Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Part 6

THE SATISFACTION OF ECONOMIC DEMANDS

Every economic function comes in contact with the mental life of man, first from the fact that the work is produced by the psyche of personalities. This gave us the material for the first two parts of our discussion. We asked what mind is best fitted for the particular kind of work, and how the mind can be led to the best output of work.

But it is evident that the real meaning of the economic process expresses itself in an entirely different contact between work and mind. The economic activity is separated from all other processes in the world, not by the fact that it involves labor and achievement by personalities, but by the fact that this labor satisfies a certain group of human desires which we acknowledge as economic. The mere performance of labor, with all the psychical traits of attention and fatigue and will-impulses and personal qualities, does not in itself const.i.tute anything of economic value. For instance, the sportsman who climbs a glacier also performs such a fatiguing activity which demands the greatest effort of attention and will; and yet the psychotechnics of sport do not belong in economic psychology, because this mountain climbing does not satisfy economic desires. The ultimate characteristic which designates an activity as economic is accordingly a certain effect on human souls. The whole whirl of the economic world is ultimately controlled by the purpose of satisfying certain psychical desires. Hence this psychical effect is still more fundamental for the economic process than its psychical origin in the mental conditions of the worker. The task of psychotechnics is accordingly to determine by exact psychological experiments how this mental effect, the satisfaction of economic desires, can be secured in the quickest, in the easiest, in the safest, in the most enduring, and in the most satisfactory way.

But we must not deceive ourselves as to the humiliating truth that so far not the slightest effort has been made toward the answering of this central scientific question. If the inquiry into the psychical effects were really to be confined to this problem of the ultimate satisfaction of economic desires, scientific psychology could not contribute any results and could not offer anything but hopes and wishes for the future. At the first glance it might appear as if just here a large amount of literature exists; moreover, a literature rich in excellent investigations and ample empirical material. On the one side the political economists, with their theories of economic value and their investigations concerning the conditions of prices and the development of luxury, the calculation of economic values from pleasure and displeasure and many similar studies, have connected the economic processes with mental life; on the other side the philosophers, with their theories of value, have not confined themselves to the ethical and aesthetic motives, but have gone deeply into the economic life too. While such studies of the economists and of the philosophers are chiefly meant to serve theoretical understanding, it might seem easy to deduce from them technical practical prescriptions as well. If we know that under particular conditions certain demands will be satisfied, we draw the conclusion that we must realize those conditions whenever such demands are to be satisfied. The theoretical views of the economists and of the philosophers of value might thus be directly translated into psychotechnical advice.

As soon as we look deeper into the situation, we must recognize that this surface impression is entirely misleading. Certainly whenever the philosophers or political economists discuss the problems of value and of the satisfaction of human demands, they are using psychological terms, but the whole meaning which they attach to these terms, feeling, emotion, will, desire, pleasure, displeasure, joy, and pain, is essentially different from that which controls the causal explanations of scientific psychology. We cannot enter into the real fundamental questions here, which are too often carelessly ignored even in scientific quarters. Too often psychology is treated, even by psychologists, as if it covered every possible systematic treatment of inner experience, and correspondingly outsiders like the economists fancy that they are on psychological ground and are handling psychological conceptions as soon as they make any statements concerning the inner life. But if we examine the real purposes and presuppositions of the various sciences, we must recognize that the human experience can be looked on from two entirely different points of view. Only from one of the two does it present itself as psychological material and as a fit object for psychological study.

From the other point of view, which is no less valuable and no less important for the understanding of our inner life, human experience offers itself as a reality with which psychology as such has nothing to do, even though it may be difficult to eliminate the usual psychological words.

The psychologist considers human experience as a series of objects for consciousness. All the perceptions and memory ideas and imaginative ideas and feelings and emotions, are taken by him as mental objects of which consciousness becomes aware, and his task is to describe and to explain them and to find the laws for their succession. He studies them as a naturalist studies the chemical elements or the stars. It makes no difference whether his explanation leads him to connect these mental contents with brain processes as one theory proposes, or with subconscious processes as another theory suggests. The entirely different aspect of inner life is the one which is most natural in our ordinary intercourse. Whenever we give an account of our inner life or are interested in the experience of our friends, we do not consider how their mental experiences as such objective contents of consciousness are to be described and explained, but we take them as inner actions and att.i.tudes toward the world, and our aim is not to describe and to explain them but to interpret and to understand them.

We do not seek their elements but their meaning, we do not seek their causes and effects but their inner relations and their inner purposes. In short, we do not take them at all as objects but as functions of the subject, and our dealing with them has no similarity to the method of the naturalist.

