An Introduction to Social Psychology

Chapter 29: Direct Contact Groups: Non-rational Types

Luther Lee Bernard

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We have discussed very briefly the more or less rational types of direct contact groups. In this chapter those direct contact groups which change more rapidly and are ephemeral and which are organized on a suggestion or non-rational and irrational basis will be taken up. In this connection also will be considered oratory as a chief method of conveying suggestion in non-rational direct contact groups.

INFORMAL CLUBS, SOCIAL SETS, ETC. —  There is a type of face-to-face group which resembles the club more closely than any other organization, but lacks the permanency and definiteness of integration of the club. Ordinarily groups of this type are wholly non-rational. In fact such groups are ordinarily very fluid, the membership changing constantly. Nor do all of the members often assemble at any one time or in any one place. The most common examples of this type of group are the social sets, such as the "four hundred," the cliques which organize themselves around a few striking personalities, the rings, etc. Every community possesses them. They lack any definite organization, but practically every one understands the essential facts about membership, leadership, the scope of their activities, etc. Their main interests almost invariably center in the ritual of polite social intercourse, amusements, fashion, eating, entertaining, and kindred activities. To many of the members the "proper" exercise of these functions, that is, their exercise according to the accepted rituals of their observance, is a sort of religion. Spencer recalls the case of a woman who said that being well dressed gave her a peace such as religion could not give. Somewhat like these informal groups, but even more ephemeral, although perhaps frequently possessing a more serious purpose, are the temporary bazaars, picnics, receptions,

(452) dinners, and like assemblages, designed either for pleasure or to raise money for some cause. Their very transitory assemblies are frequently, but not always, organized within a "set" or "clique."

CEREMONIALS claim a considerable amount of interest among modern peoples, as indeed they have always demanded, perhaps even more of primitive peoples who frequently have relatively fixed groups or "committees" assigned to the performance of particular ceremonies. Ceremonial performances have always, apparently, been used to commemorate and inculcate the most important truths or beliefs and experiences of peoples. Birth, puberty, marriage, death, and adventitious crises and discoveries have called forth this type of collective response among peoples of all ages. Even among highly literate and cultured peoples, who possess the power of preserving the memory and significance of events in more abstract and intellectual forms, ceremonials develop around the striking events of their history. We have our national holidays to commemorate the chief crises and achievements and personages in our history. Also we commemorate the most important achievements of our civilization, especially those connected with religion, in much the same way.

Ceremonials do not develop as a means of commemorating scientific achievement to the same extent as in religion and art, probably because the former is more easily communicated through intellectual symbols, while the latter still uses gesture language and other emotional communication symbols to a very considerable extent. Science perpetuates its meaning in literature, while religion, especially of the traditional type, is the chief cultivator of ritual and ceremonial. In this respect traditional religion has a close competitor as well as coadjutor, in the esthetic traditions and fine arts. In fact, art largely grew out of the ceremonial and other commemorative functions, including religious ceremonials.

The ceremonial, which becomes stereotyped and ossified in ritual, is primarily a type of gesture communication, but it also includes some elements of intellectual symbolization. It is much more primitive than the literary forms of collective expression and communication which have grown up to sup-

( 453) -plement it, and in some cases to supplant it, in the period of civilization. It finds its chief employment at present in the perpetuation of emotional values and in appeal to the young and the comparatively uneducated or those who have not been trained for the intellectual analysis of collective relationships and functions. Children, lower culture peoples, the uneducated, women, and men, is approximately the order in which ceremonials make an appeal to people in modern life. The more analytical and intellectual people become in their attitudes, the less likely they are to fall back upon ceremonial and ritual as a means of organizing their collective behavior.

THE DECLINE OF THE CEREMONIAL— Consequently, modern societies make comparatively less use of ceremonial and ritual than primitive societies. Puberty ceremonies have practically vanished from among us, although there are possibly certain remnants of them in the confirmation ceremonies of some of our more traditional religions. Birth and infant baptismal ceremonials have also diminished in importance. The marriage ceremonial has become as much or more an opportunity for the competitive display of wealth and station as originally it served the function of invoking the favor of the spirits or of palliating their vindictiveness with reference to the union. Death and burial are often treated by us with a degree of simplicity and lack of emotional outburst which would be regarded by the primitive man as sacrilegious and a direct challenge to the spirits to make reprisals.

