The Group Mind: A Sketch of the Principles of Collective Psychology: With Some Attempt to Apply Them to the Interpretation of National Life and CharacterMcDougall, William
Science
The Group Mind: A Sketch of the Principles of Collective Psychology: With Some Attempt to Apply Them to the Interpretation of National Life and Character
McDougall, William
Ethnopsychology; National characteristics; Social psychology
In a similar way the group spirit aids in raising the moral level of an
army. The organised whole embodies certain traditional sentiments,
especially sentiments of admiration for certain moral qualities,
courage, endurance, trustworthiness, and cheerful obedience; and these
sentiments, permeating the whole, are impressed upon every member,
especially new members, by way of mass suggestion and sympathetic
contagion; every new recruit finds that his comrades accept without
question these traditional moral sentiments and confidently express
moral judgments upon conduct and character in accordance with them, and
that they also display the corresponding emotional reactions towards
acts; that is to say, they express in verbal judgments and in emotional
reactions their scorn for treachery or cowardice, their admiration for
courageous self-sacrifice and devotion to duty. The recruit quickly
shares by contagion these moral emotions and soon finds his judgment
determined to share these opinions by the weight of mass suggestion; for
these moral propositions come to him with all the irresistible force of
opinion held by the group and expressed by its unanimous voice; and this
force is not merely the force derived from numbers, but is also the
force of the prestige accumulated by the whole group, the prestige of
old and well-tried tradition, the prestige of age; and the more fully
the consciousness of the whole group is present to the mind of each
member, the more effectively will the whole impress its moral precepts
upon each.
And the organisation of the army renders it possible for the leaders to
influence and to mould the form of these moral opinions and sentiments.
Thus Lord Kitchener, by issuing his exhortation to the British Army on
its departure to France, did undoubtedly exert a considerable influence
towards raising the moral level of the whole force, because he
strengthened the influence of those who were already of his way of
thinking against the influence of those whose sentiments and habits and
opinions made in the opposite direction. His great prestige, which was
of a double kind, both personal and due to his high office, enabled him
to do this. In the same way, every officer in a less degree can do
something to raise the moral level of the men under his command. Thus,
then, the organisation of the whole group, with its hierarchy of offices
which confer prestige, gives those who hold these higher offices the
opportunity to raise the moral level of all members.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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