ACTION
The ordinary way of speaking is, that the Understanding and Will are
two faculties of the mind; yet I suspect that this way of speaking of
faculties has misled many into a confused notion of so many distinct
agents in us, which had their several provinces and authorities, and
did command, obey, and perform several actions, as so many distinct
beings: which has been no small occasion of wrangling, obscurity and
uncertainty in questions relating to them.—JOHN LOCKE
§ 53. =The Psychology of Action.=—There seems to be a great gulf fixed
between plants and animals, and you were probably surprised to read,
on p. 13, that there are not a few psychologists who take the question
of a plant-mind with scientific seriousness. If you ask yourself, now,
wherein this gulf consists, you will find that it reduces in the main
to a single point of difference: _the higher plants are stationary
organisms, the higher animals are motor_. The plant stands still and
has to wait for things to come to it; and its organisation fits the
case; it spreads its organs over the widest possible space, and is
all, so to say, on the outside. The animal moves; it goes to things;
and its organisation is correspondingly different; the vital organs
are packed away inside, where they are out of harm’s reach, and
are distributed in such a way as to be easily carried. It would be
strange, then, if movement—the great differential character of the
animals—did not somehow fall within the range of psychology; and we
know that it does; for we are continually hoping, fearing, resolving,
refusing, wishing to _do_ something, or feeling glad, sorry, satisfied,
disappointed, resentful that the something has been _done_. Moreover,
we have already made frequent reference to movement; we have spoken of
the attitude of attention, of movement of the eyes, of instinctive and
expressive movements; and we have also laid stress upon the manifold
part played in the mental life by kinæsthesis, by sensations from the
moving organs. So we are prepared to consider movement in its own
psychological right, as correlated with special mental processes or
patterns.
There are, as usual, a few preliminary matters to be got out of the
way. First of all, we shall do well to distinguish the terms ‘movement’
and ‘action.’ Movement is, without question, the wider term. Action,
although it is very loosely used in ordinary speech, so that we speak
of the action of a horse or a sewing-machine, is the word that we
naturally employ in referring to human conduct. We may therefore take
advantage of this difference in meaning, and may say that =action=, as
a technical term in psychology, denotes _any organic movement that has
mental correlates_; or more strictly, that it is an organic movement
any phase of which, beginning, middle or end, has mental correlates.
The need of the stricter definition will appear as we go on.
Secondly, we must be clear as regards the =problem= which action, as
thus defined, presents to psychology. We have, of course, _to describe
and to correlate_; to describe the mental processes that occur with
movement, or with one or more of its phases; and to indicate, as well
as our knowledge permits, the corresponding processes in the nervous
system. We have made out three modes of correlation: separate mental
processes correspond with certain brain-processes; the pattern of
mental connection corresponds with the play of associative tendencies
in the brain; and the course of the mental stream corresponds with the
activity of determining tendencies. These, then, are the limits within
which we work; and we shall be obliged to leave the subject very much
in the rough; for psychological description is still imperfect, and
our knowledge of the nervous mechanisms is woefully incomplete. Be
clear, nevertheless, that _the psychological problem lies within these
limits_. The psychologist has nothing to do with the relative values
of ‘motives.’ He cannot teach you how to acquire ‘control’ of your
actions. His task is simply to set forth the facts; and if the facts
that he discovers are of value for morals or education, as indeed they
can hardly fail to be, so much the better; only, you must not confuse
scientific information with practical advice, and be disappointed at
the one because you do not receive the other. All this has been said
before; but the present is a good time for repeating it.
Lastly, you should realise that in an organism so complicated as man,
and of such varied and eventful history, _movement by itself is no
index to mental process_. There are, no doubt, outward and visible
signs of hesitation, of deliberation, of quick resolve; but the bare
movement is not a cue to mind. Psychological enquiry must always go
_behind_ the movement; that is, we must either know the previous
mental history of the individual who makes the movement, or we must
ourselves arrange the circumstances under which the movement is to
be made. Suppose, for instance, that you have to sign your name to
a deed. You may have spent weeks in reflection, in balancing pros
and cons, in painful indecision; your action is then a ‘voluntary
action’ of the most positive sort; and yet, when the moment comes,
your signature flows smoothly from the pen, as if the matter had
never cost you a moment’s worry. Now suppose that you are sitting
in a committee-meeting, listening to a tedious report; you take the
blank paper before you, and write your accustomed signature, without
either the intention to write or knowledge that you are writing. The
two movements may be indistinguishable, and yet this second writing is
an ‘automatic’ or ‘involuntary’ action. So a hand-shake may mean the
barest recognition of a casual acquaintance, or the friendly settlement
of a long-standing disagreement; the onlooker can see no difference in
the movements, though their mental accompaniments are worlds apart.
There is, indeed, no chapter in psychology that illustrates _the law of
mental growth and decay_ (p. 183) so fully and so surprisingly as this
chapter on action. Movements that once were rich in mental correlates
fall into the direst psychological poverty; and movements that now are
poor may acquire a mental fortune, which they in their turn are bound
presently to lose.
