1 Introduction
What is a crowd, and how is it different from a mob? What is a bird, and what features must it display to be classified as a ‘bird’? What does femininity entail, and what features must a human demonstrate to qualify as ‘female’?
Our ability to make sense of elements in the world around us, as in the examples above, in such a way that it enables everyday action and interaction, relies on structures of knowledge—social representations—that make up a society’s stock of common sense (Sammut and Howarth 2014; Sammut and Bauer 2021). If you were out dining and saw that the restaurant was serving ‘Coq au Vin’ on the menu, you’d understand immediately that if you proceeded to order this item, you would be served chicken that is cooked according to a traditional French recipe. You wouldn’t consult the waiter over the meaning of chicken, and how it could be a bird if it cannot fly. The meaning of chicken in routine everyday interaction is captured in a social representation people share of the bird and its uses (Chryssides et al. 2009). Had you not been socialized into this meaning structure, you would not know what a chicken was, you would not know that it is a bird and that it is edible for human beings, and you would not know how a ‘Coq au Vin’ is different from a ‘Chicken Curry’.
Social representations, however, are not fixed and permanent structures. They change and evolve over time, adapting to situated circumstances and emergent realities (Sammut, Tsirogianni and Wagoner 2012). Our contemporary understanding of what it means to be female, for instance, is very different from the meaning associated with femininity a mere 100 years ago. As a consequence, we cannot make sense of femininity in the same way that our forefathers did in a different epoch. The social representation of femininity has changed over time and the same goes for many other social representations that structure our common sense today.
This raises a key point in our study and interpretation of objects and issues pertaining to different cultures or different historical epochs, that is, common sense is socially embedded and meaning cannot be separated from its context of production (Sammut and Bauer 2021). To interpret psychological phenomena outside the context in which they materialize is to risk reifying psychological constructs as if they were immutable entities. Take personality as an example. There is a long and highly popular tradition in psychology that supports the Big Five theory of personality (Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism and Openness to Experience, Costa and McCrae 1992). This theory is sometimes taken to be universal in its manifestation. However, Zhou et al. (2009) report that a seven-factor structure was more plausible in accounting for personality structure in China (Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Unselfishness, Emotional Volatility, Positive Valence, as well as Dependency and Negative Valence). Similarly, the Russian neuropsychologist Aleksander R. Luria, in his studies amongst illiterate communities in Uzbekistan, demonstrated how human cognition is socio-culturally embedded. Luria (1976) noted how cognitive processing, such as mathematical computation, differs between individuals who rely on concrete and practical operations in their everyday lives and those who are accustomed to thinking in abstract, verbal and theoretical ways.
The concern with the universality of psychological phenomena is a critical issue and intersects with considerations of cultural and historical specificities. One way the social and psychological sciences have sought to resolve this issue is by distinguishing emic from etic (Harris 1976). The former refers to a socio-culturally embedded display (e.g. using chopsticks), whilst the latter refers to its universal operation (e.g. eating). This distinction is useful and leads to innumerable insights—such as, for instance, that personality can be variably structured by context. However, in interpreting psychological phenomena outside their context, one must proceed with caution. Psychological phenomena are intertwined with cultural products that evolve over historical time to serve the interests of the individuals and groups that participated in their emergence and production (Sammut 2011; Buhagiar and Sammut 2020). It would be very convenient for us if we were able to interview the classical authors on the meaning of their works. One suspects we would gain insight into their social representations of womanhood, crowds, reason, democracy, and so on. Whilst this is clearly impossible, we are however able to understand that the classical authors deployed particular meanings in their performances and represented characters to stir their audiences in critical ways. In the two comedies analysed in this section, Assembly Women and Birds, we understand that Aristophanes ‘psychologized’ his characters in ways that succeeded in making even ordinarily respectable figures ridiculous. This in itself, I argue, is an act of social representation (Chryssides et al. 2009).
The three chapters that follow, by Hardwick, Makri and Rosen, draw on a popular demarcation in psychology: on the one hand, there is logical reasoning, which commonly applies to rational individuals—historically and in popular conceptions this is associated with men. On the other hand, there is emotive reasoning, (stereo-)typically associated with women and crowds. The distinction has received considerable scholarly attention over the years. Its ascription to crowds was made famous by Gustav Le Bon (1895), who stated in no uncertain terms that whilst individually a person may be civilized and cultivated, in a crowd one’s mental faculties are hampered to the point where she or he become no more than a ‘barbarian’, acting by instinct (1895: 32). In the same year, Freud published his Studies on Hysteria with Breuer. This volume advanced the thesis that physiological symptoms could be caused by underlying mental illness. The thesis was supported by a series of case studies—all female. At the time, hysteria was widely thought to apply only to women. The study of psychology has admittedly come a long way since. Crowds today are recognized also as agents of social change (Drury 2020; Sammut and Bauer 2021) and psychosomatic disorders in the DSM-5 are diagnosable in both sexes (American Psychiatric Association 2013). The distinction between the two types of cognitive processing detailed above has also gained further scholarly attention. Bruner (1986), for instance, distinguishes between narrative and paradigmatic modes of thought, whilst Kahneman (2011) similarly distinguishes ‘thinking fast’ from ‘thinking slow’. In the cognitive sciences, these theories are broadly known as dual-process models of cognition, to which we now turn.
