Educational psychology

Preface

This volume, which describes man's original mental equipment — the inherited foundations of intellect, morals and skill, — is the first of three, which, together, give the main facts of educational psychology. The second volume, on The Psychology of Learning, treats of the laws of learning in general, the improvement of mental functions by practice and their deterioration by fatigue. The third volume, on Individual Differences and Their Causes, treats of the variations of individual men around the general type characteristic of man as a species, and of the influence o-f sex, race, immediate ancestry, maturity and training in producing these variations. This third volume was written first, appearing in 1903 under the general title. Educational Psychology.

A systematic account of present knowledge of the dynamics of human nature and behavior is much needed for students of education and other forms of human control. These volumes represent a selection from, and organization of, recent work in experimental, statistical and comparative psychology, such as will, I hope, economize effort and diminish the chances of error for such students.

The reader to whom these volumes bring any new insight into human nature, power in the quantitative treatment of mental facts, or interest in the rich details of concrete human nature, will become a sharer in my debt to my teachers, William James and James McKeen Cattell, and to that intrepid devotee to concrete human nature, Stanley Hall, whose doctrines I often attack, but whose genius I always admire.

Parts of Chapters I, II, VII, IX, X and KVII of this volume constituted four lectures given at Union College in March, 191 3, under the provisions of the Ichabod Spencer Foundation.

Contents

Chapteh Pagb

I. Introduction i

Original z'ersus Learned Tendencies The Problems of Original Nature

chapter ii General Characteristics of Original Tendencies NAMES for original TENDENCIES

Three terms, reflexes, instincts, and inborn capacities, divide the work of naming these unlearned tendencies. When the tendency concerns a very definite and uniform response to a very simple sensory situation, and when the connection between the situation and the response is very hard to modify and is also very strong so that it is almost inevitable, the connection or response to which it leads is called a reflex.. Thus the knee-jerk is a very definite and uniform response to the simple sense-stimulus of sudden hard pressure against a certain spot. It is hard to lessen, to increase, or otherwise control the movement, and, given the situation, the response almost always comes. When the response is more indefinite, the situation more complex, and the connection more modifiable, instinct becomes the customary term. Thus one's misery at being scorned is too indefinite a response to too complex a situation and is too easily modifiable to be called a reflex. When the tendency is to an extremely indefinite response or set of responses to a very complex situation, and when the connection's final degree of strength is commonly due to very large contributions from training, it has seemed more appropriate to replace reflex and instinct by some term like capacity, or tendency, or potentiality. Thus an original tendency to respond to the circumstances of school education by achievement in learning the arts and sciences is called the capacity for scholarship.

There is, of course, no gap between reflexes and instincts, or between instincts and the still less easily describable original tendencies. The fact is that original tendencies range with respect to the nature of the responses from such as are single,

O THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN

simple, definite, uniform within the individual and only slightly variable amongst individuals, to responses that are highly compound, complex, vague, and variable within one individual's life and amongst individuals. They range with respect to the nature of the situation from simple facts like temperature, oxygen or humidity, to very complex facts like 'meeting suddenly and unexpectedly a large animal when in the dark without human companions,' and include extra-bodily, bodily, and what would be commonly called purely mental, situations. They range with respect to the bond or connection from slight modifiability to great modifiability, and from very close likeness amongst individuals to fairly wide variability.

Much labor has been spent in trying to make hard and fast distinctions between reflexes and instincts and between instincts and these vaguer predispositions which are here called capacities. It is more useful and more scientific to avoid such distinctions in thought, since in fact there is a continuous gradation.