This method of practical life in which we seek to express and to understand a meaning, and relate every will-act to its aim, is not confined to the mere popular aspect; it can lead to very systematic scholarly treatment. It is exactly the treatment which is fundamental in the case of all history, for example, or of law, or of logic. That is, the historian makes us understand the meaning of a personality of the past and is really interested in past events only as far as human needs are to be interpreted. It would be pseudo-psychology, if we called such an account in the truly historical spirit a psychological description and explanation. The student of law interprets the meaning of the will of the legislator; he does not deal with the idea of the law as a psychological content. And the logician has nothing to do with the idea as a conscious object in the mind; he asks as to the inner relations of it and as to the conclusions from the premises. In short, wherever historical interpretations or logical deductions are needed, we move on in the sphere of human life as it presents itself from the standpoint of immediate true experience without artificially moulding it into the conceptions of psychology. On the other hand, as soon as the psychological method is applied, this immediate life meaning of human experience is abandoned, and instead of it is gained the possibility of considering the whole experience as a system of causes and effects. Mental life is then no longer what it is to us in our daily intercourse, because it is reconstructed for the purposes of this special treatment, just as the water which we drink is no longer our beverage if we consider it under the point of view of chemistry as a combination of hydrogen and oxygen. Hence we have not two statements one of which is true and the other ultimately untrue; on the contrary, both are true. We have a perfect right to give the value of truth to our experience with water as a refreshing drink, and also to the formula of the chemist. With a still better right we may claim that both kinds of mental experience are equally true. Hence not a word of objection is raised against the discussions of the historians and the philosophers, if we insist that their so-called psychology stands outside of the really descriptive and explanatory account of mental life, and is therefore not psychology in the technical sense of the word.

It is this historical att.i.tude which controls all the studies of the political economists. They speak of the will-acts of the individuals and of their demands and desires and satisfactions, but they do not describe and explain them; they want to interpret and understand them.

They may a.n.a.lyze the motives of the laborer or of the manufacturer, but those motives and impulses interest them not as contents of consciousness, but only as acts which are directed toward a goal. The aim toward which these point by their meaning, and not the elements from which they are made up or their causes and effects, is the substance of such economic studies. For such a subjective account of the meaning of actions the only problem is, indeed, the correct understanding and interpretation, and the consistent psychologist who knows that it is not his task to interpret but to explain has no right to raise any questions here. It is, therefore, only a confusing disturbance, if a really psychological, causal explanation is mixed into the interpretation of such a system of will-acts and purposes. It is true we find this confusion in many modern works on economics.

Economists know that a scientific explanatory study of the human mind exists, and they have a vague feeling that they have no right to ignore this real psychology, instead of recognizing that the psychology really has nothing to do with their particular problem. The result is that they constantly try to discuss the impulses and instincts, the hunger and thirst and s.e.xual desire, and the higher demands for fighting and playing and acquiring, for seeking power and social influence, as a psychologist would discuss them, referring them to biological and physiological conditions and explaining them causally. Yet as soon as they come to their real problems and enter into the interpretation and meaning of these economic energies, they naturally slide back into the historical, economic point of view and discuss the economic relations of men without any reference to their psychologizing preambles. The application of the psychological, scientific method to the true economic experience is therefore not secured at all in this way. The demands and volitions which they disentangle are not the ones which the psychophysiologist studies, because they are left in their immediate form of life reality. They are accordingly inaccessible to the point of view of experimental psychology, and nothing can be expected from such interpretative discussions of the economists for the psychotechnics at which the psychologist is aiming. Even where the political economists deal with the problems of value in exact language, nothing is gained for the kind of insight for which the psychologist hopes, and the psychologists must therefore go on with their own methods, if they are ever to reach a causal understanding of the means by which a satisfaction of the economic demands may be effected.

So far the psychologists have not even started to examine these economic feelings, demands, and satisfactions with the means of laboratory psychology. Hence no one can say beforehand how it ought to be done and how to gain access to the important problems, inasmuch as the right formulation of the problem and the selection of the right method would here as everywhere be more than half of the solution. It must be left to the development of science for the right starting-point and the right methods to be discovered. Sometimes, to be sure, the experiment has at least approached this group of economic questions. For instance, the investigations of the so-called psychophysical law have often been brought into contact with the experiences of ownership and acquirement. The law, well known to every student of psychology, is that the differences of intensity in two pairs of sensations are felt as equal, when the two pairs of stimuli are standing in the same relation. The difference between the intensities of the light sensations from 10 candles and 11 candles is equal to that from 50 candles and 55 candles, from 100 candles and 110, from 500 candles and 550: that is, the difference of one additional candle between 10 and 11 appears just as great as the difference of 50 candles between 500 and 550. The psychologists have claimed that in a corresponding way the same feeling of difference arises when the amounts of possessions stand in the same relation.

