Psychology : $b A study of mental lifeWoodworth, Robert Sessions
Science
Psychology : $b A study of mental life
Woodworth, Robert Sessions
Psychology
Filial love is different. It is not purely instinctive, but depends on
intelligence. It is only possible if the child has the intelligence to
see the parent as something besides a parent--as some one needing care
and protection--and if the child himself takes a parental attitude
towards the parent. But that is a grown-up attitude, seldom taken by
{151} young children. It is not the infantile instinct, which, if
there is such an instinct, is the spring of trustful, docile,
dependent, childlike and childish behavior.
The Play Instincts
Any instinct has "play value", but some have also "survival value" and
so are serious affairs. Survival value characterizes the instincts we
have already listed, both the responses to organic needs and the
responses to other people. But there are other instincts with less of
survival value, but no less of play value, and these we call the play
instincts, without attaching any great importance to the name or even
to the classification.
Playful activity.
The kicking and throwing the arms about that we see in a well-rested
baby is evidently satisfying on its own account. It leads to no result
of consequence, except indeed that the exercise is good for the
child's muscles and nerves. The movements, taken singly, are not
uncoordinated by any means, but they accomplish no definite result,
produce no definite change in external objects, and so seem random and
aimless to adult eyes. It is impossible to specify the stimulus for
any given movement, though probably stimuli from the interior of the
body first arouse these responses. They are most apt to occur during
the organic state of "euphoria", and tend to disappear during fatigue.
There is a counter-tendency to this tendency towards general activity,
and that is _inertia_, the tendency towards inactivity or _economy of
effort_. Most pronounced in fatigue, this also appears in lassitude
and inert states that cannot be called fatigue because not brought on
by excessive activity. After sleep, many people are inert, and require
a certain amount of activity to "warm up" to the active condition. As
the child grows older, the {152} "economy of effort" motive becomes
stronger, and the random activity motive weaker, so that the adult is
less playful and less responsive to slight stimuli. He has to have
some definite goal to get up his energy, whereas the child is active
by preference and just for the sake of activity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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