THE COMPONENTS OF AN ORIGINAL TENDENCY

A typical reflex, or instinct, or capacity, as a whole, includes the ability to be sensitive to a certain situation, the ability to make a certain response, and the existence of a bond or connection whereby that response is made to that situation. For instance, the young chick is sensitive to the absence of other members of his species, is able to peep, and is so organized that the absence of other members of the species makes him peep. But the tendency to be sensitive to a certain situation may exist without the existence of a connection therewith of any further exclusive response, and the tendency to make a certain response may exist without the existence of a connection limiting that response exclusively to any single situation. The three-year-old child is by inborn nature markedly sensitive to the presence and acts of other human beings, but the exact nature of his response varies. The original tendency to cry is very strong, but there is no one situation to which it is exclusively bound.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 7

Original nature seems to decide that the individual will respond somehow to certain situations more often than it decides just what he will do, and to decide that he will make certain responses more often than it decides just when he will make them. So, for convenience in thinking- about man's unlearned equipment, this appearance of multiple response to one same situation and multiple causation of one same response may be taken roughly as the fact.

It must not, however, be taken to mean that the result of an action set up in the sensory neurones by a situation is essentially unpredictable — that, for instance, exactly the same neurone-action (paralleling, let us say, the sight of a dog by a certain two-year-old child) may lead, in the two-year-old, now to the act of crying, at another time to shy retreat, at another to effusive joy, and at still another to curious examination of the newcomer, all regardless of any modification by experience. On the contrary, in the same organism the same neurone-action will always produce the same result — in the same individual the really same situation will always produce the same response. ^ The apparent existence of an original sensitivity unconnected with any one particular response, so that apparently the same cause produces different results, is to be explained in one of two ways. First, the apparently same situations may really be different. Thus, the sight of a dog to an infant in its mother's arms is not the same situation as the sight of a dog to an infant alone on the doorstep. Being held in its mother's arms is a part of the situation that may account for the response of mild curiosity in the former case and fear in the latter. Second, if the situations are really identical, the apparently same organism really differs. Thus a dog seen by a child, healthy, rested and calm, may lead to only curiosity, whereas, if seen by the same child, fll, fatigued, and nervously irritable, it may lead to fear. The organism may differ by being differently disposed in its sensory apparatus, in its associative or connecting apparatus, in its motor neurones, in its muscular condition, or in other organs concerned in the response. These predispositions may come through conditions of nutrition, poisoning, fatigue, cooperative stimulation, etc., etc.* .^

Similarly, the really same response is never made to differ- ^ ent situations by the same organism. When the same response j seems to be made to different situations, closer inspection will show that the responses do differ; or that the situations were, in respect to the element that determined the response, identical ; or that the organism is itself different. Thus, though 'a ball seen,' *a tin soldier seen,' and 'a rattle seen' alike provoke 'reaching for,' the total responses do differ, the central nervous system being provoked to three different responses manifested as three different sense-impressions — of a ball, of a tin soldier, and of a rattle. Thus, if 'ball grasped,' 'tin soldier grasped,' and 'rattle grasped' alike provoke 'throwing,' it is because only one particular component, common to the three situations, is effective in determining the act. Thus, if a child now weeps whenever spoken to, whereas before he wept only when hurt or scolded, it is because he is now exhausted, excited, or otherwise changed.

The original connections between situation and response are never due to chance in its true sense, but there are many minor cooperating forces by which a current of conduction in the same sensory neurones or receptors may. on different occasions, Biverge to produce different results in behavior, and by which very different sensory stimulations may converge to a substantially common consequence.

One may use several useful abstract schemes by which to think of man's original equipment of reflexes, instincts and capacities. Perhaps the most convenient is a series of S-R connections of three types. Some are of the type — Si leads to Ri, its peculiar sequent ; some are of the type — Si leads to Ri or R2 or R3 or R4 or R5 etc., according to very minor casual contribu-" tory causes ; some are of the type — Si leads to R+i"i, S2 leads to

*Their most potent causes are the effects of previous experience, but these do not concern the present inquiry, since all effects of previous experience are, of course, to be rigorously excluded from a description of original nature.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

R+Tz, S3 leads to R+fa etc., where n, Vz and rg are minor results.

Graphically this scheme is represented by Figs, i, 2 and 3.

