the increased blood sugar may endure for several hours even after fairly slight emotional stimulation. There is thus a post- shock or post-emotional state. Apparently the post-emotional state may be of such a character that (1) the organism is left less well adjusted and less capable of carrying out organized activities. As an example of this, the death of a child may leave the mother in a depressed and apathetic condition which may endure for months. On the other hand, (2) the post-emotional state may be of such a character that the organism is in a bettered physiological state; the activities going on before the emotional stimulus appeared may be resumed under a condition of facilita- tion and reinforcement. An example of this occurs when a parent punishes a child: there may be immediate improvement noticeable in his whole behavior (but the reverse may also hap- pen; the child may be thrown into a sullen state which might endure for some time). As a less ambiguous example, take the case of an individual working at a low ebb. He receives a letter containing a check which, while it blocks his activity for the moment, has as its post-emotional effect a tremendous influence upon the speed and accuracy of his work for the remainder of the day or even for a longer period. In general wTe may say that the effect of an emotion arousing stimulus upon the general level of activity may produce facilitation or the reverse; or it may leave the level unchanged. What result will occur depends upon a great many factors: the nature of the exciting stimulus, the individual's character, his general bodily state, etc.
Role of Emotion in Daily Life. — The main fact about emo- tion seems to be that the human organism is built to react in emotional ways. We stated in the beginning that those ways are inherited modes of action. Consequently it is not incumbent upon us as psychologists to give any detailed statement as to their biological serviceableness in keeping the race alive. We should be content with describing the facts and pointing out the role that emotion plays in our development and in our daily life. Of course, if one is terribly overawed by Darwin, one cannot rest until he has pointed out in detail the utilitarian value of every reaction. We are inclined to believe that in both instinct and 224 PSYCHOLOGY • emotion there are many part reactions which are of no adaptive value to the organism whatsoever. We find here what we shall find more strongly emphasized in our discussion of instincts, namely, that if the organism possesses enough hereditary struc- tures and modes of reaction to enable it to get along in its environ- ment, the process of evolution (selection or elimination) allows it to possess many luxuries in the way of reaction possibilities.
We do not mean to assume by these precautionary remarks that emotions are without significance in daily life. We would emphasize the point that they can and do exist whether biologi- cally they are always useful, or useful only at times. (1) Even though they were mere luxuries, so far as biological fitness is concerned, they serve to remove the individual from the monoto- nous level of existing as a highly perfected machine. They give him his ups and downs, make the exact prediction of his acts more difficult (troubling the psychologist and psychiatrist thereby), and in general make him a more delightful personality with whom to work, fight and play. The world would be a sorry place indeed, from an artistic and human standpoint, if the distress of the child, of the weak and downtrodden moved no eye to tears. Fame and ambition would be sorry crowns if the multitude were not moved to acclaim. If all hearts were calm, the great artists would have lived in vain. In a sense society hangs together because of the possibility of emotional rapproche- ment. (2) As regards their effect upon the possibilities of the achievement of the individual, we are inclined to agree with Wil- liam James in his Energies of Men, that in very exceptional cases the heightened state which comes after a great emotional crisis may bring about a degree of achievement that could not be dreamed of at the ordinary working level of the individual. Poe, De Quincey, Byron, Goethe and George Sand would prob- ably never have produced their masterpieces under a humdrum regime. One can take selected cases and marshal an imposing array of such instances. On the other hand, one must preserve one's balance in making the assumption that because a few geni- uses have produced great works under heightened emotional tension, such exalted states make for or produce genius. The HEREDITARY MODES OF RESPONSE: EMOTIONS 225 point seems to be that occasionally under a great tension all part reactions hang together and mutually facilitate one another — every asset and every resource of the individual, as long as the effect of the emotional state persists, are marshaled for the work in hand. Such occasions are rare. The next emotional shock might as its after-effect leave the individual trembling, enervated and flat; totally incapable of accomplishing anything except the merest routine. We all know from our own diaries of ourselves that under ordinary circumstances if we have a fine piece of work to do, a championship game to play, a delicate piece of apparatus to manipulate, a fine surgical operation to perform, we would not willingly expose ourselves to any strong emotional situation; and yet the brilliancy of our performance might be increased thereby. Certainly in history such achievements have been accomplished under such conditions. Possibly the shelter- ijTo-jwfoph pnrnpg from civilization has built up an attitude of tim- idity thereby lessening our readiness to takp thp rmr