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Test Bank for Social Psychology, 5th Edition :
Franzoi
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1
Student:
1. Match the following key terms to the correct description.
1. Self-
fulfilling
prophesy
The scientific discipline that attempts to understand and
explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals_
are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of_
others _
_
2. Affect The scientific discipline that studies the effects of group and
cultural variables on social behavior _
_
_
_
3. Self-
concept
4. Pers
onality
psychology
5. Psycholo
gical social
psychology
6. Social
psychology
7. Self-
serving
bias
8. Interacti
onism
The scientific discipline that studies intrapersonal and
immediate social influences on individuals' behavior _
_
_
_
A false definition of a situation evoking a new behavior
which makes the originally false conception come true. _
_
_
_
The idea that human behavior is the result of a combination
of person and situation effects _
_
_
_
A social being with the ability to engage in symbolic
communication and self-awareness. _
_
_
_
The tendency to take credit for positive outcomes but deny
responsibility for negative outcomes in our lives. _
_
_
_
The scientific discipline that studies individual, intrapersonal
differences as influences of behavior _
_
_
_
9. The self The way we think about ourselves
_
_

_
_
10. Sociolo
gical social
psychology
Another word for emotions
_
_
_
_

1. Collect
ivism
2. Comm
union
Processes involved in interpreting, thinking about, _
remembering, and using information about the social world
_
The total lifestyle of a people (e.g., symbols, preferences). _
_
3. Social
cognition
A philosophy of life that stresses the idea of the self as _
autonomous and separate from others
_
4. "Cold"
perspecti
ve
A philosophy of life that stresses the idea of the self as related _
to others and as a part of groups
_
5. "Warm
Look"
A need that is greater in people with an individualistic _
orientation
_
6. "Hot"
perspecti
ve
A need that is greater in people with a collectivistic _
orientation
_
7. Culture The idea that needs, desires, and emotions are primary _
determinants of behavior
_
8. Autono
my
The idea that rational thoughts are primary determinants of _
behavior
_
9. Individ
ualism
The idea that humans can utilize different cognitive strategies _
(intentional or unintentional) based upon their current goals,
motives, or needs _
1. Naive
psychology
2. Natural
selection
3. Evolutionary
psychology
4. Implicit
cognition
5. Explicit
cognition
6. Cerebral
cortex
7. Social
neuroscience
People's unquestioning beliefs about their social world,
which are based on their everyday experiences
Involves conscious, deliberate judgments
Involves automatic judgments or decisions made
without conscious awareness
The study of factors that affect behavior through
processes common to all living organisms
The process of passing along adaptive characteristics
through reproduction
The study of the relationship between neural processes
of the brain and social processes
The outer layer of the brain that coordinates and
integrates all brain areas.
4. is the scientific discipline that studies the effects of the imagined, implied, or actual presence
of others on people's emotions, thoughts, or behaviors.
5. Social psychology is a relatively young field, given that it is only a little over years old.
6. describes laypeople's beliefs about their social world that are based on personal experiences and
unquestioning acceptance of anecdotal evidence.

7. When the inaccurate beliefs of others towards an individual impact that person such that the originally
inaccurate beliefs become true is referred to as a .
8. One of the main differences between naive psychologists and social psychologists is the latter's use of the
to test their ideas about the social world.
9. The field of social psychology has developed largely from events and occurrences within over
the past century.
10. The describes the idea that we develop in a social context and have the ability to regulate our
behavior and engage in planned actions.
11. People's descriptive beliefs about their identity and personal characteristics constitute their
.
12. We engage in the when we take credit for positive outcomes and do not take responsibility for
negative ones.
13. is an important perspective in social psychology that emphasizes the combined effects of both
the person and the situation on human behavior.
14. The interactionist perspective stresses that behavior is caused by an individual's environment and by his
or her .
15. The perspective that people are motivated to act as the result of personal needs, desires, and emotions is
the approach to studying social psychology.
16. The perspective that people are motivated to act as the result of thoughts, beliefs, and rationality is the
approach to studying social psychology.
17. The in social psychology represented a more balanced view of human nature, suggesting that
humans can be motivated by personal needs, desires, and emotions, as well as thoughts and reason.
18. describes the total lifestyle of a group of people, including their ideas, symbols, preferences, and
material objects they share.
19. Subscribing to the idea that the group is more important than any one person's needs is likely to be more
common among people from societies.
20. The notion that people are connected only through loose ties and that oneself and immediate relations are
most important in life describes societies.
21. Individualistic societies are more likely to be found in areas.
22. Collectivistic behavior is more likely seen in areas where social relationships are .

23. For the majority of human history, the has been the basic unit of society.
24. The study of how universal patterns of behavior were developed throughout human history is called
psychology.
25. A basic tenet of is that features or characteristics that allowed people to produce more
offspring were favored over the course of history.
26. The subfield of emphasizes basic problems of survival, scarce resources, and reproduction
across the course of human history.
27. The new subfield of connects biological processes to personal and situational influences of
behavior.
28. Your ability to plan what courses you should take in your college career is controlled by the
.
29. Which statement BEST reflects the core definition of modern social psychology?
A. the study of our need to be with other people
B. the science of human behavior
C. the scientific study of the way behavior is influenced by others
D. the scientific study of our need for consistency in our beliefs
30. Which statement BEST explains the focus of the field of social psychology?
A. the study of the psychological and cognitive process of the individual
B. the study of the impact of genetics on social behavior
C. the study of the person within his or her environment
D. All of these.
31. Gordon Allport's definition of social psychology emphasizes which of the following as influences of
people's behavior?
A. the presence of others
B. the implied presence of others
C. the imagined presence of others
D. All of these.
32. Researchers have found that drivers are more likely to use their seatbelts if there is a passenger in the car
rather than when they are driving alone. For the social psychologist, this is an example of
A. the way in which the actual presence of others influences our behavior.
B. people's unconscious self-destructive tendencies.
C. the effect that imagined others have on our behavior.
D. interactionism in everyday life.
33. Social psychology has been considered a bridge to understanding other fields, such as
A. biology.
B. anthropology.
C. political science.
D. All of these.
34. Naive psychology involves
A. studying the world systematically.
B. the use of the scientific method.
C. using daily experiences to form personal theories about social life.
D. understanding basic principles of science.

35. Hearing that people's beliefs about their social worlds often result from casual observations without
rigorous proof or consideration of possible alternates, you recall that people act as in their
everyday lives.
A. sociological social psychologists
B. psychological social psychologists
C. naive psychologists
D. social neuroscientists
36. Social psychologists use the scientific method to
A. study the world systematically.
B. avoid errors in thinking.
C. investigate commonsense assumptions about human behavior.
D. All of these.
37. If you are upset and believe that you will feel less angry after going to your kickboxing class, your
behaviors are being guided more by than by .
A. common sense; the use of scientific methods
B. the use of scientific methods; common sense
C. common sense; social psychological findings
D. social psychological findings; common sense
38. The study of social behavior is represented most prominently by the field of
A. sociological social psychology.
B. psychological social psychology.
C. economics.
D. biology.
39. The merging of sociological and psychological social psychology
A. happened about 100 years ago.
B. has gained popularity in the last 20 years.
C. will likely happen in the near future.
D. will not likely happen in the near future.
40. Concepts such as social roles, cultural norms, and socioeconomic status are primarily the focus of
B. social neuroscience.
C. social cognition.
D. psychological social psychology.
41. Psychological social psychology tends to focus on
A. the psychological dynamics of small groups.
B. the individual's response to social stimuli.
C. subcultures within society.
D. the interaction of groups.
42. Psychological social psychology's recent focus on reflects, in part, interests typically focused on
by sociological social psychology.
A. culture
B. self-concept
C. social neuroscience
D. natural selection
43. How old is the field of social psychology?
A. about 200 years old
B. about 100 years old
C. about 50 years old
D. about 20 years old

44. What year was the first social psychology experiment published?
A. 1807
B. 1857
C. 1897
D. 1917
45. Who conducted the first social psychology experiment?
A. Norman Triplett
B. Kurt Lewin
C. Gordon Allport
D. Floyd Allport
46. The social psychology textbook written by Floyd Allport did what for the field?
A. increased its visibility as a discipline
B. gave it a more formal identity
C. refocused it as a scientific approach to studying behavior
D. both b and c
47. Mr. Benton believed that John would be a poor student, like his older brother had been, so he did not put
a lot of effort into answering John's questions or providing feedback on his work. As a result, John did do
poorly in the class. This process is an example of which of the following?
A. naïve psychology
B. self-concept
C. self-fulfilling prophesy
D. self-serving bias
48. According to research on self-fulfilling prophesy, which of the following is NOT true of how teachers
tend to treat positively labeled versus negatively labeled students?
A. Negatively labeled students are provided with more difficult challenges than positively labeled
students.
B. Positively labeled students receive more positive feedback on their work.
C. Teachers provide a warmer socioemotional climate for more positively labeled students.
D. All of these.
49. What was the topic of the first social psychology experiment?
A. social neuroscience
B. social facilitation
C. social cognition
D. self-concept
50. What does the organization SPSSI study?
A. real-world problems
B. political issues
C. societal factors
D. All of these.
51. Kurt Lewin's approach to the utility of social psychology was to emphasize it as providing
A. theoretical advances.
B. applied knowledge.
C. basic understanding of behavior.
D. All of these.
52. Which of the following is NOT a contribution attributed to Kurt Lewin?
A. using interaction between person and situation to explain social behavior
B. developing the theory of cognitive dissonance
C. founding SPSSI
D. conceiving of social psychology as being both basic and applied science

53. One positive and productive result of a period of crisis and reassessment in social psychology has
been
A. the increase in attention paid to the influences of race, gender, and culture on social behavior.
B. the gradual transformation of social psychology into a pure laboratory-based science.
C. the complete blending of sociological and psychological social psychology.
D. the increased emphasis on the philosophical bases of social psychology.
54. The history of social psychology has its roots in what country?
A. Spain
B. Germany
C. Italy
D. United States
55. If you were to describe the field of social psychology to a non-psychologist, which of the following terms
would you NOT use?
A. scientific
B. individuals
C. declining
D. behavioral
56. The field of social psychology went through a period of in the 1950s and 1960s.
A. growth
B. stagnation
C. decline
D. ups and downs
57. Social psychologists in the 1960s would likely NOT be studying which of the following topics?
A. love
B. aggression
C. obedience
D. gender differences
58. The of the 1970s in social psychology adopted an information-processing approach to
explain social psychological processes.
A. rapid expansion
B. cognitive revolution
C. biological revolution
D. None of these.
59. As a budding social psychologist, your knowledge could be applied to the fields of
A. education.
B. politics.
C. sports.
D. All of these.
60. Edward Jones is credited with being involved in which aspect of social psychology?
A. founding SPSSI
B. emphasizing interactionism
C. emphasizing cognitive consistency
D. None of these.
61. As a field, social psychology is at what life stage?
A. infancy
B. adolescence
C. young adulthood
D. middle age

