4. Basis of Habit

[DRESSER, Horatio W., Psychology: In Theory and Application, pp. 3840. New York, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1924.]

Behaviorists describe habits as integrated reactions modified and improved by repetition and experience, that is, "any definite mode of acting, either explicit or implicit in character, not belonging to man's hereditary equipment.". No new elementary movements are needed. The learned movement is "the tying together or integration of separate elements in such a way as to produce a new unitary activity." Hence a habit is defined as "a complex system of reflexes which functions in a serial order when the child or adult is confronted by the appropriate stimulus." Watson presupposes an original, driving or compelling organic activity, such as hunger. Man reacts to overcome the particular stimulus. The pattern and order having been acquired, the coördination is gradually built up. The individual at length attains an organized integrated level, each organized habit-system being ready to act under appropriate stimulus. The intial progress is rapid, later progress is slow....

The basis of habit, according to James, is found in plasticity, in "the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once." Paths are formed in the organic structure, especially in nervous tissue, in the brain, by successive impressions. Simple reflexes then operate to bring about a sequence of movements. Primarily and originally, habitual reactions must have been impulsive or reflex. In a strictly voluntary act, there is idea, perception, and volition in habit mere sensation is a sufficient guide, that is, the initial, impulsive command to start. The most complicated habits are simply concatenated discharges in the nerve centers, due to the presence of systems of reflex paths, organized so as to start one another up successively.

5. Elimination of Useless Movements in Habit Formation [ANGELL, J. R., Introduction_to Psychology, pp. 54-55. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1918.]

One striking feature distinguishing the earlier from the later stages in these learning processes is found in the presence at the outset of large numbers of superfluous movements, some of which are merely useless, while others actually hinder progress. In the perfected habit, almost all of these have been eliminated. It

is as though Nature called out from the organism a surplus of movements, among which may haply be found the little group indispensable for the specific purpose in hand. The process of establishing the coördination consists, then, first in the selection and fixation of the essential motor elements from among movements actually occurring, and second, in the gradual elimination of those which are needless. Abundant confirmation of these statements may be found in observing a child while he is acquiring control over almost any motor dexterity. Writing, as we have already suggested, is apt at the outset to involve a great mass of perfectly needless movements of head, tongue, shoulders, and body. Slowly these fall away, until there are left substantially only such motions as are really required. Gracefulness has sometimes been declared to depend upon the use of only essential movements. However true this definition, it certainly may be adopted as a just description of economic efficiency. It underlies all the attempts to secure maximal efficiency in industrial occupations.

6. Interference in Habits

[BOOK, W. F., The Psychology of Skill, p. 128. New York, Gregg Publishing Co., 1925.]

In the learning process, even when lower order habits are superseded by higher orders, or when useless habits are broken up, they may remain latent, and under certain conditions, may interfere with new habits. A noteworthy example of this may be found in Book's study in the learning of typewriting.

It was observed by the learners that the older and more elemental habits used in the earlier stages of writing tended strongly to persist and force themselves upon the learners long after they had been superseded by higher-order habits. At every lapse in attention or relaxation of effort, the older habits stepped forward, as it were, and assumed control, thereby tending to perpetuate themselves. Only when a high degree of efficient effort was being persistently applied, only when the learners were urging themselves forward so hard that these outgrown habits had no chance to be used was attention forced to lay hold of the higher and more economical methods of work.

7. A Hierarchy of Habits

[BRYAN, W. L., and HARTER, Noble, "Studies on the Telegraphic Language: The Acquisition of a Hierarchy of Habits," Psychological Review, 1899, Vol. 6, pp. 345–375.]

Habit in its simplest form is merely a sensori-motor coordination. In more complex habits we have groups of coördinations. The learning of anything worth while, for example, the acquisition of proficiency in any school subject, involves the formation of a hierarchy of habits. This has been well illustrated by the classic studies of Bryan and Harter in learning the telegraphic language. Later, Book and Swift, in their studies of learning, found that the learning involved a hierarchy of habits. While the views of these men differ as to what constitutes a hierarchy, the fact remains that there is a hierarchy. Bryan describes it as

follows:

A hierarchy of habits may be described in this way: (1) There are a certain number of habits which are elementary constituents of all the other habits within the hierarchy. (2) There are habits of a higher order which, embracing the lower as elements, are themselves, in turn, elements of higher habits, and so on. (3) A habit of any order, when thoroughly acquired, has physiological and, if conscious, psychological unity. The habits of lower order which are its elements tend to lose themselves in it, and it tends to lose itself in habits of higher order when it appears as an element therein.

