Experimental Study of Associative Processes 83 



did go out. He did not follow the other but went 20 seconds 

 later. It depends upon one's general opinion whether one 

 shall attribute this one case out of three to accident or 

 imitation. 



I also took two chicks, one of whom learned to escape 

 from A (in Fig. 19) by going to B and jumping down the 

 side to the right of A, the other of whom learned to jump 

 down the side to the left, and placed them together upon A. 

 Each took his own course uninfluenced by the other in 10 trials. 



Chicks were also tried in several pens where there was only 

 one possible way of escape to see if they would learn it more 

 quickly when another chick did the thing several times before 

 their eyes. The method was to give some chicks their first 

 trial with an imitation possibility and their second without, 

 while others were given their first trial without and their 

 second with. If the ratio of the average time of the first 

 trial to the average time of the second is smaller in the first 

 class than it is in the second class, we may find evidence of 

 this sort of influence by imitation. Though imitation may 

 not be able to make an animal do what he would otherwise 

 not do, it may make him do quicker a thing he would have 

 done sooner or later any way. As a fact the ratio is much 

 larger. This is due to the fact that a chick, when in a pen 

 with another chick, is not afflicted by the discomfort of lone- 

 liness, and so does not try so hard to get out. So the other 

 chick, who is continually being put in with him to teach 

 him the way out, really prolongs his stay in. This factor 

 destroys the value of these quantitative experiments, and 

 I do not insist upon them as evidence against imitation, 

 though they certainly offer none for it. I do not give 

 descriptions of the apparatus used in these experiments or a 

 detailed enumeration of the results, because in this dis- 

 cussion we are not dealing primarily with imitation as a 



