Social psychology : an outline and source book / by Edward Alsworth Ross.

  • Ross, Edward Alsworth, 1866-1951.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Social psychology : an outline and source book / by Edward Alsworth Ross. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    373/408 (page 351)
    polling of people on a question when first it comes up brings to light much prejudice, passion, and stupidity. The polling of the same persons after there has been time for free discussion and the maturing of a public opinion, reveals an intelligence and foresight far above that of the average man. It is, therefore, a slander to declare that manhood suffrage equalizes Socrates and Sambo. At its best estate a popular election merely records the outcome of a vast social deliberation in which the philosopher has a million times the influence of the field hand. This collective rumination corrects the ballot- box falsehood that one man is as good as another, and brings it to pass that the decisions of a political democracy may be quite as intelligent as those of an aristocratic society, and at the same time free from the odious class selfishness of the latter. Although public opinion at its final stage always ex- hibits the hierarchical structure, this hierarchy of influence need not be identical with the political or social hierarchy, else there could be no popular movements, no peasant re- volts, no branching off of humble sects (Dunkers, Douk- hobors), no confrontation of classes and masses. A democratic society is characterized by the depreciation of mere social position and the exaltation of the wisdom and competency of the average man. Ultra-democracy pre- sumes the independency of each citizen’s opinions, just as ultra-Protestantism assumes that every good Chris- tian will from his prayerful study of the Scriptures have worked out for himself a system of theology. The en- couragement of the common man in his own conceit profoundly alters the relation of leaders and led. Con- trast the “habitual deference” towards certain classes, Class coef- ficients of value in the formation of public opinion