2 Modes of Thinking
Aristophanes’ Assembly Women, as Alexandra Hardwick argues in chapter 4, sees Praxagora deploy differential treatment of the dêmos on the one hand, and of her husband Blepyrus (himself an assembly member) on the other. The assembly is claimed to act in a manner akin to ‘the ravings of drunkards’. It shouts down the first speaker before he can speak, for being a ‘squinter’. Hardwick notes how the dêmos prefers to attack speakers ad hominem rather than through argumentation. The battle between opposing factions, the author further notes, is conducted through sheer volume of noise alone. Praxagora is well aware of the dêmos’ perverse tendencies and she tailors her pitch accordingly. Specifically, she makes plans for dealing with counterarguments in similar fashion, by insulting her opponents rather than engaging them in reasoned deliberation. In her dealings with Blepyrus, however, Praxagora adopts a different approach. Though himself characterized as stupid, Blepyrus cross-examines Praxagora’s policy. He demands explanations and allows himself to be convinced only after his queries have been fully dealt with. Hardwick notes a parallel in Aristophanes’ Birds, with Tereus similarly providing a charismatic pitch that ‘trains’ the Chorus and paves the way for Pisthetaerus’ vision. We can see here how persuasion can be the outcome of reasoned argumentation. In other settings, however, tangential features seem to be more significant. And in other circumstances yet, as in Pisthetaerus’ appeal to the birds, both rational and emotive routes to persuasion are involved concurrently.
In psychology, dual-process models (the Elaboration Likelihood Model [ELM] (Petty and Cacioppo 1986) and the Heuristic-Systematic Model [HSM] (Eagly and Chaiken 1993; 1998) propose two routes to persuasion, which is understood to occur as a function of how the persuasive appeal is cognitively processed. The first route is through a deep processing route (i.e. the central route in ELM, or the systematic route in HSM), where a message perceived by an individual is consciously attended to and rationally processed in terms of its core message. The individual attends to the intricate features of the persuasive appeal, reasons for and against persuasion are mustered and persuasion takes place when the balance tips in favour of the appeal following appraisal and evaluation.
By contrast, the shallow processing route operates on peripheral features that may nevertheless persuade (i.e. the peripheral route in ELM and the heuristic route in HSM). This route is used when deep engagement is not possible due to circumstances, but the appeal is still perceived. What happens in these situations is that tangential features may provide a heuristic evaluation of content, for example, endorsement of an idea by the leader. In essence, therefore, human beings can be persuaded in two ways: either by good, strong arguments and pertinent information detailing how what is presented to them is what they actually need; or, through peripheral features that are appealing but that might not be relevant with regards to the product itself (or both simultaneously, as a persuasive message may in itself be multivariate). As noted above, these two types of cognitive processing mark the species in its entirety and not any subgroup in particular. Whilst Praxagora relies on the deep processing route in dealing with Blepyrus privately and the shallow processing route in her dealings with the assembly, suggesting an individual/crowd distinction, it is worth noting that in an actively agitated crowd, no reasonable character is afforded the luxury of deep and critical commentary. That may have been a factor in an individual’s choice of joining the crowd in the first place, but in an active crowd situation, other factors necessarily come into play. Clearly, which route is opportune depends on situational criteria rather than a supposed ‘crowd effect’.
The reason why some seemingly peripheral heuristics are nevertheless persuasive in certain circumstances is that human cognition is biased in determined directions that have helped our ancestral survival. This feature of human cognition is termed ‘ecological rationality’ (Todd and Gigerenzer 2000) in evolutionary psychology and represents ‘fast and frugal’ tendencies rooted in our evolved genetic baggage that remain active in human cognition today. In this way, any type of information stands to exert influence if and when judged relevant by the situated subject. One type of evidence that individuals typically consider is other people’s opinions. Asch (1952) identifies this as the social check. In persuasion, other people’s opinions are judged relevant or not depending on the epistemic authority they command (Kruglanski and Thompson 1999). This is akin to the notion of source credibility (Hovland and Weiss 1951), or what classical rhetoric identified as ethos (êthos) (cf. Sammut and Bauer 2021). The epistemic authority assigned to some individuals may be highly influential, to the point of overriding other types of evidence. Hardwick notes, for instance, that Tereus exclaims how phronimos (‘sensible’) Pisthetaerus is, appealing to his credentials without, however, providing any evidence for his claims. People default to and converge on the leader’s opinion not out of laziness, but for a good reason—the leader’s position is supported by the mass of the group.
