. In
the Harvard laboratory, for instance, we are at present engaged in an
investigation which deals with the influence of feelings on the
rapidity with which new movement cooerdinations are mastered.[24] In
order to have unlimited comparable material a very simple technical
performance is required, namely, the distribution of the 52
playing-cards into 52 boxes. Labels on the boxes indicate changing
combinations for the distribution to be learned. We examine, on the
one side, the influence of feelings of comfort or of discomfort on the
learning of the new habit, these feeling states being produced by
external conditions, such as pleasant or unpleasant sounds, odors, and
so on. On the other side we trace the effects of those feelings which
arise during the learning process itself, such as feelings of
satisfaction with progress, or disappointment, or discomfort, or
disgust or joy in the activity.

XIV

THE ADJUSTMENT OF TECHNICAL TO PSYCHICAL CONDITIONS

Teaching and learning represent only the preliminary problem. The
fundamental question remains, after all, how the work is to be done by
those who have learned it in accordance with the customs of the
economic surroundings and who are accordingly already educated and
trained for it. What can be done to eliminate everything which
diminishes and decreases efficiency, and what remains to be done to
reinforce it. Such influences are evidently exerted by the external
technical conditions, by variations of the activity itself, and by the
play of the psychical motives and counter-motives. It must seem as if
only this last factor would belong in the realm of psychology, but the
technical conditions, of which the machine itself is the most
important part, and the bodily movements also have manifold relations
to the psychical life. Only as far as these relations prevail has the
psychologist any reason to study the problem. The purely physical and
economic factors of technique do not interest him at all, but when a
technical arrangement makes a psychophysical achievement more
difficult or more easy, it belongs in the sphere of the psychologist,
and just this aspect of the work may become of greatest importance for
the total result. In all three of these directions, that is, with
reference to the technical, to the physiological, and to the purely
psychical, the scientific management movement has prepared the way.
The engineers of scientific management recognized, at least