struck. He had forced on himself this artificial breaking of the
attention, and had trained himself to have his eyes performing their
work independent of the activity of the hands. My friend assures me
that as soon as he had heard of the trick, there was no difficulty in
his imitating it, and immediately the number of ears which he was able
to husk in a given time was increased by 30 per cent. The mere
immediate instinct would always keep the eye movement and the hand
movements coupled together. A certain artificial effort is necessary
to overcome this natural coördination. But if this secret scheme had
been known to all the boys in the village, ten would have been able to
perform what fifteen did. Of course this is an utterly trivial
incident, and where my friend husked corn in his boyhood days, to-day
probably the cornharvester is doing it more quickly anyhow. But as
long as real scientific effort has not been applied toward examining
the details, we have to rely on such occasional observations in order
at first to establish the principle. Every one knows that just such
illustrations might as well be taken from the picking of berries, in
which the natural method is probably an absurd waste of energy, and
yet which in itself seems so insignificant that up to present days no
scientific efforts have been made to find out the ideal methods.
Similar accidental observations are suggested by the well-known
experiments with shovelling carried on in the interest of industry,
where the shovelling of coal and of pig iron demanded a careful
investigation into the best conditions for using the shovel. It was
found that it is an unreasonable waste of energy to use the same size
and form of tool for lifting the heavy and the light material. With
the same size of shovel the iron will make such a heavy load that the
energies are exhausted, and the coal will give such a light load that
the energies are not sufficiently made use of. It became necessary to
determine the ideal load with which the greatest amount of work with
the slightest fatigue could be performed, and that demanded a much
larger shovel for the light than for the heavy substance. Exactly this
situation repeats itself with the spade of the farmer. The conditions
are somewhat different, but the principle must be the same. Of course
the farmer may use spades of different sizes, but he is far from
bringing the product of spade surface and weight to a definite
equation. Sometimes he wastes his energies and sometimes he exhausts
them. But it is not only a question of the size of shovel or spade.
The whole position of the body, the position of the hands, the
direction of the attention, the rhythm of the movement, the pauses
between the successive actions, the optical judgment as to the place
where the spade ought to cut the ground, the distribution of energy,
the respiration, and many similar parts of the total psychophysical
process demand exact analysis if the greatest efficiency is to be
reached. Everybody knows what an amount of attention the golf player
has to give to every detail of his movement, and yet it would be
easier to discover by haphazard methods the best way to handle the
golf stick than to use the spade to the best effect.
On the other hand, the better method is not at all necessarily the
more difficult one. More effort is needed at the beginning to acquire
an exactly adjusted scheme of movement, but as soon as the
well-organized activity has become habitual, it will realize itself
with less inner interference. For the educated it is no harder to
speak correct grammar than to speak slang, and it is no more difficult
to write orthographically than to indulge in chaotic spelling, just as
in every field it is no harder to show good manners than to behave
rudely. If the sciences of digging and chopping, of reaping and
raking, of weeding and mowing, of spraying and feeding, are all
postulates of the future, each can transform the chance methods into
exact ones, and that means into truly efficient ones, only when every
element has been brought under the scrutiny of the psychological
laboratory. We must measure the time in hundredths of a second, must
study the psychophysical conditions of every movement, where not trees
are cut or hay raked, but where the tools move systems of levers which
record graphically the exact amount and character of every partial
effect. The one problem of the distribution of work and rest alone is
of such tremendous importance for the agricultural work that a real
scientific study of the details might lead to just as much saving as
the introduction of new machinery. The farmhand, who would never think
of wasting his money, wastes his energies by contracting big muscles,
where a better economized system of movement would allow him to reach
the same result through the contraction of smaller muscles, which
involves much less energy and much less fatigue. The loss by wrong
bending and wrong coördination of movement may be greater than by bad
weather.
Yet commonsense can never be sufficient to find the right motor will
impulses. The ideal distribution of pauses is extremely different from
merely stopping the work when a state of overfatigue has been reached.
