The Psychology of Interpersonal ‘ Behaviour Se. oes Ai ot <PELICAN BOOKS THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INTERPERSONAL BEHAVIOUR Michael Argyle was born in Nottingham in 1925; went to Nottingham High School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and was a navigator in the R.A.F. He has been teaching social psychology at Oxford since 1952, and is now Reader in Social Psychology and a Fellow of Wolfson College. He has been engaged in research in various aspects of social psychology for the last twenty years, and is particularly interested in the experimental study of social interaction and its application to wider social problems. In recent years he has been greatly helped by his very active research group. During sab- batical terms and long vacations, he has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, and has been visiting lecturer or professor at the Universities of Michigan, British Columbia, Ghana, Delaware, the State University of ewe Son ot Butea, te Univerety of Leuven, eed So Hebrew Us 7, Jerusalem. Michael Argyle i the author of The Scientific Study of Social Behaviour, Religious Behaviour, Psychology and Social Problems, ‘Social Interaction, The Social Psychology of Work, end other books, and has written numerous articles in British, American and European journals. He helped to found the British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology and Ee a eer rareky citar (96127), He was Chairman of the Social Psychology Section the British Psychological Society (1964-7). He is married and has four children; his hobbies are travel, interpersonal behaviour, Utopian speculation and playing the goat. 3Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Penguin Books Inc., 7110 Ambassador Road, Baltimore, Maryland 21207, U.S.A. Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin BoM tuum, Qutatio, Causa Mar! Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-196 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand First published 1967 Reprinted 1967, 1968, 1970, 1971 Second edition 1972 Reprinted 1973, 1974, 1978, 1976 Copyright © Michael Argyle, 1967, 1972 Made and printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, London, Reading and Fakenham Set in Monotype Imprint ‘This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaserCONTENTS List of Figures Acknowledgements Editorial Foreword Preface to the First Edition Preface to the Second Edition 1 Social Motivation 2 Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication 3 Social Skiil 4 Eye-contact and the Direction of Gaze § Social Behaviour and Personality 6 The Meeting of Personalities 4 Groups, Organization, and Culture 8 Self-image and Self-esteem 9 Social Behaviour and Mental Disorder ro Some Professional Social Skills 11 Training in Social Skills 12 Epilogue Further Reading References Index of Names Subject Index Oo on 13 15 36 59 80 106 125 150 | 170 19r 226 248 255 259 273 277LIST OF FIGURES 1 The relation between motivational arousal and effective effort 2 Analysis of approach-avoidance conflicts 3 Pupillary reactions to eye-spot patterns (Coss, 1970)* 4 Male and female ‘bodies-for-others’, as experienced through the amount .of touching received from others (Jourard, 1966) 5 Orientation in different relationships 6 Key movements between men in an office indicating their relationship (Burns, 1964) 7 The meaning of bodily postures (Sarbin and Hardyck, 1953) 8 The dimensions of facial expression (Schlosberg, 1952) 9 Interactions between verbal and non-verbal cues (Argyle et al., 1970) zo 23 27 38 39 40 41 43 48 10 Non-verbalsignals used in broadcasting(Brun 1969) 52and53 11 Combinations of dominant and affiliative techniques (Gough, 1957) 12 Motor skill model 13 Laboratory arrangements for-studying gaze-direction 14 Record of looking and speaking (Argyle, 1969) 15 Direction of gaze at the beginning and end of long utterances (Kendon, 1967) 16 Relation between eye-contact and distance apart of sub- jects 17 Social behaviour in different relationships (Argyle and Little, 1972) 18 Amount of disclosure over time of high- and low- revelation between groups of two (Taylor, 1965) 7 54 70 80 81 83 89 98 11gLIST OF FIGURES 19 Sample sociogram 121i 20 Organization chart. 137 2x Effect of age and sex of the other on feeling observed (Argyle and Williams, 1969) 160 22 The learning of problem-solving by groups 229 23 Learning curves for selling (Argyle, Lalljee and Lydall) 230 24 Improvement of selling skills through experience (loc. cit.) 231 25 Acquisition of social skills in adolescence (McPhail, 1967) 232 26 Laboratory arrangements for interviewer training 236 * A full list of books and papers cited thus is to be found at the end of the book (pp. 259f). ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For permission to reprint extracts and diagrams in this book, thanks are due to the following: Methuen & Co. Ltd for Figures 14 and 21, and the extract on Pp. 251-2, all from the author’s book, Social Interaction; R. G. Coss and Pergamon Press Ltd for Figure 3, from Behaviour Studies in Psychiatry; the British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology for Figure 9; and Theodore Brun and Wolfe Pub- lishing for Figure to, from The International Dictionary of Sign Language.EDITORIAL FOREWORD It is often argued that modern psychology has become out of touch with the realities of everyday life. There is some truth in the argument. The rigorously controlled experiments which are required in scientific work must usually be carried out in artificial laboratory settings, and in the last decades psycholo- gists have often been more interested in devising experiments to test hypotheses than in making and systematizing observa- tions on everyday behaviour of ordinary people. This book comes as a refreshing change. It is about one particular aspect of social psychology — the ways in which people behave to each other. It is difficult to think of anything which has more rele- vance to everything one does while not actually asleep or