Critical Analysis of the Examination of Emotion - Case Study Example

Critical analysis of Cognitive (Rational) and Emotional elements in the creation of prejudice and how it relates to the development of an individual’s group identity According to research findings so far, humans are group animals rather than isolated individuals. It is the dynamics between the emotional and rational thoughts that gets condensed into assumptions, which sometimes may become prejudices as well. One reason why individuals get enrolled into social groups is because it provides them with endorsement to their emotions and even to the prejudices they personally hold. The individual identity thus becomes a sub-unit of the group identity or more precisely, a set of group identities. But basically whether the individual identities have shaped group identities or whether the group identity is what gives a fixed form to the individual identity is quite a complex question. A researcher, while trying to answer this question, will have to take into account the cognitive and emotional aspects of an individual’s personality as well. Jean Paul Sartre (1995) has observed that in a society, a large majority of individuals may show the tendency of abandoning rational thought and accepting, emotion (passion) instead, as the leading force in their lives (pp.18). He discussed this idea in his book, ‘Anti-Semite and Jew’, citing examples of two group identities, namely, Anti Semite and Jew. He has explained this emotion-driven state of mind by citing anti-Semitism as an example and had stated that, "anti-Semitism is a passion…. in which emotions of hate or anger are involved" (pp.17). According to Sartre (1995), it is the ambiguities and uncertainties which are associated with the truth of an idea or situation that creates the aversion for an individual for rational thought and prompts him/her to choose emotions instead (pp.19). Truth being a “thing of indefinite approximation”, it is abandoned to escape the great responsibility involved (Sartre, 1995, pp.19). This idea of Sartre can be seen repeated in the theorizing of Adorno (1964) as well when he talks about “intolerance of ambiguity” which he attributes to “an authoritarian personality” (pp.326). According to Adorno (1964), an “authoritarian personality” manifests in a person in the form of authoritarian submissiveness as well as aggressiveness, and among many other typical characteristics, a tendency to stereotyping and exercise of power (pp.229). In such a character, it is not only the incapacity to face the truth results in loss of rational thought, but also several other psychological factors contribute to this process. Adorno (1964) had taken Freud’s psychoanalytic theory as the basis for developing this concept (pp.382). In this approach, the inquiries are focused on the influence of the dominating father over a child and its effects on the personality development of the child, which does not come directly under the scope of this study (pp.382). But the fact that in such a situation, the cognitive ability of the child is affected could be of interest to us. Whatever the reason, when the authoritarian personality is established as being rationally weak and emotionally loaded , the “intolerance to ambiguity” expressed by that individual can be more logically explained (pp.326, 382). Stereotyping being the next important behavioral pattern as cited by Adorno (1964), in such an individual, a link between an authoritarian personality and his inability to face the truth could be established. And his hate politics can also be well-explained, as we go further into the various aspects of this topic in the forthcoming paragraphs. Coming back to Sartre (1995), the difficulty involved in being a rationalist is to be examined against the ease of making an emotional judgment, a judgment of faith. This is what is described by the statement, "the anti-Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith," which was made by Sartre (1995, pp.19). To be more precise, the problem faced by a rationalist is that “the rationalist is constantly overwhelmed by a fresh and powerful mass of passions and emotions” (Sartre, 1995, pp.132). This statement is further explained when Sartre said (1995), “the rational man groans, as he gropes for truth; he knows that his reasoning is no more than tentative” (pp.18). Sartre (1995, pp.12) has further elaborated this concept by citing the instance of a German classmate of his, who failed in his aggregation and who could not believe that a Jewish classmate of his passed. Sartre (1995, pp.12) remembered that his classmate admitted that he did not study well, but still expressed his surprise that a Jew could pass that test. Sartre (1995) has delved with the irrationality and paradox involved in this situation by concluding that " to explain his failure, he (the classmate) made use of two systems of interpretation… His thoughts moved on two planes, without his being in the least bit, embarrassed by it" (p.12). On one plane, this student shows the cognitive ability to realize that he failed because he despised studying for aggregation. On the other plane, he is so irrational while he makes a judgment about his Jewish classmate. Instead of realizing that his Jewish classmate passed the aggregation because he had studied well, he sticks on to his irrational, emotional response to this incident. The discussion above shows that the prejudice