Making Experience an Asset : Part 2

Increasing Efficiency In Business: A Contribution to the Psychology of Business
by Walter Dill Scott, Ph.D.

(Page 13 of 16)

The experience secured in responding to one situation will be valuable in responding to a similar situation because of the three following facts: -

a. Two similar conditions may secure identical factors in our activity. Thus school life and the executive's work secure such identical activities as are involved in reading, in writing, or in arithmetic, and so forth, whether accomplished in the schoolroom or the office.

b. The method developed in one experience may be applied equally well to another activity. In connection with a course in college, a student may acquire a scientific method of procedure. At a later time he may (or he may not) apply this same method to the problems arising in his business or industrial life.

c. Ideals developed in one experience may be projected into other experiences. If the ideals of promptness, neatness, accuracy, and honesty are developed in one relationship of life, the probabilities are somewhat increased that the same ideals will be applied to all experiences.

Provided that the four general conditions discussed are secured, we then have the more specific and important question to ask: -

What Experiences are the Most Valuable?

Only those experiences are valuable that in an appreciable degree modify future action. One way in which an experience or a series of experiences modifies future action is in the formation of habits.

Habit Formation

Habit has a beneficial influence on future action in five particulars:

a. Habit reduces the necessary time of action. Repeating the twenty-six letters of the alphabet has become so habitual that I can repeat them forward in two seconds. To repeat them in any other than an habitual order, e.g. backwards, requires sixty seconds.

b. Habit increases accuracy. I can repeat the alphabet forward without danger of error, but when I try to repeat it backward I am extremely likely to go astray.

c. Habit reduces the attendant exhaustion. Reading English is for me more habitual than reading French. Hence the latter is the more exhausting process.

d. Habit relieves the mind from the necessity of paying attention to the details of the successive steps of the act. When piano playing has been completely reduced to habit, the finger movement, the reading of the notes, etc., are all carried on successively with the minimum of thought.

e. Habit gives a permanency to experience. For many years in playing tennis I served the ball in a way that had become for me perfectly habitual. For an interval of three years I played no tennis, but when I began again I found that I could serve as well as ever. If the manner of service had not been so perfectly reduced to habit, I would have found after an interval of three years that I was completely out of practice, i.e. that my previous experience did not have a permanent value.

A second form of experience that is capitalized and so predetermines a man's capacity to act and to think is the formation of what is known as practical judgments.

Practical judgments

By a practical judgment is meant the conscious recall of a concrete past experience and the determination of some action by means of this consciously recalled event. I find that it will be necessary for me to secure a new stenographer. I solve the problem by consciously recalling how I got one before. Upon the basis of that consciously recalled previous experience I decide how to act now. This is a practical judgment.

In strictness what is capitalized is not the practical judgment itself but the original concrete experience that is recalled at a later time, and upon the basis of which a practical judgment is formed.

Practical judgments cannot be more comprehensive than one's previous experience. The necessary condition for fertility in the formations of practical judgments is therefore richness of previous experience. Indeed one's practical judgments are much more restricted than one's actual experiences. A practical judgment is dependent not merely upon having had the necessary experience, but upon the recall of it at the appropriate occasion. The key to a side door of my house was temporarily lost. After trying scores of keys, I found that a key to a room in the attic would also open the side door. This side-door key was again carried off last week. After much vexation and after trying numerous keys, I again discovered that the key to the room in the attic would open the side door. I failed to make the necessary practical judgment. If when the key was lost the second time I had recalled my former experience and had taken advantage of it, I would have formed a practical judgment and would have saved myself much inconvenience.

The formation of practical judgments is not a high form of thought. Indeed it is held by many that the animals are capable of some form of practical judgment. A much more effective form of thought is the formation of reflective judgments.

Reflective judgments

A practical judgment is based on a single concrete case. A reflective judgment is based on a generalization, an abstraction, or a principle derived from many previous experiences.

Last night a salesman tried to induce me to purchase an interest in an Idaho apple orchard. Thereupon I recalled an instance of a friend who a year ago had made such a purchase and had found it a profitable investment. If on the basis of this or some other concrete case I had accepted or rejected his offer, I would have made a practical judgment. As a matter of fact I caused several concrete instances to pass through my mind, made the generalization that most professional men lose when they invest in distant properties, and upon the basis of this generalization made my reflective judgment and rejected his proposition.

About the Author

Walter Dill Scott (1869-1955) was one of the first applied psychologists. He applied psychology to various business practices such as personnel selection and advertising. In 1900 he was appointed instructor of psychology and education and director of the psychological laboratory at Northwestern University. In 1905, Dr. Scott was made professor of psychology and head of the department of psychology.