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SECURING AND UTILIZING THESE MOST VALUABLE EXPERIENCES

The conditions best adapted for procuring and utilizing one class of these most valuable experiences may not be the best for the other three classes. Our final problem must therefore be subdivided into four parts corresponding to the four classes of valuable experience.

Special Conditions Favorable to Habit Formation

The essential condition for habit formation is repetition with intensity of application. The modern movement in the industrial world known as scientific management supplies this need for repetition by standardizing all activities so that they will be repeated over and

over in identical form; and it secures the intensity of application by means of the task and bonus system. By these means the most valuable experiences for habit formation are secured and utilized.

The working out of this fact is so admirably described in recent reports upon scientific management that further description here would be superfluous.

Special Conditions Favorable to the Formation of Practical judgments

In addition to the four general conditions discussed on pages 278 to 283 the special conditions most favorable to the formation of practical judgments are the three following:—

1. The experiences most effective in arousing practical judgments are those that are most recent. A few days ago I purchased a piece of real estate and was asked how I wanted the property transferred. I replied immediately that I wanted a warranty deed and a guarantee policy. This was a practical judgment made upon the basis of a recent previous experience.

As a matter of fact there are three distinct methods of transferring real estate, but until after my judgment had been made I was perfectly oblivious of the other methods, although I had had experience with them some years before. Thus I utilized only my recent experience in making my practical judgment.

2. Other things being equal, those experiences are most valuable in arousing practical judgments that have been the most frequent. I have seen burns dressed many times and in many ways, but most often they have been dressed with soda and water. When I was called upon recently to dress a burn I recalled the method which I had seen most often and formed a practical judgment based thereupon and was helped out of my difficulty.

3. Our most vivid and intense experiences are the ones most likely to be recalled and to be utilized in the formation of practical judgments. The mistakes that I have to pay for and the deed that secured my promotion are the experiences most fertile in the formation of practical judgments.

Special Conditions Favorable to the Formation of Reflective judgments

In addition to the general conditions mentioned on page 278 the special conditions favorable for the formation of reflective judgments are as follows:—

1. A theoretical education. Proverbially schools teach generalizations, abstractions, and principles. The scholar and the student are compelled to practice in this most effective form of thinking. A justifiable criticism of the schools is that they are inclined to neglect the lower forms of thinking—the dealing with the concrete—in their zeal for the highest forms of thinking. However, a school education not only gives practice in handling generalizations, abstractions, and principles, but it provides the conditions necessary to stimulate the learners to amass a useful stock of concepts that at a later time will be used in reflective judgments.

2. Suggestions from others. Reflective judgments depend upon condensed experience. The condensation is not produced by compression

but by selecting the common though essential element from various former experiences and by uniting these elements into a new unity. This breaking up of former experiences by analyzing out the essential factor is a difficult task and one in which no man can proceed far without assistance from others.

At a recent meeting of psychologists a speaker presented a paper on the most helpful order of presentation of topics for a course in psychology. He simply called our attention to certain facts which we had all experienced as teachers of psychology. He then combined these abstracted elements in a new unity in such a way that I was enabled to form a reflective judgment as to the order of presenting topics in psychology. Without his suggestion I probably never would have been able to make the analysis necessary for the reflective judgment.

We need all the help we can get to assist us to analyze our own experiences. To this end we employ with great profit such agencies as conferences with fellow-workmen, conventions,

visitations, trade journals, and technical discussions upon our own problem (cf. Chapter XI).

3. Verbal expression. We cannot well unite factors of previous experience into a new whole unless we have some symbol to stand for the new unity. As such a symbol, a word is the most effective. Animals never carry on reflective judgments and never can, since they do not possess a language adequate to such demands. The attempt to express one's thought in words is in reality often a means for creating the thought as well as a means for its expression. A few years ago I prepared a paper on the subject, "Making Psychology Practical." In my attempt to express myself I clarified my thinking, formed new generalizations, and therefore was enabled to do with full consciousness (with reflective judgments) what previously I had done but blindly.

It is a most helpful practice to attempt to express in words just what one is trying to accomplish; what are the conditions necessary for success; what the conditions that are lowering

efficiency; and what are the possibilities of the work, etc. The method of analysis and expression assists wonderfully in abstracting the aspects of one's experience necessary for the generalization, abstraction, and principle used in reflective judgments.

Special Conditions Favorable to the Formation of Expert judgments

There are no clearly defined special conditions for increasing one's capacity to apply expert judgments. The general conditions discussed on page 278 seem to cover the case. If I have provided, as an executive, for all these conditions for developing expert judgments:—

(1) if I have good vigorous health,

(2) if I am working with enthusiastic application,

(3) if I have the right attitude towards my work,

(4) and finally, if I am having frequent experience in making practical and theoretical judgments,—I am then fulfilling the conditions most favorable for the development of expert judgments.