5»-

Fig. 3.

r

"*^^ 1 r.

Besides such a system of tendencies deciding which response any given situation will produce, there are certain tendencies that decide the status of features common to all situation-response connections. There is, for example, in man an original tendency whereby any connection once made tends, other things being equal, to persist. There is also a tendency whereby any connection or response may or may not be in readiness to be made — may be excited to action easily or with difficulty. These tendencies toward the presence or absence of a certain feature in all connections or responses will be examined by themselves in due time.

THE ACTION OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES

We can imagine a man's life so arranged that one after another original tendency should be called into play, each by itself. Let him be in a certain status, and let, successively, the light grow five times as intense, snuff be blown up his nostrils, a dear friend approach, and the earth quake, without lO THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN

in any case any other changes whatever either in the surroundings or in his internal status. Then the pupils of his eyes would contract, he would sneeze, he would smile, and he would start.

The original tendencies of man, however, rarely act one at a time in isolation one from another. Life apart from learning would not be a simple serial arrangement, over and over, of a hundred or so situations, each a dynamic unit : and of a hundred? or so responses, fitted to these situations by a one-to-one correspondence. On the contrary, they cooperate in multitudinous combinations. Their combination may be apparent in behavior, as when the tendencies to look at a bright moving object, to reach for a small object passing a foot away, and to smile at a smiling familiar face combine to make a baby smilingly fixate and reach for the watch which his father swings. Or the combination may take place unobserved in the nervous system, as when a large animal suddenly approaching a solitary child makes him run and hide, thougli the child in question would neither run nor hide at solitude, at the presence of the animal, or at the sudden approach of objects in general.

It is also the case that any given situation does not act absolutely as a unit, producing either one total response or none at all. Its effect is the total effect of its elements, of which now one, now another may predominate in determining response, according to cooperating forces without and within the man. The action of the situations which move man's original nature is not that of some thousands of keys each of which unlocks one door and does nothing else whatever. Any situation is a complex, producing a complex effect; and so, if attendant circumstances vary, a variable effect. In any case it does, so to speak, what it can.

Ultimately, indeed, every fact in htmian life is a case of the co-action of all the universe except the man in question, and the condition of* the man in question at that instant. In taking anything short of all the universe save him and calling it the situation, we are abstracting — ^are replacing the total effective

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS II

situation by some element of it. Also, in taking anything short of the rich entirety of the man at that instant as the organism, we are abstracting — are replacing the total effective coniditions of the response by some of their main features. Such abstraction is, of course, the procedure of common sense and of science. Everywhere there is abundant justification for building up an abstract scheme of the responses which situations a, b, c, singly evoke, thoug'h in fact they never act singly ; or of the bonds between situation d and a total set of responses, though in fact the various component elements of d are never present in just the same proportions so that the very existence of d/ as a thing by itself is a myth.

STAGES IN THE DESCRIPTION OF HUMAN NATURE

The history of modern explanations of human intellect, character and skill shows three notable stages. In the first, certain mythical potencies were postulated which, when aroused to action by the events of a man's life, produced his thoughts and acts. These potencies were 'instinct,' which could do almost anything in a pinch, the 'will,' and the 'faculties' — memory, attention, reasoning and the like. The actual information about human nature carried by these explanations was, as in the current uses of 'instinct of preservation' or 'capacity for self-expression,' that man was able to attain certain results in living. To say that he had the faculty or capacity of memory said that his present behavior was in one way or another influenced by his past experiences. To say that he had the power of reason was to say that he managed by thought to get along with conditions which would baffle a stone, tree, rabbit, or himself if he had not thought. Science of this sort could prophesy very little of the behavior of any given man in any given situation.

In the second stage, behavior is defined in terms of more or less clearly described states of affairs to which man responds by more or less clearly described thoughts, movements, emotions or other responses. 'Instinct' gives way to 'instincts' — each referring to a bond between some situation and some response.

