Applied Psychology: Driving Power of Thought - Being the Third in a Series of Twelve Volumes on the - Applications of Psychology to the Problems of Personal and - Business Efficiency
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Applied Psychology: Driving Power of Thought, by Warren Hilton This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Applied Psychology: Driving Power of Thought Being the Third in a Series of Twelve Volumes on the Applications of Psychology to the Problems of Personal and Business Efficiency Author: Warren Hilton Release Date: July 4, 2010 [EBook #33076] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY, VOL 3 *** Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) Applied Psychology DRIVING POWER OF THOUGHT Being the Third of a Series of Twelve Volumes on the Applications of Psychology to the Problems of Personal and Business Efficiency BY WARREN HILTON, A.B., L.L.B. FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY ISSUED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE LITERARY DIGEST FOR The Society of Applied Psychology NEW YORK AND LONDON 1920 COPYRIGHT 1914 BY THE APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY PRESS SAN FRANCISCO (Printed in the United States of America) CONTENTS Chapter Page I.
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| Publié par | mofing |
| Publié le | 01 décembre 2010 |
| Nombre de lectures | 17 |
| Langue | English |
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Applied Psychology: Driving Power of Thought, by
Warren Hilton
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.
You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Applied Psychology: Driving Power of Thought
Being the Third in a Series of Twelve Volumes on the
Applications of Psychology to the Problems of Personal and
Business Efficiency
Author: Warren Hilton
Release Date: July 4, 2010 [EBook #33076]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY, VOL 3 ***
Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
Applied Psychology
DRIVING
POWER OF THOUGHT
Being the Third of a Series of Twelve
Volumes on the Applications of
Psychology to the Problems of Personal
and Business Efficiency
BY
WARREN HILTON, A.B., L.L.B.
FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
ISSUED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF
THE LITERARY DIGEST
FOR
The Society of Applied Psychology
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1920
COPYRIGHT 1914
BY THE APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY PRESS
SAN FRANCISCO
(
Printed in the United States of America
)
CONTENTS
Chapter
Page
I.
JUDICIAL MENTAL OPERATIONS
VITALIZING INFLUENCE OF
CERTAIN IDEAS
3
WORK OF PRINCE, GERRISH, SIDIS,
JANET, BINET
4
THE TWO TYPES OF THOUGHT
5
II.
CAUSAL JUDGMENTS
ELEMENTARY CONCLUSIONS
9
FIRST EFFORT OF THE MIND
10
DISTORTED EYE PICTURES
11
ELEMENTS THAT MAKE UP AN IDEA
12
CAUSAL JUDGMENTS AND THE
OUTER WORLD
13
III.
CLASSIFYING JUDGMENTS
THE MARVEL OF THE MIND
17
THE INDELIBLE IMPRESS
18
HOW IDEAS ARE CREATED
19
THE ARCHIVES OF THE MIND
22
IV.
THE FOUR PRIME LAWS OF
ASSOCIATION
THE SEEMING CHAOS OF MIND
27
PREDICTING YOUR NEXT IDEA
28
THE BONDS OF INTELLECT
29
BRANDS AND TAGS
32
HOW EXPERIENCE IS
SYSTEMATIZED
33
HOW LANGUAGE IS SIMPLIFIED
34
PROCESSES OF REASONING AND
REFLECTION
35
V.
EMOTIONAL ENERGY IN BUSINESS
IDEAS THAT STIMULATE
39
PIVOTAL LAW OF BUSINESS
PASSION
40
ENERGIZING EMOTIONS
41
CROSS-ROADS OF SUCCESS OR
FAILURE
42
THE LIFE OF EFFORT
43
THE MOTIVE POWER OF
PROGRESS
44
THE VALUE OF AN IDEA
45
THE HARD WORK REQUIRED TO
FAIL
46
CREATIVE POWER OF THOUGHT
47
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS
TRAINING
48
TWO WAYS OF ATTACKING
BUSINESS PROBLEMS
49
CUTTING INTO THE QUICK
50
EXECUTIVES, REAL AND SHAM
51
MENTAL ATTITUDE OF ONE'S
BUSINESS
52
PSYCHOLOGICAL ENGINEERING
53
VI.
