which motive which made baby monkeys
is paired with the unconditional stim- prefer contact with a soft surrogate
ulus and comes to call out the condi- mother to contact with a wire surro-
tional response. gate mother.
conditioned avoidance: a learning task content analysis: the categorization of
in which the organism learns to make verbal materials so that the proportion
a response to a stimulus in order to of materials falling in different cate-
avoid unpleasant stimulation.
gories will provide a relatively objec-
conditioned reflex: conditional reflex.
tive measure of the content of the
conditioned response: conditional re-
materials.
sponse.
contiguity: closeness together, in time
conditioned stimulus: conditional stim-
ulus.
or space.
confederate: a helper of the experi- contiguity theorist: a learning theorist
menter posing as a subject. believing that learning can take place
conflict: parts of something being in without reinforcement.
opposition to each other. control group: a group similar to the
conformity: modifying one’s percep- experimental group in all respects ex-
tions or behavior to achieve more cept the level of the independent vari-
similarity to the perceptions or be- able.
havior of others. conversion: a radical change in a per-
congenitally: from birth. son’s most important beliefs and

370 Psychology: A Social Approach

 values, usually accompanied by a re- rial products of those ways of behav-
interpretation of the person’s past. ing.
conversion reaction: the development
of a specific physical symptom as a data: the actual observations on which
way of dealing with anxiety. The theories are based.
name stems from an earlier view that decision tree: a series of questions the
the anxiety was somehow converted answers to which enable one to char-
into the symptom. acterize concepts.
corpus luteum: a yellow mass which defended _ hostility: aggression _ex-
develops in the ovary at the point pressed in an indirect or disguised
where an ovum was released if preg- manner.
nancy has resulted. It is a source of defense mechanism: a way of protect-
hormones. ing the self from anxiety.
correlation: the extent to which things defining the situation: deciding what
tend to go together. There is a corre- concepts one’s culture would apply
lation between how tall boys are and and hence what norms should be fol-
how many points they make in a lowed. One of the main functions of
basketball game. leaders.
cortex: the outer layer, as of the brain dependency: a state of needing an-
or adrenal gland. other.
cortical: concerning the cortex. dependent variable: a variable observed
corticosteroid hormones: numerous to see what effect the experimental
chemical substances produced by the conditions had.
outer layer (cortex) of the adrenal depressive psychosis: a variety of se-
glands with diverse functions such as vere mental illness especially charac-
control of water and salt balance, pro- terized by self-hatred and negative
duction of carbohydrate from fat and emotions.
protein, and various responses to developmental quotient: a measure,
stress. similar to an intelligence quotient, of
CR: conditional response. how well a child performs for his age.
criterion: a standard. A common cri- deviant: a person who is atypical of
terion of learning is one errorless repe- the group. In Schachter’s study, a
tition. A person who can recite the confederate who took a position con-
material without error has reached the siderably different from that adopted
criterion and is presumed to know the by other members of the group.
material. differentiation (as a way of reducing im-
critical experiment: a single experiment balance): coming to see something as
making possible a choice among the- made up of different parts which are
ories. Thought seldom if ever to exist. evaluated differently.
cross pressures: influences acting on digit span: how many numbers a per-
an individual to influence his vote, but son can correctly repeat back immedi-
acting in different directions. ately after hearing them.
CS: conditional stimulus. diluted water: a solution of salt and
culture: patterns of thought and be- water having a higher osmotic pres-
havior transmitted from generation to sure than pure water.
generation by learning, and the mate- direction: a gestalt principle of percep-

Glossary 371
 tual organization indicating that stim- efferent: carrying impulses away from
uli which line up with each other are the brain.
likely to be seen as going together. ego: processes in the personality most
discriminated operant: behavior which in contact with the real world.
has come to be called out by a stimu- ego-alien: largely unconscious and un-
lus by being reinforced only when recognized by the ego. Either impulses
that stimulus is present. or moral standards may be ego-alien.
discrimination: responding differently ego ideal: one’s long-range goals and
to slightly different stimuli. aspirations.
discrimination learning: acquiring dif- electra complex: in psychoanalytic the-
ferent responses to different stimuli, ory, the attraction of a girl to her
such as learning to approach a triangle father and its psychological conse-
but not a circle. quences.
displacement: expressing a motive to- electroconvulsive shock: the causing of
ward a substitute object. unconsciousness and convulsions by
dissociative reaction: a splitting off of means of an electric current.
some of a person’s memories from electroencephalograph: a device to am-
consciousness. The most extreme cases plify and record small changes in
would involve alternation of person- electrical potential, such as those oc-
alities. curring spontaneously in the brain.
dissonance: See cognitive dissonance. embryology: the study of the develop-
dissonant: inconsistent, given the indi- ment of an organism prior to birth or
vidual’s assumptions about the world. hatching.
Perceiving that one was out campaign- emotional leader: an expressive leader,
ing for one political candidate while one who expresses emotions which
actually hoping that his opponent other members of the group are feel-
would win would generally be disso- ing. Almost synonymous with socio-
nant, for example. emotional leader.
division of labor: breaking a task down empathic: understanding others, pre-
into different subtasks so that differ- sumably at least partly through iden-
ent people perform different roles. tification with them.
dominance hierarchy: an ordering of empiricist: a member of a school of
organisms from the most successful philosophy holding that all knowledge
fighter to the least successful fighter. comes from experience.
dorsal: toward the back of an organ- endocrine gland: an organ secreting
ism. substances directly into the blood-
drive: a motive, often a motive pre- stream.
sumed to be based on a need of the endogamous: marrying within, rather
organism. than outside, the group.
environment: conditions external to the
ecological validity: accuracy of percep- organism. Includes the intrauterine en-
tions because the world is such that vironment as well as conditions to
the perceiver’s assumptions about it which the individual is exposed after
are usually justified. birth.
ECS: electroconvulsive shock. enzyme: an organic catalyst.
EEG: electroencephalogram, a record of epinephrine: a hormone produced by
the electrical activity of the brain. the adrenal medulla or produced arti-

372 Psychology: A Social Approach

 ficially. Among its effects are increases response when the response is no
in heart rate and blood pressure. longer reinforced.
equal-appearing intervals: a method of
attitude scaling developed by Thur- facilitation of consolidation: an im-
stone and depending on judges who provement in the efficiency of the
sort opinion statements into cate- process by which material is stored in
gories. long-term memory.
equivalent-stimulus technique: a way fanning: circulation of water over eggs
of discovering what an organism has by movements of the tail as shown by
learned by testing new stimuli to see the stickleback.
which ones the organism will respond feedback: information on the state of
to in the way it has responded to the a system used in the control of the
previous stimulus. system.
ethnic group: individuals sharing a field expectancy: a learned idea about
common culture or subculture. relations of different parts of the en-
ethologist: biologist specializing in the vironment to each other. |
study of animal behavior, frequently figure-ground relationship: the ten-
under naturalistic conditions. dency for a portion of what is per-
expedient: in the Gross et al. study, a ceived to stand out more clearly in
school superintendent who seldom consciousness.
said that a superintendent should al- fistula: a tube or opening, such as into
ways or never do a certain thing, but the throat or stomach.
instead said that it depended on the fixed-interval schedule: reinforcement
circumstances. of the organism for the first response
experience: consciousness as viewed by after a certain period of time has
the conscious organism. elapsed since the last reinforcement.
experimental control: elimination of al- fixed motor pattern: an organized mo-
ternate explanations of experimental tor response which is innate.
results through the study of control fixed-ratio schedule: a pattern of rein-
groups. forcing the organism once every time
experimental group: a group exposed it makes a certain number of re-
to the conditions the effects of which sponses.
forced compliance: an approach to atti-
are being investigated.
tude change in which behavior is
experimentation: a research method in
changed in the belief that attitudes
which conditions are actively manipu-
will then change also in order to be-
lated. come consistent with the behavior.
expert power: the ability of one person formal organization: the structure of a
to influence another through having social grouping as it exists on paper.
knowledge or ability which the other Many informal groups and relation-
lacks. ships arise within any organization
externalization: perceiving one’s diffi- which are not provided for in the or-
culties as being due to something in ganization’s table of organization and
the external world when in reality are thus not part of the formal organi-
they are due to one’s own character- zation.
istics. fractional anticipatory goal response: in
extinction: ceasing to give a learned Hullian learning theory, a partial re-

