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The Lonely Crowd, Revised edition: A Study of the Changing American Character Subsequent edition by Riesman, David, Glazer, Nathan, Denney, Reuel (2001) Paperback
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About the author
David Riesman
90 books40 followersDavid Riesman was an American sociologist, attorney, and educator.
After graduating from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Law Review, Riesman clerked for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis from 1935-1936. He also taught at the University of Buffalo Law School.
Riesman's 1950 book, The Lonely Crowd, a sociological study of modern conformity, which postulates the existence of the "inner-directed" and "other-directed" personalities. Riesman argues that the character of post WWII American society impels individuals to "other-directedness", the preeminent example being modern suburbia, where individuals seek their neighbors approval and fear being outcast from their community. This lifestyle has a coercive effect, which compels people to abandon "inner-direction" of their lives, and induces them to take on the goals, ideology, likes, and dislikes of their community. Ironically, this creates a tightly grouped crowd of people that is yet incapable of truly fulfilling each other's desire for companionship. The book is considered a landmark study of American character. Riesman was a major public intellectual as well as a sociologist, representing an early example of what sociologists now call "public sociology."
After graduating from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Law Review, Riesman clerked for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis from 1935-1936. He also taught at the University of Buffalo Law School.
Riesman's 1950 book, The Lonely Crowd, a sociological study of modern conformity, which postulates the existence of the "inner-directed" and "other-directed" personalities. Riesman argues that the character of post WWII American society impels individuals to "other-directedness", the preeminent example being modern suburbia, where individuals seek their neighbors approval and fear being outcast from their community. This lifestyle has a coercive effect, which compels people to abandon "inner-direction" of their lives, and induces them to take on the goals, ideology, likes, and dislikes of their community. Ironically, this creates a tightly grouped crowd of people that is yet incapable of truly fulfilling each other's desire for companionship. The book is considered a landmark study of American character. Riesman was a major public intellectual as well as a sociologist, representing an early example of what sociologists now call "public sociology."
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October 12, 2023
A STUDY OF MODERN ‘SOCIAL CHARACTER’ CLASSES IN AMERICA
Author David Riesman wrote in the Preface to the revised 1961 edition of this book (originally published in 1948), “I am struck by how much has changed in American intellectual and academic life since 1948; these changes in part refract the larger changes in our national life and in the world situation, and in part autonomous developments within the social sciences themselves.” (Pg. xi) “[This book] started with industrial society … with the upper social strata, particularly with what has been called the ‘new middle class’ of salaried professionals and managers. We assumed … that there might be great tension between an individual’s search for fulfillment and the demands of the institutions in which he had a part, or from which he felt alienated.” (Pg. xv-xvi)
He continues, “Precursors of what we term ‘other-direction’ can be found in the nineteenth century and earlier… other-direction is one step beyond conformist concern for the good opinion of others… What we mean by other-direction … involves a redefinition of the self… The other-directed person wants to be loved rather than esteemed… he seeks a less snobbish status in the eyes of others than assurance of being emotionally in turn with them.” (Pg. xx)
He goes on, “we rejected as explanations of American malaise, especially among the more privileged, the usual complaints about the power and greed of the business classes… nor did we think that the shallowness, the lack of conviction, of many Americans reflected merely the loss of hegemony by a traditional and aristocratic upper class… In stressing the passivity and joylessness of Americans, their obedience to unsatisfying values, we followed in the wake of other observers.” (Pg. xxxiii) Later, he adds, “In its own emphases and certainly in the minds of its readers, [this book] directed attention more to problems of ‘freedom from’ than to ‘problems of ‘freedom to.’” (Pg. xl)
He begins the first chapter, “This is a book about social character and about the differences in social character between men of different regions, eras, and groups. It considers the ways in which different social character types, once they are formed at the knee of society, are then deployed in the work, play, politics, and child-rearing activities of society. More particularly, it is about the way in which one kind of social character, which dominated America in the nineteenth century, is gradually being replaced by a social character of quite a different sort. Why this happened, how it happened; what are its consequences in some major areas of life: this is the subject of this book.” (Pg. 3) He explains, “‘Social character’ is that part of ‘character’ which is shared among significant social groups and which, as most contemporary social scientists define it, is the product of the experience of these groups. The notion of social character permits us to speak… of the character of classes, groups, regions, and nations.” (Pg. 4)
He clarifies, “The concept of inner direction is intended to cover a very wide range of types… It allows the grouping together of these otherwise distinct developments because they have one thing in common: the source of direction for the individual is ‘inner’ in the sense that it is implanted early in life by the elders and directed toward generalized but nonetheless inescapably destined goals.” (Pg. 14-15)