The reason for this decline in the use of ceremonials with reference to the great individual events of our lives is undoubtedly to be found in the fact that our superior analysis of natural processes and causation has intellectualized our attitudes towards our lives. Perhaps also we see these outstanding events more as necessary parts or transition phases of the whole line of development. We no longer personify striking events or look for personality causes behind them. We analyze and intellectualize them. They do not mean less to us, but we see them more in perspective with the total development of life and of the whole of nature itself. Our methods of control over them, in so far as we are able to direct them, are now through science instead of through the magic and spirit control

( 454) attempted by primitive peoples. Much ceremonial regarding the great crises in the lives of individuals, as it has come down to us, has been derived from magical practices, although the more obvious meaning of such ceremonial has usually been turned into merely esthetic and commemorative moral emotional, or even competitive social, values in our time.

CEREMONIALS COMMEMORATING IMPORTANT SOCIAL EVENTS MORE RATIONAL— Ceremonial has always been a collective or group form of behavior. The interest, whether it centered in the welfare of the individual or in that of the group, was always based upon experiences which were common to all members of the group. Consequently ceremonials have at all times been largely public affairs, involving a collective response to an outside power or principle, or the mutual and reciprocal responses of members of the group to each other. Perhaps the latter, or mutual and reciprocal responses, developed out of the collective response to the outside agency. Modern ceremonials, aside from the survivals, are particularly group products and group functions. They arise primarily in connection with events affecting the collective welfare. Early ceremonials took place wholly within the limits of face-to-face groups, but with the expansion of modern groups, as the result of the development of indirect media of communication, ceremonials now extend into distance contact relationships also. The collective behavior involved in the ceremonial is very little deliberative or abstract, although some of our patriotic ceremonials, like Fourth of July celebrations, the Colonial settlements pageants, Settlement of the `Vest pageants, etc., and the Darwinian Centennial, the Shakespearean Centenary, etc., have attempted successfully to intellectualize the ceremonial procedure.

Discussion is at a minimum in ceremonial, but even here the concrete and formal and ritualistic tends to be crowded out by the analytical and the abstract. Ceremonials commemorating crises or other significant events in the lives of both individuals and society are, in spite of the magical survivals which often persist in them, important methods of teaching significant lessons. Usually ceremonials celebrating social crises contain fewer magical survivals than those commemo-

( 455) -rating individual life events, because they are ordinarily of more recent origin. Ceremonials celebrated by indirect contact communication are still less likely to carry magical survival practices, which are ordinarily concrete and direct in their methods of performance.

RALLIES AND DEMONSTRATIONS— Less intellectual and abstract than the behavior of audiences, but usually with more participant activity on the part of the members, is the behavior of groups engaged in rallies and demonstrations. If there is discussion in such groups the intellectual element is at a minimum and suggestion and the communication of emotional attitudes are primary. In the matter of the dominance of suggestion over intellectual analysis, rallies and demonstrations are similar to ceremonials, and all three differ in this respect very largely from the other types of direct contact groups already discussed. But unlike ceremonials, the dominating purpose of the rally is usually not commemoration but the support of some present faction or program by creating public opinion in its favor. Rallies and demonstrations can be organized about any personality, movement, or proposal, at any time, if these objects of attention are sufficiently spectacular or dramatic to secure the interest of the people. But they are rarely purely spontaneous collective phenomena; they are manipulated. Rallies and demonstrations require an active leader to a greater extent than any of the collective functions which we have previously considered. The group itself has been formed at the instance of the leaders for the specific purpose of behaving in a prearranged manner with reference to some object or value which they are supporting.

PURPOSES AND METHODS OF RALLIES AND DEMONSTRATIONS — Rallies and demonstrations are organized primarily in support of political and religious interests or beliefs and personalities. But excellent examples can also be found in connection with sports and amusements, particularly in college athletics, art, literature, community affairs, public health and sanitation, etc. The groups thus formed arc but little intellectual. The object in organizing them is rarely to stimulate analysis of values and programs, but to create an emotional attachment for such programs, movements, or persons. Other-

( 456) -wise we should have discussion groups instead of rallies and demonstrations. The professional evangelist does not invite his audience to argue out the question of the advisability of seeking membership in his religion and denomination. On the contrary, he is as anxious as the stock salesman or the insurance agent to prevent intellectual analysis. He stigmatizes such analysis as stiff-necked and sinful defiance to his God and as the result of the promptings of the Evil One. He uses all of the arts of suggestion, verbal intimidation, and emotional appeal known to him to blind the auditor to the other side of the question and to influence him to see the truth as it is made manifest through the speaker. In this way professional revivals become demonstrations of religious emotionalism and rallies to the cause and dogmas of the particular religion or denomination which is being preached.