Glossary 373
 sponse of the type made at the goal halo effect: perceiving a person as good
which is made before the goal is in other ways when something favor-
reached and acts both to motivate and able is known about him.
to reinforce behavior. Hansen’s law: the generalization that
frame of reference: all those things a second-generation Americans stress
person considers in judging a particu- their Americanism while the third
lar stimulus. generation again becomes interested
fraternal twins: individuals who are in its cultural origins.
born at the same time but are no more hedonism: the theory that individuals
similar genetically than any brothers seek pleasure.
or sisters. higher-order conditioning: conditioning
frustration: failure to achieve a goal or in which a previously acquired condi-
an individual’s reaction to such a fail- tional reflex plays the role usually
ure. played by the unconditional reflex.
functional equivalents: behaviors which homeostasis: the maintaining of a rela-
serve the same motive for an indi- tively constant internal environment.
vidual. homeostatic drive: a motive to behave
functionalism. a school of psychology in a way which will help maintain a
seeing the central problem of the field constant internal environment.
as discovering how mental activity hormone: a chemical formed in one or-
helps the organism to survive. gan of the body and having effects in
one or more other organs.
general adaptation syndrome: a com- hyperthyroidism: having an excess of
plex reaction of the whole body to the secretions of the thyroid gland.
stress, with both adaptive and mal- hypertonic: having a higher osmotic
adaptive consequences. pressure than blood.
generalization: transferring previous hypochondriacal reaction: an anxiety
learning to a similar situation, either reaction in which the anxiety is fo-
by stimulus generalization or by re- cused on particular physical symp-
sponse generalization. If used without toms.
qualification, usually means stimulus hypothalamus: a structure at the base
generalization. of the brain playing important roles
gestalt theory: a theoretical approach
in motivation and emotion.
to psychology which emphasized the
hypothyroidism: having an insufficient
extent to which things are influenced
amount of the secretions of the thy-
by their context.
roid gland.
gonadotrophin: a hormone secreted by
the pituitary and stimulating hormone
hypotonic: having a lower osmotic
production by the gonads. pressure than blood.
gonads: the glands secreting the most hysteria: conversion reactions and dis-
important of the sexual hormones. sociative reactions.
gram molecular weight: a weight in
grams of a substance equal to the id: the unsocialized impulses of the
molecular weight of the substance. individual.
identical twins: two children who have
habit-family hierarchy: a learned set of developed from the same fertilized
alternate ways of achieving the same ovum, and thus have exactly the same
goal. heredity.

374 Psychology: A Social Approach

identification: responding as if the self denly and completely rather than de-
and another were one. veloping gradually on the basis of
ideographic approach: an approach to trial and error.
theory construction in which generali- instinct: a complex, stereotyped, un-
zations are drawn which would only learned pattern of behavior shown by
apply to a restricted population of in- all members of a species (or of one
dividuals or a single individual. sex of a species) under the appropriate
ideology: a view of the world which it circumstances. Used by earlier the-
is in the interest of some group to
orists in a more general way as
have generally accepted.
roughly equivalent to drive.
illusion: an inaccurate perception.
interaction: mutual influence on each
impression formation: the way in
other.
which strangers develop perceptions
interaction (social): the sequence of
of each other. Includes both studies of
events by which two or more indi-
what causes individuals to act in dif-
ferent ways and studies of how the viduals influence each other.
behavior is perceived. interaction (statistical): the additional
imprinting: a type of one-trial learning effect which one variable has when
which is highly resistant to extinction. another is at a particular level.
incentive: a goal object. interference theory of forgetting: the
incentive effect: a change in perfor- idea that learning some material causes
mance brought about by changing the other material to be forgotten because
expectations of the organism about in some way the memories interfere
the rewards it may obtain for the per- with each other.
formance. intergroup: between groups.
independent variable: what is manipu- internalization: making the standards
lated in an experiment so that the of another a part of the self through
effects of changing it may be studied. identification.
index of political predisposition: a pre- interposition: something coming be-
dictor of how a person is likely to tween the observer and what he is
vote based on his socioeconomic observing.
status, religious affiliation, and rural interrole conflict: different things being
or urban residence. expected of someone because he si-
informal organization: groupings and multaneously occupies more than one
relationships which are not provided
status.
for in the official structure of the or-
intraception: a concern with subjective
ganization. Compare formal organi-
phenomena.
zation.
intracranial: within the skull.
innate: not dependent on specific ex-
periences, but instead developing from intragroup: within the group.
hereditary causes in any normal en- intrarole conflict: different things being
vironment. expected of the holder of one status.
innate releasing mechanism: a percep- introspection: reporting on experience
tual system responding to certain by trained observers.
types of stimuli without previous IQ: intelligence quotient. A measure of
learning. intelligence deriving its name from
insight learning: learning in which the initially being calculated by dividing
solution to a problem appears sud- mental age by chronological age.

Glossary 375
just-noticeable difference: the least linear perspective: the apparent con-
change in stimulation which is, on the vergence of parallel lines receding in
average, noticeable to an observer. the distance.
link: in Deutsch’s model of motivation,
killing bite: the specific motor response a unit which conducts excitation into
used by polecats in killing prey. the motor system when the analyzer
kilogram: A unit of weight equaling associated with it is activated.
approximately 2.2 pounds. Its abbre- long-term memory: ability to remem-
viation is kg. ber events which are in the more dis-
kinesthesis: the sense which tells in- tant past. Because of the great length
dividuals the positions of their limbs of time that things may be remem-
by means of receptors in muscles, ten- bered, it appears that long-term
dons, and joints. memories may be stored by means of
structural changes in the nervous
latent learning: learning which is not system.
apparent in performance.
lateral geniculate body: a collection of Machiavellianism: the extent to which
cell bodies within the brain processing a person espouses the manipulative
visual stimulation. orientation to politics which Machia-
law of effect: Thorndike’s principle velli advocated in The Prince, as mea-
that the tendency for a stimulus to sured by an attitude scale.
call out a response will be increased manic-depressive psychosis: a severe
if the response leads to a satisfying personality disturbance characterized
state of affairs and decreased if the by states of wild excitement, states of
response leads to an annoying state of withdrawal and self-hatred, or both in
affairs. Later considerably modified. alternation.
law of exercise: a principle, first pro- manipulative strategy: a way of trying
posed and then later abandoned by to get someone to do what you want
Thorndike, indicating that learning him to do.
takes place through the simple repe- maturation: development of innate po-
tition of responses. tentials with time.
legitimate power: the ability which one mental age: the average age of children
who perform as well as the child be-
person has to influence another
ing tested. If a child performs as well
through holding a position which peo-
as the average six-year-old, his men-
ple see as giving him a right to make
tal age is six.
certain decisions and perform certain
metabolism: the chemical processes by
acts.
which protoplasm is formed and food
leveling: a failure to perceive or for- is broken down.
getting of details in the thing per- mnemonic device: an aid to memory.
ceived. mode: the score or category which is
level of aspiration: the performance for most frequent. In Schachter’s study of
which an individual is striving. communication to the deviant, a con-
limited central processing capacity: a federate who adopted the position
person’s inability to actively deal with taken by the largest number of mem-
very much information at any one bers of the group.
moment in time. molar: organized or studied in terms

376 Psychology: A Social Approach

 of large rather than small units of used as the basis for learning its
analysis. effects.
molecular: organized or studied in negative reinforcement: a state of af-
terms of small rather than large units fairs which, when it follows a re-
of analysis. sponse being given to a stimulus, will
moral anxiety: a disturbed state based decrease the probability of that re-
on fear that one will feel guilty about sponse being given to that stimulus
one’s behavior. in the future.
moralist: in the Gross et al. study, a neurosis: a mental disorder which does
school superintendent who frequently not involve as great disturbance of
made categorical judgments that a emotion, perception of reality, and be-
superintendent should always or never havior as does a psychosis.
do certain things. neurotic anxiety: a disturbed state
motion parallax: the apparent move- based on fear that one’s impulses will
ment of the world when the head is get out of control.
moved. It may be used as a depth cue, neurotic depression: a disturbed state
since objects nearer the observer seem characterized by negative emotional
to move more than those farther from reactions similar to those found in
him. mourning. Characterized by more anx-
motivation: the internal forces produc- iety but less self-hatred than depres-
ing behavior. sive psychosis.
motivational pathway: in Deutsch’s nomothetic approach: an approach to
model of motivation, a conductor of theory construction in which generali-
excitation from the point where the zations are drawn which would apply
motive originates to the links and to all normal individuals.
motor systems which initiate moti- nonsense syllable: two consonants with
vated behavior. a vowel between them not forming a
motor area: a portion of the brain word.
which, when stimulated, gives rise to norm: a standard applied to members
a muscular response. of a culture regardless of the specific
motor-impairment study: an_ experi- positions they hold within their so-
ciety, and enforced by sanctions.
ment in which an animal is trained to
give a response and then is made un-
object choice: the expression of a mo-
able to make that response so that the
tive on a particular object, with result-
response it makes instead may be
ing learning of preferences for this
studied. type of object.
multiple T-maze: a maze made of a observer bias: categorizing data so as
number of sections, each one shaped to either prove or disprove a point,
like the capital letter T. either consciously or unconsciously.
obsession: the recurrence of a thought
nativism: the position that much is in- or image, often a highly unpleasant
herited and little is learned. one. A person who kept imagining
natural experiment: an experiment in scenes of airplane crashes, for exam-
which the independent variable is not ple, would suffer from an obsession.
actively manipulated, but changes in obsessive-compulsive reactions: obses-
its level which occur naturally are sions and/or compulsions. They are

