INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

The People's Institute

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aPSYCHOLOGY
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BEHAVIORISM
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INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

by H. A. Overstreet $3.00

INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY
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THE MEANING OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION

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 INFLUENCING
HUMAN BEHAVIOR
BY
H. A. OVERSTREET
Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy,
College of the City of New York. Lecturer,
New School for Social Research

...NEW YORK. ^

W‘ W NORTON
-
& COMPANY, INC.
Publishers
 Copyright, 1925
The People’s Institute
Publishing Company
Incorporated

PRINTED flN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA

THE VAIL -BALLOU PRESS

BIKQHAMTOM and new VOBIf
 CONTENTS
Foreword . . . , yii

Preface ... ... ... . . . i

PART ONE: INTRODUCTORY TECHNIQUES

OEAPTBB
The Key Problem: Capturing the
1.
Attention . ....... . 9
11 . The Appeal TO Wants . . . . . . 28
III. The Problem OF Vividness . .... 50
IV. The Psychology of Effective Speaking . 71
V. The Psychology OF Effective Writing. 87
VI. Crossing the Interest Dead-Line . . no
VII. Making Ideas Stick. . . . . . . 125

PART TWO: FUNDAMENTAL TECHNIQUES

VIII. How to Change Persons: The Entering
Wedge . ... 143
IX. The Building of Habits: Associative
Techniques ........ 159
X. Our Unconscious Fabrication Habits 169 .

XL The Problem of Straight Thinking 184 .

XII. Diagnosing the Public 201

XIII. Training the Creative Mind .217 . .

XIV. Conflict and Invention .....2385

XV. The Technique of Humor ......
256
XVI. The Individual and His World 273 . . .

The Listeners Speak 279

Lnde2C :
V*: 293
 FOREWORD
The
following chapters are the substance of a course of
lecturesgiven last year at the New School for Social
Research in New York City, In a number of respects the
course was unusual. In the first place, it was requested by
the students —men and women —and was given under the
auspices of their Cooperative Association. In the second
place, the manner in which the request was worded was
significant. It came as a petition “for a course indicating
how human behavior can actually be changed in the light of
the new knowledge gained through psychology. We have
in our group educators, social workers, lawyers, business
men and women, and those describing themselves as having
no vocation. We have in common an interest in under-
standing and improving social conditions. Besides this, and
perhaps first of all, we desire to utilize as a part of our
everyday technique of action such knowledge as modern
psychology can furnish us. Our interest is not academic.
We wish actually to function with such knowledge as we
may gain.”
From the outset, therefore, the course belonged to the
students. Throughout the conduct of there was theit,

closest cooperation between and class. Usu-

lecturer
ally at least four discussion groups were meeting before
the lecture hour while one group met pn another evening at
;

the home of a member. The students were requested to

cooperate actively in making observations and experiments
and to report their findings. As a result, the lecturer be-
 ;

vili FOREWORD
came the much enlightened possessor of a large amount of
valuable material contributed by the members of the class.
It has not been possible to incorporate more than a small
portion of this material in the present volume. Some of
the material has been gathered together in a final chapter ;

in other cases it has been slipped into the body of the text.
The writer wishes that far more of it might have been used
but the limits of space have forbidden.
The course was, to the lecturer, one of the most stimulat-
ing that it has been his good fortune to give. It strength-
ened his belief in the very great value (a value as yet
scarcely realized throughout the country) of serious and
systematic study on the part of men and women who can
contribute out of the maturity of their experience to the
urgent problems of human behavior.
It seems invidious to single out any one person for special
mention. But the course, in its inception and continuance,
was so indebted to Mr. Daniel Cranford Smith for un-
flagging interest and intelligent devotion that I cannot for-
bear giving him my Also, I should like to make
thanks.
one other exception—in favor of my wife, who ought to be
acknowledged as the unofiicial lecturer on more pages than
can easily be counted.
H. A. Overstreet
 PREFACE
The object of these chapters is to discover how far the
data of modern psychology can be put to use by each of us in
furthering what is really the central concern of our lives.
That central concern is the same whether we be teachers,
writers, parents, merchants, statesmen, preachers, or any
other of the thousand and one types into which civilization
has divided us. In each case the same essential problem
confronts us. If we cannot solve it, we are failures ; if we
can, we are — in so far, at least — successes. What is this
central problem? Obviously, it is to be, in some worth-
while manner, effective within our human environment.
We are writers? Then there is the world of editors,
some of whom we must convince as to our ability. If we
succeed in doing that, then there is, further, the reading
public. It is a bit of sentimental nonsense to say that it

makes no difference at all if a writer convinces not even a

single soul of his pertinence and value, so be it only that
he “express” himself. We have a way of being over-
generous with so-called misunderstood geniuses. True,
this is a barbarian world; and the fine soul has its hard in-
nings. But the chances are that a writer who can convince
no single person of the value of what he writes, probably has
nothing of value to write. At any rate, as his manuscripts
come back, he might well cease putting the blame on philis-
tine editors and public long enough to ask himself whether,
indeed, he is not deficient in the very elementary art of mak-
2 PREFACE
ing the good things he has to say really understandable.
Weare business men? Then there are the thousands of
potential customers whom we must induce to buy our prod-
uct. If they refuse, then bankruptcy.
We are teachers? Obviously, we are not teachers by
right of sitting on a platform. We
are teachers only when
something of what we intend takes place in the lives before
us. If we are invariably confronted by indifference, bore-
dom, hostility, hatred, we had best earn our salaries at an-
other undertaking.
We are parents? It may seem somewhat far fetched to
say that the chief concern of a parent is to be accepted by
his children. “Whatl” we cry, “aren’t they our children;
and aren’t children required to respect their parents?”
That, of course, is all old philosophy; old ethics; old psy-
chology as well, coming from the day when children, like
wives, were our property. Nowadays children are per-
sons; and the task of parents is to be real persons them-
selves to such an extent that their children accept them as of
convincing power in their lives. Hence the parent is no
parent simply by right of his or her procreative power.
For parent, in unnumbered cases, substitute “tyrant,”
“autocrat,” “sentimentalist,” “boor.”
We need not specify further. As individuals, our chief
task in life is to make our personality, and what our person-
ality has to offer, effective in our particular environment of
human beings. Nor need this connote undue egoism on
our part. Lincoln had to make his personality, and what
his personality had*to offer, effective in his environment.
So did the Nazarene, to the extent that folk gave up their
all and followed him. So did Socrates. Neither Jesus nor
Socrates, to be sure, could persuade the greater part of
 PREFACE 3
their human environment; and so they both met a tragic
fate. But they persuaded enough of their fellows, pro-
foundly enough, to make the impress of their personalities
last through succeeding centuries.
. Wecall lives like these successful, because they go on be-
ing increasingly accepted by the world of human beings,
prhese lives, to use our modern slang, have in reality “got
across,”and continue still to “get across.” As a conse-
quence they have succeeded in profoundly influencing the
behavior of their fellows.
However, we are not writing these chapters in order to
show how we may become Lincolns or Socrateses or Christs.
Before the wonder of personal greatness, psychology still
bows its head. We are simply trying to come to some
manner of understanding about what is the central concern
for us, as it was for these superb spirits. Life is many
things; it is food-getting, shelter-getting, playing, lighting,
aspiring, hoping, sorrowing. But at the centre of it all it
is this: it is the process of getting ourselves believed In
and accepted.
That Is what love making Is. To make love to one who
will not be persuaded, is much indulged
a fool’s game, albeit
in. That Is what trading Is. The man who can persuade
no one to believe in his goods is a business failure. That
is what preaching is. The preacher who Is a joke to his
pew-holders is either a coxcomb or a fool.
To get people to think with us 1 It an art the
is —
supreme art. The blunderer in life Is he who, wishful to
capture the interests and enthusiasms o? people, to get them
to think and work along with him, is able only to capture
their indifference or antagonism. The blundering parent,
the blundering teacher, the blundering business man, the
4 PREFACE
blundering reformer — herein lies their essential
—
weakness.
Must this art — this major art of life ^be simply hit or
miss? Or may we be fairly intelligent about it?^ The po-
sition taken in these chapters is that we can be intelligent,

and to such an extent, indeed, as to increase very materially

the effectiveness of our life enterprise.
How are we to become about this? Obvi-
intelligent

ously by addressing ourselves concretely to the problem.

Not by talking vaguely about goals and ideals but by find- ;

ing out quite specifically what methods are to be employed

if the individual is to “get across” to his human fellows,

is to capture their attention and win their regard, is to in-

duce them to think and act along with him —whether his

human fellows be customers or clients or pupils or children

or wife; and whether the regard which he wishes to win is
for his goods, or ideas, or artistry, or a great human cause.
“Whenever we take ends without regard to the means,
we degenerate into sentimentalism,” says John Dewey. In
these chapters we are studying the means to accomplish the
central end indicated. In that sense we are doing what
should go hand in hand with all fruitful ethical inquiry.
In this search after means, we shall find no little help in
what modern psychology has to offer. The business man
has already discovered, in a measure, what psychological
understanding can do for him; the factory manager Is be-
ginning to discover it. Education, in its more progressive
aspects, pushing vigorously Into psychological fields in
is

order to make teaching comport more thoroughly with the

needs and possibilities of human nature.
The difficulty about human life is that It still knows so
poorly how to pursue Its own best Interests. The auto-
cratic parent is perfectly sincere ; but he is often so pitifully
 ! —

PREFACE 5

stupid. And in being stupid, he makes such an unfortunate

waste of both his own and his children’s lives. How much
better if all of us who are parents really knew how to han-
dle our children. The same is true of the autocratic em-
ployer or factory manager or foreman —-sincere but blun-
dering. The same is true of many an honest business man.
Earnest, but unknowing of his public. And so a good life
largely gone to waste
The salvaging of human life consists not simply in hav-
ing high ideals. It consists as much in having the knowl-
edge “how.” We need, in short, to know how to interest
our fellows; how to arouse their expectation; how to build
up habits of favorable response; how to lead and adjust and
control. All this is the groundwork of our human ethics.
To become skilled artists in the enterprise of life — there is

hardly anything more basically needful than this. It is

to thisproblem that we address ourselves.
The book is divided into two parts. In the first part,
the relatively simpler and more frequent techniques for in-
fluencing human behavior are discussed. The comparative
simplicity of these techniques should not, however, blind
the reader to their real value both in the superficial give and
take of everyday life and in those profound situations in
which a deeper influencing is desired. In the second part,
the discussion proceeds to the more difficult matters of ac-
tual psychological reconstruction. How, we ask there,
can we influence human behavior not only in fleeting and
surface ways, but in ways that are fundamental and perma-
nent? How, in short, can we actually 'change individuals
ourselves as well as others- —into personalities more apt for
our human enterprise?
 PART ONE
INTRODUCTORY TECHNIQUES
 GHAPTER I

THE KEY PROBLEM CAPTURING

:

ATTENTION
In the delicate matter of influencing human behavior,
most of us fall short, not so much from a profound ignor-
ance of human nature— such ignorance does, unfortunately,
—
exist as from a failure to use the simplest and most obvi-
ous techniques. It is surprising how largely this is true.
After one has become aware, for example, of the more
elementary methods for securing attention, arousing and
holding interest, one notes how greatly they are honored In
the breach. Let us. In this chapter, consider a number of
these simpler but far too neglected techniques.
What we attend to controls our behavior.What we can
get others to attend to controls their behavior. In these
two sentences we have the key to the influencing of human
behavior,
“Tell me what youhabitually attend to and I will tell you
what you are.”There is no doubt about this. If it is
your constant habit to watch the facial expressions of peo-
ple, their manner of speech and gesture, their behavior
toward each other, one can safely wager that you are, to a
noticeable degree, an analyst of human character. If, on

the other hand, you habitually watch die ups and downs of
the stock market, one can wager that you are, to an extent,
an analyst of finance. If, again, your attention is con-
stantly attracted by wheels, pistons, levers, etc., one can
lo INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
safely assume that your absorbing interest is in machinery.
You are, in short, that to which you habitually attend.
The differences in peoples is likewise to be found in that
to which they habitually attend. The Eskimos, for ex-
ample, can hardly attend to crops of corn; nor can the in-

habitants of Arabia attend to seals and polar bears. It is

obvious that the Eskimos are what they are by reason of

the peculiar type of objects that continually occupy their at-
tention. They are blubber eaters; hunters of seals and
fish; users of dog trains. One would hardly expect among
them an appreciation of Beethoven or Rembrandt. Why?
Because the objects that occupy their attention have no re-
lation whatever to the interests and values out of which
these have sprung. The Arabian, on the other hand, is oc-
cupied with herds and horses; with desert heat and sand-
laden winds. He writes poetry; he sings songs; he builds
camps he carries on feuds
; —
all in ways that are peculiarly
;

his own, for the simple reason that the objects and situa-
tions which occupy his attention are different from those
which occupy the attention of any other people.
In the case of peoples, the major attention is largely in-
voluntary; that is, it is chiefly what it has to be by reason of
environment and historic conditions. And yet even in the
case of peoples, a change in the object of attention can of-
ten be brought about which, more or less materially, modi-
fies their behavior. To take an apparently trivial example,
the Amei-icans are now a clean-shaven people. There can
be doubt that the vanishing of facial adornment was
little

much hastened by the type of pictures to which the Ameri-

can people were brought to attend in the early years of the
century. The “Gibson man” was clean-shaven; and Gib-
son pictures, because they had humor and were technically
 CAPTURING ATTENTION II

of high quality, came to be the rage. Other artists fol*

lowed; until a type of square-jawed, broad-shouldered,
clean-shaven man became the accepted ideal of young Amer-
icanmanhood. To be sure, had the condition of the techno-
logical arts been such that no easy way of shaving was pos-
sible, even Gibson pictures would have had no effect. They
themselves would not have been drawn. But given easy
deliverance from the Gibson pictures were a power-
bai'ber,
ful means of capturing attention and modifying habits.
We might paraphrase the well-known remark about the
songs of a people “Let me capture the attention of a peo-
:

ple and I care not who makes their laws.”

Who is it that Wins?

The person who can capture and hold attention is the
person who can effectively influence human behavior.
What, we may ask, is a failure in life? Obviously, it is
a person without influence one to whom no one attends
;
:

the inventor who can persuade no one of the value of his

device; the merchant who cannot attract enough customers
into his store; the teacher whose pupils whistle or stamp or
play tricks while he tries to capture their attention the poet ;

who writes reams of verse which no one will accept.

Woodrow Wilson captured the attention of Europe for
a time ;
captured and held the attention of his own people.
Then Wilson disappeared into secret session. Attention
wavered. Other stimuli were brought to bear. The issue
was fogged. Wilson emerged a defeated man.
Americans are at present indifferent or actively hostile to
entering the League of Nations. Why? Because for a
number of decades they have learned to attend to a certain
12 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
other idea: “no entangling alliances.” Full, wholehearted

attention to a plan for internationalizing the world appar-

ently cannot be secured as long as the attention holds to
an idea which is supposedly antagonistic. Two courses are
open; either to prove quite clearly that the doctrine of “no
entangling alliances” is not antagonistic to the idea of a
League of Nations; or to prove that the need of interna-
tionalization is so tragically pressing as to make it impos-
sible forAmericans not to attend. Neither of these ways
of capturing the attention of the American people has as
yet been successful. And therefore the League still goes
a-begging.

The Kinetic Technique

How, now, does one capture attention? There are a

number of basic considerations. In the first place, suppose
one tries to hold one’s attention immovably to a dot on the
wall. It is quite impossible. The eyes insist upon wander-
ing. In fact, if the attention is held for very long, there is
every likelihood that one will induce in oneself a state of
hypnosis. One will, in short, have put his waking, vari-
ously attending mind to sleep.
There must, in other words, be movement if we are to
hold attention for very long. Hence, if one wishes to cap-
ture and hold another person’s attention, he must be sure
that what he offers by way of stimulus moves. might We
call this the Mn£,tic requirement — ^perhaps the most funda-
mental of aU requirtraents.
One walks down the street and comes upon a crowd gath-
ered about a shop window. One may take a safe wager
that something is happening there. A girl is writing with a
 CAPTURING ATTENTION 13

fountain pen; or a young man is demonstrating patent neck-

ties. Doubtless of a piece with the primitive curi-
it is all

osity in us which responds instantly to a change of condi-

tion — the rustling of a leaf, the dropping of a twig.
“What is happening?” or “What is going to happen?” If
one can stir either of these questions in the minds of people
— students or prospective customers, or voters, etc. he has —
in so far captured their attention.
It is for this reason that a story almost invariably holds
us. The story obviously moves. Something is happening;
and we wish to know the outcome. Nor is the story just a
—
rambling movement unless it is a poor story. It is move-
ment towards. It carries us —
along to something.

The Chase Technique

It Is mere movement which captures
not, let us repeat,
and holds Is dramatic movement.
attention. It It is
movement towards something; but also, it is movement
which cannot in all its details be predicted. The move-
ment which can be Infallibly predicted soon bores us. In
front of one of the dance halls in New York is an electric
figure of a man and woman doing their dance steps. The
movements are always the same. The light snaps on and
snaps off in precisely identical ways. Only a moron could
continue to stare fascinated at that sign.
Unpredictability, then, one of the chief Ingredients of
is

'attractiveness ^In
—story, essay, drama, in human beings.
We know, of course, that the human being whose every act
—
can be foretold the wife who infallibly uses the same
phrases; the husband who, with exact precision, tells the
—
same stories is a bore. Success of personality consists at
 !

14 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

least—if we may so phrase it—in “keeping people guess-
ing.”
Listen to the dull speaker. Does he keep his audience

wondering? Or do they not already see the tiresome path

he has laid out for himself, along which he will dutifully
tread ? Or, even if they do not know the long path he will
take, has he aroused them even to wish to know how and to
what end he will proceed?
We have the impulse of the hunt deeply in us. love We
to be after a quarry. He who presents an idea, therefore,
had best present it as a quarry if he wishes to capture his
audience. Just to hand out the idea is too mild a proced-
ure. Thereinlies the weakness of many a lecturer. He
tells things,one after the other. After a while, the sur-
feited audience goes to sleep. He does not get them chas-
ing after ideas.
Woodrow Wilson did not set the Americans — Congress
and the rest—chasing League of Na-
after the idea of a
tions. He handed it to them. And they handed it back
Much of the weakness of our educational methods lies in
the absence of the “chase” technique. Students are as-
signed so much They learn, but under protest
to learn.
and with wandering minds. The more progressive schools
now increasingly utilize the “chase” technique. The stu-
dent is induced to run down a quarry, either by himself or
with a group of his fellows. A some-
lesson, then, is not
thing to be learned. It is something to be captured.
Where such a method is employed, there is no difficulty
about securing the attention of the students. We may take
the Dalton method as an example, where a week’s assign-
ment is given to each child, and where the child is permitted
to take up the work in any order or manner he pleases. I
 CAPTURING ATTENTION ij

once asked one small English girl how she liked the method.
“It’s fine,” she said. “You can figger things out for your-
when you’re on your own.” The chase
self As one sits !

among those children, one sees no lack of attention. There

is, indeed, a concentration that is wholly thrilling!

Like Begets Like

But not enough to get attention.

it is rowdy can do A
that. What kind of attention do we wish to attract? “It
is what people are that gets across, not what they try to

inculcate,” writes Miss Colcord.^ Our minds are like vi-

brating strings. If the A string on my violin is set vibrat-
ing, it will set A vibrations going in my piano. If one
comes to an audience with gloom on his face, one can hardly
expect to arouse much pleasant anticipation.
Like begets like. It is most important, therefore, that
the person who wishes to influence others should ask him-
self in what ways he is unconsciously influencing them him-
self-^by his appearance, his voice, his manner, his attitude.
For we influence very largely in ways far more subtle than
we suspect. We shake hands; and instantly we are con-
demned. Too We limp! speak with raspy, querulous
voice; and our auditor is all on edge to get us out of the

room. We make a timid approach; and we are turned

down flat. We make a boastful approach; and we arouse
the bristling egoism of our listener. We proceed with a
frank, cheerful manner; and we get frank cheerfulness in
return.
There is nothing, apparently, that parents and teachers

‘‘The Fabric of Family Life’^; by Joanna G. Colcord. The Family: Nov,

1924.
 6

1 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

need more deeply to learn. Parents and teachers have
this advantage over business men: their prospects are
completely at their mercy. If the parents had to win their
children; if they were in danger of losing their custom, we
should doubtless have a vast improvement in our homes in
the tone of voice and manners used towards our children.
There are no places on this earth where more wretched
techniques are used for influencing human behavior. And
since, “as the twig is bent, so the tree grows,” there is a
large indictment to be placed against the home.
But so, also, is the indictment to be placed against the
school. Querulous, raspy teachers, irritable, domineering,
unjust —they bring out in children those qualities with which
our social life can most easily dispense.
We capture attention, then, by what we are. What kind
of attention do we wish to capture ? Interest, frank ap-
proval, enthusiasm? Then there must be in us the quali-
ties that elicit these responses.
We might call tKis th.t homeogenic technique. If we
wish one kind of attention, and get another, it Is prob-
ably due to the fact that we have given no thought to
those qualities in us which subtly awaken in our audience
—
the very responses ^the unfortunate responses—which are
akin to our own manner and attitude.

Yes-Response Technique

The canvasser rings the doorbell. The door is opened

by a suspicious lady'of-the-house. The canvasser lifts his
hat. “Would you like to buy an illustrated History of
the World?” he asks. “No!” And the door slams.
House to house canvassing is perhaps the lowest estate
 CAPTURING ATTENTION 17

to which man can fall; nevertheless in the above there is a

psychological lesson. A “No” most difEcult
response is a
handicap to overcome. When a person has said “No,” all
his pride of personality demands that he remain consistent
with himself. He may later feel that the “No” was ill-
advised; .nevertheless, there is his precious pride to con-
sider] Once having said a thing, he must stick to it.
Hence it is of the very greatest importance that we start
a person in the affirmative direction. A wiser canvasser
rings the doorbell. An equally suspicious lady-of-the-house
opens. The canvasser lifts his hat. “This is Mrs. Arm-
strong?”
Scowlingly— “Yes.”
“I understand, Mrs. Armstrong, that you have several
children in school.”
—“Yes.”
Suspiciously
“And of course they have much home work do?”
Almost with —“Yes.”
a sigh
to

“That always good deal of work with ref-

requires a
erence books, doesn’t it —
hunting things up, and so on?
And of course we don’t want our children running out to
the library every night better for them to have all
. . .

these materials at home.” Etc., etc.

We do not guarantee the sale. But that second can-
vasser is destined to go far! He has captured the secret
of getting, at the outset, a number of “yes-responses.”
He has thereby set the psychological processes of his list-
ener moving in the affirmative direction. It is like the
movement of a billiard ball. Propel it in one direction
and it takes some force to deflect it; far more force to send
it back in the opposite direction.

The psychological patterns here are quite clear. When

i8 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
a person says “No” and really means it, he is doing far
more than saying word of two letters. His
a entire or-

—
ganism glandular, nervous, muscular—gathers itself to-
gether into a condition of rejection. There is, usually in
minute but sometimes in observable degree, a physical with-
drawal, or readiness for withdrawal. The whole neuro-
muscular system, in short, sets itself on guard against ac-
ceptance. Where, on the contrary, a person says “Yes,”
none of the withdrawing activities take place. The or-
ganism is in a forward-moving, accepting, open attitude.
Hence the more “Yesses” we can, at the very outset, in-
duce, the more likely we are to succeed in capturing the
attention for our ultimate proposal.
It is a —
very simple technique this Yes-Response. And
yet how much neglected! It often seems as if people get
a sense of their own importance by antagonizing at the
outset. The comes into a conference with his con-
radical
servative brethren; and immediately he must make them
furious! What, is the good of it?
as a matter of fact,
If he simply does it in order to get some pleasure out of
it for himself, he may be pardoned. But if he expects to
achieve something, he is only psychologically stupid.
Get a student to say “No” at the beginning, or a cus-
tomer, child, husband, or wife, and it takes the wisdom
and the patience of angels to transform that bristling neg-
ative into an alErmative.

Putting-It-Up-To-You Technique

Our chief object in capturing attention, as we have indi-

cated, is to “start something going” in the listener or be-
holder. Here is a pamphlet on “Habit Training for Chil-
 CAPTURING ATTENTION 19

dren.” “Does your child fuss about

It asks questions:
his food?” “Is your child jealous?” “Does your child
have temper tantrums?” Suppose these questions had
been put in the form of positive statements: “Many chil-
dren fuss about their food” “Many children are jealous.”
“Many children have temper tantrums.” How mild and
uninteresting!
But does •jour child have temper tantrums? Ah, that
is different! Here is, something aimed directly at yoM.
You are asked a question. You are expected to reply.
Does your child have temper tantrums? Why it surely
does. What about it ?

And so you ask a question in turn. You have therefore

been induced to do two things to answer a question and —
to ask one. Note the difference in attention-arousing value
between the following two versions of the same idea

’’‘‘N ervousness"

“Do I literally cause my child to be nen'ous? By

Being nervous myself?
Telling him about it so I may have his sympathy?
Constantly reminding him how nervous he is?
Telling other people in his presence how nervous and queer and
odd he is?

Worrying over his health and habits?

Coddling him physically and mentally?
Denying him independence of thought and action?
Expecting too much from him and driving him all the time?”
"
" '

Compare the above with the following:

^Trom early infancy some children are ‘nervous.’ They are fussy,
irritable babies ;
delicate, sensitive, easily upset children ; they become
ao INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
adults. Such children demand the utmost
easily flustered, excitable
parents.
in placidity and patience from their
product of the manage-
“Most ‘nervous’ children are, however, the
some of the things listed
ment given them. Their parents do all or
nervous children.
so cause,
above. Nervous parents expect, and
In their own neivous-
They constantly remind the child of this.
ness they set an example —
and it usually is imitated. They com-
worries to the child, who increases them many fold.
municate their
Etc.”

The latter version uses the expository

method. It tells

the reader something. The trouble with the expository

the sense of superiority is all on the side
method is that
of the expositor. It is he who is telling. Now, let the
expositor ask you a question’ not for quizzing —
s sake, but
_

answer. The im-

because he is interested to know your
plication is that you can answer it. The situation is there-

fore reversed. It is you, now, who are momentarily the

superior. The speaker is deferring to you.

We might indicate this by a diagram:

Expository Method
Speaker + active 1

Listener — receptive Y
Putting-it-up-to-you Method
Speaker -1 actively receptive I

t ^
( )

Listener ( —+ )
receptively active 1

movement, as
In the expository method, therefore, the
from
the arrow indicates, is altogether in one
direction
merely re-
speaker to listener!! The listener therefore is

In the putting-it-up-to-you method, the movement

ceptive.
both directions. Both speaker and listener are active
is in

and receptive.
 !

CAPTURING ATTENTION 21

To refer again to the Dalton method of teaching, the

spirit is essentially that of putting-it-up-to-you. “Can you
manage your own time, or must we manage it for you?”
The old fashioned expository method says “This is what :

we are telling you. At nine o’clock you do arithmetic; at

nine-thirty, grammar.”

^‘Challenge” Technique

A minister preached Sunday after Sunday to a fairly

good-sized and attentive audience. Then, one day, he
threw down the gage of battle —not to his audience, but
to a fellow minister. He challenged him to a public de-
bate. The debate was held to a crowded house and was
reported as first page news In the newspapers. The chal-
lenging minister lost the decision of the judges; but his
plucky, clever speech won him a wide public adherence.
Thereafter seats in his church were at a premium
Ghandi flings a challenge to the British Empire and be-
comes a figure of foremost interest in the world.
We all wish, quite rightly, to get rid of the stupid fu-
tility of war; but we still respond to a fight, AH new
ideas fight with the old. All changes in organization, all

modifications of practice mean that a new method either

wholly or partially ousts an old. That is what progress
means.
That why we read Wells’ “Outline of History” with
is

eagerness. We know that Wells is fighting old traditions

of history writing. That is why we iread James Harvey
Robinson’s “Mind In the Making.” That is why, a num-
ber of years ago, we responded to William James’ “Prag-
matism.” We may not have known much about phi-
 :

22 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

losophy. That did not matter. Here was a genial, belli-
cose, American professor who was hopping about delight-
edly, delivering body blows at the solemn thing that was
called philosophy. That is why “Behaviorism” gets its
hold upon most people. It is a “fight against;” and there-
fore it has every promise of stirring up an interesting time.
“A man going into a new line of business often needs
to excitesome competition before he can get his own busi-
ness moving, and the two competing get more than double
^
the business one could get.”
Challenge, then, is powerful as an attention-arousing
technique. But challenge must be fair or it misses the
mark. Note the following from an article called “Junk”
“I am convinced that up to this month of May, in the year
of our Lord 1923, all philosophy, all theology, all ethics

and all moral science, most sociology, all political science,

the greater part of history, most economics, most law and
pedagogics, and a large part of psychology foot up to —
much junk.”
just so
My own instant inclination is to respond with the good
American word “bunk” Here ! is a challenge indeed, but
one which obviously overshoots the mark. good deal of A
this kind of exaggerated challenge is the stock-in-trade of
the Smart- Aleck type of writer. He knows it all Every- !

thing before him is really quite negligible ! And as for the

poor creature we call the Public
Note the modesty and yet the fine firmness with which
John Dewey issues his challenge in his little book: The
^Reconstruction of Philosophy. “Being invited to lecture
at the Imperial University of Japan ... I attempted an

^ Cody, Sherwin. to Deal mik Human Nature in Business; p. 43.

Funk & Wagnalls.
 !

CAPTURING ATTENTION n
interpretation of the reconstruction of ideas and ways of
thought now going on might have
in philosophy.” He
done it in this way: “Philosophy has been on the wrong
track for a good many years. It is time, now, that it be
put on the right track. In the following pages, I am going
to indicate what new direction philosophy must take if it
is to be rescued from its present lamentable futility.”
Note the insufferable egotism of the latter; its assump-
tion that the writer is doing it all

It must show good

Challenge, therefore, must be fair.
sportsmanship. must give even the opponent his due.
It
But above all, it is most powerful when it enlists others in
the fight. Not, “Come, see me wipe up the earth with this
false prophet;” but rather, “Come, let’s join in the fight.”
The very essence of all power to influence lies in the
person to participate. The mind
ability to get the other
that can do that has a powerful leverage on his human
world.

The Magic of the New

Little need be said about the very real effectiveness of
having something to offer that is new. The new psy-
chology, the new education, new schools, the latest styles,
the newest plays. To indicate at once that what one is of-
fering is not antiquated, or out-of-date, or already-well-
known is to have at the start a strong hold on the attention.
And what is offered can easily be too new. Our under-
yet,
standing and acceptance of anything is conditioned by what
we already have in our consciousness-»-by what the older
psychologists called our “apperception mass.” Introduce
something that has no connection whatever with our past
experience and we are not interested ^^for example, speak—
24 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
of the electronic theory of atoms to an Andamanese Is-
lander; or read Gertrude Stein’s poetry to persons for
whom poetry means something that has meaning The !

psychological rule is that there must always be a large

ingredient of the familiar in the unfamiliar.
This is the reason why so many proposals for economic
reconstruction fail to convince the man-in-the-street. They
seem to him like a complete overturn of all that has been
secure and familiar. The wise proponent of a new idea
will make sure that the new is sufficiently tied to the old
to be at least interesting as well as acceptable.
Of course, the new may disappoint us. Not every flower
is born to blush in pride. The exultantly new may have
its day and cease to be. Nevertheless granting that we —
are fairly critical in our appraisals —
it is all to the good

to keep a sharp lookout for what is new —

-new to our child-
ren, new to our wedded mates, new to our customers and
our audiences. There is magic in the new that never grows
old — ^until the new itself grows old!

Respect the Attention Limits

Here is a small grocer. He is industrious, honest, pains-

taking; but one suspects that he will never be anything but
a small grocer. There are a number of reasons why.
The most is this: his windows and store are plas-
obvious
tered over with all manner of signs. Special sale of this;
so much a dozen for this; best brand of that; etc. So
many signs that ofie looks at none of them. The grocer
has not learned the most elementary principle of the art
of business, that to capture the public one must draw their
attention to a focus.
 CAPTURING ATTENTION 25

The artist —whether pictorial or musical or dramatic—

knows that. A picture cannot have just a variety of beauti-
ful things in it. It must capture the eye and lead it infal-
libly to one spot. There must, In short, be a dominant
element In the composition.
Offer the attention too much; and it gets nothing, as
the following fable indicates

The Monkey and the Nuts?-

A monkey (Aesop speaking) tried to take a handful of nuts from

a small-necked jar, but he grabbed too large a handful and couldn’t
get his hand out, nor did he until he dropped some of the nuts.
The attempt to grab too much of the public’s attention often
makes a monkey of what might be a good advertisement.
A layout is made of a simple, strong, effective page. But the
president wants another display line, the production manager wants
the trade mark larger, the secretary wants the package in, the sales
manager wants a paragraph addressed to dealers, the advertising
manager thinks the slogan should go at the top of the ad, the
treasurer insists on smaller space and the branch managers want
the addresses of all the branches,
A good handful.
Only the neck of the jar is exactly as large as the public’s
interest —and no larger.
To get your hand out, to get the public to look at and absorb
any of the advertisement, you must drop a few nuts.

Watch People
—
With that admonition “Respect the attention limits”
we close this chapter, lest we ourselves overstep the very
rules we have laid down for others.

1 Published by Calkins and Holden, Advertising Agents, 247 Park Ave.,

New York,
 !

26 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

It will be a worthwhile enterprise for the reader to
take the suggestions developed above and watch in how
far they are observed in lectures, sermons, writings, par-
ental ainonitions, pedagogical techniques, selling methods,
etc. It is rather important that one accustom oneself to
thiskind of psychological observation. It is almost better

than observing oneself. For one can be at least drastically

honest about the weaknesses of others
Observing, then, a lecturer, writer, teacher, salesman,
one might ask: Does, the presentation movef Do I feel
that I am being carried along? Am
I being lulled into

somnolence because nothing, apparently, is happening?

(Kinetic Technique)
Is itmoving towards something? Is my expectation
keenly aroused? Am I all on “tenterhooks” to know what
the outcome is to be? Or do I already see the end in the
beginning? Has the whole story been given away? Is
there a great deal of repetition; or an aimless going around
in circles? (The Chase Technique)
Am I strongly irritated by something in the manner or
attitude of the speaker or writer or salesman? Does his
own lack of enthusiasm strike me cold? Does his boastful-
ness rouse my antagonism? Is he limp? Is he insincere?
Is he a conceited coxcomb? (Homeogenic Technique)
Is the first response evoked a negative one? Am I be-
ing rubbed the wrong way? Or Is the person first winning
my approval, leading me
through successive affirmations to
an ultimate agreement with his main point? (Yes-Response
''

Technique)
Am I pleasantly aroused by the fighting quality of the
speaker or writer, etc. ? Does he make me feel like joining
in the fight? Or is he unfair? Boastful? Does he think
 CAPTURING ATTENTION 27

he is doing it all himself? Is he a Smart-Aleck? (Chal-

lenge Technique)
Is there anything new
sermon or speech or writ-
in this
ing? Is it so new make head nor tail of it?
that I cannot
Or is the new cleverly linked on with what I already know
and approve? (Novelty Technique)
Am I being deluged with facts? Do my ears buzz with
endless details? Do I feel like a lost babe in the woods?
Or does one dominant point stand out so clearly that I
shall not forget it ? (Respect-The-Attention-Limits)
Look for these simple matters of technique. There
are revelations in store for the alert observer I
 CHAPTER II

THE APPEAL TO WANTS

“If you turn to the ‘Great Didactic’,” writes Dr. Keat-
inge,^ “the remarkable treatise on education written by
Comenius in the seventeenth century, you will find an atti-
tude towards the subject of attention that is characteristic
of the older psychology. Comenius describes his ideal
classroom. The boys in it sit in rows in a large room. It
makes no difference what their number is, for Comenius be-
lieved that if a teacher’s method was a sound one, one
teacher could teach an unlimited number of boys. The
teacher sits on a raised platform at the end of the room,
and the boys, in the words of Comenius, ‘place their atten-
tion like awide-mouthed phial beneath the words of wisdom
that flow from his lips!’ Here you have the doctrine of
the mind as merely passive and receptive. It makes little
difference whether the analogy of a wide-mouthed phial is
used, the pupils’ mug being filled from the teacher’s jug,
or that of a blank sheet on which the teacher inscribes the
subject matter of instruction. In either case the implica-
tion is the same, that of an inert mind which is operated on
by external stimuli.”
Modern psychology, with its doctrine of original im-
pulses, has turned completely away from this older theory
“^Psychology and Education, In Psychology and the Sciences; edited by
William Brown, p, 114* A. and C. Black, London.
 THE APPEAL TO WANTS 29
of the inert and receptive mind. Hence the “pouring in”
technique, whether in the schools, the home, politics, or in
any other relationship, is being increasingly discredited.
“Give the people the facts” has been a slogan much in
use by persons interested in better politics. But giving the
people the facts, has been, for the most part, an enteiprise
fraught with a surprising amount of disappointment.
Usually when that technique has been used, something has
been unaccountably missing. What is it that has been
missing?
So, likewise, something is missing when parents con-
admonish them, pour
scientiously “instruct” their children,
intothem the wisdom of the older generation. The little
mugs move out from under the solemn jugs!
The mere giving of Information, apparently, will not
answer. What further is needed? “Imagine,” continues
Dr. Keatinge, “that you are reading an interesting novel
and ex hypothesfi are ahsorhed In it; what are the conditions
and the nature of your mental process? You have just
read the following passage ‘My God !’ he said in a hushed
:

and trembling whisper, and she gave no sign that she

heard. She might have fainted but that her eyes glittered
out of the shadow straight and steadily into his!’ Why,
instead of leaving off, do you go on to read the paragraph
that follows? Because you want something. You want
toknow If she actually had heard, if she actually did faint
and how long her eyes continued to glitter into his. Sup-
posing these wants to be satisfied, do you continue to read
or do you not? If the novel Is well "constructed, you do
not lay It down at the conclusion of the short episode; you
continue to the end of the chapter. The reason is that
another want has asserted itself, the want to know how the
30 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
sub-plot, withwhich the chapter is concerned, ends. When
you have finished the chapter, do you throw the book away?
Ex hypothesi you do not. Another want that has been
lurking in the background makes itself felt, the want to
know how the problem with which the novel began is solved
in the last chapter. You know the way in which stories of
a certain t3?pe begin. The scene is at Monte Carlo. The
hero and a friend drive to a well-known restaurant. The
hero goes in to see if there is any room, and on returning
to the taxi, finds his friend has gone, and in his place a lady
in evening dress, stabbed to the heart. Here at once is
formed the want which carries you through the sleepier
portions of the story, the want to know how the mystery
is cleared up at last. ‘What I like about your stories, old
man,’ says one character to another in a recent American
novel, ‘is that the hero never grabs the girl till the last
page.’ In other words the want is kept going to the
end.”
We capture attention when what we say or do is in re-
sponse to people’s wants. There, apparently, is at least a
clue!

When Facts are Wanted

And that, apparently, is why so much “fact giving” is

usually without avail. People do not want facts for the —

facts’ sake. True, if they want a particular thing badly,
they will want the facts. The assumption of the fact-
givers is want what
that if the facts are supplied, people will
the facts indicate. Nothing is psychologically farther from
the truth. Give a boy a pile of facts about health. He
is quite indifferent. But suppose he wants badly to win the
 THE APPEAL TO WANTS 31
mile race. He will go into training and simply lap up the
facts about health!
During the last election, in America a vigorous campaign
was carried on to get people to vote against the predatory
interests. The campaign was unsuccessful; for the people
overwhelmingly voted to return the party that had been
denounced as the aider and abettor of the predatory
interests. Why was this? One would suppose that good
citizens would wish to keep the country safe from ma-
rauders. As a matter of fact, while, in a kind of a vague
way, they doubtless wanted that, there was something which
they wanted far more immediately, far more fervently.
They wanted Prosperity was something which
prosperity.
was of immediate interest to everybody. The predatory
interests might be bad; but they were very distant; they
made practicallyno difference to one’s grocery store or
butcher shop.
The party which won the election talked consistently and
persistently to that vividly felt and universal want. Its
most vigorous were directed toward showing that
efforts
the victory of the anti-predatory party would mean such a
panic in business as would bring about depression and
business failures — disaster for everybody.
We are not interested — here at least — in the relative
values of these two political positions. The defeat of the
anti-predatory party may or may not have been unfortunate.
But whether was or was not, there can be no doubt what-
it

ever that the more effective psychological technique

*
triumphed.
Of course, we are now opening ourselves to grave objec-
tions. To one who disapproves of the above-mentioned
political victory, it will doubtless seem highly reprehensible
32 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
that “the people” permitted their more immediate personal
want for prosperity to take precedence in a situation ap-
parently fraught with grave danger to the country. “The
people should have had a finer sense of citizenship.”
Perhaps. But, one may properly ask, how are they to be
trained to the type of want which is the sign of a finer, more
impersonal sense of citizenship? By scolding them?
Scolding makes the scolder feel comfortably superior; but
does it ever really accomplish its end ?
As a matter of fact, people will inevitably respond to
the wants that seem to them the most important. The
problem of the political progressive is to build up wants
that are now felt only indifferently into wants that are vivid
and clamorous.

But What of the Appeal to Reason?

But the defender of reason now objects. We ought not
to demean ourselves by appealing to people’s wants.
What people want may be stupid or childish or positively
mischievous. What we ought to appeal to is their reason.
Thus many parents say, “My boy, I am telling you this
for your own good. You may not believe me now ^you —
may go your own gait; but some day, some day, my boy”
etc. So teachers solemnly proclaim: “I know you don’t
like all this; but you’ve got to learn it anyway. It’s for
your good.” This is the high “intellectual discipline” way.
And so, “You’re not inter-
again, political purists say:
ested in your city’s politics? My dear man, it’s your duty
to be interested.” The political purist seems never to
—
think that perhaps it is somebody’s duty his own, no doubt
— to make politics worth being interested in; to give them
 THE APPEAL TO WANTS 33
such vitality and pertinence that citizens will want to attend
to them as enthusiastically as they attend to golf or bridge.
What is there in this contention that we ought to appeal
to the reason of people rather than to their wants? As a
matter of fact there is a great deal in it; only it is unfor-
tunately expressed. It seems to oppose the “reason” of
people to their “wants.” But no appeal to reason that is
not also an appeal to a want can ever be effective.
What is really meant is this: we
have our narrower,
all

more Immediate wants, the wants which may seem, at the

moment, to have the most pressing claim upon us, but which,
in reality, are far less Important to us than other, more
vaguely felt wants. The trouble with many of us is that
the more Immediate,
really l&ss important wants absorb our
attentionand get our Instant reaction; while the less Im-
mediate, but really more Important wants are scarcely
attended to. Thus it is really far more important that a
man’s country be secure than that he should have a partic-
ular automobile. Usually, however, it is the automobile
that gets his most absorbed attention.
An appeal to a man’s reason, then, means making vivid
to him one of his wider, really more fundamental but less
insistent wants. That happened, of course, during the
last war. Men were swept out of their more immediate
concerns into a concern that ordinarily did not concern
them — the relation between their nation and certain other
nations of the world. So, in like manner, when the
economic revolutionist appeals to people’s reason, he tries
to get them to feel vividly that their deepest concern their —
—
most important want is for an economic system which will
bring to them far, more than they now can receive.
The phrase, appeal to reason. Is a misleading one when it
34 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
is taken to mean — as it often is —-that “giving reasons for
things” is enough— giving reasons to a child, or to a student
or to a voter. Our chief task, really, is to arouse the more
important but slumbering wants into action.

Some Fundamental Wants

What, now, are some of the fundamental wants to which
can be made ?
effective appeal It is most instructive in this
connection, to watch the appeals that advertisers make.
The advertiser wishes to influence human behavior. He
wishes people, in short, to change their habits to the extent
of purchasing what he has for sale. If he is a skilled
advertiser, he does not people that they ought to buy
his article — as a father tells his children that they ought
to do thus and so, etc. What he does is to induce them to
—
want to buy his article as a father ought to induce his
children to want to do what he wishes them to do. The
advertiser knows that if he can make the person who sees
his advertisement feel a particular want with sufficient
strength the sale is made. He does not have to argue. If
only parents could be clever enough to arouse wants and so
avoid the necessity for arguing !

In this respect, the advertiser, despite all the hard things

we have to say of him, is a pioneer in psychological tech-
nique.

Comjort, Appetites and Sex

Note how the advertiser does it. Here is the picture of

a man leaning back in a comfortable chair, one elbow on the
arm of the chair, the other resting on his crossed knee. A
 ,

THE APPEAL TO WANTS 35

cigarette is between his fingers, a smile of satisfaction on his
face. Above him is the caption: “What a whale of a
few cents make !” It is the picture of solid
difference just a
comfort, solid enjoyment Now, what we all want-other
!

—
things being equal -is just that. Hence the power of such
appeals to comfort and appetite. It is not the highest
type of appeal, no doubt; but it has its place.
Another obvious want which we all have, when we are
old enough, is sex satisfaction, in any of its multitude of
forms. Here is an advertisement “No More Wall-
:

flowers!” and the picture of a dancing couple, with the

Indication that a four-lesson course will make one a popular
dancer for almost nothing! We may deplore the exag-
geration of such an advertisement. Let us, however, note
its appeal to a fundamental want. We want to be popular
in social Another advertisement is headed:
gatherings.
“Irresistible !”and shows the picture of a young man play-
ing a saxophone with an admiring young lady standing by
his side, her hand upon his shoulder. “You can be ex-
pected, anticipated, welcomed with open arms. You can be
a favorite at parties, dances and other social affairs.” Do
you want to be a favorite? Of course you do! And so
if you are the young man you are tempted to buy the saxo-

phone and take the lessons.

Again, “Pebeco not only makes your smile lovelier, it
keeps your teeth strong and safe.” The important thing
to the young lady looking up into the face of the Arrow
Collar young man is that Pebeco is making her smile love-
lier. —
Do we want to be lovely at least those of us who
are women? We do. And so the sale of dentifrices in-
dreases.; -
Now we need not be cynical. These are all perfectly
36 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
wholesome human wants. A young lady who did not care
to be lovely might stubbornly refuse to brush her teeth.
A young bluestocking might prefer to dance like a stick just
to prove her high intellectuality; but the world would not
necessarily be the better for that. What makes us a bit
angry about advertisers is not that they appeal to mere-
tricious wants, but that they often appeal to perfectly whole-
some wants in meretricious ways. Compare for example
the advertising of lipsticks and rouge with the advertising
of a good soap under the caption: “Keep that schoolgirl
complexion.” The difference between them Is that, appeal-
ing to the same wholesome want — the possession of a beau-
tiful complexion — the first suggests a means of securing the
end which may easily whereas the second sug-
be doubted ;

gests a means that is unquestionably wholesome.

It is to be noted, in the above cases listed under “sex
satisfaction” that the appeal is never to a single want.
Take the “No More Wallflower” advertisement. If you
do not wish to be a wallflower, it is not only because you
desire the subtle sex satisfaction of dancing. You desire
the sociability of the dance. You also desire the feeling
of being competent in a social undertaking. Furthermore,
you desire to be regarded as even a little more skilled than
the others. And besides all that you wish the sheer joy of
rhythmic bodily movement. Thus the appeal Is powerful
because It is made not to one but to a group of fundamental
wants.

4fectionate Devotion

Here, again, are two pictures that make an appeal to an

identical want. In the first, a boy stands In the forefront,
grinning the full grin of a delighted twelve-year-old. He
has a repeating rifle in his hands. The caption reads,
“The Biggest Day in Your Boy’s Life.” The appeal of
the advertisement is not to the boy but to the parent of the

boy — comradeship, the want to make one’s child

aft'ection,

happy. “Sure,” says the father, “I i-emember how it was

when I was a boy. We’ll get the kid one for Chi-istmas.”
In a second picture, a young woman is seated at a table
reading a document. She is sad of face; but not too sad.
A little bobbed-haired daughter is standing near her. The
caption reads: “Everything Depended on What She
Found. Suddenly and Without Warning it Had Come.”
When the man has read through the story, he remembers
with a clutch at his affections, that he has not yet taken out
life insurance Here is a fundamental want, to protect and
!

bring happiness to those we love.

In no one of these cases, be it noted, have we referred to
“instincts.” There is much controversy among psychol-
ogists as to what precisely “instincts” are or whether they
are at all. There can, however, be no doubt that, partly
as a result of —
our inborn impulses ^which we unquestion-
ably have —
^partly as a result of our socially acquired habits
and valuations, there are a multitude of wants which we
feel deeply and persistently, the appeal to which is, as a
matter of fact, the only successful way in which any of us
can be induced to do anything at all.

Surplus Energy, Play

Here an advertisement of a well-known breakfast

is

food. A father and his

small son are running gaily down
the snow-swept road. One can feel the crispness of the
air; the pounding beat of the rich red blood. The caption
38 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
reads: “That Extra Energy! And
Golden precious
Years!” The appeal is is almost as fundamental
to what
as anything in us— the want for play and for the buoyant
health that makes play possible. No one wants illness,
depression, boredom. If work can be made into play, so
much the more powerful is its appeal.