62. Why does the concept of the "self" receive so much attention in social psychology?
A. Up until the last decade, social psychology has traditionally emphasized situational determinants of
behavior.
B. A majority of human cultures are individualistic and are therefore concerned with the idea of self.
C. Self-concept and self-centeredness are important aspects of cognitive dissonance theory.
D. Our attention to our "selves" often leads to changes in our social behavior.
63. The definition of the self encompasses all of the following EXCEPT
A. ideology.
B. the use of symbols.
C. self-awareness.
D. anticipating the actions of others.
64. An individual's knowledge about the kind of person he or she is comprises ones
A. public aspect of the self.
B. self-esteem.
C. self-concept.
D. ideology.
65. Which of the following BEST explains the self-serving bias?
A. self-enhancement
B. interactionism
C. explicit cognition
D. implicit cognition
66. If a situation allows you the opportunity to cheat on an essay assignment but you recall your personal
values and belief against cheating and consequently choose not to cheat, your behavior has been
influenced by
A. public aspects of the self.
B. self-esteem.
C. self-concept.
D. private aspects of the self.
67. The study of the self is very much in line with 's ideas about .
A. Kurt Lewin; cognitive consistency
B. Kurt Lewin; interactionism
C. Edward Jones; attitudes
D. Floyd Allport; social psychology as a science
68. Which of the following questions is at the core of the concept of interactionism?
A. How much of human behavior is determined by innate rather than learned factors?
B. Can reflection on the self actually lead to changes in behavior?
C. How much do personality factors versus situational factors contribute to social behavior?
D.Is human decision making based primarily on rational, information-based processes or on irrational
needs and desires?
69. Your friend believes that most human behavior can be predicted by knowing a person's emotional state.
Your friend is advocating which approach or emphasis?
A. public versus private aspects of the self
B. "cold" perspective
C. "hot" perspective
D. evolutionary approach
70. Your friend, an economics major, thinks that humans are rational beings who make decisions based on
calculated computations. Your friend is advocating which approach or emphasis?
A. public versus private aspects of the self
B. "cold" perspective
C. "hot" perspective
D. evolutionary approach

71. Which of the following does NOT reflect an aspect of the "hot" perspective in social psychology?
A. Emotions lead to behavior.
B. Motivation is the root of action.
C. Desire initiates responses.
D. Humans are rational thinkers.
72. Which of the following does NOT reflect an aspect of the "cold" perspective in social psychology?
A. thoughts lead to action
B. needs and wants determine decisions
C. choices should be analyzed rationally
D. desires do not determine actions
73. A psychologist who believed that people could make decisions based upon either careful reasoning or
emotional reactions would be from which perspective?
A. "Warm Look"
B. "cold"
C. "hot"
D. psychodynamic
74. When Maria is dealing with decisions at work, she rationally considers all her options before coming
to a conclusion. However, with her family, she tends to make judgments based upon her emotional
or instinctual reactions. A psychologist could explain Maria's behavior from which of the following
perspectives?
A. "hot"
B. "cold"
C. "Warm Look"
D. sociological
75. Michael and Ann love going to museums to look at paintings. Michael evaluates a painting based
upon whether the artist used bright or dull colors. Ann carefully examines its composition and style to
determine its artistic value. In making their decisions, Michael relies on while Ann utilizes
cognitions.
A. explicit; implicit
B. explicit; explicit
C. implicit; explicit
D. implicit; implicit
76. When we refer to the notion of culture, what does this include?
A. social attitudes
B. rituals
C. emblems or symbols
D. All of these.
77. Where are we more likely to find collectivistic tendencies?
A. in large, urban settings
B. in capitalistic societies
C. in cultures that emphasize autonomy
D. in rural settings
78. What is the relationship between individualism, collectivism, and economics?
A.As a society experiences economic growth, the need to depend upon one's group decreases, leading to
individualistic tendencies.
B As a society experiences economic growth, the wealth of one's group increases over that of the
. individual, leading to collectivistic tendencies.
C As a society experiences economic decline, the need to separate from one's group and survive alone
. increases, leading to individualistic tendencies.
D.As a society experiences economic decline, the need to assist one's group increases, leading to
individualistic tendencies.

79. Individualism and collectivism reflect
A. individual beliefs about how people relate to groups.
B. cultural beliefs about how people relate to groups.
C. individual beliefs about the relative influence of the person or the situation.
D. All of these.
80. Your little sister gets very upset when your parents tell her whom she cannot be friends with. Which of
the following may explain her anger over your parents' wishes?
A. growing up in a collectivistic society
B. growing up in an individualistic society
C. cognitive dissonance
D. evolutionary factors
81. Maddy grew up in a culture where she was encouraged to be competitive in her academic and
professional pursuits. She also learned to be independent and live on her own. What BEST describes
Maddy's cultural background?
A. socioemotional
B. individualistic
C. collectivistic
D. sociological psychological perspective
82. Who would be more likely to hesitate to order the same meal as the person sitting next to them?
A. someone from the United States
B. someone from Japan
C. someone with multiple cultural identities
D. someone who desires cognitive consistency
83. In the United States, making a circle with the thumb and index finger and holding the other fingers
upright is a positive sign meaning "all is well." In another country, this is a very obscene gesture. Thus,
the meaning of this gesture is
A. useful in collectivist societies.
B. a human universal.
C. very culture specific.
D. a cultural ideology.
84. Which of the following is NOT an aspect of individualism?
A. valuing autonomy and self-sufficiency
B. placing personal needs over group needs
C. preferring loosely knit relationships
D. valuing loyalty and harmony
85. Which of the following is/are NOT characteristic aspects of collectivism?
A. autonomy and self-sufficiency
B. harmony and loyalty
C. subordination of personal achievements
D. emphasis on fitting in with the social group
86. Being different from others is viewed as in the United States but in Japan.
A. difficult; easy
B. desirable; undesirable
C. undesirable; desirable
D. unattractive; attractive
87. What conditions are related to a stronger need for communion?
A. living in an individualistic culture
B. living in a collectivistic culture
C. experiencing cognitive dissonance
D. having the ability to use symbols

88. Of the following choices, who has a greater need for autonomy?
A. people in an individualistic culture
B. people in a collectivistic culture
C. people who are experiencing cognitive dissonance
D. sociological social psychologists
89. Evolutionary psychology is useful
A. in describing culture-specific behaviors.
B. in describing differences between individualistic and collectivistic cultures.
C. in explaining cognitive dissonance.
D. in examining universal social behaviors.
90. Which of the following items is out of place?
A. settings, ideas, and preferences common to a specific group
B. evolutionarily generated hypotheses
C. the lifestyle of a people
D. culture-specific questions
91. Which of the following words or phrases does NOT go along with evolutionary psychology?
A. individualistic
B. natural selection
C. competition
D. reproduction
92. Which of the following traits have been traced to evolutionary influences?
A. helping
B. aggression
C. romantic love
D. All of these.
93. Which of the following statements is FALSE regarding evolution?
A. The species, not the individual, evolves.
B. The individual's role in evolution is in the success or failure of reproducing.
C. The evolution of a species does not necessitate that it transforms into more complex forms.
D. The individual, not the species, evolves.
94. Which of the following factors is related to cautions about the use of evolutionary psychology in
contemporary times?
A. People have fewer children now than before.
B. People do not have to worry about survival now.
C. The environment has changed dramatically.
D. Natural selection does not truly operate in current times.
95. The field of social neuroscience involves the following factors EXCEPT
A. social behavior.
B. neurology.
C. economic influences.
D. physiological factors.
96. The growth in social neuroscience is partly the result of
A. better hypotheses about the brain and social behavior.
B. better understanding of evolutionary factors.
C. better measures of physiological changes.
D. All of these.

97. Which of the following words describes the subfield of social neuroscience?
A. formative
B. advanced
C. exhausted
D. outdated
98. Which of the following is out of place?
A. neuroscience
B. fMRI
C. natural selection
D. thought processing
99. Dr. Shannon is a social neuroscientist. Which of the following topics would she MOST likely want to
study?
A. the relationship between the size of certain brain structures and gender differences in talking about
emotions
B. whether changes in one's social status causes changes in his/her brain chemistry
C.the relationship between social structure (i.e., individualism, collectivism) and the development of the
limbic system in the brain
D. All of these.
100.Traits with an evolutionary history
A. made the person possessing them more intelligent.
B. increased the odds that one would reproduce.
C. increased the odds of survival.
D. All of these.
101.The process of natural selection results in
A. higher reproduction within a culture.
B. higher reproduction for an individual.
C. evolution of adaptive traits.
D. evolution of environments.
102.The process of natural selection is reflected in which of the following phrases?
A. survival of the fittest
B. people who play together, stay together
C. you are what you eat
D. both A and C
103.Which of the following words does NOT belong?
A. reproduction
B. culture
C. adaptive
D. survival
104.The study of the interplay between biology and social psychology is called
A. sociobiology.
B. behavioral economics.
C. evolution.
D. social neuroscience.
105.A researcher who says she is studying social neuroscience likely said this in what year?
A. 1957
B. 1970
C. 1982
D. 1999

106.Which of the following terms does NOT belong?
A. social
B. brain
C. neuroscience
D. culture
107.A social psychologist who is interested in social neuroscience would likely draw from all of the following
disciplines EXCEPT
A. biology.
B. sociology.
C. education.
D. psychology.
108.According to recent research using fMRI, spindle neurons appear to facilitate which of the following?
A. the production of speech
B. self-awareness
C. self-regulation
D. abstract problem solving
109.Provide an example of how the implied presence of others could affect our behavior, as argued by
Gordon Allport.
110.What is the difference between psychological social psychology and sociological social psychology?
111.Describe how topics and interests within the field of social psychology may change as a result of the
following events: September 11, 2001, the Iraq war, the 2008 presidential election.
112.What are the three steps in the process of the self-fulfilling prophesy?

113.From the research on the self-fulfilling prophesy, provide at least two examples of how teachers tend to
treat positively labeled students differently than negatively labeled students.
114.What is the relationship between negative expectancies and the self-fulfilling prophesy?
115.Provide a real-world example of the self-fulfilling prophesy and explain what makes it an example.
116.What is the relevance of referring to us as social beings?
117.Explain why the study of the self is especially relevant for the field of social psychology.
118.Why is self-awareness important?

119.While the self-serving bias indeed "serves" us, it can also create problems for us. How? Give an
example.
120.Describe two main differences between individualistic and collectivistic cultures.
121.Knowing what you do about individualistic and collectivistic cultures, outline a way in which the United
States (individualistic) works with the Iraqi people (collectivistic) on establishing a more peaceful,
organized society.
122.Discuss five ways that societies work to influence people's beliefs about themselves.
123.With regard to population density, describe where individualistic and collectivistic tendencies are more
likely to be found.
124.Explain how individualism and collectivism are related to the socioeconomic development of a given
culture.

125.Explain the difference between explicit and implicit cognitions. Give an example of each.
126.Describe how dual-process models of cognition explain social thought and behavior.
127.Discuss the way that factors within the person and as a part of the situation influence behavior. Give two
examples of each type of influence.
128.Describe the individual's role in evolution.
129.Describe the differences between sociological and psychological social psychology. List a subfield or
interest for each of them that reflects their differences.
130.Describe a question that could be answered using social neuroscientific methods.

131.Name a benefit and a caution of using evolutionary psychology to describe modern-day behavior.
132.In terms of evolution, describe the relationship between an organism and its environment. Explain what
can occur if the environment changes
133.Name a subtopic that comes from the "hot" approach of social psychology and one that comes from
the "cold" approach. Describe how the approaches differ.
134.Explain how neuroscience can help explain social behavior. Provide at least one example.
135.What does a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measure?
136.Provide an example of findings concerning the role of the frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex.

137.Describe one historical event that shaped or changed the field of social psychology.

