Psychology by Robert S. Woodworth (intellectual books to read .TXT) 📖

of a table, which shall show for each instinct: (a) the natural stimulus, (b) the native motor response, (c) the end-result that the instinct tends towards, in its adult as well as its native condition, and (d) the emotion, if any, that goes with the activity of the instinct.

2. An adult tendency or propensity may be simply an unmodified instinct, or it may be derived from instincts by combination, etc. Try to identify each of the following as an instinct, or to analyze it into two or more instincts:

(a) Love for adventure.
(b) Patriotism.
(c) A father's pride in his children.
(d) Love for travel.
(e) Insubordination.
(f) Love for dancing.

3. Which of the instincts are most concerned in making people work?

4. Show how self-assertion finds gratification in the life-work of

an actor.
a physician.
a housekeeper.
a teacher.
a railroad engineer.

5. Arrange the following impulses and emotions in the order of the frequency of their occurrence in your ordinary day's work and play:

(a) Fear.
(b) Anger.
(c) Disgust
(d) Curiosity.
(e) Self-assertion.
(f) Submission.
(g) The tendency to protect or "mother" another.

6. How do "practical jokes" lend support to the view that laughter is primarily aroused by a sense of one's own superiority?

7. Get together a dozen jokes or funny stories, and see how many of them can be placed with the practical jokes in this respect.

8. Mention some laughter-stimuli that do not lend support to the theory mentioned in Exercise 6.

9. What instincts find outlet in (a) dress, (b) automobiling, (c) athletics, (d) social conversation?

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REFERENCES

McDougall's Social Psychology gives, in Chapters III and IV, an inventory of the instinctive equipment of mankind, and in Chapter V attempts to analyze many complex human emotions and propensities into their native elements.

Thorndike, in his Educational Psychology, Briefer Course, 1914, Chapters, II-V, attempts a more precise analysis of stimulus and response.

Watson's Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, 1919, attempts in Chapter VI to show that there are only three primary emotions, fear, rage and love; and in Chapter VII gives a critical review of the work on human instincts.

H. C. Warren, in Chapter VI of his Human Psychology, 1919, gives a brief survey of the reflexes and instincts.

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CHAPTER IX

THE FEELINGS PLEASANTNESS AND UNPLEASANTNESS, AND OTHER STATES OF FEELINGS AND THEIR INFLUENCE UPON BEHAVIOR

Feeling is subjective and unanalyzed. It is conscious, and an "unconscious feeling" would be a contradiction in terms. But, while conscious, it is not cognitive; it is not "knowing something", even about your subjective condition; it is simply "the way you feel". As soon as you begin to analyze it, and say, "I feel badly here or there, in this way or in that", you know something about your subjective condition, but the feeling has evaporated for the instant. In passing over into definite knowledge of facts, it has ceased to be feeling.

Feeling is an undercurrent of consciousness, or we might call it a background. The foreground consists of what you are taking notice of or thinking about, or of what you are intending to do; that is to say, the foreground is cognitive or impulsive, or it may be both at once, as when we are intent on throwing this stone and hitting that tree. In the background lies the conscious subjective condition. Behind facts observed and acts intended lies the state of the individual's feeling, sometimes calm, sometimes excited, sometimes expectant, sometimes gloomy, sometimes buoyant.

The number of different ways of feeling must be very great, and it would be no great task to find a hundred different words, some of them no doubt partly synonymous, to complete the sentence, "I feel _______". All the {173} emotions, as "stirred-up states of mind", belong under the general head of the feelings.

But when the psychologist speaks of the feelings, he usually means the elementary feelings. An emotion is far from elementary. If you accept the James-Lange theory, you think of an emotion as a blend of organic sensations; and if you reject that theory, you would still probably agree that such an emotion as anger or fear seems a big, complex state of feeling. It seems more complex than such a sensation as red, warm, or bitter, which are called elementary sensations because no one has ever succeeded in decomposing them into simpler sensations. Now, the question is whether any feelings can be indicated that are as elementary as these simple sensations.

Pleasantness and Unpleasantness Are Simple Feelings

No one has ever been able to break up the feelings of pleasantness and unpleasantness into anything simpler. "Pleasure" and "displeasure" are not always so simple; they are names for whole states of mind which may be very complex, including sensations and thoughts in addition to the feelings of pleasantness and unpleasantness. "Pain" does not make a satisfactory substitute for the long word "unpleasantness", because "pain", as we shall see in the next chapter, is properly the name of a certain sensation, and feelings are to be distinguished from sensations. Red, warm and bitter, along with many others, are sensations, but pleasantness and unpleasantness are not sensations.

How, then, do the elementary feelings differ from sensations? In the first place, sensations submit readily to being picked out and observed, and in fact become more vivid when they are brought into the "foreground", while feelings grow vague and lose their character when thus singled {174} out for examination. Attend to the noises in the street and they stand out clearly, attend to the internal sensation of breathing and it stands out clearly, but attend to your pleasant state of feeling and it retreats out of sight.

