Sociological Application of the Psychology of Herd Instinct

In the July number of the SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW I attempted to describe some of the more obvious psychological consequences of the fact that man is essentially a gregarious animal.It was shown that the gregarious mental character is evident in man's behaviour not only in crowds and other circumstances of actual association, but also in his behaviour as an individual, however isolated.The conclusions were arrived at that man's suggestibility is not the abnormal casual phenomenon it is often supposed to be, but a normal instinct, present in every individual, and that the apparent inconstancy of its action is due to the common failure to recognise the extent of the field over which suggestion acts; that the only medium in which man's mind can function satisfactorily is the herd, which therefore is not only the source of his opinions, his credulities, his disbeliefs, and his weaknesses, but of his altruism, his charity, his enthusiasms, and his power.The subject of the psychological effects of herd instinct is so wide that the discussion of it in the former article, in spite of some prolixity, covered only a comparatively small part of the field, and that in a very cursory way.Such as it was, however, it cannot be further amplified here, where an attempt will rather be made to review some of the practical corollaries of such generalisations as were sketched there.In the first place, it must be stated with the strongest possible emphasis that deductive speculation of this sort finds its principal value in opening up new possibilities for the application of a more exact method.Science is measurement, but the deductive method may indicate those things which can be most profitably measured.When the overwhelming importance of the suggestibility of man is recognised our first effort should be to obtain exact numerical expressions of it.This is not the place to attempt any exposition of the directions in which experiment should proceed, but it may be stated that what we want to know is, how much suggestion can do in the way of inducing belief, and it may be guessed that we shall ultimately be able to express the force of suggestion in terms of the number of undifferentiated units of the herd it represents.In the work that has already been done, chiefly HERD INSTINCf ^Jby Binet and by Sidis, the suggestive force experimented with was relatively feeble, and the effects consequently were rendered liable to great disturbance from the spontaneous action of other forces of suggestion already in the mind.Sidis,.for example, found that his subjects often yielded to his suggestions out of "politeness"; this source of difficulty was obviously due to his use of pure individual suggestion, a variety which theory shows to be weak or even directly resisted.The next feature of practical interest is connected with the hypothesis, which we attempted in the former article to demonstrate, that irrational belief forms a large bulk of the furniture of the mind, and is indistinguishable by the subject from rational verifiable knowledge.It is obvioudy of cardinal importance to be able to effect this distinction, for it is the failure to do so which, while it is not the cause of the slowness of advance in knowledge, is the mechanism by which this delay is brought about.Is there, then, we may ask, any discoverable touchstone by which non-rational opinion may be distinguished from rational ?Non-rational judgments, being the product of suggestion, will have the quality of instinctive opinion, or, as we may call it, of belief in the strict sense.The essence of this quality is obviousness; the truth held in this way is one of James's " a priori syntheses of the most perfect sort;" to question it is to the believer to carry scepticism to an insane degree, and will be met by contempt, disapproval or condemnation, according to the nature of the belief in question.When, therefore, we find ourselves entertaining an opinion about the basis of which there is a quality of feeling which tells us that to enquire into it would be absurd, obviously unnecessary, unprofitable, undesirable, bad form or wicked, we may know that that opinion is a non-rational one, and probably, therefore, founded upon inadequate evidence, that it is, therefore, a belief which may prove injurious to that capacity to foretell which is science.Opinions, on the other hand, which are acquired as the result of experience alone do not possess this quality of primary certitude.They are true in the sense of being verifiable, but they are unaccompanied by that profound feeling of truth which belief possesses, and, therefore, we have no sense of reluctance in admitting enquiry into them.That heavy bodies tend to fall to the earth and that fire burns fingers are truths verifiable and verified every day, but we do not hold them with impassioned certitude, and we do not resent or resist enquiry into their basis; whereas in such a question as that of the survival of death by human personality we

Epistemology · Instinct · Psychoanalysis · Social science · Sociological research · Sociology · Ecology · Philosophy · Psychology · Sociopolitical Dynamics in Russia

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