1 Key
1. Self-
fulfilling
prophesy
The scientific discipline that attempts to understand
and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of6
individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied
presence of others
2. Affect The scientific discipline that studies the effects of group and
cultural variables on social behavior 1
0
3. Self-
concept
The scientific discipline that studies intrapersonal and
immediate social influences on individuals' behavior 5
4. Pers
onality
psychology
A false definition of a situation evoking a new behavior
which makes the originally false conception come true. 1
5. Psycholo
gical social
psychology
The idea that human behavior is the result of a combination
of person and situation effects 8
6. Social
psychology
A social being with the ability to engage in symbolic
communication and self-awareness. 9
7. Self-
serving
bias
8. Interacti
onism
The tendency to take credit for positive outcomes but deny
responsibility for negative outcomes in our lives. 7
The scientific discipline that studies individual,
intrapersonal differences as influences of behavior 4
9. The self The way we think about ourselves
3
10. Sociolo
gical social
psychology
Another word for emotions
2
Franzoi - Chapter 01 #1

1. Collect
ivism
Processes involved in interpreting, thinking about,
remembering, and using information about the social world 3
2. Comm
union
The total lifestyle of a people (e.g., symbols, preferences).
7
3. Social
cognition
A philosophy of life that stresses the idea of the self as
autonomous and separate from others 9
4. "Cold"
perspecti
ve
5. "Warm
Look"
A philosophy of life that stresses the idea of the self as related
to others and as a part of groups 1
A need that is greater in people with an individualistic
orientation 8
6. "Hot"
perspecti
ve
A need that is greater in people with a collectivistic
orientation 2
7. Culture The idea that needs, desires, and emotions are primary
determinants of behavior 6
8. Autono
my
The idea that rational thoughts are primary determinants of
behavior 4
9. Individ
ualism
The idea that humans can utilize different cognitive strategies
(intentional or unintentional) based upon their current goals,5
motives, or needs
1. Naive
psychology
People's unquestioning beliefs about their social world,
which are based on their everyday experiences 1
2. Natural
selection
Involves conscious, deliberate judgments
5
3. Evolutionary
psychology
Involves automatic judgments or decisions made
without conscious awareness 4
4. Implicit
cognition
The study of factors that affect behavior through
processes common to all living organisms 3
5. Explicit
cognition
The process of passing along adaptive characteristics
through reproduction 2
6. Cerebral
cortex
The study of the relationship between neural processes
of the brain and social processes 7

7. Social
neuroscience
The outer layer of the brain that coordinates and
integrates all brain areas. 6
4. is the scientific discipline that studies the effects of the imagined, implied, or actual
presence of others on people's emotions, thoughts, or behaviors.
Social psychology

5. Social psychology is a relatively young field, given that it is only a little over years old.
100
6. describes laypeople's beliefs about their social world that are based on personal experiences
and unquestioning acceptance of anecdotal evidence.
Naive psychology
7. When the inaccurate beliefs of others towards an individual impact that person such that the originally
inaccurate beliefs become true is referred to as a .
self-fulfilling prophesy
8. One of the main differences between naive psychologists and social psychologists is the latter's use of
the to test their ideas about the social world.
scientific method
9. The field of social psychology has developed largely from events and occurrences within
over the past century.
the United States
10. The describes the idea that we develop in a social context and have the ability to regulate
our behavior and engage in planned actions.
self
11. People's descriptive beliefs about their identity and personal characteristics constitute their
.
self-concept
12. We engage in the when we take credit for positive outcomes and do not take responsibility
for negative ones.
self-serving bias
13. is an important perspective in social psychology that emphasizes the combined effects of
both the person and the situation on human behavior.
Interactionism
14. The interactionist perspective stresses that behavior is caused by an individual's environment and by
his or her .
personality
15. The perspective that people are motivated to act as the result of personal needs, desires, and emotions
is the approach to studying social psychology.
"hot"
16. The perspective that people are motivated to act as the result of thoughts, beliefs, and rationality is the
approach to studying social psychology.
"cold"
17. The in social psychology represented a more balanced view of human nature, suggesting
that humans can be motivated by personal needs, desires, and emotions, as well as thoughts and
reason.
"Warm Look"

18. describes the total lifestyle of a group of people, including their ideas, symbols, preferences,
and material objects they share.
Culture
19. Subscribing to the idea that the group is more important than any one person's needs is likely to be
more common among people from societies.
collectivistic
20. The notion that people are connected only through loose ties and that oneself and immediate relations
are most important in life describes societies.
individualistic
21. Individualistic societies are more likely to be found in areas.
urban
22. Collectivistic behavior is more likely seen in areas where social relationships are .
interdependent
23. For the majority of human history, the has been the basic unit of society.
group
24. The study of how universal patterns of behavior were developed throughout human history is called
psychology.
evolutionary
25. A basic tenet of is that features or characteristics that allowed people to produce more
offspring were favored over the course of history.
natural selection
26. The subfield of emphasizes basic problems of survival, scarce resources, and reproduction
across the course of human history.
evolutionary psychology
27. The new subfield of connects biological processes to personal and situational influences of
behavior.
social neuroscience
28. Your ability to plan what courses you should take in your college career is controlled by the
.
frontal lobes
29.
(p. 5)
Which statement BEST reflects the core definition of modern social psychology?
A. the study of our need to be with other people
B. the science of human behavior
C. the scientific study of the way behavior is influenced by others
D. the scientific study of our need for consistency in our beliefs
Learning Objective: Define social psychology
Learning Objective: and understand how social psychology contrasts with commonsense.
Learning Objective: offer examples of the various aspects of that definition
Level: E
Type: F

30.
(p. 5)
31.
(p. 5)
32.
(p. 6)
Which statement BEST explains the focus of the field of social psychology?
A. the study of the psychological and cognitive process of the individual
B. the study of the impact of genetics on social behavior
C. the study of the person within his or her environment
D. All of these.
Level: E
Type: F
Gordon Allport's definition of social psychology emphasizes which of the following as influences of
people's behavior?
A. the presence of others
B. the implied presence of others
C. the imagined presence of others
D. All of these.
Level: E
Type: F
Researchers have found that drivers are more likely to use their seatbelts if there is a passenger in the
car rather than when they are driving alone. For the social psychologist, this is an example of
A. the way in which the actual presence of others influences our behavior.
B. people's unconscious self-destructive tendencies.
C. the effect that imagined others have on our behavior.
D. interactionism in everyday life.
Level: M
Type: A
33.
(p. 6)
Social psychology has been considered a bridge to understanding other fields, such as
A. biology.
B. anthropology.
C. political science.
D. All of these.
34.
(p. 7)
Naive psychology involves
A. studying the world systematically.
B. the use of the scientific method.
Learning Objective: Distinguish between sociological and psychological social psychology.
Level: E
Type: F
C. using daily experiences to form personal theories about social life.
D. understanding basic principles of science.
Level: M
Type: F

35.
(p. 7)
Hearing that people's beliefs about their social worlds often result from casual observations without
rigorous proof or consideration of possible alternates, you recall that people act as in their
everyday lives.
A. sociological social psychologists
B. psychological social psychologists
C. naive psychologists
D. social neuroscientists
Level: M
Type: C
36.
(p. 7)
37.
(p. 6-7)
Social psychologists use the scientific method to
A. study the world systematically.
B. avoid errors in thinking.
C. investigate commonsense assumptions about human behavior.
D. All of these.
Level: M
Type: F
If you are upset and believe that you will feel less angry after going to your kickboxing class, your
behaviors are being guided more by than by .
A. common sense; the use of scientific methods
B. the use of scientific methods; common sense
C. common sense; social psychological findings
D. social psychological findings; common sense
Level: M
Type: A
38.
(p. 6)
The study of social behavior is represented most prominently by the field of
B. psychological social psychology.
C. economics.
D. biology.
Level: E
Type: F
39.
(p. 6)
40.
(p. 6)
The merging of sociological and psychological social psychology
A. happened about 100 years ago.
B. has gained popularity in the last 20 years.
C. will likely happen in the near future.
D. will not likely happen in the near future.
Level: M
Type: C
Concepts such as social roles, cultural norms, and socioeconomic status are primarily the focus of
B. social neuroscience.
C. social cognition.
D. psychological social psychology.
Level: M
Type: F

41.
(p. 6)
42.
(p. 15)
Psychological social psychology tends to focus on
A. the psychological dynamics of small groups.
B. the individual's response to social stimuli.
C. subcultures within society.
D. the interaction of groups.
Level: M
Type: F
Psychological social psychology's recent focus on reflects, in part, interests typically focused
on by sociological social psychology.
A. culture
B. self-concept
C. social neuroscience
D. natural selection
Level: M
Type: C
43.
(p. 24-25)
How old is the field of social psychology?
A. about 200 years old
B. about 100 years old
C. about 50 years old
D. about 20 years old
Learning Objective: Briefly summarize some of the significant events and themes in the history of social psychology up to the present.
Level: E
Type: F
44.
(p. 24)
What year was the first social psychology experiment published?
A. 1807
B. 1857
C. 1897
D. 1917
Level: E
Type: F
45.
(p. 24)
Who conducted the first social psychology experiment?
A. Norman Triplett
B. Kurt Lewin
C. Gordon Allport
D. Floyd Allport
Level: E
Type: F
46.
(p. 24)
The social psychology textbook written by Floyd Allport did what for the field?
A. increased its visibility as a discipline
B. gave it a more formal identity
C. refocused it as a scientific approach to studying behavior
D. both b and c
Level: M
Type: F

47.
(p. 8)
48.
(p. 9-10)
Mr. Benton believed that John would be a poor student, like his older brother had been, so he did not
put a lot of effort into answering John's questions or providing feedback on his work. As a result, John
did do poorly in the class. This process is an example of which of the following?
A. naïve psychology
B. self-concept
C. self-fulfilling prophesy
D. self-serving bias
Learning Objective: Understand the relevance of the self-fulfilling prophesy in how it serves to create social reality.
Level: M
Type: A
According to research on self-fulfilling prophesy, which of the following is NOT true of how teachers
tend to treat positively labeled versus negatively labeled students?
A. Negatively labeled students are provided with more difficult challenges than positively labeled
students.
B. Positively labeled students receive more positive feedback on their work.
C. Teachers provide a warmer socioemotional climate for more positively labeled students.
D. All of these.
Level: E
Type: C
49.
(p. 24)
What was the topic of the first social psychology experiment?
A. social neuroscience
B. social facilitation
C. social cognition
D. self-concept
Learning Objective: Explain the importance of the concept of "self" in understanding social behavior.
Level: M
Type: C
50.
(p. 6)
What does the organization SPSSI study?
A. real-world problems
B. political issues
C. societal factors
D. All of these.
Level: E
Type: F
51.
(p. 13)
Kurt Lewin's approach to the utility of social psychology was to emphasize it as providing
A. theoretical advances.
B. applied knowledge.
C. basic understanding of behavior.
D. All of these.
Level: M
Type: F
52.
(p. 6)
Which of the following is NOT a contribution attributed to Kurt Lewin?
A. using interaction between person and situation to explain social behavior
B. developing the theory of cognitive dissonance
C. founding SPSSI
D. conceiving of social psychology as being both basic and applied science
Level: M
Type: F

53.
(p. 25)
One positive and productive result of a period of crisis and reassessment in social psychology has
been
A. the increase in attention paid to the influences of race, gender, and culture on social behavior.
B. the gradual transformation of social psychology into a pure laboratory-based science.
C. the complete blending of sociological and psychological social psychology.
D. the increased emphasis on the philosophical bases of social psychology.
Level: E
Type: C
54.
(p. 6)
55.
(p. 5)
The history of social psychology has its roots in what country?
A. Spain
B. Germany
C. Italy
D. United States
Level: E
Type: F
If you were to describe the field of social psychology to a non-psychologist, which of the following
terms would you NOT use?
A. scientific
B. individuals
C. declining
D. behavioral
Level: E
Type: A
56.
(p. 13)
57.
(p. 21)
58.
(p. 11-12)
The field of social psychology went through a period of in the 1950s and 1960s.
A. growth
B. stagnation
C. decline
D. ups and downs
Level: E
Type: F
Social psychologists in the 1960s would likely NOT be studying which of the following topics?
A. love
B. aggression
C. obedience
D. gender differences
Level: E
Type: F
The of the 1970s in social psychology adopted an information-processing approach to
explain social psychological processes.
A. rapid expansion
B. cognitive revolution
C. biological revolution
D. None of these.
Level: M
Type: F