un- conscious. Although the findings of research on this subject have great generality, readers of this book will discover that the subject can be treated with scientific rigour. The author, Michael Argyle, is a leading British social psych- ologist. He has contributed to his subject at all levels, in his writing on social psychology in general, in theoretical contri- butions ~ for instance in his development of the concept of intro- jection - and through empirical studies of industrial life and also in the laboratory, as in his studies of the part played by eye- to-eye contact during conversation. In this book Argyle surveys the whole field of the psycho- logical study of behaviour’ between people, but he chooses several topics to discuss in depth. Some people say that psych- ology is mainly common sense dressed up in fancy language. For such people this book will be full of surprises because many of the research findings could not have been anticipated by a thoughtful person sitting in an armchair and analysing what happens when people meet. The reason is that we all spend much of our time interacting with other people, with the result that the habits we use in such interaction have been practised 9EDITORIAL FOREWORD over and over again and become automatic. We are no longer aware of what we do. In this way, as well as in others, social inter- action resembles many skills, and one of Argyle’s most stimu- lating and original ideas comes from this analogy. The book opens with an analysis of the social motives which energize and direct social behaviour. It is in this chapter that there is the closest tie with the psychology of the individual, but even here the author uncovers certain motives which are purely social in origin and which would not be discovered bya psychologist studying the individual in a non-social setting. The author then goes on to discuss the actual behaviour of people in social settings, the social techniques which they use, varying from bodily contact to the persuasive use of language, and he looks at the various styles which people employ in using these techniques. Then there are sections on the way people perceive éach other and themselves, on the different kinds of bond which can exist between people and on the determinants of friendship. Other sections are concerned with the relations between interpersonal behaviour and the group and the culture in which people live. Particular attention is given to the im- portance to the individual of the way other people react to him. The last chapters are concerned with applications of the topic, in the study of mental disorder; in professional social skills such as in interviewing, public speaking, the rearing of children, and in teaching; and finally there is a section on methods of teaching social skills. For the student of psychology this book will be valuable because of the author’s survey of relevant work and because of his original ideas. For others it will provide an illustration of one of the values of psychology, which is that it helps one to think objectively about difficult subjects. The difficulty lies in the fact that these subjects are normally talked about imprecisely or that the observer himself is so involved in what is going on that he cannot see actions for words, or principles for detail. B. M. FOSSPREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION Manisa social animal: he collaborates with others to pursue his goals and satisfy his needs. It is well known that relations with others can be the source of the deepest satisfactions and of the blackest misery. Moralists, novelists and others have written about these things, but the detailed analysis of social interactions and relationships has been lacking. Recent research by social psychologists has made these phenomena very much clearer. In particular there have been important advances in the experi- mental analysis of social encounters at the level of such things as eye-movements, the timing of speech, and non-verbal communication. This research has a number of possible applications. The work of many people consists of dealing with people, rather than with things — teachers, psychologists, air hostesses, managers, and many others: research has been done into the social tech- niques which are most effective, and into how such skills can be taught. Many people are lonely and unhappy, some are mentally ill, because they are unable to establish and sustain social relationships with others. Many everyday encounters are unpleasant, embarrassing, or fruitless, because of inept social behaviour. Conflicts between different social classes and different cultural groups are partly due to the difficulties of interaction. Many of those difficulties and frustrations could be eliminated by a wider understanding, and better training in the skills of social interaction. This book reflects the activities of the Social Skills research group at Oxford. I am grateful to Professor A. B. Cherns and the Social Science Research Council for financing this research, and to all those who have been associated with the group, especially to Dr Adam Kendon, who has collaborated over this work and made valuable comments on most of the Ms., and to DrE. R. F. W. Crossman, Douglas Seymour, Nicholas Bateson, IrPREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION Janet Dean, Professor J. Ex, Mansur Lalljee, Mary Lydall, Peter McPhail, Euan Porter and Emma Shackle. I am also indebted to Professor Brian Foss, Professor Ralph Exline, Corinne Hutt, Dr Peter Robinson, Dr H. Tajfel, Dr A. Yates and Penguin Books for their valuable comments on parts of the Ms. Institute of Experimental Psychology MICHAEL ARGYLE x South Parks Road October 1965 OxfordPREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION Tere have been dramatic and far-reaching developments in research into interpersonal behaviour since the first edition of this book was written in 1965. Details of some of this work can be found in my book Social Interaction (London: Methuen; New York: Atherton Press, 1969). I