Glossary 377
 classed together as they frequently individuals, called the panel, are inter-
occur in the same individuals. viewed repeatedly. Multiple control
occupational mobility: the extent to groups are used to guard against arti-
which a person is moving upward to factual results.
a job generally regarded as more de- paradoxical sleep: the stage of sleep in
sirable or downward to a job regarded which dreaming generally occurs. It is
as less desirable. characterized by great relaxation but
Oedipus complex: in psychoanalytic a pattern of electrical activity of the
theory, the attraction of a boy to his brain similar to that found when the
mother and its psychological conse- person is awake.
quences. parathyroidectomized: having had the
operant behavior: behavior for which parathyroid glands removed.
no unconditional stimulus is known. parathyroid gland: a gland controlling
opinion: a quite specific idea about the level of calcium in the blood.
something. Similar to an attitude ex- parsimony: giving the simplest expla-
cept more specific and limited in scope. nation which can account for the phe-
opinion polling: the asking of isolated nomena.
questions, such as “Do you favor re- partial correlation: the extent to which
election of the President?” Yields less two things would go together if a
extensive information than attitude third thing were held constant.
measurement, where a series of related partial reinforcement: only rewarding
questions is asked about each topic. an organism for a portion of its cor-
organic therapy: the treatment of a dis- rect responses. There are several vari-
order by physical means. eties of partial reinforcement—fixed-
osmotic pressure: a measure of the ten- ratio, in which the organism is
dency of a fluid to pass through a reinforced for perhaps every tenth
semipermeable membrane into a more correct response, fixed-interval, in
salt solution. which it is reinforced for the first cor-
ovary: the organ producing female rect response after a given period of
germ cells. time, etc.
overactive deviant: a member of a perception: experience based on infor-
group who initiates a great deal of mation coming in through the sense
interaction but is not seen by other organs. See also sensation.
members of the group as being either peripheral: not central.
productive or likable. phobic reaction: the externalization of
overlearning: continuing to study ma- anxiety by fixing it on certain objects
terial after it is apparently learned. or situations. An unreasonable fear.
phylogenetic scale: an ordering of or-
paired comparisons: a highly precise ganisms in terms of their evolutionary
method of attitude scaling devised by development.
Thurstone, but an extremely laborious pituitary gland: a structure attached to
method to use. the base of the brain and influencing
paleontology: a branch of geology many other glands.
studying the fossil remains of earlier placebo: a treatment which has no ef-
forms of life. fect except through the suggestibility
panel design: a study in which certain of the patient.

378 Psychology: A Social Approach

place learning: learning to go to the proximity: nearness. A gestalt principle
same place even though doing so re- of perceptual organization indicating
quires different muscular responses. that stimuli which are close to each
placenta: the organ of communication other are likely to be perceived as
between the mother and the embryo. going together.
pleasure centers: areas of the brain in psychiatrist: a medical doctor special-
which positive reinforcement seems to izing in the treatment of mental ill-
be localized. ness.
positive reinforcement: a state of af- psychiatry: a branch of medicine spe-
fairs which, when it follows a response cializing in the treatment of mental
being given to a stimulus, will increase disorder.
the probability of that response being psychoanalysis: a theoretical approach
given to that stimulus in the future. to the study and treatment of person-
poulard: a spayed hen. ality disorder initiated by Sigmund
prejudice: a judgment made without Freud.
evidence, usually a negative one. psychoanalytic approach: “an approach
prestige suggestion: making something to personality and mental illness ini-
more acceptable by linking it to some- tiated by Sigmund Freud.
thing or someone that is highly psychopathic: violating the laws and
thought of. customs of one’s society without ap-
primacy effect: being most influenced parent guilt.
by material presented first. psychophysics: the study of the rela-
primary process. thinking: irrational tionships between variations of physi-
thinking characterizing both young cal energy and experience.
children and fantasy and humor of psychosis: a serious mental disorder
adults. involving major disturbances in the
principle of least interest: the generali- perception of reality, in speech and
zation that the person who cares least thought, and in mood and social rela-
about maintaining a relationship is in tions.
the best bargaining position. psychosomatic disorders: illnesses in
proactive inhibition: interference with which physical symptoms are partially
learning of later material by earlier or entirely due to psychological causes.
learned material. If knowing your old psychotherapist: a psychologist special-
telephone number made it more diffi- izing in the treatment of mental ill-
cult for you to learn your new tele- ness.
phone number, this would be an ex- psychotherapy: the treatment of men-
ample of proactive inhibition. tal disorder by psychological means.
probability: the proportion of the time psychotic: having or characterizing a
that the event will occur in a long psychosis.
series of trials. purposive: oriented toward a goal.
process (applied to mental disorder):
developing gradually without the pre- RAS: Reticular activating system.
cipitating conditions being clear. rationalization: giving a reason other
projection: attributing qualities to than the real one for doing something.
others which are not there but which reaction formation: acting on the basis
explain one’s own emotional reactions. of a motive which is unacceptable to

Glossary 379
 the self, although giving the super- impulses to the pleasure centers in the
ficial impression of acting on the op- brain.
posite motive. reinforcement theorist: a learning the-
reaction potential: the tendency to give orist believing that some reinforce-
a particular response at a particular ment, in a narrow sense, is necessary
time. Depends, in Hullian theory, on to all learning.
both the strength of the habit and the reintegration: remembering the context
amount of motivation. in which a stimulus was previously
reactive (applied to mental disorder): encountered.
characterized by sudden onset, as if relearning: learning something again,
in reaction to a particular situation. generally with the expenditure of less
reality anxiety: a disturbed state in time than was required to learn it the
which one fears punishment from the first time. The amount of time saved
world for behavior which is unaccept- is the most sensitive measure of pre-
able to himself. vious learning.
recall: the reproduction of a stimulus reliability: the extent to which a mea-
in awareness. suring instrument gives consistent re-
recency effect: being most influenced sults.
by material presented last. replication: a repetition of a research
receptor cell: a cell responding to some study to establish whether following
aspect of its environment by altering the specified procedures will reliably
the frequency with which it fires. produce the expected results.
rcognition: the identification of a representative sample: a number of
stimulus with one perceived previ- cases selected from a population in
ously. such a way that the proportions of
reference group: a group whose possi- various characteristics in the sample
ble judgments of him a person cares and the population will be approxi-
about. It may be a group, such as mately the same.
“literary critics a hundred years from repression: actively keeping material
now,” to which the person does not out of consciousness.
himself belong. respondent behavior: behavior for
referent power: the ability of one per-
which an unconditional stimulus is
son to influence another because the
known.
other identifies with him.
response generalization: giving some-
reflex: a simple, stereotyped, innate re-
what different responses than those
sponse given to a particular stimulus
that were learned.
by any normal member of the species.
regression: a return to an earlier mode reticular activating system: a complex
of adjustment. formation of neurons which is in-
reinforcement: in a broad sense, any- volved in attention.
thing which alters the probability of retina: the layer of the interior of the
a response being given to a stimulus. eyeball containing the receptor cells.
In a narrow sense, satisfaction or frus- retroactive inhibition: interference with
tration of motives. memory for things learned earlier by
reinforcement pathway: in Deutsch’s things learned later. If learning a new
model of motivation, a conductor of telephone number made a person for-

380 Psychology: A Social Approach

 get one he had learned before, this been learned before, expressed as the
would be retroactive inhibition. proportion of the original time saved.
retrograde amnesia: backward loss of scalogram analysis: a method of atti-
memory. tude scaling developed by Guttman.
reward power: the ability of one per- Has the advantage that no judges are
son to influence another by being able needed to sort the items, but other
to offer him something he wants. disadvantages.
rigidity of behavior: continuing to do scapegoat: a substitute object for the
the same thing under conditions expression of aggression.
where it is inappropriate. schizophrenia: a psychosis especially
role: the behavior expected of a person characterized by disturbances of lan-
holding a certain position in a given guage, thinking, and attention.
society. secondary process thinking: the realis-
role playing: taking on the behavior of tic thinking which characterizes ra-
a position other than that actually tional problem solving in the adult.
held in society. A boy who pretends secondary reinforcer: a stimulus which,
to be an airplane pilot is role playing, through association with a reinforcer,
for example. acquires the property of also acting as
routinization of charisma: a change in a reinforcer.
the nature of the leadership of a re- self-oriented needs: motives to defend
ligious movement from leaders who the ego.
are accepted on the basis of divine semicycle: in directed-graph theory, a
inspiration to leaders accepted on the series of lines which, if followed, will
basis of meeting formal criteria of lead back to the point of origin.
selection. sensation: awareness of energy imping-
rule of law: general agreement on the ing on a sense organ. While a distinc-
rules of the political game. Proposed tion used to be made between sensa-
by Dicey to necessarily include accep- tion, which was thought to involve no
tance of government as legitimate and interpretation of the stimulation, and
freedom from arbitrariness or favor- perception, which was thought to in-
itism on the part of government. volve interpretation, it now appears
rules of correspondence: statements of that pure sensation is probably never
what characteristics of the world cor- experienced.
respond to what entities in a theory. sense organ: a portion of the body spe-
cialized in the perception of stimuli of
sampling bias: comparing groups which a given type. The eye is the sense
differ in ways other than the level of organ of vision, for example.
the independent variable, or generaliz- sensory area: a portion of the brain
ing from cases to a population which which, when stimulated, gives rise to
they are not representative of. a sensation, such as that of light,
sanction: a reward (positive sanction) sound, or taste.
or punishment (negative sanction) ad- sentiment: a positive or negative feel-
ministered to one who does or does ing toward something.
not comply with social expectations. septal area: a region of the brain near
saving score: how much less time it the band of nerve fibers connecting
takes to learn something after it has the two cerebral hemispheres.

