An Introduction to Social Psychology by McDougall William;

Author:McDougall, William; [McDougall, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1890408
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XV

IMITATION, PLAY, AND HABIT

IN Chapter IV. we discussed the three fundamental forms of mental interaction—suggestion, sympathy, and imitation. In each case, we said, the process of interaction results in the assimilation of the mental state of the recipient or patient to that of the agent. In each case we need a pair of words to denote the parts of the agent and of the patient respectively. “Suggest” denotes the part of the agent in assimilating the cognitive state of the patient to his own ; but we have no word for the part played by the patient in the process, unless we adopt the ugly expression—“to besuggestioned.” “Imitate” and “sympathise” denote the part of the patient in the process of assimilation of his actions and of his affective state to those of the agent; but we have no words denoting the part of the agent in these processes. Since these three processes co-operate intimately in social life, we may avoid the difficulty arising from this lack of terms by following M. Tarde,et who extends the meaning of the word “imitation” to cover all three processes as viewed from the side of the patient. If we do that, we still need a correlative word to denote all three processes viewed from the side of the agent. I propose to use the words “impress” and “impression” in this sense.eu We may also follow M. Tarde in using “contra-imitation” to denote the process of contra-suggestion viewed from the side of the patient.

Impression and imitation are, then, processes of fundamental importance for social life. M. Tarde writes : “Nous dirons donc . . . qu’une société est un groupe de gens qui présentent entre eux beaucoup de similitudes produites par imitation ou par contre-imitation ” ;ev and in thus making imitation the very essence of social life he hardly exaggerates its importance. In Section I. we have considered some of the ways in which imitation moulds the growing individual and assimilates him to the type of the society into which he is born. In this Section we must consider the results of imitation from the point of view of the society as a whole rather than from that of the development of the individual.

Imitation is the prime condition of all collective mental life. I propose to reserve for another volume the detailed study of collective mental processes. Here I would dismiss the subject by merely pointing out that when men think, feel, and act as members of a group of any kind—whether a mere mob, a committee, a political or religious association, a city, a nation, or any other social aggregate—their collective actions show that the mental processes of each man have been profoundly modified in virtue of the fact that he thought, felt, and acted as one of a group and in reciprocal mental action with the other members of the group and with the group as a whole. In the simpler forms of social grouping, imitation (taken in the wide sense

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