That is, the man who owns $100 feels the gain or loss of $1 as much as one who owns $100,000 feels the gain or loss of $1000. Not the absolute amount of the difference, but the relative value of the increase or decrease is the decisive influence on the psychological effect. Some experimental investigations concerning feelings have also come near to the economic boundaries. The study of the contrast feelings and of the relativity of feelings, for instance, has points of contact with the economic problem of how far economic progress, with its stirring up and satisfying of continually new demands, really adds to the quant.i.ty of human enjoyment. In other words, how far are those sociologists right who are convinced that by the technical complexity of modern life, with all its comforts and mechanizations, the level of individual life is raised, but that the oscillations about this average level remain the same and produce the same amount of pleasure and pain? The technical advance would therefore bring no increase of human pleasure.

We might also put into this cla.s.s the meagre experimental investigations concerning the mutual influence of feelings. When sound, light, and touch impressions, each of which, isolated, produces a feeling of a certain degree, are combined with one another, the experiment can show very characteristic changes in the intensity of pleasure and displeasure. From such routine experiments of the laboratory it might not be difficult to come to more complex experiments on the mutual relations of feeling values and especially of the combinations of pleasure with displeasure. This would lead to an insight into the processes which are involved in the fixing of prices, as they are always dependent upon the pleasure in the acquisition and the displeasure in the outlay. The exact psychology of the future may thus very well determine the conditions under which the best effects for the satisfaction of economic demands may be secured, but our present-day science is still far from such an achievement: and it seems hardly justifiable to propose methods to-day, as it would be like drawing a map with detailed paths for a primeval forest which is still inaccessible.

XX

EXPERIMENTS ON THE EFFECTS OF ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nTS

We have said that the time has not yet come for discussing from the standpoint of experimental psychology the means to secure the ultimate effects of economic life, namely, the satisfaction of economic demands. If this were the only effect which had economic significance, this whole last part of our little book would have to remain a blank, as we wanted to deal here with the securing of the best effects after having studied the securing of the best man and of the best work. Yet these ultimate ends are certainly not the only mental effects which become important in the course of economic processes. In order to reach that final end of the economic movement, often an unlimited number of part processes distributed over s.p.a.ce and time must cooperate. The satisfaction of our thirst in a tea-room may be a trivial ill.u.s.tration of such a final effect, but it is clear that in order to produce this ultimate mental effect of satisfying the thirst, thousands of economic processes must have preceded. To bring the tea and the sugar and the lemon to the table, the porcelain cup and the silver spoon, wage-earners, manufacturers and laborers, exporters, importers, storekeepers, salesmen, and customers had to cooperate.

Among such part processes which serve the economic achievement are always many which succeed only if they produce characteristic effects in human minds. The propaganda which the storekeeper makes, for instance, his display and his posters, serve the economic interplay by psychical effects without themselves satisfying any ultimate economic demand. They must attract the pa.s.ser-by or impress the reader or stimulate his impulse to buy, and through all this they reach an end which is in itself not final, as no human desire to read advertis.e.m.e.nts exists. When the salesman influences the customer to buy something which may later help to satisfy a real economic demand, the art of his suggestive words secures a mental effect which again is in itself not ultimate. If the manufacturer influences his employees to work with more attention or with greater industry, or if the community stirs up the desire for luxury or the tendency to saving, we have mental effects which are of economic importance without being really ultimate economic effects.

As far as these effects are necessary and justified stages leading to the ultimate satisfaction of economic demands, it certainly is the duty of applied psychology to bring psychological experience and exact methods into their service. We emphasize the necessary and justified character of these steps, as it is evident that psychological methods may be made use of also by those who aim toward mental effects which are unjustified and which are not necessary for the real satisfaction of valuable demands. Psychological laws can also be helpful in fraudulent undertakings or in advertis.e.m.e.nts for unfair compet.i.tion.

The psychotechnical scientist cannot be blamed if the results of his experiments are misused for immoral purposes, just as the chemist is not responsible if chemical knowledge is applied to the construction of anarchistic bombs. But while psychology, as we have emphasized before, cannot from its own point of view determine the value of the end, the psychologist as a human being is certainly willing to cooperate only where the soundness and correctness of the ends are evident from the point of view of social welfare.

