S

CHAPTER I

DISPOSITION, IMPULSE AND HABIT

OCIAL psychology may be defined as the science of the motives of people living in social relations. As such it is one of the sciences of society, society being a general term for mankind living in social relations. And it deals with only one of the aspects of social relations, namely, the motives of human beings in those relations. Other social sciences deal with other aspects. Political science is the science of the relations of people organized as a state. Jurisprudence is the science of social relations in their fundamental legal aspects. Economics is the science of the relations of people organized for the pursuit of their material welfare. These sciences deal primarily with social relations that have become customary. The field of each includes a distinct, complex group of these relations, termed institutions. Thus we speak of political institutions, economic institutions. Social psychology deals with the motives of the individuals who participate in these institutional relations.1

The social relations of any group are determined, in the last analysis, by the motives of its individual members. These result from inherited traits that become adapted to life in the group in accordance with group attitudes and ideas. In the development of the child the instinctive tendencies soon lose their original form but persist in behaviour in a form modified by the group attitudes and ideas. The human behaviour with which the social psychologist has to do is due to the action of complexes of instinctive tendencies more or less modified by experience.2 Essential among these modified instinctive processes are the dispositions. They have a modifiable and a permanent aspect. 1 The author has explained the relations of social psychology to the other social sciences in his Foundations of Social Science.

2 Psychologists are so at variance in their analyses of instinctive behaviour that the social psychologist must cautiously use the word instinct.

3 For variously worded conceptions of the instinctive aspect of these processes see Thorndike, The Original Nature of Man, 5f.; Veblen, The Instinct of Workmanship, 3f.; Wallas, The Great Society, 22f.; Paton, Human Behaviour, Ch. VIII. The word disposition is by some authors used for the instinctive aspect alone, by others for the modified process.

The disposition gives a characteristic trend to behaviour so that we speak of a person as having an aggressive disposition, or a domineering disposition, or an acquisitive or close disposition, or a sympathetic disposition. The same person may have more than one disposition pronounced. We are here concerned not with the anatomy of the dispositions, which belongs in a treatise on personality, but with their functioning in social relations; wherefore the description of them in this and the succeeding chapters of Book I is designed to prepare for the analysis, in the succeeding books, of their functioning in social organization.

The dispositions are not only processes of human behaviour but also social-psychological elements. For the dispositions of the members of a group develop ways of joint acting that vary from the customary ways. Furthermore, in their social relations people are constantly studying each other's dispositions in order to know how to "handle" each other. So do parents study children. So do business managers study subordinates and foremen study workmen, and workmen their superiors. So do business men study customers. For instance, we are told that in collecting over-due bills collectors must appeal to essential dispositions of debtors, to their desire to make money, their pride. Out of the dispositions of business men has developed the industrial and financial organization through which they co-operate in satisfying those dispositions. But the dispositions are apt not to be so clearly conscious as the ways of acting that have developed for their satisfaction. And many business men have to be appealed to to follow those ways of acting by skilfully suggesting to them how those ways are in line with the essential dispositions of which men seek satisfaction in business. Owing to the dimly conscious nature of the processes involved, "indirect suggestion may be more effective than open discussion."

The dispositions are subject to the inborn tendency of human nature to avoid annoyance and seek satisfaction. The capacity of a disposition to enjoy satisfaction at any particular time depends on its readiness for satisfaction at that time. This readiness shows itself in action for satisfaction. If the disposition is brought into action when not in readiness, or if, when ready, there are no means of satisfaction, annoyance ensues. Dispositions in readiness persist in seekGardner, New Collection Methods, 127.

5 Ibid. 127.

6

Thorndike, The Original Nature of Man, 125-131.

ing satisfaction until satisfied; if they are balked, the annoyance is diffused through the connections, causing the reactions that are characteristic of a balked impulse."