Glossary 381
serial-position effect: the tendency, bers of the group but then allowed
when a series of items is presented himself to be won over to the ma-
to be learned, to learn the first and jority position.
last items best and the middle items social class: a position in a prestige
least well. hierarchy to which a person is as-
set: readiness, either to perceive some- signed more on the basis of the roles
thing or to respond in a certain way. he plays in society than on the basis
shape constancy: seeing an object as of how well he plays them.
remaining the same shape even though social group: used loosely to apply to
the retinal image of it changes in any aggregation of individuals or even
shape. a class of individuals, such as ““men
sharpening: exaggerating the differ- over the age of forty.” Used strictly
ences between something perceived to apply to an enduring organization
and other things which the perceiver of few enough individuals that they
expects or is familiar with. are responded to on the basis of their
short-term memory: ability to remem- personal characteristics.
ber events which are in the immediate social institution: the traditional ways
past. It is so easily disrupted that it in which a particular culture provides
seems to depend on an ongoing pro- for a given area of human activity. All
cess. cultures, for example, have certain in-
significant results: results which would stitutionalized ways of raising chil-
occur by chance less than some arbi- dren.
trarily set proportion of time, fre- socialization: induction into a role or
quently one time in twenty. roles which a person will play in so-
similarity: a gestalt principle of per- ciety.
ceptual organization indicating that social power: relative ability to influ-
stimuli which are similar to each other ence. In Thibaut and Kelley’s theoreti-
are likely to be perceived as going cal approach, the range of costs and
together. rewards through which one individual
situational factors: influences on be- can move another.
havior which are environmental rather social reality: the nature of the world
than personal.
according to the views of a particular
size constancy: seeing an object as re-
social grouping.
maining the same size even though
social role: the behavior expected of a
the size of the retinal image changes.
person holding some particular status,
Skinnerian methods: the shaping of
or position, in a society.
operant behavior by providing posi-
tive reinforcement for successively socioeconomic status: social class as
closer approximations to the desired judged by those indicators, largely
response. A pigeon might be taught to economic, most readily rated by an in-
peck a lever, for example, by reinforc- terviewer.
ing it every time it moved closer to socioemotional leader: the person most
the lever than it had been before. effective in dealing with the emotional
slider: in Schachter’s study of com- tensions and conflicts arising in a
munication to the deviant, a person group.
who initially took a position quite dif- source of data: what it is that is
ferent from that taken by most mem- studied. Used more specifically to refer

382 Psychology: A Social Approach

 to what organisms, living under what subcortical: areas of the brain reached
conditions, are studied. by afferent stimulation before it
spontaneous recovery: the reappearance reaches the cortex.
of an extinguished response after a subliminal: below the threshold, or
period of time during which the condi- limen. The limen is the amount of
tional stimulus is not present. stimulation which will be reported on
standard stimulus: one provided so the average.
that others may be compared with it. successive-comparison system: learning
statistical control: the elimination of a list by visualizing images which
alternate explanations of experimental combine each successive pair of stim-
results by the study of the relative uli.
effects which different variables have successive intervals: a method of atti-
when more than one are allowed to tude scaling more refined and accurate
vary at a time. than equal-appearing intervals. The
status: (1) any position in a society task of the judges is the same as in
which has a role or set of expected equal-appearing intervals, but the data
behaviors associated with it. (2) Posi- are analyzed differently.
tion in a hierarchy of class, prestige, superego: the individual’s internalized
or power. moral standards.
stereotype: a widely held idea not sup- synthesis: the combination of elements
portable by evidence. Frequently a to form a more complex whole.
negative view of a group to which the
person holding the view does not be- task leader: the person most effective
long. in enabling a group to be productive.
stimulus: a feature of the environment TAT: Thematic Apperception Test.
which may influence an organism. testosterone: a male sex hormone.
stimulus error: in classical introspec- Thematic Apperception Test: a test of
tion, reporting perceptions rather than personality and motivation based on
sensations. telling stories about pictures.
stimulus generalization: responding to theory: a set of symbols and rules for
a new stimulus in a way similar to their manipulation.
thoracic ganglion (plural ganglia): a
that in which the organism has learned
nerve center in the chest.
to respond to a similar stimulus in
thymus gland: a gland involved in im-
the past. Initial generalization occurs
mune reactions of the body.
without reinforced practice with the
thyroid gland: a gland regulating me-
new stimulus, while conditioned gen- tabolism.
eralization occurs after positive rein- togetherness situation: a situation in
forcement for generalization. which people come together for only
stimulus-response theory: a _ learning a short time or a special purpose. A
theory maintaining that what is situation in which an ad hoc group is
learned is to give certain responses to assembled.
certain stimuli. total institution: a social structure at-
structuralism: the first formal school of tempting to provide for all the needs
psychology. It saw the basic task of and activities of its members.
the field as finding the elements of ex- transposition effect: responding to a
perience. stimulus on the basis of its relations

Glossary 383
 to other stimuli. See transposition ex- unconditioned response: unconditional
periment. response.
transposition experiment: an _ experi- unconditioned stimulus: unconditional
ment in which an organism is trained stimulus.
to respond to one stimulus rather than unconscious: not present in conscious-
another and then tested on a different ness for any one of several reasons,
pair of stimuli. The name derives from including lack of appropriate sense
the transposition of a melody into a organs and motivated unconscious-
different key. An example of a trans- ness.
position experiment would be one in unit of analysis: the size element into
which an animal was trained to go which the data are broken down in
toward a bright light rather than a being studied.
dim one and then tested with a bright unit relation: in Heider’s balance the-
light and a still brighter one. ory, a relationship between people
traumatic anxiety: a disturbed state forcing them to associate with each
which is based in the actually present other regularly.
situation rather than memories of ear-
lier situations. value: a positive or negative view of
traumatic discipline: discipline which is something broad enough to help the
highly anxiety-inducing for the child, individual evaluate many other things.
either because it is unclear what be- Similar to an attitude but more gen-
havior is being punished or because of eral.
the harsh and unusual nature of the ventral: toward the abdominal side of
punishment. the organism.
visual cliff: a drop-off covered by
UCR: unconditional response. strong glass so that it appears to be
UCS: unconditional stimulus. a cliff even though it is not possible
unconditional positive regard: the total to fall off it.
acceptance of the patient by the thera- visual-deprivation experiments: studies
pist thought necessary in the school in which organisms are kept from
of psychotherapy founded by Carl having normal opportunities to see.
Rogers. von Restorff effect: learning better a
unconditional response: a response stimulus which differs from the others.
which is always called out by a par-
ticular stimulus, without training. See word salad: a highly disturbed use of
also unconditional stimulus. language characteristic of schizo-
unconditional stimulus: a _ stimulus phrenia.
which always calls out a particular
response, without training. The stimu- Zeigarnik effect: remembering uncom-
lus and the response make up the un- pleted tasks better than completed
conditional reflex. tasks under nonthreatening conditions.

384 Psychology: A Social Approach

NAME INDEX

Page numbers in italics indicate quotation.

Abelson, R., 78-83, 85, 321, 322 Arnhoff, F., 214

Adolph, E., 148 Aronson, E., 172-174, 176, 180, 184,
Adorno, T., 293, 309, 310 307, 309, 311
Allee, W., 148 Asch, S., 66-71, 67, 68, 85, 178, 327-
Allponta Gor 43pe5 Oo mOor/ynO4 noo) 331, 341, 344, 360
il, Salil, Aree)
Ames, A., 46
Anthony, A., 184 Back, K., 353, 364
Appley, M., 146, 147, 183 Baker, R., 103, 114

Name Index 385

 Bales, R. F., 350, 351, 359, 364 Brown, R., 80, 81, 85
Ball, J., 103, 114 Bunney, W., 135, 148
Bandura, A., 183 Burdick, H., 163, 183
Barker, O., 149 Burnham, W., 231, 247
Barron, F., 330 Burtt, H., 246
Bartlett, F., 62, 62, 84 Byron, Lord, 221
Beach, F., 132, 146, 148
Beauchamp, Christine (Sally), case
Gannon Ve i ZOn L427,
of, 192-195 Carlsmith, J., 306, 307, 309, 311
Bell, C., 9, 10, 9, 10, 29 Carmichael, L., 147
Bell, J., 303-305, 304, 305, 309, 311
Carpenter, C., 148
Bellows, R., 148
Cartwright, D., 76, 85, 184, 364
Bendix, R., 278
Cartwright, R., 215
Bensman, J., 267, 267, 278, 353, 364
Gascony bie 4 a
Berelson, B., 185, 334, 335, 336, 337,
Cattell pele
341
Gaylor, Jy 163, 183
Berger, P., 281, 309
Chapanis, JNny, WAS, NYAS), TiAsi, LV), Wears:
Berkeley, G., 8
Chapanis, Natalia, 178, 179, 178,
Berkowitz, L., 183
LOLS
Bernard, L., 119, 147
Chapman, J., 214
Berne, E., 189, 189, 213
Charters, W., 278
Bernstone, A., 97, 114
Cheek, D., 183
Bettelheim, B., 173, 184, 300-303,
Child eaten s4:
309, 311
Cleckley, H., 214
Binet, A., 14, 17
Cofer, C., 146, 147, 183
Binstock, W., 148
Cohen, A., 184
Bion, W., 349, 352, 358, 364
Cohen, C., 309
Birney, R., 163, 183
Collins, B., 311
Blau, P., 346, 347, 347, 348, 353, 355,
Collins, Mary, 307-309, 311, 355
363, 364
Conant, J., 269, 269, 278
Bliss, E., 148
Crutchfield, R., 330
Bogardus, E., 265
Cutler, R., 210, 215
Boring, E., 10-12, 10-12, 29, 54, 55,
59, 113, 114, 146
Bourne, A., case of, 153, 154, 192 Damianopoulos, E., 214
Bowden, J., 38, 58 Darwin, C., 13, 14, 16, 17, 29, 283
Bower, G., 113 Darwin, E., 13
Bower, T., 48, 51-56, 59 Davis Ae e250 neal a7
Bowlby, J., 122, 147 Davis) elena
Braden, Marcia, 178, 185 Davis, K., 66, 85
Bramel, D., 303-305, 304, 305, 309, Dement, W., 38, 58, 59
Sil! Descartes, R., 8
Brecermlam20 QaclAmoolemaol nooo. Dettschvye eel alc 7lso—
14 Apelor
341 148, 149
Brehm, J., 184 Deutsch, M., 307-309, 311, 355
Brenner, C., 183 Dewey, J., 14
Brown, A., case of, 153-154, 192 DiceywA. Gy 258259) 277
LOW EZ Oe O a. Dobrzecka, C., 142, 149