In order to demonstrate the principle of this kind of psychotechnical help with fuller detail, at least by one ill.u.s.tration, I may discuss the case of the advertis.e.m.e.nts, the more as this problem has already been taken up in a somewhat systematic way by the psychological laboratories. We have a number of careful experimental investigations referring to the memory-value, the attention-value, the suggestion-value, and other mental effects of the printed business advertis.e.m.e.nts. Of course this group of experimental investigations at once suggests an objection which we cannot ignore. A business advertis.e.m.e.nt, as it appears in the newspapers, is such an extremely trivial thing and so completely devoted to the egotistical desire for profit that it seems undignified for the scientist to spend his time on such nothings and to shoot sparrows with his laboratory cannon-b.a.l.l.s. But on the one side nothing can be unworthy of thorough study from a strictly theoretical point of view. The dirtiest chemical substance may become of greatest importance for chemistry, and the ugliest insect for zoology. On the other side, if the practical point of view of the applied sciences is taken, the importance of the inquiry may stand in direct relation to the intensity of the human demand which is to be satisfied by the new knowledge. Present-day society is so organized that the economic advertis.e.m.e.nt surely serves a need, and its intensity is expressed by the well-known fact that in every year billions are paid for advertising. Measured by the amount of expenditure, advertising has become one of the largest and economically most important human industries. It is, then, not astonishing that scientists consider it worth while to examine the exact foundations of this industry, but it is surprising that this industry could reach such an enormous development without being guided by the spirit of scientific exact.i.tude which appears a matter of course in every other large business. As it is a function of science to study the physics of incandescent lamps or gas motors so as to bring the economically most satisfactory devices into the service of the community, it cannot be less important from the standpoint of national economics to study scientifically the efficiency of the advertis.e.m.e.nts in order that the national means may in this industry, too, secure the greatest possible effects. It is only a secondary point that experiments of this kind are of high interest to the theoretical scientist as well. For us the advertis.e.m.e.nt is simply an instrument constructed to satisfy certain human demands by its effects on the mind. It is a question for psychology to determine the conditions under which this instrument may be best adapted to its purpose.

The mental effect of a well-adapted advertis.e.m.e.nt is manifold. It appeals to the memory. Whatever we read at the street corner, or in the pages of the newspaper or magazine, is not printed with the idea that we shall immediately turn to the store, but first of all with the expectation that we keep the content of the advertis.e.m.e.nt in our memory for a later purchase. It will therefore be the more valuable the more vividly it forces itself on the memory. But if practical books about the art of advertising usually presuppose that this influence on the memory will be proportionate to the effect on the attention, the psychologist cannot fully agree. The advertis.e.m.e.nt may attract the attention of the reader strongly and yet by its whole structure may be unfit to force on the memory its characteristic content, especially the name of the firm and of the article. The pure memory-value is especially important, as according to a well-known psychological law the pleasure in mere recognition readily attaches itself to the recognized object. The customer who has the choice among various makes and brands in the store may not have any idea how far one is superior to another, but the mere fact that one among them bears a name which has repeatedly approached his consciousness before through advertis.e.m.e.nts is sufficient to arouse a certain warm feeling of acquaintance, and by a transposition of feeling this pleasurable tone accentuates the attractiveness of that make and leads to its selection. This indirect help through the memory-value is economically no less important than the direct service.

In order to produce a strong effect on memory the advertis.e.m.e.nt must be easily apprehensible. Psychological laboratory experiments with exact time-measurement of the grasping of various advertis.e.m.e.nts of the same size for the same article, but in different formulations, demonstrated clearly how much easier or harder the apprehension became through relatively small changes. No mistake in the construction of the advertis.e.m.e.nt causes so much waste as a grouping which makes the quick apperception difficult. The color, the type, the choice of words, every element, allows an experimental a.n.a.lysis, especially by means of time-measurement. If we determine in thousandths of a second the time needed to recognize the characteristic content of an advertis.e.m.e.nt, we may discriminate differences which would escape the nave judgment, and yet which in practical life are of considerable consequence, as the effect of a deficiency is multiplied by the number of readers.

We must insist on the further demand that the advertis.e.m.e.nt make a vivid impression, so that it may influence the memory through its vividness. Size is naturally the most frequent condition for the increase of vividness, but only the relative size is decisive. The experiment shows that the full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt in a folio magazine does not influence the memory more than the full page in a quarto magazine, if the reader is for the time adjusted to the particular size. No less important than the size is the originality and the unusual form, the vivid color, the skillful use of empty s.p.a.ces, the a.s.sociative elements, the appeal to humor or to curiosity, to sympathy or to antipathy. Every emotion can help to impress the content of the advertis.e.m.e.nt on the involuntary memory. Unusual announcements concerning the prices or similar factors move in the same direction.

Together with the question of the apprehension and the vividness of the impression, we must acknowledge the frequency of repet.i.tion as an equally important factor. We know from daily life how an indifferent advertis.e.m.e.nt can force itself on our mind, if it appears daily in the same place in the newspaper or is visible on every street corner. But the psychologically decisive factor here is not the fact of the mere repet.i.tion of the impression, but rather the stimulation of the attention which results from the repet.i.tion. If we remained simply pa.s.sive and received the impression the second and third and fourth time with the same indifference with which we noticed it the first time, the mere summation would not be sufficient for a strong effect.

But the second impression makes the consciousness of recognition, thus exciting the attention, and through it we now turn actively to the repeated impression which forces itself on our memory with increased vividness on account of this active personal reaction.

