Robert Sessions Woodworth

“ There are brilliant exceptions--bookkeepers who add columns of figures with great speed and precision, students who know just how to put in two hours of study on a lesson with the maximum of effect, writers who always say just what they wish to say and hit the nail on the head every time--but the great majority of us are only passable. We need strong incentive, we need a clear and visible measure of success or failure, we need, if such a thing were possible, a practice curve before us to indicate where we stand at the present moment with respect to our past and our possible future. ”

“ Perhaps we do not often think of a fine painting or piece of music as a problem set us for solution, but it is that, and owes part of its appeal to its being a problem. To "get the hang of" a work of art requires some effort and attention; if the problem presented is too difficult for us, the work of art is dry; if too easy, it is tame.
The mastery motive is probably as important in the enjoyment of art as it is in play and dreaming. ”

“ Yes, sometimes we imagine ourselves in danger and plan out an escape. One individual often amuses himself by imagining he is arrested and accused of some crime, and figuring out how he could establish an alibi or otherwise prove his innocence. But fear daydreams also include worry, which seems at first to be an altogether unpleasant state of mind, forced upon us and not indulged in as most daydreams are. Yet, as the worry is often entirely needless, it cannot be said to be forced upon a person, but must have some motive. ”

“ A young man, "tied to the apron-strings" of a too affectionate and too domineering mother, has a strong desire to break loose and be an independent unit in the world; but at the same time, being much attached to his mother, he is horrified by this desire. She goes on a railroad journey without him--just an ordinary journey with no special danger--but all the time she is away he is in an agony of suspense lest the train may be wrecked. Such an abnormal degree of worry calls for explanation. Well--did not the worry perhaps conceal a wish, a wish that the train might be wrecked? ”

“ You are watching one of your team do the pole vault, for instance, and are so much absorbed in his performance and so desirous for him to succeed that you identify yourself with him to a degree. He is rising to clear the high bar, and the thought of his clearing it, monopolizing your mind and leaving no room for the inhibitory thought that the performer is down there in the field and you up here in the stand, causes you to make an incipient leg movement as if you yourself were vaulting. ”

“ We can say that perception is an adjustment to facts as they are, while motor adjustment is a preparation for changing the facts. Perception does not alter the facts, but takes them as they are; movement alters the facts or produces new facts. We can say that perception comes in between sensation and motor preparation. But none of these statements is quite enough to satisfy us, if we wish to know something of the machinery of perception. What is the stimulus in perception, and what is the nature of the response? ”

“ If the self-assertive impulse of an individual player is too strongly aroused, he spoils the game, just as an angry player spoils a friendly wrestling match or snowball fight, and just as a thoroughly frightened passenger spoils a trip down the rapids, which was meant to be simply thrilling. The instincts are active in play, but they must not be too active, for human play is an activity carried on well above the instinctive level, and dependent on motives that cannot wholly be analyzed in terms of the instincts. ”

“ A typical product of imagination is composed of parts perceived at different times and later recalled and combined, as a centaur is composed of man and horse, or a mermaid of woman and fish. Imagination is like reasoning in being a mental reaction; but it differs from reasoning in being manipulation rather than exploration; reasoning consists in seeing relationships that exist between facts, and imagination in putting facts into new relationships. ”

“ When you have described reasoning as a process of mental exploration, you have told only half the story. The successful reasoner not only seeks, but finds. He not only ransacks his memory for data bearing on his problem, but he finally "sees" the solution clearly. The whole exploratory process culminates in a perceptive reaction. What he "sees" is not presented to his senses at the moment, but he "sees that something must be so". This kind of perception may be called inference. ”

“ A young woman is brought before the court for delinquency, and the psychologist who has tested her testifies that she is of low intelligence. But the young woman is good-looking and graceful in her speech and manners, and so impresses the judge that he dismisses as "absurd" the notion of her being feeble-minded. He sets her free, on which she promptly gets into trouble again. Apparently the only way to perceive intelligence is to see a person in action, preferably under standard conditions, where his performance can be measured; that is to say, in an intelligence test. ”

