Psychology and Social Sanity

by Hugo Münsterberg

On the other hand, the better method is not at all necessarily the more difficult one. More effort is needed at the beginning to acquire an exactly adjusted scheme of movement, but as soon as the well-organized activity has become habitual, it will realize itself with less inner interference. For the educated it is no harder to speak correct grammar than to speak slang, and it is no more difficult to write orthographically than to indulge in chaotic spelling, just as in every field it is no harder to show good manners than to behave rudely. If the sciences of digging and chopping, of reaping and raking, of weeding and mowing, of spraying and feeding, are all postulates of the future, each can transform the chance methods into exact ones, and that means into truly efficient ones, only when every element has been brought under the scrutiny of the psychological laboratory. We must measure the time in hundredths of a second, must study the psychophysical conditions of every movement, where not trees are cut or hay raked, but where the tools move systems of levers which record graphically the exact amount and character of every partial effect. The one problem of the distribution of work and rest alone is of such tremendous importance for the agricultural work that a real scientific study of the details might lead to just as much saving as the introduction of new machinery. The farmhand, who would never think of wasting his money, wastes his energies by contracting big muscles, where a better economized system of movement would allow him to reach the same result through the contraction of smaller muscles, which involves much less energy and much less fatigue. The loss by wrong bending and wrong coördination of movement may be greater than by bad weather.

Yet commonsense can never be sufficient to find the right motor will impulses. The ideal distribution of pauses is extremely different from merely stopping the work when a state of overfatigue has been reached. Even general scientific rules could not be the last word. Subtle psychological tests would have to be devised by which the plan for alternation between work and rest could be carefully adjusted to the individual needs of every rural worker. The mere sensation of fatigue may be entirely misleading. It must be brought into definite relations to temperature, moistness, character of the work, training, and other factors. On the other hand, the absence of fatigue feeling would be in itself no indication that the limit of safety has not been passed, and yet the work itself must suffer when objective overfatigue of the system has begun. At the right moment a short interruption may secure again the complete conditions for successful work. If that moment has passed, an exhaustion may result which can no longer be repaired by a short rest. Any wrong method of performing these simple activities, that is, any method which is not based on exact scientific analysis, wastes the energies of the workingman, and by that the economic means of the farm owner, and indirectly the economic resources of the whole nation. In the Harvard Psychological Laboratory we are at present engaged in the investigation of such an apparently trivial function as sewing by hand. The finger which guides the needle is attached to a system of levers which write an exact graphic record of every stitch on a revolving drum. And the deeper we enter into this study the more we discover that such a movement, of which every seamstress and every girl who makes her clothes feels that she knows everything, contains an abundance of important features of which we do not as yet know anything. With the same scientific exactitude the laboratory must investigate the milking, or the making of butter, the feeding of the cattle and the picking of the fruit, the use of the scythe and the axe, the pruning and the husking. The mere fact that every one, even with the least skill, is able to carry out such movements with some result, does not in the least guarantee that any one carries them out to-day with the best result possible.

The governmental experiment station ought to establish regular psychological laboratories, in which the mental processes involved in the farmer's activity would be examined with the same loyalty to modern science with which the chemical questions of the soil or the biological questions of the parasites are furthered. Only such investigations could give the right cues also to the manufacturers of farming implements. At present the machines are constructed with the single purpose of greatest physical usefulness, and the farmer who uses them has to adjust himself to them. The only human factor which enters into the construction so far has been a certain desire for comfort and ease of handling. But as soon as the mental facts involved are really examined, they ought to become decisive for the details of the machine. The handle which controls the lever, and every other part, must be placed so that the will finds the smallest possible resistance, so that one psychical impulse prepares the way for the next, and then a maximum of activity can be reached with the smallest possible psychophysical energy. Such a psychological department of the agricultural station could be expanded, and study not only the mental conditions of farming, but examine also the psychological factors which belong indirectly to the sphere of agricultural work. It may examine the mental effects which the various products of the farm stir up in the customers. The feelings and emotions, the volitions and ideas which are suggested by the vegetables and fruits, the animals and the flowers, are not without importance for the success in the market. The psychology of colour and taste, of smell and touch and form, may be useful knowledge for the scientific farmer, and even his methods of packing and preparing for the market, of displaying and advertising, may be greatly improved by contact with applied psychology.

At least one of the psychological side problems demands especial attention, the mental life of the animals. Animal psychology is no longer made up of hunting stories and queer observations on ants and wasps, and gossip about pet cats and dogs and canary birds. It has become an exact science, which is housed in the psychological laboratories of the universities. And with this change the centre of interest has shifted, too. The mind of the animals is not studied in order to satisfy our zoölogical interest, but really to serve an understanding of the mental functions. It was therefore appropriate to introduce those methods which had been tested in human psychology. In our Harvard Psychological Laboratory, in which a whole floor of the building is devoted exclusively to animal experiments under specialists, single functions like memory or attention or emotion are tested in earthworms or turtles or pigeons or monkeys, and the results are no less accurate than those of subtlest human work. But this experimental animal psychology has so far served theoretical interests only. It stands where human psychology stood before the contact with pedagogy, medicine, law, commerce, and industry suggested particular formulations of the experiments. Such contact with the needs of practical life ought to be secured now for animal psychology. The farmer who has to do with cows and swine and sheep, with dogs and horses, with chickens and geese, with pigeons and bees, ought to have an immediate interest to seek this contact. But his concern ought to go still further. He has to fight the animals that threaten his harvest.

