A Beginner's Psychology

by Edward Bradford Titchener

There are, as usual, a few preliminary matters to be got out of the way. First of all, we shall do well to distinguish the terms ‘movement’ and ‘action.’ Movement is, without question, the wider term. Action, although it is very loosely used in ordinary speech, so that we speak of the action of a horse or a sewing-machine, is the word that we naturally employ in referring to human conduct. We may therefore take advantage of this difference in meaning, and may say that action, as a technical term in psychology, denotes any organic movement that has mental correlates; or more strictly, that it is an organic movement any phase of which, beginning, middle or end, has mental correlates. The need of the stricter definition will appear as we go on.

Secondly, we must be clear as regards the problem which action, as thus defined, presents to psychology. We have, of course, to describe and to correlate; to describe the mental processes that occur with movement, or with one or more of its phases; and to indicate, as well as our knowledge permits, the corresponding processes in the nervous system. We have made out three modes of correlation: separate mental processes correspond with certain brain-processes; the pattern of mental connection corresponds with the play of associative tendencies in the brain; and the course of the mental stream corresponds with the activity of determining tendencies. These, then, are the limits within which we work; and we shall be obliged to leave the subject very much in the rough; for psychological description is still imperfect, and our knowledge of the nervous mechanisms is woefully incomplete. Be clear, nevertheless, that the psychological problem lies within these limits. The psychologist has nothing to do with the relative values of ‘motives.’ He cannot teach you how to acquire ‘control’ of your actions. His task is simply to set forth the facts; and if the facts that he discovers are of value for morals or education, as indeed they can hardly fail to be, so much the better; only, you must not confuse scientific information with practical advice, and be disappointed at the one because you do not receive the other. All this has been said before; but the present is a good time for repeating it.

Lastly, you should realise that in an organism so complicated as man, and of such varied and eventful history, movement by itself is no index to mental process. There are, no doubt, outward and visible signs of hesitation, of deliberation, of quick resolve; but the bare movement is not a cue to mind. Psychological enquiry must always go behind the movement; that is, we must either know the previous mental history of the individual who makes the movement, or we must ourselves arrange the circumstances under which the movement is to be made. Suppose, for instance, that you have to sign your name to a deed. You may have spent weeks in reflection, in balancing pros and cons, in painful indecision; your action is then a ‘voluntary action’ of the most positive sort; and yet, when the moment comes, your signature flows smoothly from the pen, as if the matter had never cost you a moment’s worry. Now suppose that you are sitting in a committee-meeting, listening to a tedious report; you take the blank paper before you, and write your accustomed signature, without either the intention to write or knowledge that you are writing. The two movements may be indistinguishable, and yet this second writing is an ‘automatic’ or ‘involuntary’ action. So a hand-shake may mean the barest recognition of a casual acquaintance, or the friendly settlement of a long-standing disagreement; the onlooker can see no difference in the movements, though their mental accompaniments are worlds apart. There is, indeed, no chapter in psychology that illustrates the law of mental growth and decay (p. 183) so fully and so surprisingly as this chapter on action. Movements that once were rich in mental correlates fall into the direst psychological poverty; and movements that now are poor may acquire a mental fortune, which they in their turn are bound presently to lose.

[§ 54]. The Typical Action.—Under these circumstances, it sounds a little incongruous to talk of a ‘typical’ action. But we must start somewhere; and we may, perhaps, say that the typical action, for psychology, is an action of the simplest form taken at its psychological best; in other words, an organic movement that is singly determined and that shows a maximum of mental accompaniment. You will understand better what this definition means when we have worked out an illustration. Meantime, you can see that such an action—we call it an impulsive action—serves as point of departure in two directions. The form may remain simple, while the mental side suffers reduction; or the form may become complicated, and therewith new mental characters may be introduced. In the former case, the impulsive action runs downhill toward automatic; in the latter, it climbs up toward deliberative action.

Now for the illustration! Suppose that, as I am writing this paragraph, it occurs to me to look up a reference, for quotation, in a particular book that stands on the shelf by my side. I turn toward the shelf, recognise the book, take it in my hand and turn the pages, and presently find the passage I had in mind to use. I have performed an impulsive action, in the sense of our definition; the illustration is complete. I shall go on to put a marker in the book, or to copy out the sentence, and ultimately I shall return the book to the shelf; but these later developments do not here concern us.

Let us try to analyse this action; and since the mental accompaniment is fairly complex, let us analyse, at first, only in large and gross terms. We begin with a preparatory phase, in which there are two things to notice: the intention to move (it occurs to me to look up the reference) and the idea of the result of movement (finding the required passage for quotation). Then follows a middle phase, in which the outstanding thing is the perception of the object of movement (I see and identify the book on the shelf). The final phase includes a perception of movement itself in kinæsthetic terms (I reach out, take the book down, turn the pages) and also the perception of the result of movement (I find the sentence). So we have three roughly distinguishable phases, each one issuing from that which preceded it, which we may formulate as follows:

Intention of movement Idea of result

{

→ Perception of object →

}

Perception of movement Perception of result

You understand that the arrows indicate a definite direction; the second and third phases issue from the first; the whole course is predetermined. When I perceive the book, under this impulsive determination, the associative tendencies have no freedom of play; I cannot think that the back is breaking, or that I know the writer, or that the chalky paper is detestable, though all of these are things that might occur to me at another time; I can only recognise the book as the book that will realise my idea of result, that contains the passage I need. The whole course, again, is singly, unequivocally, predetermined; it occurs to me to use the quotation, and I do not reflect or hesitate; I act directly and forthright upon the suggestion; there is no conflict. In a word, the example shows us action in its simplest form and with a maximum of mental concomitant; and that is what we agreed to regard, from the psychological point of view, as a typical action.

Analysis of this crude kind does no more than give us our bearings. If we are to lay out the facts with scientific accuracy, we must carry actions into the laboratory, and examine them under experimental conditions. We do this by way of the ‘reaction experiment.’