In place of referring the influence of the past on the present to a ubiquitous demon called memory who alternately absorbs and excretes facts, men study the formation of particular associations or bonds, the conditions of their permanence and later effectiveness. Reasoning becomes a convenient name for the cases of behavior where some part or element in the situation is predominant in determining the response, and where selection takes place amongst plans in view of ideas about their value for some end. We thus seek, in this second stage of thought, not a potency that vaguely produces large groups of consequences, but bonds that unite particular responses orreactions to particular situations or stimuli. Science of this sort leads to many successful prophecies of what a man will think or do in a given case, but these prophecies are crude and subject to variability and qualification.

In the third stage, behavior will be defined in terms of events in the world which any impartial observer can identify and, with proper facilities, verify. Each situation will be stated as just this state of affairs in nature; the response will be stated as just this event in the man ; and the bond will be stated as just this set of habits or just that arrangement and condition of the man's neurones by which the event in the man is brought to pass when that state of affairs is present in nature. Science of this sort, by giving perfect identifiability and fuller knoAvledge, leads to completer and finer prophecy and control of human nature.

The descriptions of certain tendencies to behavior — for example, that of paramecium in response to certain chemicals, that of the dog in response to a drop of acid on certain spots of his skin, and that of man in response to a tap on a certain spot on the knee — are advancing from tlie second to the third stage. The descriptions of the instincts of fear, anger, and the like are advancing from the first to the second stage. But scores of such teiTns as musical ability, mathematical ability, technical skill, scholarship, artistic temperament, piety, quarrelsomeness, conventionality, cooperativeness, the instinct of

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 13

self-pres€rvation, the social instinct, the gambling instinct, the play instinct, the instinct for justice, and the like .witness to the great number of human tendencies whose descriptions are still of the pattern of the first stage — ^mere statements that somehow or other a certain result is attained.

Instincts as mythical potencies are, to say the least, not rigorously excluded by even two very recent and in many ways admirable discussions — one, of the relation of instinct to intelligence; the other, of the significance of instincts for a philosophy of education. The eminent psychologists who discussed 'Instinct and Intelligence' in the British Journal of Psychologytwo years ago ['lo, vol. 3, pp. 209-266] again and again speak of instinct as if it were something like a heart or a thyroid gland or a 'memory' or an 'imagination,' which did this and that for a man. Henderson seems deliberately to advocate remaining in this first stage of thought in the case of unlearned tendencies. He says : —

"The instincts are the functions of the organism considered from the point of view of the needs that they supply. Most lists of instincts are selected according to this conception, as the feeding instinct, the instinct of fear, of sociability, of acquisitiveness, of curiosity. On the other hand, the instinctive act is a complex of movements that constitutes an hereditarily preferred method of carrying out one or many instincts. Crying, for example, is an instinctive act, and it may be resorted to as a means of satisfying the instinct of hunger, that of fear, that of sociability, and, indeed, almost any instinct that appears during the period when this type of activity prevails. Just as one instinctive act may be utilized by many instincts, so one instinct may function by means of a variety of types of instinctive or habitual activity. Thus the instinct of fear may lead to a resort to the instinctive acts of crouching, lying still, or hiding, or that of flight, or in extreme cases, perhaps, that of desperate fighting." ['10, p. 65]

Next to the separation of what is original from what is learned, the main task of a description of the original nature of man is to progress from the first to the second of these stages.*

*Progress irom the second to the third stage will depend upon researches yet to be made. If the inventory and description of the original intellect

For it has remained a common practice to describe an original tendency only by its results even when, by enough attention to facts, the situation and the response could have been at least roughly defined. This is unfortunate. It is no more necessary, and is much less accurate, to describe man loosely as possessed of an 'instinct of self-preservation' than it is to describe oxygen as possessed of an 'instinct of rust production.'