The farmer himself knows quite well how important the psychical behaviour of the animals is for his success. He knows how the milk of the cows is influenced by emotional excitement, and how the handling of horses demands an understanding of their mental dispositions and temperaments. Sometimes he even works already with primitive psychological methods. He makes use of the mental instinct which draws insects to the light when he attracts the dangerous moths with light at night in order to destroy them. Ultimately all the traps and nets with which the enemies of the crop are caught are schemes for which psychotechnical calculations are decisive. The means for breaking the horses, down to the whip and the spur and the blinders, are after all the tools of applied psychology. The manufacturer is already beginning to supply the farmer with some practical psychology: dogs which despise the ordinary dog biscuits, seem quite satisfied with the same cheap foods when they are manufactured in the form of bones. The dog first plays with them and then eats them. There is no reason why everything should be left to mere tradition and chance in a field in which the methods are sufficiently developed to give exact practical results, as soon as distinct practical questions are raised. There would be no difficulty in measuring the reaction times of the horses in thousandths of a second for optical and acoustical and tactual impressions, or in studying the influence of artificial colour effects on the various insects in the service of agriculture.

Especial importance may be attached to those investigations in animal psychology which trace the inheritance of individual characteristics. The laboratory psychologist studies, for instance, the laws according to which qualities like savageness and tameness are distributed in the succeeding generations. He studies the proportions of those traits in hundreds of mice, which are especially fit for the experiment on account of their quick multiplication. But this may lead immediately to important results for the farmers with reference to mental traits in breeding animals. It would be misleading if it were denied that all this is a programme to-day and not a realization, a promise and not a fulfilment. The field is practically still uncultivated. But in a time in which the nation is anxious to economize the national resources, which were too long wasted, and in which the need of helping the farmer and of intensifying the values of rural life is felt so generally, it would be reckless to ignore a promise the fulfilment of which seems so near. To be sure, the farmers cultivated their fields through thousands of years without chemistry, just as they do their daily work to-day without psychology, but nobody doubts that the introduction of scientific chemistry into farming has brought the most valuable help to the national, and to the world economy. The time seems really ripe for experimental psychology to play the same rôle for the benefit of mankind, which in the future as in the past will always be prosperous only when the farmer succeeds.

VII

SOCIAL SINS IN ADVERTISING

There is one industry in the world which may be called, more than any other, a socializing factor in our modern life. The industry of advertising binds men together and tightly knits the members of society into one compact mass. Every one in the big market-place of civilization has his demands and has some supply. But in order to link supply and demand, the offering must be known. The industry which overcomes the isolation of man with his wishes and with his wares lays the real foundation of the social structure. It is not surprising that it has taken gigantic dimensions and that uncounted millions are turning the wheels of the advertising factory. The influence and civilizing power of the means of propaganda go far beyond the help in the direct exchange of goods. The advertiser makes the modern newspaper and magazine possible. These mightiest agencies of public opinion and intellectual culture are supported, and their technical perfection secured, by those who pay their business tax in the form of advertisements.

Under these circumstances it would appear natural to have just as much interest and energy and incessant thought devoted to this very great and significant industry as to any branch of manufacturing. But the opposite is true. Armies of engineers and of scientifically trained workers have put half a century of scholarly research and experimental investigation into the perfecting of the physical and chemical industries. The most thorough study is devoted to the raw material and to the machines, to the functions of the workingman and to everything which improves the mechanical output. In striking contrast to this, the gigantic industry of advertising is to-day still controlled essentially by an amateurish impressionism, by a so-called commonsense, which is nothing but the uncritical following of a well-worn path. Surely there is an abundance of clever advertisement writers at work, and great establishments make some careful tests before they throw their millions of circulars before the public. Yet even their so-called tests have in no way scientific character. They are simply based on watching the success in practical life, and the success is gained by instinct. Commonsense tells even the most superficial advertiser that a large announcement will pay more than a small one, an advertisement in a paper with a large circulation more than in a paper with a few subscribers, one with a humorous or emotional or exciting text more than one with a tiresome and stale text. He also knows that the cover page in a magazine is worth more than the inner pages, that a picture draws attention, that a repeated insertion helps better than a lonely one. Yet even a score of such rules would not remove the scheme of advertising from the commonplaces of the trade. They still would not show any trace of the fact that the methods of exact measurement and of laboratory research can be applied to such problems of human society.