Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/462

 446 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

other. If, instead of claiming for social psychology a separate class of phenomena, we accept this view, and regard it as an exten- sion of individual psychology to the phenomena of collective life, we have immediately a set of important problems not included in the programs of other sciences.

Prominent among the problems which must engage the atten- tion of the social psychologist is the genesis of states of conscious- ness in the social group and their modifying influence on the habits of the group. In group- as in individual life the object of an elaborate structural organization is the control of the environ- ment, and this is secured through the medium of attention. Through attention certain habits are set up answering to the needs of individual and group-life. When the habit is running smoothly, or as long as it is adequate, the attention is relaxed ; but when new conditions and emergencies arise, the attention and the emotions are called into play, the old habit is broken up, and a new one is formed which provides for the disturbing condition. In the reaccommodation there is a modification and an enlargement of consciousness. Since it is through crisis or shock that the atten- tion is aroused and explores the situation with a view to recon- structing modes of activity, the crisis has an important relation to the development of the individual or of society.

A study of society on the psychological side involves, there- fore, an examination of the crises or incidents in group-life which interrupt the flow of habit and give rise to changed conditions of consciousness and practice. Prominent among the crises of this nature are famine, pestilence, defeat in battle, floods, and drought, and in general sudden and catastrophic occurrences which are new or not adequately provided against ; and in the process of gaining control again after the disturbance are seen invention, co-opera- tion, sympathy, association in larger numbers and on a different basis, resort to special individuals who have or claim to have special power in emergencies either as leaders or as medicine men. Another set of incidents, regularly recurrent and anticipated indeed, but of a nature calling for recurrent attention, are birth, puberty, and death. The custom, ceremonial, and myth growing up about these incidents in group-life, and the degree to which