“ Breathing, obviously a native reaction, is ordinarily automatic and needs no preparatory reactions, simply because air is so easy to get. But let breathing be difficult, for any reason, and the stifling sensation is as impulsive as hunger or thirst. The stuffy air in a cave or in a hole under a haymow will lead a child to frantic escape. Possibly the delight in being out of doors which shows itself in young children, and is not lost in adults, represents a sort of air-hunting instinct, parallel to food-hunting. ”

“ His life is a voyage of discovery, and at the same time a career of invention.
Discovery and invention!--high-sounding words, still they are applicable to everyday life. The facts observed may not be absolutely new, but at least they have always to be verified afresh, since action needs always to take account of present reality. The invention may be very limited in scope, but seldom does an hour pass that does not call for doing something a little out of the ordinary, so as to escape from a fresh trap or pluck fruit from a newly discovered bough. ”

“ Now, why is a dream? What satisfaction does it bring to the dreamer? Or shall we say that it is merely a mechanical play of association, with no motivation behind it? Dreams are interesting while they last, sometimes fearful, sometimes angry, sometimes amorous, otherwise not very emotional but distinctly interesting, so that many people hate to have a dream broken up by awaking. It seems likely, then, that dreams are like daydreams in affording gratification to desires. They are "wish-fulfilling", to borrow a term from Freud's theory of dreams, soon to be considered. ”

“ The slight sound arouses intense mental response because it means something of importance--like the faint cry of the baby upstairs, noticed instead of the loud noises of the street. The delicate finger movement aims at some difficult result, while the big muscles may be doing their accustomed work automatically.
It is not always the most efficient mental process that is most conscious; indeed, practising an act makes it both more efficient and less conscious. It is, rather, the less efficient processes that require attention, because they require mental work to keep them going straight. ”

“ Watch an animal in the presence of a strange object. He looks at it, sniffs, and approaches it in a hesitating manner; suddenly he runs away for a short distance, then faces about and approaches again. You can see that he is almost evenly balanced between two contrary tendencies, one of which is curiosity, while the other is much like fear. It is not full-fledged fear, not so much a tendency to escape as an alertness to be ready to escape. ”

“ Criticism is always at their elbow, suggesting doubts and alternatives and preventing progress in the creative activity, instead of biding its time and coming in to inspect the completed result. For a similar reason, much of the best inventive work--writing, for example, or painting--is done in prolonged periods of intense activity, which allow time for invention to get warmed to its task, when it takes the bit in its teeth and dashes off at a furious speed, leaving criticism to trail along behind. ”

“ In ordinary life, mental and physical traits are not sharply distinguished, and probably they cannot be distinguished except in the abstract. The mere size of a person affects his attitude towards other people and their attitude towards him--and it is in such social relations that personality most clearly stands out. His size affects the individual's behavior in subtle ways, since the big fellow dominates others easily just by virtue of his size, and so tends to be good-humored, while the little fellow is apt to be strenuous and self-assertive. ”

“ But one who is lacking in force, especially the personal force needed in dealing with other people, may take refuge in daydreams as a substitute for real doing. Instead of hustling for the money he needs he may, like Micawber, charm himself with imagining the good opportunities that may turn up. Instead of going and making love to the lady of his choice, he shyly keeps away from her and merely dreams of winning her. He substitutes imaginary situations for the real facts of his life, and gratifies his mastery motive by imaginary exploits. ”

“ Observation is itself a form of doing, a mental reaction as distinguished from a purely passive or receptive state; so that learning is always active. Observation we found to be of great assistance, both by way of hastening the learning process, and by way of making what is learned more available for future use. Our previous studies of learning thus lead us to inquire whether committing to memory may not consist partly in rehearsing what we wish to learn, and partly in observing it. Learning by rote, or by merely repeating a performance over and over again, is, indeed, a fact ”