The Lonely Crowd

by David Riesman

  Thus we are forced to take account of the possibility that people may be compelled to behave in one way although their character structure presses them to behave in the opposite way. Society may change more rapidly than character, or vice versa. Indeed, this disparity between socially required behavior and characterologically compatible behavior is one of the great levers of change. Fortunately we know of no society like the one glumly envisaged by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, where the social character types have been completely content in their social roles and where consequently, barring accident, no social change exists.

  Finally, it is necessary to point out that social character types are abstractions. To be sure, they refer back to the living, concrete human being, but in order to arrive at them, as we saw at the beginning of this chapter, it is necessary first to abstract from the real individual his “personality,” then to abstract from that his “character,” finally to abstract from that the common element that forms “social character.”

  In fact, the discerning reader may already have realized that in the nature of the case there can be no such thing as a society or a person wholly dependent on tradition-direction, inner-direction, or other-direction: each of these modes of conformity is universal, and the question is always one of the degree to which an individual or a social group places reliance on one or another of the three available mechanisms. Thus, all human beings are inner-directed in the sense that, brought up as they are by people older than themselves, they have acquired and internalized some permanent orientations from them. And, conversely, all human beings are other-directed in the sense that they are oriented to the expectations of their peers and to the “field situation” (Kurt Lewin) or “definition of the situation” (W. I. Thomas) that these peers at any moment help to create.10

  Since, furthermore, each of us possesses the capacity for each of the three modes of conformity, it is possible that an individual may change, in the course of his life, from greater dependence on one combination of modes to greater dependence on another (though radical shifts of this kind, even when circumstances encourage them, are unlikely). For, unless individuals are completely crazy—and, indeed, they are never completely crazy—they both organize the cues in their social environment and attend to those cues. Thus, if a predominantly other-directed individual were placed in an environment without peers, he might fall back on other patterns of direction. Similarly, it is clear that no individual, and assuredly no society, ever exists without a heavy reliance on tradition, much as this may appear to be overlaid by swings of fashion.

  It is important to emphasize these overlappings of the several types in part because of the value judgments that readers are likely to attach to each type in isolation. Since most of us value independence we are likely to prefer the inner-directed type and overlook two things. First, the gyroscopic mechanism allows the inner-directed person to appear far more independent than he really is: he is no less a conformist to others than the other-directed person, but the voices to which he listens are more distant, of an older generation, their cues internalized in his childhood. Second, as just indicated, this type of conformity is only one, though the predominant, mechanism of the inner-directed type: the latter is not characteristically insensitive to what his peers think of him, and may even be opportunistic in the highest degree. Thus, he need not always react to other people as if they were merely stand-ins for his parents. Rather, the point is that he is somewhat less concerned than the other-directed person with continuously obtaining from contemporaries (or their stand-ins: the mass media) a flow of guidance, expectation, and approbation.

  Let me repeat: the types of character and society dealt with in this book are types: they do not exist in reality, but are a construction, based on a selection of certain historical problems for investigation. By employing more types, or subtypes, one could take account of more facts (or mayhap, the same facts with less violence!), but my collaborators and I have preferred to work with a minimum of scaffolding; throughout, in seeking to describe by one interrelated set of characteristics both a society and its typical individuals, we have looked for features that connect the two and ignored those aspects of behavior—often striking—which did not seem relevant to our task.

  II. The characterological struggle

  We can picture the last few hundred years of western history in terms of a gradual succession to dominance of each of the later two types. The tradition-directed type gives way to the inner-directed, and the inner-directed gives way to the other-directed. Shifts in type of society and type of character do not, of course, occur all at once. Just as within a given culture one may find groups representing all phases of the population curve, so, too, we may find a variety of characterological adaptations to each particular phase. This mixture is made even more various by the migration of peoples, by imperialism, and by other historical developments that constantly throw together people of different character structures, people who “date,” metaphorically, from different points on the population curve.

  These character types, like geological or archaeological strata, pile one on top of the other, with outcroppings of submerged types here and there. A cross section of society at any given time reveals the earlier as well as the later character types, the earlier changed through the pressure of being submerged by the later. Tradition-direction seems to be dominant in Latin America, agricultural southern Europe, in Asia and Africa. Inner-directed types seem to be dominant in rural and small-town United States and Canada, in northwestern Europe, and to a degree in Central Europe. One notices an energetic campaign to introduce the inner-directed pattern in eastern Europe, in Turkey, and in parts of Asia. And one notices the beginnings of dominance by other-directed types in the metropolitan centers of the United States and, more doubtfully, their emergence in the big cities of northwestern Europe. This last and newest type is spreading outward into areas where inner-direction still prevails, just as the latter is spreading into unconquered areas where tradition-directed types still hang on.