prpdeftpssors ha^l to take. Society more and more guards against the presence of strong emotional stimuli, since the weak pnssihly PVPTI |he individual nf avprag-e ability cannot jmth- their pffW^ hnwpvor wpll fVio genius TTiRy thrive_JuMpr their i It is true that the illustrations in which we see the bad effects of emotional shock have been chosen from activities that demand gross, explicit forms of adjustment. Would the case be different with more constructive language types of activities? Would the plan of a novel, the writing of a poem, the paint- ing of a masterpiece, the composition of a great opera, be facili- tated, or the reverse, by producing in the artist some great emotion? We shall hazard no answer. (3) In observing the daily life of a great many individuals, we seem to see the following factors at work: One individual has reached a low level of adjust- ment; he can typewrite so many words a minute, or telegraph so many words a minute, or make so many entries in his journal: if this low level of adjustment gives the individual his daily bread, he does not depart from it. His social relations at home and on the outside are on the same dead level. His emotional atti- 226 PSYCHOLOGY 226 PSYCHOLOGY tudes are stereotyped. One takes the attitude of suffering at everything; another the religious attitude; still another the hard- done-by, and the downtrodden attitude. There seems to be a wall around these people. Is there no way of breaking through this wall and getting the individual to reach a higher level of achieve- ment? Emotionally exciting stimuli occasionally seem to accom- plish it. The sudden accession of responsibility or wealth; the enforced demands which come with marriage and the rearing of a family; sometimes even a strong rage or fear, may break through the stereotyped and habitual mode of response, and arouse the individual to the point where he can accept and profit by intensive training (acquisition of greater skill in his field) and eliminate his errors, work longer hours, and plan his work in a more systematic manner.
Practical Study of Emotion and Control of Emotional Reac- tion.— At the present time as never before, individuals repre- senting authority or control over developing human beings are striving to find out enough about the normality and abnormality of emotional life to be of help in shaping that phase of the char- acter of those under them. By individuals representing author- ity we mean explicitly the parent, the physician, the teacher and the employer.
Before attempting to be of help to others in the control of emotional reactions and attitudes, it would seem to be the most logical procedure to examine for a time one's own emo- tional equipment. The simplest way for the student just begin- ning psychology to approach this problem is for him to make a study of his own emotional reactions. All the student is asked to do here is to note his own activities from moment to moment. He should begin to keep a diary of his day: What stimuli most usually call out emotional activities; do these activities show the more infantile type of phenomena that we see in fear, rage and love, or is there only a change in level? What are the- immediate and the more remote effects upon efficiency and learning? Natu- rally, we should include here as a part of his total activity think- ing, planning, since these processes show the functioning of lan- guage organization. He should determine whether the number of HEREDITARY MODES OF RESPONSE: EMOTIONS 227 emotional rises are increasing in number, whether they are becom- ing more stereotyped and consolidated into attitudes, or whether they are decreasing as he becomes better balanced and adjusted. After such a study the student should come out with a much better estimate of his own character than he now has. Very few of us1 have faced ourselves (indexed our own reactions.) in this way during the formative period of life, and we realize often too late that certain overemphasized attitudes have made life's adjust- ments very difficult for us. Some of the more serious defects in emotional adjustment (especially those connected with the sex life) will escape the student's own observation. Because of this it is extremely worth-while to have some one of your companions make systematic observations upon you, which must extend over some period of time. Our measure of normality or balance is not a mathematical or quantitative one, but a common-sense one. It is not a difficult matter to rate your associates as regards the normality of their emotions. The following class experiment may be tried: In a well-acquainted group of 25 persons, there is fairly gen- eral agreement as to their so-called intellectual attainments (general level of their behavior). We know that A is the best all-round man in his class; B approaches the average, whereas C is a hopeless blockhead, just able or unable to make his grade. We constantly make such ratings in the class-room, in the social world and in business. The emotional life is not so generally scrutinized, but there is no general difficulty in the way of making emotional ratings. Each man should study all other men in the class until he feels sure that he can rate them on their various emotional "points." Rate each man on each of the following points: (1) On Normality of Sensitivity to Emotional Stimuli. — The questions before you in this rating are: Does he show anger on insufficient provocation, or does he pass by all situations with- out showing anger? Does he show fear on insufficient stimula- tion, or does he fail to exhibit fear where others ordinarily exhibit it? Are his attachments and detachments with respect to per- sons, places and things made on adequate stimulation?