§ 54. =The Typical Action.=—Under these circumstances, it sounds
a little incongruous to talk of a ‘typical’ action. But we must
start somewhere; and we may, perhaps, say that the typical action,
for psychology, is _an action of the simplest form taken at its
psychological best_; in other words, an organic movement that is
_singly_ determined and that shows a _maximum_ of mental accompaniment.
You will understand better what this definition means when we have
worked out an illustration. Meantime, you can see that such an
action—we call it an =impulsive= action—serves as point of departure
in two directions. The form may remain simple, while the mental side
suffers reduction; or the form may become complicated, and therewith
new mental characters may be introduced. In the former case, the
impulsive action runs downhill toward automatic; in the latter, it
climbs up toward deliberative action.
Now for the illustration! Suppose that, as I am writing this paragraph,
it occurs to me to look up a reference, for quotation, in a particular
book that stands on the shelf by my side. I turn toward the shelf,
recognise the book, take it in my hand and turn the pages, and
presently find the passage I had in mind to use. I have performed _an
impulsive action_, in the sense of our definition; the illustration is
complete. I shall go on to put a marker in the book, or to copy out
the sentence, and ultimately I shall return the book to the shelf; but
these later developments do not here concern us.
Let us try to analyse this action; and since the mental accompaniment
is fairly complex, let us analyse, at first, only in large and gross
terms. We begin with a preparatory phase, in which there are two
things to notice: the _intention to move_ (it occurs to me to look up
the reference) and the _idea of the result_ of movement (finding the
required passage for quotation). Then follows a middle phase, in which
the outstanding thing is the _perception of the object_ of movement
(I see and identify the book on the shelf). The final phase includes
a _perception of movement_ itself in kinæsthetic terms (I reach out,
take the book down, turn the pages) and also the _perception of the
result_ of movement (I find the sentence). So we have three roughly
distinguishable phases, each one issuing from that which preceded it,
which we may formulate as follows:
Intention of movement } → Perception { Perception of movement
Idea of result } of object → { Perception of result.
You understand that the arrows indicate a definite direction; the
second and third phases issue from the first; _the whole course
is predetermined_. When I perceive the book, under this impulsive
determination, the associative tendencies have no freedom of play; I
cannot think that the back is breaking, or that I know the writer, or
that the chalky paper is detestable, though all of these are things
that might occur to me at another time; I can only recognise the book
as the book that will realise my idea of result, that contains the
passage I need. The whole course, again, is singly, _unequivocally_,
predetermined; it occurs to me to use the quotation, and I do not
reflect or hesitate; I act directly and forthright upon the suggestion;
there is no conflict. In a word, the example shows us action in its
simplest form and with a maximum of mental concomitant; and that is
what we agreed to regard, from the psychological point of view, as a
typical action.
Analysis of this crude kind does no more than give us our bearings. If
we are to lay out the facts with scientific accuracy, we must carry
actions into the laboratory, and examine them under experimental
conditions. We do this by way of the ‘reaction experiment.’
§ 55. =The Reaction Experiment.=—The reaction experiment comes to us,
of all unlikely things, by the road of astronomy. In the old days,
before electrical instruments were invented, astronomers used to time
the passage of a star across the meridian of their observatory by means
of the _eye-and-ear method_. You can easily imagine the procedure.
You have your eye at the ocular of a telescope, the field of which is
evenly divided by a number of fine vertical lines. The star enters
the field from the right, and crosses to the left; your task is to
determine the instant at which it traverses the midmost vertical line,
which corresponds with the meridian. A clock is behind you, beating
seconds; and you count these seconds, one, two, three, from a given
starting-point. If the star passes the meridian exactly on a beat, well
and good; you know the time of its passage; if, as ordinarily happens,
it passes somewhere between two beats, then you must estimate the time
of passage to the nearest tenth of a second. That is the principle
of the eye-and-ear method; you watch and listen, and so make your
observation.
In the year 1796, the astronomer in charge of the Greenwich Observatory
found himself obliged to dismiss an otherwise competent assistant,
who in the previous year had fallen into the habit of recording his
transits some half-second too late, and had now increased his error
to almost a whole second. This unfortunate man was the originator
of what came to be known as the =personal difference=. For it was
found that no two astronomers exactly agreed in their recording of
times; every observer differed from every other by a certain average
amount. So it became customary to take some highly skilled observer as
standard, and to refer other observers to him; and that is the origin
of the =personal equation=; the formula _A_-_B_ = 0.8 sec. means, for
instance, that the observer _A_ records a transit, on the average,
four-fifths of a second later than the more skilled observer _B_. What
_B_’s error may have been nobody knows.
We cannot trace the history of the personal difference in detail. It
is enough to say that the astronomers, having discovered it, were
naturally anxious to get rid of it; and they presently found a way to
relieve the observer of the task of listening; he simply pressed a
key when the star crossed the line of the meridian, and the time of
pressing was recorded automatically. This device did not eliminate
the personal difference; but it was methodically of great importance.
For the eye-and-ear method had now become, essentially, _a method of
response to stimulus by movement_; and in that form it settled down
permanently in the psychological laboratory. The stimulus for the
astronomer was the star on the meridian, and the response was the
pressure of his finger on a key. But it is clear that the stimulus need
not be visual; the observer might just as well respond to a sound or
a touch or a taste. It is clear, further, that the response need not
be a movement of the hand; the observer may respond, just as well, by
movement of the organs of speech, or of the foot, or of lip or eyelid.