386 Name Index

Dollard, J., 285, 286, 286, 300, 310, Gardner, Mary, 250, 251, 277
Sia Gatess Avi2237, 247,
Dornbush, S., 184 Gaudet, Helen, 185, 334, 335, 336,
Dunham, H., 170, 184 Bye, eyalal
Dunphy, D., 214 Gergen, K., 66, 85
Gibson, Eleanor, 51, 59
Gibson, J., 35, 35, 55, 58, 59
JBalitorat, IIo, LE
Gibson) Re 2054214
Ebbinghaus, H., 88, 217-221, 226,
Gleitman, H., 104, 114
Pigyey, PHN)
Glickman, S., 231, 247
Edwards, A., 266, 278, 301
Green, B., 267, 278
Eellsy Kea277.
Green, D., 184
Ehrlich, D., 176, 185
Gregory, R., 50, 50, 59
Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I., 124-126, 147
Gross, N., 338, 339, 341
Ellis, R., 318-320, 341
Guetzkow, H., 360, 364
Engels, F., 282, 310 Guttman, I., 185
Epstein, R., 293, 310 Guttman, L., 263-266, 277
Emlcsony bs 20492,05205, 204
Escher, M., 44, 59
Estes, W., 96, 114
Hailman, J., 148
Eve, case of, 192 Hall, C., 183, 184
Eysenck, H., 207-209, 214 Hamburg, D., 148
Hamilton, A., 276
Fabre, J. H., 112, 115, 117-121, 124, Hansen, M., law of, 180, 235
146
Harary, F., 76, 85
Fairweather, G., 208, 211-213, 211, Hardyck, Jane, 178, 185
ZS
Jakediony, Isl, ail, ee, WA, wets, als,
Fantz, R., 59, 84 152 aio:

Faris, R., 170, 184 Tattle loo ml66

Fawcett, J., 148 Hartley, D., 8
Fechner, G., 10-12 Hartley, E., 294, 310, 311
Ferster, C., 114 Hemingway, E., 144
Festinger, L., 20, 171-182, 184, 185, Heidbreder, Edna, 17, 17, 19, 29
ZOyey, B1Ohs), Salil
Heider, F., 74-79, 74, 83-85
Helmholtz, H. von, 10
Fisher, C., 58, 59
Helmreich, R., 311
Fouriezos, N., 360, 364
French, J., 344, 345, 354, 363, 364 Hernandez-Peon, R., 39, 40, 57, 59
Hess, E., 85
Frenkel-Brunswik, Else, 295-298,
Heyns, R., 183
296-298, 302, 302, 310, 311
Hilgard, E.; 113
Freud, Anna, 147, 183, 184
Hinckley, E., 263, 264, 278
Ereud, S,, 17—20) 152—1160) 165, 1166)
Hitler, A., 19, 282, 283, 310, 335
isiey, tsi, ew), PAWL, PANG, Pek), WLP4
Hollingshead, A., 197-201, 197, 198,
ZOO, 20 206, 2s" 24 266-2741,
Gah Dye50 PHS SKK on, Pues, JAAS)
Galanter, E., 85 Holt, J., 189, 189, 213
Galton, F., 14, 16, 17, 29 Holt, R., 162, 162, 183
Gardnemus e250 oleae 77 Holway, A., 54, 55, 59

Name Index 387

 Honzik, C., 97, 98, 114 Klopfer, P., 148
Hovland, C., 263, 264, 278 Kluckhohn, R., 184
Howarth, C., 142, 143, 149 Knox, R., 85
Hubel, D., 32-35, 50, 57-59 Kohler, I., 59
Hudspeth, W., 235, 237, 247 Kohler, W., 1-4, 29, 102, 103
Fill CeeA0rr AI S9=107™ 10) tay Kozol pane 7 oeuo
UXO), ISA, ISHS). alabey, aves)
Hume, D., 9
Lange, Dorothea, 186
Hunt, E., 229) 230, 247
Lashley, K., 41, 42, 57, 59, 103, 114,
Flunternmlea22Sec 4a 47,
132A OF Ay voZ:
Hutt, M., 360, 364
Lawrence, D., 103, 114
Lawson, J., 214
Israel, H., 64, 84 Lavan), IP, 1s, 277, Bl, G25,
Ittelson, W., 46, 59 Belo, GEV, SA!
LavaanrieS, I, WSL, Biz!
Leites, N., 310
Jackson, D., 202, 214 Lenin, N., 67
Jahoda, Marie, 208, 215, 310 Bevin, Hl, 257183295 310
James, Alice, 183 Levine, G., 278
James, W., 11-15, 11, 12, 17, 20, 29, Levinson, D., 310, 311
je), ise), Ike, TSS, Sey sey, PAZ, Lewin, K., 169, 290, 310, 356-358,
SUS, SIS, BH, Gilley. GO. VIL 364
Janowitz, M., 300-303, 309, 311, vacdellperieaL OS) lure:
CI, BIL Lincoln, A., 225, 310
Jasper, H., 58 Lindsley, D., 38, 58
Jean, case of, 205 Lindzey, Gy, 183, 184, 267, 278
Jefferson, T., 67, 282 Lipset, S., 278
Johnson, “Boney,” case of, 272, 273 Bitte 2o=2 Ae eS
Johnson, L., 262 Livingston, F., 149
Jones, A., 139, 149 locken|eiZ Ome On OT,
Jones, E., 66, 85 Porenz iw 2 72S 7 Oa
Jouvet, M., 38-40, 57, 58 Lowenthal, Ly 256, 256, 257, 257,
Jucknat, Margaret, 74, 85 DI yy. GET
lecichinspAwO 470 aAlealS4ao>

Kahl, J., 278

Kahn, R., 333 McGall, G., 341.
Katona, G., 237-240, 245-247 Maccoby, Eleanor, 157, 183, 295,
Katz Dy 130=11327147, SllON SII Sa 3647305
Katz, Rosa, 147 McDougall, W., 119
Kelley, lnk, WO), JAL, BS, Tsk, PU, BS, McEachern, A., 338, 341
354, 364 Macfarlane, D., 104, 105, 114
Kennedy, J., 361 McGaugh, J., 207, 214, 233-237, 247
Killian, L., 299, SII BA, SAT, CAL McGhie, A., 214
Kilpatrick, F., 46, 59 McGraw, Myrtle, 129, 130, 147
Kimble, D., 237, 247 Mack, J., 148
Klineberg, O., 2, 29 McKean, K., 214
Kling, H., 86 Mackenzie, J., 148