Even general scientific rules could not be the last word. Subtle
psychological tests would have to be devised by which the plan for
alternation between work and rest could be carefully adjusted to the
individual needs of every rural worker. The mere sensation of fatigue
may be entirely misleading. It must be brought into definite relations
to temperature, moistness, character of the work, training, and other
factors. On the other hand, the absence of fatigue feeling would be in
itself no indication that the limit of safety has not been passed, and
yet the work itself must suffer when objective overfatigue of the
system has begun. At the right moment a short interruption may secure
again the complete conditions for successful work. If that moment has
passed, an exhaustion may result which can no longer be repaired by a
short rest. Any wrong method of performing these simple activities,
that is, any method which is not based on exact scientific analysis,
wastes the energies of the workingman, and by that the economic means
of the farm owner, and indirectly the economic resources of the whole
nation. In the Harvard Psychological Laboratory we are at present
engaged in the investigation of such an apparently trivial function
as sewing by hand. The finger which guides the needle is attached to a
system of levers which write an exact graphic record of every stitch
on a revolving drum. And the deeper we enter into this study the more
we discover that such a movement, of which every seamstress and every
girl who makes her clothes feels that she knows everything, contains
an abundance of important features of which we do not as yet know
anything. With the same scientific exactitude the laboratory must
investigate the milking, or the making of butter, the feeding of the
cattle and the picking of the fruit, the use of the scythe and the
axe, the pruning and the husking. The mere fact that every one, even
with the least skill, is able to carry out such movements with some
result, does not in the least guarantee that any one carries them out
to-day with the best result possible.
The governmental experiment station ought to establish regular
psychological laboratories, in which the mental processes involved in
the farmer's activity would be examined with the same loyalty to
modern science with which the chemical questions of the soil or the
biological questions of the parasites are furthered. Only such
investigations could give the right cues also to the manufacturers of
farming implements. At present the machines are constructed with the
single purpose of greatest physical usefulness, and the farmer who
uses them has to adjust himself to them. The only human factor which
enters into the construction so far has been a certain desire for
comfort and ease of handling. But as soon as the mental facts involved
are really examined, they ought to become decisive for the details of
the machine. The handle which controls the lever, and every other
part, must be placed so that the will finds the smallest possible
resistance, so that one psychical impulse prepares the way for the
next, and then a maximum of activity can be reached with the smallest
possible psychophysical energy. Such a psychological department of the
agricultural station could be expanded, and study not only the mental
conditions of farming, but examine also the psychological factors
which belong indirectly to the sphere of agricultural work. It may
examine the mental effects which the various products of the farm stir
up in the customers. The feelings and emotions, the volitions and
ideas which are suggested by the vegetables and fruits, the animals
and the flowers, are not without importance for the success in the
market. The psychology of colour and taste, of smell and touch and
form, may be useful knowledge for the scientific farmer, and even his
methods of packing and preparing for the market, of displaying and
advertising, may be greatly improved by contact with applied
psychology.
At least one of the psychological side problems demands especial
attention, the mental life of the animals. Animal psychology is no
longer made up of hunting stories and queer observations on ants and
wasps, and gossip about pet cats and dogs and canary birds. It has
become an exact science, which is housed in the psychological
laboratories of the universities. And with this change the centre of
interest has shifted, too. The mind of the animals is not studied in
order to satisfy our zoölogical interest, but really to serve an
understanding of the mental functions. It was therefore appropriate to
introduce those methods which had been tested in human psychology. In
our Harvard Psychological Laboratory, in which a whole floor of the
building is devoted exclusively to animal experiments under
specialists, single functions like memory or attention or emotion are
tested in earthworms or turtles or pigeons or monkeys, and the results
are no less accurate than those of subtlest human work. But this
experimental animal psychology has so far served theoretical interests
only. It stands where human psychology stood before the contact with
pedagogy, medicine, law, commerce, and industry suggested particular
formulations of the experiments. Such contact with the needs of
practical life ought to be secured now for animal psychology. The
farmer who has to do with cows and swine and sheep, with dogs and
horses, with chickens and geese, with pigeons and bees, ought to have
an immediate interest to seek this contact. But his concern ought to
go still further. He has to fight the animals that threaten his
harvest.
The farmer himself knows quite well how important the psychical
behaviour of the animals is for his success. He knows how the milk of
the cows is influenced by emotional excitement, and how the handling
of horses demands an understanding of their mental dispositions and
temperaments. Sometimes he even works already with primitive
psychological methods. He makes use of the mental instinct which draws
insects to the light when he attracts the dangerous moths with light
at night in order to destroy them. Ultimately all the traps and nets
with which the enemies of the crop are caught are schemes for which
psychotechnical calculations are decisive. The means for breaking the
horses, down to the whip and the spur and the blinders, are after all
the tools of applied psychology. The manufacturer is already
beginning to supply the farmer with some practical psychology: dogs
which despise the ordinary dog biscuits, seem quite satisfied with the
same cheap foods when they are manufactured in the form of bones. The
dog first plays with them and then eats them. There is no reason why
everything should be left to mere tradition and chance in a field in
which the methods are sufficiently developed to give exact practical
results, as soon as distinct practical questions are raised. There
would be no difficulty in measuring the reaction times of the horses
in thousandths of a second for optical and acoustical and tactual
impressions, or in studying the influence of artificial colour effects
on the various insects in the service of agriculture.