He identifies three character types: “The tradition-directed person feels the impact of his culture as a unit, but it is nevertheless mediated through the specific, small number of individuals with whom is in in daily contact. These expect of him not so much that he be a certain type of person but that he behave in the approved way. Consequently the sanction for behavior tends to be the fear of being SHAMED. The inner-directed person has early incorporated a psychic gyroscope which is set going by his parents and can receive signals later on from other authorities who resemble his parents. He goes through life less independent than he seems… Getting off course… may lead to the feeling of GUILT… the other-directed person is cosmopolitan. For him the border between the familiar and the strange … had broken down… the other-directed person is, in a sense, at home everywhere and nowhere, capable of a rapid if sometimes superficial intimacy with and response to everyone… What can be internalized… is not a code of behavior but the … equipment needed to attend to such messages,,, one prime psychological lever of the other-directed person is a diffuse ANXIETY.” (Pg. 24-25)
He notes, “even in large and bureaucratized organizations people’s attention was focused more on products (whether there were goods, decisions, reports, or discoveries makes little difference) and less on the human element. It was the product itself, moreover, not the use made of it by the consumer, that commanded attention.” (Pg. 112)
He states, “The tradition-directed man does not make a choice whether to work or to play or whether to create a private blend of his own; matters are decided for him by tradition… To be sure, not much room is left for leisure in terms of time: hours are long and work is arduous: the tired businessman is invented. Nevertheless, the width of choice is sufficient to allow us to distinguish between those who work at consumption with the passion of acquisition and those who consume a more or less licit and occasional escape.” (Pg. 116-117)
He summarizes, “We may sum up much that is significant about inner-direction by saying that, in a society where it is dominant, its tendency is to protect the individual against the others at the prove of leaving him vulnerable to himself.” (Pg. 123)
He begins Part II of the book by outlining, “I turn… to an introductory effort to apply to American politics the theory of character developed in the preceding part… My general thesis is that the inner-directed character tended and still tends in politics to express himself politically in the style of an ‘inside-dopester.’ These styles are also linked with a shift in political mood from ‘indignation’ to ‘tolerance,’ and a shirt in political decision from dominance by a ruling class to power dispersal among marginally competing pressure groups. Some of these shifts may be among the causative factors for the rise of other-direction.” (Pg. 163)
He says of the “age of McKinley” that “the ruling class of businessmen could relatively easily … decide where their interests lay and what editors, lawyers, and legislators might be paid to advance them… Today we have substituted for that leadership a series of groups, each of which has struggled for an finally attained a power to stop things conceivably inimical to its interests and… to start things… These veto groups are neither leader-groups not led-groups. The only leaders of national scope left in the United States today are those who can placate veto groups. The only followers left … are those unorganized and sometimes disorganized unfortunately who have not yet invented their group.” (Pg. 213)
He continues, ‘Nevertheless, people go on acting as if there still were a decisive ruling class in contemporary America. In the postwar years, businessmen thought labor leaders and politicians ran the country, while labor and left thought that ‘Wall Street’ ran it, or the ‘sixty families.’ … But these barons … are… coming more and more to think of themselves as trustees for their beneficiaries. And whereas, from the point of view of labor and left, these men ran the War Production Board in the interest of their respective companies, one could just as easily argue that WPB experience was one of the congeries of factors that have tamed the barons.” (Pg, 217-218)
He summarizes, “many men are unwilling to do what … many others did in the nineteenth century: to justify their work primarily by its pay check, especially if the work is short and the pay check large. Instead as we have seen they try by false personalization, by mood leadership, by notions of indispensability, and by countless similar rituals and agendas, to fill up the vacuum created by high productivity. Yet people’s real ‘work’---the field into which, on the basis of their character and their gifts, they would like to throw their emotional and creative energies---cannot now conceivably coincide, perhaps in the majority of cases, with what they get paid for doing.” (Pg. 275)
He adds, “We need to realize that every life is an emergency, which only happens once, and the ‘saving’ of which, in terms of character, justifies care and effort. Then, perhaps, we will not need to run to a war or a fire because the daily grist of life itself is not felt as sufficiently challenging, or because external threats and demands can narcotize for us our anxiety about the quality and meaning of individual existence.” (Pg. 297)
He concludes, “If other-directed people should discover how much needless work they do, discover that their own thoughts and their own lives are quite as interesting as other people’s, that, indeed, they no more assuage their loneliness in a crowd of peers than one can assuage one’s thirst by drinking sea water, then we might expect them to become more attentive to their own feelings and aspirations… The idea that man are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom an their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.” (Pg. 307)
This book is somewhat of a social science ‘classic,’ that remains worth reading.
