be analyzed into still
more elementary components and that these components, like the
attitudes, are involved in a process of interaction among themselves. In
other words there is organization, tension, and change in the
constituent elements of the attitudes. This accounts, in part, for their
mutability.

b) _Attitudes as behavior patterns._--If the attitude may be said to
play the role in sociological analysis that the elementary substances
play in chemical analysis, then the role of the wishes may be compared
to that of the electrons.

The clearest way to think of attitudes is as behavior patterns or units
of behavior. The two most elementary behavior patterns are the tendency
to approach and the tendency to withdraw. Translated into terms of the
individual organism these are tendencies to expand and to contract. As
the self expands to include other selves, as in sympathy and in
fellowship, there is an extension of self-feeling to the whole group.
Self-consciousness passes over, in the rapport thus established, into
group consciousness. In the expansive movements characteristic of
individuals under the influence of crowd excitements the individual is
submerged in the mass.

On the other hand, in movements of withdrawal or of recoil from other
persons, characteristic of fear and embarrassment, there is a
heightening of self-consciousness. The tendency to identify one's self
with other selves, to lose one's self in the ecstasy of psychic union
with others, is essentially a movement toward contact; while the
inclination to differentiate one's self, to lead a self-sufficient
existence, apart from others, is as distinctly a movement resulting in
isolation.

The simplest and most fundamental types of behavior of individuals and
of groups are represented in these contrasting tendencies to approach an
object or to withdraw from it. If instead of thinking of these two
tendencies as unrelated, they are thought of as conflicting responses to
the same situation, where the tendency to approach is modified and
complicated by a tendency to withdraw, we get the phenomenon of _social
distance_. There is the tendency to approach, but not too near. There is
a feeling of interest and sympathy of A for B, but only when B remains
at a certain distance. Thus the Negro in the southern states is "all
right in his place." The northern philanthropist is interested in the
advancement of the Negro but wants him to remain in the South. At lea