It is clear, finally, that if we know the actual time at which the
stimulus is presented, and the actual time at which the movement of
response takes place, we can measure the interval between the two. A
little ingenuity makes this possible. If, for instance, the flash of
light which serves as stimulus _makes_ an electrical circuit, and the
finger-movement in response _breaks_ the circuit; and if an electrical
clock is placed in the same circuit; then the clock-hands will begin to
move when the flash comes, and will stop when the movement occurs, and
we can read off the =reaction time= from the dial.
In its simplest form, then, the reaction experiment takes shape
as follows. We subject the observer to some prearranged form of
stimulation (a flash of light, a sharp noise), to which he is to reply
by some prearranged movement (perhaps, the slipping of his finger from
the button of a telegraph key); and the instruments which we employ
are so connected that we can measure the time elapsing between the
exhibition of stimulus and the performance of answering movement.
The experiment thus has two sides. It gives us _numerical results,
the reaction times_ measured in units of our clock, in hundredths or
thousandths of a second; but it gives us also a _complete impulsive
action_, which we can observe as often as is necessary for analysis.
For consider the course of the reaction experiment in the light of our
typical formula of action! The observer sits down with the _intention
of moving_ when he has perceived the stimulus; and he has an _idea of
the result_ of his movement, namely, the performance of a reaction
experiment. The stimulus is presented; he _perceives the object_ of
movement; and slips his finger from the key. He thus _perceives the
movement_ itself, and also, by the movement, _realises in perception
his idea of result_. He has performed a complete impulsive action,
but an action which, on the mental side, has been thinned out to a
manageable degree of simplicity. The mental accompaniment is there; but
the intention to move bears upon a single finger, the idea of result is
just the idea of completing the experiment, the perception of object is
the perception of a simple stimulus, the movement itself is a slight
local displacement of a single member; nothing is left out, although
the action is reduced to a skeleton. It has thus been made manageable;
the mental accompaniments of the movement are not so complex that they
baffle observation; and the technique of the experiment is an outline
which can be filled in and further complicated in all manner of ways.
We may hope that that Greenwich assistant found further employment;
but we can hardly, as psychologists, regret that he timed his transits
later than he should!
§ 56. =Sensory and Motor Reaction.=—Suppose that you are performing
the simple reaction experiment, and that you tell your observers
beforehand to react as soon as they perceive the stimulus. You soon
find that this instruction is differently interpreted. One observer
will prepare to react as soon as _he perceives the stimulus_; and
another, _to react as soon as_ he perceives the stimulus. The
difference of emphasis may be brought out by a homely illustration.
When the lights are turned on in the evening, it is not uncommon, even
in the best regulated families, for a clothes-moth to start up from
some corner. You say ‘There’s a _moth_!’ and clap your hands to kill
it. But it escapes; and henceforth you do not trouble to identify it;
you clap your hands at anything mothlike that flits across the field of
vision; you are set or disposed for the movement. So in the two forms
of the simple reaction: some observers tend naturally to make sure of
the stimulus, before they move, and others tend naturally to move, as
soon as any stimulus has appeared.
We cannot rely, however, upon the natural tendency of the observer,
because his attitude is likely to change as the experiment proceeds,
and a change of attitude means a disturbance of the experimental
conditions. Moreover, there are observers of intermediate tendency, who
accent _both_ the ‘perception of stimulus’ _and_ the ‘reaction as soon
as,’ and may accent them in different degree. Hence it is necessary to
instruct the observers at the outset that they are to perform either
a =sensory= or a =motor= reaction, that is, that they are to look
forward either to the perception of the stimulus or to the execution of
the movement. With this preliminary instruction, the sensory reaction
takes, on the average and for practised reactors, a tenth of a second
longer than the motor, whether the stimulus be a sight, a sound, or a
touch. The longer time points, of course, to a more complicated nervous
path; and that in turn raises the presumption of a richer mental
accompaniment. Observations show, in fact, that _only the sensory
reaction represents a complete impulsive action_; the motor reaction
does not fall under our formula.
The main difference—and we have no space for detailed analysis—is
this. The instruction for the =motor= reaction sets up kinæsthetic
sensations of strain in the reacting member, principally in the finger;
these are contextual processes (p. 118), which carry the meaning ‘You
are to react as quickly as possible’; and they are accordingly known
as ‘sensations of intended movement.’ They imply that the instruction
is already in part fulfilled; the muscles are, from the very first,
prepared for the movement that shall end the experiment. Indeed, an
observer who is thus instructed will sometimes react prematurely,
before the stimulus has appeared, and is also liable to accept as
_the_ stimulus any chance stimulus that intervenes, and so to react
wrongly. The instruction for the =sensory= reaction, on the other hand,
sets up an expectation of the stimulus; the organism is thus prepared
especially for perception; premature and wrong reactions do not
occur. The intention to move is present, to be sure, but it is in the
background, carried only by the feel of the finger as it lies upon the
key, or in more diffuse form by the feel of the extended arm upon the
table. We might therefore say that, in the motor reaction, the formula
tends to close up on itself, like a telescope; idea of result is always
approaching perception of result, and intention of movement is always
approaching perception of movement; the perception of object gets
squeezed between the two extremes, as these draw together; whereas,
in the sensory reaction, the formula is followed _in extenso_; the
mental processes are thinned out, as we have put it, but they are all
present, following one another in their regular order. The reaction
experiment thus renders the impulsive action manageable, puts it at our
disposal for scientific analysis, but also shows that _an action, even
in its simplest form, will vary with every shift of emphasis in the
suggestion_ (p. 213) _which calls it forth_.