Security

Of quite a different and yet equally fundamental nature

is the appeal to one’s fears. We are biologically as well
as psychologically conditioned to avoid danger. Where
the danger is not too great, we may seek it in the spirit of
adventure —which indicates another want, as in hunting,
exploration, gambling, etc. But normally danger is some-
thing to be avoided. So we advertise windshields for
automobiles: “He didn’t see the danger in time to avoid
it. And so — a lifetime of regret!” A lock: “Foils the
Auto Thief.” A correspondence course: “What Would
I Do Lost My Job?” An antiseptic toothpaste:
if I
“Back of Beauty May Lurk Dread Disease !”

To Own Something
Property an extension of our personality.
Is carpen- A
ter with a kit of tools can do what a carpenter without a
kit of tools cannot do. An accountant with an adding
machine multiplies his power. A
salesman with an auto-
mobile can double and treble his territory. small boy A
with a holiday and-.a dollar in his pocket has the world by
the tail.

The love of money may, indeed, be the root of all evil,

when the love is miserly; W the secure control of the tools

 ! —

THE APPEAL TO WANTS 39

of life is the root of all our fine powers and satisfactions.
Hence — 'despite our squeamishness about materialism
there something fundamentally wholesome about the
is

appeal: “Get Ready for a Big Pay Job!” “Be an Elec-

trical Expert.” If the big pay goes with a job well done,
then the pay is simply tools added to tools well used. If
the appeal had read “Be Clever! Learn Plow to Make
:

Easy Money by Doing the Other Fellow !” we might talk

of materialism
The wish then, to possess, when with the possession goes
use, is fundamental and wholesome.

To Be Efficient
Here is an advertisement with the caption : “Most Men
Shave the Wrong Way.” The appeal is instant. No one,
if he knows it, wishes to do a thing in an inefficient manner.

If inefficiency means the expenditure of more effort for

smaller returns, it goes counter to the quite fundamental
factor of “least effort.” No man deliberately tries to put
more effort into the accomplishment of a thing than is nec-
essary — unless he is enjoying the effort itself; and then the
pleasurable effort is the end sought. Hence the strength
of appeals to the saving of time and energy filing
all —
systems, washing machines, kitchen cabinets, vacuum clean-
ers, adding machines.

Social Esteem
Then there is social pride. We live ^raong our fellows.
A great part of the satisfaction which we derive comes from
the attitude of our fellows towards ourselves. To be
looked down upon or pitied or scorned gives us intense pain.
40 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
We wish to be looked up to —by somebody; pi*eferabiy by
as many as possible. There is a good deal of sentimental
talk about the sin of pride. As a matter of fact the wish
to be thought well of, particularly by those of whom we
think well, is quite fundamental; and, one might say, it is
as civilizing an attitude as we possess. It may take ex-
travagant forms — as in conspicuous display, boasting,
extravagant, useless expenditure — ^but normally it is the
stimulus which keeps us up to the mark.
Advertisers, of course, constantly appeal to our feeling
for social esteem. Here is the picture of an elegant man-
sion,with elegant ladies and gentlemen issuing from the
door, an automobile awaiting them. The male who pre-
cedes the party is quite obviously well satisfied. The
reason why? “The Human Desire to Own the Best Sug-
gests the Cadillac.”
To something about this kind of appeal
be sure there is

that makes many of us feel a little dubious ^perhaps —

even furious. Men and women make such fools of them-
selves, waste so many of the precious energies of life—
especially the life of others — in the effort to achieve social
distinction! No doubt the process of becoming more civi-

lized is the process of discarding vulgar and wasteful dis-

play for the display of qualities that are of fine human value.
Nevertheless, even when we have discarded vulgar display,
the fundamental wish for social esteem remains. Only,
then, we take more pride in our brains than in our Cadillacs.

J^ride in Appearance
Then there is pride in our personal appearance. It can
take exaggerated forms; but, fundamentally, it is a worth-
 ) ! —

THE APPEAL TO WANTS 41

while pride. To be sure it puts the emphasis upon ex-

ternals. And yet it has in it a certain spirit of social good
will. No one loves to see a slattern.one rejoices in No
a pimply face. There is a satisfaction in a well-groomed
figure a delight in a beautiful skin. A social group in which
;

no one cares how he or she looks will doubtless be found

lacking in many of the social qualities —of courtesy, con-
sideration, ordinary kindliness. Hence there is a certain
wholesomeness as well as power in the appeal to personal
appearance. “Individuality —
How Often it Depends on
Appropriate Spectacles and Eyeglasses!” “The Most
Beautiful Ankles are Enhanced by Beautifully Fitting Real
Silk Hosiery.” “Here’s Positive Proof that I Can Grow
New Hair.” (There is no virtue in wishing to be bald
although in this case we may well doubt the “positive
proof.”) “It’s a Fownes —That’s All You Need to Know !”
{ Shapely gloved hands.

Cleanliness

Closely allied is the appeal to cleanliness. Here is the

picture of a mother standing before her kitchen stove.
The children have burst in from school and have tracked a
lot of snow upon the floor. The mother is quite unper-
turbed —unusual condition! Why? “Brush the snow off,

children; it can’t hurt mother’s new Congoleum Rug!”

What an appeal to the housewifely heart
And so with the thousand and one advertisements of
soap and cleansers and spot removers aftid the rest. Not a
highly intellectual want, indeed; but a powerfully whole-
some one!
42 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
In Briefer Mention

Wemight run on at great length for the powerful hu-

;

man wants are legion. Let us simply list a few of the more
important. We want:
Adventure (hunting; exploration; excitement; games);
Travel;
Leadership (emulation; triumph; “being looked up to;”
“being an authority”) ;

Novelty (curiosity about the unknown) ;

Propriety (modesty; good taste; being in style; good

form; good manners) ;

Constructive Achievement (planting a garden; making a

radio set; hammering out copper; organizing a com-
pany; making an invention; playing the piano);
—
Conquest (power to overcome sometimes our fellows;
sometimes Nature; sometimes a problem) ;

Sympathy
Help for the Weaker;
Humor
Harmony with our Fellows (Social Ethics) ;

Harmony with the Universe (Religion).

Our Subtler Motivation

“Man, forsooth,” writes Samuel Butler,^ “prides himself
on his consciousness! V^e boast that we differ from the
winds and waves and falling stones and plants, which grow
they know not why, and from the wandering creatures
which go up and down after their prey, as we are pleased
to say without the help of reason. We know so well what
The Way of All Fleshy Chap. III.
 !

THE APPEAL TO WANTS 43

we are doing ourselves and why we do it, do we not? I
fancy that there is some truth in the view being put for-
ward now-a-days, that it is our less conscious thoughts and
our less conscious actions, which mainly mould our lives and
who spring from us.”
the lives of those
And, writes Pascal “The heart has
: its reasons of which
the reason knows nothing.”
The student of human nature who thoroughly learns
the lesson of our subtler motivation has a fair chance of es-
caping the arid ineffectiveness of the abstract intellectual-
ist.

In every situation, in short, the human individual is moved

by a multitude of wants, of most of which he is not even con-
scious. The effective teacher, for example, is the one who
is sensitively and sympathetically aware of this. But how
often the teacher goes to her daily task simply with her head
full of “the work for the day.” She will teach so much
geography ; somuch arithmetic ; so much grammar. She
has it all neatly planned out; she is a veritable marvel of
pedagogical efficiency! Her object is to cover exactly so
much ground. It is seldom that she asks herself whether
her young charges really want to cover that ground, or
whether, indeed, they can be induced to want it. What are
their wants anyway? It does not matter. The curriculum
calls for two pages of grammar on Monday morning; and

so two pages it must be

But children do have wants. For example, they have
conversation wants. They like to talk to each other.
Cannot grammar be taught by appealing to the conversation
want? They have superiority wants. Cannot the slips in
grammar be detected by members of the class themselves,
instead of marked in red ink by the teacher? They have
 —

44 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

dramatic wants. Cannot they write plays of their own and
mutually correct their errors in speech ?
The more progressive trends in education are all in this
direction. “Never teach anything unless you tie it up with
a real want in the child’s life.”
The rule is equally applicable in the home. The usual
situation is that we parents want something done and tell

our children to go and do it. But it is not our wants that

should motivate, but theirs. We want
them to brush their
teeth ive want them to take baths %ve want them to be less
; ;

noisy; we want them to pick up their things; we want them

— heaven knows how many things we want of them. No
wonder the main indoor sport of parenthood is “telling
them what to do.”
Of course, obedience is a comfortable quality to develope
in our children —
comfortable for us. But obviously if we
get it —
by subduing the child by shouting him down, scold-
ing him into submission, threatening him into quietude
we are hardly laying up treasures for his later social life.
We are probably shaping him into timid subservience or
into suppressed rebelliousness.
Can we up what we want with what our children
tie

want? Let me illustrate the point from one of my own

parental experiences. It was at our summer camp in the
mountains. Being without a maid, we were doing our own
work; and we were consequently anxious to induce the three
boys to lend a hand in the daily routine. But, with woods
around us and a lake at our door, the hands refused to be
loaned. With brd’akfast inside them, the boys would be
out of the house and away; and father and mother had re-
sentfully to straighten out the morning chaos of beds and
breakfast dishes, kitchen floor and the melancholy rest.
 THE APPEAL TO WANTS 45
Besides, teeth were left unpolished, ears in an uncivilized
condition. We
found ourselves engaged mainly in violent
shouting after fleeing youngsters, in angry scolding, and in
direful remindings of things to be done and left undone.
Here was a beautiful vacation surely going to wreckage 1
And of course mother and father shook their heads:
“Boys are such selfish creatures!” “What they need is a
good thrashing.”
Then it suddenly occurred to us that perhaps it was we
who were at fault. Why should healthy boys be interested
in brushing their teeth; in wiping dishes; in sweeping up a
kitchen floor? Fleaven knows that we ourselves, grown up
as we were, were only mildly interested in the first and not
at all in the second and third. Quite the contrary
So the problem suddenly took shape. How could we tie
up these uninteresting tasks with something that really
gripped the boys? That change of attitude on our part
was nine-tenths of the victory. The rest was easy. It
took only a little thinking for us to devise for each boy a
schedule on which was set down the various morning tasks.
Perpendicular lines were drawn and spaces left for check-
ing up the daily performance of each task. generous A
bonus v/as allowed for a week’s perfect schedule graduated ;

payments for lesser degrees of perfection, and so on.

The simple little device worked like a miracle. Next
morning, the boys were up and at the checking. There
were no more yellings, no more remindings. The vacation
was saved; and character building was in full swing!
What was it that did it? Obviously'we had appealed to
a number of their real wants. Every child wants to earn
money and ought to be given the opportunity. Note that
in this case they earned it. Every child likes to compete,
46 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
even with himself (later in life he competes with bogy).
But, above all, every child, without knowing it really, wants
to be clear about his life’s business. Hitherto we had given
their Immature minds no clear grasp of their morning’s
program. We had forgotten that a child’s mind does not
organize itself as easily as does an adult’s. Now, at last,
on a small sheet of paper, they could see all that was ex-
pected of them; see it in due order; and grasp it as a whole.
I know of no point of view more effectively transforming,
both for parents and children, than this one of trying to ap-
peal to real and legitimate wants. It marks the difference
between intelligent experimentation, intelligent devising of
effective means, and a stupid adherence to old ways, with a
whining despair at the difficulties of parenthood.

The Older Technique of Duty

The chief problem, of course, in the training of children
is to getthem to want what is really worth the wanting.
Children want many things which are of quite inferior
value. In this, no doubt, they are not altogether unlike
their elders. The problem of child training is to give op-
portunity for the more worthwhile wants to grow strong
and multiply.
In the past generation, the concept of duty was the whip
that was applied to us. As children, we had no love for
duty. Often, we hated it with all the bitterness of our
souls. “Now, Jane, you know it Is your duty to take care
of your little brother;” or, “Now, Thomas, don’t whine.
It’syour duty to go to Sunday School.” “It’s your duty to
practice;” “Your duty to be kind.” We hated it at first;
but as we gradually became conditioned to it, there often
 THE APPEAL TO WANTS ^^7
grew up a kind of grim love for duty. We sacrificed our-
selves with a bitter pleasure ; we did what we did not like to
do for the sake of what we felt we ought
to do.
There was something severely strong about this. Many
of us feel that the present generation, brought up without
the stern sense of duty, is weak and willful. Perhaps. But
the older training was not without its dangers. It tended,
often, to develope a kind of bigoted self congratulation.
“Look at me ! do this. But I’m strong-
I don’t like to
strong enough to make myself miserable for duty’s sake!”
It was, therefore, in large measure, a breeder of moral
egotism. Also, it easily led to intolerance. “This is your
duty, young man. Do it!” And that was the last word.
The stern eye and the unrelenting heart! Worse than all
this, it too often made for hypocrisy. “I know it is hard
on you and the children, my dear, but my duty calls me,”
and the man went off to his adventure with a sorrowful face
and a glad heart.
Morally as well as psychologically, the training of chil-
dren .by emphasis upon their duty was bad because it was a
training by compulsion rather than by free inner develop-
ment. The duty, in the first instance, was never something
willed by the child it was something imposed from without.
;

The child might, indeed, be battered into acceptance it might ;

even, in the end, become so habituated to the duty as to feel

it as its own. But in the process, it tended to lose that fine
strength of personality which comes from a free choosing
and a self-determined carrying out of one’s chosen end.
If many of our present generation of young people are,
indeed, weak and willful, it is doubtless because we of the
older generation have not substituted for the severe, ex-
ternal discipline of duty the subtler, but far more powerful
48 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
discipline of an inner choice of that which
is really worth

the choosing. We
have not yet learned, in short, how to
help our children organize their wants how to estimate ;

their relative values. Brought up ourselves on the easy

duty technique
— —
“Do this and do that” ^we are altogether
at a loss in this new situation. How, as a matter of fact,
does one get a child to want to do the right, the fine thing?
That is a most difficult problem. It is infinitely easier to
say, “Do it.” Most of us, therefore, adopt the easier way.
The appeal to wants, then, presupposes, first of all, an
understanding of the fine, worthwhile wants that can h&
aroused in children; and secondly, an intelligence capable
of opening up opportunities and devising situations which
will arouse those wants. The parent. In short, is to be, in
the main, not a giver-of-commands but an opener-up-of-
opportunities. In a later chapter, we shall discuss more in
detail how be accomplished. At this point
this task Is to
we wish simply to emphasize the basic difference between
the duty technique, which operates by compulsion and from
without, and the appeal-to-wants technique, which operates
by intelligent suggestion and from within. The latter, al-
though far more difficult of application, is without any ques-
tion, psychologically and morally the superior.

Summary
“No appeal to a reason that is not also an appeal to a
want is ever effective.” That ought to dispose of a good
deal of futile arguing. It ought to put an end to most of
the angry denunciation and bitter sarcasm wherewith we
infuriate each other. It ought to mend the ways of the
preaching parent, the expostulating, scolding parent. It
 THE APPEAL TO WANTS 49
ought to indicate to the arid pedagogue a way of escape
from his aridity. And finally, it ought to suggest to the
earnest political reformer more effective techniques for cap-
turing and holding that difScult, but psychologically quite
normal entity called “the people.”
Thought (reason) is, at bottom, an instrument of action;

and whatever it may be, springs out of what we

action,
fundamentally desire. There is, indeed, a place in life- —
— —
most important place for pure thought thought, that is,
which has no interest in immediate action. But for the
most part, thought (reason) is, for us, an instrument of
exploration it enables us to see more clearly where we are
;

going, and how we may best go. But where do we actually

wish to go ? If we are sure of that, then we gladly enough
busy ourselves to find ideas which point the path and clear
the way.
Hence, as we have seen, the arguer must first arouse
in his respondent a real want to know what is being
argued about, a real wish to understand, or his argumenta-
tion is only words. The trouble with most arguers is that
they are too much in a hurry to mAo2LdL themselves. They
quite forget that, preliminary to the unloading, there must
be awakened in the respondent an eagerness to want.
That perhaps is the best piece of advice which can be
given to would-be persuaders, whether in business, in the
home, in the school, in politics, etc. first arouse in the other
:

person an eager want.

He who can do this has the world with him. He who
cannot walks a lonely way
 CHAPTER III

THE PROBLEM OF VIVIDNESS

Let the reader try to recall the smell of a peach. He
will no doubt find it a little vague. Let him try, now, to
recall its taste. Still vague; but perhaps less so. Now
let him try to recall what a peach looks like. Not vague at
all. The image of the peach leaps to the mind.
Most of us are visual minded. This means that any-
thing that can be presented to the eye has a far greater
chance of being retained and recalled than something which
is presented only to the organs of taste and smell.
To put an idea into visual form, then, is to increase its

power. For the power of an idea depends upon two’

things: (i) the swiftness and clarity with which it is re-

ceived: (2) the ease with which it is recalled.

We
have all suffered under the colorless speaker (note
the visual condemnation in the word colorless). We have
all groaned under too great abstractness of presentation.
We have all had the baffling experience of trying to recall
what a certain chapter was about. And we have all grate-
fully had the opposite experience, of a speaker who gave us
a vivid sense of the reality of what he was talking about;
of a writer who so “pointed up” his material with visual
illustration that he left us with a clear sense of his essential
meanings.
 J'HE 'PROBLEM' OF VIVIDNESS 5 ^:

Picturizing With Words

^
Note the piGture value of the following advertisement :

A $i2j000 Advertisement

was only a small advertisement ; but some freak of fortune

It
brought it into the hands of a Chinese firm in Hongkong.

A few weeks later a Cleveland concern received an order from

Hongkong, for $12,000 worth of merchandise.
It was a sizeable order. They needed it badly. Yet they
could find no credit data relating to the new customer.
They ’phoned to the Foreign Department of this organization.
Within ninety minutes, they had four closely typewritten pages
concerning their customer and his financial status.
Yet this is only a sample of the service at the command . • .

The power of that advertisement lies in the picture-

phrases of which it is so largely made up : “Only a small
advertisement;” “some freak of fortune brought it into
the hands;” “Chinese firm in Hongkong;” “a Cleve-
land concern;” “an order from Hongkong;” “$12,000
worth of merchandise;” “they needed it badly;” “they
’phoned the Foreign Department;” “within ninety min-
utes;” “four closely typewritten pages.”
Let us reconstruct that advertisement along the lines of
abstract dignity:

Credit Information

The Foreign Department of the Union Trust Company is pre-

pared to give reliable credit information at short notice concern-
ing business houses throughout the world.

^The Fine Art of Picturizing; by Arthur T. Corbett. Advertising and

Selling Fortnightly, Nov. 19, 1924, p. 18.
52 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
No pictures whatever there, except, perhaps, a whiff of
!”
one in the phrase “at short notice “Throughout the
world” is far less arresting than “Hongkong,” because it
is too general, too diffused to form a picture. “Credit in-
formation” is an understandable phrase; but it leaves us
cold beside the vivid picture of an actual instance, in a
specific place, of credit confirmation.
Notice the picture value of the following names: Camp
Fire Girls; Boy Scouts; Pioneer Youth; Children’s Bureau;
International Community Center; Day Nursery; The Road
of Anthracite; New York Central. Suppose the Camp Fire
Girls had been called : Association for the Promotion of
Friendship and Outdoor Life Among Girls!
Notice the fuzzy abstractness of the following names:
The Joint Committee on Methods of Preventing Juvenile
Delinquency; The American Public Health Association;
New York State Committee on Mental Hygiene; New
York, Westchester and Boston Railway.^

Be Creators of Images

Most of us, as we have said, are naturally “visual

minded;” but comparatively few of us are “visual worded.”
There is no need, therefore, that we train ourselves in the
power to receive visual images; there is every need, how-
ever, that we make some deliberate effort to train ourselves
in the power to create and transmit visual images.
^ I have just tested the recall value of the latter name by looking it up
in the telephone director^*. discovered I could not recall the order
First, I
of the three localities. So I started with Boston ;
—
Boston, New York, West-
chester; Boston, Westchester, New York; no luck! Then Westchester,
Boston, New York; Westchester, New York, Boston; no luck again! Then
New York, Boston, Westchester* Finally, after ten minutes or so of
irritated turning of pages, the absurd combination!
 !

THE PROBLEM OF VIVIDNESS 53

We can do by taking passages from the great
this, first,

writers—men like Tolstoy; Anatole France; Shaw, Huxley;

—
Emerson; Carlyle noting the picture words used. To
build up a fairly adequate vocabulary of such words is itself
of value. Of greater value, however, is the habit which
thereby devHops of being aware of the power which such
words give to the writing. As we begin to note the presence
of visual v»7ords in the great writers, we note, the more easily,
their absence from our own efforts. Another excellent
procedure is to examine writing which is obviously dull and
ineffective and note in how far the weakness of the writing
arises out of the poverty of picture-building words. The
same procedure may be followed in the case of effective
speakers and dull speakers.
Then we ready to take ourselves severely and
shall be
successfully in hand. We can stand over our own dull para-
graphs, or keep an ear upon our own colorless speeches, and
point them up by substituting “eye” words for the common-
place, foggy symbols which help to hold us within the ranks
of mediocrity.

The A nti-Picturizers
We now go and as writers or speakers put
a step further,
our material into visual form by the use of pictures.
There is, among many so-called intellectuals, an instant and
ominous “thumbs down.” Pictures are lowbrow. No
really intelligent person is supposed to look at pictures — un-
less they are framed and hung in a gallp ry
This is a curious attitude, since a picture, very often, is

obviously the clearest and simplest means for transmitting

ideas. Take, for example, a printed verbal description of
 ;

54 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

a house or a landscape. We all know how dilEcult it is to
follow the verbal process. Is there any particular advan-
tage in having to grope through a wordy description, achiev-
ing, at the end, only a vague and inaccurate visual image,
when a picture would give us instantly ail the characteristic
details? Or take a description of how to swing one’s golf
club properly, or do a crawl stroke? The objection
how to
to the use of pictures seems to be a curious left-over from
the ascetic philosophy that life must be made as difficult as
possible, never as easy. Pictures make things too easy for
us.
There is, of course, a degree of truth in this. A genera-
tion brought up exclusively on pictures would doubtless be-
come lazy and passive-minded (unless the pictures were
stimulative of ideas). But no one in his senses, surely,
would advocate such a wholesale use of pictures, particu-
larly of pictures which in no wise roused the mind to active
response.
In life we apply tools to the material of our environment.
One kind of tool is applied to physical things. Now it

would be a curious carpenter who would insist that it was

demoralizing to use a modern set of steel tools on the
ground that it made carpentering too easy. It is true that a
stone hammer would cause the carpenter far more trouble
would tax his patience and his ingenuity to the utmost.
But would that additional effort be worthwhile? Even at
the best, he could never accomplish with his ascetic stone
hammer what he could easily coax out of a full kit of mod-
ern tools.
The point is that the modern “easier” tools do not make
the carpenter lazy; do not weaken his craftsman ability.
 THE PROBLEM OF VIVIDNESS 55
They simply release his energies for work impossible with
the cruder tool.
Now words and pictures are tools. They are tools for
communicating ideas, stimulating interests, arousing feel-
ings and emotions. The sole question we have to ask about
these tools is, which of them does the tool-work most ef-
fectively?
When we state the issue in this way there can be no doubt
about the answer. “A picture, with a few words of ex-
planation, will make It possible to get over an idea in one
minute that would require two minutes without the pic-
ture.” If that is true, then the picture is the more effective
tool of communication. We need not worry about the fact
that the receiving mind has, in this case, worked
hard less
(a minute less) In getting the idea by picture than by word.
That simply means that it has more time left to get other
ideas.
And therein, after all, lies the secret of what we, as
human beings, are after. We make our life increasingly
successful as we are able to minimize the time spent upon
certain tasks, in order that our energies may be released for
other worthwhile tasks and opportunities.

The Imitative Picture

There are two types of pictures which are of Interest to
us in this connection: (i) the imitative; (2) the selec-

tive. Obviously, the imitative picture serves many time-

saving, idea-clarifying purposes. A photograph, or photo-
graphic drawing, of a dress, or gun, or bicycle, or building is
so far more effective than a verbal description that business
56 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
men have long since abandoned the letter, save as supple-
mentary to the picturization. The eye grasps instantly a
hundred details, gets the “wholeness” of a thing in picture
form, where it would crawl along slowly from word to word
of a description and in the end have no clear image. Books
on anatomy, physiology, biology, botany, horticulture, ag-
riculture, etc., are largely effective in proportion to the clear
and precise illustrations contained in their text. That pic-
tures are not more generously used in such texts is due to
the relatively large cost of their reproduction.

The Selective Picture: Diagrams, Graphs, Curves

The most significant type of picture, however, is the se-

lective picture. At the farthest remove from imitative
representation are those skeleton-like picturizings which we
call diagrams, graphs, curves. “When large groups of
figures are to be presented it is often useful to employ dia-
grams which enable the eye to grasp at once the series as
a whole. There are many varieties. Popular discussions
of comparative populations, wealth, navies, and so on often
represent the various figures by lines or surfaces which are
so juxtaposed as to show at once to the eye the relations
of the several quantities. ... Or we might employ rec-
tangles with equal bases, or points on a curve.”
Often skeleton maps with shaded areas show most ef-
fectively diminutions or increases in numbers.
Such selective picturizing is a comparatively recent device.
It is a form of “conceptual shorthand” which very greatly
increases the clarity and the power of the ideas.
It is significant that the making of such selective pictures
1 Jones, A. L.; Logic: Holt, New York.
p, 226.
 !

THE PROBLEM OF VIVIDNESS 57

is only slowly being introduced into the schools. Here
verbal technique is still in the ascendant, although verbal
technique is, in these cases, immeasurably inferior. But so,
likewise, students are still required solemnly to add and sub-
tract, multiply and divide, extract roots, etc. (long after
they have attained skill in these), despite the adding ma-
chine and the slide rule I

The Cartoon
Is there a more effective, idea-clarifying and emotion-
arousing device than the modern cartoon? The cartoon is

in a preeminent way form of selective picture which con-

a
veys an idea. Through conveying an idea with simple clar-
ity, it often arouses powerful emotion. It frequently does
what words cannot do. It crowds the salient details of a
situation into a few square inches of space; places them
there with such selective clarity that the eye and the mind
catch them instantly.
The power of the cartoon is the power of all art, the
power of selective emphasis. The cartoonist knows that
most of us go about with only a hazy kind of attention.
We see people indeed; but we recognize them only by a few
conventional marks. The cartoonist wants us to see the
vulgarity in that fat woman’s face; or the pathos in that
girl’s thin arms. A bit of accentuation; and the trick
is done. We now see. He has extended our human in-

sight. He has given a new direction to our thought and

feelings. ,

Or he wants us to be aware of the danger in a certain

political situation. A few accentuated characters thrown
together within his small area and the whole story is told
;
58 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
The cartoon is still one of the step-children of the arts.
Some day it will be lifted to the place of honor which is its
due. An artist who has genuine ideas about human life,
genuine insight into human situations, might well be proud
of the power to sweep his thoughts and feelings into the
swift compass of pictures that grip us with their clear per-
tinence.
Here, again, we are the victims of our own early condi-
tioning. Practically none of us, in our childhood days,
were taught to “say it with pictures.” And as for the pic-
tures that we were taught to admire, they were the paint-
ings on gallery walls.
But why should our children not be taught to “say it with
pictures?” Why should we confine our children to copying
leaves and plaster casts — a wholly Imitative, idealess enter-
prise; when they ought, from their youngest years, to be
learning how to give graphic expression to their Ideas?
When we find Thackeray, Clarence Day, Hugh Lofting,
Willem Van Loon and others, telling their stories in pic-
tures, we exclaim with delight. We seldom think that this
is what of us ought to be able to do that it Is a power
all ;

which our word-dominated education has failed to develop

in us, but which ought to become part of our everyday hu-
man equipment.

The Gallery Picture

Nor do we mean by this to detract in any degree from the

high form of art wshich hangs on our gallery walls. The
trouble with our gallery walls is —
that they are gallery
walls. The pictures on them are seldom seen; and when
seen, they are looked upon as something rare and quite
 THE PROBLEM OF VIVIDNESS 59
apart from ourselves. Usually, we do not even know how
to look at them. We drag through wearily, giving a glance
here at a mother slicing bread for her children or there at
.a generallissimo on a snorting horse.

What do these pictures on our gallery walls really intend

to convey? What good do they do? What use are they
to our human enterprise?
The usual thought is that artists are queer folk who like
to paint. Sometimes the pictures tickle our fancy; and we
stand for a moment and look at them. Then we pass on.
But, of course, there is much more to it than this. A
picture, if it is worth anything, is a more or less powerful
means of communication. The artist has seen something.
You and I have been in the same place, perhaps; have
looked at the same object; but we have not seen just that
peculiar, rare thing which the artist sees. Why? Be-
cause, as we said above, we usually see only the ordinary,
conventional marks whereby we identify the objects and
creatures of our world. But in this particular common-
place object — —
say it is a tree the artist sees something
which we have passed over. He sees a sturdiness, a stub-
bornness in the windswept branches. When he paints his
picture, it is sturdiness, stubbornness that he paints into his
canvas. He accentuates. He brings these out so that even
our attention-dulled eyes can see.
What a picture does, then, is to fasten our attention upon
aspects of our own world which ordinarily escape us. It
is for that reason that galleries are usually psychological
monstrosities. No
one of us can have our attention whipped
alive a hundred times in every few hundred feet; a
thousand, several thousand times in the course of an hour.
Every picture that is worth seeing is a stimulus to an un-
6o INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
usual act of attention on our Each
picture must,
part.
therefore, be given its full opportunity. We
should hardly
expect a person to listen with a peculiar joy to a single
musical note, if a hundred discordant whistles were blowing.
No more can we expect these selective bits of experience
which we call pictures to arouse us to their peculiar new way
of seeing things, if a hundred of them are claiming our dis-
tracted attention.
In one of our women’s colleges there is a wise art di-
rector. One room is set apart; and in that room is hung
one picture — usually for an entire week. Also in front of
that one picture, at a great enough distance, is a bench with
a back. The director knows that if we are to incorporate
the new and rare experience, we must be given time; and
that if we take time, the rest of our bodily organism must
not be crying out for attention. He knows that we or-
dinarily see galleries not with our eyes but with our protest-
ing feet.
Pictures seen in a real way add new feelings, new insights
to our life. Architecture and sculpture also influence hu-
man behavior by picturization of ideas and feelings.
There can be little doubt that to the Athenian the Parthe-
non was a very important, though doubtless quite uncon-
scious, influence. There it reposed, a white jewel of beauty,
on the top of the Acropolis. No hundred other “objects of
art” to compete with it. The Athenian passed it scores
of times; could look up at it from any part of the city.
Suppose that instead of the gleaming white Parthenon,
there had been a huge illuminated sign, with dancing silly-
billies, advertising Wogglfs Chewing Gum: It Sticks!
The Parthenon was a work of art, not only because it was
beautiful, but because it was selective. It accentuated
 THE PROBLEM OF VIVIDNESS 6i

beauty of line in the human body; beauty of move-

ment; beauty of proportion. We could easily imagine a
gargoyled temple crowded with hooded figures. Such a
temple would be selective of other features of experience
and would have had an influence notably different from that
of the Parthenon. The Parthenon taught the Greeks to
see human one of its major aspects; it influenced
life in
them unconsciously towards the development of a taste for
beauty of line, movement and proportion.

Two Necessary Projects

There are two things which, apparently, we must learn to

do if the full value of picturizing is to be realized in our
modern civilization. First, we must unlearn most of our
habits of thought about art. We must learn what pictures,
sculptures, and works of architecture really have to say.
Once we see that what they communicate is something
selective; something taken out of the vague and helter-
skelter mass of our experience and made to stand out as
beautiful and worthy of our attention —
once we see this,
every picture or other work of art becomes for us a means
to arouse our attention to something unique, something or-
dinarily unnoticed. A work of becomes for us
art, then,

a key to unlock a rarity. It is not simply something to look

at and exclaim: “Why it’s an exact copy!”; something to
give the date of and the author something to hunt up in a
;

catalogue. It becomes in itself a new, enlightening ex-

*
perience.
But, in the second place, we must ourselves learn to speak
the language of pictures. We
must begin by noting the
unusual, the rare. We must begin by trying somehow,
62 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
even though with the greatest awkwardness, to set down
our own experience of what most people do not see. Tech-
nique can follow in due course after the artist eye is opened.
And so, if we are adults and have not yet learned to speak
the language of pictures, our best plan will be not to copy
plaster casts but simply to try to note what is characteristic
about the objects around us — of a nose; the
the saucy tilt

expressive solemnity of huge ears; the pathos of knuckled

fingers; the self-reliant stubbiness of a small dog’s tail; the
lordly droop of a chrysanthemum. We can try, in our
awkward ways, to set down in simple black lines these things
we see. We may
never become skilled technicians; our
drawings may be ridiculously crude but one thing, we may
;

—
be assured, they will not be if they are drawn out of our
actual seeing of what is rare and characteristic, they will
never be dull. And they will do this for us : they will en-
able us to respond with a more instant sensitiveness to what
the master artists are trying to convey.
But, of course, all this training ought to be begun early
in life. It is a pity that our children spend years in learn-
ing the art of speaking with words, but, for the most part,
no time at all in learning the art of speaking with visual im-
ages. There are signs, however, that a new understand-
ing of the value of this art is being reached. In the more
progressive schools, children begin to draw freely from the
kindergarten on. They are never asked to copy anything
— in the pedantic way demanded of old. They are given
generous spaces of paper, a goodly equipment of paints and
brushes and allowed to go ahead as they wish. And the
wise teacher does not say: “Ah, Jennie, but don’t you see
that human arms don’t hang that way? Let me show
you how.” No, she lets thearms hang in whatever way
 —

THE PROBLEM OF VIVIDNESS 63

they wish to hang, being fully assured that the spirit is more
than arms and legs, and that while arms and legs will even-
tually find their proper placing, the spirit must blow where
it listeth.
not in order that children may paint that we do this,
It is
or that they may bring home their pictures to fond papa
and mamma. It is that they may learn to see and to express
what they see. It is, in short, that their eyes may learn a
sensitiveness to the rarer aspects of experience, instead of
becoming dulled to all except the most conventional utili-
tarian marks whereby we identify the objects around us.
There is much loveliness in our world which quite es-
capes us. Looking out upon a landscape, let the reader
bend down until his head is horizontal instead of per-
pendicular and let him look at the landscape from that
angle. A subtle change comes over the scene. Colors not
before detected now stand out, contours hitherto unnoticed
are now in sharp relief. By a slight change in the angle
of our perception, we have brought out new qualities in
the scene before us. Art does that for us—^when we really
see art. All the more reason, then, that we should all,

in some degree, become artists.

Thus we enrich our own experience. And thus, If we
can really learn the art of selective expression, we enrich
the experience of others. A civilization is drab, Main-
Streetish, when it sees only the utilitarian values. It escapes

drabness, it beautifies its Main Streets, when it develops in

its members new and more subtle sensitiveness of vision.
The effort to picturize, in brief, is valuable in many dif-

ferent ways. If we can cast aside the colorless, abstract

words of ordinary currency, and substitute words which
suggest images; if we can create what people shall see
64 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
whether we be writers, or advertisers, or teachers, or artists
— ^we add not only to the clarity of our thought, but also to
the power of our influence over human behavior.

Inducing an Imagined Experience

Picturization, then, lends a vividness such as

is not usu-

ally experienced through the imaginative use of the other

senses. To see with the eye of the mind concretely, is
to apprehend more of the object, and more vividly, than to
hear with the ears abstractly.
But there is something more effective even than seeing
with the imaginative eye. It is the condition in which we
imaginatively feel a situation with more or less of our whole
personalities.
Let us suppose that I wish to interest some one in the
starving children of Russia. I can tell the person that it
is his duty to help these children in distress. Such ad-
monition will probably not move him very greatly. Or I
can ask him whether he will be so good as to help these
poor, suffering children. He may be slightly moved by
my appeal to his pity; more particularly, perhaps, by my
flattery of hishumanity; and he may give me a contribu-
tion. Suppose, however, I could take him over with me
to Russia and let him see starving children talk with them
;

help them individually. I should no longer have to argue

or to plead. He himself, of his own free will, out of the
intensity of his own feeling, would give the maximum of
his help. T

Obviously, the best technique we can ever use is to put

the person completely into the situation. But in most
cases in life this rather expensive technique can hardly be
 THE PROBLEM OF VIVIDNESS 65

applied. Hence we are called upon to use a second-best,

namely, the technique of putting a person imaginatively into
the situation.
Wesometimes call this the power of suggestion. That
word, however, has so mysterious a sound; It has become so
associated with curious psychological procedures like hyp-
notism, auto-suggestion, etc., and with erotic “suggestive-
ness,” that I prefer not to use it, but to use a phrase which
quite clearly indicates precisely what we do.
We induce an imagined experience. Not all of us, of
course do. When we do not, our speech or our writing
is abstract, unarousing, “pale.” We talk “about it and
about.” When, however, we do successfully induce an im-
agined experience, we have a power which, for effectively
influencing human behavior, is almost, if not quite, the
greatest that a writer or speaker can have.
Let me illustrate. The power of a person like Billy
Sunday lies in the effective use of this technique. We may
not be particulaidy interested in the kind of imagined ex-
perience which the Reverend Billy induces. As psychol-
ogists, however, it Is important that we note the source of
his power. The New York Times recently reported one
of the characteristic feats of the preacher, “billy Sun-
day TALK ENDS LONG LOOTING.” “ WOMAN MOVED BY
SERMON ON THE ‘WAGES OF SIN,’ REVEALS ALL TO THE
ELMIRA POLICE.” “Before an audience of 7,000 in the
Sunday Tabernacle, the famous evangelist declared that ‘no
person In whose heart reposes guilty knowledge need expect
to make peace with God until confession is first made,’ and
the statement struck terror to one woman’s heart, for she
had been concealing the knowledge of extensive robberies
for nearly ten years and yet devoutly wished to make her
66 INFLUENCING HUMAN .BEHAVIOR
peace with her Creator. Leaving the tabernacle she sought
the seclusion of her room and remained upon her knees
in agonized prayer until the first flush of dawn, when her
decision was made.” Here was a case of inducing an im-
agined experience, that of standing before God with a guilty
secret in one’s heart The preacher doubtless portrayed
the situation with such vividness that the guilty woman was
terror-stricken.
The colored minister often has this power. The follow-
ing amusing yet psychologically most significant story is told
by Professor F. M. Davenport (quoted by Allport, Social
Psychology/^. 24.J) :

a little town between Cleveland, Tennessee, and Chattanooga,

it was the purpose to give a donation to the colored minister. One
of the brethren in the church volunteered to make a collection from
the various homes, and an old woman loaned this brother her cart
and a pair of steers for the purpose. After he had been throughout
the neighborhood and had secured a load of provisions and clothing,
he drove off to Chattanooga and sold everything, including the cart
and the steers, pocketed the proceeds and departed on a visit to
Atlanta, Consternation and indignation reigned in the community
when the affair became known. After some time the culprit drifted
back, in deep contrition, but having spent all. Indignation once
more arose to a white heat, was determined to give him a
and it

church trial at once. The meeting was crowded and the preacher, ;

after stating the charges, announced that the accused would be given
a chance to be heard. He went forward and took the place of the
preacher on the platform.
1 ain^t got nuffin Jo say fo’ myseff,’ he began in a penitent voice,
**

‘Fse a po^ mis^able sinner. But, bredren, so is all mis'able

sinners. An^ de good book says w^e must fergib. How many times,
bredren? Till seven times? No, till seventy times seven. An’ I
ain’t sinned no seventy times seven, and Fm jes’ go’ to sugges’ dat
 THE PROBLEM OF VIVIDNESS 67
we turn dis into a fergibness meetin^, and eberybody in dis great
company dat is willin’ to f ergib me, come up now, while we sing one
of our deah ole hymns, and shake ma hand,’
started one of the powerful revival tunes, and they began to
come, first those who hadn’t given anything to the donation and
were not much interested in the matter, then those who hadn’t lost
much, and then the others. Finally all had passed before him ex-
cept one, and she stuck to her seat. ‘Dar’s one po’ mis’able sinner
lef’,’ said he, Mat won’t fergib.’ (She was the old lady v^ho had
lost the steers.) ^Now I sugges’ dat we hab a season ob prayer,
an’ gib dis po’ ole sinner one mo’ chance.’ And after they had
!”
prayed and sung a hymn, the old lady came up, too

Imagining It Does It

Note the difference in effect between the following two

statements made to a person: “I would advise you to
have a regular examination by a physician;” and ‘‘By Jove,
man, you’re looking positively ill. You ought to have a
doctor look you over!” In the one case we present a per-
fectly impeccable bit of abstract statement, with the result
that nothing happens! In the second case, we “induce
an imagined experience.” The friend sees himself looking
sick; he feels himself getting sicker. And because it is he
who does the feeling, no argument is needed. He goes to
the doctor!
Amusing and yet Instructive psychological experiments
have been made along this line. A number of young men
are subjects. They are told that experiments are to be
made upon them to try out the effect of^stimulating and of
depressing drugs upon their heart-beat. They are accord-
ingly given a few pills,which, they are told, contain strych-
nine; and it is explained to them that strychnine has the
68 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
effect of whipping up the heart to more rapid action.

After a certain lapse of time, the heart beats are counted;

and in the majority of cases the beat is faster. The pills,
however, as the reader may have guessed, were only milic
sugar pills And so with the other experiments.^
!

In these cases, “inducing an imagined experience” ac-

tually succeeds in so enlisting the entire organism that even
movements ordinarily beyond conscious control are notice-
ably affected!

The “Forward Looking” Mind

There is at present in America, among forward looking
minds, a large amount of dissatisfaction with reactionary
tendencies. This dissatisfaction takes itself out in bitter
negative argumentation. The American public are roundly
scolded for taking no interest in the European situation;
for being smugly concerned only with their own affairs;
for being intolerant of liberals; for curbing free speech.
Apparently, nothing very noticeable comes of all this. The
American public go on their way supremely indifferent,
because they do not even read or hear these scoldings!
And even if they did, they would doubtless only be annoyed
into a more stubborn pursuit oftheir ways.
The one may suppose, lies in the fact that no
failure,
glowing, imagined experience is portrayed for the American
people. Suppose that the critics should face about, should
accept the idea of lOO per cent Americanism but go it one
better. Suppose they should build up, in every possible way,
the picture of America the pioneer, America the adven-
turous, the red-blooded, the unafraid; America always on
^ Dearborn, G. V . ; Influence of Jfo^; p. 90. Little Brown & Co., Boston*
 THE PROBLEM OF VIVIDNESS 69

the firing-line of social and political advance. Suppose they

could make the average citizen feel that kind of America,
feel the thrill of pride In
belonging to such a country. I
doubt whether the indifference and reactionism would re-
main quite unaffected. As a matter of fact, “100 per cent
American” is a powerful slogan, precisely because it does
Induce an imagined experience; does give a thrill of proud
feeling.
Instead of arguing against keeping political refugees out,
the more successful way, apparently, would be to build up
the picture of America as the Haven of the Persecuted.
Instead of arguing against standpattism, the more effective
way would doubtless be to build up the picture of America
as open minded, as Indeed the very America it is, because
of its eagerness for new Ideas. Instead of inveighing
against the timid reactionaries who
are constantly harking
back to the signers of the Constitution, the really powerful
thing to do would be to build up the picture of America as
forward looking.
Each of these phrases we have used, it will be noted. Is
a picture phrase, a phrase which puts one Into a situation,
and which consequently arouses the feeling of being in that
situation.
The secret of all true persuasion is to induce the person
to persuade himself. The chief task of the persuader,
therefore is to induce the experience. The rest will take
care of itself.

For the Reader

The reader will find it a most valuable undertaking to
examine the extent to which the technique of inducing-an-
70 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
imagined-experience is used forms of print and
in various
speech. Advertising is a rich field of research.
Almost
every really effective advertisement gives one a sense of
actually experiencing the delightful situation ; travel adver-
tisements, food, sport, clothing, health advertisements. He
willsoon be able to detect the difference between an adver-
tisement which makes one’s mouth water, so to speak, and
the type of advertisement, which, couched only in abstract
terms, leaves one cold.
He will find that the power of a great novel is that it

is able to induce in one the feeling of the actual experiences

through which the characters pass; whereas a mediocre
novel keeps one always in the condition of looking on. So,
too, he will find that the speaker who moves people, achieves
this through his power to make his audience experience
what he is portraying. Enthusiasm is contagious to the
extent and only to the extent that it does this. If it is un-
able to induce the imagined experience, it only seems rather
silly.

He will find that the really successful parent is not the

one who preaches or advises or explains or commands, but
the one who can induce in his children vivid imagined ex-
periences.
The secret of it all, of course, is that a person is led to
do what he overwhelmingly feels. Practice in getting
people to feel themselves in situations is therefore the
surest road to persuasiveness.
 CHAPTER IV

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING

iWe proceed now, In this and the following chapter, to
the two techniques of speech and writing. Speech, when
it has an object,
always an effort to arrest the attention
is

and in some measure to affect the behavior of other human

beings. To be sure, there is the kind of aimless speech of
conversation which seems to have no particular end in view
save to keep going. But even in the speech of conversation
there is the effort to say things in such a way that the other
party listens. No conversationalist delights in seeing his
respondent fall asleep before his eyes. Where, however,
speech has a more definite object — as In an admonition to a
child, an exposition of a point, the discussion of a motion
in a —
committee meeting, the object is quite clearly that
of influencing the listener to some kind of behavior. It
may be simply the intra-organic behavior of mental assent;
or It may be the extra-organic behavior of doing something.
In any event, speech is used as a means of getting some
kind of favorable response.
The problem of effective speaking, therefore, is essenti-
ally psychological. A
good deal of training in public speak-
ing seems to miss this point. It is a training rather in the
literary, logical and physical mechanics of speaking — the
arrangement of ideas, sentence structure, beginning, middle
and end, gestures, enunciation. All these, of course, are
72 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Nevertheless a speaker can be
quite essential matters.
aware of them and even use his knowledge of them and
be practically a failure. One finds particularly among
young college speakers that they are often wooden, un-
convincing. Even their finely prepared efforts have the
effect of something not really meant. One listens, with
half amusement, as to a child reciting something it has
committed to memory, which it only half understands and
In which It really has little Interest.
It would seem important, then, that we approach the
technique of speaking not from the side of Its mechanics
but from the side, so to say, of its “humanics.” Our
primary question in that case is not what kind of speech
Is best arranged, best enunciated, best gestured; but what
kind of speech gets the most effective response. As a mat-
ter of fact,we can quite safely forget the lengthy “speech”
altogether. If we can learn the fundamental psychology
involved even in the slightest speech situation, we shall prob-
ably be far on the way to becoming successful speakers.

The First Rule

The first simple rule of all good speaking, in any situation

whatever, is: think of your audience. This may perhaps
seem altogether too trivial a matter to need mention; but
let the reader make a special point of observing the speech
habits of people. He will note that a great many speakers
are apparently not thinking of their audience at all. They
are apparently speaking to relieve themselves. That Is

the reason why a bore is a bore. That is the explanation

of the woman who endlessly and remorsely pours out the
 PSYCHOLOGY OF SPEAKING 73
tale of her latest troubles. That is the clue to the lecturer
who can go on and on and never seem to notice while
people yawn and fidget and leave the room. Such speakers
might be called unloaders. Their primary object appar-
ently is to get rid of something. Their interest is not in
their audience but in themselves — scholarly unloaders, scien-
tific unloaders, family-troubles unloaders, business-grouch
unloaders, etc.
Suppose, however, that we keep the idea constantly to
the front that our speech should be for the sake of getting
a desirable response. Then the first question we shall
ask ourselves is: Is this manner of speech getting for me
the kind of response I desire?
The scolding of children is mainly an unloading proc-

ess. It is chiefly a relief to our exasperated feelings. As

a matter of fact it often does more harm than good and so
does not secure the response that is really desired. Hence,
in so far, it is ineffective speech. The irate citizen is

frequently found “rowing” the car conductor. The other

passengers look amused; and the conductor simply grows
obviously sulky. His “rowing” does no good —not even
to himself. He has therefore failed in his speech tech-
nique.
on the contrary, we aim at desirable response, we
If,

shall try first of all to get the favorable attention ofour

audience. We shall not scowl at him or them; we shall not
look lofty; we shall not mumble; we shall not appear
frightened we shall not seem to be evading his or their
;

eyes by looking out of the window or at a fixed spot on the

wall. We shall look and act as if we rather liked to be
with our audience.
74 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Look At Your Audience
One of the first rules for all public speaking should be:
look at your audience. There is something finely subtle
about this which is very often missed by speakers. Quite
often a speaker’s face is conventionally turned towards his
audience; but if one is in the audience oneself, one has the
feeling that the speaker is not really looking at him. The
speaker is only looking towards him. Therein lies a world
of difference. For it is only when the speaker looks
directly at his audience that the invisible wall between him
and his audience falls away. Until that wall falls away,
the speaker is relatively ineffective.
What do we mean by the difference between “looking at”
and “looking towards?” It was implied in what we said
a moment ago. He who thinks of his audience inevitably
looks at them. He who thinks solely of himself or of his
own subject-matter, inevitably has the focus of his atten-
tion turned away from his audience. We, in the audience,
may not be able to express it; but what we subtly feel is
that the speaker is distant^ apart, aloof. Or we express it
by referring to the invisible wall.
Let us recall again the technique mentioned in the first
chapter the— technique. Like begets like. If
we are interested in our audience there is a likelihood that
our audience will be interested in us. If we scowl at our
audience, there is every likelihood that inwardly or out-
wardly they will scowl at us. If we are timid and rather
flustered, they likewise will lack confidence in us. If we
are brazen and boastful, they will react with their own self-
protective egoism. Even before we speak, very often, we
are condemned or approved. There is every reason there-
 PSYCHOLOGY OF SPEAKING 7S
fore that we should make certain that our attitude Is such
as to elicit warm response.