The control through suggestion of collective emotional expression in line with the preacher's purpose is very important in the manipulation of such group behavior. The evangelist has the auditors sing songs the words of which express the same meanings as his sermons, and thus they become participators emotionally instead of remaining indifferent or becoming antagonists. Other music, prayers, workers circulating through the audience, etc., also add to the suggestive stimuli and heighten the emotional condition of the auditor by multiplying stimuli through various sensory channels.

ILLUSTRATIONS— The political rally or demonstration is organized in a very similar manner. Here participation is also important as a means of conditioning the overt and emotional behavior of the voter to the candidate or issue as stimulus. Campaign songs are sung, torchlight processions and banner parades are engineered, and sometimes experience meetings are arranged at which the veteran faithful appear and voice their approval. Clever and suggestive campaign speakers are employed who, by painting rosy pictures of their side and dark pictures of the other side, and by the use of flattery, appeals to pride acid fear, seek to Nvin the audience which leas already been prepared emotionally for the verbal appeal by participation exercises and stirring music. The use of stereotyped stimuli, of phrases such as "full dinner pail," or of stigmatizing

( 457) epithets like "socialist," "hyphenated American," or "slave driving capitalist," are largely depended upon for results. Argument from the floor is hissed down, and the offender will be carried out by the police if he asks embarrassing questions or challenges arguments, if the meeting is politically "regular." Political campaigns are won primarily by emotional appeal and suggestion. If the previous experiences of the auditor or the record of the opposition has conditioned the responses of the auditor to pointed and effective suggestion stimuli, it should be easy enough to win him over to the cause on the basis of emotional appeal.

College rallies are just as carefully planned, ordinarily. The student body, already emotionally predisposed to the cause by their daily contacts on the campus, pour into the auditorium to the martial strains of the college band. They sit jammed together, arm to arm, in plain view of each other, so that all expressions of emotion are easily communicated from one to another. The speakers chosen are college favorites. The student body participates through college yells and singing led by the yell leaders. As the crowning act of the drama the team itself marches onto the stage and a bedlam of enthusiasm is released in the audience. No intellectual analysis or argument is necessary or would be tolerated. The whole process occurs on the basis of suggestion under skilled leadership.

EPHEMERALNESS OF RESULTS FROM SUCH METHODS— Such groups are ephemeral, lasting only until after the election or the game, or until the souls have been saved. The ease with which the revival convert backslides is proverbial. Since the behavior is manipulated and is the product of suggestion rather than of intellectual analysis it can be staged again upon occasion. Such methods are also used in behalf of more permanent ends and programs, such as public health and sanitation, community improvement, coöperative organization, good government, and the like. But they are useful primarily as a method of arousing interest. To be truly and permanently effective they should he followed up by a carefully arranged and executed educational program. If follow-up work is not done the rally or demonstration may result in more harm than good. For, while it orients people emotionally

( 458) toward a common cause, emotional support is easily dissipated if it is not braced by intellectual convictions and deepened by continued achievement. An ineffective utilization of the emotions weakens emotional impulses and tends habitually to divorce emotional expression from achievement.

CROWDS AND MOBS are the lowest forms of human groups. They approximate most closely to the packs and herds of the lower animals. Crowds may be either voluntary or involuntary. That is, the members of the group may come together on purpose, or they may associate by accident, with all grades of aggregation and association between. It is usually some strong emotion or curiosity impulse which integrates a crowd. Emotion is especially dominant in the mob. Rallies and demonstrations are crowds, but usually they are carefully controlled and are not ordinarily allowed to become mobs.

Mobs are crowds in which the attention and emotions of the members become concentrated upon some object or activity with so much intensity that the members lose the power of rational inhibition. They carry out the suggestions given them or the impulses within them with reference to the object or behavior without restraint. They go mad temporarily, as in lynchings; and under the impetus of mutual and reciprocal stimulation by suggestion pouring in through almost every sense, especially the visual, auditory, and tactual senses, they perpetrate acts which as individuals they would not perform. Restraints and inhibitions from intellectual considerations being removed, suggestions are received uncritically from any source, so that the criminally minded, because of the greater strength of their lawless and uninhibited impulses, may easily dominate the mob. And good men may themselves become criminal under such conditions.

QUALITIES AND RESULTS OF CROWDS AND MOBS— ROSS has characterized the mob very effectively, pointing out the weak or biased moral sense, the insincerity, fickleness, lack of intelligence, instability, ephemerality, credulity, simple-mindedness, and untruthfulness of its members. These traits appertain also to the members of a crowd, although in less degree. It is not possible to remove them from the crowd and mob without transforming these groups into other types of groups, such as

( 459) discussion groups, or deliberative assemblies. This, however, is a difficult matter to achieve, because of the more or less adventitious character of crowds and the low intellectual and moral character of some of their members.