Let us look, now, at the =reaction times=, and see if they can be
turned to scientific account. So many experiments have been made
that we know the average times of reaction, both sensory and motor,
to light, sound and touch; and we also know what their average
constancy or regularity will be, if the reactor keeps his attitude to
the experiments unchanged. The times themselves, and the numerical
statement of their constancy, may therefore be used as indexes to the
type of reaction, sensory or motor, and to the stability or instability
of the reactor’s attitude. _They embody, as if in short-hand, the
results of oft-repeated observation_, and they may henceforth take
the place of direct psychological observation when we are asked to
decide on the type of reaction or the reliability of the reactor. The
psychological observation must, however, come first; we cannot take the
reaction-times of children or South Sea Islanders, and at once put them
down as sensory or motor or mixed; we must know what the reactors were
trying to do, how they understood the instructions given them.
§ 57. =The Degeneration of Action: From Impulsive to Reflex.=—We
have now to trace the course of impulsive action, downward to
automatic, and upward to deliberative action. If we start out on the
downward path, we note that impulsive action by frequent repetition
degenerates, first, to what is called =sensorimotor= or =ideomotor
action=: sensorimotor, if the object is still _perceived_, as it is in
the impulsive action proper (p. 235), and ideomotor, if the perception
is replaced by an _idea_ of object. Here the predetermination is a
nervous set without any mental correlates; the intention to move has
dropped away; and the idea of result is, so to say, incorporated in
the perception or idea of object; so that movement follows at once
upon this perception or idea. When we sit down at table, for instance,
we take up our knife _as_ a thing to cut food with; and when we are
dressing, we close our fingers round a button _as_ a thing to fasten
a garment with; the movements that we make are predetermined, but not
premeditated; the actions are sensorimotor. When, again, it occurs to
us, in the midst of our reading, that the mail must have arrived, we
ideate the packet of letters _as_ something to be fetched from the
mail-box; and when, as we watch the shower, it occurs to us that the
cellar hatchway is open, we ideate the hatchway _as_ something to be
closed; we act without further thought, and the actions are ideomotor.
But the degeneration may go further still. “There is a story,” writes
Huxley, “which is credible enough, though it may not be true, of a
practical joker, who, seeing a discharged veteran carrying home his
dinner, suddenly called out ‘Attention!’ whereupon the man instantly
brought his hands down, and lost his mutton and potatoes in the
gutter.” Huxley calls this an =artificial reflex= action; and indeed
the organism responds, in such cases of thorough drill, as fatally and
automatically as in the physiological reflexes, and with as little
apprehension of the nature of the stimulus; there is nothing to choose,
psychologically, between this direct response to the word ‘Attention!’
and the blinking of the eye in response to a threatened blow, or the
snatching back of the hand from a hot surface, or the withdrawal of the
foot when the sole is tickled. From the psychological point of view,
impulsive action, instinctive action and artificial reflex all shade
off into one another; and the artificial and physiological reflexes are
indistinguishable.
Only, as we know, _the artificial reflex has a mental history_; the
word ‘Attention!’ had been called out many thousand times before it
became a compelling suggestion. What, then, of the =physiological
reflex=? Has it, too, a mental history, extending beyond the individual
to the race; is it a racially degenerate impulsive action? or does it
belong to a class apart, purely physiological in character, and without
right to mention in a text-book of psychology?
The answer to these questions must be speculative; and speculation, as
is almost always the case, has swung between opposed extremes. Some
psychologists teach that all action has its origin in the physiological
reflex; the organism at first moved reflexly, automatically, fatally;
and then, later, mental processes were somehow ‘imported’ into its
activities. Others hold that all organic movements were originally
of the impulsive sort; the physiological reflex, so far from being
primary, is a late development, the final term in a series which
begins with movement of a large, diffuse sort, accompanied by mental
processes, and which ends with precise, local movement devoid of mental
correlates. Both these views are open to objection from the biological
side; and it seems reasonable to suppose that _the earliest movements
of the earliest organisms were of two kinds_: some were bare reflexes,
or—to use the newer word—physiological ‘tropisms’; others, however
scanty and undifferentiated their mental accompaniment, were still of
the nature of impulsive actions. If this mediating view be adopted, as
a working hypothesis, the zoologist and the comparative psychologist
must join forces, to trace the racial history of the physiological
reflexes, and to determine what part of our human equipment is
ultimately tropistic, and what part may be referred back to earlier
impulses.
_The passage from an impulsive action to an artificial reflex may be
regarded, broadly, as an example of the effect of practice._ We have
seen that improvement in such activity as piano-playing depends, not
solely upon repetition, but largely also upon changes in our method
of working; upon the sudden discovery of some new trick of procedure,
or the sudden release from some hampering peculiarity of method (p.
