Professor Giddings develops an interesting theory of the dualism in social structures. Civilization is marked by the contemporaneous existence of public and private associations. Civilized society affords four main sets of dualistic associations: political, juristic, economic, and cultural. In the political field there are private political parties and the public association, namely, the government, or the political party in power. Among juristic associations there are the privately-organized vigilance committees and the public associations, such as the police, the courts, the prisons. In the realm of economics there are private individual entrepreneurs, partnerships, corporations; and on the other hand, there are the governmentally-owned railroads, postal service, the water systems, the coinage systems. In regard to cultural associations we may note the privately endowed universities and state universities, privately organized churches and state churches, private charities and public charities. This dualism in social structure is supported by Professor Giddings on the grounds that private associations are needed for purposes of initiation, experimentation, and stimulation; and the public associations serve the useful purposes of regulation and maintenance of balance among various contending factors.
The highest test of social organization is the development of social personality. An efficient social organization is one which makes its members “more rational, more sympathetic, with an ever-broadening consciousness of kind.”[XXII-44]
In recent works Professor Giddings has developed the concept of pluralistic behavior. “Any one or any combination of behavior inciting stimuli may on occasion be reacted to by more than one individual.”[XXII-45] The character of pluralistic reactions, whether similar or dissimilar, simultaneous or not, equal or unequal, is determined by two variables: (1) the strength of the stimulation; (2) the similarity or dissimilarity of the reacting mechanisms.[XXII-46] Thus Professor Giddings considers pluralistic behavior the subject matter of the psychology of society, or sociology.
In 1897, Social and Ethical Interpretations, by J. Mark Baldwin, was printed; it bears the subtitle of “A Study in Social Psychology.” This was the first time that the term, social psychology, had appeared in the title of a book in America, though three years earlier, in 1894, one of the leading parts of Small and Vincent’s Introduction to the Study of Society was designated “social psychology” and included a discussion of social consciousness, social intelligence, and social volition. Baldwin’s Social and Ethical Interpretations and Giddings’ Principles of Sociology appeared almost simultaneously, one by a psychologist and the other by a sociologist. One was written from the genetic viewpoint, and the other from the objective viewpoint; one dealt primarily with social psychology, and the other with a psychology of society; one was built around the concept of the social self, and the other around the concept of a consciousness of kind. They both hastened the development of an organic social psychology.
Professor Baldwin demonstrated that the self is largely a product of the give-and-take of social life. A child becomes aware of his self by setting himself off from other selves. It is in group life, that is, in contact with other selves, that the child develops a self consciousness.
Moreover, the self is bi-polar. One end of the self-pole is characterized by what one thinks of himself, and the other end by what he thinks of other persons.[XXII-47] “The ego and the alter are to our thought one and the same thing.”[XXII-48]
People are so much alike because they are imitative. It is imitation which keeps people alike. Imitation integrates individuals. Imitation is either (1) a process whereby one individual consciously or unconsciously copies another individual, or (2) the copying of a model, that is, adopting a model which arises in one’s own mind.[XXII-49]
Baldwin found the law of social growth in the particularization by the individual of society’s store of material, and by the generalization on the part of society of the individual’s particularizations. The essence of the first phase of this process is invention and of the second, imitation. Baldwin considered invention and imitation the two fundamental processes of social growth.
In this chapter the strength of the psychological approach to an understanding of societary processes has been demonstrated. In the chapter which follows the reader will find further materials, showing the tremendous vitality of psycho-sociologic thought.