Crowds generally form in the streets or in public places. Their formation is often accidental or involuntary, the source of attraction frequently being as trivial as a street accident or fight, the trick of a publicity-seeking fakir, or a traffic jam. A street speaker may gather around him on a summer night scores of desultory wanderers, more or less disreputable in character and of low intellectual attainments. If he is a skillful orator he may be able to hold and augment his group and even throw them into the frenzy of a mob, inciting them to wreck buildings or other property. But if he tries to convert them to intellectual principles and win them to a long-time program of socials reform, he will find that they lack the intellectual grasp and the moral continuity of purpose necessary to carry out such a program. Street converts made in a crowd are good for very little except immediate action. When used in revolutions, as they often have been in the past, they must be employed at once, while their enthusiasm is hot. If they are allowed to disperse the powerful suggestion which comes from mutual stimulation is lost and their ardor cools and each one goes his own way in search of work, adventure, or forgetfulness.

MODERN LIFE AND CROWD BEHAVIOR— Modern life has often been said to favor crowds and the mob spirit. It is doubtful if modern society can offer more striking examples of mob behavior than those to be found in primitive societies or in ancient history. But there are many things in modern life which favor the adventitious formation of crowds. The anonymity of our city life, while it decreases homogeneity, yet removes inhibitions and favors the mob spirit. The vast number of the idle and unrestrained, the multitude of stimuli and the high degree to which these stimuli are organized and even commercialized or manipulated, favor crowd organization. The fact that so much amusement is performed for the spectator and that he is not called upon for participation brings large masses of people together and places them in attitudes of

( 460) receptivity to suggestion. Audiences of the amusement sort are merely crowds and the mob spirit can easily be released among them by the proper suggestions.

GOOD AND BAD RESULTS OF CROWDS— It must not be supposed, however, that all crowds are bad. Nevertheless, the crowd methods of organizing behavior are necessarily of a low order intellectually, and therefore relatively without moral discernment or standards. Occasionally crowds, or even mobs, organized in support of high purposes rise to the level of heroism. The mob which destroyed the French Bastille in 1789 was apparently motivated by a high type of idealism. Mobs have often taken up the gauntlet against tyranny when individuals would not dare to protest. In fact mobs have perhaps in the past been the chief foils of tyrants. But mob action is an expensive and risky method of reform, and we are now developing more rational procedures through legislatures and other groups organized for more intellectual types of collective action. Crowds and mobs easily become the tools of designing and unscrupulous persons, and for every instance of good results achieved by them there are probably scores of questionable or positively harmful results.

ORATORY— Perhaps the chief technic factor in the control of the crowd and in the production of mobs is oratory. With the coming of the newspaper, oratory is not relatively so important as formerly, but it is still a powerful agent of collective control. There are many kinds of oratory, according to the form and length of the oration, the method of delivery, and the relative degrees of intellectuality and emotionality of the content. But oratory which manipulates the crowd and may transform it into a mob must depend on suggestion rather than on intellectual analysis. The orator must be skilled in his understanding of the signs of the emotions of his auditors, and he will be most effective if he has proper support from music, the surroundings, including the meeting place, the previous experiences and preconceptions of his auditors, and their participation in the exercises as described above. Under such favorable circumstances they will be highly susceptible to the orator's suggestions and he can come more directly to the point and make strong and powerful appeals for their support of

( 461) the cause which he wishes to further. Figurative and strong emotional language is of course always more effective for brief appeals than intellectual analysis. The battle speeches of Napoleon are good examples of this sort of brief address. They are rivaled also by the few well chosen and well directed words of mob leaders at appropriate moments. Under favorable conditions a high grade crowd may even listen with interest to lengthy intellectual analyses and arguments on topics which they regard as of great importance.

AN ILLUSTRATION— But in the absence of such favorable conditions the skillful orator may win over his crowd audience and even be able at the end of his address to secure their willing attention to matters of considerable weight and of a character which they would not ordinarily accept. But this requires both skill and time, and probably also prestige. An illustration drawn from an actual case will make the matter clear. Several years ago a three-times unsuccessful candidate for the presidency came to speak to the people of a small southern university town. He was not very popular with most of the two thousand people who gathered to hear him, but in the hour and thirty minutes in which he spoke he won them over completely. The first fifteen minutes of his address he spent in compliments regarding their "beautiful little city," reviewing its show places, and in praise of the "splendid mothers and fathers" of that city, with their high ideals and their sacrifices for their children and community. Interest was intense and I saw a man in front of me nudge his companion and remark, "Pretty good!" With this preparation, aided by his melodious voice, the orator spent thirty minutes telling jokes on himself and his opponents. He spared neither himself nor his political enemies. All he said was in good humor, but with the grateful attitude of his hearers, aroused by the previous fifteen minutes of compliments, the political jokes on himself were turned into material for sympathy, and those on his rivals into mild ridicule, by the method of negative suggestion. The man in front of me said, "He certainly bears no grudge! " And seemingly that was the way all of the audience felt. His apparent objectivity won their hearty approval. The next thirty minutes were spent in trite and fulsome praise of American

