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 role 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.
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