I.—Imitation
The characteristic feature of social behaviour is that it is in large degree determined by the behaviour of other members of the social community. In all animals which mate there is a temporary or more lasting influence on each other of the individuals which unite to procreate their kind; and in those which foster their young there is a social relation of parents and offspring. Some of these mutual relationships will be discussed, in their emotional aspects, in the next chapter. Here we will consider the more general factors which serve to determine the course of social evolution.
Among these is commonly reckoned imitation. M. Tarde says, “La société c’est l’imitation.” But this word, like so many others which are employed alike in popular speech and in more or less technical discussions, carries a somewhat wide range of meaning, and is by some writers used in a broader, by others in a narrower sense. Thus Professor Mark Baldwin[74] says, “that all organic adaptation in a changing environment is a phenomenon of biological or organic imitation,” under which category will fall, therefore, the organic behaviour of the protozoa and of plants. On the other hand, Professor E. L. Thorndike, though he admits in the lower animals “certain pseudo-imitative or semi-imitative phenomena,” has been led by experiments, to be presently noticed, to the conclusion that animals as high in the scale of life as cats and dogs cannot form new associations under the influence of imitation. “It seems sure,” he says,[75] “from these experiments, that the animals were unable to form an association leading to an act from having seen another animal, or animals, perform the act in a certain situation.” In face of such apparently diverse usage it is necessary to show within what limits and with what qualifications the word may profitably here be used to indicate a factor in social evolution.
Professor Mark Baldwin’s use of the term “imitation” can only be understood in its relation to an hypothesis of organic and mental evolution, which he develops with no little skill and brilliancy.[76] He regards the processes of life as issuing in a great twofold adaptation, due to expansions and contractions,—the former representing waxing, the latter waning vitality; and he holds that all special adaptations are secured by the new hold upon beneficial stimulations reached by the expansive out-reaching movements. “Among the variations in organic forms,” he says, “it is easy to see that some of them might react in such a way as to keep in contact with the stimulus, to lay hold of it, and so keep on reacting to it again and again—just as our rhythmic action in breathing keeps the organism in vital contact with the oxygen of the air. These organisms will get all the benefit or damage of the repetition or persistence of the stimulus, or of their own reactions, again and again; and it is self-evident that the beneficial stimulations are the ones which should be maintained in this way, and that the organisms which did this would live. The organisms which reacted in such a way as to retain the damaging stimulations, on the other hand, by this same process, would aid nature in killing themselves. If this be true, only those organisms would survive which had the variation of retaining useful stimulations in what I have called, in speaking of imitation elsewhere, a ‘circular way’ of reacting.... So, when we come to consider phylogeny and ontogeny together, we find that if by an organism we mean a thing of contractility or irritability, whose round of movements is kept up by some kind of nutritive process supplied by the environment—absorption, chemical action of atmospheric oxygen, etc.—and whose existence is threatened by dangers of contact and what not, the first thing to do is to secure a regular supply to the nutritive processes, and to avoid these contacts. But the organism can do nothing but move, as a whole or in some of its parts. So, then, if one of such creatures is to be fitter than another to survive, it must be the creature which, by its movements, secures more nutritive processes and avoids more dangerous contacts. But movements toward the source of stimulation keep hold on the stimulation, and movements away from the contacts break the contacts; that is all. Nature selects these organisms; how could she do otherwise?”
“Thus a ‘circular’ activity is found in operation; life-processes issuing in increased movements, by which in turn the stimulations to the life-processes are kept in action.” But when a child imitates, himself reproducing the “copy” set for imitation, the reaction at which imitative suggestion aims is one which will reproduce the stimulating impression, and so tend to perpetuate itself. The stimulus starts a motor process, which tends to reproduce the stimulus, and, through it, the motor process again. It is a “circular activity.” Thus “we are able to reconstruct the theory of adaptation in such a way as to show that this kind of organic selection by movement, and this kind of imitative selection by consciousness, are the same thing. Organic imitation and conscious imitation—each a circular process tending to maintain certain stimulations and to avoid others—here is one thing;” and to this one thing the common term “imitation” is applied by Mr. Baldwin.