59.
(p. 6)
As a budding social psychologist, your knowledge could be applied to the fields of
A. education.
B. politics.
C. sports.
D. All of these.
Level: E
Type: F
60.
(p. 25)
Edward Jones is credited with being involved in which aspect of social psychology?
A. founding SPSSI
B. emphasizing interactionism
C. emphasizing cognitive consistency
D. None of these.
Level: M
Type: F
61.
(p. 26)
As a field, social psychology is at what life stage?
A. infancy
B. adolescence
C. young adulthood
D. middle age
Level: M
Type: F
62.
(p. 12)
Why does the concept of the "self" receive so much attention in social psychology?
A. Up until the last decade, social psychology has traditionally emphasized situational determinants of
behavior.
B. A majority of human cultures are individualistic and are therefore concerned with the idea of self.
C. Self-concept and self-centeredness are important aspects of cognitive dissonance theory.
D. Our attention to our "selves" often leads to changes in our social behavior.
Level: M
Type: C
63.
(p. 12)
The definition of the self encompasses all of the following EXCEPT
A. ideology.
B. the use of symbols.
C. self-awareness.
D. anticipating the actions of others.
Level: M
Type: F
64.
(p. 12)
An individual's knowledge about the kind of person he or she is comprises ones
A. public aspect of the self.
B. self-esteem.
C. self-concept.
D. ideology.
Level: E
Type: F

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and at length he reached a pistol and fired at it, when, seeing the
ghost immoveable and invulnerable as he supposed, a belief in a
spirit instantly came over his mind, and convulsion succeeding, his
extreme terror was soon followed by his death.
I have read (I believe in Clarendon), that the decapitation of
Charles I. was augured (after death) from his coronation robes being
of white velvet instead of purple; and this it was remembered was
the colour of a victim’s death-garment; and in Blennerhasset’s
history of James II., that the crown at his coronation tottered on his
head, and at the same moment the royal arms fell from the altar of
some London church. All this is too childish to be spoken of
seriously, and reminds me of the General Montecuculi, who on some
saint’s day had ordered bacon in his omelette. At the moment it was
served, a peal of thunder shook his house, when he exclaimed,
“Voilà bien du bruit pour une omelette!”
We wonder not to find Lily, into whose moth-eaten tomes I have
sometimes peeped for amusement, prating thus of consequences.
There is an old paper of his graced with “the effigies of Master Praise
God Barebone,” where, among other judgments, the blindness of
Milton is recorded as a penal infliction of the Deity, for “that he writ
two books against the kings, and Salmasius his defence of kings.”
But we do wonder at such a weakness in Sir Walter Raleigh, that he
should thus write in his History of the World,—“The strangest thing I
have read of in this kind being certainly true, was, that the night
before the battle of Novara, all the dogs which followed the French
army ran from them to the Switzers; and lo! next morning the
Switzers were beaten by the French.”
And yet a greater wonder is, that so many solemn stories should
have crept into our national legends, in which there is no truth: in
which philosophers and divines have very innocently combined to
bewilder us.
There is an assumed incident associated with a melancholy event
in the noble family of Lansdowne, most illustrative of my
observation. In the “Literary Recollections” of the Rev. Richard
Warner, is recorded the interesting story of the apparition of Lord
William Petty, at Bowood, related to Mr. Warner by the Rev. Joseph

Townsend, rector of Pewsey in Wiltshire, and “confirmed by the
dying declaration of Dr. Alsop, of Calne.”
It is affirmed that Lord William Petty, who was under the care of
Dr. Priestley, the librarian, and the Rev. Mr. Jervis, his tutor, was
attacked, at the age of seven, with inflammation of the lungs, for
which Mr. Alsop was summoned to Bowood. After a few days, the
young nobleman seemed to be out of danger; but, on a sudden
relapse, the surgeon was again sent for in the evening.
“It was night before this gentleman reached Bowood but an
unclouded moon showed every object in unequivocal distinctness.
Mr. Alsop had passed through the lodge-gate, and was proceeding to
the house, when, to his astonishment, he saw Lord William coming
towards him, in all the buoyancy of childhood, restored apparently to
health and vigour. ‘I am delighted, my dear lord,’ he exclaimed, ‘to
see you, but, for Heaven’s sake, go immediately within doors,—it is
death to you to be here at this time of night.’ The child made no
reply, but, turning round, was quickly out of sight. Mr. Alsop,
unspeakably surprised, hurried to the house. Here all was distress
and confusion, for Lord William, had expired a few minutes before
he reached the portico.
“This sad event being with all speed announced to the Marquis of
Lansdowne, in London, orders were soon received at Bowood, for
the interment of the corpse, and the arrangement of the funeral
procession. The former was directed to take place at High Wickham,
in the vault which contained the remains of Lord William’s mother;
the latter was appointed to halt at two specified places, during the
two nights on which it would be on the road. Mr. Jervis and Dr.
Priestley attended the body. On the first day of the melancholy
journey, the latter gentleman, who had hitherto said little on the
subject of the appearance to Mr. Alsop, suddenly addressed his
companion with considerable emotion in nearly these words: ‘There
are some very singular circumstances connected with this event, Mr.
Jervis, and a most remarkable coincidence between a dream of the
late Lord William and our present mournful engagement. A few
weeks ago, as I was passing by his room door one morning, he
called me to his bedside,—‘Doctor,’ said he, ‘what is your Christian

name?’ ‘Surely,’ said I, ‘you know it is Joseph.’ ‘Well, then,’ replied he,
in a lively manner, ‘if you are a Joseph, you can interpret a dream for
me, which I had last night. I dreamed, Doctor, that I set out upon a
long journey; that I stopped the first night at Hungerford, whither I
went without touching the ground; that I flew from thence to Salt
Hill, where I remained the next night; and arrived at High Wickham
on the third day, where my dear mamma, beautiful as an angel,
stretched out her arms and caught me within them.’ ‘Now,’ continued
the Doctor, ‘these are precisely the places where the dear child’s
corpse will remain on this and the succeeding night, before we reach
his mother’s vault, which is finally to receive it.’ ”
Now here is a tissue of events, as strange as they are
circumstantial; and I might set myself to illustrate the apparition by
the agitated state of Mr. Alsop’s mind, were it not for the utter fallacy
of this mysterious story, on which the late Rev. Mr. Jervis, of
Brompton, whom I knew and esteemed, deemed it essential to
publish “Remarks,” in the year 1831. From these, you will learn that
Mr. Warner is in error regarding the “address, designation, and age
of the Hon. William Granville Petty, the nature and duration of his
disorder, and the name of the place of interment.” And then it comes
out that neither Dr. Priestley nor Mr. Jervis attended the funeral, nor
conversed at any time on the circumstance. And, regarding Mr.
Alsop’s death-bed declaration, Mr. Jervis, who was in his intimate
confidence, never heard of such a thing until Mr. Warner’s volume
was pointed out to him.
This strange story, believed by good and wise men, involved a
seeming mystery, until we read in Mr. Jervis’s “Remarks,” one simple
sentence in reference to the gentleman by whom it was first told,—
that “the enthusiasm of his nature predisposed him to entertain
some visionary and romantic notions of supernatural appearances.”

PHANTASY FROM MENTAL ASSOCIATION.
“This is the very coinage of your brain:
This bodiless creation, ecstacy
Is very cunning in.”
Hamlet.
Cast. How delightful to wander thus among the reliques of that
age, when her citizens, the colonists of Britain, migrated from
imperial Rome, and built their Venta Silurum, or Caerwent, from the
ruins of which these now mouldering walls were formed. As we trod
those pictured pavements of Caerwent beneath the blue sky of
yesternoon, I felt all the inspiration of Astrophel, and a pageantry of
Roman patricians seemed to sweep along the fragments of those
painted tesselæ.
“Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain,
Our thoughts are link’d by many a hidden chain;
Awake but one, and lo! what myriads rise,
Each stamps his image as the other flies.”
There is a happy combination of antiquity and simplicity in this
land of Gwent. Almost within the shadow of the Roman Caerleon,
the Monmouthshire peasants, at Easter and Whitsuntide, assemble
to plant fresh flowers on the graves of their relatives. How I love
these old customs! the chanting of the carol at Christmas; its very
homeliness so redolent of love and friendship: and that quaint old
Moresco dance which was introduced to England by the noble
Katherine of Arragon. Then the pastimes of Halloween and
Hogmanay in Scotland, and the Walpurgis night of Germany, and the
May-day in Ireland, the festival of their patron saint, and the
Midsummer night when the bealfires cast an universal lumination
over the fells of the green isle, and the still more sacred fire, lighted
up in November in worship of their social deity, Samhuin, whose

potent influence charms the warm hearts of all the maids of Erin
around the winter hearth of their homes. I listen unto these
pleasures as if they were mine own: as children associate all the
legends of their school histories with themselves and their own time.
In every spot of this land of Wales the very names of the olden
time are before us: the romaunt of Prince Arthur and his knights is
ever present to our fancy, for he hath, as on the crag that towers
over Edinburgh, a seat on many a mountain rock in Wales; as the
Cadair Arthur over Crickhowel, and the semicircle on Little Doward,
and Maen Arthur on the moors of Cardigan.
Astr. I never look on scenes like this without the echo of that
beautiful apostrophe of Johnson, among the ruins of Iona,
whispering in my ear.
Inspired by such an influence, I have roamed over the Isle of
Elephanta, and gazed on its gorgeous pagoda hewn from the rock,
and adorned by gigantic statues and mysterious symbols of the
same eternal granite: on the beauteous excavations of Salsette: on
the wonders of Elora, and on the classic reliques of Persepolis: on
the beautiful columns of Palmyra, the Tadmor in the wilderness,
where Solomon built his “fenced city;” as well as those arabesque
and gothic temples, the abbeys and cathedrals of our own island. I
too have almost dared to think that superstition and idolatry might
be forgiven for the splendours of its architecture, even for the
elevation of those giant blocks of Stonehenge and Avebury, the
mouldering altars of the druidical priesthood, in the city consecrated
to their god.
So do I feel in this court-yard of Chepstow Castle, whilom the
Est-brig-hoel of Doomsdaye Booke, and in later times so blended
with English history. See you not the Conqueror and his knights in
panoply on prancing steeds before you? See you not Fitz Osborne
and Warren, its former lords, loom out upon your sight? And, lo! the
portal opens, and the dungeon of Henry Martin, the regicide, yawns
like a bottomless pit before us. The shade of Charles Stewart rises;
and again the phantom of Cromwell, uttering his epithets of scorn,
as if the wanton puritan were about to dash the ink in the face of his
colleague as he signed the death-warrant of the king. And now the

scene changes, and behold the doomed one is chained to those
massive rings of iron, and there with groaning dies.
Ev. I am most willing that you should thus indulge in your wild
rhapsody, Astrophel, for it is the happy illustration of one potent
cause of spectral illusion—association. There are few whose minds
are not excited in some degree when they tread the localities of
interesting events. By memory and its combinations something like
an inspired vision may often seem to come over us—a day-dream.
Or, if we have been brooding over a subject or gazing on the relics
of departed or absent love and friendship: or while we stand on a
spot consecrated by genius, or when we have passed the scene of a
murder, still will association fling around us its visionary shadows.
Shortly after the death of Maupertuis, the president of the
Academy of Berlin, Mr. Gleditsch, the curator of natural history, was
traversing the hall in solitude, when he saw the phantom of the
president standing in an angle of the room with his eyes intensely
fixed on him: an effect perfectly explicable by the association of
intense impression of memory in the very arena of the president’s
former dignity.
You will remember the story of a rich libertine, told by Sir Walter
Scott. Whenever he was alone in his drawing-room, he was so
haunted by a spectral corps de ballet, that the very furniture was, as
it were, converted into phantoms. To release himself from this
unwelcome intrusion he retired to his country house, and here, for a
while, he obtained the quiet which he sought. But it chanced that
the furniture of his town house was sent to him in the country, and
on the instant that his eyes fell on his drawing-room chairs and
tables, the illusion came afresh on his mind. By the influence of
association the green figurantes came frisking and capering into his
room, shouting in his unwilling ears, “Here we are! here we are!”
It is not, however, essential that there be substance at all to
excite these spectres. Idea alone is sufficient.
Do you think it strange that a ghost should appear fleshless and
shadowy without some supernatural influence? Be assured that the
only influence exists in the sublime and intricate workings of that
mind which in its pure state was itself an emanation from the Deity;

