The principles of psychology : 2 vols bound as one / William James
01 Jan 1950-Vol. 1950, Iss: 1950, pp 1-99
About: The article was published on 1950-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 200 citations till now.
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TL;DR: Neural firing rates in both striatal and interconnected frontal areas vary as a function of duration, suggesting a neurophysiological mechanism for the representation of time in the brain, with the excitatory–inhibitory balance of interactions among distinct subtypes of striatal neuron serving to fine-tune temporal accuracy and precision.
700 citations
TL;DR: A new paradigm to investigate whether and how complementary actions at the disposal of another agent are represented and influence one's own actions suggests that one'sown actions and others' actions are represented in a functionally equivalent way.
637 citations
Cites background from "The principles of psychology : 2 vo..."
...However, in many situations, people do not perform identical actions, but carry out complementary actions as they take care of different aspects of a task....
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...In contrast, ideomotor theories (Greenwald, 1970; James, 1890; Jeannerod, 1999; Prinz, 1997) predict that the specific actions of others can selectively affect one’s own actions, as observed in mimicry (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999), priming (Wegner & Bargh, 1998), and imitation (Brass, Bekkering, &…...
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TL;DR: The history of the attempt to cast teleology out of science is reviewed, culminating in the failures of behaviorism and psychoanalysis to account adequately for action without teleology.
Abstract: Prospection (Gilbert & Wilson, 2007), the representation of possible futures, is a ubiquitous feature of the human mind. Much psychological theory and practice, in contrast, has understood human action as determined by the past and viewed any such teleology (selection of action in light of goals) as a violation of natural law because the future cannot act on the present. Prospection involves no backward causation; rather, it is guidance not by the future itself but by present, evaluative representations of possible future states. These representations can be understood minimally as “If X, then Y” conditionals, and the process of prospection can be understood as the generation and evaluation of these conditionals. We review the history of the attempt to cast teleology out of science, culminating in the failures of behaviorism and psychoanalysis to account adequately for action without teleology. A wide range of evidence suggests that prospection is a central organizing feature of perception, cognition, affect, memory, motivation, and action. The authors speculate that prospection casts new light on why subjectivity is part of consciousness, what is “free” and “willing” in “free will,” and on mental disorders and their treatment. Viewing behavior as driven by the past was a powerful framework that helped create scientific psychology, but accumulating evidence in a wide range of areas of research suggests a shift in framework, in which navigation into the future is seen as a core organizing principle of animal and human behavior.
481 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an assessment of naturalistic research in the context of philosophy and the human sciences in the nineteenth century, and against the trend: Blumer's critique of quantitative method.
Abstract: 1. Philosophy and the human sciences in the nineteenth century 2. Pragmatism 3. Chicago sociology 4. Case study versus statistics: the rise of sociological positivism 5. Against the trend: Blumer's critique of quantitative method 6. Blumer's concept of science 7. Blumer's alternative: naturalistic research 8. An assessment of naturalistic research.
384 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the relationship depicted by this collapsed version of the Yerkes-Dodson law is far too simplistic to account for the complex relationship between various cognitive functions and emotional arousal.
Abstract: Easterbrook's (1959) cue-utilization theory has been widely used to explain the inverted U-shaped relationship, initially established by Yerkes and Dodson, between emotional arousal and performance. The basic tenet of the theory assumes that high levels of arousal lead to restriction of the amount of information to which agents can pay attention. One fundamental derivative of the theory, as typically conceived in psychology, is the assumption that restriction of information or the ability to process a smaller set of data is fundamentally disadvantageous. To explore the merits of this point, we first argue that the relationship depicted by this collapsed version of the Yerkes-Dodson law is far too simplistic to account for the complex relationship between various cognitive functions and emotional arousal. Second, conceptualization of arousal as a unidimen- sional construct needs to be rejected. Finally, and most importantly, we challenge the notion that having more information available is necessarily preferable to having less information.
249 citations
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TL;DR: Neural firing rates in both striatal and interconnected frontal areas vary as a function of duration, suggesting a neurophysiological mechanism for the representation of time in the brain, with the excitatory–inhibitory balance of interactions among distinct subtypes of striatal neuron serving to fine-tune temporal accuracy and precision.
700 citations
TL;DR: A new paradigm to investigate whether and how complementary actions at the disposal of another agent are represented and influence one's own actions suggests that one'sown actions and others' actions are represented in a functionally equivalent way.
637 citations
TL;DR: The history of the attempt to cast teleology out of science is reviewed, culminating in the failures of behaviorism and psychoanalysis to account adequately for action without teleology.
Abstract: Prospection (Gilbert & Wilson, 2007), the representation of possible futures, is a ubiquitous feature of the human mind. Much psychological theory and practice, in contrast, has understood human action as determined by the past and viewed any such teleology (selection of action in light of goals) as a violation of natural law because the future cannot act on the present. Prospection involves no backward causation; rather, it is guidance not by the future itself but by present, evaluative representations of possible future states. These representations can be understood minimally as “If X, then Y” conditionals, and the process of prospection can be understood as the generation and evaluation of these conditionals. We review the history of the attempt to cast teleology out of science, culminating in the failures of behaviorism and psychoanalysis to account adequately for action without teleology. A wide range of evidence suggests that prospection is a central organizing feature of perception, cognition, affect, memory, motivation, and action. The authors speculate that prospection casts new light on why subjectivity is part of consciousness, what is “free” and “willing” in “free will,” and on mental disorders and their treatment. Viewing behavior as driven by the past was a powerful framework that helped create scientific psychology, but accumulating evidence in a wide range of areas of research suggests a shift in framework, in which navigation into the future is seen as a core organizing principle of animal and human behavior.
481 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an assessment of naturalistic research in the context of philosophy and the human sciences in the nineteenth century, and against the trend: Blumer's critique of quantitative method.
Abstract: 1. Philosophy and the human sciences in the nineteenth century 2. Pragmatism 3. Chicago sociology 4. Case study versus statistics: the rise of sociological positivism 5. Against the trend: Blumer's critique of quantitative method 6. Blumer's concept of science 7. Blumer's alternative: naturalistic research 8. An assessment of naturalistic research.
384 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the relationship depicted by this collapsed version of the Yerkes-Dodson law is far too simplistic to account for the complex relationship between various cognitive functions and emotional arousal.
Abstract: Easterbrook's (1959) cue-utilization theory has been widely used to explain the inverted U-shaped relationship, initially established by Yerkes and Dodson, between emotional arousal and performance. The basic tenet of the theory assumes that high levels of arousal lead to restriction of the amount of information to which agents can pay attention. One fundamental derivative of the theory, as typically conceived in psychology, is the assumption that restriction of information or the ability to process a smaller set of data is fundamentally disadvantageous. To explore the merits of this point, we first argue that the relationship depicted by this collapsed version of the Yerkes-Dodson law is far too simplistic to account for the complex relationship between various cognitive functions and emotional arousal. Second, conceptualization of arousal as a unidimen- sional construct needs to be rejected. Finally, and most importantly, we challenge the notion that having more information available is necessarily preferable to having less information.
249 citations