170). Turning-points of this same sort are characteristic of the path
from impulse to reflex; we do not find a gradual refining of movement
and a corresponding simplification of its mental accompaniments; the
history is rather a matter of short-cuts and substitutions; the organic
machine is too complicated, too sensitive, has too great a variety of
resources, to follow a beaten track. So the course of impulsive action,
though it be downhill, cannot be expected to run smooth.
§ 58. =The Development of Action: From Impulsive to Selective and
Volitional.=—Action appears in its simplest form when it is singly
or unequivocally determined (p. 235); and this implies that actions
of more complicated form are multiply or equivocally determined. What
that means you will see at once if you recall the development of
attention. Primary passes into secondary attention because we have many
sense-organs, all of them open to manifold stimulation at the same
time, and because we have many different lines of interest, several of
which may be appealed to by the situation in which we chance to find
ourselves; there are rival claimants for the centre of the field of
attention. _Impulsive passes into_ =selective= _action_, in precisely
the same way, _when the nervous system is the seat of a conflict of
impulsive tendencies_.
The passage, however, is not made at one step; the conflict of impulses
may remain a mere conflict of impulses, without rising to the pitch of
selective action. We have already had an instance: the young child,
face to face with a strange dog, behaves as if pulled back and forth by
strings; it goes toward the dog, runs back to its father, approaches
the dog again, shrinks back again, and so on. It has happened to the
author, in presence of the two impulses to shut a door on the right
and to seat himself at a desk on the left, to begin the right-hand
movement towards the door, and then all at once to slue around to
the desk without having closed it. In such cases, the organism acts
impulsively or instinctively, but acts nevertheless under a dual
determination; the instincts or impulses are in conflict. Buridan’s
ass, starving to death between its two bundles of hay, illustrates the
logical outcome of an exact equality of the conflicting tendencies.
One may observe this sort of action, typically shown, in the behaviour
of those who are asked to guess a riddle or solve a mechanical
puzzle. Some people, of course, set to work deliberately, and think
the matter out in all its bearings; they are not here in question. A
great many will behave in the manner just described; they will hazard
guess after guess in quick succession, and they will snatch at one
possibility of solution after another, risking everything upon the
impulse that happens to be dominant at the moment, until they either
light upon the right principle or ‘give up.’ Professor Lloyd Morgan,
one of the best-known writers upon comparative psychology, thinks
that this _method of ‘trial and error’_ is characteristic of animal
intelligence. The dog, for instance, placed in novel circumstances,
meets the situation at once by some action that derives from his
individual experience or from racial inheritance; if that first
response fails, he ‘tries’ another action, similarly derived; and so
on, until luck favours him or he is diverted to something else. Only
man advances beyond the stage of ‘trial and error’ to the level of
rational selection; and man himself need not; in the story of _Dite
Deuchars_ Sir J. M. Barrie draws an accurate picture of human conduct
permanently arrested between impulsive and selective action.
_Selective action appears when the rival impulses are so evenly matched
that no one of them can find direct issue in movement; it implies the
state of secondary attention; and it is possible only to organisms that
possess free ideas of memory and imagination,—probably, that is, only
to man._ Any biography that goes at all minutely into details will
furnish examples. Thus, when the first Napoleon was at liberty to turn
his thoughts to England, after the treaty of Schönbrunn (1809), he
found two possibilities of action: he might himself take in hand the
conduct of the war in Spain, or he might devote himself to heightening
the rigour of the blockade in the north and north-west. He ‘chose’ the
latter course; that is to say, he passed through a period of doubt
and hesitation, weighing the alternatives and estimating results,—we
know the pattern of secondary attention,—until presently the stronger
impulse won. _It is always the strongest impulse that wins_; though
here, as also in the case of attention, it is not necessarily the
impulse that looks the strongest to psychological observation; there
may be a more impressive array of ideas on the side that finally gives
way. The winning impulse, as we see in historical examples of selective
action, is that which has the strongest backing of nerve-forces (p.
96). The actor, oftentimes, cannot make his action plausible, even to
himself, when he tries to state his ‘reasons’; but the sympathetic
historian can trace the influence of tendencies which had no mental
correlates, and whose existence was therefore unsuspected by their
possessor.
All this is clear in principle, though psychology stands sorely in
need of detailed analyses. Let us add a final word of caution,—that
you beware of confusing the practical or moral value of selective
action with its psychological status. Napoleon the Great was an
incomparably more efficient person than Dite Deuchars, and the results
of his action were incomparably wider; but with a trifle more balance
in the impulsive tendencies, and a little freer play of ideas, the
latter gentleman could have performed selective actions of the same
psychological type as Napoleon’s.
There is, however, another kind of action—we may call it =volitional=
action—in which _an impulse seems to come into conflict, not with
another impulse, but with some idea or group of ideas that has no
motor reference_. I hear my alarum-clock, and have the impulse to get
up; but that impulse is definitely opposed by the idea of another
half-hour’s sleep. How can an idea oppose an impulse? When Cæsar
crossed the Rubicon his alternative was not another course of action,
but the passive resignation of the two Gauls and the disbanding of his
army; the choice lay between acting and refraining from action. How can
activity and passivity thus come into conflict?
