b. If the vivid factor or complex be positive, i. e., associated in experience with the numerous, or if it be neutral, its group will seem the more numerous. If negative, i. e., associated in experience with the few, its group will seem the less numerous.
The experiments upon the effect of distribution support this proposition, especially as set out in Table XVII. When the vacancies in a given group were made vivid, the other group seemed more numerous; when its filling surpassed in vividness, the judgment was given for it. We have other confirmation in the fact that lengthening the time of exposure reduced the absolute number. Take also this note of one observer on the material in Table II, C:
"I noticed that I had set the open spaces in the outlined group over against the lack of them in the homogeneous, without paying much attention to the nearness together of the spots in the lines of the outlined. Then for a time my attitude was quite vacillating. I found my attention drawn to the nearness together of the spots in part of the outlined group so strongly that if I did not turn it voluntarily to the fact that the other was filled without any large open spaces, I was led to call almost any outlined group the larger. Toward the end of the experiment I got back into my original attitude, in which the outlined group seemed to have its spots hardly more thickly arranged in any part than the homogeneous, and to have also the bare spots and so to be the fewer."
That the vividness of a neutral factor or complex increases the apparent number was suggested by comments of the observers. One observer reported of the material in Table IV: "The greater brightness of red gave it more importance. The natural thing seemed to be to give the red the judgment. The gray fought more for recognition." And again: "The red seems a vitalized space and the dots more omnipresent, also the red lasts longer in memory and is there more vivid, so that often in cases of doubt, where the decisive comparison was made in memory, the red may have been given the vote. Often there was an immediate unanalyzed feeling that if the groups had been both of the same color, the judgment would have been for the gray." In both cases his results showed this tendency. Another observer, whose results agree with the former, found that his eye was directed involuntarily toward the red.
This fact was put to a special test. In the material of Table II, B, a card, in which the pattern group had an appearance strikingly different from the normal, was introduced, the two groups being objectively equal. With three observers the effect was overestimation of this group, and with a fourth, the suppression to equality of a previous overestimation of the opposite group. This fact, together with the observers' comments, seems to justify the conclusion that the vividness of a neutral factor or complex was the determining condition of the judgment. That the observers did not all show positive results in this experiment may be set down to the difficulty in controlling the subjective conditions of vividness. Of course the space-relations within the new pattern were different from those in the old. The only justification for taking no account of these is the character of the introspections themselves.
It should be said of the red group that beside its vividness it had characters mentioned by other observers that might independently have made its number seem greater. It was called "dazzling," "blurred," and its area seemed increased. In this respect the effect of the color should be discussed as a special case of distribution or object-size.
The vividness tested in this special way seems due to contrast, in the one case with surroundings, in the other case with the expected. Such a judgment is very far removed from the normal bases, rather more so, it would seem, than even those where a group had sound or touch accompaniment; for in the latter case there could be no question about the "moreness"; the only doubt could be about its legitimacy. Of the precise extent to which this cause of vividness has operated throughout our studies, even where spatial differences have been concerned, we cannot be sure. The patterns of the materials in B and C of Table II seem to offer that possibility. That it should enter anywhere opens, indeed, the entire field.
c. The observers fall into the following classes on the basis of the character of the association:
(1) Relatively fixed association,
(a) involving correct adjustment to objects (vividness of relevant factors);
(b) involving incorrect adjustment to objects (vividness of irrelevant factors).