Finding the Audience’s Interest

If, now, we are interested In our audience, we shall take

our fii'st step in the right direction: we shall say something,
or suggest something that interests them. The tendency
of a great many speakers is to say something that interests
themselves, with the hope, perhaps, that what interests
themselves will Interest their audience. Parents and
teachers are star performers at this. Science lecturers
often display this trait to perfection. Now it is true that
unless we are thoroughly absorbed in what we wish to say,
unless we can convey to our audience the feeling that we
really intend it all and believe in it, we shall not get far.
Nevertheless, complete absorption in one’s subject and com-
plete belief in its value, while Indispensable, are not always
sufficient. We recall here the psychological rule that there
must always be an element of the familiar in the unfamiliar
or the latter makes no appeal. Translated Into terms of
what we are now considering, we may say that unless
the speaker in some way ties up the thing that interests
him with what interests his audience he fails to secure
alert and fruitful attention.
Hence the speaker might well ask himself: is there any-
thing in what I wish to say that is of Interest to this
particular audience? If, before launching out, he asks

himself that question, and seeks for a •specific answer, he

is far likelier to discover the successful point of first ap-
proach to his audience than if he simply goes ahead un-
loading his ideas.
76 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Never Make the Audience Feel Inferior

But now having thought of the audience, let the speaker

treat his audience as if he really had respect for them.
Often, indeed, he has respect for them but unfortunately
does not know how to show it. He feels that he must
make an impression; so he tries to show them all he knows.
He knowledge with a flourish and the audi-
displays his —
ence feels subtly depressed. For when the speaker “tells”
his audience, he implies that of course he knows and they
do not. So he induces an inferiority feeling in them which
is a little resentful.^

Let the speaker, therefore, never try to “show how

much he knows.” If he is conceited, let him keep it safely
hidden. If he thinks well of himself and his knowl-
edge, let him not make an offensive show of his self-

congratulation.
Rather, the speaker should regard his audience as co-
operating in the pursuit of the subject. He should talk,
not down to them, but as with his equals. He should
ask them questions, sincerely, and assume that they can
give the answers.
In short (another rule), he should talk with his audience
not at them.

Circular Response

This implies something psychologically quite important.

It implies that something is to be set going in the
minds of one’s audience (their response). But it also
^Recall the discussion of the Expository and the Futting-it-np-to-you
techniques in Chapter I,
 ,

PSYCHOLOGY OF SPEAKING 77
implies that something is to be set going in the mind of
the speaker as a result of what going on in the minds
is

of the audience. This is why read papers are usually so

unsatisfactory. The audience subtly feels that the speaker
is not responding to their thought, not adjusting himself
to what is happening in them. In fact, nothing is happen-
ing in the speaker’s mind. It all happened long ago when
the paper was being written.
Thus again the process Is only in one direction from—
the speaker to the audience; not back again from audience
to speaker. This movement In two directions has been
aptly named“circular response.” It Is fundamental to all
effectivemental intercourse.^
Thus the subtle, sensitive speaker Is he who is so mindful
of what Is happening In his audience he gets it from their —
facial expression, their nods, their blankness, their scowls,
their interrupting questions — that his own thought and ex-
pression are influenced.
Hence the two important rules: (i) Keep your audi-
ence thinking with you. (2) Keep thinking with your
audience.
The first perhaps the most important, for if we
rule Is

deliberately try to keep our audience thinking along with us,

we shall inevitably so adjust our speaking as to make such
active thinking possible. We shall not leave our audience
hopelessly panting in the rear.
Here again, one notes the weakness of immature speakers.
Their minds are turned Inwards—-upon themselves. They

^ See Creative Experience by M. P. Follett. Longmans. The reader is

strongly advised to study the process in all its applications. Miss Folletfs
book presents a brilliant and comprehensive analysis.
7,8 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
are not trying to get the audience to think along with them.
Hence their speech lacks vitality. The audience simply
hears words.

Use Humor Htmorously

Humor, of course, as we shall later show, is one of our
greatest assets. He who has it has a golden way ahead
of him. But humor is a dangerous gift. It can be used
in such a way as to wreck the whole speaking enterprise.
Hence the admonition: Use humor humorously.
This means, use it in proportion. Many speakers in
the effort to he humorous, drag in long stories. The
speaker might make the following question the test of his
powers: Can I be humorous without telling a story? Par-
ticularly let him ask that question if he is to be an after-
dinner speaker; for nothing has so lowered the art of
speaking as the well-nigh universal convention that the
after-dinner speaker must offer a goulash of irrelevant,
side-splitting stories. Such a performance should not be
called a speech but a vaudeville act.
Humor should be an attitude —of playfulness, of not too
great seriousness; the sudden twist of a word, the flash of
a grotesque idea. Humor is invaluable to the speaker be-
cause (i) it enlists the audience. It gives them a feeling
of good fellowship with the speaker. Hence it evokes the
opposite of the inferiority feeling. And it breaks down
the “wall.” (2) It gives to the audience exhilarating
bodily reactions. It stimulates the nerves and circulatory
system; it raises 'the emotional tone of the audience.
Hence it makes them better listeners. A laugh is the best
sleep dispeller.(3) It keeps the sense of proportion, both
in speaker and audience.
 —

PSYCHOLOGY OF SPEAKING 7.9

A Word About the Angry Speaker

The speaker is pitiable. He is chiefly
yelling, scolding
pitiable becausehe accomplishes nothing by his anger
save the discomfort and resentment of his audience. Ill-

feeling, unless it leads to action, is a depressant. The

audience which hear themselves being lashed by the sar-
casm or the anger of a speaker can do nothing. They must
simply sit. Hence they store up bitterness. As we said
in Chapter I, the speaker can be angry, provided he car-
ries the audience with him in his anger against something
or somebody. Here, again, we note that the aim of the
speaker must be to get the psychological processes of the
audience moving along with him.

The Voice as an Instrument

The voice is so powerful a factor in its effect upon an

audience that one wonders why speakers pay so little at-

tention to its cultivation and effective use. There is, in the

first place, the quality of the voice. Is one’s voice raspy,
or nasal, or squeaky or otherwise a nuisance? Why in-

flict it upon a suffering public? Raspy, nasal and squeaky

voices can be corrected. Why not bring to one’s audience
a beautiful voice instrument?
In the second place, there is the important matter of voice
modulation. The ordinary American speech-habit is to
play one’s entire melody on one note —or at best two, — the
dominant note sustained throughout tjie sentence and the
drop-note at the end. Such speech can become intolerably
monotonous. The American
speaker in particular needs to
increase the up and down range of his voice and not be
8o INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
afraid to use that range in his speaking. He tends too
often to think that flexibility and range of voice sound af-
fected, and so he drones along in his Main-Streetish mono-
tone. Few things, however, add more to the pleasure of
a speech than a musical voice of a fairly wide range and
flexible use. Note this quality in the competent actor.

And Then One’s Appearance

The speaker must remember that however fine his ideas,

he himself is in the foreground. If his appearance is dis-
tressing or humorous or bizarre, so much the less attention
remains for his ideas. If he wishes his ideas to be in the
foreground, his appearance must be relegated to the back-
ground. This means, of course, that it must not be intru-
sive, like the new spring millinery on the heads of choir
singers, or a too tight dress on the body of a fat woman
chairman.
Very often a fairly agreeable but non-intrusive appear-
ance is quite spoiled by annoying mannerisms. Eyeglasses
are jerked on and off till the audience writhes in nervous
desperation. The hair is given successive and quite un-
necessary brushings; a finger continually caresses the cheek;
a watch chain is twisted and untwisted; sometimes even legs
are screwed and unscrewed until the nervous members
of the audience are ready to shriek. The speaker must re-
member that whatever muscular feats he perfoi-ms, the
audience tends, intra-organically, to perform with him.
Thus a speaker wfip strides up and down a platform can
tire out his audience; a speaker who stutters and stumbles
over his words has the audience likewise in a state of ver-
bal prostration. On the other hand, a speaker who holds
 !

PSYCHOLOGY OF SPEAKING 8i

himself perfectly throughout a long speech also tires

still

the audience, since the gestures of the speaker are a mus-

cular release not only for him but for his audience as
well.
If, in short, the speaker constantly remembers that what
he does the audience will also tend to do, he will doubtless
have sulScient mercy upon the long suffering folk in front
of him to keep his disagreeable mannerisms well out of
sight.
One in this connection, refrain from making
cannot,
especial mention of what is perhaps the most universal
and also one of the most exasperating mannerisms of
speakers. I mean the hesitating “er.” Hesitation in
speech is not a bad thing. In fact, in a speech, he who
never hesitatesis lost. Rattling on without a stop gives
the effect ofsomething learned by heart. But when the
speaker pauses between his words or sentences as if to
formulate more clearly his idea, let him, in the name of
allthat is artistically w'holesome, not slip in the distres-
sing “er.” Practically every speaker does slip it in at
times; so there is no hope of our getting completely rid

of this tonal nuisance. But if one is addicted to its use, a

little awareness of the mannerism and a constant self con-

trol at the precarious moment when the “er” begins to take

shape, will tend to clear this noxious thing out of one’s
speech.
The matter of disagreeable mannerisms,
difSculty, in this
is that, as the advertisement has it, “even your best friends
won’t tell you.” And so we go on accumulating bad habits
without knowing that they are bad. Ergo, find a friend
who willing to risk his friendship by telling you just
is how
disagreeable or nonsensical or pathetic you are
82 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Let Your Speech March
Often a speaker will suddenly discover that he has lost
grip on his audience. Attention relaxes heads begin to
;

move; there are whisperings, shufflings, twistings of the

body. If he will watch his speech at such a moment he
will often find that he has been saying over and over again
what he has already made clear. This is a curious tendency
which is present in most of us without our being aware of
it. We make a perfectly clear statement. Then, a few
sentences later on we make that same statement again. A
few sentences later and out comes the statement again.
The writer came upon an amusing example the other morn-
ing in an elevated train. At Ii6th Street, two girls were
talking about their rising time. “I get up at six thirty,"
said one. “I like to get up early. Gives me more time.”
“Well, I don’t get up till seven,” said the other. “Guess
I’m lazy; but seven’s early enough for me.” At Christo-
pher Street, twenty minutes later, they were still saying the
same sentences!
When the speaker finds himself marking time, or going
around in a circle, or saying what he has already said,
then is the moment when he should remember the kinetic
technique and set his speech marching ahead. Nor should it
just march aimlessly —up the hill and down again it should
;

give one a sense of one thing leading out of another and

toward another, and all toward a climax partly revealed
and partly concealed. Each step, in short, should have the
flavor of novelty. ^In a later chapter we shall discuss in
some detail how dramatic quality is achieved. Here we
content ourselves with noting the fact that a speech which
 PSYCHOLOGY OF SPEAKING 83

does not march, and march with dramatic effect towards

something is a speech precariously calculated to induce
somnolence.

Avoid the Commonplace and the Bizarre

Speech, to be distinguished, must have not only distinc-

tion of idea but distinction of phrasing. As a matter of
fact, the two interact; for, as we shall presently show,
attention to accuracy of phrasing develops accuracy of
mind. The effective speaker, however, is one who learns
not only accuracy but power of phrasing. He uses words
that stick; he formulates sentences which the audience do
not easily forget.
In this connection, the speaker will find writing his
most trusty aid. In the act of writing one has the time to
ponder and invent while in the rush of speaking, one tends
;

to use what one has become most accustomed to use. Thus

the ready speaker who does little writing is apt to fall into
commonplace habits of speech. He constantly resorts to
the least common denominator of his speech-habits.
However, one should also avoid the bizarre, for a bizarre
word or phrase instantly attracts attention to itself and
in so far diverts attention from the flow of the ideas.

The, Flat-Land Mind

We have spoken of the one-tone voice. There is also
the one-tone mind. apparently are of equal
All facts to it

value. There are no emphases; there is no hurrying over

unimportant details; no slowing-up at the greater signifi-
84 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
cances; only one steady drone, which places everything
said in the same category of importance or unimportance.
A speech should be like mountains and valleys, not like a
monotonous flat-land.
Another type is the string-of-beads mind. One fact is
strung along after another, no relationship being shown
between them. A speech, however, should advance not fact
by fact but by groups of facts. These groups should them-
selves point to a larger grouping and to an encompassing
idea which ties all the groups together.
The powerful mind is the organic mind. Just as the
body is not simply an aggregate of single cells, but is made
up of differentiated cells united into organs, which them-
selves are united into the entire integrated being called the
organism, so a speech should be a grouping of groups of
individual units.
The effective speaker is able to keep his audience aware
of the particular grouping of unit-facts that is being dis-

cussed and the relation of this group to other groups.

Such a speaker does not permit his audience to lose them-
selves in the multitude of details, but by constant, effective
recall of themain idea and the related sub-ideas, gives
them a as of moving easily and understandingly
sense
through what would otherwise be a bewildering maze of
details.
The one-tone or flat-land mind is an unrhythmic mind.
Rhythm depends essentially upon contrast. The iambic
beat is a short and a long; the dactylic, a long and two
shorts. The rhythm of waves is a swing of up and down.
Joy in rhythm is, for a number of unexplained reasons, ba-
sic in life. Hence our pleasure in rhythmic speech.
 !

PSYCHOLOGY OF SPEAKING 85

Close With a Snap

Finally let the speaker, having “respected the attention

limits,” learn the delightful art of closing with a snap. Let
him not keep promising to close. If he is reading a paper let
the audience have the joy of seeing the sheets diminish in
number. Some readers have the bad habit of placing the
sheets under each other as they read, so that the audience is

cheated of the delightful feeling that the speech is really

coming to an end. If he is simply speaking, lethim indicate
quite clearly that the blessed end is near at hand, and then
without further ado let him make an end. Such a speaker,
if he has the other graces, will be beloved of his hearers

Summary
The foregoing may be most effectively summarized in
the following score of admonitions:
1. Do not be an unloader.
2. Think of your audience.
3. Look at your audience.
4. Find what interests them.
5. Never make an audience feel inferior.
6. Keep your audience thinking along with you.
7. Think along with your audience.
8. Use humor humorously.
9. Never be angry at the audience, only with them.
10. Cultivate a voice that can be endured.
11. Keep off the monotone. ,
12. Do not let your appearance occupy the foreground.
13. Eliminate distressing mannerisms.

t
86 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
14. Let your speech march.
15. Avoid the commonplace and the bizarre.
16. Do not be a flat-land mind.
17. Nora string-of-beads mind.
18. Organize your speech Into groups and larger groups.
19. Give an effect of rhythmic movement.
20. Close with a snap!
 CHAPTER V
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EFFECTIVE WRITING
There are many excellent books on the art of writing;
but they approach their subject chiefly from a literary point
of view. One finds among them scarcely any considera-
tion — certainly no systematic one — of the psychological as-
pect of writing. Grammar, sentence and paragraph struc-
ture, logical sequence, proportion, metaphors, similes, etc.
All of these are important; nay, the knowledge of them
isquite indispensable. Writing, however, like speaking, is
something more than a mechanics of word-combination. It
is essentially a psychological enterprise. It has the aim of
arousing the attention and holding the interest of readers.
It is, in short, a form of stimulus which seeks to win favor-
able response. Now it is obvious, of course, that if one
uses undear words, confused sentences, and drearily long
paragraphs, no favorable response is likely to be evoked.
Hence there is indispensable value in training along these
lines. But it is a question whether expertness in these
literary matters is enough. Must one not go farther and
understand the psychological factors involved in good and
in poor writing?
we have said, is a form of stimulus which seeks
Writing,
a response. Good writing does something to the reader.
Poor wifiting does something else. What is it that good
writing does, and that poor writing fails to do ? Most of
us who write at all, simply write, without any thought of
87
88 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
how certain quite fundamental matters affect our readers.
As a matter of fact, most of us have been poorly condi-
tioned with regard to writing. In our childhood years we
had laboriously to leaim to write long before we were
interested in writing. Or, perhaps more accurately, we
were taught to write in ways that made the process most
uninteresting to ourselves. Who does not remember the
irritated pencil-chewing over the compositions that the
teacher demanded of us? We
had no more wish to write
compositions than to take castor oil. But the teacher had
ordered the prescription; and there was no escape. The
result was that most of us were launched into life with the
feeling that writing was a bore. If one were to make care-
ful investigation, one would probably find among the large
majority of adults a fixed aversion to the effort of putting
their thoughts into written form.
A good part of no doubt, is also due to
this aversion,
the impression usually given in our school days that there
were a great many complicated principles which had to be
learned about writing before one could dream of being
expert. The false pedagogical technique was employed of
starting to teach the principles first. It was the same
pedagogical error, in short, which is even today commonly
committed in the case of music, where lessons in the
technique of music are given to the protesting child before it
has learned to enjoy and use music in ways natural to its
child life.

Hence most of us, as adults, regard writing as a necessary

evil. If we have fair facility, we can write good, common-
place, uninspired prose. Or, if we are still verbally clumsy,
we and under inward protest, cumber-
write, laboriously
some, loose-jointed prose. Or we dictate to our stenog-
 PSYCHOLOGY OF WRITING 89

raphers, who mercifully, for a consideration, carefully re-

construct our worst ineptitudes.

Writing Our Most Precious Art

As a matter of fact, writing isperhaps our most precious

art. Without it man and his works would be as passing
as a dream. To use Korzybski’s phi'ase, writing is the
great “time-binder.” It holds the past for us in such a way
that the past functions in the present. It enables us, in
short, to inherit the experience of the race and to pass it on
with such additions as we ourselves may make.
Writing, then, because it has enabled us to preserve and
contemplate what in itself is transient and unretainable, has
been the profoundest and most wide-reaching of all the
humanly devised factors influencing our behavior. Homer
and Hesiod invested a few events and a few ideas with
permanence and became thereafter the continuous shapers
of Greek civilization. The Hebrew Bible, for the same
reason, placed its characteristic stamp upon Christian
civilization. The writings of Confucius and of Lao Tze,
which grew out of relatively transient individual experi-
ences, gave permanent direction to two contrasted streams
of Chinese culture. The Koran became the rallying point
and the code of life for millions of human beings. Dar-
win’s “Origin of Species” literally Created a new civiliza-
tion.
These are some of the master works of writing. Today
books, articles and stories multiply Ijy the hundreds of

thousands. Every one of them is in some measure a point

of influence. The aggregate of these points of influence is
simply incalculable.
90 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
There is something so thrilling about this that one would
suppose the art of writing would be cultivated as the most
splendidly human of our accomplishments. curious A
dualism of view has tended to inhibit this. It is the view
that afterall the real thing is the idea ; that writing is only
a kind of tool, an external conveyance for the “inner” idea.
But let us note this : an idea is always a verbal form. Let
the reader try to discover an idea in himself which is utterly
wordless. He will not succeed. To be sure, we make
!”
statements like, “It is- quite inexpressible “There are no
words for it!” What we really mean by these expressions
is that the type of experience which we vaguely feel has not
yet clarified itself sufiiciently words.to be put into
Philologists have a way of exploring the mind-systems of
ancient peoples. They note the absence of words expres-
sive of certain ideas from the vocabularies of these peoples;
and they are quite correct in inferring that the absence of
the words presupposes the absence of the corresponding
clearly defined ideas. In a later chapter, we shall note how
the attempt to clarify our expressions leads to the clarifica-
tion of our ideas. Hence it is a most unfortunate con-
ception that attention to the verbal vehicle is after all quite
unimportant; that the only real importance attaches to the;
“inner” idea. There is every reason to believe that the
clumsy, unclear, unprecise writer is a clumsy, unclear, un-
precise thinker. Also there is every reason to believe that
such a writer becomes a more effective thinker through the
very attempt to overcome the awkwardness and the vague-
ness of his written .(expression.
But, again, ideas are not simply delectable morsels to
retain In the inner sanctuaries of our consciousness — ^what-
ever that may mean 1 They are potential instrumentalities
 PSYCHOLOGY OF WRITING 91

of our social life. The power which they exert depends

upon the way in which they enter the social life. One does
not easily forget the Bible phrases. Hence the ideas
conveyed by those phrases have for centuries been power-
ful. The Greek was gripped by the thunderous roll of
Homer’s lines. It was the lucidity, the logical and dramatic
“march” of Darwin’s writings that helped to make his
ideas the storm center of an age.
There is another unfortunate factor which has inhibited
the enthusiastic pursuit of the art of writing. Students in
the schools and colleges get the erroneous idea that writing
is only a literary art, indulged in by literary people. By
literary they more or less vaguely mean something having
to do with the (narrowly conceived) esthetic and imagi-
native life. Thus one takes courses in writing if he intends
to be a poet or story-writer; if, on the contrary, he intends
to be a scientist or engineer or man of business, writing is

one of the literary frills inflicted upon him by a faculty of

“cultured” professors. English departments are to an ex-
tent to blame for this, because the chief emphasis of their
—
work a much needed emphasis, to be sure—-is almost
invariably upon poetry and imaginative prose. Even in
the attempt to teach the art of good writing it is these
types of writing which are used as patterns. The harm
done is really considerable; and it would seem to behoove
the traditional English department to split itself into two:
into a department of Written Expression and a depart-
ment of Literary Appreciation. An excellent beginning of
this is to be noted in the rather widespread establishment
of independent departments of Oral Expression.
Writing, then, as the great — —
our greatest art of putting
ideas more or less permanently, into the world, should be
 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
one of our chief concerns. If we cannot now write with
power, we should set about to learn. There is nothing
mysterious about writing, any more than there is about
cabinet making. There are tools to use and objectives to
attain. Neither are beyond our power.

Art and Artisanship

But to compare writing to cabinet making will set many
heads to shaking. Particularly to say that there is nothing
mysterious about writing! “All real art, my friend, is a
mystery. We can, indeed, make good ordinary artisans
in writing, but to make artists ! Art is a gift of the gods 1”
In apparent support of this let me
quote a well-known
passage from Tolstoy’s “What is Art:” “I have else-
where quoted the profound remark of the Russian artist
Bruloff on art, but I cannot here refrain from repeating it,
because nothing better illustrates what can and cannot be
taught in the schools. Once, when correcting a pupil’s
study, Bruloff just touched it in a few places, and the poor
dead study immediately became animated. ‘Why you only
touched it a loee bit, and it is quite another thing!’ said one
of the pupils. ‘Art begins where the wee bit begins,’
replied Bruloff, indicating by these words what is most
characteristic of art. . . . The teaching of the schools
stops where the wee bit begins — consequently where art be-
gins.”
The Bruloff expression is perfect. What is questionable
is the mystical Tol^oyan inference. It gives too much aid
and comfort to pedantic professors. If art cannot be
taught, then of course professors need not be artists. But
cannot we analyze the “wee bits” that transform good
 PSYCHOLOGY OF WRITING 93
artisanship into art? To declare at the outset that we
cannot would hardly seem to be the height of intelligence.
Perhaps art is indeed something inaccessible — ^dark and
mysterious. But perhaps it is not.

What Makes Writing Dull?

Let us begin at the extreme opposite, with writing which,

by no stretch of the imagination could be called literary
art, in short, with incontestably dull writing. What makes
writing dull? Apparently one or more of the following:
1. Stodginess. No “unfamiliar In the familiar.” No
phrases that hit off the Ideas in ways that are different.
Cliches, platitudes, “standard verbal equipment.”
2. Verbosity. Too many verbal stimuli for the required
effect, inducing weariness, tempting us to skip.
3. Circumlocution. The stimulus always coming; never
arriving; hence the reader always uncertain, impatient, irri-

tated. “Do, in heaven’s name, get to the point!”

4. Lack of clearness. Involved phrases, long sentences,
ideas badly arranged. The stimulus never quite clear.
The reader makes no swift favorable response, because he
does not know what It is all about.
5. Lack of dramatic quality. No “luring” quality. No
awakening of the reader’s curiosity. Hence the reader
nods.
6. Abstractness. No vivid pictures. Pale. Slips out
of the mind. Leaves no impression.
7. Absence of Rhythm. Nothing ,that “carries on.”
Jerky, disordered, clumsy.
8. Monotony of Rhythm. Movement all the same.
No variety.
94 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Now if we are suifering from any or all of the above there
is no reason whatever why we should not take our partic-
ular malady in hand and go far toward curing it. There
is every reason to believe that if we can achieve distinction
of expression; brevity and directness; lucidity; dramatic
quality; concreteness; beauty of rhythm; daring; flash;
adventurousness of phrase and idea, we need not wonder
timidly whetherwe have achieved that mystery called “art.”
We may, I think, confidently assert, that in the process of
achieving these, we become artists in writing, whether we
write stories, poems or scientific treatises. In short, in the
above we have some of the clues to the “wee bits” that
change artisanship into art.

The Psychological Instead of the Literary Approach

above we have been consider-

It should be clear that in the
ing matters which are fundamentally psychological. When
is writing dull, we asked —
and of course we replied, when
it is dull to the reader. When is it fascinating to the
reader? Apparently, so the answers ran, it is dull or
fascinating when the writing-stimulus does or does not
evoke certain fundamental responses in the reader. Com-
monplace phrasingj for example, is not just a literary
quality. It is a psychological one inasmuch as it implies no
effective response to the “novelty wish” of the reader.
Verbosity, circumlocution, lack of clearness are psychologi-
cal in that they “fog” the stimulus. Abstractness is psy-
chological in that.- it places too great a tax upon our
essentially concrete minds. Lack of dramatic quality is

psychological in that it fails to arouse the reader’s basic

interest in the “chase.” And so on. Once we note this,
 PSYCHOLOGY OF WRITING 95
that the qualities which have been found to be requisite
in good writing are requisite because they are kinds of
stimuli which evoke kinds of responses, most of the mys-
tery which resides in the “principles” of the art of writing
disappear. The reason, in short, why every one of the
above excellent qualities is excellent is that the reader
likes them. There are, in other words no canons of
which prescribe them.
literary art They are prescribed,
simply and solely, by the likes and dislikes of the
reader.
One who wishes to write well, therefore, will make his
most effective approach to the art, not by asking “What
does the art of writing require of me?” but rather, “What
does my reader require of me?” A
great deal of the teach-
ing of writing, one suspects, is deadly dull and Ineffective,
because there Is in the minds of the teachers no inkling of
the second question.
By this, of course, we do not mean to imply that every
literary artist asks himself these psychological questions.
But there can be no doubt that what he does—consciously
or unconsciously—has, in preeminent degree, these psy-
chological effects. Is there, we may ask, any advantage in
becoming conscious of what many great ones do uncon-
sciously? To say no would be to cast all teaching what-
ever into the discard. Let us assume then that if we
know what makes writing psychologically effective we will
have a measurable chance to achieve some of these effects
ourselves.
Keeping mind the above psychological points of view,
in
let us consider, in order, the two fundamental factors
in written expression: (i) words; (2) the movements of
words.
96 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
The Psychology of Words
We must develop a sensitiveness to words and word com-
binations. In the first place, we must learn, wherever pos-
sible, to prefer the concrete, pictureful word. The abstract
word is often the lazy word. It is so much easier to say
“she wore a new hat” than “she wore a perky spring hat”
or “a sombre, drooping hat” or “a pot for a head-covering,”
or “a saucy tam-o-shanter.” These descriptive terms re-
quire effort of observation. They accent the significant
characteristics. They are selective. Consequently be- —
cause art is essentially an act of selective emphasis they —
are art. “She wore a new hat” is just a good, utilitarian
statement conveying enough information to pass muster,
but no more.
In the second place we must learn to use words that have
nuances. A
nuance is a subtle shade of meaning conveyed
with the minimum of external means. Take, for example,
the sentence, “He had a quizzical liftof the eyebrow.”
Suppose we had said instead: “He was a person who al-
ways seemed to be saying something without actually say-
ing it. What he always seemed to be saying was something
a little humorous, a little ironic, a little sceptical. One felt

that inwardly he was laughing having his little

at people,
joke, a joke too subtle to be put into the form of words, a
—
joke between himself and well, the understanding angels.”
The latter is fairly good prose. But it is all said, really,
in the brief sentence “He had a quizzical lift of the eye-
:

brow.” The word “quizzical” in short or perhaps the —

phrase “quizzical lift of the eyebrow” has just the whiff —
of nuance that makes it more than a “wee bit” more —
—
than an ordinary, honest-to-goodness statement.
 PSYCHOLOGY OF WRITING 97
We first wrote the concluding words in the foregoing
paragraph: “an ordinary statement.” Then the nuance-
word “honest-to-goodness” popped into our mind, perhaps
because the phrase “an ordinary statement” did not seem
to say quite enough. The reconstructed phrase “an ordi-
nary, honest-to-goodness statement” has a superiority that is

at once apparent. It has an atmosphere, a suggestion of

hard-headed, practical, unimaginative men which the phrase
as fashioned first did not have.
“he walked uplifted”; “his
So, again, such sentences as,
manner was suave”; “his eye shifted, the veriest trifle”
say so veiy much more than they actually say that they have
all art has of building out of the meager-
the quality which
world of fascinating suggestion. To learn
est materials a
the art of saying more than one actually says—-this is
to escape the dullness of literalism. In all its numberless
forms, this is what we mean by nuance in writing.
In the third place we must develop a sensitiveness to
shades of meaning. In music the difference between a
phrase of distinction and a banal phrase is often so slight
as to be ludici-ously simple, the difference, let us say, between
using the dominant or the subdominant, between flatting
or sharping a single note. “Anybody could have thought
of that!” Verbal discrimination often as subtle and as
is

apparently trifling. Shall we use the word “home” or

“house?” The Insensitive writer will use either indiscrim-
inately. The sensitive writer will be aware of a connota-
one which the other does not
tlve suggestiveness in the
have. Shall we use “country” or “nation?” Shall we
use “government” or “state?” Shall we use “marriage”
or “wedlock?”
In the fourth place we must learn to use “affect” words.
98 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Xhe most powerful approach to the reader is always
through that which stirs his emotions. Every word there-
fore which has an “emotion” quality has power as over
against the word which is emotionally neutral. The emo-
tion quality of the word may be slight, but wherever it
exists at all, it is so much to the good. Note such “affect”
words as “cocky;” “mooning;” “tears;” “sighed;” etc.
There are words that chuckle words that laugh right out
; ;

words that weep; words that droop and falter. These arei
the words that grip the reader.
In the fifth place, we must be sensitive to the way words
fit together. In the next to the last paragraph, we first
wrote the sentence thus: “The sensitive writer will note
a connotative suggestiveness.” On reading the paragraph
over, the incompatible tone quality of the two words “note”
and “connotative” was at once apparent. What is it that
makes some words fit and some words fight? Doubtless
there is no more reason to be given than there is in the case
of the harmony or the clash of certain colors. We know,
however, that we can learn what colors do and what colors
do not clash for most of us. In word-clashes the matter
is not so simple. There are no rules; chiefly, perhaps, be-
cause the matter has never been thoroughly investigated
from a psychological point of view. One has therefore
to trust to his ear. But it is doubtless true that as one
goes on writing and applying one’s intelligence to one’s
writing, a sensitiveness to the harmonious fitting together
of words develops. It is significant that children for the
most part are insensitive to the fitting together of words
in their compositions. Practice in writing (and in reading
one’s writing aloud) apparently develops this sensitive-
ness.
 PSYCHOLOGY OF WRITING 99
Here again, the factor is psychological. The great
writer is one who never or seldom offends his reader’s ears.
Finally, one should avoid verbal pretentiousness — ^long
words, stilted, unusual words. They are only an annoyance
to the reader and reveal to him all too surely the pretentious
conceit of the writer. One of the really great poems in
—
our language ^Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Renascence—is
—
made up of such simple words almost words of one syl-
lable —
that one would suppose it written either for or by
a child. There is in the poem the lucid simplicity of genius
(another mystical word which sadly needs analysis) :

“All I could see from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood.
I turned and looked the other way
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I started from.”

One does not need big words for big effects.

Phrases of Distinction

And now we come to a difficult question: when does a

phrase have distinction? Here, again, we are troubled by
the “wee bit” which seems so difficult to explain. Perhaps
not much can be said that is helpful. Let us, however,
make a few analyses. Take Tolstoy’s sentence above quo-
ted: “The teaching of the schools stops where the wee bit
begins.” Suppose we change the Tolstoy sentence: “The
schools are unable to teach the wee bit which constitutes
100 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
art.” Does that sentence have the distinction of the first?
Of course not. It Is dull, prosaic. What gives the flash of
distinction to Tolstoy’s sentence? Note in the first place
an effect of balance and of contrast: “stops” —-“begins.”
Note second place that these are both picture and
in the
action words. Note in the third place, the rise and fall
of the rhythm. None of these qualities are found in the
second sentence. Just a plain statement of fact; no pic-
ture words and only very vague action words; and no
pleasurable rise and fall of rhythm.
Take, again, this sentence of Emerson “Through every
:

clause and part of speech of a right book, I meet the eyes

of the most determined of men his force and terror inun-
:

date every word: the commas and dashes are alive; so

that the writing is athletic and nimble —
can go far and live
long.” Let us turn that into undistinguished prose.
“Whenever I read a great book, I feel the strong person-
ality of the author; I feel the force behind his words.
They seem quite living.” Everything here is commonplace.
It is as anyone else might have said it. But “I meet the
eyes of the most determined of men;” “his force and terror
inundate my soul.” Note the picture words throughout;
also the action words; also the surge and sweep of the
rhythm.
Can we say briefly what makes a phrase distinguished?
I doubt it, save perhaps that whatever else a phrase of dis-

tinction is, it is not as others would say it. There are doubt-
less innumerable qualities which makes phrases distinguished
— a brilliant picture, an unexpected turn, a new combina-
tion of old words,, a suggestion of contrast, a surge of
rh3rthm. One who would gain effectiveness in writing could
scarcely do better than to find phrases of distinction and
 PSYCHOLOGY OF WRITING loi

analyze them to find out precisely they have distinc- why

tion. Such analysis would go far towards developing sen-
sitiveness to what is rare and an aversion for what is
commonplace.

Rhythm
We come now most interesting and yet
to one of the
most neglected of the psychological aspects of writing-
rhythm. Rhythm is fundamental in all the great arts.
Rhythmless music is simply scattered tones; a rhythmless
picture Is a hodge-podge; a rhythmless mansion Is a mon-
strosity. Rhythmless writing gives us the same vague dis-
comfort that absence of rhythm in these other arts gives
us.
Rhythm Is a fundamental quality in human life. It
might be called the “carrying on” quality. Note the
rhythm of one’s stride in walking. The “swing” of it
already predicts the steps to come. Each step, In short,
has a tempo and a space function which “carries over” into
the next step. Suppose one should be asked to take a stride
like this and to keep it up for several miles (no combination
of steps to be repeated) :

r# '

• f
‘
I
* r*-: '

o * •' '
5' etc*

Obviously, one would be exhausted in a few hundred yards.

What gives us our delight in rhythmic poetry but its

^^carrying on” quality?

•
had a little sorrow
Born of a little sin
I found a room all damp with gloom,
And, locking the door tightly, for safety’s sake, I shut us within.”
102 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
What a monstrosity! We were expecting the fourth line
to swing on triumphantly. We already felt it in our
bones. Then all those unexpected squeaks and jerks. But
when Miss Millay writes the fourth line “And shut us ;

all within,” we swing along delightedly with her in her

exhilarating stride.
Now many a prose writer who otherwise has excellent
qualities fails for some unknown reason. His writing
vaguely distresses us. Taken separately his phrases are
clear, his sentences not too involved, his paragraphs uni-
fied. His ideas are sound and interesting. He is sincere.
We feel that he is trying very hard to tell us something.
We respect him. But we do not like to read him.
Take as an example the following passage by a dis-
tinguished sociologist, Leonard Hobhouse. Mr. Hob-
house is so notable a scholar that I dislike to use him as a
horrible example, but his case illustrates so clearly one of
the major weaknesses of many scientific writers that I can-
not refrain:
“Into the family thus constituted a wife passed on her
marriage. The marriage might be accomplished by either
of two forms, and it might also be made valid apparently
without any form at all. The first form was confarreatio,
in which the essential feature was the eating by both bride
—
and bridegroom of a cake an act of the kind which we
call symbolic, but which to primitive man is rather magical,
actually efficacious in establishing a unity of the man and
woman. The second form was called coemptio, and was of
the nature of a formal sale, almost certainly, in the light
of what we know of other peoples, preserving the mem-
ory of a real purchase of the wife by the husband, which as
 PSYCHOLOGY OF WRITING 103

anything but a form had already fallen into disuse when

history begins.”
Now if the reader has read with care, he will doubtless
agree that the following was his experience with that pas-
sage: For the first two sentences he swung along with a
good, even stride; also through half the third sentence.
Then he began to trip, to falter, to take a long step and then
a short. In the fourth sentence he found himself going
ahead, then being pulled back, making a dash for it, trip-
ping and falling, getting up again, taking a running jump,
and so on. At the end, the passage left him exhausted.
Now it is this—^poor rhythm, not the profundity of ideas
—which usuallymakes a book hard reading.
I know of few things to which a writer can more profit-
ably direct his attention. Practically all of the books
which are anathema to the general mind could be made
readable by the simple device of changing their jerky, leg-
breaking, nerve-irritating rhythms into rhythms that
“swing.” It is small wonder that people love to read
Anatole France. Note the “carrying on” quality of the fol-
lowing first lines from the “Majesty of Justice.” Every
movement is forward—-big and little movements, swift and
slow, like the surge of billows.
“In every sentence pronounced by a judge in the name
of the sovereign people dwells the whole majesty of justice.
The august character of that justice was brought home to
Jerome Crainquebille, costermonger, when, accused of hav-
ing insulted a policeman, he appeared in the police court.
/Having taken his place on the dock, he beheld in the im-
posing sombre hall, magistrates, clerks, lawyers in their
robes, the usher wearing his chains, gendarmes, and, behind
104 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
a rail, the bare heads of the silent spectators. He himself
occupied a raised seat, as if some sinister honor were con-
ferred on the accused by his appearance before the magis-
trate. At the end of the hall, between two assessors, sat
the President Bourriche. The palm leaves of an oiEcer of
the academy decorated Over the tribune were
his breast.
a bust representing the Republic and a crucifix, as if to
indicate that all laws divine and human were suspended
over Crainquebllle’s head.”
Let the reader follow the and falls in the forego-
rises
ing. Rise: “In every sentence pronounced by a judge in
the name of a sovereign people (we are now on the crest of
the wave) fall: dwells the whole majesty of justice.
;

(Note the powerful down-sweep of that!) Rise: The

august character of that justice was brought home to Jerome
Crainquebllle Pause: costermonger; further rise: when ac-
;

cused of having insulted a policeman; fall: he appeared in

the police court. Rise: Having taken his place in the
dock; further rise: he beheld imposing sombre hall;
in the
further rise: magistrates, clerks (note how the wave sweeps
up to Its high crest), lawyers In their robes, the usher wear-
ing his chains, gendarmes, and behind a rail fall: the bare:

heads of the silent spectators. And so on.

Compare, In short, the successive surges of rise and
fall —
^never a back eddy, never a rock in the way ^wlth the —
turgid lashings back and forth of the foregoing illustration.
Recently in reading Galsworthy’s "Forsyte Saga,” a
really great book, I had the strange feeling of the drag
of it in many places. Being at the time interested in this
matter of prose rhythm I turned to the opening lines of
the book and examined their movement. Let the reader
decide yrhy I felt a drag.
 PSYCHOLOGY OF WRITING 105

“Those privileged to be present at a family festival of

the Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight—
an upper middle class family in full plumage. But who-
ever of these favored persons has possessed the gift of
psychological analysis (a talent without monetary value and
properly ignored by the Forsytes), has witnessed a Specta-
cle, not only delightful in itself, but illustrative of an ob-

scure human problem. In plainer words, he has gleaned

from a gathering of this family—no branch of which had
a liking for the other, between no two members of whom
existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy—evidence
of that mysterious, concrete tenacity which renders a family
so formidable a unit of society, so clear a reproduction of
society in miniature.”
My own feeling as I follow those lines is that, as I
stride along, I am constantly being plucked by the shoulder
and bidden to wait just a minute. A parenthesis slipped
into the second sentence
— “just a minute please !”
is

A dash
is introduced into the third sentence —
again comes that
arresting hand! must stop and listen for a number of
I
clauses before I can swing on again to the sentence’s end.
I think we have here the secret of a certain “slow move-
ment” quality in Galsworthy’s writings. His ideas are
perfectly clear; his pictures finely drawn; but his rhythm
constantly hesitates, holds back, then goes on, only to be
again at its irritating trick of plucking the reader by the
shoulder.
Compare the hesitating rhythm of the foregoing with
first lines from
the straight-ahead rhythm of the follo'^ying
Margaret Kennedy’s “Constant Nymph”:
“At the time of his death the name of Albert Sanger
was barely known to the musical public of Great Britain.
io6 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Among few who had heard him, there were even
the very
some who called him Sanje in the French manner, being
disinclined to suppose that great men are occasionally born
in Hammersmith.
“That, however, is where he was born, of lower middle-
class parents, in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
The whole world knew of it as soon as he was dead and
buried. Englishmen, discovering a new belonging became
excited; it appeared that Sanger had been very much heard
of everywhere else.”
Even this has its jerks and is consequently far less resist-
less in its sweep than the lines quoted from Anatole France.
Note now an example of breath-exhausting rhythm:
“The quarrel between the President and the Senate over
the latter’s refusal to confirm the nomination of Charles B.
Warren for the office of Attorney General has revealed in
the days of the administration the anarchy which pre-
first

vails in American party organization and the inability of the

Republican party to agree upon any important positive
policy. Considering the recent record and the public at-
titude of official Republicanism, there was no reason why
the Republican majority in the Senate should not have con-
firmed him. It is true, he was more of a business man than
a lawyer, and it is true that he had been responsibly as-
sociated with business interests which have apparently been
engaged in defeating the purposes of the anti-trust law;
but his record, while it him of
justified the opposition to
the Democrats and the outlawed Progressives, did not
furnish any suffici«nt excuse for the parade of similar
scruples by regular Republicans.”
Does not a merciless rhythm of this kind exhaust the
reader?
 PSYCHOLOGY OF WRITING 107

powerful a factor as rhythm in prose

It is curious that so
receives so little Nevertheless from the point
attention.
of view of the effect of prose writing upon the reader it
is of fundamental importance. The person who would
write effectively should study the movement of his lines
as closely as he studies their phrasing.

The Man Behind the Words

There is another factor which is perhaps not so easily
within the control of the writer. “The personality of the
speaker runs through all the sentences of real literature.
That personality may
not be the personality of a great
poet; it may be only the personality of a penetrative seer.
It may
not have the atmosphere in which visions are
seen, but only that in which men of affairs look keenly cut
in outline, boldly massed in bulk, consummately grouped in

detail, to the reader as to the writer.^

an enlightening task to note how far this is true.
It is
Personalities reveal themselves in practically all writing,
not only, as Mr. Wilson would seem to believe, in “real
literature.” Of late, the cock-sure Smart-Aleck type of per-
sonality has been revealing itself, particularly in reviews of
books and plays, in “snappy” es-
newspaper “Columns,” in
says. One needs but to read a number of
comparing these,
them, for example, with Lincoln’s Gettysburg address to
note how inevitably personality shines through the printed
words.
What is the writer to do about it ? Apparently only this
if he wishes his writing to be powerful, the personality

revealed must be powerful. But if one’s personality is

1 Woodrow Wilson: Mere Literature, p* 19
io8 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
weak, timid, irritable, unlovely? There is nothing to do
about it but to change the personality. hard doc-
Is that
trine? One wishes were more seriously considered
that it

by those who take their short-cuts to story writing and

flood our magazines with literary piffle
And so, with this idea, that, whether we will it or not,
it is the personality back of the writing which gives the

writing such power or lack of power as it possesses, we

come once more to the conviction that the problem of
effective writing is most deeply of all psychological.

Summary
In the foregoing, we have made no effort to give an
exhaustive account of the psychology of effective writing.
That would take a volume. We have tried simply to
suggest, quite briefly, some of the chief psychological mat-
ters to which attention may well be paid if one is to secure
the effects which all good writing achieves. have We
noted in the first place that dullness of writing follows from
the fact that the writing falls short in a number of respects
of being an adequately arousing stimulus :
—
it is vague,

rambling; it stirs no curiosity, awakens no delighted antici-

pation. We found that the aim of the effective writer is
to sharpen the stimulus at his command, —
to have phrases
that are arresting, that are clear and concise, that possess
dramatic quality.
We noted, furthermore, that with reference to the words
used, the effective writer aims at concrete (picture) words,
at nuance words (which intrigue the imagination), and at
“affect” words. Further, he is apt at discriminating shades
of meaning and at sensing the auditory fitting together of
 PSYCHOLOGY OF WRITING ;io9

words. Finally he is chary of pretentiousness of words

and phrasing.
Above, all the writer who would be effective will be as
careful of his rhythms as the symphonic composer. For his
rhythms are what give his writing the “sweep” and “carry”
that hold the reader to the end.
Finally, he will remember that somehow or other his
personality— drab or brilliant, smart-Aleck or greatly
—
humble ^will shine through his writing; so that in very
truth he will discover that “the style is the man.”
If the person who is interested in writing will deliberately
hold himself to this psychological point of view, he will in
all probability learn secrets of effectiveness that too often
are missed by those for whom writing is merely a matter
of rhetorical or literary construction.
 : !

CHAPTER VI

CROSSING THE INTEREST DEAD-LINE

There is, in all communication- —^written or spoken—a
certain dead-line of interest. If we can cross that dead-line
we have the world with us- —temporarily at least. If we
cannot cross it, we may as well retire. The world will
have none of us.
Note the following initial paragraph of an advertise-
ment:
“People’s Popular Monthly has grown in power and influence
with its subscribers because of its outstanding editorial strength.”

Am I lured on to read more? Five paragraphs follow.

I may be hard to please, but I have still to read them.
Why? Because there is nothing of particular interest in
that initial paragraph. The statements made are quite
general and commonplace. Even the phrases are cliches:
“in power and influence” ;
“outstanding editorial strength.”
Thus, there is nothing in the paragraph that arouses my
curiosity nor does the paragraph point ahead to something
;

which promises to be of interest.

The paragraph has hit the interest dead-line
Note by contrast, the following Initial paragraph of an-
other advertisement
“There are always^ those who question whether two and two
always make four, whether a bird in the hand is actually worth
two in the bush, and if a straight line is the shortest distance be-
tween two points.”
no
 THE INTEREST DEAD-LINE
^

Aha ! here is something that has flavor and zest I Do I

read on? I do.

“The Missouri-minded we have always with us.*’

Better still! For I feel that I am being referred to as

the Missouri-minded, and that I am being complimented.
And so I read on to find out what is being said about the
Missouri-minded.
That advertisement, in short, deftly leaps over the dead-
along into the second paragraph
line of interest; pulls us
and has us following inquiringly to the end ^ !

Note the lure of this initial paragraph:

“It*s a huge organization employing thousands of workers. And

yet it is controlled by a handful of executives,”

Or these two unusual paragraphs :

“I am not interested in making up finished drawings, though I can

handle this part of the work if you so desire,

“I am interested in giving you a new slant that will help you sell

your goods.”

Then note this dull initial paragraph:

“If in doubt about the expansion activities of the Gas Industry look
for ‘Construction Items* in any current issue of Gas Age-Record,**

Compare it with

“Until recently it took an expert operator in our plant a day to

turn out 300 inside mortises. This was his maximum production.**

i I am indebted for the central idea of this chapter to an article by B.

Franklin Joy, entitled, “The Danger Line in Copy”; Advertising Fort’
nightly, Mzxch 36, 1934,
 —

112 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

What happened after that? I ask myself. And I read
on to find out.
Note, now, how a writer of a semi-technical paper can
begin an article with a running jump. “Every now and
then out of the laboratories of the psychologists comes”—
what? The reader inevitably asks himself that question.
And so he goes on to read — ^(he’s over the dead-line!) —
“comes an indication of a new interest on the part of scien-
tists” —
in what? “In the business of advertising.”
Well, well, that sounds like something, says the business
reader. “They are beginning to take the mechanism of
selling apart and look with Inquisitive eyes”— at what?
“At the springs that make it work.” Good! “To be
sure, one notes in their findings a certain condescension”
of course, says the business reader, a little set up, college
professors ; don’t we know ’em ? But then, what are these
scientific chaps discovering about business advertising any-
way?
Does not the business reader wish to know? Of course
he does; and so he proceeds to find out.
Note in the above introductory sentences how “move-
ment” (recall the kinetic technique) is the major note.
“Every now and then;” “out of the laboratories;” “comes”
(a mighty word to keep us going!) “they are beginning ;

;”
to take the mechanism of selling apart “look with inquisi-
tive eyes;” “at the springs that make it work.” Every
phrase gives us a sense of moving on to something else.’-
Note, now, how a dramatist does it. In Ibsen’s John
Gabriel Borkman tjje scene opens in Mrs. Borkman’s draw-
ing-room. Mrs. Borkman sits on the sofa, crocheting.
.• The article is —
by McAlistor Coleman ^The Behavior of Crowds and Its
Effect on Markets j
Advertuing fortnightly, March 26, 1924^
 . !

