[From Kent McClelland 960218]
Clark McPhail [960215]
[Bill Leach 960215.23:03 U.S. Eastern Time Zone]
In response to my simplified list of introductory ideas about PCT, Clark says,
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Basic Facts of Social Behavior
When large numbers of people collectively control a perception, the
participants often feel deprived of individual control and like some unseen
force or some great leader is in control of the outcome.
You state this as a "fact". I'm curious about your evidence but would even
settle for an empirical illustration. Taken at face value it does not
square with my own experience nor with any of the reports I have recorded
of people engaging with large numbers of others in collective actions.
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After Clark's post, Bill sent a message offering an interpretation of what
I was trying to say, and he pretty much summed up my position, but I can
give a little more background on the way I've been thinking about this
issue.
For a long time sociologists and lots of other folks in looking at
wide-spread social phenomena have claimed to see something they call a
"group actor" or "collective mind" or "collective conscience" or "crowd" at
work, something which is much stronger than any of the individuals involved
and which effectively controls the social outcome. The list of
distinguished sociologists who have talked about group actors or something
similar is a long one--everyone from "founding fathers" like Emile Durkheim
to non-nonsense, rational-choice theorists of the current era, like James
S. Coleman. And nonsociologists, like my intro soc students, regularly
talk about "society" or "the middle class" as if these abstract entities
were some kind of super-person in control of social situations, or else
they tend to attribute to the President or other leaders a similar kind of
super-human power to control events.
In his excellent book, _The Myth of the Madding Crowd_, Clark argues that
theories of a "crowd mind" or the like must be completely mistaken, and I
agree fully with Clark on that point. However, I've also wondered why so
many people fantasize the existence of these super-human social entities,
and I now think I have a clue.
I'm in the middle of writing a paper that makes the following argument:
1. In situations where two or more people collectively control a
perception, they are likely to have different reference standards for their
control of the perception. This will lead to conflict.
2. As long as the conflict doesn't get out of hand, the CEV associated
with their joint perception will continue to be controlled in spite of the
conflict. I've called this result, "conflictive cooperation."
3. The CEV will be controlled at a "virtual reference level" emerging
from the joint efforts of the participating people.
4. If very large numbers of people are engaged in collective control of a
perception, the emerging virtual reference level will be different from the
individual's reference level for almost every person.
5. If very large numbers of people are involved in the collective control,
any single individual's efforts to make the collective CEV match his or her
own standard will have a negligible result on the outcome. People will
tend to feel individually powerless, especially if their own reference
standard is far away from the emerging virtual reference level.
6. If very large numbers of people are involved in the collective control,
the CEV will be highly stable, and impact of the collective control effort
on the CEV will be indistinguishable from that which might be produced by
some mythical super-powerful control system using the virtual reference
level to control its perceptions.
7. My conclusion is that people, sociologists included, in looking at
highly stable wide-spread social phenomena (like basic cultural norms or
the conventions of language) lose sight of all the individual humans whose
efforts are jointly responsible for that stability, and instead succumb to
the illusion that some super-human "virtual social controller" actually
exists. Hence, the illusion of the social actor or the all-powerful
leader.
Does this now make better sense, Clark, or do you think I'm going way off track?
(Sorry it took me so long to respond!)
To Bill: Thanks for your other comments on items on the list. They were
helpful.
Kent