We may consider how such factors can be tested by the psychotechnical experiment. Scott, for instance, studied the direct influence of the relative size of the advertis.e.m.e.nts.[50] He constructed a book of a hundred pages from advertis.e.m.e.nts which had been cut from various magazines and which referred to many different articles. Fifty persons who did not know anything about the purpose of the experiment had to glance over the pages of the book as they would look though the advertising parts of a monthly. The time which they used for it was about ten minutes. As soon as they had gone through the hundred pages, they were asked to write down what they remembered. The result from this method was that the 50 persons mentioned on an average every full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt 6-1/2 times, every half-page less than 3 times, every fourth-page a little more than 1 time, and the still smaller advertis.e.m.e.nts only about 1/7 time. This series of experiments suggested accordingly that the memory value of a fourth-page advertis.e.m.e.nt is much smaller than one fourth of the memory-value of a full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt, and that of an eighth-page again much smaller than one half of the psychical value of a fourth-page. The customer who pays for one eighth of a page receives not the eighth part, but hardly the twentieth part of the psychical influence which is produced by a full page.

These experiments, which were carried on in various forms, demanded as a natural supplement a study of the effects of repet.i.tion in relation to size. This was the object of a series of tests which I carried on recently in the Harvard laboratory. I constructed the following material: 60 sheets of Bristol board in folio size were covered with advertis.e.m.e.nts which were cut from magazines the size of the "Sat.u.r.day Evening Post" and the "Ladies' Home Journal." We used advertis.e.m.e.nts ranging from full-page to twelfth-page in size. Every one of the 6 full-page advertis.e.m.e.nts which we used occurred only once, each of the 12 half-page advertis.e.m.e.nts was given 2 times, each of the fourth-page size, 4 times, each of the eighth-page size, 8 times, and each of the twelfth-page size, 12 times. The repet.i.tions were cut from 12 copies of the magazine number. The same advertis.e.m.e.nt never occurred on the same page; every page, unless it was covered by a full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt, offered a combination of various announcements. It is evident that by this arrangement every single advertis.e.m.e.nt occupied the same s.p.a.ce, as the 8 times repeated eighth-page advertis.e.m.e.nt filled a full page too. Thus no one of the 60 announcements which we used was spatially favored above another.

Thirty persons took part in the experiment. Each one had to devote himself to the 60 pages in such a way that every page was looked at for exactly 20 seconds. Between each two pages was a pause of 3 seconds, sufficient to allow one sheet to be laid aside and the next to be grasped. In 23 minutes the whole series had been gone through, and immediately after that every one had to write down what he remembered, both the names of the firms and the article announced. In the cases where only the name or only the article was correctly remembered, the result counted 1/2. We found great individual differences, probably not only because the memory of the different persons was different, but also because they varied in the degree of interest with which they looked at such material. The smallest number of reproductions was 18, of which 14 were only half remembered, that is, only the name or only the article, and as we counted these half reproductions 1/2, the memory-value for this person was counted 11.

The maximum reproduction was 46, of which 6 were half remembered.

If these calculated values are added and the sum divided by the number of partic.i.p.ants, that is, 30, and this finally by the number of the advertis.e.m.e.nts shown, that is, 60, we obtain the average memory-value of a single advertis.e.m.e.nt. The results showed that this was 0.44. But our real interest referred to the distribution for the advertis.e.m.e.nts of different size. If we make the same calculation, not for the totality of the advertis.e.m.e.nts but for those of a particular size, we find that the memory-value for the full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt was 0.33, for the 2 times repeated half-page advertis.e.m.e.nt, 0.30, for the 4 times repeated fourth-page advertis.e.m.e.nt, 0.49, for the 8 times repeated eighth-page advertis.e.m.e.nt, 0.44, and for the 12 times repeated twelfth-page advertis.e.m.e.nt, 0.47. Hence we come to the result that the 4 times repeated fourth-page advertis.e.m.e.nt as 1-1/2 times stronger than one offering of a full-page, or the 2 times repeated half-page, but that this relation does not grow with a further reduction of the size. Two thirds of the subjects were men and one third women. On the whole, the same relation exists for both groups, but the climax of psychical efficiency was reached in the case of the men by the 4 times repeated fourth-page, in the case of the women by the 8 times repeated eighth-page. The 4 times repeated fourth-page in the case of the women was 0.45, in the case of the men, 0.51, the 8 times repeated eighth-page, women, 0.53, men, 0.37.

