Psychology, Robert S. Woodworth [android based ebook reader .txt] 📗

apt to be interested in stuttering, slips of the tongue, and other speech disturbances which are said to be "mental rather than physical".

It would be hard to mention any activity that is mental without being physical at the same time. Even thinking, which seems as purely mental as any, requires brain action; and the brain is just as truly a bodily organ as the heart or stomach. Its activity is bodily activity and lies properly within the field of physiology.

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But it would be equally difficult to mention any function that is exclusively bodily, and not mental at the same time, in some degree. Take digestion for example: the pleasant anticipation of food will start the digestive juices flowing, before any food is physically in the stomach; while in anger or fear digestion comes to a sudden halt. Therefore we find physiologists interested in these emotions, and psychologists interested in digestion.

We do not find any clean separation between our science and physiology; but we find, on the whole, that psychology examines what are called "mental" activities, and that it studies them as the performances of the whole individual rather than as executed by the several organs.

The Science of Consciousness

Typically, the activities that psychology studies are conscious performances, while many of those falling to physiology are unconscious. Thus digestion is mostly unconscious, the heart beat is unconscious except when disturbed, the action of the liver is entirely unconscious. Why not say, then, that psychology is the study of conscious activities?

There might be some objection to this definition from the side of physiology, which studies certain conscious activities itself--speech, for example, and especially sensation.

There would be objection also from the side of psychology, which does not wish to limit itself to conscious action. Take the case of any act that can at first be done only with close attention, but that becomes easy and automatic after practice; at first it is conscious, later unconscious, but psychology would certainly need to follow it from the initial to the final stage, in order to make a complete study of the practice effect. And then there is the "unconscious", or the "subconscious mind"--a matter on which psychologists {8} do not wholly agree among themselves; but all would agree that the problem of the unconscious was appropriate to psychology.

For all the objections, it remains true that the typical mental process, the typical matter for psychological study, is conscious. "Unconscious mental processes" are distinguished from the unconscious activity of such organs as the liver by being somehow like the conscious mental processes.

It would be correct, then, to limit psychology to the study of conscious activities and of activities akin to these.

The Science of Behavior

No one has objected so strenuously to defining psychology as the science of consciousness, and limiting it to consciousness, as the group of animal psychologists. By energetic work, they had proved that the animal was a very good subject for psychological study, and had discovered much that was important regarding instinct and learning in animals. But from the nature of the case, they could not observe the consciousness of animals; they could only observe their behavior, that is to say, the motor (and in some cases glandular) activities of the animals under known conditions. When then the animal psychologists were warned by the mighty ones in the science that they must interpret their results in terms of consciousness or not call themselves psychologists any longer, they rebelled; and some of the best fighters among them took the offensive, by insisting that human psychology, no less than animal, was properly a study of behavior, and that it had been a great mistake ever to define it as the science of consciousness.

It is a natural assumption that animals are conscious, but after all you cannot directly observe their consciousness, and you cannot logically confute those philosophers {9} who have contended that the animal was an unconscious automaton. Still less can you be sure in detail what is the animal's sensation or state of mind at any time; to get at that, you would need a trustworthy report from the animal himself. Each individual must observe his own consciousness; no one can do it from outside. The objection of the behaviorist to "consciousness psychology" arises partly from distrust of this method of inner observation, even on the part of a human observer.

Indeed, we can hardly define psychology without considering its methods of observation, since evidently the method of observation limits the facts observed and so determines the character of the science. Psychology has two methods of observation.

When a person performs any act, there are, or may be, two sorts of facts to be observed, the "objective" and the "subjective". The objective facts consist of movements of the person's body or of any part of it, secretions of his glands (as flow of saliva or sweat), and external results produced by these bodily actions--results such as objects moved, path and distance traversed, hits on a target, marks made on paper, columns of figures added, vocal or other sounds produced, etc., etc. Such objective facts can be observed by another person.

The subjective facts can be observed only by the person performing the act. While another person can observe, better indeed than he can himself, the motion of his legs in walking, he alone can observe the sensations in the joints and muscles produced by the leg movement. No one else can observe his pleased or displeased state of mind, nor whether he is thinking of his walking or of something quite different. To be sure, his facial expression, which is an objective fact, may give some clue to his thoughts and feelings, but "there's no art to read the mind's construction {10} in the face", or at least no sure art. One may feign sleep or absorption while really attending to what is going on around. A child may wear an angelic expression while meditating mischief. To get the subjective facts, we shall have to enlist the person himself as our observer.