The real facts meant, in this and in all cases, are a multitude of more or less specialized responses to certain actual situations, — in this sample case, drawing back from a missile or blow, running from this, striking back at that, swallowing what tastes sweet, spitting out what tastes very bitter, going to sleep after long exertion, waking up after long sleep, picking up the small object seen, putting in one's mouth the object picked up, etc., etc. The instinct is not a response to, 'Preserve self or destroy self?' but to particular material objects and living animals or plants. Its moving impulse is not 'to preserve self — to stay alive' but some such concrete feeling as 'get rid of this hunger — to feel comfortably full again' or 'to get away from that horrid beast.' In the case of the instinct proper, unmodified by experience, the moving impulse is not a notion of end or aim at all. For, originally, the situation itself provokes the response irrespective of any thoughts of the consequences. Even sophisticated adults eat oftenest because they arc hungry or see or smell food, not. because they zvill be full.

The name is especially misleading because the same instincts which usually result in preservation may result in death. The child's struggles against the operating surgeon or the tasting of lye, corrosive sublimate and the like along with spools and candy, are samples of the thousands of such possibilities.

and character of man as a species to be given in this volume were to be confined to perfectly identifiable and demonstrable bonds between perfectly identified situations and responses, hardly a word could be said about one out of ten of the instincts and capacities with which education, politics, business and philanthropy are chiefly concerned.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 15

There is no unlearned tendency to respond to 'life vs. death,' and probably there is none which inevitably, under every set of conditions, does result in life rather than in death. Indeed, only after the tendency is defined in terms of an identifiable response to an identifiable situation can one profitably inquire whether it is original or acquired, or how far it is original and how far acquired.

If one insists resolutely on replacing a list of instincts as magic potencies which produce certain results, by a statement of even roughly definable bonds between actual situations and actual thoughts, feelings and acts, it becomes necessary to part company with the stock descriptions of instincts. It will be a great advantage if thought about the life of man can be advanced to a level of description which will exclude teleological lists having as their themes such mythical potencies as the 'instinct of self-preservation,' which makes you stay alive — the 'social instinct,' which makes you construct a society, — the 'parental instinct,' which makes you treat your own flesh and blood so as to favor them in all ways, — ^the 'religious instinct,' which makes you believe in a world of spirits, — 'constructiveness,' which makes you build up all sorts of edifices, — 'destructiveness,' which makes you tear all sorts of edifices down, — or 'fear,' which makes you avoid danger. To secure this advantage for students of education is one main purpose of the next nine chapters.

chapter iii Inventories of the Original Nature of Man

As a first step toward a reasonable estimate of man's original equipment, we may consider the summary of the special human insimcts which James ['93*] reported as the combined result of the work of previous writers (notably, W. Preyer, ['81] and G. H. Schneider ['80, '82]) and of his own observations.

For convenience I repeat the list itself, where possible in James' own words, but for the detailed descriptions of each tendency the reader is referred to Chapter XXIV of James' Principles of Psychology.'^

James first quotes samples of the reflexes listed by Preyer,§ such as crying, sneezing, snuffling, snoring, coughing, sighing, sobbing, gagging, vomiting, hiccuping, starting, moving the limb in response to its being tickled, touched or blown upon, spreading the toes in response to being touched, tickled or stroked on the sole of the foot, extending and raising the arms at any sudden sensory stimulus, or the quick pulsation of the eyelid. Then follows his list and descriptions of the more complex original tendencies. Where possible I have summarized each description in one phrase for the situation (printed at the left of the page) and one for the response (printed at the right.) Where neither is described, I put (in the centre of the

*First published, however, in a series of articles in 1887.

tit should be noted that James does not pretend that this list is exhaustive or that his descriptions are precise, his interest being in demonstrating the vagueness, modifiability and wide range of human instincts, rather than in full enumeration or exact identification of the situations and responses concerned. It is, at all events, one of the best single lists available, and itsdescriptions are much above the average in accuracy.

§ See The Senses and the Will, by W. Preyer (Eng. trans.), Chap. X.