I am inclined to believe that the ascent of the curve of the memory-value from the full-page to the fourth-page or eighth-page would have been still more continuous, if the whole-page advertis.e.m.e.nts had not naturally been such as are best known to the American reader. The whole-page announcement, therefore, had a certain natural advantage. But when we come to another calculation, even the effect of this advantage is lost. We examined the relations for the first 10 names and articles, which every one of the 30 persons wrote down. These first 10 were mostly dashed down quickly without special thought. They also included only a few half reproductions. When we study these 300 answers which the 30 persons wrote as their first 10 reproductions, and calculate from them the chances which every one of the 60 advertis.e.m.e.nts had for being remembered, we obtain the following values: The probability of being remembered among the first 10 was for the full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt, 0.5, for the half-page 2 times repeated, 1.2, for the fourth-page 4 times repeated, 2.9, for the eighth-page 8 times repeated, 2.3, and for the twelfth-page 12 times repeated, 2.4. The superiority of repet.i.tion over mere size appears most impressively in this form, but we see again in this series that the effect decreases even with increased number of repet.i.tions as soon as the single advertis.e.m.e.nt sinks below a certain relative size, so that the 12 times repeated twelfth-page advertis.e.m.e.nt does not possess the memory-value of the 4 times repeated fourth-page advertis.e.m.e.nt. If Scott's experiments concerning the size and these experiments of mine concerning the repet.i.tion are right, the memory-value of the advertis.e.m.e.nts for economic purposes is dependent upon complicated conditions. A business man who brings out a full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt once in a paper which has 100,000 readers would leave the desired memory-impression on a larger number of individuals than if he were to print a fourth-page advertis.e.m.e.nt in four different cities in four local papers, each of which has 100,000 readers. But if he uses the same paper in one town, he would produce a much greater effect by printing a fourth of a page four times than by using a full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt once only.

As a matter of course this would hold true only as far as size and repet.i.tion are concerned. Many other factors have to be considered besides. Some of these could even be studied with our material. We could study from our results what memory-value is attached to the various forms of type or suggestive words, what influence to ill.u.s.trations, how far they reinforce the impressiveness and how far they draw away the attention from the name and the object, how these various factors influence men and women differently, and so on. Other questions, however, demand entirely different forms of experiment. We may examine the effects of special contrast phenomena, of unusual background, of irregular borders and original headings. The particular position of the advertis.e.m.e.nt also deserves our psychological interest. The magazines receive higher prices for the cover pages and the newspapers for advertis.e.m.e.nts which are surrounded by reading matter. In both cases obvious practical motives are decisive. The cover page comes into the field of vision more frequently. What is surrounded by reading matter is less easily overlooked.

But the newspaper world hardly realizes how much other variations of position influence the psychological effect. Starch[51] made experiments in which he did not use real advertis.e.m.e.nts, but meaningless syllables so as to exclude the influence of familiarity with any announcement. He arranged little booklets, each of 12 pages, on which a syllable such as _lod_, _zan_, _mep_, _dut_, _yib_, and so on was printed in the middle of each page. Each of his 50 subjects glanced over the book and then wrote down what syllables remained in memory. He found that the syllables which stood on the first and last page were remembered by 34 persons, those on the second and eleventh by about 26, and those on the eight other pages by an average of 17 persons. In the next experiment he printed one syllable in the middle of the upper and one in the middle of the lower half of each page. The results now showed that of those syllables which were remembered 54 per cent stood on the upper half and 46 per cent on the lower half of the page. Finally, he divided every page into four parts and printed one syllable on the middle of each fourth of a page. The results showed that of the remembered syllables 28 per cent stood on the left-hand upper fourth, 33 per cent on the right-hand upper fourth, 16 per cent left-hand lower, and 23 per cent right-hand lower. A fourth-page advertis.e.m.e.nt which is printed on the outer side of the upper half of the page thus probably has more than twice the psychological value of one which is printed on the inner side of the lower half. The economic world spends millions every year for advertis.e.m.e.nts on the upper right-hand side and millions for advertis.e.m.e.nts on the lower left-hand side, and is not aware that one represents twice the value of the other. These little ill.u.s.trations of advertis.e.m.e.nt experiments may suffice to indicate how much haphazard methods are still prevalent in the whole field of economic psychotechnics, methods which would not be tolerated in the sphere of physical and chemical technology.

XXI

THE EFFECT OF DISPLAY

If we turn from the simple newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nt to the means of propaganda in general, we at once stand before a question which is often wrongly answered. The practical handbooks of advertis.e.m.e.nts and means of display treat it as a self-evident fact that every presentation should be as beautiful as possible. In the first place, we cannot deny that the ugly and even the disgusting possess a strong power for attracting attention. Yet it is true that by a transposition of feelings the displeasure in the advertis.e.m.e.nt may easily become a displeasure in the advertised object. But, on the other hand, it is surely a mistake to believe that pure beauty best fulfills the function of the advertis.e.m.e.nt. Even the draftsman who draws a poster ought to give up the ambition to create a perfect picture. It might have the power to attract attention, but it would hardly serve its true purpose of fixing the attention on the article which is advertised by the picture. The very meaning of beauty lies in its self-completeness. The beautiful picture rests in itself and does not point beyond itself. A really beautiful landscape painting is an end in itself, and must not stir up the practical wish to visit the landscape which has stimulated the eye of the painter. If the display is to serve economic interests, every line and every curve, every form and every color, must be subordinated to the task of leading to a practical resolution, and to an action, and yet this is exactly the opposite of the meaning of art. Art must inhibit action, if it is perfect. The artist is not to make us believe that we deal with a real object which suggests a practical att.i.tude. The aesthetic forms are adjusted to the main aesthetic aim, the inhibition of practical desires. The display must be pleasant, tasteful, harmonious, and suggestive, but should not be beautiful, if it is to fulfill its purpose in the fullest sense. It loses its economic value, if by its artistic quality it oversteps the boundaries of that middle region of arts and crafts. This of course stands in no contradiction to the requirement that the advertised article should be made to appear as beautiful as possible. The presentation of something beautiful is not necessarily a beautiful presentation, just as a perfectly beautiful picture need not have something beautiful as its content. A perfect painting may be the picture of a most ugly person.

