Psychology : $b A study of mental lifeWoodworth, Robert Sessions
Science
Psychology : $b A study of mental life
Woodworth, Robert Sessions
Psychology
First, a purpose is an inner force, whereas what arouses a response
should be a stimulus, and typically an external stimulus. We do not
wish to drop back into the old "self-activity" psychology, which
thought of the individual as originating his acts from within himself.
But if we could show that a purpose is itself an inner response to
some external stimulus, and acts in its turn as a "central stimulus"
to further reactions, this difficulty would disappear.
Second, while a typical reaction, like the reflex or the simple
reaction of the experiment, is prompt and over with at once, a purpose
persists. It keeps the busy man, in our illustration, hurrying all the
way down the street and around the corner and how much farther we
cannot say. It is very different from a momentary response, or from a
stimulus that arouses a momentary response and nothing more.
Third, what persists, in purposive behavior, is the tendency {71}
towards some end or goal. The purposeful person wants something he has
not yet got, and is striving towards some future result. Whereas a
stimulus pushes him from behind, a goal beckons to him from ahead.
This element of action directed towards some end is absent from the
simple response to a stimulus.
In short, we have to find room in our stimulus-response psychology for
action persistently steered in a certain direction by some cause
acting from within the individual. We must find room for _internal_
states that _last_ for a time and _direct_ action. In addition, we
sometimes, though not always, need to find room for conscious
foreknowledge of the goal towards which the action is directed.
[Illustration: Fig. 21.--The stimulus-response scheme complicated to
allow for the existence of T, an inner motive or tendency, which,
aroused by an external stimulus, itself arouses a motor response. If
the reaction-tendency were linked so firmly to a single response as to
arouse that response with infallible certainty and promptness, then it
would be superfluous for psychology to speak of a tendency at all. But
often quite a series of responses, R1, R2, etc., follows upon a single
stimulus, all tending towards the same end-result, such as escape; and
then the notion of a "tendency" is by no means superfluous.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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