Psychological monographs: general and applied . lost in the words of the speaker,propriety is a matter of remote concern. Now when the credu-lous temper, the appropriate surroundings, and the speakersmessage are rightly coordinated and harmonized, there is nolimit to the distance to which inhibitions may be driven, and nopractical bound to the extremities to which the individual canbe induced to go in following his more asocial impulses. Mobscan be induced to seek, burn, fire, kill, slay, although the indi- 46 CHARLES H. WOOLBERT viduals in them, when aware of social surveillance (and in thisw
Psychological monographs: general and applied . lost in the words of the speaker,propriety is a matter of remote concern. Now when the credu-lous temper, the appropriate surroundings, and the speakersmessage are rightly coordinated and harmonized, there is nolimit to the distance to which inhibitions may be driven, and nopractical bound to the extremities to which the individual canbe induced to go in following his more asocial impulses. Mobscan be induced to seek, burn, fire, kill, slay, although the indi- 46 CHARLES H. WOOLBERT viduals in them, when aware of social surveillance (and in thiswe may include mens belief in an all-seeing eye), would be veryunwilling to act a part, however earnestly they might wish impulse hidden within is brought to the surface; the shell ofsocial habit gives way for the expanding tissue of instinctive im-pulse; the socially-hardened crust is broken by the eruption ofinner fires, long ago kindled in the race. When this loss of social inhibitions occurs, the figure changesto the following (3) :. ?Pig. 3 Here the inhibitions are gone; attention is at high focus on thespeaker and on what he is saying. The speaker has entered inreality into a one-to-one relation with the individuals before to his skill in holding them is his power to preventthe inhibitions from coming back. If he loses his grip, the aud-ience reverts to a state indicated in Figure 2. An inapt remarkwill bring about this result, or monotony of utterance, or a sud-den interruption,—anything, in fact, which distracts attention STUDIES IN SOCIAL AND GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 47 from the speakers thought. Where the speaker is effective, hedominates the mental functions, leading his auditors into newpaths of thought, stirring in them a variety of feelings, andarousing, at will, emotional and volitional impulses. But wherethe occasion and the speech are of such a nature as to enable theaudience to retain its social armor, social inhibitions will playtheir part in
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1, booksubjectpsychology, bookyear1895
