We have no reason to be disturbed by the fact that the basic practice through which an efficient government “keeps the peace” is exemplified under far less admirable circumstances in the use which the bully or gangster makes of his power to punish. It is not the technique of control but the ultimate effect upon the group which leads us to approve or disapprove of any practice. There is a similar discrepancy between the kinds of uses to which the basic technique of religious control may be put. The place of religion in modem life cannot be clearly understood without considering certain processes which are employed outside the field of religion proper for very different purposes.
Usually such terms as “superstition” and “magic” are aversive because they are commonly associated with exploitation for selfish purposes or with ineffective or poorly organized behavior. There is, however, no absolute distinction between a superstitious and a non-superstitious response. In respondent conditioning we saw that a single pairing of stimuli could result in a conditioned reflex. A neutral stimulus which has merely happened to accompany a fearful event may subsequently evoke an emotional response, and the effect may survive for a long time in spite of repeated presentations of the neutral stimulus alone. In operant behavior a single instance of a response which is followed by a reinforcing event may be strengthening, and the effect may survive for a long time even though the same consequence never occurs again. Verbal behavior is especially likely to show this sort of “magic” because of the lack of a mechanical connection between response and reinforcement. The child acquires an elaborate verbal repertoire which produces certain effects. Through the process of induction he also exhibits verbal responses which cannot have more than an occasional “accidental” effect. Having successfully told people to stop, he may cry “Stop!” to a ball rolling out of reach. Though we may prove that his response can have no effect upon the ball, it is in the nature of the behavioral process that the response nevertheless acquires strength. As we have already seen, the tendency to behave superstitiously necessarily increases as the individual comes to be more sensitively affected by single contingencies. Between the contingency which is observed only once in the life of the individual and the contingency which is inevitably observed there is a continuum which we cannot divide sharply at any point to distinguish between “superstition” and “fact.”
A prototype of religious control arises when rare or accidental contingencies are used in controlling the behavior of others. For example, we may “blame” someone for an unfortunate event which was not actually the result of his behavior, although the temporal relation was such that a contingency can be asserted. “If you hadn’t dawdled so, we should have started earlier, and the accident never would have happened.” We blame him in order to alter his future behavior—to make him less likely to dawdle, and we achieve this by converting an unrelated event into an effective punishing consequence through certain verbal processes. We use the event as a punishment, even though we did not actually arrange the contingency. It is only a short step to claiming the ability to arrange such contingencies. This is the underlying principle of witchcraft. Unless the controllee behaves according to command, the controller will bring bad luck to him. The threat to do so may be as powerful as the infliction of comparable physical punishment.
We also affect the behavior of others by using accidental reinforcing consequences of a positive sort. “You see, if you hadn’t followed my advice, you would have missed this pleasant surprise.” It is only a short step to the claim to be able to mediate future positive reinforcements—to be able to “bring good luck.” The claim may be used to induce another person to grant favors, to pay money, and so on. Thus, to sell a spurious device for locating water underground it is only necessary to establish the claim that by using the device the well-digger will be reinforced by finding water. Good-luck charms have economic value when their power to mediate positive reinforcement is made convincing to the buyer.
Perhaps it is a far cry from these selfish practices to those of the organized religious agency, but the same techniques appear to be exemplified. The control which defines a religious agency in the narrowest possible sense derives from a claimed connection with the supernatural, through which the agency arranges or alters certain contingencies involving good or bad luck in the immediate future or eternal blessedness or damnation in the life to come. Such a controlling agency is composed of those who are able to establish their claim to the power to intervene supernaturally. The agency may consist of a single individual, such as the tribal medicine man, who resorts to demonstrations of magic to prove his power to bring good luck or bad, or of a well-organized church with documented proof that the power to intervene in the arrangement of reinforcing contingencies has been vested in it by supernatural authority. We are concerned here, not with the actual structure of the agency nor with the internal techniques of control which make it an effective instrument, but with the practices through which it controls the members of the group.
The principal technique is an extension of group and governmental control. Behavior is classified, not simply as “good” and “bad” or “legal” and “illegal,” but as “moral” and “immoral” or “virtuous” and “sinful.” It is then reinforced or punished accordingly. Traditional descriptions of Heaven and Hell epitomize positive and negative reinforcement. The features vary from culture to culture, but it is doubtful whether any well-known positive or negative reinforcer has not been used. To a primitive people who depend upon forest and field for their food, Heaven is a happy hunting ground. To a poverty-stricken people primarily concerned with the source of the next meal, it is a perpetual fish fry. To the unhappy it is relief from pain and sorrow or a reunion with departed friends and loved ones. Hell, on the other hand, is an assemblage of aversive stimuli, which has often been imaginatively portrayed. In Dante’s Inferno, for example, we find most of the negative reinforcers characteristic of social and nonsocial environments. Only the electric shock of the psychological laboratory is missing.