8. Persistence of Lower Habits

[BOOK, W. F., The Psychology of Skill, pp. 97, 129. New York, Gregg Publishing Co., 1925.]

In all types of individual learning and in all acquisition we probably have hierarchies of habits. The habits of the lower order may persist and be the cause of interference of association. Book gives us concrete examples in his study.

Long after a way of locating or making certain letters and words had been superseded by a higher and better way the old habits tended to recur at every relaxation of attention. This tendency could be overcome only by keeping attention so per

sistently and strenuously applied to the writing that the highest possible habits were used. It was the development of this habit that forced the learners to make new adaptations and short cuts in method and that enabled them to leave the old and less economic ways behind as fast as they were sufficiently perfected to permit the development of the new and better ways (of writing).

The tendency to continue the old process of spelling a word, letter by letter, which has long been outgrown, and for which there no longer is time, is very strong. It requires special effort and continual care to keep from dropping into these older and slower methods of writing. You only outgrow them when you sprint sufficiently to leave them behind, or go so fast they cannot come in.

9. Habits and Their Ethical Implications

[JAMES, William, Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, pp. 120-127. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1890.]

This brings us by a very natural transition to the ethical implications of the law of habit. They are numerous and momentous. Dr. Carpenter, from whose 'Mental Physiology' we have quoted, has so prominently enforced the principle that our organs grow to the way in which they have been exercised, and dwelt upon its consequences, that this book almost deserves to be called a work of edification, on this account alone. We need make no apology, then, for tracing a few of these consequences ourselves.

"Habit a second nature! Habit is ten times nature," the Duke of Wellington is said to have exclaimed; and the degree to which this is true no one can probably appreciate as well as one who is a veteran soldier himself. The daily drill and the years of discipline end by fashioning a man completely over again. as to most of the possibilities of his conduct.

"There is a story, which is credible enough, though it may not be true, of a practical joker, who, seeing a discharged veteran carrying home his dinner, suddenly called out, 'Attention!' whereupon the man instantly brought his hands down, and lost his mutton and potatoes in the gutter. The drill had been thorough, and its effects had become embodied in the man's nervous structure" (Huxley's Elementary Lessons in Physiology, Lesson XII).

Riderless cavalry-horses, at many a battle, have been seen to come together and go through their customary evolutions at

the sound of the bugle-call. Most trained domestic animals, dogs and oxen, and omnibus- and car-horses, seem to be machines almost pure and simple, undoubtingly, unhesitatingly doing from minute to minute the duties they have been taught, and giving no sign that the possibility of an alternative ever suggests itself to their mind. Men grown old in prison have asked to be readmitted after being once set free. In a railroad accident to a traveling menagerie in the United States sometime in 1884, a tiger, whose cage had broken open, is said to have emerged, but presently crept back again, as if too much bewildered by his new responsibilities, so that he was without difficulty secured.

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps the fisherman and the deck-hand at sea, through the winter; it holds the miner in his darkness, and nails the countryman to his log-cabin and his lonely farm through all the months of snow; it protects us from invasion by the natives of the desert and the frozen zone. It dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nurture or our early choice, and to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no other for which we are fitted, and it is too late to begin again. It keeps different social strata from mixing. Already at the age of twenty-five you see the professional mannerism settling down on the young commercial traveler, on the young doctor, on the young minister, on the young counselor-at-law. You see the little lines of cleavage running through the character, the tricks of thought, the prejudices, the ways of the 'shop,' in a word, from which the man can by-and-by no more escape than his coat-sleeve can suddenly fall into a new set of folds. On the whole, it is best he should not escape. It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

If the period between twenty and thirty is the critical one in the formation of intellectual and professional habits, the period below twenty is more important still for the fixing of personal habits, properly so called, such as vocalization and pronunciation, gesture, motion and address. Hardly ever is a language learned after twenty spoken without a foreign accent; hardly ever can