Name Index
McLaughlin, B., 214 Petersen, W., 277, 311
Madsen, M., 232-234, 247 Pettigrew, T., 48, 59
Magendie, F., 10 Plato, 8
Magoun, H., 38, 58 POSnenaVi 226 12277,
Mahar, B., 214 ostiiany LoS al s455) oll 99)
Mandler, G., 85 SHUL
Margulis, S., 303-305, 304, 305, 309, Powloski, R., 114
BAliL Prange, G., 310
Marx, K., 282, 310 Prince, M., 192-195, 192-195, 207,
Mason, J., 148 214
Mason, W., 338, 341 Proshansky, H., 184
Meeker, Marchia, 277
Meredith, J., 303
Merei, F., 355, 358, 364 Raven, B., 354, 364
Miles, M., 211-213, 215 Redlich, F., 206, 214, 278
Milgram, S., 288-293, 309, 310, 328, Rees, H., 64, 84
CVO). SeY/, BL. GVel, Noy exex6) Rheinberger, M., 58
Mill, J. S., 13 Richards leye97 alae
Miller, G., 243, 247 Richter Gem Ona71
Miallispalel7 27476 aSOy 184,185 Riecken, H., 185
Minh, Ho Chi, 283 Riesen, A., 47, 59
Moruzzi, G., 38, 58 Riesman, D., 256
Mozart, W., 22 Riley, D., 103, 114
Muenzinger, K., 97, 114 Roatch, J., 148
Murray, H., 160, 161, 182, 184 Roffwarg, H., 58
Muzio, J., 58 Rogers, C., 206
Rogler, L., 197-201, 197, 198, 200,
DOI 213 204
Nailson, case of, 162, 163, 167 Rohrer |i 24029
Newcomb, I 77, 78, 82, 85, 311, Roosevelt, F., 335
320-3237 8521550) 040) 9344, 353) Rosenberg, M., 78-83, 85, 254, 255,
361, 364 MUTE, A, PrP
Nixon, R., 361 Rosenzweig, S., 169, 170, 184
Nowlis, V., 183 Ross, Dorothea, 183
Ross, Sheila, 183
Rouse, R., 149
O’Connor, Patricia, 163, 183 Rowan, W., 148
Ogilvie, D., 214
@Oldswie 529 ApS
Sacharaey alc onulisontA6
Sandberg, C., 310
Padilla, Mrs., case of, 197—201 Sanford, N., 310, 311
Paul, R., 60 Schachter, S., 144-146, 149, 185,
Pavlov, I., 15, 16, 88-95, 99-102, 108, 351, 358, 364
109, 112, 126 Scherrer, H., 39, 40, 57, 59
Pelz, Edith, 357, 358, 364 Schiller, Clara, 147
erkinsm@24 227, Schlosberg, H., 41, 41, 59, 89, 113
Perky, Carolyn, 64, 84 Schonbach, P., 185

Name Index 389

 Schuler, E., 277 Wurmmensosec4 crea
Sears, Pauline, 74, 85, 183
Sears lo OO MOO GG Loa,
295, 310 Veroff, J., 163, 183
Seidenberg, B., 184 Vidich, A., 267, 267, 278, 353, 364
Selye, H., 134, 135, 148 Vogel, J., 215
Sherif, Carolyn, 307, 311, 364 von Restorff, H., 242
Sherif, M., 263, 264, 278, 307, 308,
311, 344, 364
Walk, R., 59
ShilsaEeeoll7osd
Walker, E., 183
Simmons, J., 341
Wallace, J., 50, 59
Sim Oneal,
Wallace, W., 242, 247
Singer, J., 72, 72, 85, 144-146, 149
Warner, W. L., 250, 250, 267-269,
Skinner, B., 51, 91, 91, 99, 108-110,
114
277, 278
Watson, J., 15-17, 19, 29, 103-105,
Smelser, N., 278
119
Smelser, W., 278
Weber, E., 10-12
Smith, M., 214
Weber, M., 177, 348
Smith, S., 243, 244
Weil, R., 214
Spence, K., 102, 103, 114
Wertheimer, M., 44, 59
Sperling, G., 226, 247
Wesley, J., 252, 252
SPeLuy OO RO9
West, Patricia, 278
Spitz, JR, SUAL, ae, Aly
Westbrook, W., 237
Stamtonnlen 77
White, R., 213
Stone, Frank, Jr., case of, 271, 272
Wine, Is isk, 258) ee, 250), Dero)
Stones lai
PLETE
Sussman, L., 278
Whiting, J., 171, 183, 184
Wiesel, T., 32-35, 50, 57-59
Wilkens, L., 148
Tajfel, H., 63, 84
Wilkes, A., 63, 84
Tarnecki, R., 142, 149
Mealesee salon AG
Willkie, W., 335
Witt elelG
Tihibatwapaavinl SSeS s52 354)
Wolfenstein, M., 310
364
VVOlitn Gru Olpe2s
Thigpen; C.,.214
Woodworth, R., 41, 41, 59, 89, 113
Thompson, Clara, 183
Thomson, C., 235, 237, 247
Wundt, W., 10-15, 17, 20
Wyrwicka, W., 142, 149
Thorndike, E., 88, 92-101, LOOM ULO,
114
Thurstone, L., 263, 266, 276-278
Yerkes, R., 42
Tinbergen, N., 124, 124, 128, 129,
Noung lie eO
OTP MAOR AT eas:
Tinklepaugh, O., 72, 85
Tolman, E., 97-99, 104, 110-115 Zeigarnik, Bluma, 169, 170, 184
Torgerson, W., 267, 278 Zorbaugh, H., 314, 314, 315, 316,
Trowbridge, M., 94, 114 S20n340
Tuddenham, R., 330, 330, 341 Zotterman, Y., 138

Name Index
SUBJECT INDEX

Acquaintance, 77, 78, 269-271, 345, Analysis, opposition to, 15, 19

352-355 in perception, 32-35
(See also Perception, of people) Anxiety, effects of, 136, 165, 289
Acquisition, 91 sources of, 166, 179, 292, 333, 340
Aerial perspective, 55, 58 theoretical discussion of, 165-174,
Aggression, expression of, 286-305, 190-192
Srey BI types of, 166, 167
(See also Motives, aggressive) ways of coping with, 167, 182,
Alcoholism, 188, 189, 195, 290, 291 iekor, Ahoy waleA. Viele —eoley, hele}
Amnesia, 153, 154, 193-195, 228, 340
231-235 Assimilation, 67—72, 84, 239

Subject Index 391

 Association, and prejudice, 307, 308 Behaviorism, 6, 14-20, 28, 99-105,
by social class, 269-271 108-113, 119
Associationism, British, 7-9, 12, 13, Beliefs, disconfirmation, 176-178
16 Bell-Magendie law, 10
contemporary, 92-105, 108, 109, Bennington studies, 320-327, 332,
IAS, WO 336, 340, 355, 360-362
Athens, Tennessee, case study of, Binocular parallax, 55-58
259-261, 276 Birth order, 72
Attention, 36, 39-42, 51, 57, 61-64, Blank slate, 7, 8, 19, 87, 119, 122—
82, 194, 196, 241 130
(See also Memory; Thinking) Blindness, psychosomatic, 190-192
Attitude, change, 81, 82, 171-182, recovery from, 49, 50
252-255, 304-308, 320-327, Brain, anatomy, 4, 5, 9, 10
334-340, 360-362 damage, 195, 228
defined, 253, 254 effects of electroconvulsive shock,
measurement, 22, 23, 262—267, 232-235
MS, PALI, GO effects of strychnine sulfate, 236,
relation to behavior, 211, 250-252, Sf
S05 motor areas, 4, 5, 129, 130
transmission, 269-277, 307 pleasure centers, 5, 141-143
Attitudes, balancing, 78-84 reticular activating system, 37, 38,
cultural, 62-64, 281-284 Sy.
influenced by social class, 250- sensory areas, 4, 5, 32-35, 39, 40,
DODO
— 2. 138
organized around values, 254, 255 stimulation, 5, 137, 141-143
sample of, 266 (See also Thinking)
toward minority group members, Brayshaw’s code, 242-245
69, 264, 265, 284-286, 293-— Bureaucracy, 346-349
309
“what everybody knows,” 250—
ZOZ
Attraction, 77, 78, 352, 353 Cause and effect, association by, 8
Authoritarian personality, 293-299, @hance, 24-27
OVA, 20K), Seu, Cisys, Byeve) Child, death of, 191, 198, 200, 203
Authority (see Relations to author- development, 123, 155-159
ity; Social control) NEAL Camp lACtlCeSpllovym lo Opell,
295-299
Childhood, experiences as factor in
Balance theory, 74-84, 174, 181, 254, mental illness, 156, 166, 170,
AES, CAMA=OHY, ZYMo), Sisal, Biers} 171, 198, 202-206
358-362 experiences as function of social
Behavior, adaptive value, 14, 120- Glass lO le2Oo=
2777aoilG—
IAA 320
cultural influences on, 144, 145, unconscious memories of, 158, 159,
159, 160 166, 194, 204
as subject matter psychology, 3-7, unfavorable conditions during, 3,
aS, 1k UA, WL, WA, WA), Tere’

392 Subject Index

Closure, grouping to achieve, 45-48, Cooperation and competition, 345—
57 348
Cocktail-party effect, 37 Corticosteroid hormones, 134-136,
Coding, in learning, 226-231, 241- 191
246 Crisis situations, behavior in, 258—
in perception, 31-35, 53, 57 261 276, 299
Cognitive dissonance, 20, 74, 168, Cross-cultural studies, 2, 3, 49, 62,
171-182, 303-309, 339, 355 63, 119, 171, 198-201, 206, 255,
amount, 174, 175, 305 256
compared to ego defense, 179-182, Cross pressures, 336, 337
304, 305 Cultural disorganization, 204-206
relationships among elements, 174 Culture, as definition of the situa-
studies of, 172-174, 176-179, 303— tion, 281-284, 299, 345-348,
309 356-358
ways reducing, 175-177, 179-182 and stereotyped interaction, 352
Cognitive learning theory (see Ex- (See also Learning; Social control)
pectancy theory) Cure (see Psychotherapy)
Cohesion (see Group solidarity)
Communication channels, 344, 345,
348, 351-354, 357
Competitive practices, 347, 348 Data, as related to theory, 20-28,
Completion effect, 46, 48, 52, 53 87, 88, 105-110, 152
Conditioned avoidance, 96, 233 (See also Source of data)
Conditioning (see Learning) Decision making, 337-340, 358-360
Conflict, psychological, 18, 74, 134, Decision trees, 229-231
15a lo/-) LOSI L382 e210; Defense mechanisms, 157, 165-171,
287-293 179-182, 289-293, 331
Conformity, 164, 286-293, 326-332, (See also Neurosis; Psychosis)
340 Definition of the situation, 281-284,
and group structure, 350-352, 355— 299, 345-348, 356-358
358 Delusions, 196, 197, 204
importance of unanimity, 328, 329 Dependency, 188, 252
personality factors, 330-332, 338 Differentiation, 82, 181, 322-320)
(See also Reference groups) 336
Consistency theory (see Balance Directed-graph theory, 76
theory) Direction, grouping by, 45-47, 57
Consolidation hypothesis, 227-237, Disaster, research on, 299, 327
246 Discipline, 157, 158, 295-297, 307
Constancy, brightness, 43, 54, 57 Displacement, 168, 182, 291-303
shape, 43, 48, 54, 57 Dissonance (see Cognitive disso-
size, 43, 52-57 nance)
Contact comfort, 121, 123 Division of labor, 348-352
Content analysis, 256, 257, 274-276 Dreams, 37—39, 161, 167, 194
Contiguity, association by, 8 Drive-reduction theory, 99-102,
(See also Reinforcement) 119-123, 137, 141
Control group, 23, 27, 209 Drug addiction, 188, 195