The answer to these questions is given with what we said about the
nervous correlates of attention (p. 109). We learned, you remember,
that _nervous reinforcement and nervous inhibition go hand in hand_:
neither acts without the other; but we were not able at that time to
present the evidence for this belief. The evidence is twofold. We find,
in experiments upon _abstraction_, that reinforcement always implies
inhibition. Suppose, for instance, that the observer is shown a series
of coloured figures, each one for a fraction of a second only, and that
he is asked to report accurately upon the form of these visual stimuli.
He can do so: but if he is then asked to report further about the
colour, he can say little if anything in reply. Reinforcement of the
form has brought with it inhibition of the colour. We find, again, in
experiments with what is called _negative instruction_ that inhibition
always implies reinforcement. Suppose that a picture is shown, and that
the observer is told to utter the first word that occurs to him when
he sees it, only that the word uttered is _not_ to be the name of the
object pictured. He can do this, too; but the results prove that the
‘negative’ always brings in a ‘positive’; either the throat is held
stiff, locked up for the time against any utterance whatever, or the
instruction ‘Don’t name the object’ is translated by the observer into
‘Name a property of the object’ or ‘Name a use to which the object
might be put’; inhibition of the name has meant reinforcement of
throat-kinæsthesis or of some positively suggestive idea.
Apply this evidence, now, to the case in point! The sound of the
alarum-clock is, on the face of it, a positive suggestion, bidding
me get up; but every suggestion is really two-faced; if it sets off
certain of the tendencies natural to the situation, it also checks
others. The sound of the bell, therefore, not only reinforces the
getting-up tendencies, but also represses the nervous disposition that
tends to keep me lying still. In the same way, the idea of further
sleep means not only the reinforcement of this disposition to lie
still, but also, on the negative side, a blocking of the suggestion
from the alarum-clock. The situation offers the alternatives ‘action’
and ‘no action’; but the nerve-forces which the situation calls into
play, and which correspond with these alternatives, both alike bear
upon ‘action,’ as both alike bear upon ‘no action.’ _The conflict
is thus, after all, of the same kind as in selective action._ Idea
does not oppose impulse, nor does activity oppose passivity; but
nerve-forces which make for action and against rest oppose nerve-forces
which make for rest and against action; the double-faced nature of the
nervous mechanism is the key to the riddle. The particular ‘action’ and
the particular mode of ‘no action’ are, naturally, determined by the
situation itself.
_If these selective and volitional actions are often repeated, choice
is likely to give way to habit_; some one impulse gains predominance
over the rest; and then, as if to pay the price of victory, speedily
falls to the sensorimotor or ideomotor form, and finally lapses
into an artificial reflex. When we are learning to play a musical
instrument, our actions are one and all selective; we have to think
which dot upon the staff stands for which note upon the keys, and which
finger is to be set down where. When we have become adepts, the bare
sight of the printed score touches off the appropriate movements; we
play ‘instinctively’ in the right key, in the right tempo, with the
right emphasis; we may even carry on a conversation, and still play
correctly, though we have never seen the score before. The practised
speaker does not ‘choose’ his words; his ideas express themselves for
him; he may even run ahead in thought, while his larynx is still busy
with the present topic. The road to automatism is that with which we
are already familiar (p. 245), though the psychological history of the
automatic actions is different.
§ 59. =The Compound Reaction.=—The detailed analyses that we felt the
need of on p. 249 ought, by rights, to be provided by the reaction
experiment; for that, as we said on p. 239, furnishes an outline-plan
of experimental work which can be filled in and complicated in all
manner of ways. Why, then, should not selective and volitional
action be as manageable as impulsive? and why should we not follow,
experimentally, the rise of impulse to choice and its later return to
impulse?
_There are two main reasons, the one internal and the other external,
why the reaction experiment has not developed along the lines of our
psychological classification of action._ The internal reason is that
_the reactor is extremely sensitive to slight changes in instruction_,
in the rules laid down for the experiment. We have already had an
instance: the sensory reaction is a skeleton impulsive action; but
the motor reaction, which results from a shift of emphasis in the
instruction, is not sensorimotor; it is an abbreviated or telescoped
impulsive action. Psychologists have naturally been interested in
this side of the experiment, and so have tried the effect of varying
instructions, instead of duplicating in the laboratory the gross types
of action that our classification distinguishes. The second, external
reason is that _the reaction, largely on account of its outside
origin, was for some time treated in a chapter apart_; not until the
nineties of the last century did psychologists realise that it gave
them experimental control of action; and so the technique has been
complicated and the outline filled in without special reference to the
psychology of action. We need not here go into details; it is enough to
say that experimenters have tried the effect of increasing the number
of stimuli, and thus of leaving the reactor more or less uncertain of
what he shall expect; of increasing the number of possible responsive
movements; and of varying the instruction given beforehand to the
reactor, in such wise that a particular responsive movement is assigned
to a particular stimulus, or that response is made to certain stimuli
but not to certain others. _All these forms of compound reaction have
an interest of their own_, which makes their analysis desirable;
they enable us to trace the establishment and course of determining
tendencies, the tendencies set up by the instructions; and some of them
throw light upon the psychology of negative instruction (p. 250). Only,
as we have said, they do not represent the different types of action.
