Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/760

 746 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

is not. One morning when the father was at work in the field and the mother in the kitchen, I heard the mother say to the

boy who was loitering around, "C, do something, don't

stand there idle. I don't care what you do, but do something." In the evening on the other hand, when the girl was still working and the parents had sat down to rest and enjoy their children, I

have heard them say, "M, sit down and be quiet." In

the morning the forceful child or, more strictly, forcefulness was selected because in harmony with their working mood; in the evening the sympathetic child was selected because in harmony with their recreative mood. In the same way a rural population disapproves of men who are not working during the day (regard- less of whether or not they need to work) because these men are not in harmony with the prevailing mood of the population. But these same men are often favorites at the social gatherings in the evening.®

With this brief exposition of the essential feeling-process I pass on to the cognitive processes. Each cognitive process as such has been analyzed by psychologists. They have described attention which is the cognitive process of the forceful mood and reproductive, analogical, and suggestive cognition which are the cognitive processes of the expansive mood ; but it is through the study of social groups that we observe most advantageously the relation of these processes to one another. First, let me note briefly those aspects of each process which are important for us. In reproductive and analogical cognition states occur because they happen to have occurred in the same space or time with the state before the mind or because of a superficial resemblance between states. Thus when men relate in saloon or club the experiences of the day, these experiences are uttered as recalled juxtaposed in space or time and the narrators have the same emotional expression and feeling when recalling an experience as when they actually experienced it. And those who listen share their expression and feeling. Thus cognition, which in the narrator is reproductive, in the listener is suggestive.

The more rapidly states follow one another the less intense is

• Williams, An American Town, p. 244.