This extended usage is admitted by the author to be somewhat of an innovation. But if his hypothesis be sound this need be no bar to its acceptance. Two salient questions must, however, receive satisfactory answers. First, is all organic adaptation in a changing environment a circular process—a phenomenon of organic imitation? Secondly, does all conscious imitation tend to reproduce the imitating stimulus?
Professor Baldwin speaks of organic imitation and conscious imitation as “each a circular process tending to maintain certain stimulations and to avoid others.” Now, it may be granted that the tendency to maintain or repeat certain stimulations may be regarded as a “circular process.” But can the avoidance or non-repetition of others be so regarded? A large proportion alike of the hereditary adaptations and the acquired accommodations of behaviour are directed to this avoidance or non-repetition of hurtful stimulations. The instinctive shrinking of a chick from an aggressive animal is just as much adaptive as the repeated cuddling beneath the warm wing of the mother. The avoidance of nauseous cinnabar caterpillars is just as much an accommodation to the constitution of the environment as the reiterated seizing of palatable grubs. Even low down in the scale of animal life, Dr. Jennings’s observations on Paramecia seem to show that the retention of favourable stimulation is not due to its direct influence, but is the indirect result of a reaction to the relatively unfavourable stimulation which occurs when the Paramecium passes away from more satisfactory surroundings. A favourable environment is secured through the avoidance of the unfavourable. Unless, therefore, we exclude adaptive avoidance from the category of adaptations, we cannot regard all organic adaptation in a changing environment as a phenomenon of organic imitation due to a circular process tending to the reinstatement of stimulation.
Passing to the second question—Does all conscious imitation tend to reproduce the initiating stimulus?—we cannot unreservedly give an affirmative answer. It is true that when a child more or less successfully reproduces a sound which falls upon its ear, a like sound stimulus is afforded which may by a circular process incite to renewed effort, and lead to yet more successful reproduction. But when Professor Baldwin’s child, between nine and ten months old, imitated certain movements of the lips, there was no reproduction of the initiating visual stimulus. A chick seeing its companions run away or crouch will follow suit; and this would commonly be termed an imitative action; but there is here no reproduction of the initiating stimulus. Very much of the behaviour which is usually ascribed to imitation produces effects in consciousness quite different from that of the original stimulation. It is only by selecting one’s examples that one finds in them evidence in favour of Professor Baldwin’s “circular process.”
Since, therefore, this circular mode of activity is neither a characteristic of all conscious imitation, nor a distinguishing mark of all adaptive organic action, the grounds on which Professor Baldwin bases his extended usage of the term appear to be fallacious. And in this usage we cannot follow him.
Turning now to Professor Thorndike’s very different contention—that animals even so high as the cat and dog do not imitate in the sense of forming an association leading to an act from having seen another animal perform the act in a certain way—we may first describe some of his ingenious experiments designed to submit the matter to the test of observation under controlled conditions.[77]
Experiments were made with chicks in several ways. They were, for example, placed in pens, from which, in each case, “there was only one possible way of escape, to see if they would learn it more quickly when another chick did the thing several times before their eyes. The method was to give some chicks their first trial with an imitation possibility, and their second without, while others were given their first trial without and their second with. If the ratio of the average time of the first trial to the average time of the second is smaller in the first class than it is in the second class, we may find evidence of this sort of influence by imitation. Though imitation may not be able to make an animal do what he would otherwise not do, it may make him do quicker a thing he would have done sooner or later anyway. As a fact, the ratio is much longer. This is due to the fact that a chick, when in a pen with another chick, is not afflicted by the discomfort of loneliness, and so does not try to get out. So the other chick, who is continually being put in with him to teach him the way out, really prolongs his stay in. This factor destroys the value of these quantitative experiments, and I do not,” says Mr. Thorndike, “insist upon them as evidence against imitation, though they certainly offer none for it.”