Especial importance may be attached to those investigations in animal
psychology which trace the inheritance of individual characteristics.
The laboratory psychologist studies, for instance, the laws according
to which qualities like savageness and tameness are distributed in the
succeeding generations. He studies the proportions of those traits in
hundreds of mice, which are especially fit for the experiment on
account of their quick multiplication. But this may lead immediately
to important results for the farmers with reference to mental traits
in breeding animals. It would be misleading if it were denied that
all this is a programme to-day and not a realization, a promise and
not a fulfilment. The field is practically still uncultivated. But in
a time in which the nation is anxious to economize the national
resources, which were too long wasted, and in which the need of
helping the farmer and of intensifying the values of rural life is
felt so generally, it would be reckless to ignore a promise the
fulfilment of which seems so near. To be sure, the farmers cultivated
their fields through thousands of years without chemistry, just as
they do their daily work to-day without psychology, but nobody doubts
that the introduction of scientific chemistry into farming has brought
the most valuable help to the national, and to the world economy. The
time seems really ripe for experimental psychology to play the same
rôle for the benefit of mankind, which in the future as in the past
will always be prosperous only when the farmer succeeds.
VII
SOCIAL SINS IN ADVERTISING
There is one industry in the world which may be called, more than any
other, a socializing factor in our modern life. The industry of
advertising binds men together and tightly knits the members of
society into one compact mass. Every one in the big market-place of
civilization has his demands and has some supply. But in order to link
supply and demand, the offering must be known. The industry which
overcomes the isolation of man with his wishes and with his wares lays
the real foundation of the social structure. It is not surprising that
it has taken gigantic dimensions and that uncounted millions are
turning the wheels of the advertising factory. The influence and
civilizing power of the means of propaganda go far beyond the help in
the direct exchange of goods. The advertiser makes the modern
newspaper and magazine possible. These mightiest agencies of public
opinion and intellectual culture are supported, and their technical
perfection secured, by those who pay their business tax in the form
of advertisements.
Under these circumstances it would appear natural to have just as much
interest and energy and incessant thought devoted to this very great
and significant industry as to any branch of manufacturing. But the
opposite is true. Armies of engineers and of scientifically trained
workers have put half a century of scholarly research and experimental
investigation into the perfecting of the physical and chemical
industries. The most thorough study is devoted to the raw material and
to the machines, to the functions of the workingman and to everything
which improves the mechanical output. In striking contrast to this,
the gigantic industry of advertising is to-day still controlled
essentially by an amateurish impressionism, by a so-called
commonsense, which is nothing but the uncritical following of a
well-worn path. Surely there is an abundance of clever advertisement
writers at work, and great establishments make some careful tests
before they throw their millions of circulars before the public. Yet
even their so-called tests have in no way scientific character. They
are simply based on watching the success in practical life, and the
success is gained by instinct. Commonsense tells even the most
superficial advertiser that a large announcement will pay more than a
small one, an advertisement in a paper with a large circulation more
than in a paper with a few subscribers, one with a humorous or
emotional or exciting text more than one with a tiresome and stale
text. He also knows that the cover page in a magazine is worth more
than the inner pages, that a picture draws attention, that a repeated
insertion helps better than a lonely one. Yet even a score of such
rules would not remove the scheme of advertising from the commonplaces
of the trade. They still would not show any trace of the fact that the
methods of exact measurement and of laboratory research can be applied
to such problems of human society.
Advertising is an appeal to the attention, to the memory, to the
feeling, to the impulses of the reader. Every printed line of
advertisement is thus a lever which is constructed to put some mental
mechanism in motion. The science of the mental machinery is
psychology, which works on principles with the exact methods of the
experiment. It seems unprogressive, indeed, if just this one industry
neglects the help which experimental science may furnish. A few slight
beginnings, to be sure, have been made, but not by the men of affairs,
whose practical interests are involved. They have been made by
psychologists who in these days of carrying psychology into practical
life have pushed the laboratory method into the field of advertising.
The beginnings indicated at once that much which is sanctioned by the
traditions of economic life will have to be fundamentally revised.