which is only shadowed by illusion while in its earthly union with the
brain, and which, on the dissolution of that brain, will again live
uncombined, a changeless and eternal spirit.
It is as easy to believe the power of mind in conjuring up a
spectre as in entertaining a simple thought: it is not strange that this
thought may appear embodied, especially if the external senses be
shut: if we think of a distant friend, do we not see a form in our
mind’s eye, and if this idea be intensely defined, does it not become
a phantom?
“Phantasma est sentiendi actus, neque differt a sensione aliter
quam fieri differt a factum esse.”
“A phantom is an act of thinking,” &c.
You have dipped deeply into Hobbes, Astrophel, and will correct
me if I misquote this philosopher of Malmsbury.
It was in Paris, at the soirée of Mons. Bellart, and a few days
after the death of Marshal Ney, the servant, ushering in the
Mareschal Aîné, announced Mons. Le Mareschal Ney. We were
startled; and may I confess to you, that the eidōlon of the Prince of
Moskwa was for a moment as perfect to my sight as reality?
Now it is as easy to imagine a fairy infinitely small as a giant
infinitely large. Between an idea and a phantom, then, there is only
a difference in degree; their essence is the same as between the
simple and transient thought of a child, and the intense and
beautiful ideas of a Shakspere, a Milton, or a Dante.
“Consider your own conceptions,” said Imlac, “you will find
substance without extension. An ideal form is no less real than
material, but yet it has no extension.”
You hear I adopt the word idea, as referring to the organ of
vision, but sight is not the only sense subject to illusion. Hearing,
taste, smell, touch, may be thus perverted, because the original
impression was on the focus of all the senses, the brain.
Indeed, two of these illusions are often synchronous: as when a
deep sepulchral voice is uttered by a thin filmy spectre, like the
ghosts of Ossian, through which the moonbeams and the stars were
seen to glimmer. But the illusion of the eye is by far the most
common, and hence our adopted terms refer chiefly to the sight: as

spectre, phantom, phantasm, apparition, eidōlon, ghost, shadow,
shade.
The ghost then is nothing more than an intense idea. And as I
have caught the mood of story-telling, listen to some analogies of
those deep impressions on the mind which are the spring of all this
phantasy.
That destructive brainworm, Demonomania, is often excited in
the mind of a proselyte by designing religious fanatics. Let the life of
the selected person be ever so virtuous and exemplary, she (for it is
usually on the softer sex that these impostures are practised)
becomes convinced of the influence of the demon over her, and she
is thus criminally taught the necessity of conversion—is won over to
the erroneous doctrine of capricious and unqualified election.
These miseries do not always spring from self-interested
impostors. The parent and the nurse, in addition to the nursery tales
of fairies and of genii, too often inspire the minds of children with
these diabolical phantoms. The effect is always detrimental,—too
often permanently destructive. I will quote one case from the fourth
volume of the Psychological Magazine, related by a student of the
university of Jena.—“A young girl, about nine or ten years old, had
spent her birth-day with several companions of her own age, in all
the gaiety of youthful amusement. Her parents were of a rigorous
devout sect, and had filled the child’s head with a number of strange
and horrid notions about the devil, hell, and eternal damnation. In
the evening, as she was retiring to rest, the devil appeared to her,
and threatened to devour her. She gave a loud shriek, fled to the
apartment where her parents were, and fell down apparently dead
at their feet. A physician was called in, and she began to recover
herself in a few hours. She then related what had happened, adding,
that she was sure she was to be damned. This accident was
immediately followed by a severe and tedious nervous complaint.”
The ghost will not appear to tell us what will happen, but it may
rise, and with awful solemnity too, to tell us that which has
happened. Such is the phantom of remorse,—the shadow of
conscience,—which is indeed a natural penalty: a crime that carries
with it its own consecutive punishment. Were the lattice of Momus

fixed in the bosom, that window through which the springs of
passion could be seen, there would be, I fear, a dark spot on almost
every heart,—as there is, to quote the Italian proverb, “a skeleton in
every house.” Of these pangs of memory, the pages both of history
and fiction are teeming. Not in the visions of sleep alone, but in the
glare of noonday, the apparition of a victim comes upon the guilty
mind, —
“As when a gryphon through the wilderness,
With winged course, o’er hill and moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who, by stealth,
Had from his wakeful custody purloined
The guarded gold.”
Brutus, and Richard Plantagenet, and Clarence, and Macbeth,
and Manfred, and Lorenzo, and Wallace, and Marmion, are but the
archetypes of a very numerous family in real life,—for Shakspere,
and Byron, and Schiller, and Scott, have painted in high relief these
portraits from the life.
Many a real Manfred has trembled as he called up the phantom
of Astarte; many a modern Brutus has gazed at midnight on the evil
spirit of his Cæsar; many a modern Macbeth points to the vacant
chair of his Banquo, the ghost in his seat, and he mentally exclaims,
—“Hence, horrible shadow! unreal mockery, hence!”
Ida. Aye, and many a false heart, like Marmion, hears, as his life
ebbs on the battle-field, the phantom voice of Constance Beverly:
“The monk, with unavailing cares,
Exhausted all the church’s prayers.
Ever he said, that, close and near,
A lady’s voice was in his ear,
And that the priest he could not hear,
For that she ever sung:
‘In the lost battle, borne down by the flying,
Where mingles war’s rattle with groans of the dying’ —
So the notes rung.”

We read in Moreton an exquisite story of the trial of a murderer,
who had with firmness pleaded—“not guilty.” On a sudden, casting
his eyes on the witness-box, he exclaimed, “This is not fair; no one
is allowed to be witness in his own case.” The box was empty, as
you may suppose; but the eye of his conscience saw his bleeding
victim glaring on him, and ready to swear to his murder. He felt that
his fate was sealed, and pleaded guilty to the crime.
“——Deeds are done on earth,
Which have their punishment ere the earth closes
Upon the perpetrators. Be it the working
Of the remorse-stained fancy, or the vision
Distinct and real of unearthly being:
All ages witness that, beside the couch
Of the fell homicide, oft stalks the ghost
Of him he slew, or shows his shadowy wound.”
It is this utter humiliation of the spirit, and the conviction of our
polluted nature, that rankle so intensely in the wounded heart; and
thence the repentant sinner feels so deeply that awful truth, that
there is a Being infinitely more pure and godlike than himself.
Ev. A very fertile source of spectral illusion is the devotion to
peculiar studies and deep reflection on interesting subjects. Mons.
Esquirol records the hallucination of a lady, who had been reading a
terrific account of the execution of a criminal. Ever after, in all her
waking hours, and in every place, she saw above her left eye the
phantom of a bloody head, wrapped in black crape,—a thing so
horrible to her, that she repeatedly attempted the commission of
suicide. And of another lady, who had dipped so deeply into a history
of witches, that she became convinced of her having, like Tam
O’Shanter’s lady of the “cutty sark,” been initiated into their
mysteries, and officiated at their “sabbath” ceremonies.
Monsieur Andral, in his youth, saw in La Pitié the putrid body of a
child covered with larvæ, and during the next morning, the spectre
of this corpse lying on his table was as perfect as reality.
We have known mathematicians whose ghosts even appeared in
the shape of coloured circles and squares, and Justus Martyr was

haunted by the phantoms of flowers. Nay, our own Sir Joshua, after
he had been painting portraits, sometimes believed the trees, and
flowers, and posts to be men and women.
I knew myself a bombardier, whose brain had been wounded in a
battle. To this man a post was an enemy, and he would, when a
sudden frenzy came on him, attack it in the street with his cane, and
not leave it until he believed that his foeman was beaten or lay
prostrate at his feet.
Intense feeling, especially if combined with apprehension, often
raises a phantom. The unhappy Sir R—— C——, on being summoned
to attend the Princess Charlotte of Wales, saw her form robed in
white distinctly glide along before him as he sat in his carriage: a
parallel, nay, an explanation, to the interesting stories of Astrophel.
Then the sting of conscience may warp a common object thus.
Theodric, the Gothic king, unjustly condemned and put to death
Boëthius and Symmachus. It chanced at that time, that a large fish
was served to him at dinner, when his imagination directly changed
the fish’s head into the ghastly face of Symmachus, upbraiding him
with the murder of innocence; and such was the effect of the
phantom, that in a few days he died. But these spectral forms were
seen, like the dagger of Macbeth, and the hand-writing on the wall,
by none but the conscience-stricken, a proof of their being ideal and
not real.
Not long after the death of Byron, Sir Walter Scott was engaged
in his study during the darkening twilight of an autumnal evening, in
reading a sketch of his form and habits, his manners and opinions.
On a sudden he saw as he laid down his book, and passed into his
hall, the eidōlon of his departed friend before him. He remained for
some time impressed by the intensity of the illusion, which had thus
created a phantom out of skins, and scarfs, and plaids, hanging on a
screen in the gothic hall of Abbotsford.
I learn from Doctor T. that a certain lady was on the eve of her
marriage, but her lover was killed as he was on his way to join her.
An acute fever immediately followed this impression; and on each
subsequent day, when the same hour struck on the clock, she fell
into a state of ecstacy, and believed that the phantom of her lover

wafted her to the skies; then followed a swoon of two or three
hours’ duration, and her diurnal recovery ensued.
Cast. I know not if it will make me happier, Evelyn, but I have
learned from your lips to believe that many of those legends which I
held as poetic fictions, may be the stories of minds, in which, under
the influence of devoted affection, the slightest semblance to an
object so beloved may work up the phantom of far distant or
departed forms. You may have read the romantic devotion of Henry
Howard to the fair Geraldine, the flower of England’s court, and the
chivalrous challenge of her beauty to the knights of France. During
his travels on the continent, he fell in with the alchymist Cornelius
Agrippa, who by his sleight cunning showed in a magic mirror (as he
said) to the doting mind of the earl, his absent beauty reclining on a
couch, and reading by the light of a waxen taper the homage of his
pen to her exquisite beauty. Then there was an archbishop of the
Euchaites, a professor of magic in the ninth century. The Emperor
Basil besought this pseudo-magus Santabaran, for a sight of his long
lost and beloved son. He appeared before the emperor in a costume
of splendour and mounted on a charger, and sinking into his arms,
instantly vanished. This phantasy, and the glamourie of the witch of
Falsehope over Michael Scott, and the vision of the wondrous tale of
Vatheck, and the legend of the Duke of Anjou in Froissart, might be
the rude shadows of some slight phantasmagoria working on a
sensitive or impassioned mind; may they not?
Ev. I am proud of my proselyte, lady.
Ida. I presume these illusions may be wrought without the
outlines of distinct shapes. I have ever thought the vision of Eliphaz
the Temanite more solemn, because an undefined shadow: “A vision
is before our face, but we cannot discern the form thereof.” And
where the profane poets have written thus mystically, they have
risen in sublimity. Such is Milton’s portraiture of death:

“——the other shape,
If shape it could be called, which shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,
For each seemed neither.”
And in the splendid vision of Manfred, whose thoughts were, alas! so
polluted by passion —
“I see
The steady aspect of a clear large star,
But nothing more.
Spirit. We have no form beyond the elements,
Of which we are the mind and principle.”
And the idolaters profanely adopted this mystic metaphor when they
inscribed their Temple of Isis, at Sais —
“I am whatever has been, is, and shall be, and no one hath taken
off my veil.”
Ev. The phantom is often described as destitute of form. When
Johnson was asked to define the ghost which appeared to old Cave,
he answered: “Why, sir, something of a shadowy being.” And there is
a sublimity and a mystery in that which is indefinite. Two very deep
philosophers have however differed in opinion regarding the effect of
darkness and obscurity on the mind. Burke alludes to darkness as a
cause of the sublime and terrific: (and he is supported by Tacitus
—“Omne ignotum pro magnifico est:”) Locke, as not naturally a
cause of terror, but as it is associated by nurses and old crones with
ghosts and goblins.
I will not split this difference, but I believe Burke is in the right.
Obscurity is doubtless deeply influential in raising phantoms; that
which is indefinable becomes almost of necessity a ghost. If the
ghosts of Shakspere did not appear, the illusion would be more
impressive. In darkness and night, therefore, the ghosts burst their

cerements, the spirits walk abroad, and the ghost seers revel in all
their superstitious glory. The druids, those arch impostors, acted
their mysteries in the depth of shadowy groves: and the heathen
idols are half hidden both in the hut of the American Indian and the
temples of Indostan. It is true children shut their eyes when
frightened, but this is instinctive, and because they think it real; but,
in truth, they ever dread the notion of darkness. By the fancy of a
timid mind, in the deepening gloom of twilight, a withered oak has
been fashioned into a living monster; and I might occupy our
evening in recounting the tales of terror to which a decayed trunk
once gave birth, among some village gossips in the weald of Sussex.
There are few who “revisit the glimpses of the moon,” whose
romantic humour leads them abroad about nightfall, who have not
sometimes been influenced by feeling somewhat like phantasy,
during the indistinct vision of twilight; the dim emanations of the
crescent, or the more deceptive illusion of an artificial luminous point
irradiating a circumambient vapour. Through the magnifying power
of this floating medium, the image may be fashioned into all the
fancied forms of poetical creation.
At the midnight hour, by a blue taper light, and in a ruined castle,
a simple tale will become a romance of terror.
I have spoken thus, to introduce an incident which occurred
years ago, and yet my mind’s eye shows it to me as if it were of
yesterday.
It was in the year ——, on the eve of my presenting myself at the
college for my diploma. I had been deeply engaged during the day,
in tracing, with some fellow students, the distribution of the nervous
ganglia. The shades of evening had closed over us as our studies
were nearly completed, and one by one my companions gave me
good night, until, about ten o’clock, I was left alone, still poring over
the subject of my study, by the dim light of a solitary taper. On a
sudden I was startled by the loud pealing of a clock, which, striking
twelve, warned me most unexpectedly of the solemn hour of
midnight; for I was not otherwise conscious of this lapse of time. For
a moment I seemed in utter darkness, until straining my eyes, a blue
and lurid glimmer floated around me. A chilliness crept over me, and

I had a strange indefinable consciousness of utter desolation—of
being immured in some Tartarean cavern, or pent among icy rocks,
for the cold night-wind was sweeping in hollow murmurs through the
vaults. In the blue half-twilight I was at length sensible that I was
not alone, but in the presence of indistinct shadowy forms, silent
and motionless as the grave; and by that awful sensation of the
sublime which springs from obscurity, I conceived that I had suffered
transmigration, or had glided unconsciously through the gates of
Hades, and that these were the embodied spirits—the manes of the
departed, in sleep; and then I thought the sounds were not those of
the wind, but the hollow moaning of those restless spirits that could
not sleep. By some species of glamourie which I could not
comprehend, the gloom appeared to brighten by slow degrees, and
the forms became more distinct. When we are involved in mystery,
the sense of touch is instinctively brought to its analysis. I put forth
my hand, and found that my eyes were not mocked with a mere
vision; for it came in contact with something icy cold and death-like
—it was an arm clammy and cadaverous that fell across my own;
and as the smell of death came over me, a corpse rolled into my lap.
The moaning of the breeze increased, and the screech-owl
shrieked as she flitted unseen around me. At this moment a scream
of agony was heard in the distance, as of some mortal frame
writhing in indescribable anguish, while a hoarse and wizard voice
cried, “Endure! endure!” It ceased; and then I heard a pattering and
flutter, and then a shrill squeaking, as of some tiny creatures that
were playing their gambols in the darkness which again came
around me. On a sudden all was hushed, and there was a glimmer
of cold twilight, as when a horn of the moon, as Astrophel would
say, comes out from an eclipse; and then a brighter gleam of bluer
light burst through the gloom, at which I confess I started, and my
hand dropped into a pool of blood. Like the astonished Tam
O’Shanter, it seemed that I was alone in the chamber of death, or
the solitary spectator of some demon incantation or of some
wholesale murder. There were some forms blue and livid, some
cadaverous, of “span-long, wee, unchristened bairns,” and others
deluged in blood and impurity lay around me: one pale and

attenuated form, that more than mocked the delicate beauty of the
Medicean Venus, lay naked on the ground. On the athletic form of
another the moonbeam fell in a glory, as if the fabled legend of
Endymion was realized before my eyes.
Astr. And——
Ev. Ay, now for the secret—the materiel of this wild vision. The
truth was, I had dropped asleep in the dissecting-room—the candle
had burned out; and thus, with a copious supply of dead bodies, the
howling of a tempest, the purple storm-clouds, the blue gleams of
moonshine, and bats, and screech-owls, and the screams of patients
in the surgical wards, and withal the hoarse voices of those croaking
comforters, the night-nurses,—I have placed before you a harmony
of horrors, that might not shame a legend of Lewis, or a Radcliffian
romance.
Simple as this will be the explanation of many and many a tale of
mystery, although fraught with accumulated horrors, like those of
the “Castle of Udolpho;” and if, putting aside that ultraromantic
appetite for the marvellous, we have courage to attempt their
analysis, the pages of demonology will be shorn of half their terrors,
the gulph of superstition will be illumined by the light of philosophy,
and creation stand forth in all its harmonious and beautiful nature.

PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT.
——“A false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain.”
Macbeth.
Astr. I will grant the influence of all these inspiring causes,
Evelyn, but it is not under adventitious circumstances alone that the
gifted seer is presented with his visions, but also in the clear
daylight, in the desert, or in a mountain hut; surrounded, too, by
those who are content with the common faculties of man.
Among many of the Gothic nations especially, women were the
peculiar professors of divination and magic. The Volva-Seidkona, the
Fiolkyngi, the Visindakona, and the Nornir, were the oracular
priestesses, the chief of whom was the Hexa. These had the faculty
of insight into skulda, or the future, and foreknew the doom of
mortals: either to the niflheimr, or hell, over which presided the half
blue and half flesh-tinted Hela, the goddess of death, who, as the
Cimbric peasants believed, diffused pestilence and plague as she
rode over the earth on her three-footed horse Hellhest; or to the
Valhalla, or paradise of Odin. And this we read in the “Edda.”
Ev. Gramercy, Astrophel, you run up the catalogue of these weird
women as you were involved in their unholy league. Have a care, or
we must have you caged. There was once a Dr. Fordage, a divine of
Berkshire, (as it is recorded in a strange book, “Demonium
Meridianum, or Satan at Noon-day,”) accused of seeing spectres,
such as “dragons with tails eight yards long, with four formidable
tusks, and spouting fire from their nostrils.” Remember the peril, and
beware.
Astr. Oh, sir, you must impeach by wholesale, for clairvoyance or
second sight prevails in some regions as a national faculty.
The courses of my travel have shown to me this inspiration,
especially among the elevated parts of the globe. The Hartz and

other forests in Germany, the Alps and Pyrenees, the Highlands of
Scotland, the hills of Ireland, the mountains of the Isle of Man, and
the frozen fields of Iceland and Norway, abound in ghostly legends.
Among the passes of the Spanish Sierras, also, it is believed that the
Saludadores and the Covenanters saw angels on the hill-side during
their wanderings and persecutions.
Ev. And how clear is the natural reason of this. As in the wide
desert, so on the mountain, nature assumes her wildest form. Of the
awful sublimity of clouds, and vapours, and lightnings, among the
gorges of the giant rocks, of the Alps, and the Appenines, and the
deep and dreadful howling of a storm in the icy bosom of a glacier,
or bellowing among the crumbling walls of ruined castles, the
lowlander can form no idea.
The mind both of the Bedouin Arab, and especially of the
mountaineer, is thus cradled in romance. If that mind be rude and
uncultivated, credulity and superstition are its inmates; ignorance
being the common stamp of the seers, except in rare instances of
deep reflectors or melancholy bookworms, whose abstractions, like
those of Allan Bane and Brian and Mac Aulay, assume the prophetic
faculty; the seer by its power perceiving, as he declares, things
distant or future as if they were before his eye.
The superstitious legends of Martin, the historian of the Western
Isles, and the precepts for the practice and governance of this
clairvoyance, prove a deep interest and impression, but not a
mystery. Among the defiles of Snæfel, in Man, the belief is
prevalent: “A Manksman amid his lonely mountains reclines by some
romantic stream, the murmurings of which lull him into a pleasing
torpor; half-slumbering, he sees a variety of imaginary beings, which
he believes to be real. Sometimes they resemble his traditionary idea
of fairies, and sometimes they assume the appearance of his friends
and neighbours. Presuming on these dreams, the Manks enthusiast
predicts some future event.” Here is a local reason, as among the icy
mountains of the north. Cheffer writes, that thus influenced, the
melancholy of the Laplanders renders them ghost-seers, and the
dream and the vision are ever believed by them to be prophetic.

Cast. It is the contemplation of these alpine glories, that gilds
with so bright a splendour of imagery the romances of mountain
poets,—the wild legends of Ossian, and those which spangle, as with
sparkling jewels, the pages of the “Lay,” the “Lady of the Lake,” and
“Marmion.” It may excite the jealousy of a classic, but the ghosts
and heroes of Ossian, as very acute critics decide, are cast in a finer
mould than the gods of Homer.
You smile at me, most learned clerks of Oxenford, yet I believe
the critics are correct. When I was prowling in the king’s private
library, in Paris, M. Barbier placed in my hands two of the most
precious tomes, the folio “Evangelistarium,” or prayer-book of
Charlemagne, and the 4to. edition of Ossian. The one is sanctified
by its subject, and rich beyond compare in illuminations of gold and
colours, and priceless in the eyes of the bibliomaniac. The other was
the favourite book of Napoleon.
Fancy that you hear him in the solitude of St. Cloud, poring in
deep admiration over passages like this:
“Fingal drew his sword, the blade of dark-brown Luno. The
gleaming path of the steel winds through the gloomy ghost. The
form fell shapeless into air, like a column of smoke as it rises from
the half-extinguished furnace. The spirit of Loda shrieked, as, rolled
into himself, he rose on the wind. Inistore shook at the sound. The
waves heard it on the deep, and stopped in their course with fear.”
And yet these beauties, like the pictures of Turner, are looked
upon with a smile of wondering pity or of scorn, simply because
these home-keeping critics have never scaled the mountain, or
breasted the storm for its wild and purple glory.
Among the mountains of Wales it was my fortune to light on
many a wild spot, where the poetry of nature fell like the sun-light
on the heart of the peasant. In the beautiful vale of Neath there is
the tiny hamlet of Pont-Neath-Vechan. I shall ever remember how
fair and beautiful it seemed as I descended from the mountain rocks
of Pen y Craig, the loftiest of the Alps of Glamorgan, which inclose
Ystrad-Vodwg, the “village of the green valley.” Around its humble
cottages is spread the most romantic scenery of Brecknockshire. The