INVENTORIES OF ORIGINAL NATURE I7

line and capitalized) the word or phrase used by James to describe the instinct as a whole.

James' Inventory

Sucking an object placed in the

mouth , , .biting

Chewing Grinding the teeth

sugar licking

a sweet taste a characteristic grimace

a bitter taste a characteristic grimace

Spitting out an object which touches

the fingers or toes , . clasping

an object seen at a distance attempts to grasp it

an object seen at a distance pointing at it

an object seen at a distance -. making a peculiar sound

expressive of desire

an object grasped carrying it to the mouth

bodily discomfort crying

hunger crying

pain crying

being noticed smiling

being fondled smiling

being smiled at . smiling

an object attended to protruding the lips

Turning the head aside, frowning, bending back the body, and

hokliiig the breath

(these last three accompanying the first mentioned)

Holding head erect

Sitting up

Standing

Creeping

Walking

Climbing

Cooing and gurgling 2 hearing a sound imitating the sound

seeing a gesture imitating a gesture

Emulation or rivalry Pugnacity

Anger Resentment

the sight of suffering or

danger to others interest and acts of

relief "all living beasts, great

and small toward

which a contrary habit

has not been found —

all human beings in

whom we perceive a

certain intent toward

us, and a large number of human beings

who offend us peremptorily, either by

their look, or gait, or

by some circumstance

in their lives which

we dislike" hunting

certain noises fear

strange men fear

strange animals fear

certain kinds of vermin fear

solitude (during infancy) fear

black things fear

dark places fear

holes and corners fear

high places fear

certain ideas of supernatural agency fear

a human corpse fear

fear running

fear remaining semi-paralyzed fear trembling

INVENTORIES OF ORIGINAL NATURE I9

Appropriation or acquisitiveness or the proprietary instinct

any object which pleases attention, snatching

any object which pleases attention, begging

Envy

Jealousy

To form collections

Constructiveness

"whatever things are plastic to his hands he

must" "remodel into shapes of

his own"

Habitation — "to make a sheltered nook, open on only one side"

"when not altogether

unenclosed" "he feels less exposed

and more at home than when lying all abroad"

Play

"another boy who runs

provokingly near" running after him

"seeing another child

pick up some object" trying to get it

"someone trying to take

an object away" trying to get away

with it

Love of festivities, ceremonies, and ordeals

"concerted action as one of an organized crowd" excitement

perceiving such a crowd "a tendency to join them

and do what they are doing and an unwillingness to be the first to leave off and go home alone"

Curiosity

Movelty in any movable feature of the environment being excited and irritated aO THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN

Sociability and shyness

being alone discomfort

meeting a stranger shyness

Secretiveness

"unfamiliar human beings, especially those

whom we respect" "the arrest of whatever

we are saying or doing. .. .coupled often with the pretense that we were not saying or doing that thing, but possibly something different"

love affairs to conceal them

Qeanliness "excrementitious and putrid things, blood, pus, entrails and diseased tissues" repugnance

Modesty, shame (?)

Personal isolation

Love between the sexes

Coyness

Parental love

Indefiniteness in Descriptions of Original Tendencies

This list, and still more so James' full account, should suggest at once the question, "How can the description of a tendency in human nature be so made as to ensure that all con>- petent students can from it identify the tendency — know what they are to look for or argue about?" For example, no one doubts the truth of the statement, "The tendency which we call curiosity is more or less instinctive," but also no one could learn from it just what is instinctive. Obviously, whether or not a tendency is unlearned, cannot be tested until one knows

INVENTORIES OF ORIGINAL NATURE 21

what the tendency is well enough to observe whether it is present or not. Nor can a tendency be used in education or Other forms of social control until one knows what it itself is. The statement that 'Curiosity,' 'Rivalry,' 'Pugnacity,' and 'Constructiveness' are original tendencies gives us more questions than ansvvers.