Chicks, from sixteen to thirty days old, were also placed in boxes from which escape was open to them by such acts as pecking at the door, stepping on a platform, or pecking at a tack. The method of experiment was to put a chick in, leave him from sixty to eighty seconds, then put in another who knew the act, and on his performing it to let both escape. No cases were counted unless the imitator apparently saw the other do the thing. After about every ten such chances to learn the act, the imitator was left in alone for ten minutes. Out of thirteen cases tabulated only once was the act performed, in spite of the ample chance for imitation. “I have no hesitation,” adds Mr. Thorndike, “in declaring this one’s act in stepping on the platform the result of mere accident, and am sure that any one who had watched the experiments would agree.”
To test the influence, if any, of imitation in cats, the following method was adopted. A box was arranged with two compartments separated by a wire screen. “The larger of these had a front of wooden bars with a door which fell open when a string stretched across the top was bitten or clawed down. The smaller was closed by boards on three sides and by the wire screen on the fourth. Through the screen a cat within could see the one to be imitated pull the string, go out through the door thus opened, and eat the fish outside. When put in this compartment, the top being covered by a large box, a cat soon gave up efforts to claw through the screen, quieted down, and watched more or less the proceedings going on in the other compartment. Thus this apparatus could be used to test the power of imitation. A cat who had no experience with the means of escape from the large compartment was put in the closed one; another cat, who would do it readily, was allowed to go through the performance of pulling the string, going out, and eating the fish. Record was made of the number of times he did so, and of the number of times the imitator had his eyes clearly fixed on him.... After the imitatee had done the thing a number of times, the other was put in the big compartment alone, and the time it took him before pulling the string was noted and his general behaviour closely observed. If he failed in five or ten or fifteen minutes to do so, he was released and not fed. This entire experiment was repeated a number of times. From the times taken by the imitator to escape and from observation of the way that he did it, we can decide whether imitation played any part.... No one, I am sure, who had seen the behaviour of the cats would have claimed that their conduct was at all influenced by what they had seen. When they did hit the string the act looked just like the accidental success of the ordinary association experiment. But, besides these personal observations, we have in the impersonal time-records sufficient proofs of the absence of imitation.” Some observations on dogs are also described. From these it appears that the three individuals on which experiments were made failed to learn the way of getting out of a cage from seeing another dog escape. One of them was also allowed to see another dog beg for meat 110 times. But he never tried to imitate him and thus secure a piece of meat as a reward. It therefore “seems sure,” says Mr. Thorndike, “that we should give up imitation as an a priori explanation of any novel intelligent performance. To say that a dog who opens a gate, for instance, need not have reasoned it out if he had seen another dog do the same thing, is to offer instead of one false explanation another equally false. Imitation in any form is too doubtful a factor to be presupposed without evidence.”
Professor Thorndike is of opinion that monkeys are probably imitative in ways beyond the capacity of dogs and cats; but, at the time of writing, he had not substantiated his opinion, by analogous experiments. If so, it will perhaps prove that they are rational beings in the narrower sense defined in a previous chapter of this work. For it appears that the kind of imitation which Mr. Thorndike’s experiments go far to disprove, is what we may term reflective imitation. A cat with no experience of the means of escape, one that has tried to get out of the box by chance efforts in many directions and has failed, sees another cat perform an act acquired in this way, and learns nothing from the sight. This, no doubt, proves that the cat had not in any sense grasped the nature of the problem before it, had no notion of just where the difficulty lay, had not the wit to see that the performance of the other cat supplied the missing links in its own previous behaviour. It is questionable whether such missing links could be supplied in this way in the absence of some powers of reflection. The cat is unable to form an association, leading to an appropriate act, from having seen another animal perform the act in a certain way, partly because it cannot perceive the reason of its previous failure, and see that the other’s performance affords the requisite clue. The whole gist of the chance experience interpretation of animal behaviour is that there must be chance experience to build on. The cat cannot gain this by looking on never so intently, unless it be provided with a rational as well as a sensory eye. The act of pulling the string has been reached by the successful cat through the gradual elimination of many failures; it is a differentiated act, having no place in the previous experience of the kitten. It has never entered into the conscious situation, and cannot be supplied at will by a non-rational being.