THE INTEREST DEAD-LINE 1 13

She sits for a time erect and immovable at her crochet.
(A dramatic vacuum that cries out to be filled ) Then the 1

bells of a passing sledge are heard.

Mrs. Borkman (Listens; her eyes sparkle with gladness and she
involuntarily whispers) Erhart At last !

(She and draws the curtain a little aside to look out. Ap-
rises

pears disappointed, and sits down to her work again, on the sofa.
Presently the maid enters from the hall with a visiting card on a
small tray.)
Mrs. Borkman (quickly). Has Mr. Erhart come after all?
The Maid. No, madam. But there’s a lady
Mrs. Borkman {laying aside her crochet). Oh, Mrs. Wilton, I
suppose -
Maid (approaching). No, it’s a strange lady

Not only are we carried along with expectancy from

movement to movement and from word to word (no word
is useless), but almost instantly the dramatist gives us the
feeling that there is something back of all this. The play
is not just beginning. Much of it, we feel, has already
been played. What has happened? What is going to

happen? Here is the consummate art of the dramatist.

Note how a novelist doesIt. The first paragraph of
Marcel Proust’s, Swann’s Way begins as follows. It is
a long first paragraph —
shudderingly long But we do not I

grow tired. And for quite obvious reasons.

“For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when

I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I

had not even time to say ‘I’m going to sleep? And half an hour
later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me
and I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still
in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the
 —

114 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my
thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed
actually to have become the subject of my book. . .

Compare that with some of the dull opening descriptions

in the novels —
you have read and liberally skipped in the
reading!
Or, finally, note how an essayist does it. The follow-
ing are the first sentences in H. L. Mencken’s On Being
An American".

“Apparently there are those who begin to find it —

disagreeable
nay, impossible. Their anguish
fills the liberal weeklies, and every

ship that puts out from New York carries a groaning cargo of
them, bound for Paris, London, Munich, Rome and way points
anywhere to escape the great curses and atrocities that make life
intolerable for them at home.”

How do these advertisers, novelists, dramatists, essay-

ists do it? Unquestionably, they have a way of luring us
on. “Luring” perhaps is not the happiest word to use;
but no other seems quite so appropriate. They have the
art of stirring us out of our mental sluggishness and carry-
ing us along with them wherever they will.
Obviously, no writer without something of this art can
hope to be widely successful. No teacher without it can
hope to be anything but dull; no speaker whether on the
platform or in the drawing-room, anything but a bore.
In what, precisely, does this art of crossing the interest
dead-line consist?

Start With Situations

The first we note is that in each of

thing the above “lur-
ing” paragraphs, we have not just words, abstract ideas,
 THE INTEREST DEAD-LINE IIS

but z situation. A man questioning whether two plus two

equals four!' Whether a bird in the hand Is worth two in
the bush! A
huge organization, thousands of workers,
and only a few executives! A man telling you outright
that he does not wish to do your finished drawings but will
give you Ideas.
Note by contrast the dull paragraph about the “power
and influence” and “outstanding editorial strength” of the
People^ s Popular Monthly. No situation, there: only
words about something general and quite uninteresting.
Note again, how the skilled dramatist, instantly, at the
riseof cui'taln creates a situation. Note how one situation
passes swiftly Into another and another. The outstanding
weakness of amateur dramatists —particularly those who
write “dramas of ideas” — Is that they are wordy. They
let their characters make long speeches or engage in sup-
posedly witty dialogues while the action halts precariously
at the dead-line. Words, to have dramatic quality in a
drama, should serve one of two purposes: either to carry
the play from situation to situation — always, in brief, point-
ing forward (unless a backward reference is necessary in
order to carry the action forward) or to bring out es-
;

sential traits of character. In both cases, words must be

in the service of what Is concrete —
an action situation or
a character situation.
Note again that our novelist starts, not with general
observations, but with a concrete, easily visualized, and in-
teresting situation. Nor is the situation a static one.
Each sentence Is a situation, which is pari of the larger one;
and each moves us on to the next.
By a situation we do not necessarily mean something
taking place in the outer world. Note the following mental
 1

1 6 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

situation portrayed in an opening sentence by John A.
Hobson, the British economist: “Nobody really loves the
state or its government.” There something arresting
is

about that. Suppose, however, Mr. Hobson had begun

his article: “The question whether, in the present day,
industry is to be more and more governmentalized, or
whether governmental activities are to be increasingly re-
stricted in scope and potency, is one which needs rather
profound consideration.” Should we not be mildly dozing
at the dead-line?

Start With Something That Makes a Difference

and philosophers have the reputation of being

Scientists
the most wretched writers in the world. All honor is due
them for the keen and rigorous use of their intelligence.
One wishes, often, however, that a bit of the artist could
be mingled with their scientific and philosophic souls. No
doubt science and philosophy would have a less difficult
time making their effective entrance into our common life
if all scientists had something of the artistic genius of a

Huxley, a Pasteur, a Bergson, a William James.

Now the chief literary and dramatic vice of the scientists
and philosophers is that they seldom begin at the point of
the reader’s or hearer’s interest. Here, for example, is a
—
book on botany. It begins ^heaven save the mark ^with ! —
a long account of the history of botany But what do you
!

or I (poor laymen we!) want to know about the feeble be-

ginnings of botany? We want to know ^provided, of—
course, that we want to be something more than the lady-
like botanists who only know the names of flowers —we
want to know what the border-land problems of botany are;
 THE INTEREST DEAD-LINE 117

in what direction botanical research is tending; what differ-

ence all this botanical research makes anyway; why it is

worth studying.
An introductory chapter in any book on science should
begin, then, not by looking backward, but forward. What
is in process of happening now? And what difference does
it make if happening? Therein lay the strength of the
it is

article about what was coming out of the laboratories.

We who teach philosophy have much to answer for on
this score. We usually begin—^holding ourselves rigorously
to the logic of the calendar — ^by first studying the philo-
sophy of years and years ago: the naive thoughts that
Thales thought, and Anaximander and Anaximenes. Not
that it makes much difference to us what they thought.
But since it is logical to begin at the beginning —
and philos-
ophers worship logic! — we go through the whole chrono-
logical agony.
—
As a result, most of the students all except those who
have a pathological passion for picking up every possible
scrap of useless information about anything very soon —
hit the interest dead-line. Later, at class reunions these
students talk in a kindly way about Professor XYZ and his
philosophy lectures and admit that about all they remember
is that Thales fell into a well and that Socrates had a wife

named Xantippe. The other students, the pathological

ones, go on and take Ph.D.’s.
If philosophy is indeed to be a recondite study for a
curious few, this mode of approach is, of course, justified.
But if philosophy something that needs' to function in the
is

lives of all students, the approach is, dramatically, about

as poor as can be.
The first task of a philosophy teacher or writer, then, is
 :

1 1 8 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

to start at the point where philosophy makes a difference.
If one watches carefully, one notes that the usual dull-
ness of a dull scientific lecture arises out of the fact that
the lecturer describes one small fact after another.
knows that he is building up a structure of facts; knows
thatif the audience will only manage to keep alive through-

out the preliminaries, they will be in at the killing. But

the audience, knowing not whither it is all tending; seeing
no wider significance in the meticulously elaborated details,
soon lose all hope, and sink, with a despairing gurgle, into
the tides of slumber.
A newspaper writer is wiser. First he tells the essential
story — in a sentence or two. Then carefully, he rehearses
it detail after detail. Every detail, now, is significant, be-
cause the reader knows what it is all about.

Begin With an Efect Needing a Cause

If a savage hears a leaf rustle, he is all alert. “What

did that?” If we find a large box our room which was
in
previously not there, we are suddenly aroused. “Who put
that there?” “Who was in the room?”
We are essentially causal-minded creatures. Not that
we think much of causes and effects in our ordinary life;
but let something new enter the range of our experience
and our mind leaps instantly to the causal question
“What or who did it?”
A something new, which is at the same time unexplained,
acts as an instant^whip to our attention. Therein lies the
attention-arousing power of the -paragraph quoted above
about the expert operator who, until recently, turned out
only 300 inside mortises a day. It is implied that now he
 ?

THE INTEREST DEAD-LINE 119

turns out more. As a matter of fact, we find, in the second

paragraph, that now he turns out 17,200 a day! Instantly
the causal question leaps to our mind: “How does he do
it?”
Therein, too, lies the power of Mencken’s introductory
sentences about the anguished Americans leaving their
country for London, Munich, Rome, etc. Why are they
leaving? What makes them leave?
Therein lies much of the power of Ibsen’s opening. The
maid brings the card. Oh, the usual thing, Mrs. Wilton.
No, says the maid, a strange lady. ... Why, the strange
lady? What brought her here
We have already spoken of situations that are like
vacuums which demand filling. Wherever, as in the above
cases, an effect is presented without its adequate cause, we
have what might be called a dynamic form of vacuum. If
we can induce such a dynamic vacuum, the mind of the
reader or hearer is at once alert to fill the causal emptiness
with adequate explanation.

Or Begin With a Cause Implying an Effect

In the previous section we have noted how the mind,

given an unexplained effect, inevitably proceeds backward
to the cause. In the same manner, a mind presented with
an uncompleted cause inevitably tends to proceed forward
to its effect. Therein lay something of the interest of the
paragraph quoted about those who are always questioning
whether two and two make four, whether a bird in the hand
is worth two in the bush. Unusual individuals, aren’t
they? What comes of it? And therein lay something of
the luring power in the assertion “I am not interested in
120 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
making up drawings.”
finished Well, then, being such
an unusual creature, what do you do ?
The following are the two opening sentences of a section
of an article: “The lady descended upon me after my
lecture like a locomotive spurting steam. I edged back
from the spray of her words.” Here is a cause in full ac-
tion, implying an Instantly, we want to
effect to follow.
know what happened. “So yow are the man who wrote that
nasty article about Americans in Mexico?” We have
leaped on to the moving platform of cause-effect and we are
not satisfied until we have reached the ultimate conclusion
of it all.

So the rule is a good one : Present a cause in action.

The mind will demand the outcome.

The Shock Technique

Sometimes we are altogether too polite. I do not wish
to make a plea for rudeness but sometimes it takes a shock
;

to awaken people out of their indifferences. In the play

“The Goose Hangs High” the father has to lose his job
before the children are shocked out of their unthinking
selfishness. That seems a bit hard on father; but if the
shock works ...
“Dr. Wiley tells a story of a member of a certain
Middle West legislature who sought an appropriation of
$100,000 for the protection of public health; but could se-
cure only $5,000. One morning he put upon the desk of
each legislator before the opening of the session, a fable
which ran something like this A
sick mother with a baby
;

is told by a physician that she has tuberculosis and that she

should seek a higher altitude. Lack of means prevents her

 THE INTEREST DEAD-LINE 1 21

going. She applies to the government and is told that not

a dollar is available to save the mother and her child from

death. At the same time a farmer observes that one of his

hogs has cholera symptoms. He sends a telegram, collect,
to the government. An inspector comes next day, treats
the hog with serum and cures it. Moral: Be a hog!
The $100,000 appropriation was promptly granted.” ’•

Now suppose this legislator had been sentimentally in-

clined as well as polite, and instead of saying, quite
brusquely, “Be a hog!” had written: “Shall we place the
life of a hog above that of a mother and her baby?” would

not most of the effectiveness have been lost? “Be a hog!”

The legislators were not apt to forget that phrase 1

The peculiar power of Bernard Shaw is that he delights

in shocking us wide awake. For the shock is always a
challenge to what we have accepted as right and respectable.
Instantly, then, we are up in arms, perhaps, in the end, to
agree with the shocker. At any rate, a good shock makes
us fairly leap over the interest dead-line.

Present a Conflict

Fundamental, of course, to all dramatic movement is the

presence of conflict. A situation arouses us when two
forces are at grips and when we are unsure of the outcome.
;

That was why, some time ago, we followed the dash to

Nome with breathless interest. It was human grit and dog
grit against wild Nature. Most dullness is dull because we
are not precipitated into the midst of a fight. We need
not be squeamish about this. \hat is at
All life all signi-

ficant is in some measure at grips with something — science

^ Quoted from Puhltc Speaking; by James A. Winans* The Century

Company.
122 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
at grips with a disease; a movement at grips with a social
evil; progressives at grips with conservatives; enlighten-
ment at grips with ignorance.
To dramatize anything at ail means to present it in the
form of a conflict.

May own subject of

the writer refer once again to his
philosophy? Suppose one wishes to make so apparently
undramatic a subject dramatic; what must one do? One
most successful way is to find the points of sharp conflict,
not the conflicts that meant something to people thousands
of years ago or that are of a purely theoretical interest,
but the conflicts that are real to people now, the outcome
of which makes a vital difference to them. Are there any
such living conflicts? Certainly to start out with a dis-
cussion of Monism versus Pluralism means little if anything
to most of Suppose the world is one, or is many, what
us.
of it? we shall go about our human concerns
In either case
in quite the same way. But suppose we describe a real
conflict between two types of mind today Mind A, eager
:

to improve the human situation; profoundly believing in

our power to achieve progress; Mind B, aloof, amused, a
little cynical, coolly declaring that we human beings, from
our limited point of view, cannot have the faintest notion
of what progress means; and that, even if we did have it,
we should be unable to achieve anything ourselves, since it
is not the human mind that governs but vast impersonal
forces beyond our control. The activist and the quietist;
the ardent worker and the disillusioned looker-on.
In France, Auguste Comte writes an essay with the title:
“A Prospectus of The Scientific Works Required for the Re-
construction Of Society.” In America, William Graham
Sumner writes an essay with the title : “The Absurd At-
 THE INTEREST DEAD-LINE 123

tempt to Make The World Over.” A clash of viewpoints

Here, then, is a conflict that has profound significance for
all of us, for if the impersonal view of world change is to
be taken, there is little need for determined effort on our

part; whereas if the contrasted view is held. It may be

precisely the determined effort which will turn the trick
for human progress.
Philosophy presented from such a point of view leaps
over the interest dead-line.

Summary
We get our readers or our hearers over the interest dead-
line, then, first of all, by placing before them situations
rather than abstract ideas; second, by giving them at the
outset the feeling that here is something which really makes
a difference. In the third place, we do it by presenting a
situation which calls for explanation or from which some-
thing bound to follow.
is Again, we may shock our hearers
or readers by a phrase or an event which interrupts the calm
flow of their ordinary consciousness. Finally, dramatic
effect is attained through the presentation of conflict.
Most of us, as writers or speakers, have died many
deaths at the fatal dead-line of interest. Doubtless many
of us have never sought out the causes of our various
demises. A
very slight analysis should show us, however,
that “holding people’s interest,” “carrying them along
with us,” “keeping up their expectancy” is not the result
of some vague and mystical “draraaticj’ power possessed
by few fortunate individuals. It is the result of doing
a
one or more of a few very simple things. When we state
these simple things they seem to be so obvious as not to
124 influencing HUMAN BEHAVIOR
bear mentioning. And yet it is precisely because we do not
do these very simple things that the interest-quality of
what we say or write so often expires even before our
audience have had time to settle comfortably into their
seats.
These deaths we have died, therefore, are by no means
necessary. It is altogether probable that attention to such
matters as we have mentioned may quite measurably reduce
our mortality average.
 CHAPTER VII

MAKING IDEAS STICK

In the chapters on speaking and writing, we mentioned
in passing the importance of the right use of words and
phrases. There are two points of particular psychological
significance, however, which we did not there develop. The
first is with regard to the attention-holding power of cer-
tain words and phrases. Obviously, if we are really to
influence persons, it is not enough simply to capture their
attention. We
must hold it. If what we have to say
“goes in one ear and comes out the other” nothing very
profound can be expected to happen. If, on the contrary,
what we say “sticks in the mind,” we may be sure that our
words have a power to afiect behavior.

The Name That Sticks

Words are of two kinds, those of common currency, and

those of special mintage. The ordinary mind uses the
former almost entirely — horse, chair, house, train, river,
paper. That is why the ordinary mind, in the effort to ex-
press itself, is usually dull. The out-of-the-ordinary mind,
on the other hand, has a way of giving a new twist to the
old words, or of arrestingly inventing new words.
“A new twist to old words” is a simple but effective
formula for getting a purchase on the memory. We are
125
126 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
not likely to forget the term, “passive resistance.” Both
“passive” and “resistance” are words of common currency.
The combination of them, however, is of special mintage.
The power of that newly constructed word-combination
lies in the fact that it brings to swift, crystal-clear expres-
sion a number of ideas hitherto vaguely felt or surmised
and only expressed with cumbersome circumlocution. Now
that this combination of ideas is named, it becomes, for mul-
titudes of people, an actual plan of action.
A strikingexample of the attention-holding power of a
verbal invention is the word pragmatism. The author of
pragmatism, Charles Peirce, expounded the pragmatic
philosophy, but failed to realize the value of the name.
William James, with his brilliant sense of literary and
dramatic values, and his delight, too, in being somewhat
of an enfant terrible, snapped up the name and gave it
currency. Thereupon pragmatism began to have a vogue
quite unprecedented in this supposedly unphilosophic land.
So far as the American public is now concerned, William
James is the author of pragmatism, although James re-
peatedly and more than generously referred to Peirce as
the one and only original.
It is quite obvious, in this case, that it is the suggestive
name that has capturedand held attention for this philo-
sophy. It is a name easily remembered. It is short and
crisp. It suggests something already familiar and highly
valued. It can be carried about in one’s mental vest
pocket and slipped in and out with easy grace.
In fact, it may J)e fairly ventured that the mere name,
pragmatism, has secured its thousands of adherents where
the full exposition of the philosophy has claimed barely its
hundreds. This, perhaps, is not particularly complimentary
 MAKING IDEAS STICK 127
to the race of thinkers on the American side of the At-
lantic; for seems to suggest a quite undue readiness to
it

strain at a philosophy and swallow a title. Nevertheless,

since we are psychologizing, the fact must be noted. The
historic flower that was born to blush unseen probably was
unlucky enough to have been unnamed. Had William
James called his philosophy, “Metaphysics of Instrumental
Values and Anticipated Outcomes,” he would doubtless
have had the scholar’s profound satisfaction of seeing his
magnum opus
We might give a long list of the names that are not easily
forgotten: mechanism, vitalism, atomism,
materialism,
imperialism, nationalism, militarism, fundamentalism, radi-
calism, modernism, Marxianlsm, Bolshevism, behaviorism.
Some of these are already passing into common currency;
and yet, as names that have had attention-holding values,
they have been rallying cries; they have all profoundly
all

influenced human behavior.

Note the attention-holding power of the following also —
the delightful gaiety of some of them; jazz, flapper,
robots, bootlegger, lounge-lizard, pussy-foot, pee-wee poli-
tician, fascist, Rotarian.

Regarding Reformers
“The frequent failure of the reformer,” writes Professor Wil-
liam Bennett Munro, in his Personality in Politics, . . is due to
his deficient understanding of group-psychology as well as to his

intolerance, his antipathy to discipline, and his lack of team play.

The success of any new cause depends nol* only upon its merits
but upon the way which it is brought to the public attention.
in
Truth is mighty, of course, and will prevail; but it does not always
prevail immediately. To get the truth accepted is sometimes a long
 2

1 8 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

and diiBcult fight* . • . Those who have merchandise to sell are
well aware of the fact that successful marketing is largely a matter
of making the right sort of appeal to prospective purchasers. So
they give heed to the psychology of advertising. They find that it

pays to give their wares an attractive name; the name, indeed, is so

important that great care is taken to find the best one,
‘Wow the selection of a good designation, or symbol, or slogan,
is equally important when it comes to placing ideas on the market,
for you can sell an idea to the country, just as you sell a brand of
soap or a breakfast cereal—by the effective and reiterated stamping
of an impression upon the public mind. But . . . when (reformers)
have a meritorious idea to plant in the minds of the people they have
usually designated it by whatever makeshift of a name happened
to be at hand. Civil service reform, for example, is an appellation
borrowed from England, where the whole body of permanent gov-
ernmental emplo57ees is known as the ‘Civil Service.’ But in America
the employees of the government have never been generally known
by that name, and hence the term civil service reform has proved to
be neither appropriate nor self-explanatory. It has been a dead-
weight upon a worthy cause. Of late, the attempt has been made
to substitute ‘merit system,’ which is a far better term and one that
ought to have been adopted forty years ago; but usage has now
hardened the old terminology. So with the clumsy
and ‘initiative

referendum,’ Reformers who stand sponsor for this device now

prefer to call it direct legislation or direct lawmaking. Why did
they not project it into public discussion under one of these better
names at the outset? The Populists, thirty years ago, began a move-
ment for ‘the imperative mandate.’ But no reform could ever make
headway among the American people with that appellation hitched to
it. So the name was presently changed to ‘the recall.’ Many other
illustrations might be p:iven. Terms like proportional representation,
segregated budget, and excess condemnation are a handicap to the
reforms that they embody. Compare them, for example, with such
terms as short ballot, open .
shop, woman suffrage^ and city
manager. . • *
 MAKING IDEAS STICK 129
“Reform ought to be sold to a people in their own language.
When Theodore Roosevelt spoke of giving everybody a ‘square
deal’ he said something that the wayfaring man could get hold of.
In two words he wrote a whole program. But when reformers go
to the factory gates and discourse about the reduction of maximum
surtaxes, standardization of salaries, unit-costs and personnel ad-
ministration, they might better save the strain upon their throats.”

Phrases That Stick

We are all getting to be a little ashamed of slogans.

They belong, many of us feel, to “Babbittry and boost.”
Social workers, in their efforts to galvanize a lethargic
public into response, have been compelled to sloganize so
much that most of them are sick to death of slogans. A
recent satirical novelist has invented the phrase: “The
son of a sloganeer.”
Perhaps It is because the slogan, as used in our strenuous
campaigns. Is too obviously intrusive. It is like the eager
person who plucks you by the coat; pulls you toward him,
and talks forcibly into your face. Lest we find ourselves
in too bad company, therefore, we prefer to use the ex-
pression: “phrases that stick.”
Phrases that stick are powerful as attention-holders and
as Influencers of behavior. The kinds that are really ef-
fective, of course, are those that delight us; those that
awaken a strong emotional response those that express for
;

us swiftly, powerfully what we feel and think. They may

convey intensity of feeling, as “My country right or wrong;”
or “No entangling alliances;” or “Deutschland fiber alles;”
or “God save the King;” or “Equal rights to all and special
privileges to none.” Or they may be a call to action:
“Workers of the world unite!”
130 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Phrases and sentences like these are powerful because
they are so brilliantly economical of our thought-power.
They do not enter our minds by long, circuitous routes.
No sooner are they spoken than they are part of us. And
once part of us, they refuse to be forgotten.
In England one hears constantly the saying: “What
Lancashire thinks today, England will think tomorrow.”
Whether that is actually true or not, I do not know. I ques-
tion whether anyone knows. But I have no doubt that the
very pithiness and confident assurance of that saying has
had a powerful effect upon the English public. Even
though derided by individuals, it must already have
established an attitude towards Lancashire hard to deflect
or reverse.
One wonders what effect upon human behavior the fol-

lowing old Yorkshire motto can have had:

“Hear aw, see aw and say nowt;

Eat aw, tek aw and pay nowt
And if thou does owt for nowt
Do it for thysen.”

Here Is cynicism Immortalized 1 Pity that we have no way

of measuring what it actually did to old Yorkshire char-
acter!
“Say it with flowers” is a phrase that has come to be
part of our everyday life. When we are in doubt, we
need no book of etiquette. The phrase leaps to mind; and
we “say it with flowers.” The same may be said of the
phrase “Safety fir$.t,” which has helped to bring about a
new era in the safeguarding of life against preventable ac-
cidents. “Unhooking the hookworm” — ^used by the Rocke-
feller Foundation to describe their work— is doubtless more
 1

MAKING IDEAS STICK 13

effective than a whole volume of reports. “A salesman is

known by the customers he keeps”— a prize-winning slogan
of a New York company —might well be destined to pro-
duce a most desirable type of salesman.
In the attempt to teach safety habits, competitions in
the making of “safety slogans” have been held in numbers
of schools. The following are part of an ABC alliterative
list made by the children of the Abbot Street School, Wor-
cester, Mass:

Avoid All Accidents

Beware Before Bumping
Carelessness Causes Casualties
Don’t Do Daring Deeds
Eye Every Exit
Fire Finds Filth
Gasoline Gathers Gloom
Health Has Happiness
Ignorance Invites Injury
Joy Riding Justifies Jail.

TheBible has been powerful because it is so easily quot-

able. “Blessed are the merciful;” “I am the vine and my
Father is the husbandman;” “Father forgive them, for
they know not what they do;” “The Sabbath was made for
man, not man for the Sabbath;” “I will lift up mine eyes
to the hills whence cometh my help;” “My help cometh
from the Lord;” “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not
want.” Translate the last into good literal English and
see what happens “In matters that concern my bodily
:

and spiritual welfare, I am convinced that God is a

thoroughly dependable caretaker!”
Our attitudes towards influencing behavior have been
132 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
so predominantly moralistic that we have, for the most
part, failed to realize the power that lies in the creation
and the use of words and phrases that stick. Even now
the reader may be shuddering at this chapter. “How tri-

fling! How purely external!” And yet, if the reader will

explore his own mind and recall what has really been ojf

profound and continuing Influence in his life, he will, no

doubt find that it is, in large measure, the words and
phrases that have sunk so deeply into his consciousness that
they have become part of himself. Hence, if we would
be powerful in influencing our day and generation, we must
not scorn verbal facility as something too external to be
bothered about. We may Indeed be great enough to be
mentally powerful and verbally clumsy. But there is no
virtue in verbal clumsiness. Nor do we abdicate our pro-
fundity, if we seek, with the spirit of the artist, to sharpen
and intensify our verbal expressions.

Toning Up the Cliche Mind

This brings us to our second point attention paid to:

the sharpening of our verbal expressions is attention paid

to the sharpening of our minds. Only as our minds are
sharpened are we able to fashion the “phrases that stick.”
Let us, for a moment, discuss that rather frequent pheno-
menon, the mind that constantly uses commonplace ex-
pressions or cliches. Of course we all use cliches. We
use them by the dozens and the scores. We cannot help
doing so. The vpry phrase that we used in the former
sentence Is a cliche. We might, in an attempt to be bril-

liantly different, have said: “We use them by the fives,

the sevens, the thirteens and the twenty-ones.” That

 MAKING IDEAS STICK 133
would at least have been arresting. But what would have
been the good? We should only have succeeded in arous-
ing arithmetical annoyances and in diverting attention from
what we were going on One can, in short, be al-
to say.
together too brilliant. In one’s attempt to be different,
one can (to use another cliche) le&n over backward so
far that one risks being taken for a vaudeville tumbler.
And yet there comes a time in the speech of men when
we sometimes pray that we may be delivered. Listening
to a number of addresses few days ago, we collected the
a
—
following literary heavens! we were just going to write
“gems”! Another radiant cliche! Let us call them
“literary prunes”! “I feel it a great honor to be present
on this occasion;” “extend a most hearty and cordial wel-
come;” “in paying my humble tribute;” “let us express a
hope;” “it is but fair to say;” “of whom we are proud”!
Can not the reader catch the orotund solemnity of those
phrases that surely hark back to Hammurabi and the Pyra-
mids ! Particularly of that grand old wheel-horse of a
!”
phrase : “of whom we are proud
But these were not all by any means; for in due order
came: “it is a rare privilege;” “in the chosen field of his
endeavors;” “we are honored by the presence;” “who
drank at the fountain of learning;” “on this occasion we are
gathered to pay tribute.”
Then the inevitable stock-in-trade of reminiscence 1

“That summon up the memories of one’s youth;” “in my

mind’s eye this splendid auditorium fades into perspective;”
“the dear old chapel;” “those who haye passed into the
Great Beyond;” “my heart is filled with gratitude;” “that
respect for age and tradition;” “lessons of the past;” “in
this my native city;” “this beloved institution of ours.”- .
134 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
And finally, in one grand rapture of ecstatic eloquence:
“that stimulus to high ideals of character and citizenship
which . . .
!”

There is a point, in short, at which the use of cliches be-

comes a symptom. We may all use a goodly number of
them and do no hai'm; but one more, another and still an-
other and the proverbial camel’s hump breaks beneath the
;

final straw A physician will often make a profound diag-

!

nosis from what is apparently a most trifling aberration.

Take the knee jerk, for example. Most of us have knee
jerks, but are quite unaware of it. But let the physician dis-

cover in us an absence of this useful little kick; and he pulls

a grave face. There is, then, something deeply the matter
with us. So, in like manner, the absence of those slight
qualities of difference in one’s phrases, of nuance, sugges-
tiveness, should cause the expert reader of minds to regard
us a little closely; to inquire solicitously about our mental
processes; to doubt whether the vitality of our intellectual
life was quite up to par.
A cliche, of course, by definition, a “stereotype plate.”
is,

Printers, in America, have a less elegant name “boiler :

plate.” “Boiler plate stuff” is a short trade name which

speaks volumes. There is in it a fine, airy contempt for the
kind of literary “junk” that is bought by the ton ^particu- —
larly by the small country newspapers. No brains required
of the editor. Just so much per pound, delivered; and the
trick is turned!
Some day we read character
shall cease attempting to
by the face. OurTaces are born with us; and there is not
much that we can do about it. But our phrases! “Well
what do you know about that !” There are at least seventy
million back fences over which that phrase is being tossed
 MAKING IDEAS STICK 135
with open-eyed wonder. “Did you ever I” “You don’t
say so!” “Well I never!” “And so I sez to him, sez
I; and he sez to me!”
“Out of their mouths shall my people be judged.” That
is good psychological doctrine; for our verbal habits are
in large measure the reflex of our thinking habits. The
inveterate cliche-ist is apt to be the inveterate platitudina-
rian. He Is
—
animated boiler plate. He is particularly if

he is earnest and eloquent —

resounding literary junk.

What Can Be Done About It?

How does one get that way? Political stump speak-

ers are apt to be the star performers with cliches. Is it

because they have grown so used to appealing to the least

common denominator of the crowd intelligence that their
own has ceased to function? We know that
intelligence
a subtle thought, an unusual proposal, a new idea has a
poor chance to “get across”in a large political meeting.
For the most part, only platitudes win applause. Only
the accustomed clap-trap appeals. Does a political speaker
deliberately suppress his subtler intelligence; keep it as-
siduously hidden; does his intelligence grow flabby from
disuse; or he perhaps a successful political speaker pre-
is

cisely because he has no truly searching intelligence?

There is of course a value in accustomed phrases. They
represent verbal habits which, in the aggregate, save a
prodigious amount of one’s energy. It would be as fool-
ish to ask a person to frame a novel phrase for each mean-
ing expressed as to bid him tie his necktie in a new way
every morning. Habits are formed for the sake of re-
leasing other worthwhile energies. And so It is with
136 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
these mental habits called commonplace phrases. One
need therefore not be ashamed of using a good many
commonplace phrases provided that in some region of one’s
speech, one’s phrases wear that mai-k of precision and of
distinction which announces a living, functioning mind be-
hind the words.
The cliche mind is the mind which never shows these
marks of distinction, which on all occasions and in every
way, uses the words and the phrases that everybody is
using. One would suppose that this kind of mind rarely
exists. As a matter of fact it exists in droves. Most
persons, in short, show in their speech precisely that ab-
sence of subtle and uniqueness of phrasing
distinction
which is the sign of the commonplace, the nondiscrirainating
mind.
But if this is so, what is to be done about it? If the
mind is commonplace, the speech will be commonplace, will
it not ? and there’s an end of it Are we contending here
1

that by attempting to polish up one’s phrasing, one can

change one’s commonplace mind into a mind more dis-

tinguished?
Precisely. And for this reason. The mind is no
mystical entity, existing in aloof, metaphysical changeless-
ness as either commonplace or The mind is
distinguished.
what it does. Or mind becomes what it
better still, the
does. Give a mind something new to feed upon; give it
something new to do and it becomes a different mind. Let
;

us suppose, for example, that a person, convicted of the

rather inordinate use of cliche phrases, set about to over-
haul his speech. Suppose he deliberately noted down all

the quite commonplace phrases he used; and then, when no

 MAKING IDEAS STICK 137

one was attending, tried out all the possible modifications

and improvements of which he could think.
That would be an exercise in sharpening his own mind!
In short, in the very effort to halt a cliche on its banal
way in the very effort -to make it say more precisely, or
;

more colorfully, or more subtly what he wished to say or

what he might have wished to say had he known better,
he would be emerging from the cliche class.
It is not sufficiently understood, perhaps, that the power
of a mind is directly conditioned by its verbal equipment.
A person with a very small vocabulary inevitably has a
small range of thought. A
person with a larger range of
vocabulary has a larger range of thought. The reason for
this is fairly clear. Suppose a person has never heard of
the word “ethnology.” He consequently does not possess
the clearly defined idea-system suggested by that word.
Suppose now he learns the meaning of the word, so that
he can use it freely. A
new idea-system has been added
to his stock. Thus, as our effective vocabulary increases,
our thought-systems increase.
Even by the simple process of increasing our verbal tools,
therefore, it is within our power to increase our thought-
systems. Now the same result occurs when we attempt
to substitute for phrases that are vague, colorless, and
commonplace, phrases that express our meanings with
greater vividness, subtlety and precision.
To clarify a phrase, therefore, is to do more than en-
gage mere bit of literary brightening. It is to clarify
in a
one’s mind. Thus by becoming thoughtful about our com-
monplace phrases we become thoughtful about our common-
place ideas. We begin to probe them; to modify them;
138 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
and sometimes to discard them altogether. And so we be-
gin to shape ideas of our own that are less commonplace
—which noteworthy fact that we have
signifies the quite
passed out of the stage of easy acceptance of phrase and
idea into the stage of individual creation.
Adults often complain that they have no opportunities
for continuing their education. But here is a laboratory
command. We can place the microscope
constantly at our
over our words and phrases we can apply the scalpel of
;

our analytic intelligence; we can experiment with our ex-

pressions, trying them out until they hit off exactly what
we we mean. We are curiously inhibited from doing
think
all thisby the quite misleading idea that words are only
external after all and do not really count; that only our
“inner thoughts” count. If we could clearly grasp the
idea that the words are our thought-responses, that vague
words and phrases indicate vague thoughts, precisely as a
carpenter is known by his tools, we should realize that we

sharpen our thoughts not by some esoteric process of turn-

ing inward, but by deliberately working away at the sym-
bols which we use to convey to others what we mean.
When we do that we begin to be able to say things in ways
that are not easily forgotten.

Summary
Words and more than mere sym-
phrases, then, are far
bols about which we can be relatively indifferent. They
are perhaps the most powerful instrumentalities we possess
for effectively and permanently lodging ideas in the mind.
To be able to devise a name or a phrase that will stick.
 MAKING IDEAS STICK i39

entry into the mind that is swift and

is to have a way of
sure. , „ . . 7) £
pointing up or
Again, to pay careful attention to the
one’s words and phrases; in other
words, to try to be less
simply to
commonplace in one’s verbal expression, is not
It to engage in
engage in a kind of literary polishing.
is

clarifying one’s mind.

a process of sharpening and
has profound
Hence, attention to words and phrases
significance. He who would influence hu-
psychological
quite
man behavior can hardly do better than to proceed
his verbal equipment.
seriously and persistently to overhaul
 PART TWO
FUNDAMENTAL TECHNIQUES
 CHAPTER VIII

HOW TO CHANGE PERSONS: THE

ENTERING WEDGE
Our influencing of persons is of two types. The first

may be called incidental influencing. Thus, for example,

by a proper approach, we induce" a person to buy our prod-
ucts; to vote for our candidate; to study what we suggest;
to listen toour speech; to read our article. great deal A
of this incidental, more or less impermanent kind of in-
fluencing goes on in the world and must go on. In the
ordinary acceptation of the phrase, a person “makes good”
to the extent that he is able, in general, thus to be per-
suasive with people. Therefore it is important that we
know how such persuasiveness is most effectively ac-
complished.
Many of us, however, find ourselves with a more difficult
problem on our hands. We find it necessary to influence
certain persons in a profounder and more lasting way; to
change them, in short. They may be our children, our
husbands or wives, our pupils, our fellow workers, our
employees. This problem takes us into regions far more
difficult than any that the foregoing techniques have ex-

plored; although, as we analyze the deeper issues involved,

we shall discover that much of what we have learned about
the incidental techniques will apply.
How may we most effectively solve this profounder
143
 144 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
problem of changing individuals? We wish, for example,
to build up a stronger character in our child to
alter what ;

is disagreeable in this or that individual’s personality;

to
make this or that person more responsible or this or that ;

person less sexually irregular. This is no child’s play.

It
means, at the least, that we must understand
rather
thoroughly what people are and how they can be induced
to alter the accustomed, ofttimes “ingrained”
manner of
their lives.
At the outset we are stopped by the vagueness— one
might better say, the mysteriousness— of such terms as the
following: “character;” “personality;” “the individual ;”
“human What, as a matter of fact, is the “char-
nature.”
acter” of a person? If we wish to set about changing his
‘character,” at what point do we start? Again, what is
the individual’s “personality?” Is it, in the main, some-
thing born in him something hereditary, innate something
;
;

not really subject to alteration ? What is “the individual ?”

A mysterious ego? A
metaphysical entity? What does
one do with an individual if one wishes to change his in-
dividuality? And finally, what is one’s human nature?
Most often, when we try rather profoundly to change
people, we are told that human nature cannot be changed.
With these mysterious terms confronting us, the task
all
of making any really striking and permanent alteration in
the^ character or personality or human nature of an in-
dividual seems more than difficult.
Let us begin first with human nature, since it is in its
name that most sins are committed. When we are asked
what we mean by human nature, most of us are proba-
bly^ at a loss. one of those terms which is more
It is
easily used than understood. This man, for example,
is an
 HOW TO CHANGE PERSONS 145

industrious worker. Is part of his un-

industriousness
changeable human nature? This man refuses to give his
seat to a lady. Was he born that way; and is it quite im-
possible to make him otherwise? This man dislikes arti-
chokes. Certainly that is not part of his irrevocable hu-
man nature. This girl prefers jazz to Beethoven. Can
nothing be done about it?
We know, of course, that it is of the permanent nature
of human beings to have two legs, two ears, a pair of eyes,
and so on. Is it likewise of the permanent nature of any
human being to be a liar, or a thief, or a movie fan or a
college professor? Perhaps the lying propensity is just
as inborn as two-leggedness; perhaps a poor infant, even
in its cradle; is already doomed to be a college professor.
Much of this, of course, is obvious nonsense. And yet
it isnot always easy to say precisely where the human na-
ture that is unchangeable leaves off and the human nature
that is changeable begins. What our modern psychol-
ogy seems to teach us is that there is a certain raw material
of human nature which is practically unchangeable. For
example, we all have the impulse to avoid danger; to seek
food and warmth; to unite with the opposite sex; and so
on. In these respects we are all precisely the same; and
there is no more hope of changing us than there is of
transforming an oak tree into an armadillo.
But we are far more than raw material. We do not
live long in the world before we are raw material shaped
into particular forms. Thus, while we all are born with
the impulse to avoid danger, an Amazonian learns to avoid
danger from jungle animals and fever; while a New Yorker
learns to avoid danger from automobiles and subway jams.
While we are all born with the impulse to unite with the
146 influencing HUMAN BEHAVIOR
opposite sex, the cave-man goes out for his mate with a
club; while the young civilian of Paterson, New Jersey,
goes out with a box of candy. And even in Paterson, New
Jersey, techniques differ. One youth has learned to prefer
flowers to candy; another a dashing motor car; another a
volume of Carl Sandburg’s poetry.
It is in the manner in which the raw material of our hu-
man nature is shaped that each individual differs from every
other. Is the shaping within our power? It would be
an extreme hereditarian, indeed, who would maintain that
one youth is born to “say it with flowers” and another to
“say it with a motor car !” These youths, for a number of
reasons —
home influence, the novels they have read, the
—
money at their command have developed different court-
ing habits.
Now apparently, can be shaped and changed.
habits,
There no mystery about them; for we have all watched
is

habits grow in ourselves; and have all, with more or less

success, discontinued certain of our habits. It is only when
we think of changing “character” or “personality” that the
mystery begins. But what, now, is one’s “personality” or
“character?” If one thinks of one’s personality as a whole,
one gets nowhere. But if one analyzes it, a very significant
fact begins to emerge.
Let the reader consider himself, for example. He is

doubtless proudly aware that he has a far more delight-

ful personalitythan that of his brother, let us say. Just
what is Well, for one thing, his brother is
the difference?
never up on time in the morning. That is most annoying
to the family and leads to much expostulation and the char-
acterizing of him as lazy. The reader himself isalways
up on time. Now what this means is that he has one
 ;

HOW TO CHANGE PERSONS 147

system of rising habits, while his brother has another.

Again, his brother never finishes a job. Therefore the
family call him a slacker. The reader himself always
finishes a job. So the family call him reliable, trustworthy,

a pusher-through-of-things. Here also, the difference be-

tween the reader and his brother is that the former has
one system of work habits, and the latter has another.
Aga;in, the reader’s brother is rather inconsiderate of other
people. He never offers to clear up a room or wash the
dishes when the maid is away. The reader himself is al-
ways offering to clear up rooms and wash dishes and so he ;

always gets the job. This means, in other words, that the
reader has one kind of social habits; his brother has an-
other.
And so on. If the reader will examine carefully what
he calls his “traits” of character, he will find that they are
nothing very mysterious; they are only his predominant
habit systems. The reader’s kindliness, for example, is
his habit of thinking of other people ; of doing them a serv-
ice; his thoroughness is a habit he has, in every task he
undertakes, of seeing that each detail is attended to; his
lack of irritability is his habit of controlling himself under
trying circumstances.
Everyone, in short, has a large number of habit-systems.
Let us enumerate a few of them. Everyone has a system
of work habits (thoroughness; accuracy; slovenliness;
passing-the-buck; watching-the-clock) consumer habits
;

(paying cash; running up accounts; keeping a budget; liv-

ing beyond one’s means) ; bodily habks (clean face and
hands; daily bath; neat clothes; or the opposite of these)
play habits (fair play; sticking-it-through in play; generosity
to opponents; cheerful losing) ; moral habits (truthfulness;
148 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
lying; dependability; loyalty) emotional habits (irri-
;

tability; meanness; interest-in-others sympathy comrade-

; ;

ship), etc.
A person, in short, is what he is by reason of the more or
less unified aggregate of his habit-systems.^

The Habit-System as the Point of Approach

Now it is obvious that when we
think of changing a
person as a whole, the task seems quite hopeless. And
usually when we talk of changing an individual’s character
or personality, we are thinking of him as a whole. When
we note, however, that a person is not just one mysterious
entity,but is a complex of many systems of habits literally —
—
dozens and scores of them the task of changing him re-
duces itself to the not so difficult task of changing this or
^
that particular system of habits.
should be clear, then, that whether we are interested
It
inchanging persons into the kind of beings should like
them to be, or in changing them from the kind of beings
they are, the successful way to “get at” them is through
^This same view ‘‘that our personality is but the outgrowth of the habits
we form’’presented in brilliant fashion by Dr. John B. Watson in Chapter
is

XII of his Behaviorism, The People’s Institute Publishing Company. New

York.
2 One of my friends, listening to the above account of personality, felt
sorely troubled about the “ego.” What had become of it? Were we
simply “bundles of habits?” He was respectfully referred to metaphysics.
In this practical, work-a-day world, admitting to the full all the mystery
that still surrounds the processes of human life, an individual is the more
or less unified sj^stem of his habits. What these habits depend upon is,
of course, a further question. They may depend upon dozens of conditions:
a normally or abnormally functioning thyroid gland; shortness or tallness
of stature; birth in a minister’s home, or a physician’s; an invalid mother,
and so on.
 HOW TO CHANGE PERSONS :i49

their habit systems. These give us the entering wedge to

personality.
Let us note how this may be done in child life. The
following is a case of profoundly changing a personality,^

^Waking Uf^
Alice Gould at fourteen had not yet
^ got beyond the point
. , ,

where reading was a painful exercise. ... In other school subjects

she was somewhat retarded, partly because of a general intelligence
level which fell slightly below average, largely because of a succes-
sion of severe illnesses. She had, however, been pulled up noticeably
toward the normal standard for her age during her last year in an
opportunity class. Her hand work was especially good and she
showed artistic ability. But all the efforts of her teacher had not
availed to inspire her with the faintest glow of enthusiasm for the
printed page.
. She was listless and
. indifferent. She took little interest

in what was going on about her, was shut-in and unsocial. Her
teacher felt that she needed to be Vaked up.’ . . .

“Alice was airtsrphan and an only child. She had been taken at
the age of five by her father’s brother and his wife, who were
childless. Dr. Gould, the uncle, was a successful physician. Both
he and the aunt had been pleased to have her come to them —she was
dainty and attractive, very quiet and well behaved. But as she
grew tall and ungainly, and as she failed make normal progress
to
in school, Mrs. Gould in particular began to show marked sensitive-
ness over the child’s backw^ardness. This sensitiveness was ren-
dered more acute as time went on by the growing contrast between
Alice’s failures and the successes of two girl cousins who lived next
door. The older at sixteen was preparing for college, the younger
: m .

’^Tke Problem Child in School; by Mary B. Sayles; p. 93. Joint Com"

mitUe on Methods of Preve 7iting Delinquency, New York, This book is
rich with material for the study of techniques.
ISO INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
at twelve was already m the seventh grade. The pride . . , dis-

played by Mrs. Gould^s sister-in-law in these two daughters . . .

grew more and more painful to the childless woman who had hoped
to find compensation in the small person she had been mothering.
This much of Alice’s story was known to her teacher and was passed
on by her Miss Jones, the visiting teacher.
to
**In her first talk with her new charge Miss Jones employed cer-
tain devices suggested by her experience in the effort to find out
where Alice’s interests lay. Some simple tests revealed good powers
of observation ;
Alice gave an excellent description of a farm scene
which had been worked out by the first grade in their sand table,
and became interested in solving problems of practical life put to
her in connection with the farm. She took this as a game and her
attitude, which at first had been a bit stand-offish and suspicious,
grew friendlier. It presently appeared that she enjoyed housework
and sewing. She associated very little with the girls in her room,
many of whom came from poor homes. She had dropped out of
Sunday school because she read so poorly that she was ashamed
to go. . . .

*‘The Gouldhome proved to be a charming new colonial cottage

on a hillside overlooking a recently developed park. Mrs. Gould,
an attractive, intelligent-appearing woman, received the visiting
teacher with marked coldness. Her manner suggested that a visit
from anyone connected with the school could only mean added dis-
grace, and that she would much prefer not to discuss her niece’s
shortcomings.
‘^Miss Jones, however, . . . began by talking of Alice’s practical
accomplishments, her skill in sewdng and household tasks, with a man-

ner that assumed the aunt’s pride in such talents. Mrs, Gould was
manifestly pleased ;
her whole manner changed as she eagerly agreed
that Alice had real gifts in these directions. It appeared that the
girl was doing well with her music.
‘‘At Miss Jones’s request, Mrs. Gould brought out a volume of

Longfellow belonging to Alice. From this the girl read, haltingly,

 HOW TO CHANGE PERSONS 151

^The Children’s Hour/ Then, asked to retell it, she condensed it

into two short literal sentences. 'You see what a practical mind
she has,’ commented Miss Jones. 'Not everyone could tell the story-
in so few words/ Mrs, Gould beamed wdth pleasure. What Alice
needed, it was pointed out, was practice in reading and encourage-
ment. After considerable discussion of the situation, Mrs. Gould
agreed to spend half an hour every afternoon in listening to Alice
read aloud. Apparently it had never occurred to her that she herself
could thus help in the solution of her niece’s problem. She had been
a competent business woman before her marriage ;
teaching and child
psychology had been quite outside her realm.
"Another topic touched upon in this conversation w^as that of
Alice’s possible future career. The
had never pictured herself
child
as anything but a business woman
like her aunt. Miss Jones . . .

suggested the possibility of work with small children Alice was de- —
voted to youngsters of the kindergarten age; or specialization in
domestic science. These new ideas fairly startled the girl out of
her habitual lethargy. , .

"After this home visit Alice reported every week to the visiting
teacher. She practised reading regularly with her aunt, and in an
astonishingly short time showed such marked improvement that she
began to do her share of reading in the general school exercises, even
taking part in a play at the Christmas celebration, much to the sur-
prise of her classmates.

"Beginning with the new term Miss Jones had Alice report at
number of other girls, who also needed waking
the same hour with a
up, and welded them into a little “vt’cekly class in world events.
Each girl was responsible for bringing in one stor>’' a week of some
important happening or phase of living in a foreign country. Miss
Jones herself stimulated them by telling tales of high adventure in
distant lands, figuring such heroes as Livingstone and Dr. Grenfell.
The were to get
girls their material from books or magazines, or
from conversation with their elders.

the technique of inducing an imagined experience.