have done my best to report most of these developments, within the same framework as before. The main areas which have been added or modified are: The biological roots of social behaviour Non-verbal communication in animals and humans eet at Oxford on gaze and other aspects of 2-person Social behavi behaviour and personality Social performance of mental patients Research on Cultural rules and social behaviour. I am indebted to the following for stimulation and collabora- tion - Florisse Alkema, Chris Brand, Bridget Bryant, Philip Burgess, Peter Collett, Mark Cook, Ralph Exline, Roger Ingham, Brian Little, Robert McHenry, Hilary Nicholson, Veronica Salter, Elizabeth Sidney, Mary Sissons, Jerry Tognoli, Ederyn Williams, Marylin Williams. Department of Experimental Psychology MICHAEL ARGYLE South Parks Road March 1971 OxfordCHAPTER I SOCIAL MOTIVATION Most people spend a great deal of their time engaging in some kind of social interaction. They live together, work together, and spend spare time with their friends. Why do they do this? Why don’t we all behave like hermits, living and working alone? In fact for most individuals solitary confinement, or other forms of isolation for more than short periods, are very unpleasant indeed. Loss of ‘face’ in the Far East is a cause of suicide, and rejection by friends in our own society is a common source of distress. The explanation given by earlier thinkers was that humans (and most animals) have a ‘herd instinct’ or ‘gregarious instinct’ which draws them together. It is now realized that people seek a number of more specific goals in social situations — help with work or other activities, friendship, guidance, power, admiration, and so on. Different people seek different things in social situations. In the present state of knowledge it looks as if social behaviour is the product of at least seven different drives. A ‘drive’ can be defined as a persistent tendency to seek certain goals. As well as directing people towards goals, a drive is a source of energy; when the drive is operating there is a general increase of vigour. Much the same is true of biological drives such as hunger: when a person is hungry he will seek food with increased effort. Furthermore the drive can be subdivided into a number of more specific ones for salt, sugar, and so on: animals deprived of oneof these substances will select 2 diet which makes good the deficit. It is necessary to postulate these various forms of motivation to account for variations in the behaviour of the same person on different occasions, e.g. when hungry and not, and to describe differences between different people in the goals they pursue, and the energy with which they do it. There is as yet no final agreement on how social motivation should be divided up. What will be done here is to offer a 15THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INTERPERSONAL BEHAVIOUR isional list of seven motivational sources of interpersonal behaviour. These are sufficient to account for the phenomena described in this book, and each has been extensively studied by psychologists and others. Later in this chapter some account will be given of how these drives function, and of their origins in childhood experience or innate tendencies. Here, then, is the provisional list, together with a note of the goals which are sought in each case. These goals are either responses which are sought from others, or types of relationships with other people. 1. Non-social drives which can produce social interaction (such as biological needs for food and water, the need for money) — various kinds of cooperative or competitive behaviour. 2. Dependency — acceptance, interaction, help, protection and guidance, especially from people in positions of power and authority. 3. Affiliation - physical proximity, eye-contact, warm and friendly responses and acceptance by peers and groups of peers, 4. Dominance — acceptance by others, and groups of others, as the task-leader, being allowed to talk most of the time, take the decisions, and be deferred to by the group. 5. Sex — physical proximity, bodily contact, etc., eye-contact, warm friendly and intimate social interaction, usually with attractive peers of the opposite sex. 6. Aggression - to harm other people physically, verbally or in other ways. : 7. Self-esteem and ego-identity — for other people to make approving responses and to accept the self-image as valid, This list is provisional, but moderately well established: drives 1-6 have all been studied in animals, and the biological and evolutionary basis is understood; they have also been studied in humans, and we know how they are affected by © childhood experiences, how they ate aroused, and how they affect social behaviour. The biological functions of social behaviour in animals. During the last few years studies have been carried out of apes and monkeys in the wild; these studies have shown clearly how their social behaviour is essential to the biological survival of 16 ‘SOCIAL MOTIVATION these animals, A set of partly innate social drives has emerged during the course of evolution; these drives produce a pattern of partly-instinctive social behaviour that enables groups of apes and monkeys to eat and drink, defend themselves against enemies, reproduce themselves, care for and train their young. (1) Apes and monkeys need access to water, and to suitable vegetables and fruits to eat. They occupy a territory which contains these resources, and may defend it against rivals, (2) These animals live in groups, with a fairly stable dom- inance hierarchy which is established by aggressive displays between adult males. Certain adult males provide leadership in defending the territory and keeping internal order. (3) There is a definite family structure, which is different in different species, Opposite sex pairs mate, in order to continue the species, adult males look after their females for a time, and act as generalized fathers to the infants in the group. (4) Mothers feed and look after their young, and provide socialization