Dynamic Psychology, by Robert Sessions Woodworth (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1918 Excerpt: ... with experience, and their connections with the reactions are learned or acquired by the individual. This is generally true of emotions and their appropriate acts. The attachment of a natural reaction to a stimulus that is not its natural stimulus can be observed in much simpler cases than these of the complex emotions. Many instances can be observed in animals, such as the following from Spaulding.1 A hermit crab was kept in an oblong aquarium, one end of which could be darkened, leaving the other end light. The crab instinctively kept out of the dark end, but would go there when food was placed there, being attracted by effluvia of the food substance coming through the water. After being repeatedly fed in this way, the crab would go to the darkened portion of the aquarium, even when no food was placed there. Thus the food-seeking reaction had become attached to the darkening as a stimulus. The experiment was carried further by placing a wire screen, with a hole through it, between the crab and the food. The crab not only learned the way through the screen, but after awhile reacted to the screen as a stimulus, going behind it as soon as it was placed in position, even without the presence of food. The screen, not itself an original arouser of the food-seeking reaction, came by 'association', as the phrase runs, to have the power of arousing it. In the same way, the sight of food, though having no original power to excite the flow of saliva, comes from frequent association with the taste of food, which has this power, to have the power itself. Even the name of a food may produce the same result. Evidently there is no inherent likeness between the sound of the word 'beefsteak' and the taste of beefsteak; and this case illustrates in a different field what wa...