As Mr. Thorndike himself says, “no cat can form an association leading to an act unless there is included in the association an impulse of its own which leads to the act.”[78] By “impulse,” Mr. Thorndike “means the consciousness accompanying a muscular innervation apart from that feeling of the act which comes from seeing one’s self move, from feeling one’s body in a different position, etc. It is the direct feeling of doing as distinguished from the idea of the act done gained through eye, etc.... The act in this respect of being felt as to be done or as doing is in animals the important thing, is the thing which gets associated, while the act as done, as viewed from outside, is a secondary affair.” I take it that by “impulse” is here meant what Dr. Stout would term the direct experience involved in conation.[79] If it have a place in experience distinguishable from that of stimulation and response it is included in what I have on a former page spoken of as the consciousness of behaviour as such, which was said to be essential. And I am surprised that Mr. Thorndike should have supposed that I believe that this could by any animal be “supplied at will.” In any case it seems probable, as the result of observation, that unless the consciousness of behaving in a specific manner has entered into the situation as developed in experience it cannot in animals enter into any subsequent representative complex. And it is the absence of such consciousness of behaving in a specific manner which the sight of the escaping cat fails to supply in Mr. Thorndike’s experiments.
Interesting and valuable as these experiments are, they are open to the criticism to which, as we have seen, his other experiments are also open—that the conditions are abnormal and cramped. Apart from reflective imitation, which they tend to disprove, they do not conduce to the kind of conscious situation which appears to be most favourable for the development of intelligent imitation founded on hereditary tendencies and propensities. It is through such imitation that, as Herr Groos says,[80] “animals learn perfectly those things for which they have imperfect hereditary dispositions.” The kind of situation which conduces to such intelligent imitation is that which involves the attitude of attention and interest rising, when these are sufficiently varied in their direction, into what is spoken of as curiosity. These, in their natural occurrence in animals, are parts of, or in any case accompaniments of the conative attitude—they are connected with activities and impulsive tendencies to behaviour. If attention and interest are directed to the behaviour of another animal, the conative attitude is that of imitation. Miss Romanes has described how skilfully a capuchin imitated the actions necessary to unlock a trunk. It does not seem necessary to assume that reflective imitation is here exemplified. The monkey need not regard the key and lock as the related parts of a puzzle to be practically solved, need not have any free idea of the difficulty it presents, need not in unlocking the trunk grasp the true nature of the difficulty or have any conception of its solution. Every several act of the capuchin, the seizing the key, the directing it here or there, and so on, is already supplied with the impulse of which Dr. Thorndike speaks. Attention, itself charged with impulse, directs and combines these pre-existing impulses to a new end. And since that which directs the attention is the act of another, we call the procedure imitative. But the varied and persistent effort differs in no essential respect from that of a two days’ chick, which pecks again and again at some speck which catches its eye, or that of a nestling jay, which will peck for long at some nail or piece of wire in its cage, twisting and turning its bill in many and varied ways. And success in opening the trunk is reached by the capuchin, not, it would seem, through any real appreciation of the essential kernel of the practical problem, but through the chance results of many varied efforts. Although in no other animals is it developed to so high a degree as in the monkeys, interest in the doings of others is an attitude by no means rare, and affords the basis of intelligent imitation. Perhaps the conditions in Dr. Thorndike’s experiments were not the best for the development of such interest in the procedure of another. And in any case the imitation of a particular mode of procedure, reached by the gradual defining of the impulse, could hardly be expected in the absence of the series of experiences by which that definition had been reached, unless the cat were capable of what has been above spoken of as reflective imitation.
