No color was universally unpleasant. Two subjects found this greenish-yellow almost always mildly pleasant. For most of the subjects, however, it was unpleasant. Here were reported feelings of contraction, of withdrawal, of disgust, of doubt, of hesitation, of stimulation without definiteness, dissatisfaction, slight feeling of nausea, of sea-sickness, of opposition, and the general feeling of offensiveness. The necessary, unpleasant aggressiveness, unrest, or discontent characterizes this feeling. This unpleasant critical attitude where a decision is wanted but not easily gotten, is called often the feeling of uncertainty.
In no sense is this investigation a study of the psychology of color; the only purpose here is to find certain clearly defined feelings for slight stimulations, in order to find in what way they relate themselves to other similarly simple feelings from a different source of stimulation.
In a similar manner, then, the investigation was conducted in the analysis and description of feeling-tones for tactual impressions.
For plush there was a feeling of pleasure, ease, safety, and content. The mood was one of a general enjoyment of sinking one's self into the situation, an agreeable self-surrender. Here also is a feeling of unbending one's self, of general expansiveness, of relaxation. One is soothed, enjoys a suggestion of freedom from disturbance, of a "regularity" of the experience, feels at the same time strength in the suggested repose, responds to pleasant reverberating thrills by the falling off from the accustomed muscular tonicity, and hence has a decided feeling of satisfaction. To some subjects the feeling aroused by the hard, polished, glazed tin surface, possessing no "yielding" character, corresponded more nearly to the feeling for the yellow color than for the red. To all red "went best" with the plush. No tactual feelings offered such distinguishable elements for analysis, nor were they as definitely described as the visual or olfactory or auditory impressions. The sensational elements were in many cases more pronounced. The feeling for the plush, however, much like that for the red color, suggests a "settling down to," or a "dropping forward toward," rather than an aggressive "taking in" of the feeling-material.
The feeling-tone with sensations from sandpaper is grating, irritating, stirring, stimulating. The feeling is one of contraction, of withdrawal, of uneasiness. One is full of "collapsing chills," of minute little pains, and there is a decided call for an opposite kind of behavior. The sense of weakness, of waste of power and energy, of being penetrated, of strained expectation, of unwelcome tension, and of slight "wasteful excitement" results. To some subjects, notably subject E, at times the whole feeling of stimulation as such predominated, and the total effect produced was agreeable, as it "satisfied a felt need of waking up." Here again one subject, subject B, throughout the whole period of two years, failed to find any element of pleasure in any tactual sensation that was pronounced or prolonged sufficiently to furnish material for introspection.
As regards simple tones from tuning-forks the subjects find little to say. All are pleasant, as a rule, and almost universally, low tones are most pleasant, richer in content, greater in amount of "general appeal," more soothing, and pleasantly stimulating. The feeling of the easy attitude called for contributes to the whole feeling. High tones, calling for more activity on the part of the subject, more strain, and greater stimulation, coupled with some rather unprepared-for irritating elements, are less pleasant, and also more limited in their general appeal to the whole organism. The noises variously produced were at first unpleasant, and the only assignable reason seemed to be that their suddenness came as a shock. If expected or continued they too became pleasant very often.
Feelings for forms seem to relate even more definitely to the activity element. The pleasure for the most part is described as being far less sensual, if indeed, so at all. Small upright ovals, 1½ × 1 in., are most pleasant, because somehow they are "more suggestive of definiteness." Circles one inch in diameter are next in order of value as to their feeling-tones. Horizontal ovals are less pleasant still, though for most subjects not unpleasant. Upright ovals are best, as the kind of action apparently called for by the aroused feeling is most agreeable and suitable to the subject's natural upright position of body. An explanation of this general result of introspection, as well as the preference for the particular size chosen almost without exception, is attempted in another part of this report, where are given in more detail the various kinds of bodily accompaniments. The feelings for those ovals have also the characters of stimulation, mild excitement, and a feeling of easy freedom in a pleasing kind of activity. Tension is always present as an agreeable element when reported at all. This element is coupled with the "feeling of assurance of certainty" which the whole situation calls for. It often seems clearly to suggest that one do something. Circles tend more to suggest inner stability and completeness. They stand on their own axes. Here there is a sense of satisfaction, complacency, and sufficiency. The feeling here of a call for immediate activity on the part of the subject is weak and indefinite, when not altogether absent. The subjects do not use for this experience such expressions as excitement, tension, irritation, quick contraction, or the impulse to self-assertion. Horizontal ovals are least pleasant, it seems to me, for obvious reasons. Here such noted elements as "felt unnaturalness," "difficulty of adapting one's self," "wrong direction of activity," which alone and in themselves would be unpleasant, are nevertheless more than counterbalanced by other and pleasing elements, such as symmetry, definiteness, partial stability, and other agreeable features. Often these latter features are not pronounced, and then the judgment is, that the total feeling is unpleasant.
Likewise as regards so-called bad forms, no single statement is unqualifiedly true of any considerable number of subjects. The decided feeling of irregularity, the "bulging-out" or the undesirable "pushing-in" of the figure, the feeling of weakness in one's own body corresponding, the feeling of instability which one tends himself to imitate in various ways, the total effect of lack of poise, all tend to make these figures on the whole unpleasant. But one cannot even here count upon the constancy of the subjects' feelings. At times, due perhaps to undercurrents of association processes of which even the subject himself is not clearly aware, the figure suddenly looms up as quite definitely pleasing, and full of vague suggestiveness and hidden richness of content. These varying characters of the feelings for forms come out interestingly later in the study of them when they are presented as frames for the above described colors.
Section B. The bodily processes noted by the subjects are numerous, and here also, just as with the amount of feeling above, the personal differences are striking. Some subjects detect a great many forms of organic commotion, others rarely find anything that can be said to be descriptive or explanatory of the feeling-state. To all of them at first this looking for bodily accompaniments destroyed the feeling itself. Only after considerable training was it possible for them to find any physiological processes that seemed at all significant. As a general statement the evidence would all tend to suggest that feelings for color are most readily and directly referred to the head, face, throat, and particularly to the forehead and to the eye-muscles. When, however, the feelings are particularly strong, they tend to pervade the whole organism. Red thus often brings about the suggestion of general bodily comfort, and yellow, when very strong, arouses the impulses calling for "spreading-out, aggressive movements," referred to arms, shoulders, and chest. Tones have in general the same reference to the head. Odors are always more organic, affecting more directly the respiration, muscles of the abdomen, and the more internal apparatus generally. Tactual impressions refer to the trunk rather than to the face, hand, arms, or legs. Forms seem to call forth imitative movements, and the actual or incipient motor impulses refer to the action of the eyes in motion, the position of the head, of the whole body, of the shoulders particularly, of the shaping of the cheeks, lips, etc., and of the similarly imitative actions in the hands and arms. The following is a list collected from the reported bodily references given for the feelings described in Part I, Section A.