For this reason, social identification along with social representation is a critical dynamic (Breakwell 2015) that determines the standards a social group considers common sense. Challenging the standard paves the way for ushering a new sense that is yet to become common—an uncommon sense, which at first glance an audience perceives, in this case through a satirical performance, as comical nonsense (Sammut and Bauer 2021). This point is brought home in Xenia Makri’s chapter on Aristophanes’ Birds. Makri notes how Pisthetaerus invokes the social identity of the birds to motivate their revolt on the basis of a quest for positive distinctiveness. By playing up the perceived injustice the birds have suffered at the hands of gods and humans alike, Pisthetaerus presents a social representation of the prevalent order that provides birds with a sense of entitlement they did not previously feel. The perceived injustice serves to motivate their identification with Pisthetaerus’ quest. In social representations theory (Sammut, Andreouli, Gaskell and Valsiner 2015), projects serve to bind social actors in purposive relations with regards to an object of common concern. Groups form when individuals come together in pursuit of some activity (Buhagiar and Sammut 2020), setting the grounds for social identification with one another and with a prototypical leader who best embodies (i.e. represents) the quest. Pisthetaerus positions himself as an in-group member despite the fact that he himself is not a bird. This constitutes a social representation of the in-group/out-group boundary. He draws on this newly forged representation to become leader-dictator of the birds capable of crushing dissenting in-group rebels. In social psychology, this tendency is termed the ‘black sheep effect’, representing a cognitive bias that serves in-group cohesion through social exclusion (Sammut, Bezzina and Sartawi 2015). In Birds, this is only possible in light of the fact that new social representations have altered the sense-regulating social interaction—from the common to the non-common with regard to the dissenting birds’ sceptical actions, and from nonsense to sense with regard to Pisthetaerus’ role in the drama (cf. Sammut and Bauer 2021). At this point, it is worth considering what representational work is at play in the texts analysed and what consequences this representational work precipitates.
3 Social Representation in Practice
It is worth singling out two social psychological processes apparent in the chapters of this Part. First, the distinction between reflexive and reflective engagement; secondly drama as performed social representation. The distinction between reflexive and reflective engagement is crucial in understanding the role of satire in society, from antiquity to today. In a crucial sense, the distinction seems to map onto the shallow/deep cognition distinction we reviewed in dual-process models of persuasion. Reflexive engagement constitutes an instinctive response, whereas reflective engagement implies higher intellectual functioning. It also seems to map onto the distinction Rosen presents in Chapter Six between Duchenne and non-Duchenne laughter. The former represents genuine expressions associated with happiness whilst the latter is intellectual and, as Rosen notes, is self-generated without requiring positive affect. It is worth noting that just as the shallow and deep cognitive-processing routes can be activated concurrently, so reflexive laughter can simultaneously involve reflective engagement. When we observe a funny act, such as a clown falling headlong into a cake, we reflexively laugh at the occurrence. Satire includes such humorous fictive events but also employs recognizable characters and personifications enjoying respect in ordinary life. To the extent that the analogy between the cast of satire and real life is not perceived, satire constitutes mere comedy and any laughter it generates can be understood to be reflexive. Yet to the extent that the analogy between cast and real life is indeed perceived (e.g. dêmos: assembly; Paphlagon: Cleon, see the chapter by Rosen), the laughter it generates is understood to be reflective, and satire thus serves the political role of social representation. It is for this reason that its reception remains contentious, potentially attracting backlash and requiring at times the management of audience expectations, as Rosen notes when discussing the prelude to Frogs.
This brings us to the second point, which builds on the first. That is, in essence, satirical drama is a performed social representation (Chryssides et al. 2009). It is social inasmuch as it involves a communicative, intersubjective exchange between different parties (i.e. dramatist, actors, spectators). It is a representation inasmuch as it does more than enact characters (sometimes personifications) in a natural and realistic way, to the extent that this is at all possible. Rather, it represents characters (i.e. political leaders, Athenians, crowds, council, etc.) in irreverent ways that makes them laughable. In this act, a social representation is performed. Even if the attempt fails and attracts scorn on the part of the audience who finds the play either distasteful or simply not funny (following deliberation using the central route of ELM), the performance itself, by virtue of its enactment, nevertheless succeeds in socially representing its primary characters as ridiculous at the very least. In this way, the classical dramatist, by making light of some tough issues, is doing more than jesting. The dramatist, under the vestige of satirical comedy, is a political player pushing the boundaries of common sense.
4 Conclusion
The following chapters deal with two psychological processes: cognitive processing and social identity. Both are relevant for the performative enactment that brings together dramatist and audience. The performance is a political act of social representation. The audience, engaging with the performance through smile or smirk, is presented with an opportunity for identification with a represented cast. What may normally be respectable is represented as laughable, or the object of mockery. In this way, it is dethroned, demoted to the realm of human imperfection and subject to scrutiny by common sense (Sammut and Bauer 2021).
In conclusion, it is worth noting that the deployment of common sense in this way opens up possibilities for revisiting and updating the community itself. What a community holds as reverent at the start of a performance may end up as a joke following the performance’s enactment. The representation opens up possibilities for the audience to identify reflectively with the critical pitch. If successful, the object is represented according to a newly established sense that sees a new social representation take root. Satiric drama is catalytic in this sense and, as the following three chapters make clear, it contains the seeds of social change that is as innovative as it is uncomfortable, but that falls just shy of outright revolt. It is easy to recognize, in our days, that this remains a timeless lesson indeed.
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