Questions and Exercises
(1) (a) It is said on p. 232 that “the present is a good time for repeating” certain cautions. Now that you have read the chapter, can you see why the statement was made? (b) Criticise, in your own words, the doctrine that pleasure and pain have ‘power’ to determine actions.
(2) Give from your own experience instances (a) of sensorimotor and ideomotor action, and (b) of the passage of selective or volitional action into some simpler form. Make your account as detailed as possible.
(3) Draw up a table, in the form of a genealogical tree, of the various kinds of action discussed in this chapter. Write a psychological formula for every kind. Where does instinctive action come in?
(4) Give instances, from history or fiction, (a) of selective action, (b) of volitional action, and (c) of conflicts from which a volitional action might have resulted, but did not.
(5) Name (a) some of the principal human reflexes, and (b) some of the artificial reflexes most commonly acquired by civilised man.
(6) The following statements occur in various psychological works: (a) every impulse is at the same time emotion; (b) every emotion is at the same time impulse; (c) every emotion is at the same time instinct; (d) every instinct is an impulse. What comment have you to make?
(7) What evidence can you offer for the hypothesis (p. 245) that impulsive actions are, in the history of the race, as old as tropisms?
(8) Suppose that you perform a selective action; the action issues from a conflict of determining tendencies; you ‘decide’ among various possibilities of action. Does the decision always take place in the same way, or can you distinguish ‘types’ of decision?—Do not hurry to answer the question; keep it by you, and answer it in the light of experience.
(9) We saw that the motor reaction (which has its counterpart in everyday life) is a telescoped impulsive action. Can you mention any other kinds of action (also occurring in everyday life) which do not find their precise place under the headings of the chapter?
(10) What kinds of action are involved in the product of constructive imagination?
(11) (a) What is the chief psychological difference between hesitation and deliberation? (b) Give, from your own experience, a detailed analysis of some desire.
(12) It is very important that you should become acquainted with the reaction experiment, and should analyse a number of reactions. Many instrumental outfits are on the market; one of the simplest is President E. C. Sanford’s vernier chronoscope (C. H. Stoelting Co.). When you have familiarised yourself with the experiment, try to plan an experimental study of selective and volitional actions.