experiences which complete the partly ‘open’ in- stinctive systems. Mothers have maternal patterns of behaviour which are aroused by the sight of young; the young have dependent patterns of behaviour which are aroused by the sight, feel and sound of the mother. (5) Aggressive behaviour is used to defend group and terri- tory; it may also occur between males of the same group who are competing for dominance or for access to the same female. However, such aggression is usually limited to ferocious displays in which the most terrifying animal wins — it would not be in the interests of the group for real fighting to take place. (6) Young apes and monkeys engage in play, adults in groom- ing; these are two examples of affiliative behaviour which probably have the functions of restraining aggression inside the group, and making cooperation easier. Social behaviour in lower animals is almost entirely instinc- tive: the entire pattern of social behaviour is innate and has emerged during evolution because of its biological survival value. The apes and monkeys are different in that their instinc- tive systems are more ‘open’, and remain to be be completed during socialization experiences. There are also small com- 17THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INTERPERSONAL BEHAVIOUR ponents of ‘culture’, in that a group of monkeys may build up atradition of eating or sleeping. One group of Japanese monkeys has developed the ability to swim. The behaviour of apes and monkeys is very illuminating for the understanding of human social behaviour. However some recent books have over-emphasized the similarities between men and monkeys. In men innate factors are less important, and there is a longer period of socialization. Human groups build up a far more elaborate culture, which is passed on to later generations. There are also striking resemblances in the use of non-verbal signals, but humans can of course also communicate by means of language. « Biological and other drives. The best-understood drives are hunger and thirst. There seems to be a bodily self-regulating system which keeps the levels of food and water in the body at an equilibrium level. For example, when there is a shortage of water, thirst is experienced and this drive is aroused, leading to behaviour which makes good the deficit and restores the equilibrium. Most of the other drives do not work like this. Sex is an interesting intermediate case: in lower animals sexual arousal depends on the level of sex hormonesin the bloodstream —though there is no deficit here; in higher mammals and in man there is little connection between hormones and sexual arousal and activity; castration after puberty leads to no loss of sexual desire. In the case of other drives, such as those for affiliation and money, the contents of the bloodstream are not involved: what- ever physiological basis they have must be in the brain. There is no deficit, so that satisfaction of the need does not lead to a cessation of activity: it may lead to more. These drives resemble hunger and thirst in that relevant internal states and external stimuli result in autonomic arousal and the direction of be- haviour towards the goals in question. Conscious and unconscious motivation. It is said that a drive is operating when a person is observed to be pursuing some goal in an energetic and persistent manner. Often people are con- 18SOCIAL MOTIVATION sciously. aware of the goals which they are seeking, but this is not always so, and then the motivation must simply be deduced from the behaviour, or measured in certain indirect ways, which will be described below. The operation of ‘unconscious’ motiva- tion is illustrated by the following experiment. A subject is hypnotized and given the suggestion that he should, for example, stand on the table at a certain time by the clock; he is told to forget this suggestion before being de-hypnotized. When the appointed time comes the subject will rather sheepishly stand on the table, and if asked why he is doing it will make up some reason. Clearly he is unaware of the true motivation, and furthermore is liable to make up other reasons for his actions, It is clear that conscious experiences are only a very partial and sometimes a quite misleading guide to the underlying processes. Arousal and satiation. People are not hungry all the time; the momentary strength of any drive depends on how far it has been aroused or satiated. It is now known that the activation of any drive system involves a similar pattern of physiological ‘arousal’. This consists of electrical activity originating in the hypothalamus, and of activity in the sympathetic nervous _ system, producing higher blood pressure, a faster heart-beat and perspiration — though the physiological pattern varies between individuals. A well-known lawin psychology states that increasing arousal has an energizing effect, which first improves performance, but later leads to deterioration, as emotionality disrupts the pattern of behaviour. The optimum level of arousal for most effective performance is lower the more complex the task. An ingenious series of experiments by Schachter and his colleagues showed how the same physiological state may be experienced differently, and how physiological and external stimnuli may interact to produce a particular kind of emotional or motivational state. Some subjects were given an injection of adrenalin, while others had neutral injections of salt solution. Some of each group of subjects were placed in the company of a confederate of the experimenter, who generally behaved in a wild and crazy manner, Further groups of subjects were sub- 19THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INTERPERSONAL BEHAVIOUR jected to an insulting interview, in the company of a confederate, who became very angry with the interviewer. The main finding was that the adrenalin-injected subjects became very euphoric in the first situation, and aggressive in the second — more so than those injected with salt solution. Whenever a drive is