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adrenal secretion, while exerting a stimulating influence on the muscles, has an inhibitive influence on the digestive

organs.

19. Fear

[CRILE, G. W., Origin and Nature of the Emotions, p. 60ff. Philadel phia, W. B. Saunders Co., 1915.]

...

We fear not in our hearts alone, not in our brains alone, not in our viscera alone-fear influences every organ and tissue; each organ or tissue is stimulated or inhibited according to its use or hindrance in the physical struggle for existence. By this concentrating all or most of the nerve force on the nerve-muscular mechanism for defense, a greater physical power is developed. Hence it is that under the stimulus of fear animals are able to perform preternatural feats of strength. For the same reason, the exhaustion following fear will be increased as the powerful stimulus of fear drains the cup of nervous energy even though no visible action may result. . . . Perhaps the most striking difference between man and animals lies in the greater control which man has gained over his primitive instinctive reactions. As compared with the entire duration of organic evolution, man came down from his arboreal abode and assumed his new rôle of increased domination over the physical world but a moment ago. And now, though sitting at his desk in command of the complicated machinery of civilization, when he fears a business catastrophe his fear is manifested in the terms of his ancestral physical battle in the struggle for existence. He cannot fear intellectually, he cannot fear dispassionately, he fears with all his organs, and the same organs are stimulated and inhibited as if, instead of its being a battle of credit, or position, or of honor, it were a physical battle with teeth and claws. . . . Nature has but one means of response to fear, and whatever its cause the phenomena are always the samealways physical.

...

The point is this,-fear is a costly proceeding, and should be "indulged" in only under extreme conditions.

20. Control of Fear

There are three major methods of dealing with fear. In the first place, personal example is a most fruitful way of inhibiting fear tendencies. Second, there is the possibility of conditioning the individual by associating with the situa

tion that tends to provoke fear, some original satisfiers that promise to lessen the fear response. Third, appeal may be made to the child's knowledge or reason. The particular method to be used will depend upon the age and experiences of the child.

Fear is a great motivating force in the control of behavior. Appeal should be made to the highest levels of fear that will work if they are to be used at all. Some of these fears are, fear of violating one's conscience, fear of not measuring up to one's ideals, fear of social disapproval.

21. Hate

[JAMES, William, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 283. New York, Longmans, Green & Co., 1902.]

"Love your enemies!" Mark you, not simply those who happen not to be your friends, but your enemies, your positive and active enemies. Either this is a mere Oriental hyperbole, a bit of verbal extravagance, meaning only that we should, as far as we can, abate our animosities, or else it is sincere and literal. Outside of certain cases of intimate individual relation, it seldom has been taken literally. Yet it makes one ask the question: Can there in general be a level of emotion so unifying, so obliterative of differences between man and man, that even enmity may come to be an irrelevant circumstance and fail to inhibit the friendlier interests aroused? If positive well-wishing could attain so supreme a degree of excitement, those who were swayed by it might well seem superhuman beings. Their life would be morally discrete from the life of other men, and there is no saying... what the effects might be: they might conceivably transform the world.

22. General Emotional Instability

[BURT, Cyril, The Young Delinquent, pp. 484-490. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1925.] (Adapted.)

General emotional instability may be observed in the delinquent boy who steals. His behavior is characterized by such tendencies or traits as secretiveness, truancy, bad sexual habits, and quarrelsomeness. At the same time, however, he may be cowardly, spasmodically generous and affectionate. The emotionally unstable child is usually bad-tempered, de

structive, cruel, and pugnacious. However, his feelings are often transient. Occasionally, he has impulsive outbursts of affection, and alternating feelings of merriment and misery or happiness and depression. Not infrequently he has a bright imagination.

23. Pleasant Feelings Facilitate Progress in Typewriting [Book, W. F., Psychology of Skill, pp. 206-207. Copyright, 1925. Courtesy of the Gregg Publishing Co., New York.]

But what about our second question, the retroactive effect of pleasant and unpleasant feelings upon the learner's ability to do and to improve? . . . Pleasant feelings, had undeniably, in our experiments, a stimulating and helpful effect upon every part of the work, unpleasant feelings a depressing, retarding effect. Pleasant feelings produced something like an increased irritability in the neural basis of every psycho-physical activity in operation at the time. Success brings pleasure and the pleasure spurs the learner on to greater effort and more successful work. An unpleasant feeling tends to interrupt the natural, easy and correct movement of attention by taking forcible possession of consciousness and dominating it. Instead of consciousness being focused on the details of the work, it is filled with unpleasant feelings, which not only take attention off the details of the work, but create a "set" of mind unfavorable for the work.