In addition to the tendency to seek satisfaction and avoid annoyance, there is another, namely, the tendency of dispositions when satisfied to be strengthened and to develop a variety of habits and attitudes. The behaviour of a social group in its outward aspects is constituted largely of these joint habits and social attitudes organized around fundamental tendencies. This customary behaviour persists, owing not only to "the force of habit" but also to the satisfaction thereby afforded dispositions involved. We are apt to overlook this cause of the persistence of customary behaviour and to observe only the more obvious force of habit. But when force of habit is particularly strong, it is due to the fact that the action is satisfying. Action according to habit satisfies the impulse to leave one's peace of mind undisturbed, and the particular action may satisfy some other impulse. For instance, in the efforts put forth by the United States government during the World War to induce people to economize, it was found very difficult to change food habits when this involved substituting a poorer food for the luxury to which people had become accustomed. Note also the persistence of the customs surrounding the satisfaction of the sexual disposition. These have persisted because eminently satisfying to the man, who has exercised the social control.

As long as the primal instincts are fairly well satisfied, among people who are unconscious of others social behaviour tends to be extremely conventional. While there is always a tendency to the breaking up of 7 habits and the formation of new ones,9 habit exercises a retarding effect on impulses for a more satisfying adaptation. "The habits, like the instincts, are safe and serviceable. They have been tried, and they are associated with a feeling of security. There consequently grows up in the folk-mind a determined resistance to change. And there is a degree of sense in this, for while change implies possibilities of improvement it also implies danger of disaster, or a worse condition. It must also be acknowledged that a state of rapid and constant change implies loss of settled habits and disorganization. As a result, all societies view change with suspicion, and the attempt

↑ See Book VIII.

Keller, Societal Evolution, 103.

Ibid. 249-251.

Γ

"10

to revise revise certain habits is even viewed as immorality." This tendency to conservatism is apt to be weaker in the future than it has been in the past. The increasing intimacy of association and communication, the facilities for cheap printing,11 the spread of education will more easily unsettle habits. Isolation, the great buttress of conventionality,12 is coming to be a thing of the past. There is little stimulus to change where a group is isolated. The attention of the members is exclusively on each other, so that one who differs excites a social irritability and an impulse to compel outward conformity, at least, to the beliefs and customs of the group.13 But no group, not even a sovereign nation, can any longer remain isolated, and the differing minds which cannot find support in their own nation may find it in another.

Another condition that tends to weaken conservatism is the increasing tendency to migration all over the world. This frees men and women from the retraints of home, subjects the mind to a flood of new impressions, and requires adaptation to new ways of doing. As college students like the freedom of college life, as men like the freedom of the club or life on the frontier, so immigrants, particularly the young, like the freedom of a new country. While remaining in the family they may profess the beliefs of their parents, but are apt to discard even the appearance of assent after passing from under the parental restraint.14

Another condition that tends to weaken conservatism is the increasing influence of young men as compared with old. The intensity of life calls for comparatively young men for the difficult positions. Furthermore, the tyrannical control of old men that we see in primitive and barbarian tribes was due to the religious significance of age, which has now passed away, and to their being the repositories of the traditions of the group, which are now written in books. 15 There is a poise and power of judgment that comes only with maturity, but this does not mean old age. It means the period in which a man is at the

10 Thomas, Source Book for Social Origins, 21.

11 Lea, The Eve of the Reformation, in Ward, Prothero, Leathes (editors), The Cambridge Modern History, I: 684-685.

12 Semple, The Influence of Geographic Environment on the Lower St. Lawrence, Amer. Geog. Soc. Bulletin XXXVI: 465; Shotwell, The Religious Revolution of Today, 17-18; Williams, An American Town, 72-78.

13 Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven, 103; Williams, op. cit., 30, 46-50. 14 Hupka, Uber die Entwicklung der westgalizischen Dorfzustände, 190-193. 18 Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, 10-15, 421; Simkhowitsch, Die Feldegemeinschaft in Russland, 364.