tributaries of its rolling river there blend their waters—those torrent
streams which Drayton has impersonated in the Polyolbion, as
“Her handmaids Meltè sweet, clear Hepstè, and Tragath.”
On the Meltè is the wondrous cavern of Porth-Mawr, through
which, in Stygian darkness, flows this Acherontic river. And on the
clear Hepstè is that glittering waterfall which in the midst of leafy
woods and bosky glens, throws itself, like a miniature Niagara, from
the rock, forming an arch of crystal, beneath which the traveller and
the peasant cross the river’s bed on the moss-green and slippery
limestone. Oh! for the pencil of a Salvator, the pen of Torquato, to
picture the wild vision which was before my eyes when I sought
shelter beneath this crystal canopy from the deluge of a thunder-
cloud. The lightning flash gleamed through the waterfall, forming a
prismatic rainbow of transcendent beauty, while the deep peal swept
through the echoing dingles, and the crimson-spotted trout leaped in
sportive summersaults over the water-ousel that was walking quietly
on the gravel, deep in the water.
In this wilderness of nature, no wonder that legends should
prevail: that fairies are seen sporting in the Hepstè cascades, and
that in the dark cavern of Cwm-Rhyd y Rhesg, the ghosts of
headless ladies so often affright the romantic girls of these wild
valleys. No wonder that they believe the giant Idris, enthroned on
his mountain chair, shook the three pebbles from his shoe into that
pool which bears the name of the Lake of Three Grains; or that the
shrieks of Prince Idwal are to this day heard by the peasants of
Snowdonia, amid the storm which bursts over the purple crag of the
Twll-dhu, and thunder-clouds cast a deeper and a darker shade over
the black water of Lyn Idwal. Nay, I myself may confess, that as I
have stood on the peaks of Y Wyddfa, while the white and crimson
clouds rolled beneath me in fleecy masses, whirling around the cone
of Snowdon, I have for a moment believed that I was something
more than earthly. And when enveloped in the mysterious cloud
which rests on the head of Mount Pilate in Lucern, I gave half my
faith to the legend of the guide, that storm and human trouble, and

the perils of flocks in the vicinity of its triple peak, were the result of
the self-immersion of Pontius Pilate in its lake, an act of remorse at
his impious adjudication. This unhallowed water was regarded with
dismay, and not a pebble might be cast to make a ripple on its
surface and disturb the quiet of the traitor. But, lo! in the sixteenth
century the spell was proved to be a fable by an assemblage of bold
Switzers, who hurled rocks into the lake, and swam across its water
without the slightest indication of displeasure from this kelpie of the
Brundeln Alp.
Ev. The truth is sweeter on your lips than fiction, Castaly.
Whisper again in the ear of Astrophel the penalties entailed on the
indulgence of second sight. Dr. Abercrombie knew a gentleman who
could, by his will, call up spirits, and seers have assured me that the
sight is to a certain degree voluntary:—by fixing the attention on a
subject during the dark hour, the power of divination may be
increased, but it cannot be controlled. But those who indulge in
those illusions are often driven on to a degree of frenzy equal to the
agonizing penalty of Frankenstein; even as the witch of Endor
trembled when she raised before Saul the spirit of Samuel, or the
Iberian princess Pyrene, who, like Sin, fled from the child-serpent
which was born from her dalliance with Hercules.
The effort of the seers, nay, the mysterious ordeal to which they
submit themselves, are often so painful, that they gaze with strained
eyeballs, and fainting occurs as the vision appears. When the dark
hour is o’er, they will exclaim with Mac Aulay, “Thank God, the mist
hath passed from my spirit!” Indeed, Sir Walter Scott observed in
those who presumed to this faculty, “shades of mental aberration
which caused him to feel alarmed for those who assumed the sight.”
Archibald, Duke of Argyle, was a seer, and it is written that he was
haunted by blue phantoms, the origin, I believe, of our epithet for
melancholy—“blue devils.”
At the foot of yonder purple mountains in Morgany, once lived
Colonel Bowen, a doer of evil works, whose spectral visitations fill so
many pages of Baxter’s “Essay on the Reality of Apparitions.” This
deep historian of the realm of shadows tells that the wizard was
worn down by the phantoms of his evil conscience; that he

imprisoned himself and his boy, who was, I presume, a sort of
famulus, in a small castle; that he walked and talked of diablerie,
and I know not what miseries, in his sleep.
I have myself known those who see spectres when they shut
their eyes, before an attack of delirium, which vanish on the re-
admission of light; and in imaginative minds, under peculiar
conditions, intense reading may so shut out the real world, that an
effort is required to re-establish vision. In Polydori’s “Vampyre” it is
recorded that they had been reading phantasmagoria, and ghost
stories in Germany, thereby highly exciting the sensitive mind of
Percy Bysshe Shelley. Anon, on Byron’s reading some lines of
Christabel, Shelley ran from the room, and was found leaning on a
mantel-piece bedewed with cold and clammy perspiration; and it is
enough to read of the gloom which marked the minds of those
geister-sehers, the proselytes of Swedenborg (among whom he
ranked the King of Prussia), to reclaim all the converts to his strange
religion.
Astr. There is a bright side, Evelyn. In Germany, those children
which are born on a Sunday are termed “Sontag’s kind,” and are
believed to be endowed with the faculty of seeing spirits; these are
gifted with a life of happiness.
Ev. And you believe it. Well, for a moment I grant its truth; but it
is the reverse in Scotland; the vision is almost ever cheerless, and
prophetic of woe. “Does the sight come gloomy o’er your spirit?”
asks Mac Aulay. “As dark as the shadow of the moon when she is
darkened in her course in heaven, and prophets foretell of future
times.” And the anathema of Roderich Dhu’s prophet Brian is dark
and gloomy as the legend of his mysterious birth, or its prototype,
the impure fable of Atys, and the loves of Jupiter and Sangaris.
Cast. If I am the sylph to charm this moody gentleman from his
reveries, I will warn him in the words of a canzonet, even of the
17th century:

“Yet, rash astrologer, refrain;
Too dearly would be won
The prescience of another’s pain,
If purchased by thine own.”
And I will tell him what Collins writes on the perils of the seer, in his
“Ode on Highland Superstition,” —
“How they whose sight such dreary dreams engross,
With their own vision oft astonished droop,
When o’er the wat’ry strath or quaggy moss
They see the gliding ghosts embodied troop. —
They know what spirit brews the stormful day,
And, heartless, oft like moody madness stare
To see the phantom train their secret work prepare.”
He listens not to me. Nay, then, I will try the virtue of a spell that
has oft shed a ray of light over the dark hour of the ghost-seer. I will
whisper music in thine ear, Astrophel. The fiend of Saul was chased
away by the harp of David; the gloomy shadows of Allan Mac Aulay
were brightened by the melody of Annot Lyle; and the illusion of
Philip of Spain, that he was dead and in his grave, was dispelled by
the exquisite lute of the Rose of the Alhambra.
Astr. My thanks, fair Castaly; yet wherefore should I claim your
syren spells. My visions are delightful as the inspiration of the
improvisatore, and carry not the penalty of the monomaniac. But
say, if there be (in vulgar words) a crack in this cranium of mine,
may not this crack, as saith the learned Samuel Parr, “let in the
light?”
If prophetic visions in the early ages came over the dying, why
not in ours?
The last solemn speech of Jacob was an inspired prophecy of the
miraculous advent:—“The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a
lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and to him shall
the gathering of the people be.” And is it profanation to ask, why
may not the departing spirit of holiness, even now, prophecy to us?
As we see the stars from the deep well, so may such spirits look
into futurity from the dark abyss of dissolution. In some cases of

little children, I have learned that this unearthly feeling has caused
them to anticipate their dying. How pathetically does John Evelyn, in
his Diary, allude to the anticipation of his little boy,—“an angel in
body and in mind, who died of a quartan ague, in his fifth year. The
day before he died, he called to me and told me that, for all I loved
him so dearly, I should give my house, lands, and all my fine things,
to his brother.”
The dying seem indeed themselves to feel that they are scarcely
of this world. Holcroft, a short time before his death, hearing his
children on the stairs, said to his wife, “Are those your children,
Louisa?”—as if he were already in another existence. As if the
human mind itself were perusing the celestial volume of the
recording angel,—the awful book of fate.
When the Northern Indian is stretched on the torture, even
amidst his agonies, an inspired combination of belief and hope
presents him with vivid pictures of the blessed regions of the Kitchi
Manitou. The faithful Mussulman, in the agonies of death, feels
assured that his enchanted sight is blessed by the beautiful houris in
Mahomet’s paradise. The Runic warriors also, as the Icelandic
chronicles record in their epitaphs, when mortally wounded in battle,
“fall, laugh, and expire;” and in this expiration, like the dying
warriors of Homer, predict the fate of their enemies.
As the venom of the serpent curdled the blood in the veins of
Regner Lodbrog, the Danish king, he exclaimed with ecstasy,—“What
new joys arise within me! I am dying! I hear Odin’s voice; the gates
of his palace are already opened, and half-naked maidens advance
to meet me. A blue scarf heightens the dazzling whiteness of their
bosoms; they approach and present me with the soul-exhilarating
beverage in the bloody skulls of my enemies.”
Ev. In that awful moment, when the spirit is
“Soon from his cell of clay
To burst a seraph in the blaze of day,”
the mind is prone to yield to those feelings which it might perhaps in
the turmoil of the busy world and at another period deem

superstition. There is something in the approach of death of so holy
and so solemn a nature, something so unlike life in the feeling of the
dying, that in this transition, although we cannot compass the
mystery, some vision of another world may steal over the retiring
spirit, imparting to it a proof of its immortality. I do not fear to yield
for once my approval of this devout passage of Sir Thomas Brown:
—“It is observed that men sometimes upon the hour of their
departure do speak and reason above themselves, for then the soul
begins to be freed from the ligaments of the body, and to discourse
in a strain above mortality.” It is on the verge of eternity, and the
laws and principles of vitality may be already repealed by the Being
who conferred them.—The arguments, then, regarding the
phenomena of life may fail, when life has all but ceased.
With this admission, I may counsel Astrophel as to the danger of
adducing heathen history or fiction in proof of this solemn question.
Cast. And yet Shakspere, for one, with a poet’s license, brings
before us, as you do, the dying hour, as the cause of prophetic
vision. John of Gaunt, on his death-bed, mutters, —
“Methinks I am a prophet new inspired,
And thus expiring do foretell of him,”
and then predicts the fate of Richard.
And remember, the dying Hotspur says, —
——“now could I prophecy,
But that the icy hand of death,” &c.
Ev. Well, I will not controvert your creed, Astrophel; rather let me
illustrate some of your apparent mysteries by simple analogy.
As in these extreme moments of life, so in the hour of extreme
danger, when an awful fate is impending, and the world and our
sacred friendships are about to be lost to us, a vision of our absent
friends will pass before us with all the light of reality. We read in the
writings of Dr. Conolly of a person who, in danger of being swamped
on the Eddystone rock, saw the phantoms of his family passing
distinctly before him; and these are the words of the English Opium-

Eater:—“I was once told by a near relative of mine that, having in
her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of
death but for the critical assistance which reached her, she saw in a
moment her whole life in its minutest incidents arrayed before her
simultaneously, as in a mirror, and she had a faculty developed as
suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part.”
Now, although the coming on of death is often attended by that
slight delirium indicated by the babbling of green fields, and the
playing with flowers, and the picking of the bedclothes, and the
smiling on the fingers’ ends, yet in others some oppressive or
morbid cause of insanity may be removed by the moribund
condition. In the words of Aretæus,—“the system has thrown off
many of its impurities, and the soul, left naked, was free to exercise
such energies as it still possessed.”
I will glance in illustration at these interesting cases:—from
Zimmerman, of an insane woman of Zurich, who, “a few hours
before her death, became perfectly sensible and wonderfully
eloquent;”—from Dr. Perceval, of a female idiot, who, as she was
dying of consumption, evinced the highest powers of intellect;—from
Dr. Marshall, of the maniac, who became completely rational some
hours previous to his dissolution;—and from Dr. Hancock, of the
Quaker, who, from the condition of a drivelling idiot, became shortly
before his death so completely rational, as to call his family together,
and, as his spirit was passing from him, bestow on them with
pathetic solemnity his last benediction.
Thus your impressive records are clearly explained by pathology;
and, perhaps unconscious of this, Mrs. Opie has a fine illustration in
her “Father and Daughter:”—the mind of the maniac parent being
illumined before his death by a beam of reason.
But in the languid brain of an idiot excitement may even produce
rationality.
Samuel Tuke tells us of a domestic servant, who lapsed into a
state of complete idiocy. Some time after, she fell into typhus fever,
and as this progressed, there was a real development of mental
power. At that stage when delirium lighted up the minds of others,
she was rational, because the excitement merely brought up the

nervous energy to its proper point. As the fever abated, however,
she sunk into her idiot apathy, and thus continued until she died. It
was but the transient gleam of reason.

