PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON THE WORKING POWER
The increase and decrease of the ability
to do good work depends of course not only upon the
direct fatigue from labor and the pauses for rest;
a large variety of other factors may lead to fluctuations
which are economically important. The various
hours of the day, the seasons of the year, the atmospheric
conditions of weather and climate, may have such influence.
Some elements of this interplay have been cleared
up in recent years. Just as the experiments of
pedagogical psychology have determined the exact curve
of efficiency during the period of an hour in school,
so other investigations have traced the typical curve
of psychical efficiency throughout the day and the
year. Sociological and criminological statistics
concerning the fluctuations in the behavior of the
masses, common-sense experience of practical life,
and finally, economic statistics concerning the quantity
and quality of industrial output in various parts
of the day and of the year, have supplemented one
another. The systematic assistance of the psychological
laboratory, however, has been confined to the educational
aspect of the problem. Psychological experiments
have determined how the achievement of the youth in
the schoolroom changes with the months of the year
and the hours of the day. It seems as if it could
not be difficult to secure here, too, a connection
between exact experiment and economic work. Much
will have to be reduced to individual variations.
The laboratory has already confirmed the experience
of daily life that there are morning workers whose
strongest psychophysical efficiency comes immediately
after the night’s rest, while the day’s
work fatigues them more and more; and that there are
evening workers who in the morning still remain under
the after effects of the night’s sleep, and who
slowly become fresher and fresher from the stimuli
of the day. It would seem not impossible to undertake
a systematic selection of various individuals under
this point of view, as different industrial tasks
demand a different distribution of efficiency between
morning and night.
Such a selection and adjustment may
be economically still more important with reference
to the fluctuations during the course of the year.
Economic inquiries, for instance, have suggested that
younger and older workingmen who ordinarily show the
same efficiency become unequal in their ability to
do good work in the spring months, and the economists
have connected this inequality with sexual conditions.
But other factors as well, especially the blood circulation
of the organism and the resulting reactions to external
temperature, different gland activities, and so on,
cause great personal differences in efficiency during
the various seasons of the year. Inasmuch as
we know many economic occupations in which the chief
demand is made in one or another period of the year,
a systematic study of these individual variations
might be of high economic value, where large numbers
are involved, and might contribute much to the individual
comfort of the workers. But a constant relation
to day and year also seems to exist independent of
all personal variations. When the sun stands
at its meridian, a minimum of efficiency is to be
expected and a similar minimum is to be found at the
height of summer. Correspondingly we have an
increase of the total psychical efficiency in winter-time.
During the spring-time the behavior seems, as far as
the investigations go, to be different in the intellectual
and in the psychomotor activities. It is claimed
that the efficiency of the intellectual functions
decreases as the winter recedes, but that the efficiency
of psychomotor impulses increases.
The influences of the daily temperature,
of the weather and of the seasons may be classed among
the physical conditions of efficiency. We may
group with them the effects of nourishment, of stimulants,
of sleep, and so on. As far as the relations
between these external factors and purely bodily muscle
work are involved, the interests of the psychologists
are not engaged. But it is evident that every
one of these relations also has its psychological
aspect, and that a really scientific psychotechnical
treatment of these problems can become possible only
through the agency of psychological experiments.
We have excellent experimental investigations concerning
the influence of the loss of sleep on intellectual
labor and on simple psychomotor activities. But
it would be rather arbitrary to deduce from the results
of those researches anything as to the effect of reduction
of sleep on special economic occupations. Yet
such knowledge would be of high importance. We
have in the literature concerned with accidents in
transportation numerous popular discussions about the
destructive influence of loss of sleep on the attention
of the locomotive engineer or of the helmsman or of
the chauffeur, but an analysis of the particular psychophysical
processes does not as yet exist and can be expected
only from systematic experiments. Nor has the
influence of hunger on psychotechnical activities
been studied in a satisfactory way.
A number of psychological investigations
have been devoted to the study of the influence of
alcohol on various psychical functions and in this
field at least the strictly economic problem of industrial
labor has sometimes been touched. We have the
much quoted and much misinterpreted experiments
which were carried on in Germany with typesetters.
The workmen received definite quantities of heavy wine
at a particular point in the work and the number of
letters which they were able to set during the following
quarter-hours were measured and compared with their
normal achievement in fifteen minutes. The reduction
of efficiency amounted on the average to 15 per cent
of the output. It may be mentioned that the loss
referred only to the quantity of the work and not
at all to the quality. The well-known subjective
illusory feeling of the subjects was not lacking; they
themselves believed that the wine had reinforced their
working power. As soon as such experiments are
put into the service of economic life, they will have
to be carried on with much more accurate adjustment
to the special conditions, with subtler gradation
of the stimuli, and especially with careful study
of individual factors. But at first it seems
more in the interest of the practical task that the
extremely complicated problem of the influence of
alcohol be followed up by purely theoretical research
in the laboratory in order that the effect may be
resolved into its various components. We must
first find the exact facts concerning the influence
of alcohol on elementary processes of mental life,
such as perception, attention, memory, and so on,
and this will slowly prepare the way for the complete
economic experiment.