HOW TO SELECT EMPLOYEES
A CLUE TO ADAPTABILITY
57
MAPPING THE MENTALITY
58
THE KIND OF "HELP" YOU NEED
59
TESTS FOR DIFFERENT MENTAL
TRAITS
60
TEST OF UNCONTROLLED
ASSOCIATIONS
61
TEST FOR QUICK THINKING
62
MEASURING SPEED OF THOUGHT
63
RANGE OF MENTAL TESTS
64
TESTS FOR ARMY AND NAVY
65
TESTS FOR RAILROAD EMPLOYEES
66
WHAT ONE FACTORY SAVED
67
PROFESSOR MÜNSTERBERG'S
EXPERIMENTS
68
TESTS FOR HIRING TELEPHONE
GIRLS
69
MEMORY TEST
71
TEST FOR ATTENTION
72
TEST FOR GENERAL INTELLIGENCE
74
TEST FOR EXACTITUDE
76
TEST FOR RAPIDITY OF MOVEMENT
77
TEST FOR ACCURACY OF
MOVEMENT
78
RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTS
79
THEORY AND PRACTICE
85
HOW TO IDENTIFY THE UNFIT
87
MEANS TO GREAT BUSINESS
ECONOMIES
88
ROUND PEGS IN SQUARE HOLES
89
THE DANGER IN TWO-FIFTHS OF A
SECOND
90
PICKING A PRIVATE SECRETARY
91
FINDING OUT THE CLOSE-
MOUTHED
92
A TEST FOR SUGGESTIBILITY
93
SELECTING A STENOGRAPHER
95
TESTS FOR AUDITORY ACUITY
96
A TEST FOR ROTE MEMORY
97
A TEST FOR RANGE OF
VOCABULARY
100
CRIME-DETECTION BY
PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS
105
THE FACTORY OPERATIVE'S
ATTENTION POWER
106
KINDS OF TESTING APPARATUS
108
ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT CALLINGS
109
EXERCISES FOR DEVELOPING
SPECIAL FACULTIES
110
PRINCIPLES THAT BEAR ON
PRACTICAL AFFAIRS
111
Chapter I
[Pg 3]
O
Vitalizing
Influence of
Certain Ideas
The Work of
Prince, Gerrish,
Sidis, Janet, Binet
The Two Types of
Thought
JUDICIAL MENTAL OPERATIONS
ne
of
the
greatest
discoveries
of
modern times is the impellent energy
of thought.
That every idea in consciousness is energizing and carries with
it
an
impulse
to
some
kind
of
muscular
activity
is
a
comparatively new but well-settled principle of psychology.
That this principle could be made to serve practical ends
seems never to have occurred to anyone until within the last
few years.
Certain eminent pioneers in therapeutic
psychology, such men as Prince, Gerrish,
Sidis, Janet, Binet and other physician-
scientists, have lately made practical use
of the vitalizing influence of certain classes
of ideas in the healing of disease.
We shall go farther than these men have gone and show you
that the impellent energy of ideas is the means to all practical
achievement and to all practical success.
Preceding books in this Course have taught that—
I.
All human achievement comes about through some form of
bodily activity.
II.
All bodily activity is caused, controlled and directed by the
mind.
III.
The
mind
is
the
instrument
you must employ for the
accomplishment of any purpose.
You have learned that the fundamental
processes of the mind are the Sense-
Perceptive
Process
and
the
Judicial
Process.
So far you have considered only the former—that is to say,
sense-impressions and our perception of them. You have
learned
through
an
analysis
of
this
process
that
the
environment that prescribes your conduct and defines your
career is wholly mental, the product of your own selective
attention, and that it is capable of such deliberate molding and
adjustment by you as will best promote your interests.
But the
mere
perception
of sense-impressions, though
a
fundamental part of our mental life, is by no means the whole of
it. The mind is also able to look at these perceptions, to assign
them a meaning and to reflect upon them. These operations
constitute what are called the Judicial Processes of the Mind.