 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
‘^After some weeks of this exercise, Alice one day brought in a
story about the stamping out of malaria and yellow fever in the
Panama Canal Zone. Her uncle, it appeared, had become inter-
ested in the mental awakening of his niece. He had set her the
task of doing a certain amount of newspaper reading every day and
reporting on it to him at dinner time. Alice was made to feel that
this was of value to him, and her pride and pleasure in her task were
evident.^
‘‘No less encouraging were the signs of social awakening in this
shut-in listless child. Her manner took on a new liveliness and
her relations with her classmates became friendlier. She began to
take an interest in her appearance, and asked her aunt if she might
have her hair bobbed.

“The new phase of Aliceas existence which opened thus propitiously

has continued to unfold itself. She has been making a good record
in the domestic science department of junior high school. The
future now holds many possibilities for this girl who less than two
years ago could see nothing before her but a struggle to lit herself

for work in which she felt doomed to failure.”

Entering Wedges

Now if had thought of Alice Gould

the visiting teacher
simply as a personality gone wrong, she doubtless would
not have proceeded very far. What she saw was that
Alice Gould was deficient in one rather important habit-
system, the reading habit-system. Deficiency in that habit-
system, she realized at once, might quite easily be the cause
for deficiency in another important habit-system, the social.
As a matter of fact, the little girl was listless and indif-
ferent, was shut-in and unsocial. Wisely enough the teacher
^ Note the putting-it-up-to-you technique.
 HOW TO CHANGE PERSONS 153
took as her point of approach the deficient reading habit-
system. In her investigations she soon discovered that the
deficiency both in the reading and the social habit-systems
was accentuated by a certain habit-system in the child’s
foster parent, namely, the critieism-and-expression-of-
disappointment habit.
The problem, then was to modify these two habit-systems,
the one in the child, the other in the foster parent. By a
clever emphasis upon some of the strong habit-systems of
the the criticism-and-dlsappointment habit of the
child,
foster parent was changed and incentive was given the child
for the Improvement of her reading.
An analysis of this kind shows that the crucial problem
of personality was reducible to habit-systems. The little

girl lacked the one type of habit which gave her the golden
key to life. No
wonder, then, that she was listless, shut-in,
unsocial. A school no doubt would have
visitor to the
called her a dull child, without magnetism, and would have
pitied her fe^not having been born with better endow-
ments. An Improvement in a single habit-system was ef-
fected; and the dullness disappeared!
May it not be true of many a person of whom we say
that he lacks personality, that the lack lies not in some
mysterious entity called the ego, but only In some as yet
undiscovered habit deficiency? All that is needed, ap-
parently, is to analyze the habit-systems of such a person
to discover the one which is deficient and which has an in-
hibiting Influence upon a whole group of habit-systems.
If only that could be done, the drab ^ind ineffective per-
sonality might easily flower into effectiveness and charm.
Such is the technique employed in a very amusing play by
Rachel Crothers, “Expressing Willie.” The heroine has
'

154 .

,
INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR '

one inhibiting habit, the habit of self-depreciation. That

self-depreciation habit influences her other habits, makes
her timid and awkward, hesitating in speech, subservient in
her ideas, uninteresting. She is taken hold of by a clever
artist at a house party and induced to ‘let herself go, to
“express herself.” Instantly her character is transformed.
Her other habit-systems fall into line; and she becomes
the fascinating center of the group.
No doubt Miss Grothers has, in this case, used dramatic
liberties which go beyond the psychological probabilities;
but taken as symbolic, the play presents a genuine case of
the transformation of the whole personality through the
correction of one deficient habit-system.
Let us take one other typical character problem from
Youth in Conflict^ by Miriam Van Waters,^ a valuable dis-
cussion of juvenile court techniques for handling character
conflicts.

^Tour girls, fourteen, sixteen, fifteen and seventeen years of age

are next on the calendar. They are high school students, healthy
young Americans of ‘good’ families. They are involved in a ‘school
scandal.’ One was discovered by her teacher to possess a notebook
of dull obscenities, sex jokes and drawings, together with improper
parodies of popular songs, and what would have been, if true, a
casual, supposedly witty account of rape on a school girl. These
she had obtained from another girl, the delicate daughter of a minister,

who had received them from a certain taxicab driver. This

in turn
young fellow, on being brought to court, was discovered by psycho-
logical examination to be feeble-minded. The notebook had cir-

culated among students, brilliant, dull, rich and poor.

‘The four girls now before the court were the popular, well-
dressed daughters of good families. They smoked, drank (when
^Republic Publishing Company. New York. Page 43.
 HOW TO CHANGE PERSONS 155
they could get it), rode home from dances in taxicabs with young
men, took all night joy-rides, used a great deal of paint and powder,
swore at their parents. Each had a 'daddy, although the tenure
’

of office and length of service of these young lovers were precarious.

The girls were sophisticated, tired; any exertion, besides dancing,
wore them out. They detested athletics, books and housework.
They stood about average in high school work.
"Three boys were also before the court, as witnesses, aged fifteen,

seventeen and twenty. They were prominent students in scholarship

and activities. They were not, it seems, 'daddies’ of these girls,
but there was some imperative, diplomatic reason why they should
'help’ the girls who were in a 'scrape’ or impending unpleasantness

at home. So, the youngest boy obtained the parental automobile,

the three boys and four girls 'eloped,’ that is to say, went to the
neighboring county-seat to procure marriage licenses, En route
gasolene gave out. Thereupon the parental car was abandoned,
and a strange one commandeered. In talking it over at leisure it

was decided not to marry, the parents would probably 'fuss’; if one
thing more than another was to be avoided it was 'fuss.’ Now these
girls were pretjy^and delicate, daintily reared, and the boys were
'manly,’ 'regular fellows’ in good society, yet in court they admit,
not only sexual familiarity, but promiscuity and disregard of sim-
plest requirements of decency and affection which would arouse honest
contempt in the mind of a longshoreman. Early in the morning
they had arrived at a road-house, and being without funds or gaso-
lene, one of the boys telephoned to his parents. Now, charged with
theft and immorality, they are before the court.
"They presented an amazing contrast to their parents. One
would have thought it was the parents who were laboring under

burden of guilt, while the children were calm and rather disinter-
ested. Clearly the parents behaved as if the pillars of their family
esteem had suddenly collapsed ; dazed with surprise and humiliation
they sat with bowed heads, utterly pitiable. On the other hand the
young people were courteous, frank, submissive to questions of court,
but there wei*e frequent smiles and impatience at the futility of it all.
156 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
“Each had what is called a ‘good home/ above average in com-
forts,and in good standing in public opinion. • , .

“It is now a question not of degree of guilt, or weight of punish-

ment, but of understanding and helping young people. . . •

“Sex is not sacred to them, or terrifying; it is merely fun. While

their attitude may be less harmful than that of some of their critics,
it is still dangerous, inadequate and abnormal, running swiftly into
perversions. The court will send each young person with his or
her parents, if possible, to a socially-minded physician to be in-
structed in the elements of sex hygiene, for be it well understood
all their glib, seeming information They do not know
is spurious.
the body and its rules any more than they know the spirit of the
creative force which they have been destroying. The court, by
probing, simple questions, tries to bring them a sense of birth, child-
rearing, nursing, illness, love, courtship, self-sacrifice, discovery,
struggle and happiness, parenthood and death. Not fear, but under-
standing, and pity (where it is needed for helplessness, disease, blind-

ness, suffering among the innocent, etc.) are sought, and since in
race-history human situations have not changed much, these
3^oung people are often genuinely impressed after their visits to
orphanages, children’s hospitals and the like. Their parents have
shielded them and have veiled realit}^, but the court has never faced
a ‘flapper’ who has not been somewhat touched by a true life-situation,
squarely presented. Funny parodies in the notebook become not
quite so funny, if the mystery is removed, and biological sequences
revealed. The court, however, would be guilty of a wrong did it

not see that in sex-instruction furnished these young people by doctor

and probation officer, emphasis was on health and joy, rather than
upon disease and pain.
“To parents the court must stress the need of studying their indi-
vidual children, of not J^Iaming other young people for their children’s
delinquencies; of the need of vigor in parenthood, not alone physi-
cally, but in ideals of family life which make child-rearing a genuine
fulfillment.
 HOW TO CHANGE PERSONS m,
“Surprising as it appears after hearing evidence, the largest pro-
portion of these boys and girls from high schools and good neighbor-
hoods, if taken to court early for first delinquencies, if there they
are wisely handled, under adequate probation officers, if home, school,
church and court cooperate, make good. They do not repeat de-
linquencies, they look on their former conduct as a fad they have
dropped; they become rather sober-minded, critical young American
citizens.”

Wholesale Condemnation

Many of us would have been inclined to regard the

young people whose case we have just cited as abandoned
women, degraded flappers, degenerate adolescents! As a
matter of fact, these boys and girls were fundamentally
sound. The root of their difficulty lay in a perverted
habit-system. They had, through misinformation, as well
as through the prudish silence of their parents, developed
certain habitual ways of thinking and behaving about sex.
In reality, lh-<5y were profoundly ignorant of the basic
significance of sex. Ignorance, in this case, however,
meant, not innocence, but a system of habits built upon
crude substitutes for information. It was this perverted
habit-system which needed re-building. have no re- We
port of the outcome in their particular cases; but it should
be clear that in the intelligent re-forming of that one very
powerful habit-system of sex-thinking lay the clue to the
saving of these apparently degraded and abandoned young
people.^

^ Other valuable case records are to be found in Three Prohlem Ckildrent

published by the Joint Committee for the PreiJention of Juvenile Delhi-

quency, and in the case records published by the Judge Baker Foundation,
Boston, Mass.
158 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Summary
The personality or character of a person, we have said,
is the more or less unified aggregate of his habit-systems.
The reader will find this analytic way of regarding per-
sonality of utmost value. He
might make an inventory of
his own habit-systems, noting which of them predominate
and the exact manner in which the predominating habit-
systems control his other habit-systems. Then if he is
interested in observing character, let him do the same thing
with other people. Most of us do not know how to ob-
serve character; and for that reason we are poor at re-
forming it. We take people rather blindly as wholes, ap-
proving or condemning in a mystical kind of way. Once,
however, we begin to observe our children or our friends
in terms of their specific habit-systems, we obtain illuminat-
ing clues as to the causes of their strength or weakness,
their charm or their absence of charm; and we learn how,
most effectively, to take the initial steps towards the re-
building of their character. Thus character training loses
most of its mystery, and becomes a comparatively simple
step-by-step process of redirecting and remoulding specific
systems of habits.
 CHAPTER IX
THE BUILDING OF HABITS: ASSOCIATIVE
TECHNIQUES
How, now, do we proceed to build habits? When one
considers the multitude of habits which need to be built up
in a lifetime, the answer to this question might seem diffi-

cult. As a matter of fact, there is just one basic consider-

ation in the building of habits. Every habit is built up by
associating one specific type of stimulus or response with
another specific type of response or stimulus.
Let us most simply, from animal behavior.
illustrate this,
We wish, for example, to train a dog to come for his food
at the ringing of a bell. At the outset, of course, the bell
has no food implications for the dog. Unlike the food, it
is altogether'an artificial stimulus. What we proceed to do,
now, Is to associate the artificial stimulus (bell) with the
natural stimulus (food). At the same moment that we
show the food, we ring the bell. We repeat this procedure
a number of times. Finally, we ring the bell without show-
ing the food; and the dog comes.
A habit has now been established. A
certain specific type
of response has become associated with a certain specific
type of stimulus. We
strengthen this habit of response If,
every time the bell is rung, the food appears. We weaken
the habit, if we continually break the association; i. e., if we
ring the bell and do not produce the food.
Now all habit formation is of this quite simple pattern.
1 6o INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
'Psychologists call the above a conditioned reflex, for the
reason that the response (to the bell) is not a natural one
but is a response to a condition associated with the natural
stimulus.
Let us note the process of habit formation in early child-
hood. Here is a child that is habitually crying. Granted
that there are no physical distresses, how did this crying
habit develop? The child was in distress; it cried; its

mother came running to it; took it out of its crib; fondled

it. Now not capable of reasoning
the child, obviously, is

that every time it cries, it will be taken up. But let us sup-
pose that that is exactly what does happen. An association
is up between the two: crying ... being taken up.
built
The is formed.
crying reflex
Let us suppose, however, that the mother has become
aware of the unfortunate habit and seeks to break it. She
will proceed, quite simply, by breaking the association.
The child will cry and will not be taken up. Gradually it
“learns” as we say, that crying does no good. With the
breaking of the accustomed association, the habit is discon-
tinued.
All of this seems almost too simple to need elaboration.
We state it, however, because it is the clue to all the more
complex types of habit formation. For example, we wish
to develop the moral habit of truthfulness. Let us suppose
that at one time a child, having broken a window, say, tells
the truth and is severely punished. Obviously a strong
association is established between telling the truth and
physical punishment. Thereafter the child is well on the
way to the formation of a truth-evasion habit. Let us sup-
pose, on the contrary, that every time the child tells the
truth, it is warmly praised. A different strong association
 BUILDING OF HABITS i6i

is established. The child, consequently, is on the way to

the formation of a truth-telling habit.
While, indeed, the psychological pattern of habit-
formation is simplicity itself, the difficulty, in each specific
case, lies in finding the effective associations. For example,
with what type of stimulus should we associate the act of
hand-washing-before-meals in order to develop it into a
habit? We may adopt the inspection-at-the-table-and-
scolding technique, which makes for a large amount of
troublesome expostulation. We
may adopt the inspection-
and-reward technique, which has both advantages and dis-
advantages. We may adopt a warning-bell technique. In
each case we attempt to build up a strong association
between the act of hand-washing-before-meals and the scold-
ing or reward or warning bell stimulus. We are psycholog-
ically intelligent in the exact degree to which we can select
associative stimuli that are really effective.

'Two Contrasted Techniques

In the early life of children, disapproval and punishment
are largely used as associative stimuli. We may call them
pain techniques. The child, being taught to eat with a
spoon, puts its fingers into its food. The mother cries:
“No, No!” Perhaps she gives it a rap on the hand. The
punishment or pain technique can, of course, easily be over-
done; but at this stage of life when as yet so few of the
rational associations have been formed, a bit of severity, re-
straint, even mild punishment helps iq the formation of
those elementary habits —
particularly the bodily habits
without which no child can effectively develop.
But the punishment, or association-with-a-painful-experi-
 —

i 62 influencing human behavior

ence technique soon outgrows its usefulness. Much of the
wreckage we make of adolescent life lies in the fact that the
more difficult technique — association-with-a-pleasurable-
experience — understood and less applied.
is little

Let us refer, for example, to the case of Clara. The

elderly judge who examined her was so shocked by her past
life that he called her an ‘‘abandoned woman.” ^

‘Tut Clara is not a woman, abandoned or otherwise. She is

fourteen years old, a frail American girl who comes before the
courts in hundreds of girls* cases every year — aimless, drifting, un-

aware of waste or wreckage, wishing no evil, bearing no malice,

by grown-ups. .
their sole desire not to be ‘picked at* Such girls . .

long for easy approval. They do not get this at home, but on the
street, well-dressed young men smile at them pleasantly. . * . At
home a dull routine, not even a trapeze in the backyard, parents
absorbed, and when aroused to attention, critical; when one is a
little girl one must be lady-like, — there is an instantaneous suppression
of the least outbreak in the daily schedule. There are no heightened
moments, no adventures. There is and ‘being
talk about mortals
good,’ but it is matter-of-fact, very dry. ‘Honestly, mother and
father seem sort of bored with life.’ . Then the other world
. .

smiling, gay, changing, no disapprovals, motion and rhythm in dance-

halls and swift cars; unheard of intimacy, strange and stimulating
food, vague awareness that though one may be ‘bad* the adults who
‘live this way* are contented and seemingly rewarded, at least in

movies and magazines. More than all else there is a fascinating

flood of knowledge about sex to be endlessly talked over. Experi-
ences, whispered confidences, boastings and combats between men and
women and rivals. Nothing else is so interesting as this information;
it began in childhood with a persistent intensity that took the breath,
shocking things that later became common-place, but amusing: in
short a world of easy mastery.”
^ Youth in Conflict; p. 3*.
 BUILDING OF HABITS 163

A simple psychological pattern Virtue associated with

!

dullness, suppression, scolding. Being bad associated with

gaiety, approval, excitement, mastery. A habit will form
along the most pleasurable association as inev-
line of the
itably as smoke will rise or water will run down hill.
Thus our problem in helping to shape the habits of
adolescents is to associate the type of action which we
should like to have become habitual in them with a pleasur-
able feeling.^ This was what was done so effectively In
the case, cited above, of Alice Gould. Reading had been
strongly associated with unpleasurable feelings; namely,
the nagging disappointment of the foster parent and the
thought of entering upon an undesired vocation. By as-
sociating the reading with a pleasurable feeling the sense —
of pride in being able to condense a long passage into a few
sentences by dissociating it from the pain of entering busi-
;

ness ;
by associating it with the pleasurable feeling of
again,
being able to help her foster parent in his researches, the
reading-habk was soon firmly established.
One reason, for example, why the learning-habit is so
easily and swiftly put off by most of us is that in very many
cases the habit is built up in the midst of a complex of
strongly disagreeable associations: a censorious teacher,
watchful-eyed, pouncing, bitter, sarcastic, angry; enforced
silence and movelessness; the frights of examinations; de-
merits; staying-after-school. We said above that all this

about habit-formation seemed too simple to require elabora-

tion; yetwhen one realizes how the most elementary facts
about building habits through pleasurable associations are
completely disregarded in many of our classrooms, one
doubts whether any elaboration can be too great. It is

^ See Chapter 11, “The Appeal to Wants.”

1 64 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
wholly deplorable that one of the most precious habits
—
which ought to be developed ^the habit of intellectual curb
osity —
is blocked almost at the beginning of life by the

psychological stupidity of a very great many teachers.

“The teacher herself should have made adequate adjust-
ment to life, should not look to children to supply her with
opportunities for outlet to anger, fear, wish to dominate
or to be dominated. She should not use affections of
children to gratify her need of love and approval; her own
adult relationships should be established satisfactorily.
The most important personality attribute of the successful
teacher is ability to create and foster a sense of vitality and
enthusiasm for life.” ^

Association-Constants

It is important for the teacher to realize that she is a

continuing stimulus in the child’s life. The child is daily
and hourly building up associations between her and what
he is doing. If she is just, kind, enthusiastic, the reading,
spelling, geography and the rest will be associated with her
justice, kindness, enthusiasm. If she Is unjust, cruel, a mere
taskmistress, the child’s mental activities will be associated
with her disagreeable qualities.
Thus it is of profound importance that the teacher have
the fine personality qualities —of courtesy, low voice, quiet
manners, generosity, humor, and fair play. She, in her
mere personality, quite apart from her teaching, is, for her
pupils, a powerful habit-builder. We
have an instance here
of the homeogeni'J factor discussed in the first chapter.
The same considerations, of course, apply to parents, and,
 !

OF HABITS 165

in adult life, to employers, superintendents, foremen, etc.

Again, the environments we provide are habit builders.
I remember, even as an adult, once beginning the habit of
wandering about the streets at night. I had rented a room
on the East Side of New York in the neighborhood of a
social settlement in which I was interested. It was the
only room I could secure at the time. It had, however, the
advantage of being so mean and dark and airless that I
had no need to deceive myself into believing that I “be-
longed” to the poverty stricken neighborhood. When the
nights came, I found myself stifling; there was no pleasure
in the thought of reading in that stuffy room; no pleasure
in the thought of going to bed. I found myself, night after
night, picking up my hat and wandering out, to return at
midnight or later. Heaven only knows to what a disrep-
utable end even so professorial a person as I might have
come
Obviously, if the home is crowded, dirty, noisy, we can
hardly wond§r if habits of vagrancy are developed. Our
juvenile case records are full of the amazement of re-
spectable parents that their children should have gone
astray. But a single glance at a customary home — children
sharing the same room; a dark kitchen with unwashed
dishes; a mass of uninteresting furniture; father sleeping
late on Sunday morning; stale air; mother padding about
in torn kimono and unkempt hair; later father and mother
wrangling; brothers and sisters wrangling; the voice of
neighbors heard wrangling; clotheslines and garbage cans;
— here are permanent association-factors which powerfully
affect the social and domestic habits of young people.
So, in like manner, the school building and the school
room are association-constants. The schoolroom, with its
1 66 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
glaring white wall; its mechanical pre-
stark blackboards ; its

cision of seats; its severe goddess enthroned, may be a

terrifying thing to an incoming child. It is for that reason
that the better types of schools wisely realize that the
schoolroom should be a place of interest and beauty. One
may fairly suspect that a large indictment for the intellec-
tual aversions evident in our adult population is to be
lodged against the dull, uninteresting school buildings and
schoolrooms of our childhood.
A movement is taking shape now-a-days for adult educa-
tion. This means that we are endeavoring to build up a
new type of intellectual habits among adults. There are
large handicaps to overcome: — the weariness of workers;
the enervating evening comfort of the “bourgeois;” the
general indifference to learning; the competing attractions
of the theatre, film, and radio. It is noticeable, in most
cases,however, that no effort is made to overcome these
handicaps by establishing delightful association-constants.
In Denmark, where the adult education movement has be-
come powerful, every effort is made to link up the intellec-
tual work with surroundings and activities that give pleas-
ure. The same is true in some of the adult education cen-
ters in Switzerland. In America, however, the older con-
notation of education as something severe, even repellently
severe, is maintained. Uglyrooms hard seats ab-
lecture ; ;

sence of pictures, music, social life —

it must be a hardy adult

intellectualist who can flourish under such conditions

"Devised Associations

Character is builtup by the associations in which we

take pleasure. Let us suppose that we wish to build up
 BUILDING OF HABITS 167
what we might call a “tackle” quality in a youth’s charac-
ter— the quality of taking hold of difficult problems and
pushing them through. We are now at the point where
we see how ineffective mere admonition is how less than in-

—
;

effective mere sarcasm or scolding is unless the person

who admonishes or scolds or is sarcastic is, despite his poor
technique, really admired — in which case the pleasurable
association is with him. We now see that if we are to
build up the particular habit-system which we call the
“tackle” quality, we must associate it with something which
is in itself pleasurable.
How we do this ? One kind of answer is given by
shall
a new type of school developing in Europe, the Landerzie-
hungsheime of Germany and Switzerland (an outgrowth
of the Abbotsholme school in England) In these schools, .

the students live a large measure of outdoor life, do carpen-

tering and farm work, help build their school equipment,
sometimes even the buildings. The purpose is to achieve
the “tackle’^ quality through activities that are in them-
selves pleasurable.
The aim Boy and Girl Scouts, Campfire Girls, and
of the
similar organizations, is much the same. Endurance, faith-
fulness, wish to help, cooperation, alertness these are fine —
moral most readily be developed by as-
qualities that can
sociating them with activities which require no coaxing.
Most of the habit-systems which we wish to develop in
young people are not in themselves pleasurable. Take, for
example, the sense of responsibility. We can, however,
make it pleasurable by the simple device of giving young
people pleasurable responsibilities. Thus, for example, the
student safety patrols in our schools, who stand at the
street crossings and guard the younger children from traffic
1 68 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
dangers, are having the kind of experience which makes
them the envy of every child. Because they are enjoying
the responsibility so thoroughly, they are learning to enjoy
being responsible.
Finally, we may establish associations through the imag-
inative life. The boy who thrills at the hardy adventur-
ousness of Daniel Boone, establishes a powerful association
which tends to build up a splendid moral quality in his life.
We need hardly comment upon the boy who thrills at the
exploits of the Deadwood Dicks, or who, in more modern
fashion, follows on the silver screen the amours of the
latest high-powered sheik.

Summary
It is clear, then, that we build habits through associations.
Our first task is to watch carefully the association-constants
in our life —
(i) persons: —
^parents, teachers, managers,
foremen; (2) environments: homes, schooj buildings,—
classrooms, churches, factories, offices. These, we find, are
powerful In building up habits of aversion or of delight.
Our next task
is to be intelligent in devising associations

with situations and activities that are in themselves pleas-

urable.
Character, in short, is most effectively built by the asso-
ciations in which we take pleasure. Once this is clearly un-
derstood, the punishment techniques which so largely pre-
vail — ^because they are the easiest resort of our indolent hu-
man nature — ^will be reduced to a rational minimum.
 CHAPTER X
OUR UNCONSCIOUS FABRICATION HABITS
Let us regard now some habits which grow up like rank
weeds, and which are almost, if not entirely, neglected.
The normal mind is moved, among others, by two basic
drives — self-regard and least efEort. Out of self-regard
spring most of the activities which tend to fit us into our
human environment. For one to be wholly out of the en-
vironmental picture is to suffer the agonies of the isolated
damned. But here is a curious thing about human life.

Even when we cannot fit into the picture, our self-regard

never permits us to remain wholly outcast. When the ob-
jective isol^tiop is at its worst, we set about building for
ourselves a world of fabrication into which we fit ourselves
with more or less satisfaction. It is in this manner that
the day-dream is born as the compensating state of mind
for one who cannot fit himself into the objective situation.
When the day-dream is so intensified and prolonged that it
is the normal state, it becomes the hallucination of insan-

ity.

Insanity regarded as deplorable, not because the in-

is

dividual is unhappy; he is often the happiest of mortals.

It is regarded as deplorable because the happiness is gained
through an evasion of reality.
Between the sheer hallucination of insanity and the sheer
objectivism of a harmony with one’s environment, there are
169
170 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
all degrees. Thus the day-dream may take the form of a
relatively harmless playing with delightful possibilities.

The dreaming may be but momentary and may in no way

incapacitate one for serious attention to the realities. Or
the day-dream may be
temporary compensation for cer-
a
tain inevitable weaknesses later to be outgrown. It is in

this respect that the child is much given to dreaming. He

is at a peculiarly helpless stage in his life’s career. All
sorts of fascinating possibilities present themselves which
he is still So he dreams of being a
powerless to realize.
big man like his father; of eating all the pies he wants; of
sailing off on a big ship of being a general and leading an
;

army to victory. Day-dreaming of this sort has at least

the quasi-reality of anticipatory experience, and is outgrown
as the child’s power to master his environment develops.
As he becomes adult, he substitutes for the pleasure of the
dream the pleasure of objective achievement. Any post-
ponement or balking of this normal development this —
—
power to achieve is deplorable. Any adv^nee into adult-
hood which still preserves, as dominant, the day-dream
habit of childhood an indication of objective defeat.
is

Such an individual, has not been able to fit himself

in short,
into his objective environment. He returns therefore to
the easy, compensatory way of childhood and lives a life
of infantile unreality.
In this day-dream habit we note the play of the other
basic drive, that of least effort. Often the day-dream is

a substitute for effort. It is a way of achieving exquisite

satisfactions without going through the hard labor of sub-

duing the recalcitrancies of nature. Many a man slips into
this easier way, is too indolent to face the facts and grapple
with the realities. fThen, since the desire for maintaining
 FABRICATION HABITS 171

one’s self-respect is also basic, he unconsciously elaborates

self-excuses which confirm him in the belief that the fabri-

cated way is the better way. He regards himself as more
sensitive than the common herd; he finds reality vulgar; he
detects in himself a poetic strain; he glories in living apart,
in being of finer stuff. In the end, as he becomes habitu-
ated to his evasion of reality, he builds up a delicately self-
enhancing picture of himself; and he goes through his days
»• delightfully unaware of the fact that he has regressed to or
never grown beyond the stage of infancy.
This pattern of the compensatory day-dream is now fa-
miliar to most persons. What is not so familiar is the man-
ner in which it plays its part in our ordinary social thinking
and serves to hinder the types of thought and action which
are necessary for social progress.

Romantic Evasions
The example of a day-dream so incorpor-
greaj; historic
ated into everyday that it became a hindrance to pro-
life
gressive social thinking was the heaven concept. The
heaven concept was distinctly compensatory. It was. born
out of human helplessness. In the midst of a situation
which seemed too difficult to control, it offered an escape, on
the one hand from utter hopelessness, on the other, from
grilling objective effort. It was the easiest way to secure
achievement.
It is significant that the heaven concept (of some kind)
is the more vividly held the more we g<i back into the child-
hood of the race. There objective controls scarcely ex-
isted, and the only escape was through a complete outflank-
ing of objective reality. It is also significant that the
172 :
INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
heaven concept with which Christians are familiar was born
out of a condition of social impotence. The early Chris-
tians could do nothing with their great brutal world of Ro-
man domination. Their easiest way, therefore, was to
build up the fabrication of a compensatory order, insti-
tuted and governed by a power friendly to themselves. It
needs, of course, hardly to be said that this fabrication was
not known as a fabrication. The peculiarity of our uncon-
scious motives is that they fabricate without letting our
conscious selves be aware that it is pure, self-easing and
self-excusing fabrication.
What heaven fabrication is that it
interests us in this
went distinctly counter to what was
socially wholesome. It
excused and justified the slackening of men’s efforts to
straighten out their immediate objective world. It pro-
duced in them an effortless futurism, a Micawber-like will-
ingness to let the great and glorious thing “turn up,”
What is significant about our present civilization is that,
as objective controls have increased, the wi-llingness to en-
gage in celestial day-dreaming has decreased. Many of
the churches are distressed at this, much as a teller of chil-
dren’s stories might be distressed at the gradual diminution
of the ranks as her little hearers grew up into youth and

adulthood. Where, on the contrary, the churches have be-

come alive to the significance of what is happening, they
have come to see that, as historic elaborators and cultivat-
ors of the heaven-fabrication, they have played the part of
hindrances to social effort and advance. Such churches dis-
card the fabricatiorv and shift their emphasis from an ideal
future life to ideals that are to be striven for in this present
state.
 FABRIGATION HABITS :r73

Progress in religion, in short, may be psychologically ex-

pressed as a progress from the infantilism of fabrication
to the adulthood of objective achievement in the realm of
ideals.
A hundred years or more ago the great source of ease-
—
ment for the ordinary person ^particularly for the woman
-—was the reading of the Bible. Here was imaginative
compensation. As the pious person read, the difficulties
and the sorry defeats of everyday life fell away. A great
Reality unrolled itself, which swept the reader up into its
sublime joys.
Today the Bible has, in a large measure, ceased to be
a source of easement. A critical age has pronounced it to
be, in large measure, historically and scientifically untrue.
Has the critical age therefore abandoned altogether the
easement that lies in fabrication, and set out resolutely to
obtain its exquisite joys only through objective achievement?
Today the place formerly held by the Bible is held by the
romance. And significantly enough it is the woman, in the
main, who reads the romance —
although as the delights of
this means of evasive satisfaction are becoming known,
Adam is a close second to Eve of the apple.
in the eating
With the woman, apparently, it is again a case of com-
pensatory fabrication. Although far advanced beyond her
pious sisters in social emancipation, she is still the relatively
helpless member of the community. She is still peculiarly
tied to a single function and, in most cases, to a single per-
sonal association. Her
sphere of objective achievement is
still relatively stereotyped and limited. To be sure, her
peculiar function of child training is, in View of our psychol-
ogical illuminations, becoming far less stereotyped; her per-
 t-' ^

174 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

sonal association is far less of the purely submissive kind;
while, in turn, broader fields of objective achievement have
been opened up to her. Nevertheless, compared with the
man, she is still the creature largely bound. not at all
It is
surprising then that she should find her way of escape by
the pathway of fabrication.
For the romance is a way of escape. It is a powerful
means whereby we identify ourselves with imagined persons
and situations that express our own unconscious wishes.
It is a notorious fact that the novel-reading habit may be-
come a kind of narcotic vice, making its victims insensitive
to the difficult necessities of their environment, slackened in
power to grapple effectively with objective realities.
Here again we note the socially hindering effect of this
type of fabrication. an easement, an easement by
It is

evasion. The person who can live in the glowing ecstacies

of romantic imagination has as little feeling of the stark
inadequacies of his world as the alcoholic singing his joy-
ous songs in the midst of squalor, or the infantile religion-
ist babbling his happy hopes of heaven.

We must, of course, discriminate; for the novel is not all

romance. There is the type of novel which, like the new
type of church, discards as completely as It can this fantasy-
breeding habit; the novel which seeks, with dramatic power
as well as with psychological and social accuracy, to depict
the situations in which we must take our part; and which
by making us identify ourselves with personages and situa-
tions, awakens the habit of social analysis and effort. But
such novels are few compared with the multitude of fantasy-
breeding stories th^t give delusive easement from trouble-
some reality.
 —

FABRICATION HABITS ^^S

Fabricated Superiorities

The object of all fabrication of this kind is to place one-

self securely in a position of superiority. One of the most
persistent ways which this is done is through social fabri-
in
cations. It seems almost essential to our self-respect that
we find some group or class or set which we can consider
inferior to our own. It is a well-known psychological fact
that what we strongly wish to find we invariably do find, al-
though in the finding, we may have subtly to dispense with
some of the less convenient canons of truth. Thus, for ex-
ample, is all ethnocentrism born, the conviction that one’s
own group is the superior one.
Ethnocentrism is very amusing when seen with the sophis-
ticated eye in others, as for example when the Chinaman
thinks bis people superior to ours; or the Esquimo or the
Hindoo. It is far less amusing when one is himself con-
victed of it. The curious thing indeed about this racial
or group self-deception is that it can only be seen at a dis-

tance. Near by, it vanishes, and

supposed not to exist.
is

But this, psychologically interpreted, simply means that it

functions, —
^but for that reason, with greater effectiveness

only in the unconscious.

Thus the American gentile who holds his skirts aside at
the approach of a Jew, does not realize that he has prob-
ably unconsciously fabricated a racial view which gives him
prodigious satisfaction. Consciously, he may, with great
sympathy for the Jews that they
earnestness, express his —
are outcast; he may even be intelligent enough to deplore
the fact that two thousand years of p^secution have put
the Jews out of touch with the niceties of the Christian civ-
 —

1 76 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

ilization that persecuted them. He may seem to he full of
sympathy; but even that sympathy is a self-glorification
which makes him walk with firmer step and more uplifted
head. In fact, without some such creature as this to pity
—
and to exclude he would miss some of the most exquisite
joys of self-congratulation.
As is well known, the more insecure one’s own social su-
periority the more one finds the need for buttressing his self
upon the inferiority of the
respect by centering his attention
members of some other group. Thus in this case of an-
tagonism to the Jews we find that the hatreds and intoler-
ances are the fiercer and more uncontrolled the lower the
scale of intelligence. It is the thoroughly ignorant upon
whom one depends for the pogroms. As one rises in the
scale to persons highly intelligent and finely discriminating,
one discovers the anti-Jew feeling progressively diminishing,
until in those whose refinement and intelligence are without
question, one finds it, as a purely racial antagonism, alto-
gether absent.
Ignorance, relative or absolute, is always the fertile soil
for fabrication. Superstition is a form of fabrication that
concerns itself with the forces of nature. Racial and group
antagonism is a form of fabrication which concerns itself
with the human factors in the environment. In both cases,
the unconscious fabrication is the ignorant person’s easiest
way of fitting himself securely into the picture. When he
wears a rabbit’s foot as a protection against rheumatism, he
has achieved that perfect assurance which passeth all un-
derstanding. When he turns a Jew out of a hotel, he has
achieved that sense of God-given grace which makes him a
kinder father and a more loyal citizen.
The same is true of the ignorant Protestant’s attitude
 '

IS/.'.

HABITS 177

toward the Catholics. Here, again, there is no intelligent

attempt to learn the real character of individual Catholics.
By means of an easy fabrication, an anti-CatholIc complex
applicable indiscriminately to everyone professing the Cath-
olic faith is built up. That fabrication is then the truth,
the kind of truth which gives the ignorant Protestant a
more secure feeling of his complete superiority and a
grander conviction of his chosen place in the eyes of the
Lord.
Social snobbishness, again. Is a prevalent form of fabri-
cation. Here likewise Is a trait that can be seen only at a
distance; for none of us know ourselves to be snobbish.
Again, this is so because our snobbishness is deeply hidden
away in our unconsciousness, where it functions with the
greater effectiveness.
Snobbishness arises out of an unwillingness to be critically
honest about other people. That unwillingness, in turn,
arises out of our own unrecognized wish to be securely su-
perior. The combination of these two make us fabricate
an inferiority in the other. Thus to have our own little
set and deliberately to exclude others from our set gives
us a continuing sense of power. This may be and in most —
cases is —
compensatory. We should like to be in a higher
set, but cannot. We deliberately repress our disappoint-
ment into unconsciousnessby the more rigorously excluding
certain persons from our own set and so building up an
“our set” complex. Here, again, it is only when we rise
to persons who are fine in Intelligence and wisdom that we
find this compensatory trait almost abseii,t.
The college fraternity, unfortunately, is often a breeding
place for this kind of snobbishness-fabrication. Here the
fabricator uses a typical form of rationalization. It would
178 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
be too crude for fraternity members to say that they consid-
ered themselves superior to others, that they excluded those
whom they considered inferior to themselves. Hence the
earnest statement that it is good for likeminded persons to
be together, since out of the harmony of such likeminded-
ness comes great social and spiritual good I The charac-
teristic of all rationalization, of course, is to give a per-
fectly acceptable reason for a motive which is itself per-
fectly unacceptable.^

Ego Magnification

We amusing
find this fabrication habit taking all sorts of
forms. Thus the member of an adult fraternal order who
puts on his tinsel uniform and marches down the street be-
fore the eyes of his womankind is acting out his infantile
fantasy of military heroism. He is a hero returning from
the wars. All the city has turned out to greet him. He
rides in on his trusty charger. There stands the girl he
loves —and who has perhaps cruelly rejected him. The
crowd cheers; the girl, in a sudden rush of returning love
and admiration, throws him a blossom from her bou-
quet. , . .

It is the dream stuff of which all our life is made and if, ;

when we are old and undistinguished, we grasp what sorry

means we have to bespangle ourselves as heroes and to feel
the creep of gooseflesh under the admiring eyes of our stout
Susans and our buxom Janes, who shall deny us?
Unless, perhaps,_ there here a subtle danger, the dan-
is

ger that our fabricated satisfactions will last over as reali-

ties and make us insensitive to unlovely things; or what is

1 This will be treated more fully in the following chapter.

 FABRICATION HABITS
worse, intolerant of those who tell of unlovely things. The
characteristic of the inveterate “joiner” is that he is a
“good fellow.” Is he not a “good fellow,” perhaps, be-
cause he has found, in his naive, fabricated way, how to
fashion his world into a good world — for himself and his
crowd? Has he, in short, not found an unconscious way
of easement, which releases him from all obligation to grap-
ple with unlovely realities, and so puts him in the same
class with the heaven-adoring religionist and the romance-
reading nursemaid?
When, however, the tinsel uniform of the lodge member
is exchanged for the ghostly and sinister uniform of the
lyncher or the terrorizer, then the fabrication-habit leads
to tragedy. Here again, the same motives are operative.
Here is the magnifying of the ego in the easiest way, a mag-
nifying that is by way of compensation for a minifying in
ordinary life. One does not find these terrorizing orders
officered by distinguished scientists. One does not find
lynching mohs ie4 by the Wells’s, the Bernard Shaw’s, the
Masefield’s. One finds them led by men who, in ordinary
life, have the basic craving for distinction; but who, by
reason of mediocrity of their powers, are able to achieve dis-
tinction only by facing away from the realities and building
up a fabricated structure of evil and hatred and infantile
retribution.
Here again, all the well known processes of rationalizing
self-deception are These men declare and
operative. —
—
deeply believe it that they are terrorizing for the good of
the community. They are wielding the scourge for an
angry God. They are cleansers rectifiers citizens burning
; ;

with the flame of righteousness. Here, again, the reason

given is wholly acceptable. It is, indeed, so acceptable that
i8o INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
itcompletely hides from the perpetrators their real motives.
And so crimes are committed in the name of justice, but in
the unconscious service of self-glorification.

New Moral Commandments

Some day, in our education of future adults, we shall pay
more attention to this socially mischievous fabricatibn-
habit. We are still very naive and crude about our educa-
tion. About the only form of deception that we get excited
over is the overt lie. We
are utterly abased if it is discov-
—
ered to us that our children or that we ourselves have —
perpetrated this awful sin. But the overt lie, while indeed
culpable, is harmless compared with these processes of un-
recognized self-deception which daily and hourly shape our
characters into the prejudices, intolerances, indifferences and
complacencies that slacken our social efforts and hold us
content with the world as it is.

There is every indication, however, of a very real and

significant psychological awakening. Even the ordinary
man today knows that there Is such a thing as a rationaliza-
tion; and while he may not be quite certain just what it is,
—
he knows that everybody himself included has not infre- —
quently an attack of it. He tends therefore, a bit un-
easily, to watch himself for signs of the distemper. Also,
he has a triumphant sense of detecting rationalizations in
persons with whom he disagrees.
All this, elementary and confused as it Is, is to the good.
It means that the psychological subsoil is being turned up
and that a new crop of social admonitions is in process of
planting. Precisely as our automobile consciousness is be-
 FABRICATION HABITS i8i

ing so awakened that wesoon write with sternness:

shall
“Thou shalt not pass another car on a curve;” or “Thou
shalt remember thy neighbor which is behind thee to wave
him a warning when thou slackeneth they speed;” so we
shall write, with even greater sternness “Thou shalt not,
:

in thine unconscious self, build for thyself an image of su-

periority, either of thyself or thy wife or thy children, thy
race or thy social set;” or happy romance
“Beware the
when it enticeth; for it slackeneth the arm and weakeneth
the heart, and maketh one to lie down in the folly of one’s
own imaginings;” or “Put not on the uniform, neither of
grandeur nor of terror; for in the one case it maketh into
a child tickled at its own vanities; in the other, into a fiend,
that excuseth his indulgences in the name of the Lord.”
The opposite of the fantasy-habit is the habit of grap-
pling with objective reality. That form of fabrication
which we call superstition has, thanks to methods of ob-
servation and objective control, largely diminished. The
problem nowjs hpw to apply this same method of observa-
tion and objective control to the region of our personal and
social judgments. The first step, apparently, lies in a rig-
orous objective analysis of our psychological selves. Such
an analysis, no doubt, will eventually become as regular a
part of the education of the young as the learning of the
multiplication table. For every one to know how persis-
tently his unconscious desires tend to twist and falsify his
judgments, how they induce in him a fool’s satisfaction of
unreal superiority, how they breed intolerances, prejudices,
social hatreds, is to make him at least alert to dangers and
in a better position to correct them when they develop into
too obvious mischief.
1 82 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
So the study of all human history will become illuminated.
Instead of being seen as a neutral succession of events, it
will be seen rather as the serio-comic play of men’s uncon-
scious desires magnified into the action of groups. Such
a study of history will make, one would suppose, for a
greater wisdom in the evaluation of the present conflicts
and tendencies that have the same psychological rootage.
The recognition that social judgments are, in the main,
subjective, in short, is the first step in social wisdom. The
next step is not simply to distrust these judgments; that is
the function of the social sneerer it is rather to understand
;

them. One may suspect therefore that the next great stage
in human emancipation —physical science and technology
—
having played the dominant part in the first stages will de-
velop through an objective understanding of the psycholog-
ical conditions which shape our judgments. As that un-
derstanding becomes clear and secure, it will inevitably pene-
trate through to the training of the still immature. Only
in that way may we hope eventually to achieve a social men-
tality less given to subjective illusion and more responsive
to the demands of the environmental realities.

Our Basic Problem

Our very problem then is to trace out in ourselves

basic
these fabricated forms of mental and emotional life. As
a matter of fact, not only do we not trace out and try to
understand them, but we make no effort to check their de-
velopment in that period of life when they have not yet
grown to large dimensions. We teach the multiplication
table and spelling and geography. We establish habits of
 FABRICATION HABITS 183

toothbrushlng and politeness. We do not teach the basic

facts of self-deception, self-excusing, self-glorification and
evasion.
Gan this be done? Can we, in short, develop habits of
straight thinking? This is our next major problem.
 )

CHAPTER XI
THE PROBLEM OF STRAIGHT THINKING
Our fundamental concern, then, is to build up habits of
straight thinking. How is this to be done? Apparently,
our educational systems exist for that purpose. Do they
accomplish their end? If they did, one would indeed be
put to it to explain the self-deluded terrorizers, practically
all of whom are the product of our school systems; the race
snobs; the lynchers; the breakers-up-of-liberal-meetings;
the curbers of free speech; the war-rumor hounds; the “sic-
em-Uncle-Sam” misguided type of patriots, the patent medi-
cine and the gold brick victims.
Let us consider the technique used in the schools for in-
ducing straight thinking. The chief and Captain of them
is the “drill” technique. 2 times 2 equals 4; e-a-t spells
eat; Albany is the capital of New York; a sentence has a
subject and a predicate; Columbus discovered America in

1492 . . . ye terriers, drill!”

“drill, After a pleasant in-
troductory season of play in the kindergarten, education be-
comes the serious business of learning by heart what one is
rigorously bidden to learn.
Unquestionably, a noticeable degree of accuracy is thereby
attained —
in a few matters. But two questions arise ( i :

Does this accuracy “carry over” into other regions of men-

tal life? (2) Does the “drill” techinque inspire an ardent
love for accuracy?
184
 PROBLEM OF ^STRAIGHT THINKING 185

No Transfer of Skills

Upon the answer to the first question, educational psy-

chologists are now fairly in agreement: a skill attained in
one mental pursuit does not necessarily “transfer” to other
mental pursuits. Thus, for example, the power to be in-
fallibly accurate as to multiplication tables does not, of
necessity, make one an accurate-minded reader of history
or of the newspapers. Accuracy in each of the latter re-
gions seems to require a training of its own.
This conclusion has most profound implications. Let us
note the kinds of mental accuracy developed in the schools.
They consist of accuracy (i) with regard to the adding,
subtracting, multiplying and dividing of numbers; (2) the
spelling of words; (3) the forming and punctuating of
sentences; (4) the learning of known facts about the loca-
tion of cities, rivers, mountains, and about the population
and products of cities and countries; (5) the learning of
known facts about certain outstanding historic occur-
rences. Accuracy in these matters is practically the sum to-

tal of education as it exists in most of our elementary

schools.
However, the accuracies required in our adult thinking go
far beyond these. 7 times 9 equals 63 will not enable one
to measure the amount of uncritical opinion contained in an
editorial; “s-e-i-z-e spells seize” will not help one far in put-
ting together the various arguments for and against Soviet
philosophy. “Hoboken lies to the west of New York” will
not be of great assistance in estimating the truth and the
falsity inrace propaganda. “Senteaces have modifying
clauses” will give one little critical accuracy in judging the
philosophy of economic imperialism. In short, the accur-
1 86 INFLUENCING HUMAn BEHAVIOR
acy developed in the classrooms, at best, holds good only
for the very limited subjects studied and does not, of ne-
cessity, induce an accuracy of mind which operates in other
regions.
Thus the elementary school system, with all its purpose
to prepare for life, does little more than make of the pupils
something rather less than good adding machines, fair at-
lases and rather poor outlines of history. Life, however,
requires that they be far more than mechanical technicians
and compendia of facts, for life is a continuous process of
judging, weighing, balancing, drawing conclusions; not a
process of reciting sums, dates and localities.

Being Accurate and Loving Accuracy Are Diferent

In the second place, a “drill” technique, while it achieves

In the pupils a kind of ready and limited accuracy, really
precludes the development of the kind of attitude which
would make the wider and more fruitful appreciation of
that skill and accuracy possible. A boy mky h*ave learned
perfectly to parse every sentence in his book and yet have
a slumbering hatred for the whole business. He achieves
grammatic accuracy at the profound cost of hating it. Ob-
viously, then, he is in no mood to pursue accuracy as a fas-
cinating life aim. This, of course, is the severest indict-
ment of the prevailing educational methods. They get
from the pupil the golden eggs of precise information but ;

they kill the goose that lays them. For however much a
boy or girl may be induced to know accurately, if he or she
has not learned to l(?ve the art of seeking to know accurately
in all things, the mere knowledge is a barren thing.
 PROBLEM OF STRAIGHT THINKING 187

The Schools Even Encourage Inaccuracy

But this is not the worst. For it might easily be ob-
jected that not everything can be accomplished within a
few elementary years. However, there would hardly seem
to be an excuse for the kind of teaching which quite defi-
nitely encourages the inaccurate, the prejudiced and the
dogmatic mind.
The greatest offenses are committed in the field of his-
tory. Only in the rarest cases, for example, is history
studied from the point of view of more than one textbook.
This is particularly unfortunate where the history is that of
one’s own nation; for in such a case the result is almost in-

variably a disproportioned and ofttimes distorted account

which the pupil (for he knows no better) accepts as the en-
tire truth. Whether the account in the single textbook be
true or not, however, matters little; the method of learning

history from one source induces an uncritical receptiveness

of mind and a resultant dogmatism that carry forward only
too fatally into adult judgments on historical and political
issues. History, as we shall presently show, presents a
rich opportunity for the development of the critical, weigh-
ing mind. It is an opportunity, however, which is in far
toomany cases completely neglected.
One might suppose that the teaching of science would
show more favorable results. But, in the first place, the
great majority of our population, who leave school at the
end of the elementary grades, study no science! Or if, in

rare cases they do, they do not study it scientifically. For

to learn certain facts which are stated as science-facts is not
by any means to study science; e. g., the distance to the
i88 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
moon; the fact that water is made up of Hydrogen and Oxy-
gen. The essence of science is the scientific method.
Scientific method involves accurate observation, careful ex-
periment, cautious inference. Where the student sirnply
learns science-facts out of a textbook, he is no more being
trained in the true spirit of science than if he were reciting
doggerel verse. That is perhaps why anti-science flourishes
so unashamed in the land. The chief weapon against dog-
matism, in short, is unfortunately too often presented in the
schools (where it is presented) dogmatically.
We need not pursue the analysis. The schools doubly
fall short on the ground that the “drill” technique tends to
kill the very spirit of ardent pursuit of truth; while the ac-

tual inaccuracies taught in the schools and the dogmatic

methods of teaching even facts, develop minds that are
sorely unfit for the noble task of thinking straight.