( 462) institutions, very melodiously spoken. He could make the most banal statement appear to be of the utmost importance by the way in which he said it. There were the usual remarks about the greatness of the founders of the republic, the wonderful document, our Constitution, which came inspired from their brains, the glorious devotion to democracy of the hero of the southern people, Jefferson, a hint at the sorrows for the "lost cause" now turned into an effort for achievement for the future, well chosen references to the blood shed on many battlefields in defense of the liberties of the American people, in which they had always done at least their share. Some of the women with memories were crying. The men looked self-conscious, stoical and proud of themselves. He had only been manipulating a common stock of suggestion stimuli, but he knew with the unerring skill of the practiced orator what responses were conditioned to these stimuli. He held that audience in the hollow of his hand and their beliefs on the tip of his tongue. And here, with his compliment to their martial defense of their liberties scarcely spoken, he turned to the fourth part of his oration and said, in the last fifteen minutes of his harangue, what he had come there to say. The hour and a quarter of flattery and sentimental truism had been only preparation. He assured them that a more insidious enemy than armies was invading their land and liberties, called upon them to protect the republic for their children against unscrupulous greed and conscienceless exploitation, and to choose Woodrow Wilson as the leader of their civic army to do battle with this modern monster. He sketched the aggression of monopolies and advocated governmental reforms and a progressive machinery of democracy. He left the audience enthusiastic for the very principles which most of them had previously opposed, because he knew how to assimilate or condition his liberal program to their preconceived beliefs and emotions. It was a case of conditioning by analogy and similarity. It was characteristic of the most successful kind of oratory. The method here used is typical. Most of the time must be spent in telling the people what they know or believe already, with emphasis and approval, in order that they may be led to believe what before was foreign or unacceptable to them, by showing them analo-

(463) -gies or similarities, mainly emotional and stereotyped, which they had not previously suspected. Or their beliefs may be changed merely by direct conditioning.

THE MIXED CHARACTER of MOST GROUPS— It must not be supposed that there is a sharp line of demarcation between direct and indirect contact groups. Most modern groups are mixed or involve both direct and indirect contacts. Thus the nation, the state, even the city and the community, rural or urban, exhibit both direct and indirect contacts among their members. Except for the size of the indirect contact groups and the expanse of territory which they cover, they would be direct contact groups. But their overgrowth compels them to use indirect media for the consummation of their contacts, since all of the members of the group cannot ever be brought together in face-to-face association for any purpose at any one time. Business associations, scientific and art societies, and similar organizations, likewise possess a dual character, but with the emphasis upon the derivative or indirect contact aspect instead of upon the direct contact phase, as in the former case. In these types of groups the members ordinarily make their contacts through indirect media and resort to face-to-face contacts only on special occasions, such as at regular directors' or program meetings.

Mixed groups take three leading forms. These may be described as follows: Associations, in so far as they possess a face-to-face character instead of being based on indirect contacts, come under the categories of deliberative assemblies and discussion groups and classes. They are essentially purposive in character and constitute the highest form of mixed groups. Societies, an appellation sometimes used interchangeably with associations, are any sort of direct or indirect contact groups having a relatively permanent or at least a continuous existence covering a considerable period of time. The term is more inclusive than that of associations, which it embraces. We do not ordinarily speak of purely temporary groups possessing only an accidental or unconscious organization as societies. It is to these that we commonly apply the term crowd, or even mob, thereby indicating a greater degree of ephemeralness and a lower type of organization. Institutions are those associa-

( 464) -tions and societies which possess a high degree both of permanency and of organization, although it is not necessary that this organization should have been achieved consciously or purposively. Institutions are also thought of as possessing a considerable degree of abstract content, in which symbolic contact mechanisms loom large. In modern society this abstract and invisible element in institutions practically always outweighs the concrete and local face-to-face extensions which almost all institutions possess. Thus the derivative aspects of the group now dominate the primary and face-to-face aspects in institutions. This is perhaps least true in the family institution and most largely the case in the institution of morals.

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