  Such a view may help us to understand American character structures. In America it is still possible to find southern rural groups, Negro and poor white, in the phase of high growth potential—and it is here that we look for the remnants of tradition-directed types. Similarly, immigrants to America who came from rural and small-town areas in Europe carried their fertility rates and character patterns with them to our major cities as well as to the countryside. In some cases these people were and are forced to make, in one lifetime, the jump from a society in which tradition-direction was the dominant mode of insuring conformity. to one in which other-direction is the dominant mode. More frequently the jump is made in two generations: the peasant is converted to inner-directed ways; his children then make the jump to other-direction.

  The mixing of people of different character types, as of different races and religions, as a result of industrialization and colonization, is to be found everywhere in the world. Character types that would have been well adapted to their situation find themselves under pressure from newer, better-adapted types. They may resign themselves to a subordinate position. Or they may be tempted by the new goals which enter their view and may even seek these goals without reference to the culturally prescribed means of attaining them.

  Inner-directed types, for instance, in the urban American environment may be forced into resentment or rebellion. They may be unable to adapt because they lack the proper receiving equipment for the radar signals that increasingly direct attitude and behavior in the phase of incipient population decline. They may refuse to adapt because of moral disapproval of what the signals convey. Or they may be discouraged by the fact that the signals, though inviting enough, do not seem meant for them. This is true, for instance, of minority groups whose facial type or coloring is not approved of for managerial or professional positions, or in the hierarchy of values portrayed in the mass media of communication. The same thing holds for those whose ancestry is adequate but whose persona
lity in subtle ways lacks the pliability and sensitivity to others that is required.

  Studies of American Indians provide analogies for some of the things that may happen when an older character type is under pressure from a newer one. Among Sioux reservation children, as described by Erik H. Erikson, there seem to be two reactions to white culture: one is resentful resistance, the other is what might be termed compliant resistance. The behavior of the former seems, to the white educator, incorrigible; of the latter, almost too ingratiating, too angelic. In both cases, because he has at least the tacit approval of his parents and other Sioux adults, the child preserves something of the Sioux character and tradition whether or not he yields overtly to the whites. The conflict, however, drains the child of emotional energy; often he appears to be lazy. Both the resistant and the seemingly compliant are apathetic toward the white culture and white politics.

  I think that there are millions of inner-directed Americans who reject in similar fashion the values that emanate from the growing dominance of other-directed types. Their resentment may be conscious and vocal. As with the Sioux, this resentment is culturally supported both by the old-timers and by the long memory of the past which is present to all in rural and small-town areas. This past is carried in the tales of the old men and the editorials of the rural press, not yet blotted out by urban sights and sounds. Hence, the resentment can express itself and win local victories over the representatives of other-directed types. Nevertheless, the “moralizers,” as we will later term them, do not feel secure—the weight of the urban world outside is against them—and their resentment hardens until these residual inner-directed persons are scarcely more than caricatures of their characterological ancestors in the days of their dominance.

  A second locus of resistance and resentment is to be found among the vanishing tradition-directed migrants to America—migrants both from America’s colonies: Puerto Rico, the deep South, and previously the Philippines, and from Mexico, Italy, and the Orient. Here it is more difficult to find cultural support for one’s resistance to the enforced change of signals called “Americanization.” The southern poor white or the poor Negro who moves North does not have to learn a new language, but he is usually about as deracinated as are the migrants from abroad. The costume and manners of the zoot-suiter were a pathetic example of the effort to combine smooth urban ways with a resentful refusal to be completely overwhelmed by the inner-directed norms that are still the official culture of the city public schools.

  A similar style of resentment is to be found among miners, lumberjacks, ranch hands, and some urban factory workers. As in many other societies, the active dislike of these workers for the dominant culture is coupled with a feeling of manly contempt for smooth or soft city ways. These men have their own cocky legends as the Sioux have stories of the cowboy as well as of their own belligerent past. We must ask to what extent all these groups may be dying out, like their Sioux counterparts, as other-direction spreads down the class ladder and beyond the metropolitan areas. In the absence of a home base, a reservation, these people have their choice, if indeed there be a choice, between homeless-ness and rapid acculturation to other-directed values.

  The “characterological struggle” does not go on only within a single country and among the groups within that country who stand at different points on the curve of character and population. Whole countries in the phase of incipient decline also feel threatened by the pressure of population and expansion from other countries that are in the phase of transitional growth, and even more by the huge oriental countries still in the phase of high growth potential. These international tensions, acting in a vicious circle, help to preserve, in countries of incipient decline, the inner-directed character types and their scarcity psychology, appropriate in the earlier era of transitional growth. Thus the slate of character types befitting a society of abundance—a society of which men have dreamed for centuries—is held in historical abeyance, and the gap between character structure and the potentialities of the economic structure remains.