Again, the Associative Technique

How then shall we do it? Obviously we must concern

ourselves with far more than these limited and specific kinds
of accuracy. We must, if we can, develop the ardent love
for accuracy, for straight thinking in all things. We must,
in short, develop an accuracy-habit-system.
Our chapter on building habits has perhaps given us the
clue. As human beingsgrow older, habits can be less and
less effectively established by punishment techniques. We
develop habits most strongly, it was noted, to the extent
that we associate desii'ed types of action with pleasur-
able feelings.
Let us report, here, in illustration, an actual proceeding
in a third year class (Miss Katharine Keelor’s) in one of
 PROBLEM OF STRAIGHT THINKING 1 89
the more fortunately organized schools, the Lincoln School
of Teachers College, New York City. Out of a study of
boats had grown an interest in historic discoveries. The
discovery of America was discussed. The students went to
all the books in the library on which they could lay their
hands. They brought back the astonishing information
that the books differed! Some books said that Columbus
had discovered America; others said that Leif Ericsson had
done it. The class was at first divided into heated parti-
sans for their favorites. But the matter was not permitted
to rest there. The whole class set to work comparing the
different accounts (youngsters of eight!) and discussing the
relative points of historic value. Some made an eager
visit to the Museum of Natural History to find out what
they could learn there. At the end they reached the con-
matter could not be decided and that they
clusion, that the
would have to wait for further evidence.
Crude and elementary as the whole procedure was, to be
smiled at by austere historians, could anything have been
more finely in the spirit of science
Note, now, that these young students had not been
“assigned” a lesson on the discovery of America. They
were not “studying” a textbook. They were out on a hunt,
a self-imposed hunt and they were having thrilling advent-
;

ures on the way

Again, one day, in this same class, a child, whirling the
globe of the world, was heard to remark that it was at least
two thousand miles from New York to Oklahoma. An-
other child said it was over three thousand. Neither child
knew how measure distance on the globe. Each child
to
was at the They brought their prob-
stage of “opinion.”
lem to the teacher; and soon they all knew about the ac-
190 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
curate use of scales of miles on maps. They had graduated
from opinion to science.
In this same school, science begins in the kindergarten.
Nor does it begin with a textbook, but with flower pots and
aquaria. The children observe, because they naturally love
to observe; but their observations do not go unchecked.
They are constantly checked up by the group. How long
was it before the tadpole changed into a frog? One child
has the glib ready answer of the guesser. Another child
has another answer. “Why, we put it down on the cal-
endar;” says another. “Let’s count up the days.” Ob-
servation documentation the will to be accurate
; ;

In these children the desire to be accurate is becoming

a fascinating daily habit.
Education, by and large, has not yet caught this central
idea that what we need to develop in children is not so much
a knowledge of facts as an attitude toward facts an atti- —
tude which “refuses all substitutes.”
In one of the advanced grades of the same school, con-
ducted by Dr. Daniel C. Knowlton, the students read a
—
weekly journal usually the Literary Digest and in each —
article selected determine exactly what are the facts pre-
sented and what are the opinions. A
year of that kind of
training to distinguish fact from opinion works wonders
with young minds. Here, again, the assignment is not
something to be learned and recited. There is something
to be discovered by the student and when discovered to be
defended before the group.

Exposing the Rationalizing Process Early

The fairly widespread awareness of the fact that there

is a rationalizing process is rather a recent achievement.
 1

PROBLEM OF STRAIGHT THINKING 19

As a matter of fact even many adults who talk glibly of this

or that person’s rationalizing often confuse it with a good
—
many other things usually with plain stubbornness. It is
little wonder, then, that the exposing of its dangers has not
yet penetrated to the earlier years. However, as its power
for mischief becomes increasingly revealed, there is every
reason to believe that before long warnings will be issued
against even in the early years of children’s lives, pre-
it

cisely as we now
issue warnings against the most awful error
of computing 7 plus 5 as 13. It seems a pity that children
must grow up to a college class in psychology before they
can be made clearly aware of this insidious art of self de-
ception.
Once we understand quite clearly what the rationalizing
process is, it is not difficult to find numerous examples of it
in the lives of children, as well as in the literature they read.
Rationalizing, as we know, has its source in an intense de-
sire—an “emotionalized system of ideas” — ^which is itself in

conflict witlT another desire. Let us suppose, for example,

that a married man
has fallen in love with another woman.
He may secretly visit her, in which case there is a perpetual
conflict between his passion and his sense of what is right,
or at least respectable. A
conflict of such a kind is not
pleasant. He may of course solve it by giving up the pas-
sionate love or by deserting his wife.
;
Either course will
make him unhappy. Finally he discovers a most accept-
able way to ease his mental distresses. He begins to
argue that the sex conventions are really too narrow, par-
ticularly for men of a finer nature; and that extra-marital
relationships are necessary for one’s development. Pretty
soon he has quite convinced himself of that. Then he goes
on to argue that, of course, his wife will not understand, she
192 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
being a woman hence in order not to hurt her -for he
;
—
really does not wish to hurt her, poor thing—-he must keep
it all quite seci-et. Now he is perfectly happy. He has
supplied himself with an apparently indisputable reason for
doing what he wants to do, a reason, of course, which is not
the real reason at all. The real reason is his passionate de-
sire for the other woman. His expressed “reason” is the
means whereby he deceives himself into a standpoint which
saves his own feelings of what is right or respectable and
also permits him to have what he wants.
Now and child literature are full of examples
child life
of just this procedure. The fox wanted the sour grapes.
He tried hard to get them but failed. “Bah!” he finally
said and walked away “They are only sour grapes !” Was
;

that the real reason, the child might be asked. Of course

not. What was it then? It was a make-believe reason.
And why did he give a make-believe reason? Because he
did not want to acknowledge that he could not get the
grapes. . •

Or, again, the fox had lost his tail. He went about say-
ing that it was much more stylish to be without a tail.

Was that his real reason? Of course not. WTy did he

give it? Because he did not like to acknowledge that he
did not have what the other foxes had.
A v/ealth of examples suggest themselves in child life.

In fact, children are masterly rationalizers. It must be re-

membered, of course, that rationalizing is not overt and in-

tended deception. The rationalizer really deceives himself.

Thus the fox leaped so many times that bitterness entered
his soul. He really believed after a while that the grapes
_

were sour, or at least that he did not want them anyway;

while the fox without a tail, as he surveyed himself in the
 —

PROBLEM OF STRAIGHT THINKING 193

mirror, actually became convinced that tails, after all,

weren’t so handsome, when you came to think about it.
So the child frequently deceives himself as to his true
reasons. He wants something very badly,—to go to a
week-end party, say. But he knows he has lessons to do.
Fie can quite fervently convince himself that he can do his
lessons much better if he gets up early Monday moiming
and does them when he is fresh. Or he does not want to
wash the dishes. He can quite earnestly convince himself,
that really, he has a lot of homework to do—oh, a lot-
and half an hour later will be found reading a story. Or,
in school, he does not wish to buckle down to his arithmetic;
and he can quite eloquently explain that he really has to
finish that boat he is making; he has a chance to use the
tools now, etc., etc.

We shall not get very far if we introduce into the elemen-

tary grades lessons in the logic and psychology of rationaliz-
ing. But to get children on the
still hunt for signs of self-

deceptive reasoning in themselves and their fellows; to

make a merry game out of it all so that it is not taken too
seriously yet nevertheless gets into the habit-systems of the
children, may work wonders toward bringing up a new
generation less subject than the older generations, to sol-
emn, self-justifying muddle-headedness.^

What Shall We Do With the Older Generation?

But, now, what of the older generation? We touch here
upon one of the profound problems of our modern civiliza-
^ Child
life is so full of the gentle art of “kid<iiing oneself along’^ that
it a pity not to scotch the bad habit at the beginning. For when we
is
grow old, the habit has become so much a part of us that we are often
unable to distinguish between the still small voice of our own intense de-
sires and the pretentious explanations we give to gratify them.
194 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
tion. Let us note the curious psychological situation in
which an average adult in an average small city finds him-
self.

In the first place, supposing that he left school at about

fourteen years of age, the mental training (outside of his
was given
specialized vocational life) which he has received
him during immature years. That rigorous mental
his
training gave him command of a few necessary but quite
elementary skills. Beyond these, his mental training was
nil. Even if he was fortunate enough to have gone to
teachersmore richly endowed than usual with social insight,
his mind was too immature to grasp full significances in
matters social, historical, political, economic and moral.
Hence, in the only period open to him for systematic and
thoroughgoing training in the questions that most vitally
concern human life, his mind was left unequipped.
He is now a man of between thirty and forty. He has
read the newspapers and popular magazines; has gone to
“happy ending” plays; perhaps to church,; ha« learned to
make a fair amount of money. He has never had the
chance to subject his mind to a thorough overhauling as far
as the really crucial matters of human life are concerned.
His mind, therefore, is, save in rare cases, a museum of im-
mature fixations, snap judgments, picked-up prejudices, and
unverified “hand-me-downs.” It is the mind of a child on
the shoulders of an adult.
Today, he judges the affairs of the nation. He brings up
a family; he selects or deposes a minister of his church; a
respected and influential member of the board of education,
he decides what shall and shall not be taught, and how.
And he doubtless has already done his fair share of heresy
hunting!
 !

PROBLEM OF STRAIGHT THINKING 195

Again, let us remember that he graduated at fourteen.
Or no, let us give him some “advantages.” Let us have
him go on to high school and to college. Now he belongs
to the “intellectual elite.” He has his sheepskin; and the
world is his oyster
How mightily that brain worked at college Between !

Chaucer, and French verbs, and football and beer-busts it

really developed There was one professor who began to
!

set his brain stirring. A rather upsetting young chap, the

professor was. He did not seem to think that the world
oyster was already long since opened and ready for the
ing. The world was full of problems
— eat-
“social maladjust-
ments,” “unjust exploitation” and other seemingly unlovely
things which one did not mention in the society of papas and
mamas. The young student’s mind, filled with cliches and
conventional fixations, was just beginning to stir, when the
unconventional professor was asked to resign.
So one chance was lost; and now our hero finds him-
his
middle agf, stout, respectable, financially established,
self in
convinced that he has been “well-educated” and not averse
to giving his opinions on politics, morals, economics, religion
and the sad future of civilization to any reporter who will
do him the honor of calling.
—
But note granting even that he did receive adequate
education in college, that was from ten to twenty years
and more ago The world, since then, has moved ahead
!

so rapidly and so far that if one did not keep alive to it all,
one was left quite measurably in the rear. That is what
has happened to the very great majority even of college-
bred men of twenty-odd years ago. Most of them have at
best kept up with the intellectual and scientific times only
through the newspapers and popular magazines. They
 !

196 influencing HUMAN BEHAVIOR

physical or the social
really do not know the science—the
science — of today! .

every morning before

, r

That sentence ought to be repeated

breakfast by everyone over forty!
race,
Now when people fall behind in the intellectual
happy about It. They feel
they do not feel bubblingly
thing is that they do not,
vaguely disquieted. But the queer
matter of course, put the blame upon themselves. They
as a
art of rationalizing an
automatically Invoke the gentle
“Things weren t this way
place the blame upon the new.
fangled ideas—what
when I was a boy.” “All these new
Is the world coming
to?” The older generation, mentally
unequipped (for the most part) and
now lagging far be-
the impetuous new world to
hind, sends out angry cries to
stop and behave itself and settle
down

Education Without Graduation

grown-up has
The foregoing analysis of the typical
the great civihza-
seemed necessary In order to emphasize
opening before us. A
new
tional opportunity which is just
ground, the idea of education as
idea is beginning to gain
throughout life. Old stereotpes still
a process continuous
idea. There is the accus-
check the full emergence of this
two stages; the stage
tomed thought that life is made up of
stage of living itself. 1 his
of preparation for life and the
;

already been thor-

“two-stage” Idea of life has, of course,
philosophy of education.
oughly discredited In the newer
shown that the
Tohn Dewey and his followers have
clearly
should not be regarded simply
life of children inUe schools
to come later, but as a lite
as a preparation for something
will eventually
lived. So. in like manner, adult life
 PROBLEM OF STRAIGHT THINKING 197
come to be regarded not simply as a putting-into-practice
of education already received, but as a process of continuing-
education-with-living.
At any rate, however the philosophy of it may be formu-
lated, the actual development of this type of adult life is
taking place all over the world. In all the leading countries
of the world, adult education is increasingly to the fore.
One need not pose as a very rash prophet, therefore, if one
suggests that within another generation adult colleges will
be found springing up all over the world. There was a
time when even universal elementary education was not
dreamed of. It is only recently that secondary education
has come to be regarded as an essential part of the educa-
tional system. It is still more recently that college educa-
tion for young men and women has reached out widely into
all classes. The next stage of our educational advance is

obviously the establishment of the privilege of systematic

education for all adults — college bred and non-college bred
alike.
Nothing short* of this can have very wide social signifi-

cance. Our laws are what our lawmakers make them.

And our lawmakers are what their education and their vo-
cations have made them. A generation of lawmakers ill
equipped with minds to judge the grave social issues that
confront us will make laws ill suited to solve the trying ques-
tions of our very trying days. Hence the quite funda-
mental importance of this movement forward into the sys-
tematic continuance of the education of those who have
grown up.
Curiously enough, adult education is often thought of as
education for those who missed the opportunity of educa-
tion in their youth. On the contrary, it should be regarded,
198 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
far more fundamentally and broadly, as the needed stimu-
lus and training for all minds that have grown beyond the
easy judgments and the rather superficial training of youth-
ful immaturity. When age begins, education is then, in a
profound sense, really possible.

Concerning Freedom of Thought

One superlative advantage of an adult system of educa-

tion is Those of us who are concerned about
to be noted.
freedom of thought in our colleges often fail to note that
even in college classes there are vital questions of individ-
ual and social life that cannot be gone into with complete-
ness. One reason for this — quite apart from the pressure
of parents and trustees — is that college students, for the
most equipment of experience which makes
part, lack the
it possible for them to pass judgment upon some of our

trying social and moral problems. This, of course, would

in no sense be true of adult classes. In adult education,
then, we should at last possess a field of investigation and
discussion in which speech need not be halted by the shocked
protest that “My son John is too young to be told such
!”
things
From a broad view this is a most exhilar-
social point of
ating prospect. For as one looks over the present educa-
tional field, one finds not a single spot in it, save perhaps
in the limited sphere of graduate work, where social and
ethical investigation and discussion are really free! The
situation would be utterly preposterous did we not call to
mind what we ha?e just intimated, that in no part of the
educational system, with the one exception noted, is educa-
 1

PROBLEM OF ’STRAIGHT THINKING 199

tion carried on with minds that are really old enough to be
fully free.

The Issue is Fundamental

In the foregoing, then, we have indicated not one or more
specific techniques for inducing straight thinking among
adults, but rather a fundamental change of attitude and
habit. Anything short of this is mere psychological tinker-
ing with the problem. Adults think crudely because most
of them have never systematically learned to think other-
wise. It is no wonder then that in difficult days like our
own the eager-minded of the younger generation despair of
their elders. For the older generation, with few exceptions,
have no acceptable philosophy of life to offer to the young.
When, ever, or where, did they overhaul their minds thor-
oughly enough to clear out prejudices and false impressions
and arrive at something that has even the semblance of
being bed-rock and comprehensive ? The older generation,
learning in^the much overrated “school of experience,” con-
tribute a philosophy of material adventurousness and so-
cial timidity!

There is no doubt that the removal of illiteracy among

the masses has had a powerful effect upon human behavior.
There is no doubt that the increasing utilization of the privi-
leges of higher education has likewise had a powerful effect.
Once adult education gets into full swing, we shall doubt-
less find that, in the same manner, its effect upon our social
and ethical thinking will be of immeasurable importance.

Summary *

Effective training in straight-thinking-habits, we pointed

200 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
out, is one of our most profound educational concerns. We
noted the inadequacy of the prevalent “drill” technique in
the schools, the fact that it develops only limited skills, and
fails to arouse that love of accuracy which is of the essence
of straight thinking. We
noted, then, that a better tech-
nique was to be found by associating accuracy of perform-
ance with pleasurable undertakings. We
noted, in particu-
lar, how the troublesome act of rationalizing might be ex-
posed and corrected even in the early years of life. Finally
we noted that the great hope of straighter and more fruit-
ful thinking among adults lay in the increasingly wide recog-
ition of the fact that education should not be confined to a
few preparatory years but should be a continuing process
throughout life. The adoption in practice of the slogan
“Education without graduation” might have an effect upon
our individual and social life far profounder than any other
single change that could be wrought.
 CHAPTER XII

DIAGNOSING THE PUBLIC

Some of the foregoing chapters should throw important
lightupon the difficult problem of influencing that mysteri-
ous entity which we call the Public. Let us recall the ar-
gument in our chapter on “How to Change Persons.” If
we think of the Public as a whole, as just a vast, unencom-
passable mass, we shall doubtless be staggered at the
thought of affecting it in any profound sense. If, on the

other hand, we think of the Public (any particular Pub-

lic) as, like the individual, a more or less unified aggregate

of habit-systems, we may, by making an intelligent diagnosis,

find the opening wedge for bringing our intelligent influence
^
to bear.
What we discovered in the case of the individual was
that certain habit-systems are more important than others
in that they are the determinants of a number of dependent
habit-systems. We noted, for example, in the case of Alice,
how the poorly developed reading habit-system was the key
to her defective character. Once that habit-system was set
right other habit-systems straightened themselves out.
Now same kind of diagnosis made of a people or of
the
any other social group would doubtless clarify matters for
us very greatly, and enable us to approach the “hugeness”
of what we call the social problem with less of bewilderment
and with a swifter and more certain effectiveness.
202 INFLUENCING HUMIn BEHAVIOR
A Public, for example, like an individual, has bodily hab-
its. We do not by that mean that there is a mystical entity
called the Public which has body and bodily habits. We
mean that in any particular Public there are bodily habits
which prevail among the large majority of its members.
Thus there was a difference, for example, between the
bodily habits of the large mass of pre-war Russian peasants
and the large mass of British farmers. The difference was
great enough for us to note a sharp contrast. Now we
might ask, do cleanly or uncleanly bodily habits have any
noticeable effect upon other habits? Are they causes of
other habits? Or are there other habit-systems which are
causes of the bodily habits?
A Russian woman, speaking the other day of the hard-
drinking habits of the pre-war peasants, made the follow-
ing significant remark: “Because they could not read, they
were lonely; and so, of course, they drank.” Her impli-
cation was that the absence of a reading-habit-system was
in large degree responsible not only for the,drii>k habit but
for thriftlessness (work and consumer habits) filth (bodily
;

habits) quarreling, animosities (emotional habits).

;

Apparently, then, the defective reading habit-system was

an important clue to the other defects in the Russian peas-
ant Public, precisely as it was in the case of Alice. Follow-
ing upon such a diagnosis then, we should be less inclined
to trouble ourselves about the habit-systems which were
only effects, and should address ourselves instead to the de-
fective habit-system which was the determinant cause of the
others. Or to put i| a little more accurately, if we did con-
cern ourselves with one of the chief effects (drinking), we
should realize that the elimination of the drinking-habit was
dependent upon the establishment of a reading-habit
 DIAGNOSllNG THE PUBLIC 203

which doubtless might itself have been dependent upon the

establishment of a still more crucial habit-system — ^let us
say, the work-habit-system.

Determinant Habit-Systems in the Emancipation of Women

Let us note a number of changes in the habit-systems of
the American people. After several years of agitation,
there has finally been achieved the political emancipation of
women. This means that women have built up a new set
of political habits. How was this new habit-system
achieved? On the surface it appears as if direct agitation
of the idea of political equality was the major cause. In
one sense this may be true. Without the direct presenta-
tion of the idea of political equality, political equality would
doubtless never have been achieved. But there were also
a number of causes, it would seem, apparently far removed
from direct agitation, which were doubtless as powerful, if
not indeed more so, than the presentation of the equality
’ '
idea.
It is obvious, for example, that no amount of preachment
by an eloquent and fearless Mary Wollstonecraft in the
days of Pericles could ever have brought about political
emancipation of the Greek women of that era. There were
habit-systems which would have completely nullified all her
eloquence and courage. indeed whether a
It is a question
Mary Wollstonecraft could even have existed in those
days.^ Why? We have a mystical way of saying that the
time was not ripe. What do we mean by that? What we
really mean is that the major habit-systems both of women
^The emancipated women of those days were, in the main, what we
should call ^‘loose” women, women of too exceptional brilliancy to subject
themselves to the seclusion-habits of married life.
 ! ;

204 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

and of men were such that the political-equality habit-
system could not have been regarded as a possibility.
Again, in the “clinging vine” days in England and Amer-
ica, the preaching of emancipation could have had no real
effect. A woman who laced herself to suffocation, who
dragged acres of cloth over the ground, who wore impos-
sible shoes, who screamed on every possible occasion and
fainted with regularity into the arms of her male protector
above all, a woman who really knew nothing save a little
French and music, was a bundle of physical, emotional and
mental habits ill fitted to adopt or even to care for a habit
of political independence.
In the past few decades a type of woman with different
habit-systems has been developing. Three of these have
been of particular significance. The first has been a new
system of physical habits. Women, like all the rest of us,
have been carried along by a new movement for the culti-
vation of vigor of body. It began a few decades ago with
fresh-air crusades.People began to open tjheir ^windows at
night. Then they began to seek fresh air through walking,
out-door games and bicycling (the bicycle itself had a pow-
new bodily habits). Then came
erful effect in developing
bathing. more frequent indoor bathing; then out-of-
First
door bathing. I can remember in my boyhood when girls
simply did not swim. It was not the “thing.” If they
went to a watering place, they put on long mother-hubbards
and stepped gingerly and rather secretly into the water.
Contrast the present dayl Many of us can also remember
when a bath once-a-'yeek was the height of respectability
These fresh air habits, these habits of out-of-door exer-
cise, and these habits of joyous unashamed bathing have

made of woman a new kind of creature. Long before any-

 — •

DIAGNOSiNG THE PUBLIC ^205

one preached political emancipation to her, she had begun to

emancipate her body. Here, then, was a physical habit-
system without which, one suspects, women could not really
have become emancipated.
In the second place, with the growth of our industrial
S5’'stem, women began in increasing numbers to change their
old dom.estic-seclusion habit-systems. They learned to
work regular hours outside thehome and to receive regu-
;

lar pay for their own specific work. They learned to

handle money and to spend it as they wished. They
learned in short to organize their own economic life. Here,
then, was a secondpowerful habit-system which was pre-
requisite to Had it never been formed,
emancipation.
women would, despite all possible preachments, still be in
the “Doll’s House” stage— and would, for the most part
be adoring their Doll’s House and making angry remarks
at their shameless sisters who “wanted to be like men.”
In the third place, following upon the greater sense of
freedom brrf)ught about by the more vigorous bodily habits,
women began to change their old mental habit-systems.
French and music were increasingly insufficient. Women —
fearfully at first and subject to suspicion and ridicule
began to develop mental habits like those of their male pro-
tectors. They went to the higher schools and colleges.
And so, finally, there emerged the type of woman whose
mental habits made her responsive to intellectual stimuli
social, political, economic—-to which formerly she had been
quite indifferent. The little unenlightened doll. In short,
plaything of the man, was now increasingly a mind in her
^p^nright.
Here, then, were the real determining factors In the
emancipation of women— new systems of bodily, economic
 f

206 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

and mental habits. It is signifiGant to note that the women
who opposed the movement of political emancipation were
(so far as ray own observation goes) in the main of the so-
called “feminine” t37pe — the delicate, unathletic, well-taken-
care-of women; the economically dependent, seminary
trained women typical of the Victorian age.

Why Are We Temperate?

Let us analyze another change which has taken place In
the habits of the Public. Despite all the gloomy pronounce-
ments about bootlegging and our general disregard of the
law, we are a temperate people, far more temperate than
we were forty or fifty years ago. Why? The ladies of
the W.C.T.U, would proudly answer: “We did it!”
And the Anti-Saloon League would beg to come in as a
close second —
or first One may be inclined to doubt these
I

estimable people. Viewing temperance as a consumption

habit-system, one may quite safely regard^it as the result
of forces far more powerful than any preachments. In a
highly industrialized society any large amount of intemper-
ance is impossible.
What has happened, in short, since the Civil War in
America, has been the building up of new systems of work-
habits. Mechanized industry requires regularity, steadi-
ness of hand and eye, swiftness and unerringness of execu-
tion. A misstep or a mishandling is too costly to be per-
mitted. A drunken locomotive engineer is odiously not
to be thought of, ^An intoxicated worker at the centri-
fugals would probably find himself armless or legless or
and the centrifugals wrecked, with possibly other
lifeless
workers maimed and killed in the bargain.
 DIAGNOSfNG THE PUBLIC 207
Again, a commercial and banking system growing upon
the active body of a highly industrialized system, requires
keenness of mind, accuracy of attention, the habit of “be-
ing on the job.” During the occupation period in Cologne,
1 came, to my dismay and great inconvenience, upon a
drunken^ ticket-seller behind one of the station windows.
Of course there was nothing to do but to wait until his sub-
stitute appeared. The thing was unprecedented in my own
experience; and was due, of course, — a most significant
fact—to the temporary superimposition of a military upon
a commercial system.
Drunkenness as a prevailing habit, in short, cannot co-
exist with the work-habit-systems required by a highly in-
dustrialized and commercialized society. Those genial old
village scoundrels who drank themselves to death in our
boyhood days, the cobblers particularly, and sometimes the
hotel keepers and the lawyers, have disappeared — to the
sorrow of our story writers. But not because the ladies of
the W.C.TxU. preached them out of existence! If the
ladies believe that, they are gentle sentimentalists I

We are a temperate people, in short —and despite our

bootlegging forebodings —always will be as long as we are
a highly industrialized and commercialized people, because
our work-habit-systems are the determinants which im-
peratively govern our consumption-habit-systems.

Analyzing Our Political Habit-Systems

Such analyses as the above should be of significance to

a person interested in modifying the political life of the
society in which he lives. In a recent copy of a liberal
journal, a melancholy account was given of the unregener-
 —

2o8, influencing HUMAN BEHAVIOR

ate habit which the American people have of being quite
willing, time after time, to be fooled by political charla-
tans. Why, the writer asked in despair, cannot the
American people learn to guard themselves against the
buncombe which is periodically “put over” on them?
“The lesson might have been learned after the Hard
Cider Campaign of 1840, when a political party without
an issue and with only a mediocre candidate got itself
elected by wheeling log cabins and rolling cider barrels
through the streets of an America eager for any sort of
a substitute for reality. By 1876 it was fairly well
established that the temperance principles of one candidate
availed more than the intellectual preeminence of his op-
ponent, and in 1896, the ‘free silver’ buncombe of Bryan
was brought to naught only by the even more preposterous
buncombe of the McKinley campaign with its hysterical
predictions of disaster. The 1920 and
insincerities of
1924 are of too recent and painful memory to require am-
plification; but they, too, point to the truth of our major
premise, which is .that you can
. .
—
^with enough money
—
and a good press agent fool enough of the people all of
the time.”
What are we to do about it? And the following is this
writer’s mystical answer! “We
need a ‘passion for souls’
to call us to the battle for the preservation and spread of
‘culture,’ tolerance, decency and the critical spirit. The
bravest Wesleyan zeal is the one thing which can save
not so much George F. Babbitt from the sloughs of Philistia
— ^but you and me^and even H. L. Mencken, from jail or

hanging. We must burn with a tremendous passion for

the evangelization of Demos or we shall lose our precious
freedom to enjoy our own evangel.”
 f

DIAGNOSING THE PUBLIC 209

Is it not precisely this kind of writing from the pens of
forward looking minds, which makes the whole task seem
so hopeless! Suppose one wishes to start out with a
“passion for souls,” what, actually, does one do? Or sup-
pose one starts out to spread “culture!” Do we not know
of the most socially and politically benighted minds who cry
culture from the housetops? And what, pray, is this
“evangelization of Demos?” Words, words!
As a matter of fact, so far as the practical direction of
our intelligent energies is concerned, the article tells us
precisely—nothing. We all know of the strange aptness
of the masses to be politically fooled. But what can we
do about it
Perhaps there is really nothing we can do about it. But
perhaps, if we keep our heads and refuse to lapse into
vague sentimentalism, we may proceed to analyze our
American public into its major and minor habit-systems.
If we do that, we may at least discover what are the de-
terminant habit factors. When we
have discovered these,
we may be able with some heart to go about building up
habit-systems which will correct what is now defective.
Of course, vFe may find the whole situation quite beyond
our feeble tinkering. Or we may find that more powerful
forces are already at their corrective work. In any event,
such an analysis is the first prerequisite to the understanding
both of the problem and Its solution.

Agricultural Work Habits as Determinants

It is significant at the outset to recaM this fact: farming

populations are normally conservative. They are con-
servative in religion, in economics, and in politics. The

./ %
210 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
predatory interests that deceive them must, therefore, ap-
pear in the guise of defenders of the status quo. Radical
philosophies, in short —
^like socialism, communism, etc.—

have never gained any extensive hold upon the rural popu-
lations. To be sure, flash-in-the-pan radicalisms, like Mr.
Bryan’s preposterous free-silver doctrine, momentarily
captured the western farmers. But the very fact that so
patently absurd a financial doctrine could win the suffrage
of farmers was itself a symptom of the mental-habit-system
which we wish to analyze.
Now in any issue of national importance, it is the rural
population, who, by their weight of numbers, decide.
When we despair of “the people,” therefore, we must re-
member that the great majority of “the people” still live
in that habit-system which we call rural.

What, now, is the typical mental-habit-system of the

farmer? (Let me emphasize the word “typical,” for of
course there are many notable exceptions.) In the first

place, the farmer, in his productive activity, i^s subject to

forces which are quite beyond his control.' He contributes
his labor, to be sure but the outcome is so predominantly
;

not his work that he constantly is face to face with the fact
of his own littleness and dependence. The wind bloweth
where it listeth. So does the sun shine as it lists and the
rain pour. All the work-habits, in short, are conditioned
upon an acceptance of blessings beyond his own power to
produce.
In the second place, his work enforces upon him a rela-
tive isolation. He may labor with three or four or a
dozen in his fields ;
'but never with a hundred, five hundred,
a thousand. Hence the range of his associations through
continuous human contacts is distinctly limited.
 DIAGNOSfNG THE PUBLIC 2
In the third place, he is far from the swift give and take
of commercial transactions. His crop is six months or a
year in ripening. He makes one long meditated tran-
saction, or two. Other than that, his transactions are con-
cerned with petty matters of household provisioning.
The -v^ork-habits above described must inevitably have a
profound influence upon the farmer’s mental habits ^his —
ways of thinking about the universe, his human fellows,
politics, economics, morals and the rest. We have much
that substantiates this. In the first place, the farmer is
ever the outstanding pietist. He is in the hands of God;
and so to God his thoughts naturally turn. Also, he is the
outstanding individualist. It is with awkward difficulty
that he joins with his neighbor farmers even in cooperative
ventures that are for his own benefit. He creates few of
those voluntary group associations that flourish in cities for
the sharpening of minds and the widening of horizons. His
sole voluntary association usually is pietistic — ^his church.
Also, in the*third place, he is the outstanding example of
the “slow” type of mind. He may indeed be profoundly
way; but the very absence of the daily
sure, in his limited
give and take of more active modes of life, makes his mind
move cumbrously to its conclusions.
Now here is a psychological pattern in which the work-
habit-system is the preeminent and controlling factor. It
is no wonder that the farmers of Tennessee vote to oust
evolution from the schools. —
They are to be sure, to a
greater degree than usual in America —-rural pietists. It

is no wonder that the great bulk of Presbyterians and Bap-

tiststhroughout the country are against the New York
modernists. Nothing else is to be expected of the hundreds
on hundreds of simple minded country congregations. Nor
212 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
is it to be wondered at that vigorous new social philos-
ophies of economic reconstruction and of political inter-
nationalization find no countenance among farmers. In
the isolated, individualistic self-sufficiency of rural life,

farmers rarely develop any sense of the subtle and far

reaching inter-relations of human enterprise.
The root of our difficulties with our farm population, in
short, is not that they are poor creatures easily fooled by
political charlatans. The real difficulty lies In the typical
rural work-habits. In certain European countries notably —
in Denmark —where the farmer lives continuously a more
integrated group life, his general intelligence, his political
and economic acumen are notably higher than in the
his
rural districts of America. He is interested in adult edu-
cation; he works harmoniously with the group; he forms
his cooperative producing and distributing associations.
In short, he has industrialized and socialized himself.
Here, then, apparently. Is one clue to our American prob-
lem. It is the work-habit-systems of the^ American farmer
that need changing. Once that change could be accom-
plished, other important thingswould follow. If, in short,
the American farmer could learn to live more continuously
and actively In the group (the automobile and the union
district school are helping him to this) if he could enter
;

upon the co6pera,tive production and selling of his pro-

ducts (become, in short, industrialized and socialized),
we should doubtless find his Intelligence rising and his
proneness to be the tool of designing politicians increasingly
less in evidence.
It should be obvious, then, that the political salvation of
the farmer cannot be accomplished through verbal means.
Therein lies the mistake of most political Idealists. What
 DIAGNOSING THE PUBLIC 213
the progressive political thinker does is to harangue the
farmer, scold him, cajole him, plead with him to wake up
and cease being deceived. Such techniques, however, save
on momentary occasions, are really futile for the simple
reason above noted that the most powerful force shaping
the mental outlook of the farmer is his work-habit-system.
It is that* which must be changed; and no amount of verbal
exhortation is likely to do it. Hence the person who can,
for example, induce farmers to organize cooperative pi*o-
ducers’ associations is probably far more effective in chang-
ing the mind of the farmers than ail the earnest generations
of political persuaders.

Diagnosing Jingoism

We have made the above analysis merely for the sake

of indicating what we believe to be the true technique of
social diagnosis. If this were a sociological treatise we
should now proceed to further analysis. Gur purpose,
however, bei*ng purely psychological, we shall content our-
selves with the single example. Also, we are aware that
there may be disagreement as to the details of the analysis.
We are not really concerned about that. What we are
concerned about is to point out how persons who are in-
terested in modifying the Public must approach their prob-
lem if they are to find an effective entering wedge. The
essence of that technique apparently lies in regarding a
Public as a more or less unified aggregate of habit-systems
and in finding the one or more habit-systems which are de-
terminant of the others. »

Suppose, for example, we take a typical instance like the

following of the kind of talk which actually influences the
214 INFLUENCING HUMAN EEHAVIOR
Public today and ask what the habit-systems are which
make it possible for such talk to be effective.
“For an example of the sort of jingo folly to which we
refer, one could ask nothing better than some remarks
young Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., recently uttered in the
San Francisco Illustrated Daily Herald, one of several
popular picture papers of which he is the ownef. When
the American fleet arrived at the Golden Gate on its way
to Hawaii a few weeks ago, he welcomed it in an article
^
over his signature in which he said (italics his) ;

“
‘The next war —and that war may not be so very far distant, if

we are to believe reports seeping out of Tokyo and Washington—

will be a sea war. . . , Today, 145 vessels of war lie in the bay,
aboard which close to 50,000 men are quartered. There is a reason
why San Francisco waters today. That reason will
this fleet lies in

be forthcoming before many months pass by. In 1914 another great

armada lay in the waters of Portsmouth harbor. Great Britain.
One month later the world was embarked on its greatest war-making
venture. That is not synonymous ; it is simply exemplary.
“‘Should trouble eventually occur in the Pacific- — and there is no
reason why that trouble should not occur, it is a probable certainty
that the nations bordering the South Pacific, feeling as they do at
present,and the nations bordering the Northeast Pacific, British
Columbia in particular, would be drawn into the conflict on the side
of the nation whose fleet lies with us today.’ ” ^

Why is it that such inflammatory writing gets any au-

dience at all? We have noted the quite elementary char-
acter of the intellectual habit-systems of the farmer. That
the farmer should be aroused by primitive fears and ani-
mosities is not at all surprising. What of the typical
^ The New Republic, June 3, t$zs.
 DIASNOSiNG THE PUBLIC 215
businessman? Is it perhaps true that his prevailing habit-
system has been, in his business enterprise, a fight habit-
system? Certainly commerce seems always to have had a
rather intimate connection with war while art and science,;

on the contrary, have been the crossers-of-boundaries, the

uniters-of-peopies. Is it true that the typical habit-system
of busiiTess technique is greatly different from the typical
habit-system of art and of science? If so, then the hope of
diminishing the power of such anti-social statements as we
have quoted above must lie in changing the typical habit-
system of the millions of men who make up our business
population. I mean by this that the change in business
attitude from one of competitive and predatory self in-
terest toone of productive social serviceableness is funda-
mental to any real change in world outlook. One may sus-
pect, then, that themost important movement toward the
elimination of war which is at present taking place among
business men is the movement toward making business
socially serviceable.^
Where that rnovement is weak or not yet begun, the war
mind is bred like rank weeds. Where that movement
grows strong, the war habit of mind is increasingly
weakened; and an interest in the productive harmonization
of human enterprises takes the place of the older interest
in destructive antagonisms.

Summary
The reader will find it a valuable aid to social insight to
analyze, in the manner above described, the particular
^ See the author’s chapters in ^^The Scientific Foundations of Business”
edited by Henry C. Metcalf.
2i6 influencing HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Public with which he Is familiar. He will probably agree
that it has hitherto not been his custom to regard the
Public as an aggregate of more or less unified habit-systems.
He most of us, regarded the Public as a whole, a
has, like
kind of mysterious, unapproachable entity. Let him, how-
ever, begin to make a habit analysis of the Public and he
will find a sudden increase in social illumination. 'If, then,
as he proceeds with his analysis, he will attempt to dis-
cover those habit-systems which control subordinate habit-
systems, he will hit upon the only really effective clue to the
difficult task of influencing a people’s behavior. Thus the
problem of social and political advance becomes funda-
mentally a problem of discovering the crucial habit-systems
of a people and of devising the means for changing them.
 TRAINING THE CREATIVE MIND
The technique of experimentation may be regarded as
the high-water mark of human achievement. Where the
primitive mind is acceptive, taking the world as it super-
ficially finds it and fitting itself to its rude requirements, the
highly civilized mind is creative, taking the world as it

more deeply discovers it — in its basic laws — and readjust-

ing the superficial order of things to suit its own needs.
In primitive life, the experimental habit of mind was
long hindered in its development by the tribal tabu. The
tabu was a “strictly forbidden,” rooting usually in some su-
pernatural Thus to introduce an innovation in the
Jjelief.

form of a new weapon, or a new utensil was to go counter

to the sacred customs of the tribe. The inventor was a
heretic. The only true piety was faithful conformity to
the practices which had descended from immemorial, sacred
antiquity. If variations occurred, therefore, they occurred
by accident or by slow, imperceptible changes; seldom, if
ever, by conscious design.
It was not, in short, until this “piety” motive was re-
moved from the realm of tool making and tool use, that
the inventive powers of man rapidly developed. One may
doubt whether it is even as yet completely removed, for
one recalls the absurd objection urged only a few decades
ago against the use of the umbrella as a setting up of the
i: 317 '

.
V
2i8 influencing human behavior
prideful human being against the manifest ordinances of
God; also, the outcry against the application of anaesthetics
in cases of childbirth. Here, as in primitive days, the rea-

son given was supernatural. God had ordained woman to

suffer; therefore let not man seek to relieve her of the pain
that is divinely her due. One still hears persons object
to the removal of tonsils and appendices on the grcTund that
it is natural to have them. One must not do what is un-
natural. So, a curious old book on homeopathy, written
somewhere in the 8o’s, advises most earnestly against
shaving off the beard on the double ground that it is bad
for the throat and that God evidently intended it for man’s
use and adornment. The striking contemporary example
of the fight between the supernaturalistic and the natural-
istic habit of mind is found in the controversy over birth

control. Now and then one finds an opponent of birth

control arguing upon serious physiological and sociological
grounds. —
For the most part, unfortunately- for, in this
matter, serious physiological and sociological^ wisdom is
—
needed opposition is confined to superriatural grounds.
Bearing children is an act of piety not to be invaded by the
spirit of inquiry.

Explanation of Social Pietism

One is tempted to explain this tabu habit of mind

psychologically. The impulse to such an explanation is

given by the disconcerting experiences one has even now-

a-days in trying to introduce labor-saving devices. One
has these experiences not only with unintelligent domestic
help but with intelligent housewives. The power-driven
 TiIe creative mind 219
washing machine has still to make its difficult way against
the suspicious dislike of servant and mistress, even where,
in the case of the latter, there is no financial obstacle in the
way of purchase. In most cases the electric iron has won
way into use. But in many a household the oldfashioned
its

broom is still preferred; while over the length and breadth

of the land, hand-washed dishes still triumphantly rule in
the kitchen.
As one listens to the reasons given for not using or even
not experimenting with new devices, one is tempted to see
in these reasons an unconscious rationalization of a very
elemental force in life — the force, if one may call it such,
of psychological inertia. Habit, we know, is an energy
saver, A new device is a breaker of old habits. It there-
fore calls for conscious effort of readjustment. But con-
scious effortis precisely what, if we possibly can, we avoid.

In the sharp competitions of industry and business, effort

cannot be avoided. The competitor must be alive to dis-
cover ways ihat are more successful than those of his rivals.
Hence the male mind, in business and industry, has de-
veloped a readiness to scrap old devices and adopt new
ones; more than that, it has developed a habit of working
hard to find new and more successful machines, new and
more successful types of business and industrial organiza-
tion.
The household, obviously, is subject to no such competi-
tive pressure. Hence has been a fertile field for the
it

growth of strong inhibiting habits. The housewife-mind,

in fact, is par excellence the “inertia” type of mind. In-
novations invade her realm of pious ffxity only with diffi-

culty, and against the unconscious resistance of a mind not

220 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
trained to the efforts of swift and continuous readjustment
along the lines of the most efiieient utilization of materials
and energy. The housewife is notoriously the type of
woi'ker who still uses the most energy for the least result.
Nor is she resentful of this. There is for her a kind of
pious glorification in the fact that while a man’s work
(thanks, of course to his inventive hospitality) is from
sun to sun, a woman’s work (thanks, chiefly, to an inven-
tive inhospitality of which she is not herself aware) is
never done.
Perhaps the supernatural reasons given by the more
primitive peoples against the introduction of new devices
or the adoption of new customs were rationalizations of
this sort. Resort to the supernatural was the easiest way
for primitive peoples. Hence the deep, unconscious de-
sire not to change habits would most easily justify itself
by reference to the only causes of which the primitive was
aware, namely, the ancient and honorable order of the
Unseen.
It is significant in this connection to note that among
primitive peoples, customs tend to change, with the greater
rapidity, as group competition develops. No one cause,
perhaps, contributed more to the modification of primitive
mores than war. War forced the effort of readjustment;
forced into the forefront the necessity for achieving the
greatest results by the most effective means. Primitive war
was the only striking means of breaking in upon the seem-
ingly ineradicable inertia-tendency of the human mind.
Apparently, the problem of modern societies is to find
means, more compatible with their civilized motives than
war, of stirring themselves out of their social inertia.
 TKE CREATIVE MIND 221

Pietism versus Use-Value

The “piety” habit of mind has well nigh disappeared

from the region of mechanical use and invention. Ex-
perimentation in that field, no longer regarded
therefore, is

as a commerce with the devil; no longer an insult to the

sacred traditions of the tribe; no longer, therefore, some-
thing to be visited with social disapprobation. The fruit-
ful thought has developed, rather, that to understand the
material world and to organize it still more effectively to
human uses, is the really high function of man. There-
fore the inventor now an honored benefactor.
is He is held
up to the admiration of the young. The entire educational
system swings behind him, supporting his pe-
in strongly
culiar type of reconstructive iconoclasm and developing in
its young charges a hospitality towards experimental pro-

cedures.
All this, however, true only of the region of mechanical
is

use and in^vention. In the region of social relationships

the “piety” habit of mind still prevails.
Thus any attempt to consider the finality of monogamic
marriage as an open question meets with the shocked out-
cry “immoral,” “indecent;” any suggestion of a different
mode of breeding and nurturing children is greeted with
“unnatural,” “monstrous;” any attempt to examine the
basic claims of the private property system is opposed by
the heated outcry, “revolutionary,” “subversive;” any
serious suggestion that the constitutional organization of
one’s own land is basically at fault, is met by the most in-

flamed cry of all

— “disloyal.”
’

All of these are “piety” terms, terms that root not in

222: INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
an impersonal examination of the use-value of these re-
lationships, but rather inan emotional acceptance of evalu-
ations handed down from the elders.
So far as our social intelligence is concerned, in short,
we are very much at the same point as was the primitive
when he sternly reprobated any change in the accustomed
shape of his utensil. To the enormous benefit of the race,
we have advanced beyond that stage. May we not venture
to guess that the next really significant civilizationar ad-
vance will be in the direction of freeing social relationships
altogether of the “piety” motive and making them subject
to the same naturalistic inspection and experimental re-
organization as now prevails in tlie physical and mechanical
field?

Developing Social Experimentation

The problem, for those who see the trend of things, is

to find out how this is to be brought about. It may be ob-

jected, however, that it is not to be brought about at all;

rather, that it will, in good time, come about. But that

is itself to renounce the naturalistic habit of mind, is to
sink back into a kind of civilizational passivity really a —
civilizational mysticism —
^which is the very reverse of
naturalistic. For the naturalistic, experimental habit of
mind is one which is convinced of the possibility, through
observation and conscious experimentation, of controlling
and therefore of redirecting its world.
As a matter of fact, modern civilization has developed
one instrumentality t>f conscious control which has already
proved to be of very real effectiveness. The educational
system now successfully molds young minds In ways ac-
ceptable to the societary standards. To be sure, those
standards, in social, political and economic matters, are still

so powerfully pietistic that any overt opposition to them

—as when a teacher questions the prevailing economic sys-
tem or suggests the feasibility of another type of sex re-
lation-meets with instant and overpowering opposition.
Nevertheless it is not impossible to conceive of ways in
which the instrumentality of education may be used for
the purpose of developing a more consistent and far reach-
ing naturalistic and experimental habit of mind.
The mistake of social radicals in education, one suspects,
is that in the face of a pietistic public opinion they attempt
to teach anti-pietistic views instead of attempting to develop
an anti-pietistic habit of mind.
After all it is the basic habit of mind that counts and it

—
;

is with that ^not with specific views —

that education should
mainly be concerned. So the problem of a progressive
education comes to this how can the minds of the young be
:

made as fearlessly experimental in their attitude towards

social matters as in their attitude towards matters physical
and mechanical ?
The first answer, one suspects, is that the mind of the
young must be made more experimental even in physical
and mechanical matters. Education has indeed been hos-
pitable to the experimental habit of mind; it has not as yet
been as successful as it might be in developing that habit
in its young charges. Education is still notoriously an
authoritarian process. Students come to school to learn the
facts. The facts are all there ready to be memorized.
All that is needed is submission to a*uthority and patient
industry.
Students, in short, are not supposed to come to school to
224 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
find the facts — for themselves-—^much less to find new facts.
Textbooks are written to supply the available information.
Teachers are there to see to it that the information is faith-
fully reproduced.
C)ne would suppose that in the teaching of science it would
be different. But it is not so. Science is experimental;
science teaching almost entire degree, authoritarian.
is, in
This even extends to the so-called experimental or labora-
tory work in science. Here, with a few exceptions, the
whole matter is cut and dried for the student. He is di-
rected to do thus and so, and to note that a result, thus and
so, will follow. Cook-book science, it is sometimes called.
Or he is work back from a result and discover
directed to
the (already well-known) stages by which it was reached.
There is no margin of uncertainty in all this no trying ;

and failing; no independent and individual venturing; in

short, no actual experimentation. There is at most only a
repetition of the experiments of others —
which is a widely
different matter. ..