against the ‘other’ is born out of an individual’s inability to face the truth which in turn, is a contribution from his authoritarian personality. Sartre (1995, pp.145) further went on to examine the ‘other’ in this case, which is the Jewish identity in the example he took, and has concluded that “what makes the Jew is his concrete situation; what unites him to other Jews is the identity of their situations.” So, the existence of anti-Semite identity, makes it inevitable, the existence of the ‘other’, which is the Jew. In this way, each and every irrationalist will have to invent his/her ‘other’ self. And this is why, according to Sartre (1995), an anti-Semitic would invent a Jew "if the Jew did not exist” (p.13). In this context, the words of Michael Walzer (pp.23 of preface to Sartre, 1995) have relevance as he stated, “identity and culture are not timeless essences; they develop and change within historical situations; and the self-perception of individuals and groups is radically influenced by the (often hostile) perceptions of the “others”. As we have seen, the replacement of the rational thought with the emotional thought, leads to the creation of the ‘other’ and this in turn, creates prejudices against the ‘other’ (Allport, 1954). Allport (1954) who had developed the cognitive approach to prejudice has said that prejudice is a basically irrational negative attitude which emerges out of the feeble personality of an individual. Another curious fact that Allport (1954) has brought to light is that, “holding a prejudgment when we know better is one of the strangest features of prejudice” (pp.23). How can an individual behave in such an irrational way has been great cause of concern for humanitarians and an interesting topic of research for social scientists. But the answer that Allport (1954) has suggested is that the prejudices emerge out of the value systems that an individual holds inherited from the group identity that he/she has (1954, pp.40). Allport (1954, pp.93) has cited the example of Americans, who “officially believe in the fundamental values set forth in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition”, to substantiate this statement. The nature of prejudices has been the favorite topic of discussion for Allport (1954) though he has warned the readers that “there is no master key…(to understand and measure the concept of prejudice)….rather, what we have at our disposal is a ring of keys, each of which opens one gate of understanding” (p. 208). According to Allport (1954), group identity is only one among factors which help develop prejudices. In the whole discussion about prejudice, prejudice against ethnic groups is taken as the best example by Allport (1954, pp.14). Also, Allport attributed a major role in prejudice creation to stereotyping (Allport, 1954, pp.21). He (Allport, 1954) has said that stereotyping “saturates all that it (prejudice) contains with the same ideational and emotional flavour” (pp.21). Jost and Banaji (1994) have studied the different aspects of stereotyping and have concluded that stereotype is a tool for “system justification” (pp.2). To be able to sustain the prejudice against the ‘other’, the stereotyping of the ‘other’ becomes a necessity. Here, system-justification is defined as “the psychological process by which existing social arrangements are legitimized” (Jost and Banaji, 1994, pp.2). Jost and Banaji (1994) also inferred that this is the reason why “members of marginalized groups” tend to wear themselves with conviction, the negative stereotypes attributed to them (pp.10). Here it has also to be kept in mind that why a prejudice becomes a prejudice is also because there is no rational fact behind it. For example, though Jews are viewed by many as a race born with greed and an inclination towards money lending, studies have proved that the number of Jews who are in the “banking business is negligible” (Sartre, 1995, pp.14). But how do individuals, who have this habit of creating and holding prejudices, form a group? Will a group also pursue the same prejudices as its individual members hold? Or do all the members of a group hold the same prejudices? Thes were the questions that Sigmund Freud (1990) had tried to answer. First of all, Freud (1990) found out that “in a group, the individual is brought under conditions which allow him to throw off the repressions of his unconscious instinctual impulses” (pp.9). Freud (1990) further argued that the resultant behavior of the individual will contain “all that is evil in the human mind….as a predisposition” (pp.9). Prejudice being a negative impulse, it can be logically concluded that this emotion also gets flared up in a group situation. There is also yet another way in which a group influences an individual. Freud (1990) has drawn attention to this characteristic of a group by saying, “in a group, every sentiment and act is contagious” (pp.10). Freud (1990) has used the word, “emotional contagion” to denote the emotional aspect of this process and had classified this phenomenon under the category of hypnotization (pp.10, 22). This can be understood as a situation in which, an individual becomes less aware of the rationality of a situation and becomes immersed in the group attitudes. Freud (1990) has also concluded from his prolonged studies and observations that an individual who gets himself lost inside a group for a considerable time has a tendency to loose his/her