The Judicial Processes of the Mind are of two kinds, so that, in
the last analysis, there are, in addition to sense-perceptions,
two, and only two, types of thought.
One of these types of thought is called a Causal Judgment and
the other a Classifying Judgment.
[Pg 4]
[Pg 5]
[Pg 6]
A
Elementary
Conclusions
First Effort of the
Mind
Distorted Eye
Pictures
Chapter II
CAUSAL JUDGMENTS
Causal
Judgment
interprets
and
explains
sense-
perceptions. For instance, the tiny baby's first vague notion
that
something
, no knowing what, must have caused the
impressions of warmth and whiteness and roundness and
smoothness that accompany the arrival of its milk-bottle—this is
a causal judgment.
The very first conclusion that you form
concerning any sensation that reaches you
is that something produced it, though you
may not be very clear as to just what that
something is. The conclusions of the infant mind, for example,
along
this
line
must
be
decidedly
vague
and
indefinite,
probably going no further than to determine that the cause is
either inside or outside of the body. Even then its judgment may
be far from sure.
Yet, baby or grown-up, young or old, the
first effort of every human mind upon the
receipt and perception of a sensation is to
find out what produced it. The conclusion
as to what did produce any particular sensation is plainly
enough a judgment, and since it is a judgment determining the
cause of the sensation, it may well be termed a causal
judgment.
Causal judgments, taken by themselves, are necessarily very
indefinite. They do not go much beyond deciding that each
individual sensation has a cause, and is not the result of
chance on the one hand nor of spontaneous brain excitement
on the other. Taken by themselves, causal judgments are
disconnected and all but meaningless.
I look out of my window at the red-roofed
stone schoolhouse across the way, and,
so
far
as
the
eye-picture
alone
is
concerned
, all that I get is an impression of
a flat, irregularly shaped figure, part white and part red. The
image has but two dimensions, length and breadth, being
totally lacking in depth or perspective. It is a flat, distorted,
irregular outline of two of the four sides of the building. It is not
at all like the big solid masonry structure in which a thousand
children are at work. My causal judgments trace this eye-picture
to its source, but they do not add the details of distance,
perspective, form and size, that distinguish the reality from an
[Pg 9]
[Pg 10]
[Pg 11]
[Pg 12]
Elements that
Make Up an Idea
Causal
Judgments and
the Outer World
The Marvel of the
Mind
The Indelible
Impress
architect's front elevation. These causal judgments of visual
perceptions must be associated and compared with others
before a real "idea" of the schoolhouse can come to me.
Taken
by
themselves,
then,
causal
judgments fall far short of giving us that
truthful account of the outside world which
we feel that our senses can be depended
on to convey.
If there were no mental processes other
than
sense-perceptions
and
causal
judgments, every man's mind would be the
useless repository of a vast collection of
facts, each literally true, but all without
arrangement, association or utility. Our notion of what the
outside world is like would be very different from what it is. We
would have no concrete "ideas" or conceptions, such as
"house," "book," "table," and so on. Instead, all our "thinking"
would be merely an unassorted jumble of simple, disconnected
sense-perceptions.
What, then, is the process that unifies these isolated sense-
perceptions and gives us our knowledge of things as concrete
wholes?
Chapter III
CLASSIFYING JUDGMENTS
A Classifying Judgment associates and
compares
present
and
past
sense-
perceptions. It is the final process in the
production of that marvel of the mind, the "idea."
The simple perception of a sensation unaccompanied by any
other mental process is something that never happens to an
adult human being.
In the infant's mind the arrival of a sense-impression arouses
only a perception, a consciousness of the sense-impression. In
the mind of any other person it awakens not only this present
consciousness
but
also
the
associated
memories of past
experiences.
Upon the slumbering mind of the newborn
babe
the
very
first
message
from
the
sense-organs
leaves
its
exquisite
but
[Pg 13]
[Pg 17]
[Pg 18]
How Ideas are
Created
The Archives of
the Mind
indelible
impress.
The
next
sense-
perception is but part of a state of consciousness, in which the
memory of the first sense-perception is an active factor. This is
a higher type of mental activity. It is a something other and more
complex than the mere consciousness of a sensory message
and the decision as to its source.