At present the greatest significance
for the economic field may be attached to those alcohol
experiments which dealt with the apprehension of the
outer world. They proved a reduction in the ability
to grasp the impressions and a narrowing of the span
of consciousness. The indubitable decrease of
certain memory powers, of the acuity in measuring
distance, of the time estimation, and similar psychical
disturbances after alcohol, must evidently be of high
importance for industry and transportation, while the
well-known increase of the purely sensory sensibility,
especially of the visual acuity after small closes
of alcohol, hardly plays an important rôle in practical
life. The best-known and experimentally most studied
effect of alcohol, the increase of motor excitability,
also evidently has its importance for industrial achievements.
It cannot be denied that this facility of the motor
impulses after small doses of alcohol is not a real
gain, which might be utilized economically, but is
ultimately an injury to the apparatus, even if we abstract
from the retardation of the reaction which comes as
an after-effect. The alcoholic facilitation,
after all, reduces the certainty and the perfection
of the reaction and creates conditions under which
wrong, and this in economic life means often dangerous,
motor responses arise. The energy of the motor
discharge suffers throughout from the alcohol.
Some experiments which were recently
carried on with reference to the influence of alcohol
on the power of will seem to have especial significance
for the field of economic activity. The method
applied in the experiment was the artificial creation
of an exactly measurable resistance to the will-impulse
directed toward a purpose. The experiment had
to determine what power of resistance could be overcome
by the will and how far this energy changes under the
influence of alcohol. For this end combinations
of meaningless syllables were learned and repeated
until they formed a close connection in memory.
If one syllable was given, the mechanical tendency
of the mind was to reproduce the next syllable in
the memorized series. The will-intention was
then directed toward breaking this memory type.
For instance, it was demanded, when a syllable was
called, that the subject should not answer with the
next following syllable, but with a rhyming syllable.
This will-impulse easily succeeded when the syllables
to be learned had been repeated only a few times, while
after a very frequent repetition the memory connection
offered a resistance which the simple will-intention
could not break. The syllable which followed
in the series rushed to the mind before the intention
to seek a rhyming syllable could be realized.
The number of repetitions thus became a measure for
the power of the will. After carrying out these
experiments at first under normal conditions, they
were repeated while the subjects were under the influence
of exactly graded doses of alcohol. From such
simple tasks the experiment was turned to more and
more complex ones of similar structure. All together
they showed clearly that the alcohol did not influence
the ability to make the will effective and that the
actual decrease of achievement results from a decrease
in the ability to grasp the material. As long
as the alcohol doses are small, this feeling of decreased
ability stirs up a reinforcement in the tension of
the will-impulse. This may go to such an extent
that the increased will-effort not only compensates
for the reduced understanding, but even over-compensates
for it, producing an improvement in the mental work.
But as soon as the alcohol doses amount to about 100
cubic centimeters, the increased tension of the will
is no longer sufficient to balance the paralyzing
effect in the understanding. Yet it must not
be overlooked that in all these experiments only isolated
will acts were in question which were separated from
one another by pauses of rest. Evidently, however,
the technical laborer is more often in a situation
in which not isolated impulses, but a continuous tension
of the will is demanded. How far such an uninterrupted
will-function is affected by alcohol has not as yet
been studied with the exact means of the experiment.
To be sure an obvious suggestion would
be that the whole problem, as far as economics, and
especially industry, are concerned, might be solved
in a simpler way than by the performance of special
psychological experiments, namely, by the complete
elimination of alcohol itself from the life of the
wage-earner. The laboratory experiment which
seems to demonstrate a reduction of objective achievement
in the case of every important mental function merely
supplements in exact language the appalling results
indicated by criminal statistics, disease statistics,
and inheritance statistics. It seems as if the
time had come when scientists could not with a good
conscience suggest any other remedy than the merciless
suppression of alcohol. Indeed, there can be
no doubt that alcohol is one of the worst enemies
of civilized life, and it is therefore almost with
regret that the scientist must acknowledge that all
the psychological investigations, which have so often
been misused in the partisan writings of prohibitionists,
are not a sufficient basis to justify the demand for
complete abstinence.
First, newer experiments make it very
clear that many of the so-called effects of alcohol
which the experiment has demonstrated are produced
or at least heightened by influences of suggestion.