The reinforcers portrayed in Heaven and Hell are far more powerful than those which support the “good” and “bad” of the ethical group or the “legal” and “illegal” of governmental control, but this advantage is offset to some extent by the fact that they do not actually operate in the lifetime of the individual. The power achieved by the religious agency depends upon how effectively certain verbal reinforcements are conditioned—in particular the promise of Heaven and the threat of Hell. Religious education contributes to this power by pairing these terms with various conditioned and unconditioned reinforcers which are essentially those available to the ethical group and to governmental agencies. The relation between the agency and the communicant, or between God and man, is often made more effective by being characterized as such a familiar mundane relation as that between a father and his sons, a king and his subjects, or a military commander and his men—where again the primary reinforcing contingencies do not differ greatly from those used in ethical and governmental control.
In actual practice a threat to bar from Heaven or to consign to Hell is made contingent upon sinful behavior, while virtuous behavior brings a promise of Heaven or a release from the threat of Hell. The last is a particularly powerful technique. The agency punishes sinful behavior in such a way that it automatically generates an aversive condition which the individual describes as a “sense of sin.” The agency then provides escape from this aversive condition through expiation or absolution and is thus able to supply a powerful reinforcement for pious behavior.
Other techniques are, of course, encountered in religious control. Insofar as the agency controls other variables, it can use other processes. It may acquire wealth and operate eventually through economic control (Chapter XXV). It may train and support teachers to achieve educational control (Chapter XXVI). It may utilize ethical or governmental techniques in addition to those within its own sphere (Chapters XXI and XXII). This is especially likely when its controlling practices coincide with those of the group as a whole. In short, all the techniques described under self-control in Chapter XV and under personal control in Chapter XX are available to the agency possessing the necessary power.
The use of physical restraint by a religious agency is exemplified by actual incarceration, as in the treatment of women in Moslem countries. Relevant environmental conditions are manipulated when the stimuli which elicit or set the occasion for sinful behavior are weakened or removed and when the stimuli which elicit or serve as the occasion for virtuous behavior are pointed up. Suggested regimens of simple fare, unseductive clothing, limited personal contact, and the other features of the cloister or the “sheltered life” follow this pattern. Religious agencies are likely to favor censorship of movies, plays, and books, the enforcement of laws governing modesty of dress, the prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages, and so on, because these measures reduce occasions for sinful behavior. Satiation, and deprivation also are manipulated. St. Paul defended marriage as a measure which reduces licentious behavior, and periods of fasting and regimens of exercise may be employed for the same effect. Ritualistic techniques which affect the physiology of the organism are common—in Hindu practices, for example. Some religions encourage substitute forms of behavior to reduce sexual or other tendencies; the practice is based upon the transferred satiation discussed in Chapter IX. Since emotion is usually an important means of religious control, respondent conditioning is important. Religious art, music, and pageantry generate emotional responses by portraying the suffering of martyrs, the torments of the damned, the tender emotions of the family, and so on. These responses are transferred to stimuli; verbal or nonverbal, which are later used by the agency for purposes of control. Some religious agencies resort to the use of drugs, either to induce appropriate emotional or motivational conditions or to produce effects which seem to support the claim of a supernatural connection.
Other kinds of religious agencies. Many religious agencies make no claim to be able to intervene in the arrangement of reinforcements. The agency may accept the existence of supernatural reinforcing events—for example, Heaven and Hell—but may claim only to be able to prescribe a course of action upon which they are contingent. The attainment of Heaven or Hell is said to depend upon the behavior of the individual alone. The agency controls the communicant, not by manipulating contingencies of reinforcement, but by making certain real or claimed contingencies more effective. Its techniques then resemble those of the counselor (Chapter XXIV) or teacher (Chapter XXVI). Such an agency is composed of those who establish their claim to the knowledge of such a way of life and who exercise that claim for purposes of control.
Still other religious agencies make no appeal to supernatural events whatsoever. Their techniques are scarcely to be distinguished from those of the ethical group. The agency simply furthers ethical control in encouraging good behavior and discouraging bad. It functions as counselor or teacher in demonstrating certain contingencies between “good” or “bad” behavior and natural consequences. A way of life is set forth which “brings its own reward.” Membership in this third type of agency is often not sharply defined.