Author David Riesman wrote in the Preface to the revised 1961 edition of this book (originally published in 1948), “I am struck by how much has changed in American intellectual and academic life since 1948; these changes in part refract the larger changes in our national life and in the world situation, and in part autonomous developments within the social sciences themselves.” (Pg. xi) “[This book] started with industrial society … with the upper social strata, particularly with what has been called the ‘new middle class’ of salaried professionals and managers. We assumed … that there might be great tension between an individual’s search for fulfillment and the demands of the institutions in which he had a part, or from which he felt alienated.” (Pg. xv-xvi)
He continues, “Precursors of what we term ‘other-direction’ can be found in the nineteenth century and earlier… other-direction is one step beyond conformist concern for the good opinion of others… What we mean by other-direction … involves a redefinition of the self… The other-directed person wants to be loved rather than esteemed… he seeks a less snobbish status in the eyes of others than assurance of being emotionally in turn with them.” (Pg. xx)
He goes on, “we rejected as explanations of American malaise, especially among the more privileged, the usual complaints about the power and greed of the business classes… nor did we think that the shallowness, the lack of conviction, of many Americans reflected merely the loss of hegemony by a traditional and aristocratic upper class… In stressing the passivity and joylessness of Americans, their obedience to unsatisfying values, we followed in the wake of other observers.” (Pg. xxxiii) Later, he adds, “In its own emphases and certainly in the minds of its readers, [this book] directed attention more to problems of ‘freedom from’ than to ‘problems of ‘freedom to.’” (Pg. xl)
He begins the first chapter, “This is a book about social character and about the differences in social character between men of different regions, eras, and groups. It considers the ways in which different social character types, once they are formed at the knee of society, are then deployed in the work, play, politics, and child-rearing activities of society. More particularly, it is about the way in which one kind of social character, which dominated America in the nineteenth century, is gradually being replaced by a social character of quite a different sort. Why this happened, how it happened; what are its consequences in some major areas of life: this is the subject of this book.” (Pg. 3) He explains, “‘Social character’ is that part of ‘character’ which is shared among significant social groups and which, as most contemporary social scientists define it, is the product of the experience of these groups. The notion of social character permits us to speak… of the character of classes, groups, regions, and nations.” (Pg. 4)
He clarifies, “The concept of inner direction is intended to cover a very wide range of types… It allows the grouping together of these otherwise distinct developments because they have one thing in common: the source of direction for the individual is ‘inner’ in the sense that it is implanted early in life by the elders and directed toward generalized but nonetheless inescapably destined goals.” (Pg. 14-15)
He identifies three character types: “The tradition-directed person feels the impact of his culture as a unit, but it is nevertheless mediated through the specific, small number of individuals with whom is in in daily contact. These expect of him not so much that he be a certain type of person but that he behave in the approved way. Consequently the sanction for behavior tends to be the fear of being SHAMED. The inner-directed person has early incorporated a psychic gyroscope which is set going by his parents and can receive signals later on from other authorities who resemble his parents. He goes through life less independent than he seems… Getting off course… may lead to the feeling of GUILT… the other-directed person is cosmopolitan. For him the border between the familiar and the strange … had broken down… the other-directed person is, in a sense, at home everywhere and nowhere, capable of a rapid if sometimes superficial intimacy with and response to everyone… What can be internalized… is not a code of behavior but the … equipment needed to attend to such messages,,, one prime psychological lever of the other-directed person is a diffuse ANXIETY.” (Pg. 24-25)
He notes, “even in large and bureaucratized organizations people’s attention was focused more on products (whether there were goods, decisions, reports, or discoveries makes little difference) and less on the human element. It was the product itself, moreover, not the use made of it by the consumer, that commanded attention.” (Pg. 112)