(2) On the Evenness (But Not Absence of Emotional Tone) of Emotional Level.— Assume that every individual works at three levels: normal, high and low.
228 PSYCHOLOGY (3) On the Normality of Permanent General Attitude. — Here you should be guided by such factors as: Freedom from such attitudes as exclusion, inferiority, suspicion and embar- rassment. On the other hand, the person observed should be free from garrulity, oversensitiveness, display or exhibition tendencies.
(4) On Freedom from Unusual Outlets Through Which Emotional Tension May Drain. — Rate on such points as free- dom from unsocial outlets, such as the chewing of the nails in public, twitching of eyes or lips and motor tics, drumming with feet or fingers, cutting and cleaning nails in public; freedom from rumination and day-dreaming carried to the point where they interfere with other activities — sub-vocal language outlets; from eagerness to run into danger, seeking for highly exciting emotional situations, talking overly much about sex matters, curi- osity about the details of other people's affairs. On the other hand, the individual should possess normal outlets in work, litera- ture, music, play, dress and social affairs.
(5) Make a Final General Rating on What Might be Called the Efficiency of the Individual's Emotional System. — Here two questions predominate: Are his total emotional assets of such a character that they will not interfere with, but on the other hand will facilitate his work and social relations? Is there likeli- hood of a breakdown under any emotion-producing situation which is likely to be met with under the ordinary conditions of modern civilization?
If you are not sure of the place or rating of any person, guess at it. Rate yourself as you do any other person. Make up the five lists tentatively, changing your rating as your study progresses. In the place assignments such factors as class stand- ing and personal friendship should not be considered. The rating should be made entirely upon the basis of the emotional activity of the individual in so far as that can be separated from his other activities. When completed, hand your five lists to the in- structor, without signing your name, who will work them up sta- tistically (see Hollingworth for statistical method, Vocational Psychology, page 42), and use his own judgment as to whether the class shall be told of the final ratings.
From such studies we arrive at the conclusions: (1) that there is normal emotional adjustment; (2) that the majority of indi- viduals are not perfectly balanced, but their weaknesses are so compensated for by other factors (habit) that it is safe to pre- dict that no break-down will occur unless the crisis is very un- HEREDITARY MODES OF RESPONSE: EMOTIONS 229 usual or severe; (3) there are emotionally unstable individuals. So many wrong attachments and detachments have been made, so many unsafe outlets have been' formed, so high or so low is the level of activity, so persistently do these levels appear and so easily are they provoked, that we cannot fail to conclude that the person exhibiting them is in need of medical attention — the advice of a modern psychiatrist should be sought. The parent, the teacher and the employer are, however, brought face to face constantly with individuals belonging in this last class under con- ditions where it is not possible to obtain the advice of a properly trained psychiatrist. Some kind of practical safe and sane way of controlling these factors must be sought. After the unstable in- dividual has been studied and the main factors connected with his lack of balance have been found out, there are two ways of possibly doing good without introducing the element of harm: (1) the environment may be altered; (2) the individual may be retrained.