activated, physiological arousal occurs, though the feelings experienced and the behaviour produced are specific to the drive (Schachter, 1964). Arousal can be brought about by such physiological methods, arousal Figure 1. The relation between motivational arousal and effective effort. but the more usual means of arousal is through expectations of satisfaction. Arousal is stronger when the expected reward or “ incentive’ is larger, when it is greatly desired, and when its probability of being attained appears to be greater. The effect of incentives varies with the drive strength, and may vary between different cultural groups. For instance working-class children are aroused more by cash incentives, while middle- class children are especially affected by hopes of ‘success’. We turn now to the conditions under which needs are satisfied. The hungry person is made less hungry by eating; the hunger drive builds up gradually with time until it is satisfied again. The drives behind social behaviour do not seem to work quite like this. A person who seeks money, or fame, does not 20SOCIAL MOTIVATION cease to do so when he receives some gratification. Indeed the reverse is more likely: a person who seeks fame and never receives any, is likely to give up, and seek different goals instead. In other words gratification seems to reinforce rather than satiate the goal-seeking tendency. There may still be some parallel to biological drives in that there may be temporary satiation, before further goals of the same type are sought. The origins of drives, Hunger and thirst are innate bodily needs, though the way that they are satisfied is partly learnt from the culture. Sex, aggression.and affiliation also have an instinctive basis; in other words all human beings have an innate tendency to pursue these goals when aroused. However, particular en- vironmental conditions may be necessary for the drive to develop. It was found by Harlow and Harlow (1965) that monkeys who had been reared without contact with their mothers later showed little interest in the opposite sex. Some social drives may be wholly learnt, as the need for money is. Drives may be acquired in childhood in a number of ways. There may be something like ‘imprinting’ during the first year of life: the infant becomes attached to the dominant moving object in its environment, and does its best to follow that object. This has been observed in birds and other species and there is evidence that something similar occurs with human infants. A pattern of behaviour may become a drive because it consistently leads to other kinds of satisfaction: the origin of the need for money is probably that it leads to gratification of hunger and then becomes a goal which is sought for its own sake, Drives may be acquired through other learning processes, such as identification with parents: a child who takes a parent as amodel is likely to acquire the parental pattern of motivation, There are great variations between cultures in the typical strength of these drives. Some cultures are very aggressive, some are greatly concerned about status and loss of face. These variations can sometimes be traced to the environmental setting — tribes which are constantly having to defend themselves against enemies need to have aggressive members, and so aggression is encour- aged in children (Zigler and Child, 1969). aiTHE PSYCHOLOGY OF INTERPERSONAL BEHAVIOUR The measurement of motivation. People vary in the energy with which they pursue the goals of sex, dominance, affiliation and so on. How can these individual differences be assessed? The most direct way would be to present a person with a series of be- havioural choices, as when a rat is offered food, water, female rats, or mazes to explore. For humans thisis not very convenient, though it is possible to obtain ratings from friends, or sometimes psychiatrists, as to the choices which a person habitually makes. _ Other measuring instruments are often validated against such reports. The easiest means of assessment is by means of ques- tionnaires, though these can only get at the conscious part of motivation, and errors are caused by subjects trying to present a desirable picture of themselves. Questionnaires have been constructed for several of the drives which we shall deal with below,.and have been validated against reported behaviour, or behaviour observed in group situations. For example a scale of dominance was found to give some prediction of attempts to control other people in laboratory groups. Another means of measuring drive-states has been devised which can probably assess unconscious as well as conscious aspects of motivation. In ‘projection tests’ subjects are asked to tell a story about people shown in rather vaguely-drawn pictures. Their answers are scored to show the amount of affiliative, aggressive or other imagery, and this is used to predict the overt behaviour of the subject. There is considerable doubt over the validity of such projection tests, and they cannot be said to provide very good predictions. In the case of aggression and sex, there may even be a reverse prediction — some of the people who write the most aggressive stories display the least actual aggression in their behaviour; this is because fantasy may be- come a substitute for the real thing if that has been heavily punished. Conflict. In the cases of sex, aggression and probably affiliation, there are restraining forces which prevent the goal being at- tained. When the drive is aroused, there is also arousal of inner restraints, probably because of punishment in the past. The study of such conflicts has shown that the drive which has been 22Z SOCIAL MOTIVATION aroused is satisfied in an indirect way: this can be explained by a theoretical model (Fig. 2) devised by N. E. Miller (1944), and is one of the points at which research on animals has shed light on: human behaviour. distance from goal equilibrium position Figure 2. Analysis of approach-avoidance conflicts, If a rat is fed at the end of a linear maze (A), he will try to get to the