PHANTASY FROM CEREBRAL CONGESTION.—
OPIUM.
——“Have we eaten of the insane root,
That takes the reason prisoner?”
Macbeth.
Ev. The contrasts to these phantoms of blind superstition, are
those of the overstrained condition of the mind. The Creator has
ordained the brain to be the soil in which the mind is implanted or
developed. This brain, like the corn-field, must have its fallow, or it is
exhausted and reduced in the degree of its high qualities. In our
intellectual government, therefore, we should ever adopt that happy
medium, equally remote from the bigotry of the untutored, and the
ultra refinement of the too highly cultivated mind.
It is not essential that I should now offer you more than a hint,
that the essence of the gloomy ghosts of deep study, like the
melancholy phantoms and oppressive demons of the night-mare,
consists in the accumulation of black blood about the brain and the
heart; and a glance at phrenology would explain to you how the
influence of that blood on the various divisions of the brain will call
up in the mind these “Hydras and Gorgons, and Chimeras dire.”
The learned Pascal constantly saw a gulph yawning at his side,
but he was aware of his illusion. He was, however, always strapped
in his chair, lest he should fall into this gulph, especially while he was
working the celebrated problem of the cycloidal curve.
A distinguished nobleman, who but lately guided the helm of
state in England, was often annoyed by the spectre of a bloody
head;—a strange coincidence with the phantom of the Count Duke
d’Olivarez, the minister of Philip of Spain.
From Dr. Conolly we learn the curious illusion of a student of
anatomy, who, during his ardent devotion to his study, confidently

believed that there was a town in his deltoid muscle.
And, from Dr. Abercrombie, the case of a gentleman of high
literary attainments, who, when closely reading in his study, was
repeatedly annoyed by the intrusive visits of a little old woman in a
black bonnet and mantle, with a basket on her arm. So filmy,
however, was this phantom, that the door-lock was seen through
her. Supposing she had mistaken her way, he politely showed her
the door, and she instantly vanished. It was the change of posture
which effected this disappearance, by altering the circulation of the
brain-blood, then in a state of partial stagnation.
My friend, Dr. Johnson, has told me of a gentleman of great
science, who conceived that he was honoured by the frequent visits
of spectres. They were at first refined and elegant both in manners
and in conversation, which, on one occasion, assumed a witty turn,
and quips, and puns, and satire, were the order of the evening; so
that he was charmed with his ghostly visitors, and sought no relief.
On a sudden, however, they changed into demoniac fiends, uttering
expressions of the most degraded and unholy nature. He became
alarmed, and depletion soon cured him of his phantasy.
A Scotch lawyer had long laboured under this kind of
monomania, which at length proved fatal. His physician had long
seen that some secret grief was gnawing the heart and sucking the
life-blood of his patient, and he at last extorted the confession, that
a skeleton was ever watching him from the foot of his bed. The
physician tried various modes to dispel the illusion, and once placed
himself in the field of the vision, and was not a little terrified when
the patient exclaimed, that he saw the skull peering at him over his
left shoulder.
The “Martyr Philosopher,” too, in the “Diary of a Physician,” saw,
shortly preceding his death, a figure in black deliberately putting
away the books in his study, throwing his pens and ink into the fire,
and folding up his telescope, as if they were now useless. The truth
is he himself had been engaged in that occupation, but it was his
own disordered imagination that raised the spectre.
You will believe from these illustrations, Astrophel, that Seneca is
right in his aphorism, —

“Nullum fit magnum ingenium sine misturâ dementiæ.”
And Pope also in his unconscious imitation, —
“Great wits to madness nearly are allied.”
Lord Castlereagh, when commanding in early life a militia
regiment in Ireland, was stationed one night in a large desolate
country house, and his bed was at one end of a long dilapidated
room, while, at the other extremity, a great fire of wood and turf had
been prepared within a huge gaping old-fashioned chimney. Waking
in the middle of the night, he lay watching from his pillow the
gradual darkening of the embers on the hearth, when suddenly they
blazed up, and a naked child stepped from among them upon the
floor. The figure advanced slowly towards Lord Castlereagh, rising in
stature at every step, until, on coming within two or three paces of
his bed, it had assumed the appearance of a ghastly giant, pale as
death, with a bleeding wound on the brow, and eyes glaring with
rage and despair. Lord Castlereagh leaped from his bed, and
confronted the figure in an attitude of defiance. It retreated before
him, diminishing as it withdrew in the same manner that it had
previously shot up and expanded; he followed it, pace by pace, until
the original child-like form disappeared among the embers. He then
went back to his bed, and was disturbed no more.
The melancholy story of the Requiem of Mozart is an apt and
sublime illustration of this influence. It was written by desire of a
solemn personage, who repeatedly, he affirmed, called on him
during its composition, and disappeared on its completion. The
requiem was soon chanted over his own grave; and the man in black
was, I believe, but a phantom of his own creation.
A step beyond this, and we have the spectres of the delirium of
fever: the wanderings of typhus, in which the victim either revels
with delight in the regions of fancy, a midsummer madness, or is
influenced by gloom and despair, in which, with a consciousness of
right and wrong, he is driven headlong to acts of ruin and
devastation.

Ida. In this illusive condition of the intellect consists even the
monomania of suicide; and the phrenologist will declare that torpor
or excitement of the “organ of the love of life,” will incite or deter
from such an act. But surely this is error: it is certain that there was
a fashion among the Stoics for this crime; and even in the early
history of Marseilles, suicide was sanctioned, not only by custom, but
by authority.
Ev. It is a truth of history, but the essence of the crime is the
predisposition in the brain. You will think to confute my position,
Astrophel, by adducing Brutus and Cassius, and Antony and Cato,
and a host of Roman heroes, in proof of the sanity of these suicides;
but even in the case of Cato, if we read Plutarch and not Addison,
who with Rousseau, Montaigne, and Shaftesbury, leaned toward a
sanction, we shall believe that Cato was indeed a monomaniac. I
speak this in charity.
And to all these morbid states we may still offer analogies. Such
are the effects of opium.
The brilliancy of thought may be artificially induced, also, by
various other narcotics, such as the juice of the American manioc,
the fumes of tobacco, or the yupa of the Othomacoes on the
Orinoco. To this end we learn from a learned lord, that even ladies of
quality are wont to “light up their minds with opium as they do their
houses with wax or oil.”
Indeed a kind of inspiration seems for a time to follow the use of
these narcotics. The Cumean sybil swallowed the juice of the cherry
laurel ere she sat on the divining tripod; and from this may have
arisen those superstitious fancies of the ancients regarding the
virtues of the laurel, and the influence of other trees, of which I
remember an allusion of the excellent author of the “Sylva.”
“Here we may not omit what learned men have observed
concerning the custom of prophets and persons inspired of old to
sleep upon the boughs and branches of trees, on mattresses and
beds made of leaves, ad consulendum, to ask advice of God.
Naturalists tell us that the Laurus and Agnus Castus were trees
which greatly composed the phrensy, and did facilitate true vision,
and that the first was specifically efficacious, προς τους

ενθυσιασμους, to inspire a poetical fury: and Cardan, I remember, in
his book de Fato, insists very much on the dreams of trees for
portents and presages, and that the use of some of them do dispose
men to visions.”
During the reverie of the opium eater (not the deep sleep of a
full dose, but the first and second stage ere coma be induced), he is
indeed a poet, so far as brilliant imagination is concerned, but his
scribbling is mere “midsummer madness,” the phantoms of which
are as wild as those of intoxication, dreaming, or insanity. But the
philosophy, the metaphysics of poetry, are not the product of mere
excitement: “Poeta nascitur, non fit.” A poet’s genius is born with
him. The influence of opium on the philosopher or the orator is the
same, but in them it does not usually elevate the force of
imagination beyond that of judgment. The power of the faculties has
been in fact exhausted by thought or study; the stimulus of opium,
then, restores that depressed energy to its proper level, leaving the
judgment perfect, and not overbalanced. The celebrated Thomas
Brown, during the composition of his Essay on the Mind, kept his
intellect on the stretch by opium for several successive nights. Sir
James Mackintosh (one of his favourite pupils) informed us, that on
entering the doctor’s library one morning somewhat abruptly, he
overheard the following command addressed to his daughter: “Effie,
bring me the moderate stimulus of a hundred drops of laudanum.”
So that the excitement be obtained, it matters not how, whether by
the use of opium, or other “drowsy syrups of the East, poppy or
mandragora,” as in the case of some of our modern statesmen; or
the free libation of brandy in certain orators, who were wont to
stagger down to the House from White’s or Brookes’s, with those
clubhouse laurels, wet towels, round their brows, and overwhelm
Saint Stephen’s by the thunders of their eloquence. Unless, indeed,
this be carried to excess, and then we have two very interesting
states of vision, as you may gather from the following witticism on
two of these departed legislators, which was founded on a truth:
“I cannot see the Speaker, Bill, can you?
Not see him, Harry, d——e, I see two!”

For the effects of alcohol and opium are alike: the first degree is
excitement; the second, reverie; the third, sleep, or stupor. “Ben
Jonson,” writes Aubrey, “would many times exceede in drink; Canarie
was his beloved liquor: then he would tumble home to bed, and
when he had thoroughly perspired, then to studie.”
The second visions of that moral delinquent, the practised opium-
eater, like the cordial julep of Comus,
“Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight,
Beyond the bliss of dreams.”
The phantoms of the third stage are often of unutterable
anguish: visions of bright forms dabbled in blood, and scenes of
crime and horror which are at once loathed and revelled in. The
awful curse of Lord Byron’s infidel—a vampyre—who, haunting the
graveyard with gouls and afrits, sucks the blood of his race:
“ ’Till they with horror shrink away
From spectre more accurs’d than they.”
Thus for a moment of delirious joy, he yields up his mind to the
agonies of remorse, his body to a slow poison, perhaps to a sinful
dissolution.
Ida. The scenes which I gazed on among the opium-houses of
Constantinople, ever excited my wonder and my pity. These slaves
of pleasure, when they assemble and take their seats, are the
perfect pictures of either apathetic melancholy or despair. As the
potent poison creeps through the blood, they are lighted with unholy
fires, until, these being exhausted, the vulture of Prometheus again
gnaws their vitals, although the fire is not stolen from heaven.
Listen to the confessions of such a slave: —
“At last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the
features that were all the world to me, and clasped hands, and
heart-breaking partings, and then everlasting farewells, and with a
sigh such as the caves of hell sighed, when the incestuous mother
uttered the abhorred name of Death, the sound was reverberated—
Everlasting farewells.”

Test Bank for Social Psychology, 5th Edition : Franzoi

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