Subject Index 393

 Education and social class, 269-277 Family disorganization, 201, 203—
Educational decision making, 338, 205
339 Fenwick study, 78-83
EEG) 37, 38 Figure-ground relationship, 43
Efficient memorizing, major princi- Fixed motor pattern, 124-127, 146
ples summarized, 223, 224, 245 Forgetting, course over time, 219—
Ego, attitude as, 252 22h 220, 239,246
origin, 155, 170, 203—205 theories of, 227-237, 246
Electroconvulsive shock, 232-235 Friendship, 77, 78, 269-271, 352,
Emotion, 134-136, 144-146, 303- SoS
305 Functionalism, 14-17, 20, 28
Emotional responses, disturbance of,
195-197, 201, 203, 204
Empiricism, 7, 46-48 General adaptation syndrome (see
Endocrine glands, adrenal, 130, 134— Stress)
136, 144, 145 Generalization, response, 103-105
corpus luteum, 130, 131 stimulus, 91, 92, 102, 103, 112
gonads, 130, 133-136 Gestalt theory, 19, 20, 28, 43-48, 53
parathyroid, 120, 130 Group, communication in, 345, 351
pituitary, 130-136 contrasted with togetherness, 344,
placenta, 130, 132 345, 360
thyroid, 130-133 rejection of deviant, 351, 352
Environment (see Heredity) structure, 344, 348-355
Environmentalism, 19, 20 Group conflict, dealing with, 350,
(See also Empiricism) 358-360
Equal-appearing-intervals scaling, Group decision studies, 356-358
263, 264 Group pressure (see Conformity;
Equivalent-stimulus technique, 52 Reference groups)
Ethology, 124-129, 139, 146 Group processes and personal
Evaluation of productivity, 346-348, change, 211-213, 307, 308, 313—
360 326, 334-340, 355-358, 360—-
Evolutionary theory, 13, 14, 19, 47, 364
CBs WAIL Group solidarity, 172,317, 320, 3217
Expectancy theory, 99, 100, 110-112, 347, 355-360
IONS, WANE Guilt, 189, 195, 209, 285, 289
Experience, as subject matter psy- (See also Anxiety; Repression)
chology, 3-7, 12-15, 19
(See also Heredity)
Experiment, critical, 27 Halo effect, 71, 72
natural, 3, 27, 48 Happiness, strategies of seeking,
role-playing, 78-83 187-189
simple, 23-29 Hearing (see Perception)
Experimental group, 23, 27 Heredity, interaction with environ-
Extinction, 91, 96, 112, 143 ment, 3, 20, 34-36, 46—53, 57,
61—62, 122-130, 202, 203
(See also Instinct; Nativism)
Failure, reactions to, 73, 74, 189 Heroes, characteristics of, 256, 257
(See also Threat to the self) Hetzer-Wolf baby tests, 121

Subject Index
Higher-order conditioning, 89, 99, Internal factors in behavior (see
HOO LZO: Heredity; Hormones)
Homeostasis, 120-123, 128-130, 141 Interposition, 55, 58
Hormones, 130-137, 143-146, 191
methods of action, 132, 146
(See also Endocrine glands) Judgment, 63, 64, 71, 263, 264
Human relations training, 212
Hypnosis, 17, 18, 83, 153, 154, 193,
LOA 254255 Killing of prey, 125, 126

Id, defined, 154, 155 Language, 63-69, 196

Ideas, association of, 8, 9, 12 Law, of effect, 92-99, 109
source of, 7-9 of exercise, 94
Identification, 156-160, WAL, IEL8%, Leaders, types of, 349-352, 359, 360
295-299, 354 Leadership, 282, 283, 293, 318-320,
Identity (see Self) 348-352, 355-258
Identity crisis, 204, 205, 315 Learned factors in behavior (see En-
(See also Threat to the self) vironment)
Ideology, 281-284, 305, 359 Learning, concept, 229-231
Illusions, 45—49 conditioning, 15, 16, 52, 57, 88—
Impression formation (see Percep- C2 OO OS a OS—It0) 12
tion, of people) 120
Imprinting, 127, 128, 146 cultural, 62-66, 119, 144, 145, 155—
Inhibition, proactive, 220, 245 160, 171, 294, 307
retroactive, 220 discrimination, 41, 42, 92, 102,
Initiation, 171-176, 182 NOS AOCOM2
Information processing in perception, Hull’s theory of, 40, 41, 99-107,
Sl BOOS Boy Sy IUA0)

(See also Coding) insight, 1, 2

Innate factors in behavior (see (See also Organizing in mem-
Heredity) orizing)
Innate releasing mechanism, 124- latent, 97-99, 110, 113, 141
maze, 97-101, 103-105, 111, 140,
1277 146
AS38237,
Instines Ort —11O 22 —-Le On 37,
measures of, 218, 221, 238, 246
146
motor pattern, 110, 126-129, 142
Intelligence, adaptive value, 14-17
nonsense syllables, 218-221
of animals, 42, 93, 112
paired associates, 242
as factor in nonconformity, 330 perceptual, 47-51, 126-128, 229
group differences, 2, 3 DIAGEO OA lelOpelal oma
individual differences, 14-17, 133 preferences, 110, 120, 144, 155,
testing (see Mental testing) 156
Interaction, observation of, 359, 360 of principles (see Organizing in
statistical, 24 memorizing)
Interest, as factor in attention, 62—64 role, 157-160, 171, 267-277
Interference theory of forgetting, trial and error, 2, 93, 94, 109
220, 227-231, 236, 242, 246 (See also Memorizing)

Subject Index 395

 Level of aspiration, 72-74, 189, 316- Motivation, Deutsch’s theory, 136—
320 146
Leveling, 68, 69, 84 Motivational pathway, 140-143, 146
Linear perspective, 55, 57 Motive, arousal, 128, 133, 136-143,
Link in Deutsch’s model, 140-144 146
Locomotion, development of, 129, termination of, 137-143, 146
130 (See also Attitude)
Motives, achievement, 163-165
affiliation, 163-165
Machiavellianism, 72, 188 aggressive, 133, 157-159, 162, 163,
Manic-depressive psychosis, 135, 166, 167, 203, 286-309
136, 170, 195, 203-206, 213 hunger, 120, 139, 140
Memorizing, effect of meaningful- measurement of, 158-165
ness on, 220-226, 237-246 self-oriented needs, 210, 294, 300—
effect of recitation, 221-224, 246 305, 358-360
overlearning, 220, 221 sexual, 127, 129, 133-136, 142,
relearning, 221, 246 TAG loop Oo/P lOO nL96 e203;
rote, 218-221, 245 284-286
use visual imagery, 241, 245, 246 social, 156-165, 317
Memory, effect of interest on, 62, 63 thirst, 137-139
how stored, 225—237 Motor-impairment studies, 103, 104
improvement of consolidation, Motor system, as component of
REAL. P2EXS Deutsch’s model, 137, 140
long-term, 225-228
nature of, 224-236
short-term, 225-228, 244 Nativism, 19, 20, 46-48
types of, 218, 246 (See also Heredity,
(See also Amnesia; Consolidation Nerves, motor, 10
hypothesis; Forgetting; Re- sensory, 10, 38, 138
pression; Thinking) Nest building, 124, 125
Memory aids (see Mnemonic de- Neurosis, 190-195, 212
vices) Neutral attitude, 263-266
Mental health, criteria, 208-213
Norms, creation of, 344, 355-358
Mental illness (see Defense mechan-
in U.S., 164, 267, 285, 287, 308
isms; Manic-depressive psycho-
sis; Neurosis; Schizophrenia)
Mental testing, intelligence, 17, 121,
Obedience (see Authority; Disci-
122
personality, 18, 158-165 pline; Social control)
Methodology, errors in, 178, 179, Observer bias in research, 207, 208
202 20/7— 209262 e200 27a, Oedipus complex, 20, 156-159
300 Opinion, defined, 253
Mnemonic devices, 241—246 Opinion polling, 261, 262
Modifiability of behavior, 112, 118, Organization, formal, 346-349
119 informal, 345-348
Mothering (see Child; Childhood) in perception, 35, 42-49, 52, 53,
Motion parallax, 55-58 57, 65-84

