In attempting to measure the rate at which feeling-tones for
those slight stimulations develop when no disturbing factors are
consciously present, an interval of from one and one half to two and
one half seconds seemed to be required. At such a time the feeling
was experienced as having reached its maximum. There was no marked
difference for different subjects, nor any constantly noticeable
difference among the kind of stimulations used. A possible exception
was found for Subject I, but this was probably due, as he himself
thought, to his inability to adapt himself easily to the requirement of
the experiment.
After this was sufficiently tested, the interval which was required
for one feeling-tone to arise when another was already present, was in
the same manner tested. The interval in all cases was too long to be
measured by means of a chronometer. A stop-watch was used.
While the subject was consciously enjoying a sound from a tuning-fork
or a tactual impression from some chosen texture surface, one of the
colors was presented to him. The time-interval thus ascertained as
necessary for the new feeling-tone to reach its maximum was compared in
each case with the time-interval when the color alone was presented.
Various combinations were here employed also. Colors in forms in
addition were studied in comparison with the same colors presented
without regard to the enclosing forms. No definite results could be
obtained in most cases. It was thought that the repose one feels
for plush might appreciably hasten the feeling-tone for the red and
probably retard that for the more exciting yellow. The evidence is not
directly conclusive. This was not found to be the case in much more
than half of the tests. It did, however, in the great majority of the
cases with all subjects, retard the time-interval for the development
of the unpleasant character of ordinarily disagreeable colors. Given
at such times also the normally unpleasant colors not infrequently
appeared themselves as slightly agreeable. In these cases the interval
was also appreciably longer, suggesting evidence that new processes of
some sort were set up. A pleasant low tone hastened the arousal of a
pleasant feeling-tone for red quite perceptibly for three subjects, and
had no influence upon the other subjects. The feeling-tone for yellow
under the same circumstances was for two subjects retarded regularly,
with no marked effect either way for the others. The same low tone
retarded all the unpleasant colors, as did the plush, in many cases
causing them to appear as pleasant.
The effect of forms, as enclosures for colors, upon the time-rate was
more marked and constant. Subject I again was always disturbed when
colors were presented to him in definite forms. For him feeling-tones
never arose so quickly when the form-element entered. For the other
six subjects, available for this part of the work, upright ovals
considerably increased the whole state of pleasure whether or not
fusion of the different elements resulted. For them the feeling-tone
for every pleasing color was hastened from two fifths to four fifths
of a second. These same forms retarded the unpleasant colors whenever
one element of the experience seemed to be opposed to the other.
Occasionally here also the color appeared as itself directly and
unaccountably pleasant, the prepared situation of the subject being
such, apparently, that the ordinary character of the color did not
appear at all. This was very frequently the case for all subjects.
The irregular unpleasant forms generally retarded the feeling-tone
for the enclosed color when that color appeared to have lost some
of its accustomed agreeableness. When, however, the contrast in
feeling-character between the form-element and the color-element as
such was noted as marked, the feeling-character of the color was more
often hastened than retarded. These same forms in almost every case (of
nearly two months' work for seven subjects) hastened the feeling-tone
for the corresponding disagreeable color. Often again pleasant colors
changed the feeling-tones for these irregular forms. In such cases the
influence could not be attributed to the effect of unpleasant forms
upon feeling-tones.
Statistics alone seem insignificant here. Each variety of affective
experience in itself presents its own peculiar difficulties. In a
great number of tests the affective phases of the experiences were
all described in such terms as to suggest that too general a grouping
of them would not mean much. Often when one thought, after a careful
choice of the stimuli to be used, that the experiment would show that
feelings whose prominent characteristics were those of excitement or
tension, for example, were exerting an influence upon some other kind
of feeling, introspection would reveal the fact that altogether other
phases of the experience were the pronounced elements. Examples of what
at first appeared to be capricious results illustrate the baffling
nature of the problem here dealt with. Red is very pleasant. The oval
with the bulging side is repulsive. This combination caused no marked
retardation in the time required for a feeling-tone to develop. The
blue, not so markedly pleasant alone, with the same bulging oval as
its frame, had its feeling-tone changed, and the time-development
quite perceptibly hastened. This same blue color with an upright oval
as its frame produced a feeling-tone much more pleasant, also with
marked hastening of the speed-development of its feeling-character.
The pleasant-unpleasant dimension of the feeling clearly cannot alone
furnish one with an explanation of these different phenomena. The red
under normal conditions, _i. e._, if not influenced by either favorable
or unfavorable coexisting feeling-tones, aroused its peculiar and not
necessarily pervasive kind of physiological process. Likewise all our
evidence goes to show that the feeling for blue is correlated with a
peculiar physiological process, not so deeply seated in the organism,
and not so satisfactorily coördinated, or "definite." Now the specific
feeling-tone for forms arises when the imitative adjustment called
for is successfully accomplished. In the first combination cited
above the feeling-tone for red, being mild, soothing, more pervasive
than blue, but lacking in the exciting character, is correlated with
processes not so easily influenced by the reactions occasioned by
the presented forms. Subjects say that it does not call for "surface
reactions." It is less "intrusive." It does not "fall in with," nor
does it strikingly oppose, the necessary reaction to the forms. Its
influence upon the time-development of feeling-tones for accompanying
stimuli is consequently small. This is not the case with the blue.
The explanation, however, does not here differ in principle. This
"volatile, unstable, indecisive, thin, or shallow" feeling, can be more
easily influenced by the definite and decisive processes characteristic
of the forms. It, indeed, needs something to determine its character,
or coördinate its general reaction. Hence in both the above
combinations the development period of the new feeling-tone for blue
is shortened. The feeling reaches its maximum in either combination
more quickly than when it occurs alone. As one should expect, fusion
or mutual reënforcement quickens coördinated reaction; and partially
independent coexistence, except where the contrast is sharp, serves as
a condition for the lengthening of the latent period of feelings.