In this investigation, after considerable training, the subjects,
with a single exception, _were all convinced that both feeling-tones,
for tactual and visual impressions, could be present at once_. When
three or more were given at once, confusion as to the state of feeling
was usually so great that valuable introspection was always rendered
exceedingly difficult. Impressions from the same field, as, for
example, colors presented in chosen forms as enclosures, were most
often taken as one object with one feeling-tone. This even was by no
means always the case. When it was thus taken, the experience was still
reported as more complex than either element alone had produced.
When the feeling-tones for simultaneous stimulations from two
different sources came out sufficiently clearly, the kind of feeling
was described in some such terms as indicated in Part I, Section A,
except that almost invariably the introspection was more difficult.
The relations of these various feeling-components of an affective
experience are numerous. There is a frequent tendency to read one
into the other. The soft soothing feeling coming from plush, if in
the particular experience the color be the more prominent partial
element, tends often to make the subject enjoy more the color, because
there seems to be added to it a soft yielding surface texture.
Frequently also, as in the case of red above, the warmth it suggests is
intensified.
In cases of feelings of opposite nature occurring together, the
stronger generally prevails, finally in most cases effacing all
specific tone for the weaker element. An odor, for example, even when
always unpleasant, becomes less so when one looks at a pleasant color,
when a feeling-tone can, or often even when it cannot, be detected for
the color at the time. Again, when a very unpleasant form or tactual
impression is being felt, a slightly unpleasant color tends to arouse
often in this situation, as if by contrast, a simultaneously pleasant
element in the total experience.
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