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AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY |
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by William McDougall
It is a notorious fact that, when a number of men think and feel and act together, the mental operations and the actions of each member of the group are apt to be very different from those he would achieve if he faced the situation as an isolated individual. Hence, though we may know each member of a group so intimately that we can, with some confidence, foretell his actions under given circumstances, we cannot foretell the behavior of the group from our knowledge of the individuals alone. If we would understand and be able to predict the behavior of the group, we must study the way in which the mental processes of its members are modified in virtue of their membership. That is to say, we must study the interactions between the members of the group and also those between the group as a whole and each member. We must examine also the forms of group organization and their influence upon the life of the group. Groups differ greatly from one another in respect of the kind and degree of organization they possess. In the simplest case the group has no organization. In some cases the relations of the constituent individuals to one another and to the whole group are not in any way determined or fixed by previous events; such a group constitutes merely a mob. In other groups the individuals have certain determinate relations to one another which have arisen in one or more of three ways: (1) Certain relations may have been established between the individuals, before they came together to form a group; for example, a parish council or a political meeting may be formed by persons belonging to various definitely recognized classes, and their previously recognized relations will continue to play a part in determining the collective deliberations and actions of the group; they will constitute an incipient organization. (2) If any group enjoys continuity of existence, certain more or less constant relations, of subordination, deference, leadership and so forth, will inevitably become established between the individuals of which it is composed; and, of course, such relations will usually be deliberately established and maintained by any group that is united by a common purpose, in order that its efficiency may be promoted. (3) The group may have a continued existence and a more or less elaborate and definite organization independent of the individuals of which it is composed; in such a case the individuals may change while the formal organization of the group persists; each person who enters it being received into some more or less well-defined and generally recognized position within the group, which formal position determines in great measure the nature of his relations to other members of the group and to the group as a whole. We can hardly imagine any concourse of human beings, however fortuitous it may be, utterly devoid of the rudiments of organization of one or other of these three kinds; nevertheless, in many a fortuitous concourse the influence of such rudimentary organization is so slight as to be negligible. Such a group is an unorganized group or mob. The unorganized crowd presents many of the fundamental phenomena of collective psychology in relative simplicity; whereas the higher the degree of organization of a group, the more complicated is its psychology.
Excerpted from The Group Mind, by William McDougall |
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