Association (psychology)

“ We shall therefore occupy ourselves first with the method of association, a method which has been of valuable assistance to me both practically and theoretically. The association method in vogue in psychology, as well as its history, is of course, so familiar to you that there is no need to speak of it. ”

“ If he is unhappy, unpleasant associations have the advantage; if happy, pleasant. If he is absorbed in a given matter, facts related to that matter have the advantage. Frequency, recency and intensity summarize the history of associations, and measure their strength as dependent on their history; but the present state of mind is an additional directive factor, and when it has much to do with recall, we speak of directed or controlled association. ”

“ From this practical point of view it would be a true ignoratio elenchi to flatter one's self that one has dealt a heavy blow at the psychology of association, when one has exploded the theory of atomistic ideas, or shown that contiguity and similarity between ideas can only be there after association is done. [511] The whole body of the associationist psychology remains standing after you have translated 'ideas' into 'objects,' on the one hand, and 'brain-processes' on the other ”

“ Try the matter out for yourself, in any concrete case of association, and you will reach the same result; the ideas of associationism are not psychological ideas. James sums things up for us: “Association,” he says, “so far as the word stands for an effect, is between things thought of; it is things, not ideas, which are associated in the mind. And so far as association stands for a cause, it is between processes in the brain; it is these which, by being associated in certain ways, determine what successive objects shall be thought.” The brain associates, and meanings are associated. ”

“ But unless we are led astray by the mirage of unity at any price, it is impossible to admit that every association supposes an emotional factor as a determining reason. Not to speak of the numerous cases resulting from contiguity, in which the part played by the feelings is very doubtful, I find an important category of purely intellectual associations, where the intervention of the feelings appears to me impossible to verify. ”

“ The stranger, as a whole individual, has never been contiguous with my friend, but some characteristic of the stranger has been thus contiguous. In association by similarity, it is not the whole present object that arouses recall of the similar object, but some part of the present object. This kind of association is important in thinking, since it brings together facts from different past experiences, and thus assembles data that may be applied to a new problem. ”

“ Such a co-operation of assimilations and complications is seen in the most striking manner in those processes of association which in ordinary life are called "recognitions," or, if the scope of the region of association over which the recognition stretches is indefinitely larger, are called "cognitions." We recognise, for example, an acquaintance, whom we have not seen for a long time. ”

“ A desire or purpose being present in many minds, the idea of the association arises in some one or more of them, and, being communicated to others, becomes the immediate instrument through which the association is called into being; and only so long as this idea of the whole as an instrument for attaining the common end persists in the minds of the individuals does the association continue to exist. In this respect such an association is at the opposite end of the scale from the fortuitous crowd, which owes its existence to the accidents of time and place merely. ”

“ So that while all associative phenomena rest on subjective psychology, distinctively human association depends upon and presupposes a fully developed rational faculty.
I have called this the perceptive, as distinguished from the affective side of mind. This term, though inadequate to express the highest processes of the intellect is well adapted to describe the incipient stages of rational life. Since the new biology has taught us to account for every organ and attribute by the law of advantage, the intellect of man has presented the most marked obstacle to this mode of interpreting nature. ”

“ However the associationist may represent the present ideas as thronging and arranging themselves, still, the spiritualist insists, he has in the end to admit that something, be it brain, be it 'ideas,' be it 'association,' knows past time as past, and fills it out with this or that event. And when the spiritualist calls memory an 'irreducible faculty,' he says no more than this admission of the associationist already grants. ”

“ The law of association by contiguity is unsatisfactory from a modern standpoint because it treats only of the stimulus, and says nothing about the response. It states, quite truly, that stimuli must be contiguous in order that an association between them may be formed, but it neglects to state that the association, being something in us, must {398} be formed by our reaction to the stimuli. It is especially necessary to consider the response because, as we have just seen, the response is not always made and the association, therefore, not always formed. ”

“ Small wonder that Hume compared the law of association in psychology with the law of gravitation in physics! All the great names in British psychology (and the fact throws a good deal of light on the psychology of the nation itself) are connected with the doctrine of association; a whole science has taken its national colour from a single principle of explanation. Association has also played its part, though less dominantly, in France and Germany. ”

“ As it often happens that an association of strong feeling tone produces in the experiment a perseveration, with the result that not only the critical association, but also two or three successive associations are imperfectly reproduced, it will be very interesting to see how many imperfect reproductions are so arranged in the series in our cases. ”

“ That is, the prospect has met other people manifesting certain characteristics, and has fallen into the habit of hasty generalization, or classification of people in accordance with certain traits of appearance, manner, etc. This is the operation of the psychological principle of the Association of Ideas, and may be influenced by what is known as the Suggestion of Association. ”

“ This is one of the most striking proofs of the range of application of the principle of association of ideas in psychology. An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total. As there is no limit to the various associations into which an interesting idea may enter, one sees in how many ways an interest may be derived. ”