Now should be obvious that the experimental habit of

it

mind can be developed only through experimenting actual, —

bona fide experimenting-—not through this shadow-boxing
that is so largely carried on in the school laboratories.
One may illustrate the difference in method and result by
comparing the teaching of electricity to small boys by the
stereotyped method of set experiments, and by the method
of letting the small boys construct electrical devices for
themselves. When a boy starts out (because he chooses
that) to build, let us say, a motor-driven truck, with his
Meccano of all, sets his own problem. That is
set, he, firsf

primary. In the second place, since there is no textbook to

supply informaition, he works out his own plans and pro-
 —

THE CREATIVE MIND 225

ceeds to execute them to the best of his own ability. That

is equally essential —an exercise in independence and initia-
tive. In the third place, he probably makes mistakes.
That is almost more essential — for that is precisely the type
of experience which makes for flexibility — -as well as for per-
sistence of mind. In the end, if he has succeeded after a
number of trials and failures, in building a truck that runs,
he has developed a vigor and acuteness of mind and a work-
able knowledge of mechanics and electricity that is far more
important than the most exemplary memorizing, from text-
book and teacher, of the facts.
One may illustrate likewise from a non-mechanical field
of education. Art, in the schools, has very largely been
taught as an exercise in learning certain skills with pencil and
brush. The process has been to get the student to do cer-
tain things — things, of course, that others had done many
times before. Cook-book In recent years new meth-
art.
ods have begun to be introduced. Despite his lack of tech-
nical profiqjency, the young student is asked to create.
Thus, for example, the child in the kindergarten is not
directed laboriously to copy squares and triangles and cireles
and color them acccording to directions. He is asked to
draw what he pleases, or to illustrate some suggested idea.
Here again, the emphasis is placed upon initiative, indi-
vidual planning, trying and failing, and trying with in-
creasingly greater success. This method is interestingly in
evidence in the training in design. Here the student is

given certain elementary forms, like straight lines, curves,

and circles, and asked so to compose them that a beautiful
*
design results.
The effect of such training, as over against the old au-
thoritarian training, is to develop a certain habit of mind
226 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
the creative, exploratory, experimental habit rather than the
passively acceptive habit.
These two illustrations will doubtless be sufficient to point
the moral, namely, that there is a vast difference between
welcoming the experimental mind when it happens to appear
in a few rare individuals, and making a conscious effort to
develop that habit of mind in everyone. It should be clear
that when once the habit is developed of being individual,
of striking out on one’s own, of trying new ways of doing old
things, and of projecting new things in new ways, an exceed-
ingly significant change will have been brought about in the
attitude of the ordinary mind. No doubt this willingness
to try will eventually penetrate to other regions of life.

The compulsive, uniformitarlan attitudes in social matters,

the pious acceptances, and the horror of non-conformity will
perhaps begin to disappear; and experimentalism in the field
of social judgments will increasingly lose its menace.

^
Utilizing the Evolutionary Idea.

It Is interesting to remember that there was a time when

man was regarded as a fixed type, indeed the highest type in
the universe. In those times ideas that now are almost a
—
commonplace had no existence the ideas, for example, em-
bodied in the study of eugenics. It is, of course, the evo-
lutionary habit of mind which has made it possible to con-
ceive of improvements in the human type to be brought
about by selective control.
The ordinary attitude towards social Institutions is much
like the attitude of a century ago towards homo sapiens.
So powerful are the pietistic compulsions that it Is difficult

for the ordinary person to think of the particular social in-

stitutlons in which he —
lives ^marriage, the state, private
property,- —as not final, but as distinctly subject to modifi-
cation by selective control. The problem is how to induce
in the social region an evolutionary habit of mind as strong
as has been formed in regions biological.
Obviously social evolution is to be studied through his-
tory; and if an evolutionai-y habit of mind is to be developed
it must be through such a study of history as emphasizes the

factor of progressive societary modification. This, of

way in which history has
course, in the past, has not been the
been studied or taught. It is only in recent years that his-
tory has been regarded as a study of the social life of the
past. Previously it had been regarded rather as a pictur-
esque account or calendar of dynastic intrigues, wars, suc-
cessions, and other singular events.
There is every reason to believe, however, that a new

impulse has come into the study and teaching of history.

Societary life is now increasingly an object of serious investi-
gation; and social evolution is a phrase that is increasingly
comprehensible to the mass mind. When one realizes that
this development is a matter of only a few recent years, that
the vast resources of history have hitherto been untapped
save for the few stories they hold of uxorious kings or de-
signing queens, one can understand why it is that the ordi-
nary person is still non-evolutionary minded when it comes
to the institutions with which he is familiar. One may ven-
ture to guess that within the next five or six decades the
study of history will have become as powerfully evolution-
ary in the social field as the study of life forms has become
in biology. It is not rash, therefoi^, to prophesy that
through the increasing power of the evolutionary idea (its
power is shown in the frantic outcries of the anti-evolution-
228 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
ists) the pietistic attitude toward social institutions will be

gradually displaced and social institutions will be regarded

as much a part of the whole developing order of things as
the atom or the protoplasmic cell or the living organism.

Must We Simply Let Things Take Their Course?

With this more comprehensive development of the evolu-

tionary habit of mind, a future age will no doubt be as ea-
gerly engaged in trying out new social experiments as the
present age is in trying out new chemical or mechanical ex-
periments; and it willwelcome the social experimentor as
eagerly as now it welcomes the inventor.
There are those, however, who are too impatient to wait
for this blessed consummation. For such the way is un-
doubtedly open to teach history from an evolutionary stand-
point, as an account of the origin, growth and progressive
modification of social attitudes and institutions. There is
every reason why such teaching shfould bear fruit. The ri-

gidities and intolerances of moral absofutism tend to be

broken down as one studies morals in evolution. So like-
wise do the rigidities and intolerances of political, economic
and religious absolutism. The teacher of history who is
vividly aware of the mischief wrought in all these regions
by the pietistic habit of mind undoubtedly has it within his
power, by uncovering the past as the progressive modifi-
cation of social attitudes and institutions, subtly but strongly
to develop a habit of mind alert to the inadequacies of the
present societary order and hospitable to efforts towards
progressive modification.
Necessity, however, is still the mother of invention. We
are led. In the main, to think in new ways, because of the
compulsion of the situation. Undoubtedly this is what is
happening in the region of our social pieties. The egoistic,
nationalistic state simply will no longer work. Some modi-
fication of it apparently must be discovered if civilization is

not to wreck itself. We are passing at present through a

more or less conscious,more or less reluctant period of
political "trial and error. Old political habits are, willy
nilly, having to be broken and new habits of thought and

of loyalty are having to be formed. The same thing is

true in the economic order. Experimentation in modified
forms of economic organization is of the order of the day
— ^not, indeed, because we love economic experimentation,

but because we are forced to it by the necessities of a very

troublesome situation. The same thing is true of the re-
lation of men and women; of the place of women In the
world; of the relation of children to parents; of the form
and function of family life. We live now within a rapidly
changing order, an order indeed, so rapidly changing, that
change begins to lose its terrors. And as change begins
to lose its terrors, the way becomes increasingly open for
the conscious study and control of change.
All this means a preparation of the soil for the growth of
the socially experimental mind.

The Power of Psychological Insight.

But perhaps one of the most powerful ways in which to

undermine the socially pietistic habit of mind is through a
study of the social processes of the mind itself. Modern
—
psychology ^particularly the psycholegy of the uncon-
scious — beginning to address itself to the Important task
is

long ago set by Francis Bacon, namely, to purge the mind

230 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
of its uncritical prepossessions, or “idols,” as he called
them. Bacon grouped these into four classes: Idols of
the Tribe, the Market Place, the Theatre, the Den. Idols
of the Tribe were those prejudices which unconsciously took
shape in us by reason of our human, or racial, or tribal
outlook upon the world; Idols of the Market Place were
the confusions that were engendered out of the easy accep-
tance and use of ambiguous or ill defined terms; Idols of
the Theatre were the views or theories which were un-
critically accepted as if they were facts; Idols of the Den
were the peculiar personal attitudes that arose out of our
individual dispositions, environments and nurture.
The point which Bacon was trying to drive home was
that most of our thinking is not straight, logical thinking
at all, but is thinking colored and confused by all kinds of
racial, group, environmental, and Individual inheritances.
Modern analytical psychology is confirming this in striking
ways. It shows the “complex” to be at the root of much
of our prejudiced thinking and the “rationalization” the
means whereby such illegitimate thinking plausibly shapes
itself into the seeming pattern of truth.
A vivid acquaintance with these distorting psychological
factors —
particularly an acquaintance with them in our-
selves, —
which was what Bacon desired tends inevitably to
make one less sure of one’s ardent loyalties or of the ardent
loyalties of one’s particular group. It tends to make one
critical of the manner in which social judgments are
formed, and so lessens the easy reverence which one Is
inclined to pay to the social convictions of one’s age or
group.
One may new developments
confidently look, then, to the
in psychological analysis which have taken place in recent
 THE CpATIVE MIND 231

years, as a powerful stimulus to a more objective study of

social institutionsand practices; and one may venture to
guess that as this analysis becomes a part of the everyday
knowledge of young minds— as it Is increasingly becoming
—-much of the impenetrable sacredness that has hitherto
surrounded our societary forms and functions will be dissi-
pated; and there will be applied to social institutions the
same rigorous experimental analysis and control that now
and mechanical.
prevails in regions physical

The Next Enterprise

The great enterprise to which the humanistic spirit may
in the next decades most fruitfully address itself, then, is
to assist in the development of a new habit or trend of
mind. Particular views, as we have said, count for little
compared with the basic quality or attitude of minds, with
the ways, in short, in which minds “go at” things. That
desirable attitude we have called naturalistic and experi-
mental, meaning, thereby the willingness to accept as truth
only what is verifiably observable, the willingness also, not
only to accept what is observable, but to control, and if

it to the most effective human uses.

necessary, redirect We
have noted that the human mind is still backward in Its
judgments and activities wherever its trend towards experi-
mentalism continues to be hindered by the drag of pietism.
We have seen likewise not only that there are forces
inevitably making for the development of the socially
experimental mind, but that there are instrumentalities and
methods whereby this development,may be consciously
accelerated. No doubt an enlightened system of education
will increasingly incorporate these instrumentalities and
232 INFLUENCING HUM4N BEHAVIOR
methods, so that, without overtly going counter to the sensi-
tive pieties of its age, it will imperceptibly but powerfully
change the mind-habit of its age and in that way bring about
the condition which will eventually lead to a more reason-
able and flexible handling of social perplexities.

Doinff It Differently

In the foregoing we have traced some of the deeper

conditions affecting the experimental and creative mind.
Let us now betake ourselves to more practical considerations.
—
How can the reader himself If he is not that already
become a creative mind ?
Here again, we are confronted (i) by mystery and (2)
by poor early conditioning. Creative is one of those awe-
inspiring words which we use with a kind of reverent sur-
render of our clear thinking. We do not seek to analyze.
A creative mind is just — creative. It is a gift of the gods.
Bow low, all we of lesser breed, and worship
The no doubt, of this mystical reverence has
chief cause,
been our early conditioning in the schools and at home.
We learned about the “great” inventors, the “great” dis-
coverers, artistsand poets. Consequently, the human race
came to be divided into two sharply contrasted classes: the
few great and the multitude of lesser ones. Of course,
with our powers still in the bud, and with our juvenile habit-
systems causing a fair amount of annoyance, no teacher
ever suggested that we might be as these breath-taking
great ones were. At the most, we might (if we were
male) become Presidents. But creative geniuses! The
:

latter always, it seemed, were born somewhere else.

All of this has been most unfortunate, for It has
 TPE CREATIVE MIND 233

developed the view that inventiveness is a power with which

endowed
a few rare individuals are at birth. we find
Since
no strong symptoms of this power in ourselves, we simply
take it for granted that we are not destined to belong to
the ranks of the inventors ; and so, quite naturally, we make
no effort to develop such latent powers as we may possess.
Let us suppose, however, that in another generation we
should become convinced that inventive or creative power,
in greater or lesser degree, is possessed by everybody;
moreover that there are ways of stimulating and of train-
ing it which are capable of increasing it far beyond its
latent condition. One suspects that if once such a con-
viction were widespread, education would be revolutionized.
Instead of serving, as education now does, chiefly as a
technique for the transmission of past information, its

major energies would be directed towards the arousing and

training of the inventive powers latent in all its children.
For it would realize that a society alive with inventive
power woyld, on the whole, be the most powerfully pro-
gressive society.
No such recognition, however, can come until the mystery
isremoved. What, after all, does the creative or inventive
mind do? Stated in the simplest terms it breaks up old
habits of association and establishes new ones. Let us take
as an example the Invention of the fountain pen. Genera-
tions of men and women were quite content to live within
the fixity of a certain system of writing-associations. Writ-
ing meant: pen (hei-e), inkwell (there). There was no
questioning of that association. It was taken for granted,
as final; precisely as most of us take many things for
granted today; e. g. an unwashable man’s suit of clothes;

unremovable, uncleanable pockets, etc. The first step in the

234 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
act of invention was to doubt the finality of that pen-
inkwell association^ Why must it be
necessary to have the
pen here and the inkwell there? Once that doubt was
aroused, the next step was not difficult. Why not a new
relationship of pen and inkwell? What new relationship?
The questioning mind might at this point have found no
solution. It might have hung suspended in doubt. But
itmight have gone on to ask: Why not the inkwell
the pen ? in the pen ?
If the reader will analyze a number of simple inventions
— like the detachable collar, the wrist watch, the washing
machine, —he will note that the above is the typical process
(i) a questioning of the habitual relationships (e. g. watch
in the pocket) (2) a working out of new possible relation-
;

ships (watch on the wrist)

Thus the mystery completely disappears. No doubt
there is a difference in our natural endowments, although we
are as yet, and perhaps always will be, completely unable
to measure these differences. (Hence there is.. practically
no use talking about them.) But however near some of
us may naturally be to the heights of genius, however
humbly others of us must remain on the levels of mediocrity,
it is possible for every one of us to question some of the

habitual relationships in our world of things and institu-

tions. It is also possible for every one of us to keep ask-
ing himself, in this situation and in that: how may it be
done differently?
Some time ago the writer was engaged in the laborious
task of entering grades upon a number of sheets of paper.
Inasmuch as the sheers had to be shuffled, each notation had
1 This doubt may actually have been so swift as not to be recognized ;
but
swift or slow it must have been there for an 3rthing to follow.
 THE CREATIVE MIND 235
to be blotted. This meant picking up and putting down the
blotter many times, with a fair amount of hunting for the
elusive article when it became lost beneath the shuffle. The
writer hates to confess on how many occasions he per-
formed this task before it occurred to him to cut a small
piece of blotting paperand snap it with an elastic on to his
left hand. Thereafter hundreds of needless motions were
saved; and his inventive soul was exalted. This same de-
vice was independently discovered and reported later by
one of the members of the writer’s adult class.
The following is from the manuscript of a forthcoming
book by a member of the writer’s class (Anna G. Noyes) :

“An Invention”

“During the war, we had ten barrels of corn on the cob,

our chicken food for the winter. To get it shelled we used
the scheme of Colonial days, a corn shelling bee. Boys
and girls, dressed in overalls and aprons, were paired off.
Each couple was provided with a large pail and a pile of
corn ears, and at a given signal all would start shelling.
At the close of thirty minutes each couple’s output was
weighed and appropriate prizes awarded . . . Fingers
flew, and corn shot gaily around the room. One girl tried

her teeth; several blistered their fingers. At the second

party one of the boys exhibited a corn sheller of his own
make. It consisted of a board with a hole in it large
enough to admit the stripped end of a corn cob, and was
surrounded by a close row of projecting brads. Holding
this in one hand and the corn cob in^he other, he twisted
the cob through the hole the kernels were loosened off and
;

then dropped. The invention appealed to the others and

236 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
soon half a dozen like were in operation. Then the in-
it

ventor found that the plain board was difficult to hold, so

he fitted it with a handle, and that was copied. Then to
prevent the kernels from flying around the room, he put
a hood on the device. And soon, in one way or another,
he improved upon the original invention five times.”
This little tale indicates admirably _the psychological
steps in inventing. First the difficulty, the lack, the short-
coming. (Necessity the mother of invention.) Then the
question: need it be done in this way? The next question:
how can it be done differently? Once the first step in the
solution is reached, other steps suggest themselves, until
the invention swings along to a finished device never
dreamed of in the beginning.

Taking the Matter Into Our Own Hands

The whole matter is so simple, one wonders that edu-
made so little of
cation has it. There are hundreds of ob-
jects about us of each one of which we ma5*' ask: May this
not be made differently? There are scores of undertak-
ings —games, —
of each one of which
conferences, dinners,
we may ask: May be done differently? In fact,
this not
one might say that the really alive mind is one that every
now and then is asking itself such questions. Most of our
minds are simply too lazy to ask them too lazy, and also, —
never yet made adequately aware that these questions are
the “open sesame” to invention.
It should be obvious that there is no more fruitful task
which a society can sat itself than that of increasing the in-

ventive power of its citizenry. For in social life, as in

biological, the effective variation is the key to progressive
 THE CREATIVE MIND 237

evolution. It is true that transmission of information

must ever remain a chief function of education, for the
simple reason that without a background of established fact,
no very fruitful creation of new fact can be expected.
But transmission should be instrumental, never an end-in-
itself. It should be instrumental to the production of that
questioning, experimental, creative mind which is the great-
est asset of any civilization.
But we need not wait for education to capture this idea.
The matter is within our own hands. We can decide now
to “do things differently” — things mechanical, domestic,
social, political, economic. Out of our decision may come
results that can quite easily be of vast moment to ourselves
and our society.
 CHAPTER XIV
CONFLICT AND INVENTION
all life is conflict and all conflict is good.
In one sense
We have to struggle to keep ourselves alive. Out of that
struggle has come most of the intelligence we possess.
Were we spoon-fed by Nature we should doubtless be Na-
ture’s morons. No one, therefore, who is wise to the pe-
culiar human genius for mental “slumping” would wish to
get rid of conflict. Conflict is our gad-fly. We fret and
fume at it; but in the end we must acknowledge that it

keeps us on the move.

And yet there are forms of conflict which even those of
us who are not averse to mental movement deplore. For
example, there is a widespread feeling, that war is a kind
of conflict which is tragically stupid. Much incidental
good, indeed, comes out of it, but so much more harm, that
we seek to eliminate it altogether. Are we in error about
this? Is theview sounder and wholesomer, said to have
been expressed some years ago by Theodore Roosevelt,
that “war makes for the manly and adventurous qualities?”
Was Heraclitus justified when he wrote: “War is the
Father of all things?”
Is not the same to be said of industrial conflict? When
there was no conflict, most of the population were the
obedient slaves of the few. When the slaves organized and
fought lustily, they won for themselves some measure of
23S
 CONFLICT .AND INVENTION
freedom. Must not the good work go on? Is he not a
sentimentalist who deplores class conflict, who urges that
the economic lamb should lie down in company union with
the economic lion?
Is not the same to be said of race conflicts? Has not
the entire history of man been a wholesome fight of races
each for its own supremacy? Who would wish the mag-
nificent Nordics to have established peaceful matrimonial
relations with the despised Yellows? To have produced a
mongrel breed! Must not the good fight still be fought
—with the weapons of bitterness and violence? If God
indeed moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform,
is it not perhaps best shown in this instance, where out of

hatred and contempt for others Is born the fine flower of

our chivalric and world-serving Nordicism?
It seems, at first sight, a difficult problem to solve. Un-
questionably there Is no form of which does not
conflict
eventuate in good. It is quite erroneous therefore to op-
pose conflicf as such. The very opposition is itself a form
of conflict which "believes itself to be good. On the other
hand, it would seem equally erroneous to grow mystically

ecstaticover conflict. The very fact that most of us, even

the ardent advocates of war, or of class conflict, or of race
supremacy disbelieve in clubbing our wives into submission,
is sufficient indication that we believe that there are fight
techniques which at least are not in good taste. Perhaps
we may even go farther and acknowledge that there are
fight techniques which are highly intelligent and others
which are tragically stupid.
And so we are again at the point Vhere we must ana-
lyze our meanings. It should be obvious that we are here
concerned with one of the most crucial problems of in-
240 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
fluencing human behavior. Conflict still plays a major role
in our life. How we are to behave with regard to it de-
pends fundamentally upon what we are to believe with re-
gard to it. It is important then that we clarify our ideas.

When Is Conflict Intelligent^

We speak of the struggle to survive as if it were wholly

a matter of fighting enemies. And yet, if we regard our
civilized life, with its various equipments for food, shelter,
clothing, learning, etc., we note that it becomes successful
precisely to the degree, not that we are able to oppose the
so-called forces of Nature, but to the extent that we can
understand them and work with them. It may, of course,
be said that gravitation is the deadly foe of the airplane
and that our aspiring life is in conflict with this down-pulling
force. And yet the down-pulling force is that without
which the up-flying mechanism would be quite impossible,
precisely as it would be impossible for the bird^to fly were
there no resistance of the air. Our mefaphor of conflict
in this connection is then largely erroneous. Our human
task is not just to fight Nature; it is rather to understand
the natural conditions of our life so thoroughly and in such
detail that we can —
and enjoy them live with them,
utilize
in brief, — instead of breaking our stupid heads against
them.
What then has the so-called struggle with Nature meant
for us? It has given us the impulse to find out about this
supposed enemy of ours and to devise ways in which to
join our forces with its requirements. It has, in short,
been the stimulus to both our intelligence and our inven-
tion.
 CONFLICT *AND INVENTION 241

One might at the outset, then, venture the following

hypothesis; conflictis civilizing when it involves an effort

(i) to understand the opposing factor; and (2) to invent

a means whereby the opposition is succeeded by fruitful co-
operation.

Conflict Within the Individual

Accepting this hypothesis for the time being, let us ex-
amine some of the typical conflict situations in our life in
order to determine, if possible, when it is that conflicts are
carried on stupidly and when intelligently. Let us con-
sider first the conflicts within the individual life. Our
most illuminating example perhaps will be found in the type
of conflict brought about by a suppression. Freudian
analysis has made us sufficiently aware of these psychologi-
cal antagonisms within ourselves it has shown us how deep-
;

seated they often are and how they eventuate in various

more or less serious conditions of disease. What is the
psychological situ’ation in such conflicts? The strong emo-
—
tion it may have been an infantile fear, or a powerful sex

attachment,—has been, as the Freudians say, suppressed

into the unconscious. The conscious part of us refused to
face it. Itaway, so to speak; pushed it off; would
hid it

have nothing to do with it. It treated it as a foe that must

be cast out completely. But, as we know, our efforts thus
to suppress the enemy usually achieve only this, that the
suppressed emotion lives on without our knowing it, and in

a most puzzling way, breaks up the harmonious integration

of our life. •
Thus, in this case of conflict within the individual, mere
opposition does us no good. Note now what happens
242 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
when we apply the therapeutic technique devised by this
new school of psychologists. The disturbing cause has long
since been pushed out of consciousness; we have quite for-
gotten it. The object of the analytic technique is to find
the foe, face and understand
it The understanding Is
it.

as fundamental as the finding and the facing. The re-

markable thing about this technique is that it makes the
—
understanding of the foe not the defeat of the foe the —
chief prerequisite for the wholesome resolution of the con-
flict.

Once the disturbing cause is found and thoroughly

understood, a new relationship is made possible within the

individual. The individual now adjusts the opposing

emotion-systems to each other and so devises a new mode
of life wherein both may function.
Here then we have the resolution of conflict by the proc-
ess (i) of understanding; and (2) of foi-ming a new in-

tegration.
The foregoing account of what takes pljace in-the psycho-
analytic process is altogether too little understood. As
a matter of fact It is quite simple. That a skilled psychol-
ogist is necessary to carry the process through is only in-

cidental. The process is really one of bringing a detached

and repudiated portion of our mentality into the full light

of our conscious intelligence. To understand, in this case,

is to reconcile. Why? Because, with understanding, a
new relationship can be established between factors hitherto
so completely at odds that no reconciliation has been pos-
sibled
^Recall Chapter VIIL The Freudian analysis is a striking example of
the possibility of straightening out the entire life of an individual by the
reconstruction of a single habit-system. The analyst suspects in the patient
an emotional habit-system wherein a suppressed factor plays a continuous
 I

GONFLiex^AND INVENTION 243

The JVar Psychosis

Let us now pass to that state of intense individual and

social arousal called war. "We
find in war a most significant
symptom. When war begins, all the avenues of mutual
approach between the warring peoples are instantly closed
and are kept closed. Those avenues, in modern times, are
so numerous; so much passes over them from land to land
—
and people to people science, art, commerce, literature,
friendly correspondence — that, in times of peace, they make
of the various nations an integrated world. By that we
mean that no part of the world lives in isolated independence
of the rest. Each land or people both gives and receives.
Each therefore is, in quite a vital sense, organic with the
whole.
In time of war, on the other hand, this wholesome inter-
penetrative unity becomes a split-in-two. Each combatant
builds a psychological wall about itself, shutting out the
li
other. Uponnormal, organic association, in short, there
supervenes ’( except for destructive relationships) a com-
plete dissociation. We
all know well enough what hap-

pens. Within each self-enclosed area there are bred the

intensest hatreds of the enemy. These hatreds are fostered
by rumors, ignorant exaggerations and outright lies. The
outright lies are condoned on the ground that any means is
justifiable which builds up the morale (note the irony of
that woi'd!) of a people at war.
And now the curious thing happens. Should some one
in nation A, let us say, desire honestly to find out the real
and perhaps justifiable grievances of ijne enemy people, B,
he is cried down as disloyal!
and disastrous part. The uncovering of this factor breaks the habitual
relations and makes possible the formation of a new habit-system.
244 INFLUENCING HUIVLAN BEHAVIOR
The chief war technique, In short, is to preserve each
member to the conflict in darkest ignorance of the other.
Far more fundamental and powerful than the force of
armies, in short, is the force of censorship and propaganda.
Were there no censorship, even propaganda, one suspects,
would be relatively harmless. Were there neither censor-
ship nor propaganda, mere armies would be powerless to
carry on a conflict, for the simple reason that war can go
on only through a refusal to understand.
Now what is significant about this is the sheer split-in-
two which this attitude accomplishes. In the case of the
individual, as we have seen, a sheer split-in-two of the in-
tegrated organism is a sign of disease. We find such a split
in the insane person. The lunatic is so dissociated men-
tally, that the Identical person is King of England
at once a
and a humble petitioner for a pipeful of tobacco. The
hysteric is a dissociated personality who, in each successive
state, is quite unaware of the preceding state. Now all
our therapeutic effort in the case of the dissociated in-
dividual is to bring about integration of the personality.
—
Disintegration -the Dr. Jekyll powerless to understand and
control the Mr. Hyde— is the major symptom of a per-
sonality-disease.
Apparently war, in the social field, is likewise this type
of disease. We are not here pretending to an analogy
between society and the individual. We are simply, in each
case, analyzing the facts. War means a relatively complete
psychological dissociation between conflicting groups.
It isno wonder, then, that war employs the technique of
suppression. The foe must be trampled upon; as nearly
as possible annihilated. The victory of the one must mean
 CONFLICT AND INVENTION 245
the utter defeat of the other. The other side is all wrong;
itmust be put completely out of business.
Nowthere are two things that must be said about such
a form of conflict. In the first place we may suspect that
any form of conflict which deliberately repudiates that
which is the most precious achievement of our whole hu-
man namely, the truth seeking attitude, can hardly
histcrry,

be otherwise than deeply disastrous. To say that war

makes for manly virtues and for many other fine things is
to say no more than that an attack of typhoid makes for
the sympathy of one’s family. But to seek to develop sym-
pathy by inducing an attack of typhoid would be a most
Chinese method of burning down the house in order to roast
the pig.
In the second place, Be really fruitful, must
conflict, to
eventuate in a discovery. Consider primitive man standing
helplessly on the shore of the The ocean is a foe.
ocean.
It places an irrevocable bar to his advance. Here, then, is
conflict. Let us suppose that the primitive man cries out
in his rage, calls liis magicians and bids them order back
the offending waters. Not even a primitive would be as
stupid as that. What he proceeds to do is to find out about
this offending thing; how he may come to terms with it.
And he does come to terms when he is intelligent enough
to build a boat.

The Substitute for War

Conflict is fruitful when it is the stimulus to a new way
out. War is really no way out at alt—-at least no fruit-

ful way. What, then, shall we substitute for war? The

246 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR '

'

f’; :

extreme answer is, let us substitute loving kindness, the

brotherhood of man. If we can, well and good. But one
suspects that life is hardly to be reduced (or lifted up)
to so simple a formula. Life is inevitably a conflict of
interests. Our substitute for war, then, must be not an
absence of conflict but a handling of conflict in such a way
that it becomes the opportunity for a new creative achieve-
ment.
That, of course, is what is happening, for example, in
Geneva. Sweden and Finland are in conflict over the
Aaland Islands. From the point of view of Geneva the
conflict is an opportunity. A
neutral commission is ap-
pointed to find out all the facts. The commission makes a
report which gives to neither contestant a full victory over
the other. On the other hand it does not simply infuriate
each by giving each less than it desired. It invents a new
way out.
Such, undoubtedly, must be the fertile technique of the
future. With it will go that chief abomination of the
older, war technique, secret diplomacy. 'Secret diplomacy,
with censorship and propaganda are the unholy trinity that
have brought most of the distresses in a world struggling
with difficulty to be intelligent. The substitute for war
must involve a technique of openness, understanding and
invention.

Labor and Capital

Much same analysis can be made of the conflict be-
the
tween labor and capital. The traditional form of conflict
has been that of an outright fight — either in process of be-
ing fought out or in preparation for being fought out.
 CONFLICT, AND INVENTION 247
The two parties to the fight have held themselves rigorously
apart — again, a condition of complete dissociation, a split-
in-two. Neither party has tried or wished to know the
real grievances or the real difficulties of the other. The
morale of each has been maintained by its own system of
propaganda: em.ployers’ propaganda in the meetings of
merchants’ and manufacturers’ associations, to which the
terrible foe are never, under any circumstances, admitted;
employees’ propaganda in union meetings, to which the
hated employing class are never invited.
Hence there have been two self-enclosed groups hating
each other because not knowing and not seeking to know
each other. It is no wonder that the typical technique of
the labor fight has been the war technique, the victory of
one over the other. And here, too, the unholy trinity has
been operative: secret diplomacy, censorship and propa-
ganda. For let a worker within his own group speak a
kind word for the employer, or let an employer propose
friendly relations with workers —
instantly the war-cry of
the infuriated pabk!
we have maintained, may be of great human
Conflict,
value, but neverwhen it repudiates our most precious hu-
man achievement, the will to know the truth. What is the
substitute for this traditional technique of the labor fight?
The outlines of it are already discernible. In a little of-
fice in Rochester, three mornings a week, representatives
of the employers and of the employees in the garment trades
gather together. They still sit on opposite sides of the
room; and doubtless there is still a fair amount of glaring
at each other. But between them, behind a desk, sits an
impartial chairman chosen by both parties. The task of
the chairman is to adjudicate difficulties as they come up.
240 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
No sooner does an irritation arise in tne shops than It is

brought out into the open. It Is discussed by both sides;

then decided by the chairman; and the decision thereupon
is in black and white for all the world to see.

Here then is a technique which stresses openness; the

wish to find out and face the facts; and the willingness to
devise new ways out of difficulties. In other words, con-
flict, here, is an opportunity for (i) intelligence and ( 2 )

invention.

Racial Enemies

“Prejudice,” writes Dr. Sheffield in his enlightening little

book, “Entering Into Public Discussion,” “is a defense re-
action of Ignorance. You’re apt to be ‘down on’ what
you’re not ‘up on.’ ” No doubt race antagonism can chiefly
be reduced to this. Each race counts Itself superior be-

cause knows Itself

it and does not
the other.knowEach
race makes a show of proving that other races are inferior.
No single one of these proofs, however, has as yet any
standing in sober science. They are at best the rationaliza-
tions of our own deep wish to be superior.
The curious thing about race antagonism Is that it does
not arise out of a conflict regarding matters that are really
basic.^ It springs rather out of the trifling surface dif-
ferences between peoples. Thus It is blackness of skin
that arouses the virtuous Indignation of the Southerner.
The heart within the skin may
be whiter than the white
Southerner’s, and the brain within the black skull may be
infinitely more capable. Nevertheless beyond the skin
covering the Southerner will not go. For the race-inflamed
iRace, of course, is quite un inaccurate word, typical of the inaccuracy
that invades this entire field.
 Creating Our Own Conflicts

The four types of conflict above discussed — conflict be-

tween emotional states within the individual, conflict be-
tween nations, between capital and labor, and between
—
races are not staged by us for our»own pleasure. They
arise, somehow and we do the best we
;
can with them. To
be sure, our best has been fairly inadequate; but it can
250 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
hardly be said that we have deliberately set about to wish
these conflicts upon ourselves. It is different, however,
with the type of conflict which we are now to discuss. We
deliberately create and come out in crowds fathers and
it, —
mothers and sisters and aunts and all the rest of the noble
citizenry —
to admire our handiwork! Nay more than
that, we solemnly instruct our young folk that to engage in
such a conflict —
^we call it a debate —
and to come forth
victorious is to be well on the way toward success.
It is only in a very special field that we are still able .to

continue this thing. If we go into the chemical laboratory

and ask that a public combat be staged on the possible out-
come of radium research, the chemical professor will shake
his head: “We don’t stage combats here. We try to find
things out.” If we go into the biological laboratory, we
get the same subtly ironic answer. The biologist will ad-
mit, if pressed, that there are indeed conflicting views in
—^between
biology mechanists and vitalists, for example.
“Ah, we
then,” say, “let us stage a combat — a great public
combat— and negative; with judges to decide
affirmative
who wins and who gets defeated; and an audience to go
wild with enthusiasm at the oratory.” The biologist will
shake his head. “That is not the way we scientists do
things. Long ago, when science was still learned out of
Aristotle, scientific men argued themselves hoarse; dis- —
putations, they called such verbal orgies. No more of that
now. Our task, as scientists, is not to see who can argue
the most cleverly, but who can really find things out.”
Then, if he is a good friend, he may whisper in our ear:
“Go to those who dfihl in social questions. They still do
that mediaeval thing!”
 GONFLICT^AND INVENTION 251
'

, ,
'

I
Of course, if we are a bit huffed, we may reply ; “Why
so highty tighty ? Is not an oratorical combat a most ef-
fective way to find things out ? Doesn’t every question have
two sides?”
“Yes, indeed, and sometimes three, sometimes four, or
five, or a dozen!”
“Oh well, but it has two sides at least, and if we get
those two sides well fought out. . .
.”

“My friend,” the biologist may then reply, “have you

ever studied a real problem?”
“I’ve—I’ve studied chemistry and physics.”
“No, nol I don’t mean have you learned to reproduce
what is in a textbook. I mean have you ever studied a
problem, real problem, like the question how to make
a.

synthetic sugar, or (to go into that region of nebulous

hypothesis, sociology) how
young ladies into theirto fit

proper sphere in life? Well if you have, then you will be

aware that when you start to run down a problem there
are no clearly defined sides at the beginning. As you pur-
sue the problem to its solution, you may have to take a posi-
tion at the end which you never even dreamed of taking at
the beginning.
“Chasing down problems in science is like that. Each
new step is a discovery. You chart your way as you go
along. And when you have reached your conclusion,
you may look back at the tentative positions you held
at the beginning and smile at all that you did not then
know.
“Now that is why all this Yes-No business; Affirmative
— Negative God-for-me—the Devil^ith-you I’m White
; ;

— You’re Black; I’m going to Win You’re going to —

252 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
—
Lose ^what you call ‘debate’ (which, you remember—
comes from debatuere, to beat, to thump) that is why no —
real scientist will have anything to do with it. It is not
science, it is sophistry.”
Those, are hard words for the ancient and honorable
tournament yclept debate But is not our scientific friend
!

right about it? Is not debate a left-over from a military

age, when the chief object in life was to be the hardest hit-
ter, the chief cracker of skulls? A debate is never a
“Come let us reason together.” It is rather a “Shake
hands ; now ready Gong
!”
—
Reversing the Scientific Process

As one writer has recently expressed it: “Now what

kind of process is this? Students meet, and agree to dis-

cuss a problem. The latter is generally of a political,

sociological, ethical or philosophical nature, and one they
know little or nothing about. Whatever it isj they have
yet to make a careful, thorough and systematic study of
it. But their ignorance does not prevent them from de-
termining that this or that proposed solution is or is not
practicable. Having come to a conclusion, they proceed to
find the facts and justify it!

“As a process, this is the very reverse of that dictated by

lo^c and by science. one of the objects of our
Yet it is

schools to train students in the art of approaching problems

with minds free of any bias toward a preconceived solution.
It is also the object of the science courses in particular to
impress upon the pupils the importance and the necessity
of arriving at even tentative conclusions, or rather hypo-
 CONFLICT, AND INVENTION 253
theses, only after a careful, thorough, systematic and im-
partial examination of all the available data relating to a
^
given problem.”
Debate, then, is deeply in conflict with the scientific spirit
of our age. It is militarism in the intellectual life. It is
mediaevalism in modernity. By teaching young minds to
start with their conclusions and then find the facts to justify
them, it is the great aider and abettor of the noble art

of rationalizing.

Constructive Debate

But it is always a little dangerous to cast out the baby

with the bath. Perhaps there is something that can be
salvaged out of this verbal bellicosity. Let us recall our
hypothesis about conflict. Conflict, we said, was civilizing
when it was accepted as an opportunity (i) to understand
the opposed side; (2) to find a new way out. Debate, as
hitherto conducted has been carried on like war, namely,
with the deliberate refusal to understand the other side,
and with the sole aim, not of a creative way out, but of a
smashing victory.
Let us suppose, however, that we keep in mind our crea-
tive view of conflict.^ Let us also grant to our debating
friends that there are social, economic and political prob-
lems with reference to which, in a more or less general
1 ^‘The Competitive Debate”; by Arnold H. Kamiat. School and Society,
voL XIX, No. 488; May 3, 1924. See also the writer’s two artides: “Reason
and the ‘Fight Image,’” New Republic, Dec. 20, 1922; and “Forming First
Habits for the International Mind,” Frogresswe Education, -vol. II, No. 2;
1925. ^
valuable analysis of this view is to be found in the book already
cited, “Creative Experience,” by M. P. Follett.
254 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
way, two opposed stands can be taken. Suppose now that
we say to our young minds: “It is fair to give each side
its strongest defense let us first do that.
; It makes no
difference whether you believe in the affirmative or not.
If you defend it valiantly, we all know that you are simply
doing your chivalric best to say what can be said in its
favor. But now, after we have done our best fdf affirma-
tive and negative, let us take off our disputatious habits and
don the habit of the scientists. Let us, in short, now con-
sider together what we are going to do with the whole ques-
tion. We shall now not debate; we shall discuss. We
shall try honestly to understand each other. Above all,

we hope not to end with the affirmative-negative dead-

shall
lock with which we began; we shall rather hope to find a
new way out.”
We might call this “constructive debate,” implying by the
term the spirit of the upbuilding scientist rather than the
spirit of the down battering militarist.

“Where Two or Three are Gathered Together’’

“The way we is by getting our

generally strive for rights
fighting blood up; and I venture to say that that is the
long way and not the short way. If you come at me with
your fists doubled, I think I can promise you that mine
will double as fast as yours but if you come to me and say,
;

‘Let us sit down and take counsel together, and, if we

differ from one another, understand why it is that we differ
from one another, just what the points at issue are,’ we will
presently find that wE are not so far apart after all, that
the points on which we differ are few and the points on
which we agree are many, and that if we only have the
 CONFLICT AND INVENTION 255

patience and the candor and the desire to get together, we

^
will get together.”
All this is in line with our more civilized techniques.
Open diplomacy, the leaguing of all nations, international
conferences, fact-finding agencies, boards of adjustment-
all these operate in terms of the hypothesis above expressed
for the Handling of conflicts. The militaristic mind is the
either-or mind; the black-white, god-devil mind. It is es-

sentially, therefore, the static and destructive mind. The

new type that Is increasingly developing in our social affairs
is the neither-and-both mind; the gradations-of-color ;
the
neither-you-nor-I-am-God-or-devIl; the come-let-us-reason-
together mind. It is therefore essentially the evolving,
creative mind.
shall doubtless realize, more than we now
Some day we
do, the profound psychological significance of the biblical
sentence “Where two or three are gathered together In
:

My name there am I in their midst.” That has hitherto

been taken only In a religiously mystical sense. Psycholog-
ically Interpreted, however, It means that in every coming
together of minds that are serious in the effort to under-
stand, there Is something more than the sum of minds.
There is the Creative Plus which no one mind by itself
could achieve. And even when the two or three are In con-
flict together, If the intent to understand and to find a new
way there something creatively new emerges.
out Is

the secret of civilized conflict which is slowly but

This is

quite certainly being learned in our times. The day of

destructive fight is passing; the day of constructive fight
is ahead of us.

^ From a speech of Woodrow Wilson at the dedication of the A.

F. of L. Building, July 4, 1916. Recall the homeogenic technique, Chapter L
 CHAPTER XV
THE TECHNIQUE OF HUMOR -

Why, it may we now take up so apparently

be asked, do
trifling a subject as humor? But humor is not trifling. It
is that blessed quality which pervades or should pervade
all our techniques for influencing human behavior.
So many books have been written about humor that even
a short chapter might seem superfluous. Our only excuse
is that we have a special object in view. ICnowing that
humor is a powerful factor in influencing behavior, we wish
to ask.not what humor is but how it can be cultivated.
Does this seem a preposterous question? But to assert
that we ought not to ask it is to take the obscurantist posi-
tion that humor is a kind of mysterious gift. In that case,
if one has a sense of humor, let him thank the good gods;

if he has it not, let him be brave, poor soul, and try to

bear up under his sorry afiliction. But in the present day,

when we successfully feed thyroid to cretins, and regenerate
senile functioning by transplantation, we should be little
inclined to make a final judgment upon any human lack
whatever, particularly, in the matter of a sense of humor,
about which we know so little.

Why fs Humor Effective?

We
might begin our analysis indirectly by asking why
humor is effective as a technique. Doubtless there are
'256
'

^
 THE TECHJ^IQUE OF HUMOR 257
many answers to tffiis question. The following answer may
perhaps lead us to some fertile conclusions. When a per-
son uses humor, he implies that his respondent possesses
a sense of humOr. Now that implication is one of the
highest compliments which he can pay him. Conversely,
it is almost the greatest reproach to tell a person flatly that
he has no sense of humor whatever. Tell him that he is

disorderly, or lackadaisical, or homely, or awkward; he

will bear up under these. But tell him that he has no
sense of humor; it is a blow from which even the best of
'

us find it difficult to recover.

People have a most curious sensitiveness in this regard.
That is why, no doubt, the humorless person actually builds

up for himself the belief that he has a sense of humor. He

must have it if he is to retain his self-respect.
Why is there this all but universal wish to be possessed
of humor? We arenow treading obscure paths; and what
we have to offer by way of explanation must be accepted
only as tentative^suggestion. However, our approach may
yield something of value.

What a Sense of Humor Implies

Apparently, the possession of humor implies the pos-

session of anumber of typical habit-systems. The first is
an emotional one the habit of playfulness. Why should
:

one be proud of being playful? For a double reason.

First, playfulness connotes childhood and youth. If one
can be playful, one still possesses something of the vigor
and the joy of young life. If one flas ceased to be play-

ful, one writes oneself down as rigidly old. And who

wishes to confess to himself that, rheumatic as are his
258 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
joints, his mind and spirit are really aged? So the old
man is proud of the playful joke which assures him that
he is still friskily young.
But there is a deeper implication. To be playful is,

in a sense, to be free. When a person is playful, he mo-

mentarily disregards the binding necessities which corapel
him, in business, morals, domestic and community life.
These binding necessities, for the most part, encompass our
lives. We have to submit to them whether we wish to or
not. We have to go to work—-no play about that! We
have to pay our watch our moral step, to obey the
rent, to
policeman, to be circumspect in our diet. Life is largely
compulsion. But in play we are free! We do what we
please. We make the rules. And if we lose, there is no
harm done; while if we win, there is no sadness at having
brought distress to another.
Apparently there is no dearer human wish than to be
free.
But this is not simply a wish to be free from; it is also,
and more deeply, a wish to be free to. What galls us is
that the binding necessities do not permit us to shape our
world as we please. They hand out the conditions to us.
We must take them or leave them. What we most deeply
desire, however, is to create our world for ourselves.
Whenever we can do that, even in the slightest degree, we
are happy. Now in play we create our own world. Omni-
potent as Heaven may be, He never played football.
God in
We made Thereupon a new world was created;
football!
and ever since, we have sat in the grandstand and pro-
nounced it good. Out world I

So when we play, we function happily within our own

created world. To be sure, play is not our last word in
 THE TECHNIQUE OF HUMOR 259
creation. Play is* evanescent creation. In art — ^whicH is
our more serious play—we create for permanence. Here,
too, we are free. In art and play, then, we are most
happily ourselves. All our other activities industry,—
business, even science, save when they are themselves play
—are but instrumentalities to meet the hard necessities and
give us rdom for freedom.
To imply, therefore, that a person has a fine sense of
humor is to imply that he has still in him the spirit of

play, which implies even more deeply the spirit of free-

dom and of creative spontaneity.

Poking Fun at the Respectabilities

In humor this spirit of playful freedom gets frequent

expression in delighted digs at “necessary things.” Why
be so oppressively respectable? To be sure, we have to
be respectable. We
cannot do certain things. But at least
we can take it out oii the solemn respectabilities by saying
certain things. 'This is what Freud calls “escaping the
censor.” We all like to be a little wicked just because
virtue is so uppish about it —and so confoundedly neces-
sary!
It would almost seem as if the willingness and the wish
to be somewhat flippant toward the solemn respectabilities
— of state and church and sex and family—were a pre-
requisite for a sense of humor. For apparently the per-
son who submits himself utterly to the social and moralistic
compulsions can hardly possess that gay freedom which
delights in building a world for itself; which delights,
therefore, every now and then, in knocking the long-faced
respectabilities endwise.
 ; ;

26 o influencing HUMAN BEHAVIOR

We all remember the irreverent wfty in which Dean
Briggs handled the social respectables of Boston

“I dwell in the city of Boston,

The home of the bean and the cod
Where the Cabots talk only to Lowells,
And the Lowells talk only to God.” ^

That was far more humorous, because far more daring of

the censor, than the self-congratulatory, though also cleverly
humorous reply of Dean Jones of Yale:

from the town of New Haven,

“I hail
The home of the truth and the light.
Where the Lord talks to Jones
In the very same tones
Which he uses to Hadley and Dwight.”

Perhaps one of the best instances of slyly escaping the

censor was the case of the young curate who had quarreled
with his vicar and was due to leave. On the Sunday of
his departure, he preached his farewell sermon. “I shall
take as my text,” he said, “those words from the moving
story of Abraham: ‘Tarry ye here with the ass while I
”
go yonder.’

/F'e Blunder

,
Not humor, however, seeks to poke fun at the re-
all

spectabilities.Much of it is concerned with our blunders.

Now we can have the habit of taking all blunders seriously;
then we condemn thetn. Or we can have the habit of play-
ing with them. One of our newly-rich mothers made her-
 THE TECHNIQUE OF HUMOR 261

self famoussom? years ago by declaring with great

earnestness that she was looking up the best schools in
Washington for her daughters, because, she said, she
wanted her daughters to be well macadamized. Stupid
woman, says the serious person she ought to have learned
;

better English I

It is, among other

things, in the power to see blunders
and to them with laughter in one’s soul that the human
see
creature differs from the lower animal. Dogs do not
appear to laugh at each other. Perhaps they do in their
own way; but I seem to see one dog sitting quite solemnly,
without the twinkle of a smile on his flexible nose, while
another dog blunders around trying to disentangle him-
self from the rope that has got, most mysteriously, wound
about his legs. Perhaps the solemn dog is just solemn, and
the tangled dog is just tangled, simply because a dog always
has his nose right up against the facts. The solemn dog
simply hasn’t a rope about his legs. The other dog has.
If the solemn dog were roped, he would himself make
frantic efforts tohecome unroped; but being at the present
moment serenely unroped, sufficient unto the moment is
the comfort thereof. By which we mean, I suppose, that
the dog has not the imaginative power to see around facts.
He does not, for example, picture to himself his com-
panion dog’s state of mind immediately preceding the
snarl —
the proud independence of his soul, his calm self-
assurance, his cocksure way of marching ahead with uplifted
tail as if the world were his own private ham bone. He
has, therefore, no sense of the amusing contrast presented
by this depressed and irritated and very much bewildered
creature tied up in a hard knot.
262 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
To humor of a situation, therefore, apparently
see the
requires not only the ability to blunder and to see blunders
— —
we all possess that ^but the ability to blunder and to
see blunders with a certain detachment. The deadly
serious person is all wrapped up in what he is doing. The
crusader, for example, is never humorous about his cru-
sading. If he were, he would doubtless not crusade. In
order to get himself properly worked up, he has to put
his soul right up against one deadly, detestable fact and
hold it there. He must see nothing else, particularly noth-
ing that will mitigate the one fact. In the same manner,
a person may put his soul so immediately up against himself,
or his troubles, or his ambitions as to see nothing else in
the universe. He then is said to take himself too seriously;
and any joke made, at his expense is not a joke but an in-
sult.