rationalizing faculty and instead a “hypnotized” personality replaces his/her individual sense (pp. 11). All these phenomena turn into valid manifestations of hatred when the group is governed by a prejudice against another psychological group. The contagious nature of group psychology is so powerful that an individual will even become ready to sacrifice his/her self-interest in order to fulfill the collective interest, which in this case will be an act of prejudice against the ‘other’ group (Freud, 1990, pp.10). This is why Sartre (1995) has observed that “violence of the anti-Semite has the paradoxical effect of pushing the Jews to the conquest of other milieux and other groups” (99). In this process, we can see the progression of sociological processes that we have discussed above. First the anti-Semite is an individual who chooses emotional thought in the place of rational thought. Then, this transforms into hatred for the ‘other’, which in this case is the Jews. This hatred develops into a more concrete prejudice against the Jews. When such an individual gets affiliated to a group, which holds the same prejudice in its collective mind, the individual gets totally hypnotized by the affiliation. Inside the group, he/she starts to feel more power and his/or her acts of prejudice becomes more dangerous to the other group. Freud (1990) as a psychologist has admitted that “only rarely and under certain exceptional conditions is individual psychology in a position to disregard the relations of this individual to others” (pp.3). This statement strongly reflects how the group identity overrides the individual identity. Freud (1990) has also made it a point that “every individual is ruled by those attitudes of the group mind which exhibits themselves in such forms as racial characteristics, class prejudices, public opinion etc.” (63). Here the theorizing of Freud (1990) extends a direct connection to what Sartre (1995) has observed about racism. Thus racism becomes a perfect example for the social process by which rationality of an individual is suppressed, an individual ego is formed out of it and this ego is submerged into the collective mind of a hate group. Why the individual gets so much affected by the group is so also because a group provides the individual a sense of identification. It has been observed that identification is the “earliest expression of an emotional tie with another person” and in group situation, the scope of identification is far stronger (Freud, 1990, pp.46). Human beings basically being group animals, a situation of isolation is unbearable for them (us). Adorno (1964) had tried to find out the proportion between the individual ego and group ego in a given situation. He has even attempted at quantifying the variables when he said, “the discriminatory power… (of an individual)…is a measure of the variability of the high and low scorers around the group mean, and of their average difference in response” (pp.80). Adorno (1964) has also revealed the irrationality of racist attitudes by saying that to “attribute various ills of the world to..(the Jews)…is plainly illogical” (pp.9). Here Adorno is seen to agree with Sartre, but his opinion changed course when Adorno (1964) observed that even within group identities governed by a set of attitudes, there may be hidden undercurrents which are based on the income group to which each individual belongs to (pp.199). Thus Adorno (1964) indeed brings in Marx into the discussion, but moves beyond the class dynamics to include more complex social realities. Adorno (1964) has partially accepted the theories of Marx while trying to explore the background and reasons of group formation, but also has insisted that “when it comes to the ways in which people appraise the social world, irrational trends stand out glaringly” (pp.8). This is why, he (Adorno, 1964) said, the attempts to “counter numerous anti-Semitic accusations by means of rational argument” has met with only “small success” (58). In Adorno (1964), some other psychological factors that contributes to the development of the collective mind, comes to light. He (1964) just like Freud, has talked about the role of “primal father” in the formation of a racist group identity, and thereby proved that there are other elements as well which affect the individual and group psychology (Freud, 1990, pp.76; Adorno, 1964) said, “disagreement with father is related to anti-ethnocentrism” (pp.192). He (Adorno, 1964) has explained this further by citing the example of German families which have a prolonged history of “authoritarian, threatening father figures” and said that the members of these families were more “susceptible to a fascist ideology” (pp.46). Here also the irrationality involved in the individual and group thinking process is highlighted. Adorno (1964) also has added one more factor to this set of reasons behind formation of individual and group identity, namely, the “pseudo-masculinity” which again has emerged out of threatening parental presence (pp. 428-559). Adorno (1964) has also pointed another interesting aspect of group identity when he said that the identity and identity reversal of an individual with a group depended on a few simple things: “those outgroup characteristics which have an aspect of power are kept intact in the ingroup….