“ Every nameable thing, act, or relation has numerous properties, qualities, or aspects. In our minds the properties of each thing, together with its name, form an associated group. If different parts of the brain are severally concerned with the several properties, and a farther part with the hearing, and still another with the uttering, of the name, there must inevitably be brought about (through the law of association which we shall later study) such a dynamic connection amongst all these brain-parts that the activity of any one of them will be likely to awaken the activity of all the rest. ”

“ If the origin of concepts and of distinct types of association is such as I suggested to-day, and if the existence of these concepts and types of association is brought into the consciousness of primitive man by the incidents of his daily life, when customary concepts and customary associations seem to be broken, we recognize that man must in a great many cases find himself confronted with the fact that certain ideas exist in his mind for which he cannot give any explanation except that they are there. ”

“ We have thus, whenever we meet a familiar object, that sense of expectation gratified which is so large a factor in our æsthetic emotions; and even were there no 'fringe of tendency' toward the arousal of extrinsic associates (which there certainly always is) , still this intrinsic play of mutual association among the parts would give a character of ease to familiar percepts which would make of them a distinct subjective class. A process fills its old bed in a different way from that in which it makes a new bed. One can appeal to introspection for proof. ”

“ Associated Interest depends largely upon the principle of Association or Apperception, the latter being defined as "that mental process by which the perceptions or ideas are brought into relation to our previous ideas and feelings, and thus are given a new clearness, meaning and application." Apperception is the mental process by which objects and ideas presented to us are perceived and thought of by us in the light of our past experience, temperament, tastes, likes and dislikes, occupation, interest, prejudices, etc., instead of as they actually are. ”

“ Often we succeed in forming a complete association with the past, we localize the given familiar experience, and then complete recognition ensues. Familiarity is incomplete, vague, indefinite recognition. ”

“ In short, the entire potential content of one's consciousness is accessible from any one of its points. This is why we can never work the laws of association forward: starting from the present field as a cue, we can never cipher out in advance just what the person will be thinking of five minutes later. The elements which may become prepotent in the process, the parts of each successive field round which the associations shall chiefly turn, the possible bifurcations of suggestion, are so numerous and ambiguous as to be indeterminable before the fact. ”

“ If associationism is identified with objective psychology, all the well-founded objections to the monopoly of the somewhat sterile principle of association appear as objections to phenomenalism in psychology, and voluntaristic theories, especially those which work with the teleological category of apperception, are put in its place. But without returning to apperceptionism we can overcome the one-sidedness of associationism if full use is made of the means which the world of phenomena offers to theory. ”

“ This imperceptibly brings us down to consciousness, from the moment when the affective state can be verified without induction. A certain disposition, a certain manner of feeling, is the direct and immediate cause of association. It is permanent or transitory. If permanent, it answers to the temperament or disposition. As the subject is cheerful, melancholy, erotic, or ambitious, an unconscious selection is exercised on the ideas arising in consciousness; an artist and a practical man, in face of the same object, have two totally distinct modes of association. ”

“ The first association is a distinct complex-constellation, the last is a fragment of her fancies which always occupy themselves with great festal occasions.
Patient says: "If one has been great and then becomes little it is a loss." ”

“ Turning now to association by similarity we find that the relations of the elements are somewhat more complex than in that of contiguity. Where mental life is complex and where there are present many different trains of ideas and images, there will be a tendency for them to cross and intersect at many points. The course of a given train of ideas and images instead of running in its habitual line will tend to become deflected along other lines and give rise to that particular form of association of representative elements known as association by similarity and contrasts. ”

“ In the section entitled "Association," in the short chapter on "Laws of Mind," association by contiguity alone is described. In the chapter on "Memory," however, section on "Suggestion," association by similarity and association by contrast are also described, and described first, though the author regards association by contiguity as the fundamental form.
Professor James has well said that when psychology approaches metaphysics "one must be impartially naïf or impartially critical." ”

“ The meaningful associations of the uneducated are not really the product of intellectual thinking, but are simply the results of a special emotional state. The whole thing is more important to the uneducated, his emotion is greater, and for that reason he pays more attention to the experiment than the educated person, and his associations are therefore more significant. ”

“ I believe it will not be very necessary to prove that these qualities produce an association among ideas, and upon the appearance of one idea naturally introduce another. 'Tis plain that in the course of our thinking, and in the constant revolution of our ideas, our imagination runs easily from one idea to any other that resembles it, and that this quality alone is to the fancy a sufficient bond and association. ”

“ The attempt might be made to answer this question entirely in terms of the psychology of association, only we should then be forced to designate processes as associational which do not at all come under the original definition of the word—namely, processes of fusing or blending, which is not the bringing of a succession of disparate ideas into special relations, but rather a unifying process, in which the after-effect of past experience and the present perception blends to an inseparable synthesis. ”

“ The Help given by Association by Similarity.—It is probable, also, that man's superior association by similarity has much to do with those discriminations of character on which his higher flights of reasoning are based. ”