Psychologists, for instance, examined the memory value of the
different parts of the page. Little booklets were arranged in which
words were placed in the four quarter pages. The advertiser is
accustomed patiently to pay an equal amount for his quarter page,
whether it is on the left half or the right, on the lower or on the
upper part of the page. The experiment demonstrated that the words on
the upper right-hand quarter had about twice the memory value of those
on the lower left. The advertiser who is accustomed to spend for his
insertion on the lower left the same sum as for that on the upper
right throws half his expenditure away. He reaches only half of the
customers, or takes only half a grasp of those whom he reaches. This
case, which can be easily demonstrated by careful experiments, is
typical of the tremendous waste which goes on in the budget of the
advertising community. And yet the advertiser would not like to act
like the poet who sings his song not caring whose heart he will stir.
As long as the psychologist is only aware of an inexcusable waste of
means by lack of careful research into the psychological reactions of
the reader, he may leave the matter to the business circles which have
to suffer by their carelessness. But this economic wrong may coincide
with cultural values in other fields, and the social significance of
the problem may thus become accentuated. A problem of this double
import, economic and cultural at the same time, to-day faces
publishers, advertisers, and readers. It is of recent origin, but it
has grown so rapidly and taken such important dimensions that at
present it overshadows all other debatable questions in the realm of
propaganda. The movement to which we refer is the innovation of mixing
reading matter and advertisements on the same page. In the good old
times a monthly magazine like _McClure's_ or the _American_ or the
_Metropolitan_ or the _Cosmopolitan_ showed an arrangement which
allowed a double interpretation. One interpretation, the idealistic
one, was that the magazine consisted of articles and stories in solid
unity, which formed the bulk of the issue. In front of this content,
and after it, pages with advertisements were attached. The other
interpretation, which suggested itself to the less ambitious reader,
was that the magazine consisted of a heap of entertaining
advertisement pages, between which the reading matter was sandwiched.
But in any case there was nowhere mutual interference. The articles
stood alone, and the automobiles, crackers, cameras, and other wares
stood alone, too. All this has been completely changed in the last two
or three years. With a few remarkable exceptions like the _Atlantic
Monthly_, the _World's Work_, and the _Century_, the overwhelming
majority of the monthly and weekly papers have gone over to a system
by which the tail of the stories and articles winds itself through the
advertisement pages, and all the advertising sheets are riddled by
stray pieces of reading matter. The immediate purpose is of course
evident. If the last dramatic part of the story suddenly stops on page
15 and is continued on page 76, between the announcements of breakfast
food and a new garter, the publisher, or rather the advertiser, hopes,
and the publisher does not dare to contradict, that some of the
emotional interest and excitement will flow over from the loving pair
to the advertised articles. The innocent reader is skilfully to be
guided into the advertiser's paradise.
We claimed that here the economic innovation, whether profitable or
not, has its cultural significance. The sociologists who have thought
seriously about the American type of civilization have practically
agreed in the conviction that the shortcoming of the American mind
lies in its lack of desire for harmony and unity. It is an æsthetic
deficiency which counts not only where art and artificial beauty are
in question, but shows still more in the practical surroundings and
the forms of life. The nation which is and always has been controlled
by strong idealistic moral impulses takes small care of the æsthetic
ideals. The large expenditures for external beautification must not
deceive. Just as the theatre is to the American essentially
entertainment and amusement and fashion, but least of all a life need
for great art, so on the whole background of daily life a thousand
motives show themselves more effectively than the longing for inner
unity and beautiful fitness. The masses who waste their incomes for
beautiful clothes, not because they are beautiful, but because they
are demanded by the fashion, patiently tolerate the dirt in the
streets, the crowding of cars, the chewing of gum, the vulgar slang in
speech, and shirt-sleeve manners. But this undeveloped state of the
sense of inner harmony has effects far beyond the mere outer
appearances. The hysterical excitement in politics, the traditional
indifference to corruption and crime up to the point where they become
intolerable, the bewildering mixture of highest desire for education
and cheapest faith in superstitions and mysticism and quacks, all must
result from a social mind in which the æsthetic demand for harmony and
proportion is insufficiently developed. The one great need of the land
is a systematic cultivation of this æsthetic spirit of unity. It
cannot be forced on the millions by any sudden and radical procedures.
The steady, cumulating influences of the whole atmosphere of civic
life must lead to a slow but persistent change. Fortunately, many such
helpful agencies are at work. Not only the systematic moulding of the
child's mind by art instruction, and of the citizen's mind by
beautiful public buildings, but a thousand features of the day aid in
bringing charm and melody to the average man.