We have not yet spoken of the suggestive power of the means of propaganda. Every one knows the influence on taste and smell, on social vanity, on local pride, on the gambling instinct, on the instinctive fear of diseases, and above all on the s.e.xual instinct, can gain suggestive power. Everywhere among the uncritical ma.s.ses such appeals reach individuals whose psychophysical att.i.tudes make such influences vivid and overpowering. Every one knows, too, those often clever linguistic forms which are to aid the suggestion. They are to inhibit the opposing impulses. The mere use of the imperative, to be sure, has gradually become an ineffective, used-up pattern. It is a question for special economic psychotechnics to investigate how the suggestive strength of a form can be reinforced or weakened by various secondary influences. What influence, for example, belongs to the electric sign advertis.e.m.e.nts in which the sudden change from light to darkness produces strong psychophysical effects, and what value belongs to moving parts in the picture?

The psychologist takes the same interest in the examples of window displays, sample distributions, and similar vehicles of commerce by which the offered articles themselves and not their mere picture or description are to influence the consciousness of the prospective customer. Here, too, every element may be isolated and may be brought under psychotechnical rules. The most external question would refer to the mere quant.i.ty of the presented material. The psychologist would ask how the mere ma.s.s of the offering influences the attention, how far the feeling of pleasure in the fullness, how far the aesthetic impression of repet.i.tion, how far the a.s.sociative thought of a manifold selection, how far the mere spatial expansion, affects the impression. In any case, as soon as it is acknowledged as desirable to produce with certain objects the impression of the greatest possible number, the experimental psychologist stands before the concrete problem of how a manifoldness of things is to be distributed so that it will not be underestimated, perhaps even overestimated as to quant.i.ty. Again, the laboratory experiment would not proceed with real window displays or real exhibitions, but would work out the principle with the simplified experimental means.

An investigation in the Harvard laboratory, for instance, tested the influence which various factors have upon the estimation of a number of objects seen.[52] The question was how far the form or the size or the distribution makes a group of objects appear larger or smaller.

The experiment was started by showing 20 small cards on a black background in comparison with another group of cards the number of which varied between 17 and 23. At first the form of these little cards was changed: triangles, squares, and circles were tried. Or the color was changed: light and dark, saturated and unsaturated colors were used. Or the order was varied: sometimes the little cards lay in regular rows, sometimes in close cl.u.s.ters, sometimes widely distributed, sometimes in quite irregular fashion. Or the background was changed, or the surrounding frame, or the time of exposure, and so on. Each time the subjects had to estimate whether the second group was the larger or equal or the smaller. These experiments indicated that such comparative estimation was indeed influenced by every one of the factors mentioned. If the experiments show that an irregular distribution makes the number appear larger or a close cl.u.s.tering reduces the apparent number, and so on, the business man would be quite able to profit from such knowledge. The jeweler who shows his rings and watches in his window wishes to produce with his small stock the impression of an ample supply. He lacks the psychology which might teach him whether he would act more wisely in having the rings and the watches separated, or whether he should mix the two, whether he ought to choose a background which is similar in color or one which contrasts with the pieces exhibited, whether he ought to present the single object in a special background as in a case, or to show it without one. He is not aware that by simple psychological illusions, it is not difficult to change the apparent size of an isolated object by special treatment, making his show-piece appear larger by a fitting background or intentionally making a dainty object appear smaller by contrasting surroundings. These, to be sure, are very trivial ill.u.s.trations, but the same fundamental psychological laws which are true for the show-window of the next corner store are true for the world-display of the nation. The point is to present clearly the idea, which can be most simply expressed in such trivial material. But it may be added that even in the case of the most indifferent example a few hasty experiments with one or two subjects cannot yield any results of value.

