Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist

lying the psychology of reaction than has the too-detached psychology of the laboratory. But even tfiose who are the best practical psychologists realize that common-sense methods can never produce universal or widespread progress in psychology. Our great military leaders, our great religious leaders, the demagogues and the politicians, have accomplished their results1 by their very wide acquaintanceship with the reaction tendencies in man, and by their happy accidents in creating the situations which will call out such reactions. By reason of the fact that occasional success has been obtained by crude methods and happy accidents, we must not conclude that psychology should not attempt to discover and analyze and bring under scientific control the factors which have occasionally made such successes possible. Because an occasional business leader has known how to pick out and keep good men, we are offered no reason why we should not seek to understand and control the processes involved in picking and keeping good men. The same may be said of the factors in keeping men out of crime, keeping them honest and sane, and their ethical and social life upon a high and well-regulated plane. This brief summary of the every-day uses of psychology should convince us of two things : first, that common-sense, while a reasonable method so far as it goes, does not go far enough, and never can ; and secondly, that in order to make progress, the phenomena of human behavior must be made an object of scientific study. We shall attempt next, then, to gain some impression of this systematic psychological procedure.