Introspection

This is observation by an individual of his own conscious action. It is also called subjective observation. Notice that it is a form of observation, and not speculation or reasoning from probabilities or from past experience. It is a direct observation of fact.

One very simple instance of introspection is afforded by the study of after-images. Look for an instant at the glowing electric bulb, and then turn your eyes upon a dark background, and observe whether the glowing filament appears there; this would be the "positive after-image". This simple type of introspection is used by physiology in its study of the senses, as well as by psychology; and it gives such precise and regular results that only the most confirmed behaviorists refuse to admit it as a good method of observation.

But psychology would like to make introspective observations on the more complex mental processes as well; and it must be admitted that here introspection becomes difficult. You cannot hope to make minute observations on any process that lasts over a very few seconds, for you must let the process run its natural course unimpeded by your efforts at observing it, and then turn your "mental eye" instantly back to observe it retrospectively before it disappears. As a matter of fact, a sensation or feeling or idea hangs on in consciousness for a few seconds, and can be observed in this retrospective way. There is no theoretical objection to this style of introspection, but it is practically difficult and {11} tricky. Try it on a column of figures: first add the column as usual, then immediately turn back and review exactly what went through your mind in the process of adding---what numbers you spoke internally, etc. Try again by introspecting the process of filling in the blanks in the sentence:

"Botany could not make use of introspection because ______ have probably no ________ processes."

At first, you may find it difficult to observe yourself in this way; for the natural tendency, when you are aiming at a certain result, is to reach the goal and then shift to something else, rather than to turn back and review the steps by which you reached the goal. But with practice, you acquire some skill in introspection.

One difficulty with introspection of the more complex mental processes is that individuals vary more here than in the simpler processes, so that different observers, observing each his own processes, will not report the same facts, and one observer cannot serve as a check upon another so easily as in the simpler introspection of after-images and other sensations, or as in the observations made in other sciences. Even well trained introspectionists are quite at variance when they attempt a minute description of the thought processes, and it is probable that this is asking too much of introspection. We mustn't expect it to give microscopic details. Rough observations, however, it gives with considerable certainty. Who can doubt, for example, that a well-practised act goes on with very little consciousness, or that inner, silent speech often accompanies thinking? And yet we have only introspection to vouch for these facts.

Objective Observation

But to say, as used to be said, that psychology is purely an introspective science, making use of no other sort of observation, is absurd in the face of the facts.

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We have animal psychology, where the observation is exclusively objective. In objective observation, the observer watches something else, and not himself. In animal psychology, the psychologist, as observer, watches the animal.

The same is true of child psychology, at least for the first years of childhood. You could not depend on the introspections of a baby, but you can learn much by watching his behavior. Abnormal persons, also, are not often reliable introspectionists, and the study of abnormal psychology is mostly carried on by objective methods.

Now how is it with the normal adult human being, the standard subject for psychology? Does he make all the observations on himself or may he be objectively observed by the psychologist? The latter, certainly. In fact, nearly all tests, such as those used in studying differential psychology, are objective. That is to say that the person tested is given a task to perform, and his performance is observed in one way or another by the examiner. The examiner may observe the time occupied by the subject to complete the task, or the quantity accomplished in a fixed time; or he may measure the correctness and excellence of the work done, or the difficulty of the task assigned. One test uses one of these measures, and another uses another; but they are all objective measures, not depending at all on the introspection of the subject.

What is true of tests in differential psychology is true of the majority of experiments in general psychology: the performer is one person, the observer another, and the observation is objective in character. Suppose, for example, you are investigating a memory problem; your method may be to set your subject a lesson to memorize under certain defined conditions, and see how quickly and well he learns it; then you give him another, equally difficult lesson to be learned under altered conditions, and observe whether he {13} does better or worse than before. Thus you discover which set of conditions is more favorable for memorizing, and thence can infer something of the way in which memorizing is accomplished. In the whole experiment you need not have called on your subject for any introspections; and this is a type of many experiments in which the subject accomplishes a certain task under known conditions, and his success is objectively observed and measured.

There is another type of objective psychological observation, directed not towards the success with which a task is accomplished, but towards the changes in breathing, heart beat, stomach movements, brain circulation, or involuntary movements of the hands, eyes, etc., which occur during the course of various mental processes, as in reading, in emotion, in