The behavior which comes under religious control depends upon the type of agency. For the medicine man, who uses his magic for his own aggrandizement, “pious” behavior is simply any behavior which reinforces him. On the other hand, the well-developed religious agency which derives much of its power from the group may control largely in accordance with group practice. It works in concert with ethical control in suppressing selfish, primarily reinforced behavior and in strengthening behavior which works to the advantage of others. The control is usually much more stringent, however, than that exercised by the group. Variables are manipulated in ethical control because of some current threat to the welfare of a member of the group, but the religious agency maintains its practices according to more enduring criteria of virtuous and sinful behavior. Where eating and drinking may be restricted by ethical reinforcement only when they work to the momentary disadvantage of others, religious control may establish much narrower limits, by classifying gluttony as a deadly sin and temperance as a cardinal virtue. Where sexual behavior is controlled by the group mainly in certain competitive situations, the religious agency may encourage chastity and celibacy as a general program and may tolerate sexual behavior even in marriage only for the purpose of procreation. Acquisitive or possessive behavior which leads to group retribution only in a competitive situation and is elsewhere classified as good may be wholly suppressed, regardless of the circumstances, by the religious agency which demands a vow of poverty or enjoins the communicant not to lay up treasures on earth. The boastful behavior of the Pharisee, which encounters only moderate group censure, is suppressed in favor of humility and modesty. The extremity of this form of religious control is seen in the suppression of the behavior of self-preservation in pacifistic philosophies, acts of martyrdom, and the mortification of the flesh. On the other hand, behavior which benefits others is promoted. Love or charity as a disposition to favor others is encouraged, and the communicant is reminded that he is his brother’s keeper and must give all that he has to the poor.
The religious agency usually establishes a repertoire of obedience for future use, and it may also set up extremely powerful self-control to guarantee a measure of controlled behavior in the absence of the religious agent. The latter is one of the consequences of an emphasis on punishment. Because the control is often exerted more powerfully than by the group, the religious conscience or superego often speaks in a louder voice than the ethical. Extreme measures of self-restraint are sometimes enjoined. The individual may confine himself to restricted diets, enter upon periods of fasting, engage in certain exercises or adopt certain postures, or take certain drugs—all because of the resulting change in his dispositions to act in virtuous or sinful ways. Self-control through the manipulation of stimuli is common. “Temptation” (often personified in religious literature as Satan) embraces all the stimuli which lead to sinful behavior. “Wrestling with the devil” appears to describe the conflict between the controlled and controlling responses of Chapter XV.
The controlling relations which hold the religious agency together as an effective unit do not account for the ultimate form of control, nor would they explain the agency which has only one member. To account for the existence and maintenance of the agency as a whole we turn to external variables. If the agency serves the group by extending ethical control, the agency may be explained by the support which the group gives it. The religious agent may be paid by the group, he may be disposed to control because the group approves this as “right,” or he may be coerced into working for the agency because any other course of action would be punished as “wrong.”
There is another possible interpretation of the behavior of some religious agents. When an individual is conditioned through ethical and religious practices to “avoid temptation”—to eliminate stimuli which would otherwise be conducive to wrong or sinful behavior—his efforts may be so extensive that they affect other people as well. Freud called the result “reaction formation.” If the individual’s behavior in this respect resembles religious control, he may simply join the agency. He is reinforced for serving as a religious agent by the effect upon his own behavior. If economic or coercive control appears to be unimportant, his zeal may be unusually conspicuous. Since this explanation presupposes that the religious agent himself has an especially high probability of engaging in sinful behavior, it is generally resisted.
An agency always operates within certain limits. The religious agency may come into conflict with other religious agencies attempting to control the same people or with governmental agencies with different programs of control. Religious control is often opposed by economic and educational agencies and, as we shall see in Chapter XXIV, by psychotherapy.
Another limit is internal. It is imposed by the extent to which the controllee will submit to control. The claim to supernatural intercession supplies a powerful technique. Religious agencies, like all other agencies here being considered, have sometimes used their power for personal or institutional advantages—to build organizations, to accumulate wealth, to punish those who do not come under control easily, and so on. From time to time this has given rise to measures of countercontrol which have restricted the scope of the agency. The religious controllee may simply leave the sphere of control of the agency, he may question the reality of claimed contingencies, he may attack the agency by establishing a rival agency, and so on.
The justification of religious practice is an important part of theology. A particular practice may be recommended because it maximizes some such entity as salvation or the glory of God. Such justifications are presumably beyond the realm of science. An analysis of techniques permits us to account for the behavior of both controller and controllee without raising the question of any ultimate effect of this sort. When a religious practice does not appeal to supernatural events, its traditional justification resembles that of ethical control; a religious practice is supported because it maximizes piety or virtue. These entities have a function in the field of religion similar to that of the greatest good of the greatest number in ethics, and freedom or justice in government. They are “principles” in terms of which we choose or suggest a given practice. Whether a science of behavior provides us with any basis for explaining why we choose or suggest such a principle will be considered in Section VI.