  It is possible to take various attitudes toward this gap. One would be that, because another world war—this time between the two highly polarized world powers—is possible or even probable, it makes little sense to talk about the age of abundance, its character types, and its anticipated problems. Or, the same conclusion might be reached by a different route, arguing that in effect it is immoral, if not politically impractical, to discuss abundance in America when famine and misery remain the lot of most of the world’s agriculturists and many of its city dwellers. These are real issues. But I would like to point out as to the first—the imminence and immanence of war—that to a slight degree nations, like neurotics, bring on themselves the dangers by which they are obsessed, the dangers that, in place of true vitality and growth, help structure their lives; though obviously the decision, war or not, does not rest with the United States alone. As to the second issue, it seems to me that to use world misery as an argument against speculation about possible abundance is actually to help prolong the very scarcity psychology that, originating in misery, perpetuates it. Pushed to its absurd extreme, the argument would prevent leadership in human affairs except by those who are worst off. On the other hand, those who are best off may fail as models not only out of surfeit but out of despair. Contrary to the situation prevailing in the nineteenth century, pessimism has become an opiate, and the small chance that the dangers so obviously menacing the world can be avoided is rendered even smaller by our use of these menaces in order to rationalize our resignation and asceticism.

  Fundamentally, I think the “unrealistic” Godwin was correct who, in contrast to his great opponent Malthus, thought that we would someday be able to grow food for the world in a flower pot. Technologically, we virtually have the flowerpots.

  II

  From morality to morale: changes in the agents of character formation

  Q. Do you think the teachers should punish the children for using make-up?

  A. Yes, I think they should punish them, but understand, I’m a modern mother and while I’m strict with my daughters, I am still modern. You know you can’t punish your children too much or they begin to think you are mean and other children tell them you are mean.

  From an interview

  Population curves and economic structures are only a part of the ecology of character formation. Interposed between them and the resultant social character are the human agents of character formation: the parents, the teachers, the members of the peer-group, and the storytellers. These are the transmitters of the social heritage, and they wield great influence over the lives of children and hence on the whole society. For children live at the wave front of the successive population phases and are the partially plastic receivers of the social character of the future. In this chapter we consider the changing role of parents and teachers in socializing the young in each of the three population phases. Chapter III considers the socializing function of the peer-group. Chapter IV treats of the changes in the role of the storytellers, or, as they are now called, the mass media of communication.

  We shall concentrate here on the shift from inner-direction to other-direction as the principal mode of insuring conformity in the urban American middle class. Perspective, however, requires a glance at societies in which tradition-direction is the principal mode of insuring conformity; and since the tradition-directed types have played a very minor role in America, we will take examples from primitive and medieval society. As we compare methods of socialization we shall see what is new about the newer types—and particularly what is new about other-direction.

  I. Changes in the Role of the Parents

  There has been a tendency in current social research, influenced as it is by psychoanalysis, to overemphasize and overgeneralize the importance of very early childhood in character formation. Even within this early period an almost technological attention has sometimes been focused on what might be called the tricks of the child-rearing trade: feedin
g and toilet-training schedules. The view implicit in this emphasis happens to be both a counsel of optimism and of despair. It is an optimistic view because it seems to say that facile mechanical changes in what the parent does will profoundly alter the character of the progeny. It is pessimistic because it assumes that once the child has reached, say, the weaning stage its character structure is so formed that, barring intensive psychiatric intervention, not much that happens afterward will do more than bring out tendencies already set.

  Increasingly it is recognized, however, that character may change greatly after this early period and that cultural agents other than the parents may play important roles. Cultures differ widely not only in their timing of the various steps in character formation but also in the agents they rely on at each step. Each new historical phase on the curve of population is marked by an increase in the length of life and in the period of socialization—that is, the period before full entry into one’s adult social and economic role. At the same time there is an increase in the responsibility placed on character-forming agents outside the home, the clan, or the village.

  PARENTAL ROLE IN THE STAGE OF TRADITION-DIRECTION

  In societies depending on tradition-direction, children can be prepared at an early point to assume an adult role. Adult roles are almost unchanging from generation to generation, and apart from training toward technical and manual skill, which may often be intensive, grown-up life demands little in the way of complex and literate instruction. Children begin very early to learn how to act like adults simply by watching adults around them. In the population phase of high growth potential there are many children to imitate a comparatively small number of adult models. The children live, ordinarily, in a large family setting. What the adults do is simple enough for children to grasp, so simple that children can often understand and imitate it before they have the physical skills to take a full part. Social maturity waits on biological maturity. Yet the biological roles of adult life are, in many cases, not themselves remote, for since there is little inhibition of childhood play and curiosity, children know what there is to know about sex and other adult functions—even though certain ceremonial mysteries may remain to testify to the power of the adult and the helplessness of the child.