All parts of physiological psychological optics can contribute similar material. The questions of color harmony and color contrast, light intensity and mutual support of uniformly colored objects, of irradiation, depth and perspective, are significant for an effective display in the show-window, and the laboratory results can easily be translated into psychotechnical prescriptions. But here it is still more necessary to separate carefully the merely optical impression from its aesthetic side. All that we claimed as to the poster is still more justified for the presentation of the saleable objects themselves. As soon as the display of the articles forms a real work of art, it must produce inhibitions in the soul of the spectator by which the practical economic desire is turned aside. Beauty here too has strong power of attraction, and moreover the suggestive power, by which it withdraws our senses from the chance surroundings, forces us to lose ourselves in the offered presentation. But just through this process the content of the display becomes isolated and separated from the world of our practical interests. Our desires are brought to silence, we do not seek a personal relation to the things which we face as admiring spectators, and the intended economic effect is therefore eliminated. Whoever is to examine the psychotechnics of displays and exhibitions must therefore study the psychology of aesthetic stimulation, of suggestion, of the effects of light, color, form and movement, of apperception and attention, and ought not to forget the psychology of humor and curiosity, of instincts and emotions. For us the essential point is that here too the experimental psychological method alone is able to lead from mere chance arrangements founded on personal taste to the systematic construction which secures with the greatest possible certainty the greatest possible mental effect in the service of the economic purpose.

The problems of the storekeeper who arranges his windows, however, overlap the problems of the manufacturer who prepares his goods for the world-market, and who must from the start take care that the outer appearance of his goods stimulate the readiness to buy. In factories in which these questions have been carefully considered, the psychological elements have always been found to be the most influential, but often the most puzzling. I received material from a number of industrial plants which sold the same article in a variety of packings. The material which was sent to me included all kinds of soaps and candies, writing-papers and breakfast foods, and other articles which are handled by the retailer, the sale of which depends upon the inclination and caprice of the customer in the store. For every one of these objects a number of external covers and labels were sent and with them a confidential report with details about their relative success. For instance, a certain kind of chocolate was sold under 12 different labels. One of them was highly successful in the whole country, and one other had made the same article entirely unsaleable. The other 10 could be graded between these extremes. In all 12 cases the covers were decorated with pictures of women with a scenic background. As long as only aesthetic values were considered, all were on nearly the same level, and aesthetically skilled observers repeatedly expressed their preference for some of the unsuccessful pictures over some of the successful ones. But as soon as an internal relation was formed between the pictures and the chocolate, in the one case a mental harmony resulted which had strong suggestive power, in the other case a certain unrest and inner disturbance which necessarily had an inhibiting influence. The picture which was unsuccessful with the sweets would perhaps have been eminently successful for tobacco. From such elementary starting-points, the laboratory experiment might proceed systematically into spheres of economic life hitherto untouched by scientific methods. The psychology of the influence of external forms on the conscious reactions of the ma.s.ses is so far usually considered only when, as often happens, the most fundamental demands are violated; for instance, when objects which are to give the impression of ease are painted in colors which give a heavy, clumsy appearance, or _vice versa_, when book-bindings are lettered in archaic type which makes the reading of the t.i.tle impossible for a pa.s.ser-by, and in many similar antipsychological absurdities which any stroll through the streets of a modern city forces on us.

XXII

EXPERIMENTS WITH REFERENCE TO ILLEGAL IMITATION

It is perhaps not without interest to turn into a by-path at this point of our road. All the ill.u.s.trations which we have picked out so far have referred to strictly economic conditions. But we ought not to forget that these economic problems of commerce and industry are everywhere in contact with legal interests as well. In order to indicate the manifoldness of problems accessible to the experimental method, we may discuss our last question, the question of packing and of labels, in this legal relation too. All the packings, covers, labels, trademarks, and names by which the manufacturer tries to stimulate the attention, the imagination, and the suggestibility of the customer may easily draw a large part of their psychological effectiveness from without, as soon as they imitate the appearance of articles which are well introduced and favored in the market. If the public is familiar with and favorably inclined toward an article on account of its inner values or on account of its being much advertised, a similar name or a similar packing may offer efficient help to a rival article. The law of course protects the label and the deceiving imitation can be prosecuted. But no law can determine by general conceptions the exact point at which the similarity becomes legally unallowable. This creates a situation which has given rise to endless difficulties in practical life.

If everything were forbidden which by its similarity to an accredited article might lead to a possible confusion in the mind of the quite careless and inattentive customer, any article once in the market would have a monopoly in its line. As soon as a typewriter or an automobile or a pencil or a mineral water existed, no second kind could have access to the market, as with a high degree of carelessness one economic rival may be taken for another, even if the new typewriter or the new pencil has a new form and color and name. On the other side, the purchaser could never have a feeling of security if imitations were considered as still legally justifiable when the difference is so small that it needs an intense mental effort and careful examination of details to notice it.

The result is that the jurisdiction fluctuates between these two extremes in a most alarming way, and this seems to hold true in all countries. In theory: "There is substantial agreement that infringement occurs when the marks, names, labels, or packings of one trader resemble those of another sufficiently to make it probable that ordinary purchasers, exercising no more care than such persons usually do in purchasing the article in question, will be deceived." But it depends upon the trade experts and the judges to give meaning to such a statement in the particular case, as the amount of care which purchasers usually exercise can be understood very differently.

Sometimes the customer is expected to proceed with an attention which is most subtly adjusted to the finest differences, and sometimes it is taken for granted that he is unable to notice even strong variations.