A Beginner's Psychology

by Edward Bradford Titchener

[CHAPTER VI]

Association

Here is a kind of attraction which in the mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as in the natural, and to show itself in as many and as various forms.—David Hume

§ 31. The Association of Ideas.—The doctrine of the ‘association of ideas’ is one of the oldest and most influential in the history of psychology. It begins, in a somewhat casual way, with Aristotle. Suppose, Aristotle says, that we are trying to recall something that has slipped our mind; what do we ordinarily do? We hunt through a number of things, beginning with something that is like what we want to recall, or contrary to it, or that was next it in time, or adjacent to it in space. These other things, the like, the contrary, the just before or just after, the adjoining, have the power to suggest what we have forgotten. Aristotle gives the impression that everybody acts in this way, as a matter of course; and no doubt his hearers acquiesced; for the statement sounds reasonable. We want, for instance, to remember a certain picture that we saw ten years ago: how do we set to work? We start from something like it: ‘I remember that it reminded me of Van Eyck’; or from something opposite: ‘I remember smiling to think how a Venetian would have treated it’; or from something next it in time: ‘I remember coming to it after three whole hours of Dutch genre’; or from something next it in space: ‘I remember that it hung beside a Mabuse portrait.’ Seeing how natural and obvious such remarks are, we can understand that Aristotle’s single sentence had tremendous consequences for psychology. It foreshadowed the four ‘laws of the association of ideas,’ the laws of similarity, of contrast, of succession in time, and of coexistence in space. According to the doctrine of association, one idea ‘calls up’ another because it is like that other, or contrasts with it, or was next to it in time or space; likeness and difference, succession and adjacency, somehow give an idea the power to recall, and render it liable in its turn to be recalled. The four laws thus represent an attempt to explain the course of our ideas, and for that reason they have always appealed to common sense.

But, for the same reason, the laws have not proved an unmixed blessing to psychology. Aristotle, it is clear, was simply raising a practical question; and practical questions are answered in terms of meaning, not of process. Moreover, Aristotle was temperamentally a logician, and he could not help throwing even this bit of everyday practice into formal logical shape. Notice the arrangement in pairs: like-contrary, coexistent-successive; that is logical. Notice also the nature of the pairs. Like-contrary is the extreme way of saying like-unlike; and when you mention succession, you mention the only kind of non-coexistence that can come into account for psychology; so that both pairs have the form ‘A and not-A’ (like and not-like, coexistent and not-coexistent); and that is logical again. Aristotle’s four rules are therefore not really empirical, in the sense that they are directly derived from a study of experience; they rather show the inveterate logician, who is bound to schematise and tabulate. Later writers, swayed now by experience and now by logic, have both increased and decreased the number of these ‘laws’ of association; the general tendency has been to reduce them to two, or even to one. Thus, we can make contrast, logically, a case of likeness; the palace reminds us of the hovel, apparently by contrast; yet are not the palace and the hovel alike, as human habitations? We can, still more easily, reduce space to time. If the two pictures hung together on the wall, they were seen at the same time. Simultaneity, however, is one kind of contiguity in time; succession is another; and temporal contiguity thus includes everything. The four laws have become two: similarity, and contiguity in time.

Can we go further? Yes, if we go on arguing. The picture reminded me of Van Eyck; it was like a Van Eyck; the association seems to be an association by similarity. Yet it is practically certain that the picture in question was, at some time or other, present in my mind along with some picture by Van Eyck. It is practically certain, in other words, that the two ideas were in temporal contiguity; and every instance of association by similarity raises the same sort of presumption. That being the case, we may discard the law of similarity; and contiguity stands alone, the sole survivor of the Aristotelian quartet. Only, this is all logic, a matter of meanings, a translation of psychological fact; we have not got to the facts themselves.

We shall come to psychology presently. Meantime you should try to realise how well this doctrine of association works for practical purposes, and how strong is the appeal it makes to the practical side of our nature. It explains the appearance of every single idea that has ever occurred to anybody; it offers to take us to the very heart of psychology without need of training or preparation; it flatters us into the belief that we have all our lives been talking and thinking psychology without knowing it; it covers up the gap that separates common sense from science. Small wonder that Hume compared the law of association in psychology with the law of gravitation in physics! All the great names in British psychology (and the fact throws a good deal of light on the psychology of the nation itself) are connected with the doctrine of association; a whole science has taken its national colour from a single principle of explanation. Association has also played its part, though less dominantly, in France and Germany.

Realise all this; and realise also that the doctrine was of great service in the days when psychology was in the making; it is not only agreeable to common sense, it is not only historically important, but it also did true psychological service. Let us admit all this: and then we must add that the reign of associationism was over as soon as ever psychology became scientific; as soon, that is, as the proper task of psychology was recognised and formulated (p. 18). For let us take an instance: what does the word ‘summer’ suggest to you? Very likely it suggests ‘winter.’ How, then, is this association to be explained psychologically? By contrast? But the ideas of summer and winter may be exactly alike, both of them verbal-auditory-motor, or both of them mental pictures; the contrast is a contrast of meaning, not of mental process or pattern; the real summer, what we mean by the word ‘summer,’ contrasts with the real winter, and not the idea of summer with the idea of winter. By resemblance? But, if the ideas of summer and winter are exactly alike, so are they also like thousands of other ideas, verbal-auditory-motor or visual-imaginal; there is no reason in their psychological likeness why the one should suggest the other; and if they do suggest each other by ‘resemblance,’ the resemblance is again a likeness of meaning (they are both seasons of the year) and not of mental constitution. Try the matter out for yourself, in any concrete case of association, and you will reach the same result; the ideas of associationism are not psychological ideas. James sums things up for us: “Association,” he says, “so far as the word stands for an effect, is between things thought of; it is things, not ideas, which are associated in the mind. And so far as association stands for a cause, it is between processes in the brain; it is these which, by being associated in certain ways, determine what successive objects shall be thought.” The brain associates, and meanings are associated. We have already said something of the psychology of meaning (pp. 26 ff., 117 ff.); what can we now say of the associative functions of the brain?

[§ 32]. Associative Tendencies: Material of Study.—We want to find out how those processes in the brain which are the correlates of our ideas go together, get connected or associated. The brain is a machine; and it is not only complicated, but it is also plastic, that is, it is subject to change and modification. The complexity of the machine makes it necessary for us to work with simple stimuli and by strict methods; only if we work with simple stimuli shall we get to the bare essentials of the associative functions; and only if we work by strict methods shall we obtain results which other investigators can repeat and verify. Even so, the plasticity of the machine makes it impossible for us to lay down hard and fast laws of connection; we can speak only of connective tendencies or of associative tendencies; what actually happens, in any particular case, is likely to be the joint result of many tendencies, weak and strong, conflicting and concurring.