Things are now changing; but a great deal of work must be done before
we obtain typical analyses of the actions discussed in the preceding
paragraphs.
In one respect, this historical severance of the reaction experiment
from the special psychology of action has been of scientific advantage;
it has left experimenters free to employ the reaction method in any
connection in which it promised to be of service. _The technique
of the reaction experiment has, in fact, proved useful in many
investigations, in which the psychology of action is not involved._
Thus, we may measure the time required for response at different levels
of _attention_, the time required (under various circumstances) for
_recognition_, the time required for the _discrimination_ of sensations
whose stimuli are more or less alike, and so on. There are a great
many experiments into which this feature of time-measurement may be
introduced; and when they have been often repeated, and standard times
have been determined, the times themselves and the numerical statement
of their constancy become psychologically significant (p. 242); they
indicate, in a sort of short-hand way, what the observer has done and
how uniformly he has done it. One of the most valuable extensions of
the reaction experiment, from the practical point of view, is the
_association reaction_; words are shown or called out to the observer,
who replies in every case by the first word that comes into his mind.
This experiment may be performed with abnormal as well as with normal
reactors, and the results are of importance to the alienist. It has
also been employed with a view to the detection of crime: a series
of words, some of which bear upon the circumstances of the crime,
is presented to the supposedly guilty person, and the time of his
response to the critical words is taken as an indication of his guilt
or innocence. Under laboratory conditions, with ‘crimes’ invented for
the sake of the experiment, some rather surprising results have been
obtained; but there have also been flat failures; and no one can yet
say positively whether the association reaction will have its place in
the legal procedure of the future.
All these word-reactions move in the realm of meanings, which are
the practically important things; there is no reason, however, why
experiments of the kind described on p. 161 should not be accompanied
by time-measurements. We have already suggested that moods might be
timed (p. 227); and it is possible to measure the time required for
the arousal of a sense-feeling, as well as to note its duration. On
the whole, therefore, the reaction experiment or, as we may now term
it, the =reaction method= should play an even larger part in the
experimental psychology of the future than it has played in the past.
§ 60. =Will, Wish and Desire.=—The compound reactions have led us
into a digression. But, if the traditional forms—the discriminative,
cognitive and choice reactions—are off the main track of the
psychology of action, they still throw light on the establishment of
determining tendencies to action, and in so far contribute to the
psychology of =will=. For will, taken in a psychological and not
in a moral sense, is simply _the general name for the sum total of
tendencies, inherited and acquired, that determine our actions_; and
we distinguish different types of will, according as these tendencies
to action manifest themselves, characteristically, in different ways.
The man of strong will is one whose tendencies are so deep-seated
and persistent that he attains his end, or at any rate continues to
strive towards it, however remote it may be and however numerous the
counter-suggestions that oppose it; and the man of weak will is one
whose tendencies are so instable that he is at the mercy of every
fresh suggestion that comes. James remarks that, when the will is
healthy, action follows, neither too slowly nor too rapidly, as the
resultant of all the forces engaged; whereas, when it is unhealthy,
action is either explosive or obstructed: the mercurial or dare-devil
temperament shows an explosive will, “discharging so promptly into
movements that inhibitions get no time to arise”; and the limp
characters, the failures, sentimentalists, drunkards, schemers, show
the obstructed will, in which “impulsion is insufficient or inhibition
in excess,” Divisions of this sort might be pushed much further; but
here, as in the parallel case of temperament (p. 227), it is enough to
indicate the lines along which classification may proceed.
The terms ‘wish’ and ‘desire’ come to us from popular psychology, and
cover a great variety of actual experience. If we are willing to speak
somewhat arbitrarily, we may say that a =desire= appears when some
particular tendency to action, which has present control of the nervous
system, is thwarted by external circumstances, while the goal of action
is still regarded as attainable; and that a =wish= appears when some
tendency to action rises to momentary dominance, but is promptly met
by inhibiting tendencies, while the goal of action is regarded as
unattainable. This statement of the difference between desire and wish
will not fit every case, for the reason that the terms are popular, and
not technical, and that their meanings are not sharply distinguished
either in ordinary speech or in psychology. The experiences themselves,
if we seek to compare them with the experiences discussed in previous
chapters, approach most nearly to _sense-feelings_. Desire is a
straining-exciting, and wish a straining-subduing feeling; and both
desire and wish may be either pleasurable or unpleasurable, according
as the focal idea is the idea of result, of the goal of action, or the
idea of its (present or permanent) inaccessibility. The existence of
these ideas, however, and the play of associative tendencies which it
implies, set desire and wish upon a higher plane of mental development
than the sense-feelings; and the fact of direction, of the pressure of
determining tendencies, marks another difference between the two kinds
of experience.