(and)…for each outgroup characteristic signifying weakness or immorality,” there is an ingroup characteristic signifying the opposite (pp.46). From this, it can be logically concluded that an individual’s identity is affected not only by the behavior of ingroup in which he/she is a member, but also by the behavior of the outgroup. According to Carl Marx (1975) who had put his faith in the dynamics of group rather than an individual, it is the centralized methods of production that concentrated humans into large groups (by bringing together scattered small groups) “thereby transforming labor into wage labor and the means of production into capital” (pp.15). The interaction of individual and group identities has not been attributed any relevant role in this by Marx (1975). Thus, according to Marx, the group becomes the greatest creative force which can transform the society in a planned manner. Also it followed in his argument that “division of labor within Bourgeois society (has) created new groups of interest” which has subsequently caused a prolonged class struggle. (Marx, 1975, pp. 178). For Marx, it is “the mode of production in material life (that) determines the general character of the social and and political process of life” (pp.40-50). Also, according to Marx (1975), even the long-approved social systems like “law, morality…(and)…religion” are “bourgeois prejudices” which have been formulated in favor of the class that has power in the society (84). So here the social and literary space occupied by the word prejudice, is expanded beyond the limits previously drawn by other scholars (Freud, 1990). As per Marxism, the only prejudice that needs to be discussed is the class prejudice of the ruling class and this is what defines the working class identity. But there has always been a contradiction between the way even a political class which is also a group, behaved in reality and the way Marx expected them to, in history. Even within the new “groups of interest” formed by capitalistic production, new smaller groups are found to evolve based on other aspects of identity like race or gender. In such a situation, instead of systematic, rational thought promoted by Marxism, a different kind of emotion based logic also get at work. Thus the interplay of different individual and group identities can be seen at work within the Marxian frame work of a society. And within the frame work of practical Marxism, it can be noticed that individual identities submit to the collective identity of the working class group (Freud, 1990, pp.10). Tajfel and Turner (1986, pp.7-24) have put forth a different approach in assessing the individual and group identities. The social identity theory put forth by Tajfel and Turner (1986) has tried to resolve the complexities involved in the formation of individual identities and group identities by assuming that individual ego is an aggregate of several “personal selves” formed by the overlapping group identities to which he/she belongs to, and which prompt the individual to behave based on any of these “level of self” (pp.7-24). The basic premise of this approach to individual and group identities is that an individual is having “multiple social identities” (Tajfel and Turner, 1986, pp.11). This theorizing expands Another aspect of the observations made by Tajfel and Turner (1986) relevant to this discussion is that a “stigmatized” group like Jews, and the individuals belonging to such groups, try to overcome the negative stereotyping by limiting their comparison of selves to others who share the same negative stereotyping (pp.7-24). This is a situation when a group identity becomes a necessity for survival as well as a reason for stigmatization as well. This contradiction in the interplay between individual and group identities is there to stay in any relevant social situation. The multiple social identities will make this situation more complex. Because, in a particular situation, one specific personal self of an individual may get upper-hand and it will be difficult to locate the group identity to which it can be attributed to. Each group identity will have its influence on an individual in various degrees. And in certain situations, one group identity might even be able to nullify or lessen the effect of another group identity in the same person. For example, an Islamic woman who might have valid reasons (held by her group identity) to believe that globalization is evil, will also have reasons to accept the liberating aspects of globalized culture, as part of her gender group identity. It is in such direction that future studies on this topic have to be streamlined to. References Adorno et al. (1964) The authoritarian personality, Volume 1, Hoboken NJ: Wiley Publishers. Allport, G.W. (1954) The nature of prejudice, New York: Addison-Wesley. Coons, D. (2009) Psychology: a journey, New Delhi: Cengage Learning. Freud, S. (1990) Group psychology and the analysis of the ego, New York: W.W.Norton & Company. Jost, J.T. and Banaji, M.R. (1994), The role of stereotyping in system-justification and the production of false consciousness, British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, pp.1-27. Marx, K. (1975) Society and Social Change, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sartre, J.P. (1995) Anti-Semite and Jew, Paris: Schocken Books. Tajfel, H. and Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of inter-group behavior, In S. Worchel and L. W. Austin (eds.), Psychology of Intergroup Relations. Chigago: Nelson-Hall, pp.7-24. Read More