Psychology : $b A study of mental lifeWoodworth, Robert Sessions
Science
Psychology : $b A study of mental life
Woodworth, Robert Sessions
Psychology
Numerous experiments have been conducted in the search for such
radically different organic states, but thus far the search has been
rather disappointing. Arrange to record the subject's breathing and
heart beat, apply pleasant and unpleasant stimuli to him, and see
whether there is any characteristic organic change that goes with
pleasant stimuli, and an opposite change with unpleasant stimuli. You
should also obtain an introspective report from your subject, so as to
be sure that the "pleasant stimuli" actually gave a feeling of
pleasantness, etc. Certain experiments of this sort have indicated
that with pleasantness goes slower heart beat and quicker breathing,
with unpleasantness quicker heart beat and slower breathing. But not
all investigators have got these results; and, anyway, it would be
impossible to generalize to the extent of asserting that slow heart
beat always gave a pleasant state of feeling, and rapid heart beat an
unpleasant; for there is slow heart beat during a "morning grouch",
and rapid during joyful expectation. Or, in regard to breathing, try
this experiment: hasten your breathing and see whether a feeling of
pleasantness results; slacken it and see whether unpleasantness
results. The fact is that pleasantness can go with a wide range of
organic states, so far as these are revealed by heart beat and
breathing; and the same with unpleasantness. If there is any organic
fact definitely characteristic of either state of feeling, it is a
subtle fact that has hitherto eluded observation.
{177}
2. Pleasantness might represent smooth and easy brain action,
unpleasantness slow and impeded brain action. According to this
theory, unimpeded progress of nerve currents through the brain is
pleasant, while resistance encountered at the brain synapses is
unpleasant. A stimulus is pleasant, then, because the nerve currents
started by it find smooth going through the brain centers, and another
stimulus is unpleasant because it finds the going poor.
While this theory looks good in some ways, and fits some cases very
well--as the great unpleasantness of blocked reaction, where you
cannot make up your mind what to do--there are two big objections to
it. The first objection is found in the facts of practice. Practising
any reaction makes it more and more smooth-running and free from inner
obstruction, and should therefore make it more and more pleasant; but,
as a matter of fact, practising an unfamiliar act of any sort makes it
more pleasant for a time only, after which continued practice makes it
automatic and neither pleasant nor unpleasant. The smoothest
reactions, which should give the highest degree of pleasant feeling
according to the theory, are simply devoid of all feeling.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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