Consciousness As A Fundamental Factor in Social Psychology[1]
Margaret Floy Washburn
Vassar College
Like sociology, social psychology has been stronger in description than in explanation. At its service for explaining the phenomena of human social behavior it has three classes of psychological influences. Two of these are universally recognized: first, the great social drives—gregarious, fighting, self-exhibiting, imitating, submitting, mating, and protecting; and secondly, the laws of learning. The third influence is probably taken for granted by everyone, but its working has never been adequately analyzed and described in print. This influence is that of ejective consciousness, and ejective consciousness is one's idea of what is going on in other minds. It was W. K. Clifford who coined the word `eject' to designate an idea representing a state in another person's mind (2). Ejective consciousness does not necessarily involve sympathy. We can contemplate what we suppose to be another person's state of mind, without sharing it; we may feel towards it attitudes ranging from sympathy through indifference to violent antagonism. It should also be stated at the outset of this address that when I speak of ejective consciousness as influencing social behavior, I am not implying interaction between body and mind. The expression is used as an abbreviation: the full statement to be understood is that
( 396) social behavior is influenced by the neuromuscular processes which accompany ejective consciousness.
The presence of ejective consciousness in man explains the most striking differences between his social behavior and that of the lower animals. Animal social behavior results from the combined influence of external stimuli, especially though not exclusively those stimuli resulting from the behavior of other animals; and internal rhythms, which at certain seasons intensify fighting, mating, and parental behavior. When the external stimulus or the internal rhythm is lacking, animal social behavior lapses. Many observations show that it is unaccompanied by any ideas of the thoughts or feelings of other animals, for instance Herrick's observation (4) that nestlings of a late summer brood are abandoned when the autumn migratory drive begins. Man through his power of imagining the thoughts and feelings of others can keep his social behavior constant though the external stimuli and the internal rhythms both vary. This idea was expressed in an article I wrote for the Titchener Commemorative Volume, published in 1917, and the same article traced certain features of the course of development of ejective consciousness, which as it grows broadens in its space and time references and passes from the power of interpreting the emotions of others to the power of interpreting their ideas, and from the power of imagining that others think and feel as we do to the power of realizing that they think and feel differently from ourselves.
What I wish to add to these ideas which have already been published may be outlined as follows.
First, ejective consciousness explains certain features of the social and moral sentiments. Secondly, it is a necessary concept in explaining the difference between normal and abnormal suggestibility. Thirdly, it constitutes the difference between the religious and scientific views of the world. Fourthly, it is essential to the very definition of language and makes the difference between language and involuntary emotional expression. Fifthly, it is the essence of the creative impulse in art, and deeply involved in the enjoyment of art. And lastly, it is fundamental to our sense of the comic.
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