866 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 



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control of the individual over himself and of society over him de- 

 pends largely on this faculty, and it is often alleged by psycho- 

 logists and students of society that the inferior position of the lower 

 races is due in part to feeble powers of inhibition, and consequent 

 lack of ability to sacrifice an immediate satisfaction for a greater 

 future one. An examination of the facts, however, shows that the 

 savage exercises definite and powerful restraints over his impulses, 

 but that these restraints do not correspond to our own. In con- 

 nection with tabu, totemism, fetish, and ceremonial among the 

 lower races, in the hunger voluntarily submitted to in the presence 

 of food, as well as stoicism under physical hardships and torture, 

 we have inhibitions quite as striking as any exhibited in modern 

 society or in history. The occasions of inhibition depend on the 

 point of view, the traditions, the peculiar life-conditions of the 

 society. In the lower races the conditions do not correspond with 

 our own, but it is doubtful whether the civilized make more use of 

 inhibition in the manipulation of society than the savage, or whether 

 the white race possesses superior power in this respect. The point, 

 at any rate, is to determine the effect in a given group of inhibition 

 on activities, and the reaction of the social life on the inhibitive 

 processes of the individual. 



The influence of temperament among different races in deter- 

 mining the directions of attention and interest is also an important 

 social-psychological field. There is much reason to think that tem- 

 perament, as determining what classes of stimulations are effective, 

 is quite as important as brain-capacity in fixing the characteristic 

 lines of development followed by a group, and that there is more 

 unlikeness on the temperamental than on the mental side between 

 both individuals and races. From this standpoint the social psych- 

 ologist studies the moods and organic appetites of the lower 

 races the attitude toward pain and pleasure, vanity, fear, anger, 

 ornamentation, endurance, curiosity, apathy, sexual appetence, 

 etc. It is not impossible, for example, that the arrested develop- 

 ment of the Negro at the period of puberty is due to the obsession of 

 the mind by sexual feeling at this time, rather than to the closing 

 of the sutures of the cranium. 



Similar to the question of temperament in the individuals of a 

 group is that of the degree to which the affective processes, as com- 

 pared with the cognitive, are the medium of the stimulations pro- 

 moting social change. Cognition is of less importance than emotion 

 in some activities, notably those connected with art and repro- 

 duction, and it is even true that emotion and cognition are in certain 

 conditions incompatible. In this general region lie such questions 

 as the effect of rhythm on social life, particularly in bringing about 

 cooperation in hunting, war, and work; the psychology of work 