He states, “The tradition-directed man does not make a choice whether to work or to play or whether to create a private blend of his own; matters are decided for him by tradition… To be sure, not much room is left for leisure in terms of time: hours are long and work is arduous: the tired businessman is invented. Nevertheless, the width of choice is sufficient to allow us to distinguish between those who work at consumption with the passion of acquisition and those who consume a more or less licit and occasional escape.” (Pg. 116-117)
He summarizes, “We may sum up much that is significant about inner-direction by saying that, in a society where it is dominant, its tendency is to protect the individual against the others at the prove of leaving him vulnerable to himself.” (Pg. 123)
He begins Part II of the book by outlining, “I turn… to an introductory effort to apply to American politics the theory of character developed in the preceding part… My general thesis is that the inner-directed character tended and still tends in politics to express himself politically in the style of an ‘inside-dopester.’ These styles are also linked with a shift in political mood from ‘indignation’ to ‘tolerance,’ and a shirt in political decision from dominance by a ruling class to power dispersal among marginally competing pressure groups. Some of these shifts may be among the causative factors for the rise of other-direction.” (Pg. 163)
He says of the “age of McKinley” that “the ruling class of businessmen could relatively easily … decide where their interests lay and what editors, lawyers, and legislators might be paid to advance them… Today we have substituted for that leadership a series of groups, each of which has struggled for an finally attained a power to stop things conceivably inimical to its interests and… to start things… These veto groups are neither leader-groups not led-groups. The only leaders of national scope left in the United States today are those who can placate veto groups. The only followers left … are those unorganized and sometimes disorganized unfortunately who have not yet invented their group.” (Pg. 213)
He continues, ‘Nevertheless, people go on acting as if there still were a decisive ruling class in contemporary America. In the postwar years, businessmen thought labor leaders and politicians ran the country, while labor and left thought that ‘Wall Street’ ran it, or the ‘sixty families.’ … But these barons … are… coming more and more to think of themselves as trustees for their beneficiaries. And whereas, from the point of view of labor and left, these men ran the War Production Board in the interest of their respective companies, one could just as easily argue that WPB experience was one of the congeries of factors that have tamed the barons.” (Pg, 217-218)
He summarizes, “many men are unwilling to do what … many others did in the nineteenth century: to justify their work primarily by its pay check, especially if the work is short and the pay check large. Instead as we have seen they try by false personalization, by mood leadership, by notions of indispensability, and by countless similar rituals and agendas, to fill up the vacuum created by high productivity. Yet people’s real ‘work’---the field into which, on the basis of their character and their gifts, they would like to throw their emotional and creative energies---cannot now conceivably coincide, perhaps in the majority of cases, with what they get paid for doing.” (Pg. 275)
He adds, “We need to realize that every life is an emergency, which only happens once, and the ‘saving’ of which, in terms of character, justifies care and effort. Then, perhaps, we will not need to run to a war or a fire because the daily grist of life itself is not felt as sufficiently challenging, or because external threats and demands can narcotize for us our anxiety about the quality and meaning of individual existence.” (Pg. 297)
He concludes, “If other-directed people should discover how much needless work they do, discover that their own thoughts and their own lives are quite as interesting as other people’s, that, indeed, they no more assuage their loneliness in a crowd of peers than one can assuage one’s thirst by drinking sea water, then we might expect them to become more attentive to their own feelings and aspirations… The idea that man are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom an their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.” (Pg. 307)
This book is somewhat of a social science ‘classic,’ that remains worth reading.
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