CHAPTER TWO
BEHAVIOR OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Wundt [(21)] has pointed out that there are two types of reaction to an emotion, what he calls outer and inner volitional acts. The first refers to the external bodily expression of an emotion and the latter to the mental behavior. In the study of the emotions, attention has for the most part been directed to the former. Darwin’s study of the emotions in man and animals, early called attention to the finer physical expressions of each emotion, explaining them as instinctive habits which were formerly useful. Darwin’s study partly paved the way for the James-Lange theory, which maintains that what we experience as an emotion is but the sensation of the instinctive physical expression.
The aim of this chapter is to study the mental behavior during the conscious period the anger exists. It is recognized that the motor and physical expressions is primary and fundamental. For that reason it has served so adequately in the objective study of the emotion. What we shall attempt to study is the mental behavior of persons under the influence of anger. Ethics tells us how we ought to act when angry, but psychology has neglected to find out how in reality consciousness does behave when the emotional excitement is on. David Iron’s [(12)] statement is still apropos. He writes, “The neglect of the reactive side of human consciousness is nowhere more conspicuous than in the case of the emotions.”
The anger consciousness is characterized by heightened mental activity. A multiple number of images, attitudes, fluctuations of the emotional and feeling content appear in rapid succession till the emotion disappears. This statement is true for even the more tenuous instances of anger. In fact some of the milder experiences have the most marked changeableness of conscious content. Objectively there may be little activity, while simultaneously on the mental side, there is a wealth of processes which must be considered in the psychology of the emotions.
After making a rather minute collection of the different kinds of mental reaction to anger, as shown by the introspections, it is observed that they fall into three rather clear types of conscious behavior. The first type is in the general direction of the emotive tendency and is the one that most impulsively follows on the stimulus of the emotion. It expresses pugnacity in some form. This type of reaction expresses a tendency similar to the basal instinct of the emotion of anger, such as thinking cutting remarks, imagining the offender’s humiliation, hostile witticism, joking and sarcasm. This type of a reaction will be called attributive reaction. A second type is contrary to pugnacity; the instinctive impulse is reversed. A friendly attitude may be assumed toward the offender, an adequate excuse it found for his offense, an over polite attitude may be taken. This type of behavior will be called the contrary reaction. A third type is one that is entirely of a conscious attitudinal character. The subject becomes indifferent to the whole situation exciting the emotion. The offense may suddenly be apathetically ignored and the subject behaves unconcerned and assumes an “I don’t care,” or a “What-is-the-use” attitude. This will be called indifferent reaction. These three types of behavior are characteristic of the reactive consciousness to anger. The emotion may contain one, or it may contain all three of these types before it finally ends. Going over the results of the observations of all the subjects, about fourteen hundred sixty eight reactions are counted in the six hundred cases of anger studied. Seventy one percent of such reactions are classified as attributive reaction, eighteen percent are the contrary type, and eleven percent are the indifferent.
The initial reaction to anger is always of the attributive type. Whatever other reactions may follow in the course of the entire anger period, the attributive reaction in some form is characteristic of the early stage of the emotion. The contrary and indifferent types are secondary in point of time and occur after the initial hostile tendencies have been restrained. If an emotion of anger is made up entirely of the attributive type, which frequently occurs, and continues for any length of time, it is always noted that some of the reactions are more crude and unsocial and others are refined, disguised it may be, covered up, and when the emotion is most intense whether it be in the initial stage or elsewhere, the unsocial attributive tendencies are usually found at those places.