Alteration of the Environment; Retraining. — Sometimes the conditions antecedent to emotional disturbance are quite simple when discovered. (1) There may be ordinary factors, such as wrong diet, overindulgence in certain foods, overeating, lack of regularity in sleep and insufficient sleep. It is assumed, of course, that the individual has been in the hands of a physician and that organic disturbances and deficiencies have been corrected as far as possible (including hyper- and hypo-activity of the glands of internal secretion). A change of routine often succeeds in bring- ing about the disappearance of the mal-adjustment. (2) In children especially there are factors of a very different character which can produce disturbances. The parents by giving way to the child, noting its every pain and woe, doing things for it which it should do for itself, failing to force it to form the early habits every child should put on (thereby putting it out of adjustment with its mates); now railing at the child and scolding it, the next moment displaying entirely too violent an attachment for it — this condition soon breeds a series of attitudes (dependence, inferiority, rage, depressions), which many times cannot be cor- rected until the child is removed from that environment. (3) As 230 PSYCHOLOGY the child grows older, a still more complicated set of causal fac- tors comes in. It is called upon to react to a world of situations connected with sex. They are made peculiarly sensitive to such situations by their own developing bodies. The stimuli from without are hurled at them in such conflicting ways that proper associations have no time to form, and there are no preexisting organized channels for appropriate reaction. Wrong sex theories are built up; harmful attachments are made and poor outlets are formed. We have in mind here the complex conditions which are at hand around the age of puberty. The youths have to face a mass of sex stories and wrong conceptions of how children come into the world. Sometimes these come from associates of their own age, but often from older children who for the younger represent authority. Unless these theories are straightened out by the parents (or teacher or physician) they get out of touch with their environment. Most healthy children pass safely through this period; some, however, do not emerge unscathed. Improvement can be obtained in such cases if the parents are able to establish a perfect rapport with the child and to talk such matters out quite frankly. A true education process is begun.
Appropriate systems or ways of responding to the sex situation are prepared. If the mal-adjustment has gone on for any great length of time, it may be necessary to remove the child for a time from the persons, places and things around which his poorly adjusted reactions cling. (4) One other especially trying period occurs when the young* man and woman break home attachments and ties and leave a sheltered environment to face a world which they must build for themselves. They.have their occupations to choose and master and their mates to select and adjust to. How they meet this new world depends very largely upon the emotional attitude they bring with them from the childhood and adolescent periods. If their repertoire includes the attitude of seclusive- ness, suspicion and inferiority, or if the sheltering process has gone on too long, healthy adjustments of the type demanded are hard to form and actual psychoses may ensue. A process of re- training must take place. The factors involved in retraining belong in the chapter devoted to habit.
CHAPTER VII HEREDITARY MODES OF RESPONSE: INSTINCT Introduction. — In our discussion of emotion we brought out the fact that there is no sharp line of separation between emo- tion and instinct. Both are hereditary modes of action. On page 194 we stated that in emotion the radius of action lies within the individual 's organism, whereas in instinct the radius of action is extended in such a way that the individual as a whole may make adjustments to objects in his environment. While the radius of action in instinct is extended, the action at the same time is particularized — narrowed down to some specific form of adjust- ment, e.g., nursing, wiping off an offending substance, grasping the covers or any small object with the hands, etc. If the above 1 distinction could be made to apply.wholly without exception it I would be equivalent to saying that in emotion the action is im- \ plicit mass action, whereas in instinct it is explicit definitized and} localized action. But in the previous chapter we found that while the reaction in emotion involved mainly a general response in the visceral motor and glandular side of the organism (implicit), movements of the striped musculature (explicit) were involved to some extent. Notwithstanding this exception, the distinction suggested above is serviceable. We can hardly escape the fact that in emotion the implicit factors predominate. We shall see from our present study that in instinct the action is explicit and capable of being observed in general without instrumentation. Probably every stimulus which leads to a definite instinctive act leads at the same time to some change in emotional tension. It seems easier to believe that emotion can occur without overt instinctive response than that instinctive action can occur without at the same time arousing emotional activity.