Experiments which have been carried on in England
for the study of that point show clearly that certain
psychical disturbances which seem to result from small
doses of alcohol fail to appear as soon as the subject
does not know that he has taken alcohol. For
that purpose it was necessary to eliminate the odor,
and this was accomplished by introducing the beverages
into the organism by a stomach pump. When by this
method sometimes water and sometimes diluted alcohol
was given without the knowledge of the subject, the
usual effects of small doses of alcohol did not arise.
But another point is far more important. We may
take it for granted that alcohol reduces the ability
for achievement as soon as such very small doses are
exceeded. But from the standpoint of economic
life we have no right to consider a reduction of the
psychical ability to produce work as identical with
a decrease in the economic value of the personality.
Such a view would be right if the influence necessarily
set in at the beginning of the working period.
But if, for instance, a moderate quantity of beer is
introduced into the organism after the closing of
the working day, it would certainly produce an artificial
reduction of the psychical ability, and yet this decrease
of psychophysical activity might be advantageous to
the total economic achievement of the workingman in
the course of the week or the year. To be sure
the glass of beer in the evening paralyzes certain
inhibitory centres of the brain and therefore puts
the mind out of gear, but such a way of expressing
it may easily be misleading, as it suggests too much
that a real injury is done. From the point of
view of scientific psychology, we must acknowledge
that such a paralyzing effect in certain parts of
the psychophysical system sets in with every act of
attention and reaches its climax in sleep, which surely
does no harm to the mind. It may be thoroughly
advantageous for the total work of the normal, healthy,
average workingman if the after effects of the motor
excitement of the day are eliminated by a mild, short
alcoholic poisoning in the evening. It may produce
that narrowing and dulling of consciousness which
extinguishes the cares and sorrows of the day and
secures the night’s sleep, and through it increased
efficiency the next morning. Systematic experiments
with exact relation to the various technical demands
must slowly bring real insight into this complex situation.
The usual hasty generalization from a few experiments
with alcohol for partisan interests is surely not
justified in the present unsatisfactory state of knowledge.
Perhaps we know still less of the
influences which coffee, tea, tobacco, sweets, and
so on exert on the life of the industrial worker.
It will be wise to resolve these stimuli in daily use
into their elements and to study the effects of each
element in isolated form. To know, for instance,
the effects of caffein on the psychophysical activities
does not mean to know the effects of tea or coffee,
which contain a variety of other substances besides
the caffein, substances which may be supposed to modify
the effect of the caffein. Yet the first step
must in this case be the study of the effects of the
isolated caffein, before the total influences of the
familiar beverages can be followed up. An excellent
investigation of this caffein effect on various psychological
and psychomotor functions has recently been completed.
When the caffein effect on tapping movements was studied,
it was found that it works as a stimulation, sometimes
preceded by a slight initial retardation. It persists
from one to two hours after doses of from one to three
grains and as long as four hours after doses of six
grains. The steadiness test showed a slight nervousness
after several hours after doses of from one to four
grains. After six grains there is pronounced unsteadiness.
A complex test in cooerdination indicated that the
effect of small, amounts of caffein is a stimulation
and that of large amounts a retardation. Correspondingly
the speed of performance in typewriting is heightened
by small doses of caffein and retarded by larger doses.
In both cases the quality of the performance as measured
by the number of errors is superior to the normal
result.
The influences of the physiological
stimulants have many points of contact with the effects
of social entertainment, the significance of which
for the economic life is still rather unknown in any
exact detail. Many factories in which the labor
is noiseless, as in the making of cigars, have introduced
gramophone music or reading aloud, and it is easy
to understand theoretically that a certain animating
effect results, which stimulates the whole psychophysical
activity But only the experiment would be able to
decide how this stimulation is related, for instance,
to the distraction of attention, which is necessarily
involved, or how it influences various periods of the
work and various types of work, how far it is true
that the musical key exerts an exciting or relaxing
influence, what intensity and what local position,
what rhythm and what duration of such aesthetic stimuli,
would bring the best possible economic results.
We all have read of the favorable effects which were
secured in a factory when a cat was brought into every
working-room in which women laborers were engaged
in especially fatiguing work. The cat became a
living toy for the employees, which stimulated their
social consciousness. In not a few plants the
reinforced achievement is explained by the social means
of entertainment, which have been introduced under
the pressure of modern philanthropic ideas. The
lounging-rooms with the newspapers and periodicals
the clubrooms with libraries, the excursions and dances
and patriotic festivities, fill up the reservoir of
psychophysical energies. As a matter of course
all the social movements which enhance the consciousness
of solidarity among the laborers and the feeling of
security as to their future development in their career
have a similar effect of reinforcing the normal psychical
achievement.
