In order to retain a necessary distinction between the process of forming an impression and the actual organization of traits in a person, we have spoken as if nothing were known of the latter. While we cannot deal with the latter problem, one investigation is of particular relevance to the present discussion. We refer to the famous investigation of Hartshorne and May (3), who studied in a variety of situations the tendencies in groups of children to act honestly in such widely varied matters as copying, returning of money, correcting one's school work, etc. The relations between the actions of children in the different situations were studied by means of statistical correlations. These were generally low. On the basis of these results the important conclusion was drawn that qualities such as honesty are not consistent characteristics of the child but specific habits acquired in particular situations, that "neither deceit, nor its opposite, honesty, are unified character traits, but rather specific functions of life situations." Having accepted this conclusion, equally fundamental consequences were drawn for character education of children.
Abstracting from the many things that might be said about this work, we point out only that its conclusion is not proven because of the failure to consider the structural character of personality traits. As G. W. Allport has pointed out, we may not assume that a particular act, say the clandestine change by a pupil of an answer on a school test, has the same psychological meaning in all cases. Once this point is realized, its consequences for the thesis of Hartshorne and May become quite threatening. Let us consider a few of the possibilities in the situation, which would be classified as follows by Hartshorne and May:
Honest
1. The child wants to alter his answer on a test but fears he will be caught.
2. He does not change because he is indifferent to the grade.
Dishonest
1. The child changes his answer because he is devoted to his teacher and anxious not to lose her regard.
2. He cannot restrain the impulse to change the wrong answer into the answer he now knows to be correct.
Psychologically, none of these acts are correctly classified. Further, two of these are classified in precisely the wrong way. The child who wishes to cheat but is afraid does not belong in the honest category, while the child who cannot bear to leave the wrong answer uncorrected does not necessarily deserve to be called dishonest. We do not intend to say that the psychological significance of the reactions was as a rule misinterpreted; for the sake of illustration we have chosen admittedly extreme examples. But the failure to consider the psychological content introduces a serious doubt concerning the conclusions reached by Hartshorne and May.
Discussion V
A far richer field for the observation of the processes here considered would be the impressions formed of actual people. Concrete experience with persons possesses a substantial quality and produces a host of effects which have no room for growth in the ephemeral impressions of this investigation. The fact that we are ourselves changed by living people, that we observe them in movement and growth, introduces factors and forces of a new order. In comparison with these, momentary impressions based on descriptions, or even the full view of the person at a given moment, are only partial aspects of a broader process.
In such investigation some of the problems we have considered would reappear and might gain a larger application. Other problems, which were of necessity excluded from the present investigation, could be clarified in such an approach. We mention one which is of particular importance. It was a constant feature of our procedure to provide the subject with the traits of a person; but in actual observation the discovery of the traits in a person is a vital part of the process of establishing an impression. Since observation gives us only concrete acts and qualities, the application of a trait to a person becomes itself a problem. Is characterization by a trait for example a statistical generalization from a number of instances? Or is it the consequence of discovering a quality within the setting of the entire impression, which may therefore be reached in a single instance? In the latter case, repeated observation would provide not simply additional instances for a statistical conclusion, but rather a check on the genuineness of the earlier observation, as well as a clarification of its limiting conditions. Proceeding in this manner, it should be possible to decide whether the discovery of a trait itself involves processes of a strutural nature. Only direct investigation based on the observation of persons can furnish answers to these questions.
In still another regard did our investigation limit the range of observation. In the views formed of living persons past experience plays a great role. The impression itself has a history and continuity as it extends over considerable periods of time, while factors of motivation become important in determining its stability and resistance to change.
Even within the limits of the present study factors of past experience were highly important. When the subject formed a view on the basis of the given description, he as a rule referred to a contemporary, at no time to characters that may have lived in the past; he located the person in this country, never in other countries. Further, experiments we have not here reported showed unmistakably that an identical series of traits produced distinct impressions depending on whether we identified the person as a man or woman, as a child or adult. Distinctions of this order clearly depend on a definite kind of knowledge obtained in the past. Indeed, the very possibility of grasping the meaning of a trait presupposes that it had been observed and understood.
That experience enters in these instances as a necessary factor seems clear, but the statement would be misleading if we did not add that the possibility of such experience itself presupposes a capacity to observe and realize the qualities and dynamic relations here described. The assertion that the properties of the impression depend on past experience can only mean that these were once directly perceived. In this connection we may refer to certain observations of Kohler (6, p. 234) concerning our understanding of feelings in others which we have not observed in ourselves, or in the absence of relevant previous experiences. In his comprehensive discussion of the question, G. W. Allport has equally stressed the importance of direct perception of a given structure in others, of our capacity for perceiving in others dynamic tendencies.
Nor do we consider it adequate to assert that in the present investigation our subjects were merely reproducing past observations of qualities and of the ways in which they modify each other. When the subject selected a certain trait as central (or when he deposed a once central trait to a minor role within a new context) it is by no means clear that he was guided by specific, acquired rules prescribing which traits will be central in each of a great number of constellations. It seems more in accordance with the evidence to suppose that the system of the traits itself points to a necessary center. And as we have mentioned earlier, the interaction between two traits already presupposes that we have discovered— whether in the past or in the present —the forces that work between them. Given the quality "quick" we cannot unequivocally infer the quality "skillful"; but given "quick-skillful" we try to see how one grows out of the other. We then discover a certain constancy in the relation between them, which is not that of a constant habitual connection.
While an appeal to past experience cannot supplant the direct grasping of qualities and processes, the role of past experience is undoubtedly great where impressions of actual people extending over a long period are concerned. Here the important question for theory is whether the factors of past experience involve dynamic processes of the same order that we find at work in the momentary impression, or whether these are predominantly of the nature of associative bonds. It seems to us a useful hypothesis that when we relate a person's past to his present we are again relying essentially on the comprehension of dynamic processes.
REFERENCES
1. ALLPORT, G. W. Personality: a psychological interpretation. New York: Holt, 1937.
2. ASCH, S. E. Studies in the principles of judgments and attitudes: II. Determination of judgments by group and by ego standards. J. soc. Psychol., 1940, 12, 433—465.
3. HARTSHORNE, H., & MAY, M. A. Vol. I, Studies in deceit, 1928; Vol. II, Studies in service and self-control, 1939; Vol. Ill (with F. K. Shuttleworth), Studies in the organization of character, 1930.
4. HULL, C. L. Principles of behavior. New York: Appleton-Century, 1943.
5. HULL, C. L. The discrimination of stimulus configurations and the hypothesis of afferent neural interaction. Psychol. Rev., 1945, 52, 133-142.
6. KOHLER, W. Gestalt psychology. New York: Liveright, 1929.
7. MACKINNON, D. W. The structure of personality. In Hunt, J. McV. (Ed.), Personality and the behavior disorders, Vol. I. New York: Ronald Press, 1944.
8. TERNUS, J. Experimentelle Untersuchungen iiber phanomenale Identitat. Psych, Forsch., 1926, 7, 81-136.
9. THORNDIKE, E. L. A constant error in psychological rating. J. appl. Psychol., 1920, 4, 25-29.
10. WERTHEIMER, M. Productive thinking. New York: Harper, 1946.
www.psychspace.com心理学空间网
