Summary:
IT seems perfectly obvious that factors which in common conversation are called wants, interests, attitudes, desires, motives, tendencies and feelings influence human action, and perhaps the behaviour of all animals, more powerfully than any others. For many reasons, however, factors of this kind are not easy to study experimentally in an adequately controlled manner, and comparatively little is known definitely about the ways in which they operate. Many years ago, Prof. E. L. Thorndike began to develop an experimental technique for studying these ‘satisfiers’ of action, as he now calls them, and he soon arrived at the view that they operate, not only in a prospective manner, tending to establish connexions between particular reactions in a series, but also, retrospectively, strengthening or weakening connexions once set up. In this book he, and a number of his students, present and discuss the results of their most recent studies of the general problem of the effects of specific tendencies upon behaviour.