In the second place, sensations are "localized"; you can tell pretty well where they seem to come from. Sensations of light, sound and smell are localized outside the body, sensations of touch are localized on the skin (or sometimes outside), taste sensations are localized in the mouth, organic and muscular sensations in some part of the body. On the other hand, pleasantness and unpleasantness are much less definitely localized; they seem to be "in us", without being in any special part of us.

In the third place, feelings differ from sensations in having no known sense organs. There is no special sense organ or set of sense organs for the feeling of pleasantness or unpleasantness, as there is for warmth or cold. Some sensations are pleasant, to be sure, and some unpleasant; but there is no one kind of sense organ that has the monopoly of either sort of feeling.

Feeling-Tone of Sensations

The pleasantness or unpleasantness characteristic of many sensations is called their "feeling-tone", and sensations that are markedly pleasant or unpleasant are said to have a strong or pronounced feeling-tone. Bitter is intrinsically unpleasant, sweet pleasant, the salty taste, when not too strong, neither one nor the other, so that it has no definite feeling-tone. Odors, as well as tastes, usually have a rather definite feeling-tone. Of sounds, smooth tones are pleasant, grating noises unpleasant. Bright colors are pleasant, while dull shades are sometimes unpleasant, sometimes merely indifferent or lacking in feeling-tone. Pain is usually unpleasant, moderate warmth and cold pleasant, simple touch {175} indifferent. Very intense sensations of any kind are likely to be unpleasant.

The statements made above as to the subjectivity and non-localization of feeling do not apply altogether to the feeling-tone of sensations. The pleasantness or unpleasantness of a sensation is localized with the sensation and seems to belong to the object rather than to ourselves. The unpleasantness of a toothache seems to be in the tooth rather than simply "in us". The pleasantness of a sweet taste is localized in the mouth, and we even think of the sweet substance as being objectively pleasant. We say that it is a "pleasant day", and that there is a "pleasant tang in the air", as if the pleasantness were an objective fact.

By arguing with a person, however, you can get him to admit that, while the day is pleasant to him, and the tang in the air pleasant to him, they may be unpleasant to another person; and he will admit that a sweet substance, ordinarily pleasant, is unpleasant when he has had too much of sweet things to eat. So you can make him realize that pleasantness and unpleasantness depend on the individual and his condition, and are subjective rather than objective. Show a group of people a bit of color, and you will find them agreeing much better as to what color that is than as to how pleasant it is. Feeling-tone is subjective in the sense that people disagree about it.

Theories of Feelings

1. Pleasantness might represent a general organic state, and unpleasantness the contrary state, each state being an internal bodily response to pleasant or unpleasant stimuli, and making itself felt as an unanalyzable compound of vague internal sensations.

This theory of feeling is certainly attractive, and it would {176} account very well for all the facts so far stated, for the subjectivity of feeling, for its lack of localization, and for the absence of specific sense organs for the feelings. It would bring the feelings into line with the emotions. But the real test of the theory lies just here: can we discover radically different organic states for the two opposite feelings?

Numerous experiments have been conducted in the search for such radically different organic states, but thus far the search has been rather disappointing. Arrange to record the subject's breathing and heart beat, apply pleasant and unpleasant stimuli to him, and see whether there is any characteristic organic change that goes with pleasant stimuli, and an opposite change with unpleasant stimuli. You should also obtain an introspective report from your subject, so as to be sure that the "pleasant stimuli" actually gave a feeling of pleasantness, etc. Certain experiments of this sort have indicated that with pleasantness goes slower heart beat and quicker breathing, with unpleasantness quicker heart beat and slower breathing. But not all investigators have got these results; and, anyway, it would be impossible to generalize to the extent of asserting that slow heart beat always gave a pleasant state of feeling, and rapid heart beat an unpleasant; for there is slow heart beat during a "morning grouch", and rapid during joyful expectation. Or, in regard to breathing, try this experiment: hasten your breathing and see whether a feeling of pleasantness results; slacken it and see whether unpleasantness results. The fact is that pleasantness can go with a wide range of organic states, so far as these are revealed by heart beat and breathing; and the same with unpleasantness. If there is any organic fact definitely characteristic of either state of feeling, it is a subtle fact that has hitherto eluded observation.

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2. Pleasantness might represent smooth and easy brain action, unpleasantness slow and impeded brain action. According to this theory, unimpeded progress of nerve currents through the brain is pleasant, while resistance encountered at the brain synapses is unpleasant. A stimulus is pleasant, then, because the nerve currents started by it find smooth going through the brain centers, and another stimulus is unpleasant because it finds the going poor.

While this theory looks good in some ways, and fits some cases very well--as the great unpleasantness of blocked reaction, where you cannot make up your mind what to do--there are two big objections to it. The first objection is found in the facts of practice. Practising any reaction makes it more and more smooth-running and free from inner obstruction, and should therefore make it more and more pleasant; but, as a matter of fact, practising an unfamiliar act of any sort makes it more pleasant for a time only, after which continued practice makes it automatic and neither pleasant nor unpleasant. The smoothest reactions, which should give the highest degree of pleasant feeling according to the theory, are simply devoid of all feeling.

The second objection lies in the difficulty of believing unpleasant stimuli to give slow, impeded reactions. On the contrary, the instinctive defensive reactions to unpleasant stimuli are very quick, and give no