When the salesman influences the customer to
buy something which may later help to satisfy a real economic demand,
the art of his suggestive words secures a mental effect which again is
in itself not ultimate. If the manufacturer influences his employees
to work with more attention or with greater industry, or if the
community stirs up the desire for luxury or the tendency to saving, we
have mental effects which are of economic importance without being
really ultimate economic effects.
As far as these effects are necessary and justified stages leading to
the ultimate satisfaction of economic demands, it certainly is the
duty of applied psychology to bring psychological experience and exact
methods into their service. We emphasize the necessary and justified
character of these steps, as it is evident that psychological methods
may be made use of also by those who aim toward mental effects which
are unjustified and which are not necessary for the real satisfaction
of valuable demands. Psychological laws can also be helpful in
fraudulent undertakings or in advertisements for unfair competition.
The psychotechnical scientist cannot be blamed if the results of his
experiments are misused for immoral purposes, just as the chemist is
not responsible if chemical knowledge is applied to the construction
of anarchistic bombs. But while psychology, as we have emphasized
before, cannot from its own point of view determine the value of the
end, the psychologist as a human being is certainly willing to
coöperate only where the soundness and correctness of the ends are
evident from the point of view of social welfare.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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