Humor is Not Censorious

But the humorous person is blessed among us because

he has the habit of taking other people’s blunders rather
lightly. He is not a perfectionist. There are few more
deadly persons than perfectionists. They take the joy out
of life because what they require of us is so dolefully be-
yond our powers. The finely humorous person, on the
contrary, is felt to be one of us. He is not offensively our
moral superior. He knows our weaknesses; but he rather
suspects that he has similar weaknesses himself. Hence,
when we are with him, we are comfortable. We know
that he will not pry‘*too severely into our shortcomings.
He will not draw a long face and threaten us with eventual
damnation.
 THE TECHNIQUE OF HUMOR 263

, Humor is Unexpected

Again, the humorous person is not completely predict-

able. At any moment he may say and do precisely what
the logic of the situation did not call for. He makes a
logic of his own, which is far more interesting at times
than the Eumdrum logic which marches with due precision
past all the well-known milestones. A rather pretentious
fellow met the Whistler one evening. Pretentious
artist
Fellow: “I passed your house to-day, Mr. Whistler.”
W’^histler: “Fm much obliged.”
One suspects that there is so much greater joy over one
sinner that repenteth than over the ninety and nine good
and virtuous citizens for the reason that the whole thing
is so unexpected. Logically, the sinner belongs in the other
place. All his friends had told him that he was going
there; the angels expected It. Then suddenly he turned
a trick; and stands grinning before St. Peter! Meanwhile
the good and virtuous have been trudging with their
citizens
Baedeckers in hand, straight and solemnly to the appointed
hotel.
Thus the humorous person is always something of a
mystery, a wonder. We never quite know what he will
say or do next. That is why humor, apparently, is so
utterly essential In the long years of married life, and why
the very best advice to the lovelorn is: “Be certain that
he has a sense of humor —and that you have one your-
self!”

Why We Like Himorous Persons

From the foregoing brief analysis, then, It should be clear

—
why other things being equal —we like persons who have
264 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
a sense of humor. The humorous person has a number
of delightful qualities: he is playful; free; creative; not
priggish, nor fanatic, nor bigoted; he is not afraid of
laughing at the too solemn respectabilities he ; is not censoin-
ous; above he is everlastingly and refreshingly unex-
all

pected. Therefore we like to live with him. And sO'

because, by implication, we deny these delightful' qualities,
we offer the direst insult when we jokingly say to a person :

“You’re all right, my friend; but you haven’t a grain of

humor in you.” We mean that he had best not be around
too much!

Can We Cultivate Humor?

And now we come how can this
to a difficult question:
fine quality of humor be The foregoing analy-
cultivated?
sis should cast some light upon the problem. Humor, we
said, exhibits itself in a number of typical habits. Can we
cultivate these? In the first place there is the habit of
being playful. If we vaguely suspect that we have not a
noticeable degree of humor, we might ask ourselves : Are
we ever playful with serious things or ; is it our habit always
to take serious things, —our work, our — soul’s salvation, the
salvation of our neighbors or world the ^with prodigious
solemnity ?
The Puritan may cry out against this, but serious things
apparently have to be taken with a touch of playfulness
if we are not to surrender the freedom of our spirits. Why,
for example. If we are scientists, be so deadly in earnest
about our researches ih chromosomes? Chromosomes are
valuable, no doubt; but there are other things in life. Be-
sides, there is even a possibility that one may be mistaken
 THE TECHNIQUE OF HUMOR 265

about one’s bles£,j;d chromosomes and that a later scientist

may have a good round laugh at one’s expense. Or if it
is not chromosomes, then vegetarianism, or antivivlsec-

tlon, or fundamentalism or birth control. can get the We

habit of being playful wiih our Serious concerns. can We
knock them about a bit; be irreverent towards them; con-
sider We can refrain from
thSm temporary nuisances.
scowling when people disagree with what we hold certain
or sacred; and we can heroically restrain ourselves from
passing laws to compel them to bow the knee to our beliefs.
Are we timid towards the respectabilities? Then we can
learn to poke fun at them. We can realize that the world
is still in the making and that the last respectability has not
been cast into the mold of eternity. We can at least be
proud of our ability to be free spirits and can genially make
faces at that ofttimes royal pretender. Convention.
The first thing, of course, that we have to learn is that
humor is something far more than making jokes. It is

an attitude. If we are of that unfortunate number who

can never remember the right joke at the right moment,
we may rest easy. There are more things in the heaven
and earth of humor than made-to-order jokes. The im-
portant thing is that we begin to be free with our utilitarian
and conventional concerns — ^playfully free; that we re-

nounce the slavery of a too strict allegiance and take

mental and spiritual holidays. The effect is much like an
actual vacation; we come back a little boisterous and con-
tagiously happy.
Again, have we developed the habit of heresy hunting?
Are we terribly hot against bolshevllts? Have we formed
an association to suppress the reading of Russian novels?
Are we storming the women’s clubs to cast out the menace
266 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
of the cross word puzzle? It is good*to disagree about
things. It is also good to be in earnest about our convic-
tions. But not too earnest. Humanity has had a long,
hard march. It is often tired and blunderheaded. Ap-
parently there is no use gettin’g too wrought up about
the mistakes it makes. Things straighten out far more
quickly in the presence of the genial and understanding
mind than in the presence of the mind all ugly to condemn
and to crucify.
If our lack of humor exhibits itself in a constant habit
of censoriousness, have we not a remedy? The trouble
about matter of censoriousness is that it is invariably
this
treated from a solemnly moralistic point of view. “Judge
not that ye be not judged.” Rather, “Judge not, lest ye
lose the fine power of indulgent laughter.”

The Problem of the Unexpected

But now comes the difficult problem. The unhumorous

person may mend his ways in all the above respects but if ;

he is one of those terribly predictable creatures who bores

us by the very regularity and inevitability of his processes,
what can he do about it? Can he solemnly say to him-
self: “Now is the time to be unexpected”; and turn a
somersault?
There are of course innumerable ways of being humor-
ously unexpected. The lowest way is the way of the pun.
We would not suggest it, but one can actually train one’s
self to the unexpectedness of pun making by keeping a con-
stant lookout for double meanings in words. It is a low
way of humor, however, since it is so bereft of ideas, so
lacking in a fine quality of philosophic vision. Humor,
 THE TECHNIQUE OF HUMOR 267

most deeply, is a playful sense of those contrasts that we

call incongruities. An incongruity is something out of
proportion, out of its true relations. To see things in pro-
portion is wisdom. To see things in their lack of propor-
tion and to be playfully aware of the incongruity is the
wisdom of humor.
There»is no doubt that we can develop the habit of
observing incongruities. When we can (i) note an in-
congruity, and can then (2) raise it to laughable conspic-
uousness, we perform that unexpected creative act which
brings the delighted laugh. Recall the stanza about the
Lowells, the Cabots and God. That is sheer unexpected-
ness. The raw material of it was a certain aloofness from
the common herd. Dean Briggs might have said: “The
thing one notices about the Lowells and the Cabots is that
they consider themselves superior to their fellows.” That,
besides beingcommonplace, would have had a touch of as-
perity. No, he remarks the incongruity, the quite dispro-
portionate aloofness; but he does more; he raises it, by
exaggeration, tc? laughable conspicuousness : “And the
Lowells talk only to God.”
That, one suspects, is the secret. Life is full of all

kinds of incongruities. People are constantly exaggerating

their own importance; saying onething and doing another;
making mountains out of molehills. Most of us solemnly
note these incongruities; get irritated at them; condemn
them; scoff at them. The humorist, on the other hand,
gives a flip of exaggeration; and the irritating situation
is transformed into laughter 1

One of the best examples of thi« playful exaggeration

found in Donald Ogden Stewart’s “The
of incongruities is

Haddocks Abroad” (Doran). I cannot forbear quoting

268 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
since it illiisti 3.tes so
the following passjigc from the book}
aptly the power to note incongruities
and raise them to the
level of laughter.

time for departure

“I’m so excited,” said Mrs. Haddock, as the
boat before.”
drew near. “I’ve never been on a
“You’ll be very seasick,” said Aunt Flora.
The Quetches were
never good sailors except your half-brother Edmund 'who was
drowned at that picnic thirteen years ago
next July fourth.”

“Drowned people can be raised to the surface by firing guns over

a river,” said little Mildred.

drowned said Aunt Flora, are never
“People who are at sea,’

recovered.” t•
Mildred, “that if you fired a big
“I should think,” said little
a lot of inter-
enough gun over the Atlantic Ocean you could bring
esting things to the surface.”
way little Mildred’s mind worked and she was al-
That was the
the town as the
ready becoming known among the simple folk of
Joan of Arc of 453 Crestview Ave.
week before sailing was full of problems. There was
The last

first of all the question of whether or not to

take Mr. Haddock’s
winter pajamas.
who, man and boy, had
“It might turn cold,” said Mrs. Haddock,
and ought to have
had forty-nine years of experience with weather
known what she was talking about.
in June.
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Haddock. “It won’t turn cold
said Aunt Flora, “that your brother Samuel
“It was in June,”
—
took pneumonia and died ^June twenty-sixth.
once
“That wasn’t in Europe,” said Mr. Haddock, who had
thought of taking up the law.
“Weather is the same the world over,” said Mrs. Haddock.
“It isn’t,” said Mildred. “In Abyssinia the average mean rain-

fall is 13.4 mches.

“But we aren’t going to Abyssinia,” said Mr. Haddock plaintively.
'

“We might,” said Mrs. Haddock, and so she packed the pajamas
 THE TECHNIQUE OF HUMOR
'

269
rather triumpliantly (for pajamas) and asked Mr. Haddock to sit

00 the lid.

don't see why you packed my dress suit/' said Mr. Haddock,
not going to any banquets."
,

“At the Opera in Paris," said little Mildred, ^'full evening dress
is de riffueur/'
“You see," said Mrs. Haddock. “Mildred, talk some more French
for your Aunt Flora."
“I won't," said Mildred.
“Please, Mildred," said Aunt Flora, “talk some French for your
Aunt Flora."
“Mildred," said Mr. Haddock, “you talk some French for your
Aunt Flora or you don't get any Toasted Fruito for dessert to-night.
Papa means it."

“All right," said Mildred. “Ou est I'encre?"

“You Mrs. Haddock proudly.

see," said

“What does that mean, Mildred?" asked Aunt Flora.

“Where is the ink?” translated Mildred obediently with a pretty
toss of her curls.
“She will be a great help to you,” said Aunt Flora.
“Especially if w(i need much ink," said Mr. Haddock.

Note the quite disproportionate concern of Aunt Flora

about seasickness. How it looms! And drowning! And
note the delicious irrelevancy of little Mildred's mind, which
meets every situation with a text-book futility. And the
seriousness of the discussion of winter pajamas In summer.
We find around us. We hear discus-
people like that all

sions of exactly such profound triviality. But for the

most part we take no particular notice. The cultivation
of a sense of humor lies in sharpening our attention to the
incongruities that are about us andT then in learning how,
by a slight exaggeration, to raise these incongruities to
laughable conspicuousness.
,270 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Some day, no doubt, we shall begin train our young
people in this art. For the noting of incongruities is the
first step in wisdom. Most of us are clever enough to see
the things that can literally be seen. Fewer of us are
clever enough to note the subtle contradictions that lurk
within ideas and situations — the pedantry that protests
its liberality; the conservatism that loudly proclaims its

progressiveness ; the timidity that makes a boast of its

own courage. We do not really observe human life until

we have learned to see it in terms of these subtler incon-
sistencies. When once we achieve that power and can at
the same time preserve our kindliness, we are well on the
way to humor.

The Crucial Test

But now we come to our real test. It is fairly easy

to laugh at the incongruities in the behavior of other folk;
it is not so easy to laugh at the incongruities in our own
behavior. Have we been disproportionately wrathful
amounted to little ?
at something that really, in the long run,
And has our life-companion rather caustically remarked
that we seemed to have lost our sense of humor? To be
sure, life-companions should not be caustic in such crises.
Far better if husband and wife agreed beforehand on a
non-irritating signal to be given on all such trying occasions.
But even the mildest and most kindly-intentioned signal
might only infuriate us the more.
We had best, therefore, in time of fair weather prepare
for storms. We might do well then to remind ourselves
fairly frequently that the most liberating ability possessed
by man is the ability to laugh at himself. With sufficient
 THE TECHNIQUE OF HUMOR
self-reminding, it is not impossible to build up a laughing-
at oneself habit. Our irritations, frustrations, disgusts and
angers would take on a most delightful sporting quality
if we began to watch ourselves under stress and to note the
precise moment at which, our sense of proportion com-
pletely vanishing, our humor went into the discard.

Summary

A humor, then, is not to be regarded as a

sense of
mysterious gift with which some fortunate individuals are
endowed. It is a system of prevailing habits, habits which
it is apparently within the power of all of us to develop.

Primary among them is the habit of playfulness. Ex-

pressed briefly, this is the habit of taking things out of
their conventionally accepted relationships, as, for example,
when we use a good utilitarian pillow for a pillow fight
So the punster plays
instead of for a nocturnal head-rest.
with words when he departs from the accepted utilitarian
way of holding each word strictly to a single meaning. So,
again, a contest becomes play when it is agreed that losing
is bereft of Its conventional meaning of disaster.

To be playful, in short, is to re-create our world of bind-

ing necessities, to do with it what is not conventionally ex-
pected or required.
seems reasonable to assert that there is no fixed or in-
It
herited degree of playfulness in each of us, but that once
we are aware of the basic relation of playfulness to humor,
the degree to which the former operates can be noticeably
•
increased.
So we can learn, with moderation, to play with the serious
things of life. We can play with people’s blunders. We
272 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
r

can overcome our habits of undue censoriousness. Above

all, we can grow the habit of noting incongruities, noting

them, however, without bitterness and raising them by ex-

aggeration to laughable conspicuousness. Finally, pre-
cisely as we can direct this fine playfulness towards others,
we can direct it towards ourselves, learning the salutary
habit of not taking ourselves too seriously.
Humor is so powerful a factor in influencing human
behavior that we may well believe its cultivation to be a
major concern. now, we regard the sense of humor
If,

not as a mysterious endowment, but as a system of habits,

we may, with fair confidence, assert that it is possible for
us to refashion one after another of the habits that make
us unhumorous. We may, in short, actually develop a sense
of humor where apparently it does not exist.
 ;

CHAPTER XVI

TrtE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS WORLD

“The sermon now ended,
Each turned and descended
The eels went on eeling;
The pikes went on stealing;
Much delighted were they,
But preferred the old way.”

Perhaps that is how the reader now feels. We have

talked of influencing human behavior —our own and that
of others. Can we actually do it to any important extent?
Do not the vast impersonal forces sweep us along, paying
scant heed to ouf aspirations or techniques ? Spinoza tells

the tale of a stone shot from a catapult. In mid-flight

it awoke to consciousness. “Ahal” we can hear it say,
“see how swiftly I am pushing myself along! Not
many stones can do what I am doing!”
we express our human impotence biologi-
In modern days
cally. Note the paramecium swimming about with appar-
ent freedom, we say. Now introduce a beam of light.
Instantly the paramecium makes for the illuminated spot.
Does the creature freely choose its direction? Not at
all. A force stronger than itself informs its muscles and
compels its direction. A tropisml And thus, many of us
conclude, it is with human beings. We are physico-
 !

274 influencing HUMAN BEHAVIOR

chemically determined ;
and despite all our psychological
techniques, we shall be what we are to he and go whither
we are destined to go. How absurd, then, to believe that
by taking thought abo,ut it, we can add' one new psycho-
logical wrinkle to our make-up
It is possible, however, that we have been a little
overawed by these new biological observations. Earamecia
and tropisms and the rest have not yet become part of
our daily regime, like chairs and tables, bank checks and
breakfasts. Hence we still receive them into our company
a little bashfully, admit them with perhaps too uncritical
a deference. But two things are worth our noting; first,
that the human being is apparently the only animal that
asks questions such as the above; second, that the human
being is apparently the only animal that not only can ask
questions about the so-called natural processes, like birth,
struggle, biological determination, racial distribution, but
also can actually control these processes. The human in-

dividual, for example, decides that he will have no more

than four children to his mating, and 'is able (despite
the laws) to carry out his decision. He decides that only
so many individuals shall migrate from one portion of
the earth to his own particular locality; and again he
carries out his decision. In short, the human being is not
only subject to the laws of biological evolution, he himself,
within limits, subjects those laws to his purposes. In this
respect he is like no other animal.

Profound, then, and u nmistakable as is our identity with

the world of animal life, equally profound and unmistak-
able is our difference. ,r- We
human beings have somehow
emerged to a different level, one on which we can turn back
upon ourselves, can see ourselves in relation to events and
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS WORLD 275
processes and can exercise upon them our selective con-
"*^1;
trol.

Our Three Objectives

In the' foregoing chapters we have discussed very briefly

some of ’the ways in which we can thus selectively control
our human situation. We have called the particular type
of control in which we are here interested “influencing
human behavior.” Roughly speaking, we discovered that
we influence human behavior in three ways: first, through
various methods of capturing attention, arousing interest,
—
making ideas stick thereby getting some measure of de-
sired action. To be able to do these things, we found. Is
the first prerequisite to the possession of any real power
among one’s fellows.
In the second place,we influence human behavior through
the ability tochange individuals. We noted how individ-
uals are to be regarded not as mysterious entities, but as
more or less unified, more or less modifiable groups of
habit-systems. He who can find the crucial or deter-
minant habit-system In a person —or in that collectivity
of persons called the public —and can set about, by adequate
methods, to alter that controlling system, has a power over
the human situation which is indeed profound.
In the third place, we can influence human behavior by
deliberately setting about to develop — and
in ourselves in
others — the creative type of mind. The creative mind is

the active variant. It puts new things into the world.

They may be mechanical things, like automobiles, which
many of our habit systems; or they
bring about changes in
may be social things, like republics or leagues of nations,
276 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
which effect even wider and more significant changes in our
habit-systems. Even the most tough-nfnded determinists,
who speak slightingly of man’s suppose? power to change
his world by his ideas, make one exception. In so far as
man can invent, they agree, he is in truth a transformer.
In other words, he is then not merely a looker-on at
Nature’s processes; he himself is actively a shaper of those

processes.
Hitherto, as we saw, the creative mind has been accepted
simply as a kind of inexplicable gift to the human race.
There is, however, every reason to believe that this sup-
posed gift need no longer be waited for, humbly, and ac-
cepted with gratitude when it comes. By intelligent
understanding and direction, it can actually be stimulated
into growth. He who can develop the creative mind,
whether in himself or in others, produces an effect upon the
human situation which is so endlessly wide-reaching as to
be in reality incalculable.

Our Basic Enterprise

Here, then, are three important ways in which we may

set ourselves to influence human behavior. The fascina-
tion of it is that no one of them is closed to any single nor-
mal individual. As a matter of fact, it is to be hoped that
the day is not far in the future when education along all

three lines will be part of everyone’s training. It is most

astounding when one thinks of it, that in these issues which
are really at the root of both our happiness and our human
progress, we leave th^" whole matter largely to hit or miss.
Nowhere have we set about systematically to instruct our-
selves in this art of all arts, the art of influencing human be-
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS WORLD 277
havior. A significant beginning to be noted in a course
Is

recently projected' at Vassar College, called Euthenics, a

course in the scier^ce and art of improving the human race
by securing the best influences for the physical, mental and
moral development of the individual. It is noteworthy that
this effort to secure the improvement of the individual, and
thereby of the race, is made not by devout aspiration, but by
a thorough and systematic study of the physiological, psy-
chological and social techniques necessary for wholesome
living. It Is to be hoped that out of a small beginning like
this will grow a wider interest in the problem which is really
basic to our entire human enterprise.
The past centuries —^when
not otherwise occupied
busied themselves with searching out the chief “end” of
human life. They paid little attention to the means
whereby this chief end might be attained. It remains for
our century, already expert in devising mechanical aids to
more wholesome living, to search out the psychological and
social means to a more adequate human life. Eventually
the problem of itlfluencing human behavior to this end will
become the major concern of education.
 THE LISTENERS SPEAK
The foregoing has been cast in the form of a typical pro-
fessorialmonologue. The lecturer has not permitted him-
self to be interrupted. When, however, the course was
given, of which these chapters are in part the substance,
questions and answers and vigorous discussions were the
order of the evening. Many a point was hotly contested
and new points were suggested by the class. It has been
quite impossible to reproduce the liveliness of this continu-
ous give and take. The reader may be assured, however,
that something of it has found its way into the text through
the effect of the discussions upon the lecturer himself. For
the course exemplified in a striking manner that circular
process of which mention has been made in these chapters,
in which the movement goes both ways, from speaker to
audience and from audience to speaker.
In the following pages some of the more considered re-
actions, as given in letters from the members of the class,
are recorded. These are of particular interest not so much
as comments upon the lectures but rather as suggestions of
further points of view that might well be developed. They
constitute only about a fifth of the material received. In
all cases, except in the reference to * forthcoming book, the
name of the writer has been omitted. This was the custom
adhered to throughout the course.
28 o influencing HUMAN BEHAVIOR .

Doing Fmjors '

this time I suppose you have consideted the technique of

letting-the-other-fellow-do-you-a-f avor. I am nrcch impressed by its
usefulness as a means of breaking the ice with a child to whom one
is about to give a psychological test. When he has been asked if he
will cany some of the games and puzzles upstairs for the examina-
tion, has eagerly complied, and has been warmly thanke^J, it seems
very easy to secure his cooperation for the testing. It is just as use-
ful with adults.''

Fixations

‘‘The first fixation in my young life was the certainty, established

before I was eight, that ail really respectable families were Baptist,
Republican, and Homeopathist. Various members of my family still
cling to one or another of these innocent delusions, so that I am long
accustomed to being the only truly emancipated member,
“My own pet fixation is the conviction that no real business person,
male or female, could ever be a kinspirit of mine. I might make a
doubtful exception of such souls as cruel circumstance had forced
against their better selves to abandon a chosen vocation for the pur-
suit of filthy lucre, but the genuine, enthusiastic business man or
woman —
never! This conviction has possibly been reinforced by the
notable absence of evidence that business persons recognize a kin-
spirit in me. In view of this mutuality, is it worth while to
unfixate it?"

Breaking Fixations

^‘Fixation: ‘When I have the money/

“Substitute: ‘As we journey through life, let us live by the way'
(poetic version).
‘The kingdom of God is within' (Jesus Christ).
‘Do it now' (busiiiess man).
“Fixation: Debating society attitude: argue against what was
advanced with which we do not agree; look out for weak
 spots. Fighting actmties and emotions aroused. Motive:
desire for recognition.
“Substitute: .Firid points of agreement.
Amplify and illuminate
whatadvanced with which we agree. Look for strong
is

spots. Altruistic actmties and emotions aroused. Motive:

desire for response. If this substitute can be made, it will
greatly improve the quality of discussion. The point is for
the group to try to find a consensus of opinion and develop it.
"Tixatioo: Being frank. ‘Tell the truth and shame the devil.’
‘Cali a spade a spade.’ Trying to cure faults by discussing
them with the person to be cured. Giving (unsought) advice.
Smoothing the fur the wrong way, thus lowering bodily tone.
“Substitute Flattery in the non-invidious sense.
: Rubbing the
fur the right way, thus elevating bodily tone. This change
will add more to human happiness than anything else I know
of.”

Seen Me Opportunities and Acted According”

“Perhaps one of the most harmful series of fixations is that which

blocks our seeing our opportunities and acting accordingly. Booker
T. Washington sa4d this: ‘If we will do our level best every day,
W'e will be surprised at the unexpected opportunities which will come
to us.’
“The other day I was thinking of this in connection with the
‘when I have the money’ and ‘when I have the leisure’ fixations.
To-day I am reading Robinson’s The Humanizing of Knowledge
and am thinking of the waiting for the creative intelligence to do or
say something fixation. Robinson himself has the right answer. It
is this %ve must fumble and by chance we may make a success.
:
;
If
we do we shall have the creative intelligence. The creative intelli-
gence is something that exists after the event (success). Did not
William James fumble? Was he not a successful teacher? Did he
not print the results of his fumbling ancj^the fumbling itself? Was
he not then recognized as a creative intelligence? Where was the
creative intelligence before he began fumbling?
“Anybody can fumble and fumble at anything. Perhaps the dSt-
282 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
ference between those with and those without creative intelligence
consists of this those with it try to do something they can't (yet) do;
:

and the others have the do something

fixation that one has to learn to
first, otherwise there no use trying to do it?^ Perhaps the term
is

creative intelligence is an evil stereotype. Perhaps the very words

artist, poet, writer, musician, inventor, and so on are evil stereotypes

preventing people from trying to do what artists, writers, poets do.

The stereotype we all need is the idea embodied in the statement
‘function makes faculty/ This statement should be rewritten in
terms of modern psychology, in forms that will stick.''

Fabrication Defended

“While considering the fabrication habit from the standpoint of

your talk, would it not be wise also to consider the value of phantasy
under some conditions of life?
“To be forced to live always in the midst of depressing conditions
and yet to be able to at times dream oneself into a life of beauty
or joy, is, I think, to gain a rea,l stimulation that makes for mental
and physical health, A sense of humor with the power of controlled
day-dreams has kept many a lonely woman human and sane. Of
course this implies the power to snap out of thg phantasy and face
reality at the proper times.
“You spoke of the Christian with a fixed prejudice against the Jew.
May not one of the forces that hasmade the Jew survive such preju-
dice and the centuries of persecution which accompanied it, be almost
a race power of fabrication as you use the term? Even when forced
to live in a ghetto, wear a prescribed garb with a yellow badge, and
often literally be ‘spat upon,' the Jew feels himself of ‘God's chosen
people' and therefore superior to his persecutors. His home, a hovel,
was happy; for the Jew has never been other-worldly. He has lived
wholly in the world that tortured him, dreamed he was superior,
and survived. To-day the poorest, most ignorant Jew still has that
superiority complex and srill drives on to give his children a chance
to show what they really are. They firmly believe it is what they
are and always have been ; they do not believe it is what they may be
or will become.
 THE 'LISTENERS' SPEAK,, '

iST
While I realize it is onif in a limited number of conditions that

superiority dreams, which have no foundations in material reality,

are of value,I do tlunk it unwise to overlook the imaginative symbol-

ism in even the wdfst crude dreams of limited minds and the stimu-
lation such dreams can bring to depressed or miserable lives,”

Good Will Technique

^‘At one time I determined to read through the Gospels and see if

the cure for social evils was to be found in Christ’s teachings. I

read till I came to the golden rule and then stopped. I said to my-
self, ‘Yes, here it is. It hasn’t been tried.’
“It seems to me that the consideration of the golden rule should
not be isolated from the numerous sayings of Christ’s which
are summed up in the doctrine of non-resistance to evil. In sum these
sayings advocate the attitude of good will. Christ meant that good
will should be displayed whole-heartedlj^ as illustrated in the saying
‘if a man compel you go with him one mile, go with him two.'
to
The situation here Roman soldiers by law had the right
was that the
to impress subjects to carry their baggage looo paces. Christ advo-
cated doing more than was required to show that it was done un-
grudgingly.
“The point is, then, that w^e are to show good-will, and we are to
do it, even when the other fellow does not show it. As such it can
be examined as to how and why it works as it does. These two
statements seem to be facts: (i) We tend to feel the emotions we
overtly display. Darwin’s work on the expression of the emotions
seems to prove this. (2) We tend to induce in others the emotions
which we ourselves display.”

Simulated Disinterest
“
‘Simulated disinterest’ may briefly jje defined as pretended in-
difference. Several very painful personal experiences have taught me
that simulated disinterest is a technique which, if applied to love af-
fairs, results in quick and downcrashing disaster. Even when ap-
 284 INFLUENCING HUMAN" BEHAVIOR
plied to those relatively less sensitive asscf^iations we terra friendships,
it leads only to the slow butnone the less inevitable evaporation of
the friendship— no breakage, no sharp recriminations; Waporation’
seems to be the word. «
‘‘On the other hand, very pleasant experiences have taught me,
though with mild and dubitable emphasis, that simulated disinterest
is a technique which often proves surprisingly successful in obtaining

a sanction of a business proposition. More than one very desirable

position has been obtained by the applicant at the end of his resources,
by the simple process of pretending an indifference to such a barely
desirable position On at least three occasions he has obtained worth-
!

while jobs by this means. He has also sold several difficult proposi-
tions by this means.”

The Unexpected

“The unexpected is Perhaps someone with a deeper In-

desired!
sight than mine can why. In the days of my youth when
tell
thoughtful people were fed on Spencer’s evolutionary philosophy, the
answer was that it is due to inheritance. Our ancestors lived in a
dreadful state of uncertainty, whether in the next moment they
would happen on a square meal or themselves be eaten. They be-
came used to it, and we miss what they were used to. I don’t be-
lieve this.
“The unexpected is desired! Hence arousing expectation of the
unexpected can be a technique for influencing human behavior.
“This is not just the same as novelty. Itmust involve curiosity
plus something. This something is we know not what, but some-
thing wanted and important.”

The Use of a Story to Put an Idea Across

“The great exemplar of the use of stories to put ideas across was
Christ. One of the womefi students told me she was going to read
, the Gospels through again to see what Christ’s techniques were.”
 THE LISTENERS SPEAK
Literary Clinics

professional fir perhaps, even better, a general discussion group

might function quite effectively as a clinic for the examination and
testing of literature directed toward the influencing of behavior.
Doubtless you know how fashionable such clinics have become among
public health workers in the last few years. Perhaps the idea grew
out of such thorough studies as Watson, Lashley, and Achilles made
of the effectiveness of the educational pamphlets of the American
Public Health Association. The Committee on Publicity Methods
in SocialWork have held a number of quite successful public clinical
examinations of sample circulars submitted by different organizations.
The knife has generally been wielded by one or more advertising men,
psychologists or expert printers.’^

Including the Reader

‘‘Having but a poor grounding in the elements of English prosody,

I opened Professor Bliss Perry’s book to see what I could learn, and
in the chapter on rhythm and metre, I found a delightful example of
the technique you described. He ‘puts it up’ to the reader by in-
genious use of the ^device of reviewing the subject as ‘something that
we all learned in college.’ In this way, inserting a parenthetical ‘so
our instructors taught us’ in almost every other sentence, he succeeds
in a few pages in summarizing and driving home all the rudimentary
facts which readers like myself are looking for, while politely indi-
cating in each new paragraph, that of course we all went to college
and learned all this!”

The Importance of What We Are About

“A ‘crank’ has been defined as a man of one idea. Wilson said

that he (Wilson) had a ‘single track mind.’ He also said he was

descended from covenanter ancestry and^would fight for the League
of Nations. He died of fighting for it. There are people who be-

lieve that it is the ‘cranks’ who put new things across.

286 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
‘What IS peculiar about ‘cranks’ and ^hose of ‘single track minds’
is what they are about is of great importance. If
that they think that
can be made infectious, the means of making it so becomes
this belief
a productive technique for influencing human behavior.”

Nuisance Technique
“Besides those techniques already mentioned for gaining attention,
there seems to me to be another one, very effective and very widely
used, and that is the nuisance technique.
“It is used instinctively from childhood on. a baby wants When
something it cries. If refused at first —louder
and louder crying
brings results. The little girl sulks. Til take my doll clothes and
go home’ is an easy way to get what she wants. The bad boy throws
things or punches. Another kind whines.
“I was present at this scene. A mother with a child by the hand
was talking to a neighbor on the sidewalk. An ice-wagon drew up
beside the curb. The child asked the mother for a piece of ice. The
mother said, ‘No.’ Then the play began. After a slight pause, the
child said again, ‘Mama, can I have a piece of ice?’ No answer.
Then, ‘Mama, can I have a piece of ice?’ ‘Mama, can I have a piece
of ice? Mamacanihaveapieceofice,’ etc., etc., etc., for ten minutes
without pause. No temper, no accent, and no cessation, until finally
the dropping water wore away the stone and she got the piece of
ice,

“The little boy who pestered his mother for a drink of water after
he was put to bed, until he was told that if he asked once more he
would be spanked, then called down stairs, ‘Mama, when you come
up to spank me will you bring me a drink of water?’ was a master
of nuisance technique,
“Teachers know this technique and can generally name each gray
hair after a nuisance-child. . . . Mr. Dean Martin tells
Everett
about a man who worked in a factory out West where he was fore-
man with some two hundred men under him. He was a poor worker,
was the most insolent, the post pugnacious and the foulest-mouthed
man he ever came in contact with. He was the bane of his exist-
ence throughout a very hot summer. But in looking back over the
 THE 'listeners SPEAK 287
experience after some yearsf that man is the only one he can remem-
ber. The man got his personality across by nuisance.
''Beggars are trained to employ this technique. Anyone who has
travelled in Italy ^recalls a much keener sense of annoyance than of
pity. I remember
vividly an experience in China which is illustrative
of this. Getting off the train at the place. where one starts to walk'
,

up to the Great Wail, one is met by a swarm of Chinese men and

boys who me poised for so much prey. I was in a small party, vastly
outnumbered by the jabbering mob. One toothless old man was
especially solicitous. He wanted to help us over the rocks and show
—
us the w^ay -very intimately —
until one person whom he had made
his particular charge called out to the guide, 'I don't mind the rest

of this gang but I will give this one two dollars if he will just go
aw^€ty.t
"Most argumentation is based on nuisance. Someone has said that
very few men have been convinced by argument no women. It is —
true that the one who can talk the loudest and the longest and make
the most nuisance is generally the one who wins. I talked recently
with the manager of a successful and much travelled debating team.
He told me that after hundreds of debates, they had come to the con-
clusion that very few decisions had been upon logic at all; that no
matter how carefully selected the judges, the decisions turned on
other points. Not the least of these was the above-mentioned tech-
nique. When argument fails, the nuisance technique is often very
effective. Ghandi is trying it in India. The Irish put it over in
Ireland and the Suffragettes in England. If men won’t listen to
reason, throw stones, break windows, attack policemen, wreck, ruin,
grow hungry and die before the public. In a w^ord, make a complete
nuisance of yourself and you win.
"Not only hunger strikes but all strikes are based on this govern-
ment by nuisance. When Labor becomes impatient of being heard
before justice through orderly procedure and argument, Labor strikes.
Then, right or wrong, it is heard. The game of politics is full of
this technique of nuisance, A great deal
is based on it.
of advertising
And through the ages it has been woman’s most used weapon tears. —
The weeping woman is usually not crying to make you sad or sorry
for her, but because she knows that where all other resources fail,
290 INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR ^

“First, I tiy for a ‘transfer,’ to make fhe person Fm talking with,

feel my genuine interest in him by ;

(a) concentrated attention with the impi’esseon that my time is

his entirely for as long as he wishes;

(b) establishing some bond of common interest or experience;
(c) finding something about the person’s looks, manner, or ev-
perience that I can conscientiously admire,
“Second, I try to have him feel my desire and ability to kelp or ad--
vise him; and
“Third, I try to make him feel I believe in him and make him be*
lieve in himself,
“My chief failures have come when I was fatigued, and when it

became an effort even to simulate interest. The person talked with

felt the break, the effort; and the responsive chord was not awak-
ened,”

A Symptom
“We all have numerous ideas, beliefs, and attitudes which have
—
been ‘wished on us’ by others hand-me-downs of the group or groups
in which we have been reared. One of our problems is to get rid of
such stuff as will not stand the light of critical examination. .
We
should be skeptical towards every old belief and idea we have, simply
because we know from our studies in psychology that the chances are
that weharbor an immense amount of error.
“Mr. has suggested a very good piece of technique for judging
lOur assurance of the validity of our ideas on any subject. Do we get
excited when these ideas are challenged? We
frequently think we
are not excited when we are. Mr. says that it is a sure sign
of lack of well-considered basis for our ideas if we raise our voice,
get hot under the collar, or speak like an oracle passing out judgment.
When these signs appear, it is time to be skeptical.”

Learning How To Do It

“I shall go a long way off for my illustrative case, to China. The

impact of Western Civilization has given China a staggering, almost
a death blow to her civilization. Whether China can be recon-
 THE LISTENERS SPEAK
structed is of vast importar^ce. This matter arouses intense interest
among Chinese students. They think (for a time) that
can be it

done. But they become Speaking of this pessimism,

pessimistic.
Pearl S. Buck, fo» many j^ears a professor in one of the Chinese uni-
versities (Art. Chinese Student's Mind, Nation, October 8, 1924)
"""m part has this to say: A
second reason for this attitude of pes-
simism may be their apparent lack of ability to preserve in any line of
action in attacking their problems; this is partly youth and partly an
inherent facial characteristic. They start off with fire crackers,
speech making and a high sounding name, and then impetus seems to
be dissipated, and the attention drawn off to other things. Possibly
it is lack of deep seated convictions. They do certainly tend to lack
convictions. Whatever the cause, they are incorrigible promoters.
They are forever starting agricultural societies and mutual improve-
ment societies and anti-Japanese societies and dozens of others. Most
of these die of general inanition, and then are reorganized with more
fire crackers and speeches into something else. Magazines have
sprouted up like weeds all over the country — radical magazines, so-
called scientific magazines, literary magazines, short-story magazines
—a fascinating kaleidoscopic mirror of student mind and thought.
These magazines continue with great fervor for a short time and then
they are no more. Three months seems to be the average life time.
Again part of it is youth; part of it is lack of sufficient technical
knowledge part of it is natural lack of stick-to-it-iveness/
;

“I present this quotation because in it are all the elements —impor-

tance, devotion, conviction that something can be done; but the one
thing lacking is knowing what to do and how to do it. I can
imagine the kind of education these Chinese students have been get-
ting is the kind that was given to Negroes in the institutions of
higher learning for them in the South soon after the Civil War; the
curriculum of colleges: English, Latin, mathematics, philosophy, his-
tory, and some smattering of science. The professors thought they
were preparing the boys for life. The results were similar to those
described in Buck’s article.
‘'These students did not learn what t^do and how to do it. They
were left in a state of puzzled confusion. The same is apparently
the case with the Chinese students. Buck explains it as youth and
lack of stick-to-it-iveness. I don’t know what he means by this.
292 INFLUENCING HUMAT^ BEHAVIOR
What is not knowledge
they need hut the habit of doing*
There no such thing as a natural lack of stick-to-itiveness. Buck,
is

in short, does not put his finger on the right spot. These Chinese
students have not, been prepared in college for meeting the problems
that have to be met. Above all, they have not learned to do by
'

doing.’*
 INDEX
absolutism, breaking '

down of, 228. Comte, Auguste, 122

accuracy, training in, 186, 190 concreteness, 4, 64, 115
: adult '.'education, 13,8, 166, .194 If. conditioned reflex,
1 59
advertising, psychology in, 34, 36,
'

.
conditioning, early, 88, 232
'

'70 conflict,121, 238 If.

;
antagonistic approach, 3, 18 argumentative, 249
apperception mass, 23 between nations, 238, 243
architecture, influence of, 60 character, 154 If.

argument, technique of, 49, 249 ff. industrial, 238, 246

art, 57, 58, 61, 63, 89, 92, 96, 259 racial, 176, 239, 248
of life, 3 within the 24X If.
individual,
teaching of, 225 cooperation, 213
association-constants, 164 Corbett, Arthur T,, 51 n.
associative techniques, 159 & creative mind, 255, 258, 276, 281
attention, 4, 9 If., 22, 30, 57, do, 87, training of, 217 If.
1 18, 125 fl., 275 use of, 253
limits, _
24, 85 Crothers, Rachel, Expressing Willie,
154
Bacon, Francis, 230
Butler, Samuel, 42 Dalton method, 14, 21
Davenport, Professor F. M., 66
cartoon, 57 day-dream, 169
censor, escaping the, 259 Dearborn, G. V., 68
challenge technique, 21, 289 debate, 249 ff., 280
changing persons, 143 If. constructive, 253
character, building of, 158, i6d Dewey, John, 4, 32, X97
conflicts, X 54 If. Didactic, The Great, 28
chase technique, 13 discipline, 47
choice, act of, 47 dissociation, 244, 247
circular response, 76, 279 dramatic quality, 13, 93, 94, X13,
citizenship, training of, 32 115, ..X32 .

cliches, 93, 132 ff. drawing, teaching of, 6z

Cody, Sherwin, 22 n. dullness, 14, 93, 95, xiS, i2x
Colcord, Joanna C., 15 duty techniques, 32, 46 If.

Coleman, McAlistor, ii2n,

Comenius, 28 eduction, 44, 62, 88, 91, 163, 167,
commerce, psychology of, 215 181, i8d, 190, 197, 200, 222, 277
compensatory habits, 169 If., 177 adult, X 3 8, 166, X84, X94lf., 331
compulsion techniques, 44, 47, 4^ ego magniiication, 179
 m

INDEX
idea%^ 90, 125, 275
ethics, 4^
5,
imaginative experience, 64.
ethnocentrism, i75>
'

inaccuracy, encouragement of, 1S7

euthenics, 277 ^ ,

I79 incongruities, 'observing, 267

evasions of reality, 171 Ir.,
inducing an i?nagincd experience,
experimentation, 46, 217
64 f., 6S, 288
social, 223, 23S
inertia, psychological, '219
expository method, 20, 29
infantilism, 170, 173, 178

2S2 inferiority feeling, 20, 76, 78

fabrication habits, 169,
influencing the public, 201
facts, appeal to, 29, 30
intellectualism, abstract, 43
familiar in unfamiliar, 24, 75> 93
interest, 45, 55, 75> 87, 275
fixations, 280, 281
dead-line, 1 10 ff.
Foilett, M. P., 77 n., 253
internationalism, 12, 245, 249, 253 n.,
France, Anatole, 103
255
freedom of thought, 19S
invention, 126, 221, 241, 245, 24S,

Galsworthy, John, Forsyte Saga, 104

Ghandi, 21
good-will technique, 283
James, William, 21, 126
habits, 146 275 ff., jingoism, psychology of, 213
building of, I59 ^53 Joy, B. Franklin, in n.

compensatory, 169 fl*, £77

consumption, 206 Kamiat, Arnold H., 253 n.
experimental, 223 Keatinge, Dr., 28, 29
evolutionary, 226 Kennedy, Margaret, T/te Constant
fabrication, 169 Nymph, 1Q5
jingoistic, 213 fl.
kinetic technique, 12, 82, ii2, 115
in humor, 257 S. Korzybski, 89
new, in women, 203 m
of doing, 292 Lander%iehungsheime, 167
perverted, 157
League of Nations, ii
rural, 209 ff.

significance for politics, 208

tt.
mannerisms, in speaking, So
social, 301 if.
means and ends, 4, s, 277
unlearning, 61 j
•
Mencken, H. L., 114, 119
and the experimental mmd,
^

history
mind, the, 28, 83
227
and verbal expression, 136
Flobhouse, Leonard, 102
of the child, 46
Hobson, John A., 116
X5» *04, motivation, subtler, 42
homeogenic technique, 74>
movement, 12 (see also kinetic tech-^

human nature, 144 m nique)

humor, 257 Munro, Professor William Bennett,

42, 78,

music, erroy ’
teaching, 88
Ibsen, 1 12, 1 19
 names that
INDEX m
stick, 125 f. science, 75, 1x7
novel,, the, 70, 113, 115, 174 spirit of, 189, 25 r
novelty, 23, 42, 94, 118 teaching of, 187, 190, 224
'Hoyes, Anna G., 235, 289 sculpture, influence of, 60
nuance,' in .v^ords, "^96 selective emphasis, 57, 59, 6x, 96
'

imisance technique, 28^ self-excusing, 171, 190 ff., 248, 253

sex habits, training of, 154 ff.
obedience, 44 Shaw, Bernard, I2x
Sheffield,Dr. Alfred Dwight, 248
pain techniques, x6x shock technique, 120
parent,, the, 2, 4, 15, 29, 44, 48, 70, situations, portraying, 1x5
75,164 slogans, 128, 129
Pascal, 43' snobbishness, 177
Peirce, Charles, 126 social pietism, 217 ff.
personal appearance, 80 speaking, psychology of, 70, 71 ff.

personality, 2, 14, 47, 107, 144 If., Stewart, Donald Ogden, 268
152,158 story, the, as technique, 13, 78, 284
persuasion, 69 straight thinking, training in, 184 ff.

philosophy, of 199
life, suggestion, 65
psychology of teaching, x 17, 122 Sumner, William Graham, 122
phrasing, 83, 97, 99>
phrases that stick, 129 ff.
m superiority feeling, 20,
178, 248, 282
76, 78, X75,

picturizing, 51 ff., 58, 61, 63 teacher, the, 3, 15, 43, 75, 152,
pietism, social, 217 if. techniques for influencing behavior,
playfulness, in humor, 257 accuracy training, z86, 190
prejudice, 248 appeal to duty, 32, 46®.
race, 248 ff. to facts, 29, 30
problem, our centra, i, 278 to reason, 32, 33
progressivism, techniques of, 68 to wants, 28 ff., 33, 43, 45, 48,
Proust, Marcel, 113 163
psycho- analytic process, 242 associative, 159 ff.

public, influencing the, 201 If. association-wi'th-pleasurable-expe-

putting-it“Up-to-you technique, 18 ff. rience, 159 ff.

attention limits, 24, 85

racial antagonism, 176 authoritarian, 225
rationalizing, 178, 190 ff., 230, 24S, challenge, 21, 289
253 chase, 13
reason, appeal to, 33,
33 circular response, 76, 279
reflex, conditioned,
159 constructive debate, 253
reformers, techniques of, 4, 127
creative, 126, 217 ff., 221, 232 ff.,

response, 16, 32, 72, 73, 87, 94, 160 241, 245, 248, 253, 255,
circular, 76, 279 .281.

rhythm, 84, 93, loi ff. ?oing favors, 279

Robinson, James Harvey, 21, 2S1 dramatic, 93, 113, 115, 122
evolutionary teaching of history,
:iayles,:';Mary;' B., X49,ii.
^
227
 INDEX
transfer of. skills, 1S5
experimentation, 46, 3x7
exposing rationalizing process, tropisnts, ^73 .

nnconscions, the, 43, 17Z, 17

expository, 20, 29
iSi, 229, 24i>
good will, 2S4
analysis, individual, 143 unpredictability, 13, 264, 285
habit .

use-value, 221
social, 201 if.

homeogenic, 15, 74 ^^4 ^55 ) )

humor, 42, 78, 256 if., 282 Van Waters, Miriam, 154
inducing an imagined experience, variation and evolution, 236
Vassar College, 278
64 ff., 68, 288 ^

interest dead-line, crossing of, verbal expression, 90, 97, 132, 137
visual-mindedness, 50, 52
visual images, 50 if.
kinetic, X2, 82, 112, 115
vividness, techniques of, 50 if.
names that stick, 125 if.
voice, psychological e&ct of, 15, 79,
novelty, 23, 42, 94, 118
nuisance, 287
pain, 161
129 wants, appeal to, 28 f., 33, 43) 45)
phrases that stick, ff.

picturizing, 51 ff., ^3 48, 163

psychological analysis, 229 fundamental, 34 ff.
putting-it-up-to-you, 18 ff. organizing of, 48
selective emphasis, 57, 59 ) 9^ war, psychology of, 238, 243
simulated disinterest, 283 Watson, John B., 1480.
speaking, 70, 71 ff.
Wells, H. G., 21
straight thinking, 184®. Wilson, Woodrow, xx, 14, 107, 254,
writing, 87 flE. 285
Winans, James X2X n.
yes-response, 16
thinking, straight, training in, words, 96 ff., 125 iff., X38
writing, psychology of, 87 ff.
184 ff.

thought, freedom 198 of,

instrument of action, 49 yes-response technique, 16

Write for

What It Has to Teach You About Yourself and Your

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EVERETT DEAN MARTIN

Director, The Peoples Institute

A complete outline of Psychology which ^‘relates the new science

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Times.

Lecture CONTENTS
I. What Psychology really is — Uses and Abuses.
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II, Psychology and Physiology —A Study of Reactions.^
III. Psychology and Philosophy —The Place of William
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IV. —
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done to Psychology.
V. What Psychologists think about Consciousness.
VI. The Fatality of Habits.
VII. Human Nature and the Problems of Instinct,
VIII. Man and his Emotions.
IX. A Lecture on How We Think.
X. The Value of the Fictions We invent about Our-
selves.
XL The Unconscious and its Influence upon Human Be-
,
havioiv
XII. The Significance of the Intelligence Tests.
XIIL Is there a Group Mind? What governs the Be-^
havior of People in Society ?
XIV. The Psychology of Propaganda and Public Opinion.
XV. The Psychology of Religion.
XVI. The Psychology of Politics.
XVII. Are there Psychological differences of Race?
XVIIL Ethics in the Light of Psychology.
XIX. —
Behaviorism ^The Latest and Most Debated Devel-
opment.
XX. How much Progress qan Human Nature Stand?
 '

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The First Popular Presentation of

‘

BEHAVIORISM
JOHN B. WATSON
Formerly Professor of Psychology and Director
of the Psychological Laboratory, Johns Plopkins University

CONTENTS
I. What Is Behaviorism? The old and new Psychology
contrasted.
II. How TO Study Human Behavior. Problems, methods,
technique and samples of results.
III. The Human Body. What it is made of, how it is put
together, and how it works.
Part I —The structures that make Behavior possible.
IV. The Human Body. What it ismade of, how it is put
together, and how it \vorks.
—The glands everyday Behavior.
Part II in
V. Are There any PIuman Instincts?
Part — On the subject of talent and tendencies
I and the
inheritance of all so-called ‘^meniaV* traits.
Are There Any Human Instincts?
Part II —What the experimental study of the human
young teaches us. ^
Emotions. What emotions are we born with how do —
we —
acquire new ones how do we lose our old ones?
Part I —A
general survey of the field and some experi-
mental studies.
Emotions. What emotions are we born with how do —
we acquire new oncsy-how do we lose our old ones?
—
Part II Further experiments and observations on how
we acquire, shift and lose our emotional life.
IX. Our Manual Habits. How and when they start, how
we retain them, and how we discard them.
X. Talking and Thinking. Which when rightly under-
'

stood goes far in breaking down the fiction that there

is any such thing as mental life.
XL Do We Always Think in Words? Or does our whole
body do the thinking?
XII." Personality. Presenting the thesis that our personality