_This reference to sense-feeling reminds us of the doctrine, common to
the associationist psychology and to modern popular psychology, that
‘pleasure and pain’ are the sole determinants of action._ Bain, for
instance, tells us that “the proper stimulus of the will, namely some
variety of pleasure or pain,” is always “needed to give the impetus”;
“that primary constitution, under which our activity is put in motion
by our feelings,” remains unchanged through the whole history of
mind. Spencer, as we have seen (p. 86), regards it as a corollary to
the general law of organic evolution that “pleasures and pains have
necessarily been the incentives to, and deterrents from, actions which
the conditions of existence demanded and negatived”; our actions are
always ‘guided’ by pleasures and pains, immediate or remote. Leslie
Stephen, who is in the main a disciple of Spencer, writes in his
brilliant _Science of Ethics_: “pain and pleasure are the determining
causes of action; it may even be said that they are the sole and the
ultimate causes.” And, lastly,—though the list of quotations might be
greatly extended,—Professor Sully asserts that “the prompting forces
in our voluntary action are feelings.”
It is true that there is oftentimes a close relation between feeling
and action; we gave some examples on p. 231. It is also true, however,
that there are numberless actions into which feeling does not enter.
The associationist school have, therefore, fallen into a mistake the
opposite of that which we laid at their door on p. 161; _as they look
at the course of ideas in too intellectual a way, so do they look
at action in too emotional a way_. They also repeat a mistake which
we noted on p. 146. There we found that an idea is supposed to have
a ‘power’ to recall another idea; Hume refers to association as “a
kind of attraction” which one idea exerts upon another. So here the
feelings are supposed to have a ‘power’ to arouse or prevent or deflect
actions; they are used to _explain_ conduct, precisely as the laws
of association are used to _explain_ the course of ideas. Both these
theories _betray a misunderstanding of the psychological problem_.
We must conclude, then, that the associationists are at fault in their
observation; for even if the earliest impulsive actions (p. 244) were
invariably preceded by feeling,—and that is a matter of guesswork,—it
is still true that our present actions show no such uniformity. We
conclude, also, that the explanation of action is to be found in the
determining tendencies of the nervous system, and not in the motive
force of feeling.
Questions and Exercises
(1) (_a_) It is said on p. 232 that “the present is a good time for
repeating” certain cautions. Now that you have read the chapter, can
you see why the statement was made? (_b_) Criticise, in your own words,
the doctrine that pleasure and pain have ‘power’ to determine actions.
(2) Give from your own experience instances (_a_) of sensorimotor and
ideomotor action, and (_b_) of the passage of selective or volitional
action into some simpler form. Make your account as detailed as
possible.
(3) Draw up a table, in the form of a genealogical tree, of the various
kinds of action discussed in this chapter. Write a psychological
formula for every kind. Where does instinctive action come in?
(4) Give instances, from history or fiction, (_a_) of selective action,
(_b_) of volitional action, and (_c_) of conflicts from which a
volitional action might have resulted, but did not.
(5) Name (_a_) some of the principal human reflexes, and (_b_) some of
the artificial reflexes most commonly acquired by civilised man.
(6) The following statements occur in various psychological works:
(_a_) every impulse is at the same time emotion; (_b_) every emotion
is at the same time impulse; (_c_) every emotion is at the same time
instinct; (_d_) every instinct is an impulse. What comment have you to
make?
(7) What evidence can you offer for the hypothesis (p. 245) that
impulsive actions are, in the history of the race, as old as tropisms?
(8) Suppose that you perform a selective action; the action issues
from a conflict of determining tendencies; you ‘decide’ among various
possibilities of action. Does the decision always take place in the
same way, or can you distinguish ‘types’ of decision?—Do not hurry
to answer the question; keep it by you, and answer it in the light of
experience.
(9) We saw that the motor reaction (which has its counterpart in
everyday life) is a telescoped impulsive action. Can you mention any
other kinds of action (also occurring in everyday life) which do not
find their precise place under the headings of the chapter?
(10) What kinds of action are involved in the product of constructive
imagination?
(11) (_a_) What is the chief psychological difference between
hesitation and deliberation? (_b_) Give, from your own experience, a
detailed analysis of some desire.
(12) It is very important that you should become acquainted with
the reaction experiment, and should analyse a number of reactions.
Many instrumental outfits are on the market; one of the simplest is
President E. C. Sanford’s vernier chronoscope (C. H. Stoelting Co.).
When you have familiarised yourself with the experiment, try to plan an
experimental study of selective and volitional actions.
References
W. James, Principles of Psychology, ii., 1890, ch. xxvi.; W. Wundt,
Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology, 1896, Lects. xviii., xxix.;
Outlines of Psychology, 1907, § 14; E. B. Titchener, Text-book of
Psychology, 1910, 428 ff.
Special references are: T. H. Huxley, Lessons in Elementary Physiology,
Lesson xi. (1896, 302); C. L. Morgan, Animal Behaviour, 1900, 138; A.
Bain, The Emotions and the Will: The Will, ch. iii. (1880, 352 and
elsewhere); H. Spencer, The Principles of Ethics, i., ch. xiv. (1892,
244 and elsewhere); L. Stephen, The Science of Ethics, 1882, 50; J.
Sully, The Human Mind, ii., 1892, 2, 236. The technique of the vernier
chronoscope is described by Titchener, Experimental Psychology, I., i.,
1901, 117 ff.; ii., 212 ff.