II. Following upon this preparatory training, the second part of the
experiment consisted in a similar study of the _mutual influences_
of _simultaneous feelings_ accompanying sensations from different
sense-organs. How does the feeling of pleasure obtained from contact
with a smooth surface influence the feeling occasioned by the _sight_
of a pleasant or unpleasant object? Here, for example, colors were
exposed in a large black frame manipulated by means of shutters easily
opened or closed, at the same time that a tactual surface was being
applied, or a tone from a tuning-fork was being sounded.
The introspection method was essentially the same here as in Part I.
(_a_) First, the subject was requested, without the necessary
distraction of directing his attention at all to the bodily processes,
to give himself up to the situation and to report as accurately as he
could the kind of affective state experienced.
(_b_) Next, as in Part I again, in a repetition of the same experience,
he was requested to be on the lookout for any and all accompanying
bodily changes. The problem here was to discover to what extent the
more complex state now in question would correspond to the specific
and noticeable bodily reactions such as were noted in Part I, where
single experiences presumably resulted. If different feeling-elements
are in experience at once, can one fix upon correspondingly different
suggested actions? Does the organism react to more than one situation,
or to two sources of stimulation at once? Is affection present only
when the whole organism is, to use Titchener's expression, "tilted"
one way? Is the Totalgefühl the single undifferentiated result
always, or can we here also detect such phenomena as summation,
fusion, inhibition, and partial or total mutual reënforcement of the
different feeling-components? Do the new reactions which seem to mean
the feelings always refer to actions so inclusive as to result in the
inhibition of any other tendencies to response, or is there sometimes a
clear strife between two simultaneously conflicting feelings, two kinds
of relatively self-dependent reactions both going on at once? Or again,
when the hedonic or algedonic characters of two given simultaneous
stimuli, such as a soft, soothing, pleasant touch with an irritating,
exhilarating, invigorating but also pleasant yellow color, do not
differ as to their pleasant-unpleasant character, must one be pale and
empty "intellectual perception" when the other is being enjoyed? These
are some of the questions that suggest themselves at once.
Not at this point, however, considering the dimensionality of feeling,
the four simple combinations were first studied; such, for example, as
(1) a pleasant color with a pleasant touch, (2) pleasant color with
unpleasant touch, (3) unpleasant color with pleasant touch, and (4)
unpleasant color with unpleasant touch.
* * * * *
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