feeding point again, and the strength of the pull can be measured. The strength of motivation falls off at greater dist- ances from the goal, as shown. Similarly rats that are given shocks will pull to get away from that point — but the strength of the pull declines more sharply with distance than the approach pull did, i.e. the slopes have different gradients. If a rat is some- times fed and sometimes shocked at the same place it follows that it is drawn both towards and away from the goal, and moves towards an equilibrium position where approach and avoidance drives are equal. A very similar process is found in humans who are attracted towards each other and who are also afraid of each other — two components of affiliative motivation. What happens is that they approach to a degree of proximity at which the are balanced. In the cases of sex and aggression there is an intermediate degree of directness of expression of these drives. 23THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INTERPERSONAL BEHAVIOUR SEVEN ROOTS OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR In this section we shall give a brief account of each of the seven motivational systems listed earlier. It must be emphasized that this is a provisional list which will probably have to be revised in the light of future research. 1. Non-social drives affecting social behaviour. Basic biological drives, such as the need for food, may lead to varied kinds of interaction. They may result in drawing together the members of a primitive group in a cooperative task which none could accomplish alone. This happens in animals and leads to the formation of cooperative agricultural and pastoral groups in primitive communities. In modern societies work leads to the satisfaction of biological needs less directly. In other situations biological needs can lead to intense competition or hostility, as when there is a limited amount of food to be shared out. It is possible for such cooperative and competitive situations to be set up experimentally by manipulating the way in which rewards are to be shared out. The need for money can function in exactly the same way, resulting in either pattern of behaviour. An important acquired drive is the need for achievement, which leads to attempts to attain higher and higher standards of excellence, whether at examinations, competitive sports, or in other ways. In many social situations there is a task to be com- pleted, asin committee work, or in research groups. People high in achievement motivation are found to be most concerned with the task, while those in whom affiliative motivation is stronger are more concerned about getting on well with the other group members. Some of the social situations with which we shall be concerned later can be regarded as exercises of professional social skill - for example interviewing, teaching or selling. Here the performer of the skill is trying to affect the behaviour of others, not primarily because of his social needs but for professional reasons, He wants the others to learn, or buy, just as a person strong in affiliation wants others to respond in a warm and friendly manner. Of course the social-skill performer has other 24SOCIAL MOTIVATION motivations — for achievement, money, etc. - which make him keen to do well at his job, but the immediate goals for him are those of getting the client to respond in the specific ways required by the situation. The social-skill performer will also in most cases be affected by social drives, and the client may be primarily affected by these. Another way in which non-social drives can produce social behaviour is where people seek information of some kind. Rats will endure electric shocks in order to explore interesting mazes, and humans take a lot of trouble to gain certain types of in- formation. It has been found that some conformity behaviour occurs because people believe that the others are better in- formed than they are themselves, There is a certain amount of evidence to show that people seek out the company of others in order to check their opinions, especially when it is difficult to check them more directly. These are some ways in which people may come together, and engage in social interaction, in the absence of any form of specifically social motivation or real interpersonal attraction. Indeed it is one of the marks of the psychopath that he will engage in social behaviour in so far as it is financially or otherwise profitable to do so, but he has no intrinsic attraction to other people at all. For the psychopath there is no particular difference between people and things. He is lacking in the social motiva- tions proper, and to these we now turn. 2. Dependency. The goals of dependency are close and sub- missive relations with parents, and later on with other people, where the other person provides help, guidance and protection. Dependent behaviour may be directed to people in power and authority, or towards equals. This is the earliest kind of attach- ment to other people: most children develop a pattern of dependency toward their parents, and often have to be trained out of it at about the age of five. Studies of institutionalized children show that the ones who have never experienced parental nurture are very low in dependency, while those who have are very high. For a long time it was believed that de- pendency was due to the association between the mother and 25THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INTERPERSONAL BEHAVIOUR the satisfaction of bodily needs, especially in feeding. However Harlow and Harlow (1962) reared baby monkeys in the company of two artificial ‘mothers’ with faces; one body wasmadeof wire, the other covered with terry cloth. The baby monkeys much preferred the cloth mother, developed an affection for her, as shown by close bodily contact, and ran to her when frightened. This happened regardless of which mother provided the milk, suggesting that an instinctive need for bodily contact is more important than food reward. Studies of human babies show that