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reflective appreciation of the processes involved, who knows, as we say, what he is doing, will not long be baffled by a car with a slightly different arrangement of levers and steering gear, nor be completely frustrated when the car for some reason fails to move. As happened in many notable instances, during the world war, trained executives were not long at a loss when they shifted from the management of a steel plant to a shipyard, or from large scale mining operations in Montana to large scale relief work in Belgium.

The Conscious Transference of Habits

When habits are consciously acquired, they may be consciously transferred with modifications to situations slightly different from those in which they were first learnt. Merely mechanical habits are a hindrance in any save the most mechanical work. An alert and conscious method of learning, which means the development of habits as methods of control, will enable the individual to modify habits acquired in slightly different circumstances to new situations where the major conditions remain the same. To be merely habitual is to be at best an efficient machine, utterly unable to do anything except to run along certain grooves, to respond like an animal trained to certain tricks. It means, moreover, a loss of richness in experience. When a profession becomes routinated it becomes meaningless; a mere making of the wheels go round. The spirit of alert and conscious inquiry must be maintained if life is not to become a mere repeated monotony.

An alert and conscious adjustment of habits to a changing environment constitutes intelligence. The technique of this adjustment is the technique of thinking or of reflective behavior.

CHAPTER III

TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR AND THEIR SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE-REFLECTION AND EMOTION

Instinct and Habit versus Reflection

In the two types of behavior already discussed, man is, as it were, 'pushed from behind'. In the case of instinct he performs an action simply because he must perform it. Willynilly he withdraws his hand from fire, eats when hungry, and sleeps when tired. In the case of habits, once they are acquired, he is also largely dominated by circumstances beyond his own control. The bottle is to the confirmed drunkard almost an irresistible command to drink, the alarm clock to one accustomed to it an equally imperative and not-to-bedisregarded order to arise. The story of the old veteran who was carrying home his dinner and who dropped his hands to his side and his dinner to the gutter when a practical joker called 'Attention'; the pathetic plight of the superannuated business man who is totally at a loss away from his familiar duties, are often quoted illustrations of how completely habit may determine a man's actions.

But while in a large portion of our daily duties we are thus at the beck and call of the instincts which are our inheritance and the habits which we have acquired, we may also control our actions. Instead of performing actions as immediate and automatic responses to accustomed stimuli, we may determine our actions, single or consecutive, in the light of absent and future results. To act thus is to act reflectively, and to act reflectively is the only escape from random acts prompted by instinct and routine ones prompted by habit.

To act reflectively is to delay response to an instinctive or habitual stimulus until the various possibilities of action and the results associated with each have been considered. An action performed instinctively or habitually is automatic; it

is performed not on the basis of what will be the result, but simply as an immediate response to a present stimulus. But an act (or a series of acts) reflectively performed is performed in the light of the results that are prophetically associated with them. In the case of instinct and habit, the individual almost literally does not know what he is about. In reflective activity he does know, and the more thorough the reflective process, the more thorough and precise is his knowledge. He performs actions because they will achieve certain results, and he is conscious of that causal connection, both before the action is performed, when he perceives the results imaginatively, and after it is performed when he sees them in fact.

Illustration of the Reflective Process

A student may, for example, be seated in his study preparing for an examination. A friend enters and suggests going for a walk or to the theater. If the student were to 'follow the impulse', he would, before he realized it, be off for an evening's excursion. But instead of responding immediately, dropping his books, reaching for his hat, opening the door and ringing for the elevator (a series of habitual acts initiated by the instinctive desire for rest, variety, and companionship), he may take some time to decide. This period of indecision is the interval during which reflection takes place. In general terms (the technique of reflection will be discussed in Chapter XV), what happens is simply this: he will, if genuinely reflective, consider the two courses of action, and the results associated with each. On the one hand is the immediately pleasurable stimulation of companionship; he is being hurried heedlessly along the paths of instinctive desires. On the other hand is a lonely evening of arduous concentration, annoying, dissatisfying to the instinctive cravings at that moment uppermost, but associated with the passing of the examination. If he decides to stay at work, his action is not guided by the first promptings of instinct, but by a deliberate consideration of the future. Even if he decides finally to follow the first impulse which presented itself, his action is different than if he had acted without any consideration at all. For one thing, it

means more; it is done in the light of certain consequences, for the fun it will bring and in spite of the possible failing in the examination. The very heart of reflective behavior is thus seen to be its utilization of present stimuli as indications of possible results, and its making of present responses in the light of their possible consequences.

The train of thought and action is not always so simple and immediate as in the above illustration. It may be long and complicated as when a man economizes on time and money, resists every persuasion of immediate enjoyment, and spends years in preparation for a professional career. Through this long preparation he may go through a great variety of complete acts of thought, and take into account a much wider number of facts and considerations than those mentioned above.

Reflection as the Modifier of Instinct

Reflection is primarily a revealer of consequences. Instead of yielding to the first impulse that occurs to him, the thinking man considers where that impulse, if followed out, will lead. And since man is moved by more than one impulse at a time reflection traces the consequences of each, and determines action, on the basis of the relative satisfactions, it can prophesy after careful inquiry into the situation. To reflect is primarily to query a stimulus, to find out what it means in terms of its consequences. The more alert, persistent, and careful this inquiry, the more will instinctive tendencies be checked and modified and adjusted to new situations.

In the discussion of the acquisition of habits, it was pointed out that useful habits may be acquired most rapidly by an analysis of them into their significant features. The speed with which random instinctive actions are modified into a series of useful habitual ones depends intimately upon how clear and detailed is the individual's appreciation of the results to be achieved by one action rather than another. A large part of learning even among humans is doubtless trial and error, random hit or miss attempts, until after successive repetitions, a successful response is made and retained. But

human learning and habit formation is so much more various and fruitful than that of animals precisely because human beings can check and modify instinctive responses in the light of consequences which they can foresee. These foreseen consequences are, of course, derived from previous experience, that is, they are 'remembered'. But reflection short-circuits the process. The more deliberate and reflective the process of learning, the more the individual notes the connections between the things he does and the results he gets, the fewer repetitions will he need in order effectively to modify his in- | stinctive behavior into useful habits. He will anticipate results; he will experience them in imagination. He will not need to make every wrong move in paddling a canoe until he finally hits upon the right one. He will not need to alienate all his clients before learning to deal with them successfully. In any given set of circumstances he will form the effective habits rapidly. He will calculate, 'figure out', find out in advance. To keep one's temper under provocation, to refrain from eating delicious and indigestible foods, to keep at work when one would like to play, and sometimes to play when one is engrossed in work, are familiar instances of how our first impulses become checked, restrained, or modified in the light of the results we have discovered to be associated with them.

Reflective Behavior Modifies Habit

The same conscious breaking-up of a new type of action into its significant features, the same connection of a given action with a given result which makes the intelligent learner so much more quickly acquire effective new habits than the one who is mechanically drilled, leads also to a continuous criticism of habits, and their discontinuance when they are no longer adequate. Reflection, if it is itself a habit, is the most valuable one of all. It is an important counterpoise to the hardening and fossilization which repeated habitual actions bring about in the nervous system.

In acting reflectively we subject our accustomed ways to deliberate analysis, however immediately persuasive these may have become, and deliberately institute new habits in

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