If, then, we agree to exclude from the category of imitative behaviour in animals, on the one hand, any “circular process” which may occur in the same individual, and on the other hand any reflective imitation, such as is so important a factor in human education, it remains to be seen what may be fairly included in this category.
It is probable that in animals imitation has its foundations in instinctive behaviour, of which it may be regarded as the characteristically social type. If one of a group of chicks learn by casual experience to drink from a tin of water, others will run up and peck at the water, and thus learn to drink. A hen teaches her little ones to pick up grain or other food by pecking on the ground and dropping suitable materials before them, while they seemingly imitate her action in seizing the grain. One may make chicks and pheasants peck by simulating the action of a hen with a pencil point or pair of fine forceps. According to Mr. Peal, the Assamese find that young jungle pheasants will perish if their pecking responses are not thus stimulated; and Professor Claypole tells me that this is also the case with young ostriches hatched in an incubator. A little pheasant and guinea-fowl followed two older ducklings, one wild, the other tame, and seemed to wait upon their bills, to peck when they pecked, and to be guided by their actions. It is certainly much easier to bring up young birds if older birds are setting an example of eating and drinking; and instinctive acts, such as scratching the ground, are performed earlier if imitation be not excluded. If a group of chicks have learnt to avoid cinnabar caterpillars, and if then two or three from another group are introduced and begin to pick up the caterpillars, the others will sometimes again seize them, though they would otherwise have left them untouched. One of my chicks, coming upon a dead bee, gave the danger or alarm note; another at some little distance at once made the same sound. A number of similar cases might be given; but what impresses the observer as he watches the early development of a brood of young birds, is the presence of an imitative tendency which is exemplified in many little ways not easy to describe in detail. It is probable, however, that these imitative tendencies or propensities are not wholly indefinite. The young birds do not imitate any actions, but behaviour of certain specific types, the imitation of which has been engrained through the action of natural selection.
What generalization, then, can be drawn from this somewhat indefinite group of facts, to which many others of like import could be added from observations on the young of mammals? What is their relation to instinctive procedure in general? It would seem that they are characterized by a special relation of the external stimulus to the response. When this stimulus is afforded by the behaviour of another animal, and the responsive behaviour it initiates is similar to that which affords the stimulus, such behaviour may be termed imitative. A chick sounds the danger note; this is the stimulus under which another chick sounds a similar note, and we say that the one imitates the other. Such an action may be described as imitative in its effects, but not imitative in its purpose. Only from the observer’s standpoint does such instinctive behaviour differ from other modes of congenital procedure. It may be termed biological, but not psychological, imitation. And if it be held that the essence of imitation lies in the purpose so to imitate, we must find some other term under which to describe the facts. This does not seem necessary, however, if we are careful to qualify the term “imitation” by the adjective “instinctive” or “biological.” And the retention of the term serves to indicate that this is the stock on which deliberate imitation is eventually grafted.
The fact that instinctive imitation leads, under natural conditions, to behaviour which is already familiar to us in the species concerned, prevents us from recognizing the influence of this social factor so easily as might otherwise be the case. The abnormal arrests our attention more readily than the normal, and hence the cases commonly cited are generally those which strike us as unusual, such as the imitation of human sounds by the parrot. But if the young inherit a tendency to imitate certain actions of their parents, and if there is among the members of a gregarious species such instinctive imitation as shall tend to keep them gregarious, we have here a social factor in animal life of no slight importance. Just as the higher type of reflective imitation is of great value in bringing the human child to the level of the adults who form the family and social environment, so, too, does the sub-conscious instinctive imitation of the lower animals bring the young bird or other creature into line with the members of its own species. In broods of chicks brought up under experimental conditions, there are often one or two more active, vigorous, intelligent, and mischievous birds. These are the leaders of the brood; the others are their imitators. Their presence raises the general level of intelligent activity. Remove them, and the others show a less active, less inquisitive, less adventurous life. They seem to lack initiative. From which one may infer that imitation affords to some extent a means of levelling up the less intelligent to the standard of the more intelligent; and of supplying a stimulus to the development of habits which would otherwise be lacking. When a mongrel pup, whose development Dr. Wesley Mills watched and has described, was introduced to the society of other dogs, its progress was, he tells us, “extraordinarily rapid.”