The moment, then, that we get beyond the first crude sense-
perception
consciousness consists not of detached sensory
images but of "ideas," the complex product of present sense-
perceptions, past sense-perceptions and the mental processes
known to psychology as association and discrimination
.
Every concrete conception or idea, such
as "horse," "rose," "mountain," is made up
of a number of associated properties. It has
mass, form and various degrees of color,
light and shade. Every quality it possesses is represented by a
corresponding visual, auditory, tactual or other sensation.
Thus, your first sense-perception of coffee was probably that of
sight
. You perceived a brown liquid and your causal judgment
explained
that
this
sense-perception
was
the
result
of
something outside of your body. Standing alone, this causal
judgment meant very little to you, so far as your knowledge of
coffee was concerned. So also the causal judgment that traced
your sense of the smell of coffee to some object in space meant
little until it was added to and associated with your eye-vision of
that same point in space. And it was only when the causal
judgment explaining the
taste
of coffee was added to the other
two that you had an "
idea
" of what coffee really was.
When you look at a building, you receive a number and variety
of simultaneous sensations, all of which, by the exercise of a
causal judgment, you at once ascribe to the same point in
space.
From
this
time
on
the
same
flowing
together
of
sensations from the same place will always mean for you that
particular material thing, that particular building. You have a
sensation of yellow, and forthwith a causal judgment tells you
that something outside of your body produced it. But it would be
a pretty difficult matter for you to know just what this something
might be if there were not other simultaneous sensations of a
different kind coming from the same point in space. So when
you see a yellow color and at the same time experience a
certain familiar taste and a certain softness of touch, all arising
from the same source, then by a series of classifying judgments
you put all these different sensations together, assign them to
the same object, and give that object a name—for example,
"butter."
This process of grouping and classification
that we are describing under the name of
"classifying judgments" is no haphazard
affair. It is carried on in strict compliance
with certain well-defined laws.
These laws prescribe and determine the workings of your mind
just as absolutely as the laws of physics control the operations
of material forces.
While each of these laws has its own special province and
jurisdiction, yet all have one element in common, and that is
that they all relate to those mental operations by which sense-
perceptions,
causal
judgments,
and
even
classifying
[Pg 19]
[Pg 20]
[Pg 21]
[Pg 22]
I
The Seeming
Chaos of Mind
Predicting Your
Next Idea
The Bonds of
Intellect
judgments, past, present and imaginative, are grouped, bound
together, arranged, catalogued and pigeonholed in the archives
of the mind.
These laws, taken collectively, are therefore called the Laws of
Association.
Chapter IV
THE FOUR PRIME LAWS OF ASSOCIATION
f there is any one thing in the world that
seems utterly chaotic, it is the way in
which
the
mind
wanders
from
one
subject of thought to another. It requires but a moment for it to
flash from New York to San Francisco, from San Francisco to
Tokio, and around the globe. Yet mental processes are as law-
abiding as anything else in Nature.
So much is this true, that if we knew every
detail of your past experience from your
first infantile sensation, and knew also just
what you are thinking of at the present
moment, we could predict to a mathematical certainty just what
ideas would next appear on the kaleidoscopic screen of your
thoughts. This is due to laws that govern the association of
ideas.
These laws are, in substance, that the way in which judgments
and ideas are classified and stored away, and the order in
which they are brought forth into consciousness depends upon
what other judgments and ideas they have been associated
with most
habitually
,
recently
,
closely
and
vividly
.
There are, therefore, four Prime Laws of Association—the Law
of Habit, the Law of Recency, the Law of Contiguity and the
Law of Vividness.
Every idea that can possibly arise in your thoughts has its vast
array of associates, to each of which it is linked by some one
element in common. Thus, you see or dream of a yellow flower,
and the one property of yellowness links the idea of that flower
with everything you ever before saw or dreamed of that was
similarly hued.
But the yellow-flower thought is not tied to
all these countless associates by bonds of
equal strength. And which associate shall
[Pg 23]
[Pg 27]
[Pg 28]
[Pg 29]
Brands and Tags
How Experience
is Systematized
come next to mind is determined by the
four Prime Laws of Association.