As the strongest factor, finally,
the direct material interest must be added to these
conditions. The literature of political economy
is full of discussions of the effect of increase of
wages, of the payment of bonuses and premiums, of
piece-wages, of promised pensions, and, as far as
Europe is concerned, of state insurance. In short,
the whole individual financial situation in its relation
to the psychophysical achievement of the wage-earner
is a favorite topic of economic inquiry. We cannot
participate here in these inexhaustible discussions,
because all these questions are to-day still so endlessly
far from the field of psychological experiments.
Nevertheless we ought not to forget the experience
through which general experimental psychology has
gone in the last few decades. When the first
experiments were undertaken in order to deal systematically
with the mental life, the friends of this new science
and its opponents agreed, on the whole, in the belief
that certainly only the most elementary phenomena
of consciousness, the sensations and the reactions
of impulses, would be accessible to the new method.
The opponents naturally compared this modest field
with the great problems of the mental totality, and
therefore ridiculed the new narrow task as unimportant.
The friends, on the other hand, were eager to follow
the fresh path, because they were content to gain
real exactitude by the experiment at least in these
simplest questions. Yet as soon as the new independent
workshops were established for the young science, it
was discovered that the method was able to open fields
in which no one had anticipated its usefulness.
The experiments turned to the problems of attention,
of memory, of imagination, of feeling, of judgment,
of character, of aesthetic experience and so on.
It is not improbable that the method of the economic
psychological experiment may also quickly lead beyond
the more elementary problems, as soon as it is systematically
applied, and then it, too, may conquer regions of
inquiry in which to-day no exact calculation of the
psychological factors seems possible.
If such an advance is to be a steady
one, the economic psychologist will emancipate himself
from the chance question of what problems are at this
moment important for commerce and industry and will
proceed systematically step by step from those results
which the psychological laboratory has yielded under
the non-economic points of view. Many previous
psychological or psychophysical inquiries almost touch
the problems of industrial achievement. For instance,
the experiments on imitation, which psychophysicists
have carried on in purely theoretical or pedagogical
interests, move parallel to industrial experiences.
It is well known that the pacemaker plays his rôle
not only in the field of sport but also in the factory.
The rhythm of one laborer gains controlling importance
for the others, who instinctively imitate him.
Some plants even have automatically working machines
with the special intention that the sharp rhythm of
these lifeless forerunners shall produce an involuntary
imitation in the psychophysical system. In a
similar way many laboratory investigations on suggestion
and suggestibility point to such economic processes,
and it seems to me that especially the studies on
the influence of the ideas of purpose which are being
undertaken nowadays in many psychological laboratories
may easily be connected with the problems of economic
life. We know how the consciousness of the task
to be performed has an organizing influence on the
system of those psychophysical acts which lead to
the goal. The experiment has shown under which
conditions this effect can be reinforced and under
which reduced. Pedagogical experiments have also
shown exactly what influence belongs to the consciousness
of the approach to the end of work; the feeling of
the nearness of the close heightens the achievement,
even of the fatigued subject. It would not be
difficult to connect psychophysical experiments of
this kind with the problems of the task and bonus
system, which is nowadays so much discussed in industrial
life. The practical successes seem to prove that
the individual can do more with equal effort if he
does not stand before an unlimited mass of work of
which he has to do as much as possible in the course
of the day, but if he is before a definitely determined,
limited task with the demand that he complete it in
an exactly calculated time. Scientific management
has made far-reaching use of this principle, but whether
constant results for the various industries can be
hoped for from such methods must again be ascertained
by the psychological experiment.
These hopes surely will not weaken
the interest of the psychologist for those many psychological
methods which lie outside of the experimental research.
A sociologist, who himself had been a laborer in his
earlier life, undertook in Germany last year an inquiry
into the psychological status of the laborers’
achievement by the questionnaire method. He sent
to 8000 workingmen in the mining industries, textile
industries, and metal industries, blanks containing
26 questions, and received more than 5000 replies.
The questions referred to the pleasure and interest
in the work, to preferences, to fatigue, to the thoughts
during the work, to the means of recreation, to the
attitude toward the wages, to the emotional situation,
and so on. The 5000 answers allowed manifold
classifications. The various mental types of men
could be examined, the influence of the machine, the
attitude toward monotony, the changes of pleasure
and interest in the work with the age of the laborer,
the time at which fatigue becomes noticeable, and so
on. Many psychological elements of industrial
life thus come to a sharp focus and the strong individual
differences could not be brought out in a more characteristic
way. Yet, all taken together, even such a careful
investigation on a psychostatistical basis strongly
suggests that a few careful experimental investigations
could lead further than such a heaping-up of material
gathered from men who are untrained in self-observation
and in accurate reports, and above all who are accessible
to any kind of suggestion and preconceived idea.
The experimental method is certainly not the only
one which can contribute to reforms in industrial
life and the reinforcement of industrial efficiency,
but all signs indicate that the future will find it
the most productive and most reliable.