Definition of Instinct. — We should define instinct as an hered- itary pattern reaction, the separate elements of which are move- ments principally of the striped muscles. It might otherwise be expressed as a combination of explicit congenital responses un- 232 PSYCHOLOGY folding serially under appropriate stimulation. The following is an illustration: At a fairly early age, the child will respond to a rapid threatening movement of the hand or some other object ag follows: A definite sharp blink of the eyes (which does not appear until about the 100th day), an upward movement of the hands and a backward movement of the head. In every instinct of the more complicated type, we see that the human animal does the same thing, makes some kind of an adjustment. The fact accomplished (what he does) may or may not be adaptive. Many of the hereditary acts are, of course, adaptive, but many of them are non-adaptive and even anti-adaptive. William James has made some statements about instinct which are as nearly true now as when he wrote them: "The actions we call instinctive all conform to the general reflex type; they are called forth by determinate sensory stimuli in contact with the animal 's body or at a distance in his environ- ment." And again: "The older writings on instinct are inef- fectual waste of words, because their authors never came down to this definite and simple point of view, but smothered every- thing in vague wonder at the clairvoyant and prophetic power of the animals — so superior to anything in man — and at the ben- eficence of God in endowing them with such a gift. But God's beneficence endows them, first of all, with a nervous system; and turning our attention to this makes instinct appear neither more nor less wonderful than all the other facts of life. ' ' The simplest way for those beginning the study of instinct is to look upon every definite act that the infant performs at an early age, and hence without learning, as an instinct. If the pure instinctive activities are to be isolated we must here also adopt the genetic method. In advance it may be said that if we look upon all untutored activity of the child as instinctive, we shall have to admit that man has a large repertoire of instincts, but we shall see that they are not all of the full-fledged pattern type. We do not see the very young infant fighting, running, swim- ming and burrowing, but we do find, him performing a goodly number of less spectacular acts, some of which we shall soon describe. At a later age we do find the youth running, fighting, swimming and doing many other things that the animals do. We HEREDITARY MODES OF RESPONSE: INSTINCT 233 are not at this age dealing with pure instincts, however, but with instinct plus habit. The question is pertinent as to why we wish to make distinctions among the instinct, habit and emotional activities. The answer here as it was in the case of emotions is that such an abstraction is necessary if we are ever to be- in a position where we can understand and use instinctive factors to the fullest extent. We shall by no means neglect the instinct- habit consolidation. We shall take up in detail such consolida- tions and show that they function very much as do "pure" instincts.
The Distinction Between Reflex and Instinct. — The term reflex is a convenient abstraction in both physiology and be- havior. In clinical neurology we speak of testing a patient's reflexes such as the patellar, the movement of the pupil under the action of light, the adjustment of the lens, the plantar, etc. In physiology we speak of the reflexes connected with circulation, respiration, digestion, etc. We mean by reflex when used in this way that action takes place under appropriate stimulation in some fairly circumscribed glandular or muscular tissue. It is an abstraction because reflex action in the eye, the leg, hand or foot can never take place in isolation. Action is altered in other parts of the body as well. We brought some of these factors out in our discussion of the knee jerk. The clinician and the physiologist, however, are not interested for the moment in action in any part of the body other than in the particular motor organ which is under observation. Our schematic drawing on page 118 showed the fewest neural connections necessary for a reflex, but action of such simplicity never really takes place. The term reflex, how- ever, is an extremely convenient one and by it we mean the sim-l plest type of activity that can ordinarily be produced. Theo-» retically we might have a pure reflex if we were to stimulate a single neuro-fibrillar ending of an afferent neurone and had a single neuro-fibrillar strand of a motor neurone connected with a single muscle fiber. This dissection has never been made nor has any one been interested in making it. We defined instinct above as a "combination of congenital responses unfolding serially under appropriate stimulation." When we are interested in analyzing 234 PSYCHOLOGY H instinct into its lowest terms, it is simplest to look upon each such element of activity in the pattern as a whole as a reflex. Loeb states, for example, that an instinct is a system of chained re- flexes. As a mere schematic outline of the instinct we have no objection to such a definition.