In all moderate degrees unpleasant feelings serve as a distraction and produce, or further aggravate, a failure of attention. If exceedingly severe, they may, however, serve as an incentive to efficient effort and thus entirely counteract their usual effect. That is to say, one's mistakes or the unpleasant feelings which follow, may in rare cases, serve to arouse the learner to greater voluntary endeavor and so prove advantageous. Pleasant feelings always seemed to stimulate the right flow and movement of attention and, therefore, made every part of the work go better. Every increase in effectiveness caused more pleasure, it seemed, and the pleasurable feeling gave, in turn, the proper "set" of attention for still more easy and successful work. The learner could try both harder and more effectively when he was feeling good. He had to waste no effort in trying. Only when success led to complacent self-satisfaction and slackened voluntary attention did the effect of the pleasant feeling become disadvantageous. When it lessens effort to a consider

able degree, its unconscious helpful effect may be more than counteracted. In our experiments, however, this never occurred. All pleasant feelings attending the success had a helpful reactionary effect on the work.

One additional fact should be mentioned. It was found that a good moment or two in the early part of a test gave the learner a favorable mental attitude or feeling tone which often persisted for the rest of the test. As one of the learners expressed it (Z, May 22, practice sentence notes): "I started to-day with a feeling of disgust. I was afraid I would go to pieces again like yesterday. When I found that I could write well, I began to feel better and wrote with more enthusiasm. Towards the end of the test I could put more enthusiasm into the work and write easily because of my early success."

24. Zeal and Concentration of Attention Make Practice Effective

[Book, W. F., Psychology of Skill, p. 176. Copyright, 1925. Courtesy of Gregg Publishing Co., New York.]

The significance for learning of this variation in voluntary attention or effort will be seen when it is remembered that new adaptations or forward steps in learning were only made when intense effort was rightly applied to the work. At the "critical stages" where a natural and marked decrease in spontaneous attention and effort occurred, no improvement was made. The learner was caught by the law of habit and was content to use old methods of writing when he should have been forging ahead inventing new and better ones. The important fact is not that an initial and final spur to effort should generally occur but that it was lacking at the "critical stages" where the lapse in spontaneous attention and effort occurred. It seems but another way of saying that at the stages of practice where little or no improvement was made less effort was put into the work.

25. Self-Consciousness Hampers Free and Vigorous Action [JAMES, William, Talks to Teachers, pp. 220-222. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1915.]

Now from all this we can draw an extremely practical conclusion, If, namely, we wish our trains of ideation and volition to be copious and varied and effective, we must form the habit of freeing them from the inhibitive influence of reflection upon

them, of egoistic preoccupation about their results. Such a habit, like other habits, can be formed. Prudence and duty and self-regard, emotions of ambition and emotions of anxiety, have, of course, a needful part to play in our lives. But confine them as far as possible to the occasions when you are making your general resolutions and deciding upon your plan of campaign, and keep them out of the details. When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all care and responsibility about the outcome. Unclamp, in a word, your intellectual and practical machinery, and let it run free; and the service it will do you will be twice as good. Who are the scholars who get 'rattled' in the recitation-room? Those who think of the possibilities of failure and feel the great importance of the act. Who are those who do recite well? Often those who are most indifferent. Their ideas reel themselves out of their memory of their own accord. Why do we hear the complaint so often that social life in New England is either less rich and expressive or more fatiguing than it is in some other parts of the world? To what is the fact, if fact it be, due, unless to the over-active conscience of the people, afraid of either saying something too trivial and obvious, or something insincere, . . . or something in some way or other not adequate to the occasion? How can conversation possibly steer itself through such a sea of responsibilities and inhibitions as this? On the other hand, conversation does flourish and society is refreshing, and neither dull on the one hand nor exhausting from its efforts on the other, wherever people forget their scruples and take the brakes off their hearts, and let their tongues wag as automatically and irresponsibly as they will.

26. Emotions and Their Control

[PILLSBURY, W. B., Essentials of Psychology, pp. 315-316. Copyright, 1915, by the Macmillan Co.] (Adapted.)

The child's emotional reaction is often determined by the attitude he takes toward the exciting stimulus or situation. The teacher and parent can help children gain self-control in a very large measure by developing proper attitudes. The attitude is very largely under one's control.

On the whole it is probably wise to curb or repress the child's instinctive tendencies and the accompanying emotions as little as possible. However, in modern times such a

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