The Law of Habit requires that
frequency
of association be the
one
test
to
determine
what
idea
shall
next
come
into
consciousness, while the Laws of Recency, Contiguity and
Vividness
emphasize
respectively
recency
of
occurrence,
closeness in point of space and intensity of impression. Which
law and which element shall prevail is all a question of degree.
The most important of these laws is the
Law of Habit
. In
obedience to this law,
the next idea to enter the mind will be the
one
that
has
been
most
frequently
associated
with
the
interesting part of the subject you are now thinking of
.
The sight of a pile of manuscript on your desk ready for the
printer, the thought of a printer, the word "printer," spoken or
printed, calls to mind the particular printer with whom you have
been dealing for some years.
The word "cocoa," the thought of a cup of cocoa, the mental
picture of a cup of cocoa, may conjure with it not merely a
steaming cup before the mind's eye and the flavor of the
contents, but also a daintily clad figure in apron and cap
bearing the brand of some well-known cocoa manufacturer.
If a typist or pianist has learned one system of fingering, it is
almost impossible to change, because each letter, each note
on the keyboard is associated with the idea of movement in a
particular
finger.
Constant
use
has
so
welded
these
associations together that when one enters the mind it draws its
associate in its train.
Test the truth of these principles for yourself. Try them out and
see whether the elements of habit, contiguity, recency and
intensity do not determine all questions of association.
If you wanted to buy a house, what local
subdivision would come first to your mind,
and why? If you were about to purchase a
new tire for your automobile or a few pairs of stockings, what
brand would you buy, and why? When you think of a camera or
a cake of soap, what particular make comes first to your mind?
When you think of a home, what is the mental picture that rises
before you, and why?
Whatever the article, whether it be one of food or luxury or
investment, or even of sentiment, you will find that it is tagged
with a definite associate—a name, a brand, or a personality
characterized by frequency, recency, closeness or vividness of
presentation to your consciousness.
The grouping together of sensations into integral ideas is one
step in the complicated mental processes by which useful
knowledge is acquired. But the associative processes go much
beyond this.
We also compare the different objects of
present and past experience. We carefully
and
thoroughly
catalogue
them
into
groups,
divisions
and
subdivisions
for
convenient and ready reference. This we do by the processes
of memory, of association and of discrimination, previously
referred to.
[Pg 30]
[Pg 31]
[Pg 32]
[Pg 33]
I
How Language Is
Simplified
Processes of
Reasoning and
Reflection
Ideas that
Stimulate
Through these processes our knowledge
of the world, derived from the whole vast
field
of
experience,
is
unified and
systematized. Through these processes is
order realized from chaos. Through these processes it comes
about that not only individual thought, but the communication of
thought from one
person
to
another, is
vastly
simplified.
Language is enabled to deal with ideas instead of with isolated
sense-perceptions. The single word "horse" suffices to convey
a thought that could not be adequately set forth in a page-long
enumeration of disconnected sense-perceptions.
The associative process covers a wide range. It includes, for
example, not only the simple definition of an aggregate of
sense-perceptions, as "horse" or "cow"; it includes as well the
inferential process of abstract reasoning.
The only real difference between these
widely diverse mental acts, one apparently
so much less complicated and profound
than the other, is that the former involves
no act of memory
, while the latter is based
wholly on sensory experiences
of the past
.
Abstract reasoning is merely reasoning from premises and to
conclusions which are not present to our senses at the time.
Chapter V
EMOTIONAL ENERGY IN BUSINESS
t is a recognized fact of observation that
Every
idea
has
a
certain
emotional
quality
associated
with
it,
a
sort
of
"feeling tone."
If ideas of health and triumphant achievement are brought into
consciousness, we at the same time experience a state of
energy, a feeling of courage and capability and joy and a
stimulation of all the bodily processes. If, on the other hand,
ideas of disease and death and failure are brought into
consciousness, we at the same time experience feelings of
sorrow and mental suffering and a state of lethargy, a feeling of
inertia, impotence and fatigue.
THE LAW
[Pg 34]
[Pg 35]
[Pg 39]
[Pg 40]
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