they often form early attachments to people who have taken no part in feeding or caretaking. Probably feeding is important not because it gratifies the hunger drive but because it provides bodily contact and the chance to see and hear the mother, Bodily contact is important for baby monkeys ~ when frightened they will cling to the mother or a mother surrogate that has the right kind of skin. This is true of most human babies in the first six months of life, but later they are content to be able to see the mother. When mothers use a lot of bodily contact, their infants become rather more dependent on bodily as opposed to visual contact. ‘Cuddlers’, as they have been called, are upset if bodily contact is interrupted, and bodily contact comforts them when upset. Dependent behaviour is stronger when the mother has been most responsive to the child’s crying and there has been a lot of interaction between them (Schaffer and Emerson, 1964). De- pendency is biologically important and is instinctive in animals. Human infants show characteristic responses of sucking, reach- ing.and grasping. A lot of recent evidence suggests that human babies have an innate preference for the human face. At ages as early as four to six weeks infants will take more interest in faces, or masks, than in other objects. Smiling is elicited, and distress is relieved by seeing them. In the early weeks of life, infants focus most on objects eight to nine inches away: during feeding the mother’s face is likely to come into this range. Smiling is particularly likely if there is eye-contact — and the mother also finds this rewarding. Babies are attracted to the face, smile at it, and they make eye-contact from an early age, following the mother round 26SOCIAL MOTIVATION the room. Coss (1965) has found that patterns resembling pairs of eyes produce a greater emotional response in adults than various similar patterns. This may be due to an innate preference for eyes, or it could be due to very early learning. It has been suggested that there may be a process resembling ‘imprinting’ in birds. During a critical period birds will become imprinted by the dominant moving figure in their environment, and after- wards follow that figure round. Ducks and dogs raised by humans may be imprinted by them, and human babies who are reared by wolves may fail to be imprinted by humans. 61-0, Mary dilator $05) pI © @ @ § ©@ .@@ Figure 3. Pupillary reactions to eye-spot patterns (Coss, 1970) Infants can’t walk, and it may be that smiling or following with the eyes is the equivalent of following physically. There . may also be learning by reward here: the important reward appears to be not so much food as the reduction of anxiety brought about by physical and visual contact with the mother. If there is a critical period for the development of visual depend- ence on the mother it is probably between six weeks and six months, There is some evidence that the sound of high-pitched human voices is innately perceived in much the same way as human faces. (These studies are reviewed by Walters and Parke, 1965.) Under these conditions dependency will develop, and it may generalize to other adults and people in authority, and even to members of the peer group if no other relationship can be established. 27THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INTERPERSONAL BEHAVIOUR Dependency is established in most children in varying degrees, and is later trained out, wholly or partially, especially in boys. Dependency may be aroused in adults in situations which are new and frightening, and where others know the ropes. Dependence, or submission, is closely related to its op- posite, dominance, in that some people may show both types of behaviour on different occasions. The so-called ‘authoritarian personality’ is submissive to people of greater power or status, and dominant to those of less. He can be found displaying these alternating styles of behaviour in hierarchical organizations like the Army. Authoritarians come from homes where parents have been very dominating and strict. One explanation of their be- haviour is that in their dependent role they are continuing the relationship which they had with their parents while in their dominant role they are imitating their parents. 3. The need for affiliation. This need leads to bodily contact, eye-contact, friendly social interaction, and other forms of in- timacy with others. Only an intermediate degree of intimacy is sought with most people, for reasons which will be given below. In laboratory situations it is found that subjects strong in affiliation spend time establishing personal relationships with other people, rather than getting on with the appointed task. This dimension is closely related to ‘social extraversion’, in that both describe the people who are strongly motivated to interact with others. In particular they are keen to interact with other people of similar age, position, etc. to themselves. It probably leads to interaction with members of the opposite sex as well, but at present we are unable to disentangle its effects from those of the sexual drive — with which it appears to be rather closely related. There is probably an innate basis to affiliative motivation, but it is mainly acquired from early experiences in the family. It has long been believed that affiliative behaviour develops in some way out of dependency. There is quite a lot of evidence to support this theory — the Harlows’ monkeys showed no later affiliative behaviour if they had been reared in isolation, and affectionless psychopaths often have a history of maternal 28SOCIAL MOTIVATION deprivation. One version of the theory is that anxiety reduction through contact with mothers reinforces social con- tacts in general. Schachter (1959) found that college girls who had been made anxious by the prospect of receiving electric shocks from ‘Dr Zilstein’ chose to wait with other subjects rather than alone: this was especially the case for those who were made most anxious, and for first-born and only children - whose mothers may be assumed to have done more to relieve anxiety during childhood. However it is very difficult to see how a dependency pattern of behaviour becomes ‘transformed’ into an affiliative one. There is no doubt that most four-year-olds prefer to play with other four-year-olds rather than with adult females who re- semble their mothers. Perhaps the young child, through contacts with other children, finds that others like him- self have similar interests and are good to play with: this enables the shift in affiliative orientation to take place. Experience with other infants may be a direct source of affiliative motivation. Harlow and Harlow (1965) found that monkeys reared without mothers but with other infants devel- oped normal affiliative behaviour. Human infants need mothers during the first year of life, but it looks as if interaction with peers is important during the next few years in the development of affiliative motivation. Under what conditions is affiliative motivation aroused? If affiliation is to be regarded as a drive in some way similar to hunger and thirst, it should be aroused by deprivation, in this case by isolation. A number of experiments have been conducted in which subjects have been isolated for periods up to four days. It has been found that periods of isolation as short as twenty minutes make children more responsive afterwards to social rewards. However, other experiments suggest that isolation does not arouse affiliative motivation unless it creates anxiety (Walters and Parke, 1964). Schachter’s experiment, described above, shows that anxiety alone can lead to affiliative be- haviour. Affiliative behaviour may bring a number of benefits - reducing anxiety, providing a means of checking opinions against those of others, inhibiting aggression, and making 29THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INTERPERSONAL BEHAVIOUR cooperation easier. However affiliation appears to act as an autonomous drive, quite apart from such consequences. The analysis of approach~avoidance conflicts described ear- lier can be applied to affiliative behaviour. Suppose that people are attracted towards one another physically, as a result of past rewarding experiences, and also repelled physically, as a result of punishing experiences. If the avoidance gradient is steeper then the approach, it follows that people will move together until the equilibrium is reached, and then stop. We can extend this theory and postulate that people move towards an equilib- rium degree of ‘intimacy’ with others, where: physical proximity eye-contact facial expression (smiling) topic of conversation (how personal) tone of voice (warm), etc. Intimacy is a function of: Experimental support for this theory is given in on pp. 87f. 4. Dominance. This refers to a very important group of motiva- tions, including needs for power — to control the behaviour or fate of others, and for status or recognition ~ to be admired and looked up to by others. We shall be mainly concerned with its effect in face-to-face situations, such as small groups. Dominant people want to talk a lot, have their ideas attended to, and to be influential in decisions. People strong in dominance take part in a struggle for position, the winner emerging as the ‘task leader’, i.e. the person responsible for decisions (see Chapter 7). The same is true in groups of monkeys: dominance here is usually established by threat displays or actual fighting, and the winner receives deference from the others, and most access to the females. The need for dominance can be assessed by questionnaires or projection tests, which will give a prediction about how hard a person will struggle for position - though not about how successful he will be. There may be innate, instinctive origins of dominative be- 30SOCIAL MOTIVATION haviour: dominance is thought to have developed during evolu- tion since it has the biological function of providing leaders who can keep order in the group, and repel enemies. Males are more dominant than females in every human society, and among monkeys and other mammals. It has been shown that injecting male monkeys or other male animals with male sex hormones produces more aggression and dominance. There are also childhood origins of dominance. It is partly due to identification with parents — who in their parental role are of course relatively dominant. As was said above, authoritar- ians have dominating parents; it is found that they greatly admire these parents, and that children of high status parents are more dominant - no doubt because they see their parents more often in dominant situations. In addition children may succeed in dominating their peer group, and this may be rein- forcing in various ways — they get a larger share of everything, and are able to choose the activities of the group to suit them- selves. Dominance is established in monkeys by fighting, and the same is partly true of children. This is a need which is only aroused at certain times and in relation to certain groups. Once.a hierarchy has been established it is fairly stable, and struggling for position ceases. Dominance is also aroused during elections to office in groups, when the struggle for power becomes salient. 5. Sex. In the lower animals sexual motivation is instinctive; arousal is controlled by sex hormones and leads to the fulfilment of the biological purpose of reproduction. In man sex seems to have become a pleasurable end in itself, and is controlled by the cortex rather than by sex hormones. For present purposes sexual motivation can be looked at as a social approach drive similar to the need for affiliation, but which is usually directed towards members of the opposite sex. We shall not be con- cerned with the specific consummation to which sexual motiva- tion is directed: in social situations it is similar to affiliation in leading to physical proximity, eye-contact, and other aspects of intimacy. Perhaps the most important difference is that rather greater degrees of arousal are generated, and this will 31 Si