PART III
In attempting to measure the rate at which feeling-tones for those slight stimulations develop when no disturbing factors are consciously present, an interval of from one and one half to two and one half seconds seemed to be required. At such a time the feeling was experienced as having reached its maximum. There was no marked difference for different subjects, nor any constantly noticeable difference among the kind of stimulations used. A possible exception was found for Subject I, but this was probably due, as he himself thought, to his inability to adapt himself easily to the requirement of the experiment.
After this was sufficiently tested, the interval which was required for one feeling-tone to arise when another was already present, was in the same manner tested. The interval in all cases was too long to be measured by means of a chronometer. A stop-watch was used.
While the subject was consciously enjoying a sound from a tuning-fork or a tactual impression from some chosen texture surface, one of the colors was presented to him. The time-interval thus ascertained as necessary for the new feeling-tone to reach its maximum was compared in each case with the time-interval when the color alone was presented. Various combinations were here employed also. Colors in forms in addition were studied in comparison with the same colors presented without regard to the enclosing forms. No definite results could be obtained in most cases. It was thought that the repose one feels for plush might appreciably hasten the feeling-tone for the red and probably retard that for the more exciting yellow. The evidence is not directly conclusive. This was not found to be the case in much more than half of the tests. It did, however, in the great majority of the cases with all subjects, retard the time-interval for the development of the unpleasant character of ordinarily disagreeable colors. Given at such times also the normally unpleasant colors not infrequently appeared themselves as slightly agreeable. In these cases the interval was also appreciably longer, suggesting evidence that new processes of some sort were set up. A pleasant low tone hastened the arousal of a pleasant feeling-tone for red quite perceptibly for three subjects, and had no influence upon the other subjects. The feeling-tone for yellow under the same circumstances was for two subjects retarded regularly, with no marked effect either way for the others. The same low tone retarded all the unpleasant colors, as did the plush, in many cases causing them to appear as pleasant.
The effect of forms, as enclosures for colors, upon the time-rate was more marked and constant. Subject I again was always disturbed when colors were presented to him in definite forms. For him feeling-tones never arose so quickly when the form-element entered. For the other six subjects, available for this part of the work, upright ovals considerably increased the whole state of pleasure whether or not fusion of the different elements resulted. For them the feeling-tone for every pleasing color was hastened from two fifths to four fifths of a second. These same forms retarded the unpleasant colors whenever one element of the experience seemed to be opposed to the other. Occasionally here also the color appeared as itself directly and unaccountably pleasant, the prepared situation of the subject being such, apparently, that the ordinary character of the color did not appear at all. This was very frequently the case for all subjects.
The irregular unpleasant forms generally retarded the feeling-tone for the enclosed color when that color appeared to have lost some of its accustomed agreeableness. When, however, the contrast in feeling-character between the form-element and the color-element as such was noted as marked, the feeling-character of the color was more often hastened than retarded. These same forms in almost every case (of nearly two months' work for seven subjects) hastened the feeling-tone for the corresponding disagreeable color. Often again pleasant colors changed the feeling-tones for these irregular forms. In such cases the influence could not be attributed to the effect of unpleasant forms upon feeling-tones.
Statistics alone seem insignificant here. Each variety of affective experience in itself presents its own peculiar difficulties. In a great number of tests the affective phases of the experiences were all described in such terms as to suggest that too general a grouping of them would not mean much. Often when one thought, after a careful choice of the stimuli to be used, that the experiment would show that feelings whose prominent characteristics were those of excitement or tension, for example, were exerting an influence upon some other kind of feeling, introspection would reveal the fact that altogether other phases of the experience were the pronounced elements. Examples of what at first appeared to be capricious results illustrate the baffling nature of the problem here dealt with. Red is very pleasant. The oval with the bulging side is repulsive. This combination caused no marked retardation in the time required for a feeling-tone to develop. The blue, not so markedly pleasant alone, with the same bulging oval as its frame, had its feeling-tone changed, and the time-development quite perceptibly hastened. This same blue color with an upright oval as its frame produced a feeling-tone much more pleasant, also with marked hastening of the speed-development of its feeling-character. The pleasant-unpleasant dimension of the feeling clearly cannot alone furnish one with an explanation of these different phenomena. The red under normal conditions, i. e., if not influenced by either favorable or unfavorable coexisting feeling-tones, aroused its peculiar and not necessarily pervasive kind of physiological process. Likewise all our evidence goes to show that the feeling for blue is correlated with a peculiar physiological process, not so deeply seated in the organism, and not so satisfactorily coördinated, or "definite." Now the specific feeling-tone for forms arises when the imitative adjustment called for is successfully accomplished. In the first combination cited above the feeling-tone for red, being mild, soothing, more pervasive than blue, but lacking in the exciting character, is correlated with processes not so easily influenced by the reactions occasioned by the presented forms. Subjects say that it does not call for "surface reactions." It is less "intrusive." It does not "fall in with," nor does it strikingly oppose, the necessary reaction to the forms. Its influence upon the time-development of feeling-tones for accompanying stimuli is consequently small. This is not the case with the blue. The explanation, however, does not here differ in principle. This "volatile, unstable, indecisive, thin, or shallow" feeling, can be more easily influenced by the definite and decisive processes characteristic of the forms. It, indeed, needs something to determine its character, or coördinate its general reaction. Hence in both the above combinations the development period of the new feeling-tone for blue is shortened. The feeling reaches its maximum in either combination more quickly than when it occurs alone. As one should expect, fusion or mutual reënforcement quickens coördinated reaction; and partially independent coexistence, except where the contrast is sharp, serves as a condition for the lengthening of the latent period of feelings.