Cities and towns; Social psychology; Sociology; Sociology, Urban
It is a well-known fact that if an ant be removed from a nest and
afterward put back it will not be attacked, while almost invariably an
ant belonging to another nest will be attacked. It has been customary
to use the words memory, enmity, friendship, in describing this fact.
Now Bethe made the following experiment. An ant was placed in the
liquids (blood and lymph) squeezed out from the bodies of nest
companions and was then put back into its nest; it was not attacked.
It was then put in the juice taken from the inmates of a “hostile”
nest, and was at once attacked and killed.[14]
A further instance of the manner in which ants communicate will
illustrate how simple and automatic communication may become on the
instinctive level.
An ant, when taking a new direction from the nest for the first time,
always returns by the same path. This shows that some trace must be
left behind which serves as a guide back to the nest. If an ant
returning by this path bears no spoils, Bethe found that no other ants
try this direction. But if it bring back honey or sugar, other ants
are sure to try the path. Hence something of the substances carried
over this path by the ants must remain on the path. These substances
must be strong enough to affect the ants chemically.[15]
The important fact is that by means of this comparatively simple device
corporate action is made possible.
Individuals not only react upon one another in this reflex way, but they
inevitably communicate their sentiments, attitudes, and organic
excitements, and in doing so they necessarily react, not merely to what
each individual actually does, but to what he intends, desires, or hopes
to do. The fact that individuals often betray sentiments and attitudes
to others of which they are themselves only dimly conscious makes it
possible for individual A, for example, to act upon motives and tensions
in B as soon, or even before, B is able to do so. Furthermore, A may act
upon the suggestions that emanate from B without himself being clearly
conscious of the source from which his motives spring. So subtle and
intimate may the reactions be which control individuals who are bound
together in a social-psychological process.
It is upon the basis of this sort of instinctive and spontaneous control
that every more formal sort of control must be based in order to be
effective.
Changes in the form of social control may for the purposes of
investigation be grouped under the general heads:
1. The substitution of positive law for custom, and the extension of
municipal control to activities that were formerly left to individual
initiative and discretion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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