Psychology and parenthood

by H. Addington Bruce

On the other hand, the colour violet appears to have a deadening effect. Another acquaintance, a member of the Harvard University professorial staff, and a well-known psychologist, assures me that the sight of anything violet almost nauseates him, and gives rise to a most depressed feeling. In such a case, however, it may be that the colour is subconsciously associated with some unpleasant occurrence in the earlier life, and that the nausea and depression are merely symbolical manifestations of the presence in the subconsciousness of some memory of this occurrence, concerning which there is no conscious recollection. (This important point will later be discussed in detail.)

Of more immediate significance is the fact that violet rays are sometimes used to quiet unruly patients in asylums for the insane, and that the alienist Osburne, after many years’ experience, testifies that “in the absence of structural disease, violet light—for from three to six hours—is most useful in the treatment of excitement, sleeplessness, and acute mania.”

Altogether, there is warrant for the assertion that red, yellow, and violet are colours that should not be used overmuch, either in one’s apparel or in the decorating of one’s home. Blue, green, grey, and brown, on the contrary, have psychological qualities that make them particularly desirable for decorative purposes.

Care must always be exercised, though, to work out a colour scheme that harmonises, since discordant colour effects inevitably carry to the mind suggestions of discordant thinking and feeling and doing. As a first aid to the study of colour harmony—a subject which, as soon as its significance to human welfare is more generally recognised, will be taught far more systematically than at present—I recommend painstaking observation of the colour schemes developed by master artists, as shown in the paintings to be seen in the art museums of our cities; or, better still, excursions into the country, where, in the colour combinations of earth and sky, tree and water, mountainside and valley meadow, one can gain invaluable hints from that greatest of artists, Nature. On such excursions, need I add, the children should be taken along, to receive early lessons in the appreciation of true beauty.

But now, while thus utilising to the full the educational possibilities opened by the suggestibility of childhood—while reinforcing the educational value of example by the educational value of a well-arranged home environment—it must also be recognised that the child’s extreme suggestibility carries with it certain dangers. As was said, the essential element in every successful suggestion is the automatic, uncritical acceptance of whatever idea is thus intruded into the mind. It goes without saying that, so long as the critical faculty remains unawakened and untrained, it will always be possible to intrude by suggestion erroneous as well as sound ideas.

More serious still, there is warrant for adding that unless the child’s critical powers be developed at an early age—unless he be taught from the outset of his life how to observe accurately and reason closely—the tendency to uncritical acceptance may become more or less of a habit. That, under present conditions of child training, this is a real danger is clearly shown by the results of recent experiments by French and German psychologists.

In Germany, Kosog, visiting a school-room before the beginning of the lesson-hour, placed three objects, a pen-holder, a pocket-knife, and a piece of chalk, so near the edge of the teacher’s desk that they could be plainly seen by every pupil in the room. During the brief recess that followed the first lesson-hour, he removed these objects, and after the pupils had reassembled asked them what they had seen on the desk the previous hour. Hardly one of them, it turned out, had noticed the objects at all. Next day, after leaving the desk entirely bare the first hour, he put the same question to them at the beginning of the second hour. Now 26 per cent. of the pupils asserted that they had seen the pocket-knife, 57 per cent. the chalk, and 63 per cent. the pen-holder.

In France, the headmaster of a school, following the instructions of the famous psychologist, Alfred Binet, announced to a class of eighty-six boys that he intended to test their memory of the length of lines. A line two inches long, ruled on white cardboard, was shown to each boy, who, after looking at it, had to draw it as accurately as he could on a sheet of paper. The boys were then told that they would be asked to draw another line a little longer than the first, and were accordingly given a second line to copy. In reality it was shorter than the first, being only an inch and three quarters long. Yet out of the entire class only nine resisted the suggestion and believed their eyes and their memories rather than the master’s statement. The other seventy-seven boys—some of whom were fourteen years old—made the second line longer than the first.

A variation of the same experiment was made on another class, to whom a series of thirty-six lines was shown, one after the other. Of these lines the first five progressively increased in length, while the remainder were uniformly long. Not one of the forty-two boys who were asked to copy them reached the maximum length at the fifth line, while nine industriously continued making their lines longer up to the last line shown them. The first five lines, that is to say, had acted as a suggestion having sufficient force to induce in them, despite the evidence of their eyes, a belief that the entire series similarly increased in length.