Subject Index
Organizing in memorizing, 237—240 Power, types of, 353, 354
(See also Coding) Prejudice, economic factors in, 284,
Overlearning (see Memorizing) 300-303
personality factors, 293-299, 332
and sexual impulses, 284-286
Passive-decay theory, 228, 236, 246 situational factors in, 299-305,
Perception, as active process, 3446, 307-309
57, 161-165, 171-182 Prestige suggestion, 66-68
audition, 39, 40 Primacy effect, 70
cultural influences on, 62, 63, 66 Primary process thinking, 155
of depth, 52-58 Probability, 25, 26
of emotions, 144-146 Problem solving, 358-360
form, 31-35, 43-51 Productivity, 346-348, 350, 360
Gestalt principles, 44-48 Projection, 165-167, 180, 189, 303-
movement in, 34, 57 BOSH35S
of objects, 43-53 Projective tests, 161-165
of people, 63-66, 69-84, 167, 352, Proximity, grouping by, 44-47, 57
353 Psychoanalysis, 17, 18, 206-209
of statements, 66—68, 83, 261—266 (See also Psychoanalytic theory)
(See also Attitude; Conformity; Psychoanalytic theory, 16-20, 151—
Reference groups; Self-con- 182, 252, 286-299, 303-305
ception; Threat to the self) basic assumptions, 152-154
Perceptual analyzer, 137, 140, 141, of conformity, 293-299, 330-332
144 modifications, 160
Perceptual distortion, 74-84, 165— Psychology, definition, 1-7
171, 174-182, 210 foundation of, 10-12
(See also Delusions; Illusions) history of, 7-20, 87-97, 119, 120,
Personality, alternating, 153, 154, 207
192-195 Psychophysics, 10-12
change, 313-320, 340 Psychosis (see Manic-depressive psy-
and conformity, 330-332 chosis; Schizophrenia)
development, 154-160, 166, 170, Psychotherapy, case studies of, 189-
171, 203-206, 295-299 195
individual differences, 17-19, 158, effects of, 136, 206-212
170, 171, 178, 187—206 group processes in, 349, 350
and prejudice, 293-299 research on, 207—212
structure, 154-157 types of, 206-209
testing, 158-165 (See also Psychoanalysis)
(See also Conflict; Psychoanalytic Punishment, 95-97, 113, 157, 158,
theory) 189, 232-235, 295-297, 318
Renstasionneole mol, 22-205) 27.5) Purposive behaviorism, 110-113
320, 351, 356—358
Physiology, and emotion, 144-146
nineteenth-century, 9, 10 Rationalization, 168, 173, 181
Political socialization, 273-276, 320— Reaction formation, 163, 168, 180
BPE Reality, denial of, 136, 191, 196,
Power, legitimate, 338, 354, 356 ZOO ZO

Subject Index 397

 Receptor cells, 31-35, 53 Rigidity of behavior, 112, 118, 119
Reference groups, 315-329, 332- Role, casting other in, 189, 298, 317,
340, 355-364 318, 349
Reflex, conditional (see Learning, conflict, 258, 332-340
conditioning) expectations, influence on_ indi-
unconditional, 88, 89, 112 vidual, 211, 315-320, 332-
Regression, 159 340
Reinforcement, mechanism in iba’ WS), 1Wezl, woke), lew, hehe)
Deutsch’s model, 137, 140-144, of mental patient, 211
146 social perception influenced by,
PilManyyes 292 OO LOO MalSy slezak 65, 66, 268
secondary, 99-101, 113, 120, 143, Role-playing experiments, 78-83
144 Roles in groups, 348-352, 355
Relations to authority, dependency, Rule of law, 258-261
INS, GIS! Rumor transmission, 68, 69, 84, 161
encouraging antisocial behavior,
286-293, 309, 328, 329, 340
and prejudice, 295-299, 302, 303, Sadism, 162, 163, 293
309 Sampling, 23, 207, 208
in socialization, 157-160, 271-273, Sanctions, 332, 338, 339, 346-348,
348 354-356
Reliability, 24-28 Scalogram analysis, 264-266, 277
Religious affiliation and voting, 335— Schizophrenia, genetic factors, 202,
Cie 203
Repression, experimental demonstra- nature of, 170, 171, 195-198, 213
tion, 169, 170 theory of, 198-206
psychoanalytic theory of, 82, 136, Secondary process thinking, 155
153, 165-168, 289-293 Self, nature of, 193-195, 315-318,
as theory of forgetting, 169, 170, 326
TUS Itsy. AA AIMS, PRN, HAMS Self-conception, 167, 175, 315-320,
use of, as personality characteris- BZO Ooo
tic, 194, 201, 295-299, 330-
Self-disconfirmation (see Threat to
SoZ
the self)
(See also Reality)
Self-esteem (see Threat to the self)
Research methods, content analysis,
Self-oriented needs (see Motives)
PN8),oi, IMME. PAIES)
Sensation, 53, 54
experimental introspection, 12, 13,
Sentiment relations, 74-76, 79, 84,
Rey XO
BM, BAAS
experimentation, 6-12, 15, 23-28,
106
Serial-position effect, 70, 101
panel design, 334 Set, 41, 64-72

of psvchophysics, 10-12 Sharpening, 69-71, 84

statistical control, 6, 24-28 Similarity, association by, 8
(See also Experiment; Methodol- grouping by, 44-48, 57
ogy) (See also Assimilation)
Response, nature of, 103-105, 111, Sleep, 37-39
Talks, paradoxical, 38
Retina, 31—35 rapid-eye movement, 37-39

398 Subject Index

Social change, introduction of, 356- Symptoms, problems in classifying,
358 MUONS), Wyss, AV
Social class, differences in voting, which are developed, 170, 171,
273, 334-337,
361 190,191, 199, 202-206, 212
distinctions, 250-252, 267—270 who develops, 199, 202, 203, 213
political socialization by, 273-276, (See also Defense mechanisms;
354 Neurosis; Psychosis)
transmission of, 267—277
Social-class level, measurement of,
268, 269 Thematic Apperception Test (TAT),
Social classes, characteristics of, 268, 161-167,
292, 298, 331
269 Theory, common sense, 20—23, 32,
Social control, 159, 160, 289, 293, SOL TZ,
COZ SOUS Mol, 6207 Gor, construction of, 105-110
(See also Relation to authority) explicit as opposed to implicit, 21,
Social distance, 265 28, 106
Social institutions, 159, 160, 269— ideographic, 4-7, 15-17, 20
ZO
OLS OOS MOL OO Ae. internal consistency, 21, 22, 28,
(See also Family disorganization) 106
Social mobility, 250, 301, 302, 318- MmOlaredalys IoD,
320 molecular, 112
Social support, importance of, 177, nomothetic, 4-7, 15-17, 20
201, 313-320, 355-358, 362 as related to data, 20-28, 87, 88,
Socialization (see Child; Childhood) 105-110,
152
Source of data, 3-7, 15, 18 specification of relevant observa-
Spontaneous recovery, 91, 92, 112 tions, 21-23, 105-107
Statistical significance, 26, 27 Therapy (see Psychotherapy)
Stereotypes, 69, 285, 294, 298, 301, Thinking, central processing capac-
303, 307 ity, 225-227,
243, 244
(See also Attitudes) disturbances of, 195-197, 203, 204
Stimulus, error, 53-57 (See also Memory)
nature of, 102, 103, 113 Threat to the self, 135, 169-173,
Stimulus-response theory (see Asso- 191, 197-206, 299-305, 314-
ciationism) 320
Stopping thinking, 82, 322-327, 336 (See also Motives)
Stress, 134-136,
146, 188, 191, 195, Transfer of learning to new situa-
197, 201 tion, 50, 91, 92, 105, 238-240
Striving, social, 205 Transposition, 102, 103
Structuralism, 13-20, 28
Subjects, animal, 3-7, 14, 15, 41, 42,
47 Unconscious processes, 18, 46, 47,
human, 3-7, 15, 47 64, 68, 152-155,
161, 165-171,
Successive-comparison system, 242 1327 192-195 OZ, 2oOo oO
Superego, origin, 156-160, 173, 292 299
removing controls of, 291-294 Unemployment (see Threat to the
Symptoms, as attempts to adapt, self)
188-191, 212 Unit of analysis, 5-7, 16, 111, 112,
onset, 197—202, 213 174

Subject Index 399

 Unit of analysis, just-noticeable dif- Variable, dependent, 23, 29
ference as, 11 independent, 23, 24, 28
in visual perception, 34 Vision (see Perception)
Unit relations, 75, 76, 79, 83, 84, Visual cliff, 51
S2eoL Voting, studies of, 181, 258-261,
273-276, 334-337, 340, 353,
360-362
Value, defined, 253
Values, cultural, 255-261, 281-284
measurement of, 255-261
Wakefulness, 37-39, 57
predict friendship, 77, 78
unquestioned, 255, 256
(See also Ideology; Superego)
Variable, controlled, 23, 28 Zeigarnik effect, 169, 170

400 Subject Index