Instinctive imitation thus introduces into the conscious situation certain modes of behaviour, and if the development of the situation as a whole is pleasurable, there will be a tendency to its redevelopment, under the guidance of intelligence, on subsequent occasions. As in the case of other instincts and propensities, there is given through inheritance a more or less definite outline sketch of social procedure, which intelligence further defines, and refines, and shapes to more delicate issues. As a rule, however, intelligence does not tend to make the imitation as such more perfect. It may perfect the behaviour, but not necessarily on imitative lines. In the case, however, of the song and call-notes of birds, and not improbably the sounds of other animals, there does seem a predisposition to render the imitation as such more perfect. The facts, as afforded by such birds as the magpie, jay, starling, marsh-warbler, and mocking-bird, are familiar; and I have elsewhere[81] given some account of them. It may be specially noted that we have in this case that circular mode of activity on which, as we have seen, Professor Mark Baldwin lays so much stress. Professor Thorndike seems to regard the phenomena presented by imitative birds as somewhat of a mystery, and as the result of a specialization removed from the general course of mental development. And he says that, until we know whether there is in birds which repeat sounds any tendency to imitate in other lines, we cannot connect these phenomena with anything found in the mammals, or use them to advantage in a discussion of animal imitation as the forerunner of human. Upon the view, however, that such imitation is primarily instinctive and only secondarily intelligent, there seems no reason why we should expect to find imitation in birds running along any other lines than those which the hereditary instinct has marked out. And so far from being unable to use the phenomena to advantage in a discussion of animal imitation as a forerunner of human, we may perhaps see in them the best examples, other than those afforded by apes, of that intelligent imitation which is the precursor of the rational and reflective imitation of the boy or girl.
In the case of the human child we may see the three stages in the development of vocal imitation. First, the instinctive stage, where the sound which falls upon the ear is a stimulus to the motor-mechanism of sound production. Secondly, the intelligent stage of the profiting by experience. Intelligence, as we have seen, aims at the reinstatement of pleasurable situations, and the suppression of those which are the reverse. The sound-stimulus, the motor effects in behaviour, and the resulting sound-production coalesce into a conscious situation, which appears to be pleasurable or the reverse, according as the sound produced resembles or not the initiating sound-stimulus. If we assume that the resemblance of the sounds he utters to the sounds he hears is itself a source of pleasurable satisfaction (and this certainly seems to be the case), intelligence, without the aid of any higher faculty, will secure accommodation and render imitation more and more perfect. And this appears to be the stage reached by the mocking-bird or the parrot. But the child soon goes further. He reflects upon the results he has reached; he at first dimly, and then more clearly realizes that they are imitative; and his later efforts at imitation are no longer subject to the chance occurrence of happy results, but are based on a scheme of behaviour which is taking form in his mind, are deliberate and intentional, and are directed to a special end more or less clearly perceived as such. He no longer imitates like a parrot; he begins to imitate like a man, and may, by the study of good models and the maintenance of a high ideal, acquire the moving cadences of an orator.
According to our interpretation, instinctive imitation is a factor of wide importance in animal behaviour, intelligent imitation, arising in close connection with interest in the doings of others, is a co-operating factor, but of intentional and reflective imitation there is at present no satisfactory evidence in any animal below man.