J.— PSYCHOLOGY. 177 



(1) Collections of imperfectly adapted responses. — This class includes 

 much domestic work, the skill of most labourers and of workers in the 

 semi-skilled trades. (It is true that some apparently simple tasks would 

 be placed higher in the scale by an expert than by a scientific observer. 

 It is equally true that an intensively skilled person may honestly over- 

 estimate the absolute difficulty of his special skill.) 



(2) Perfectly adapted responses which do not exhibit personality. — 

 Such are the movements on parade of the perfectly drilled soldier. Military 

 skill of this kind may be compared with the skill which would result in 

 industry if a stereotyped series of actions, however efficient, were rigidly 

 prescribed to the worker. Its advantages and defects are clear in military 

 organisation. While the engineer, Mr. Frederick W. Taylor, tried to 

 prevent ' soldiering ' in the old American sense of that word, i.e. taking 

 things easily, his own uimiodified system would have produced soldiermg 

 of a modern type. This is recognised by many of his disciples.^' 



(3) Responses resembling habits, but less specific and automatic. — The 

 importance and distinctive nature of such responses make one doubt 

 the wisdom of classing them with habits. For habitual actions are 

 inadequate to the situations which these others meet so very perfectly. 

 Such responses are exemplified in sport when rapid, delicately effective 

 complex adjustment is made towards the surface upon which the player 

 is moving, e.g. wet and dry, hard and grass tennis courts, heavy and light 

 football grounds, hard, soft, smooth and bumpy ice, and different hard- 

 nesses and elevations of snow-slopes. Such adjustments appear neither 

 to the understanding external observer to be mechanical, nor subjectively 

 to their performer to be unconscious. 



This adaptation may be effected to conditions both outside and inside 

 the body. A performer who is feeling ill, without decreasing control, may 

 modify his movements so that less strain is put upon his muscles. A first- 

 class automobile driver's adaptive behaviour in traffic makes the average 

 motorist look like the bundle of habits which some pessimists declare man 

 to be. 



(4) Responses like those in (3), but exhibiting in their totality a pattern 

 characteristic of the individual. This pattern may be original or unoriginal. 

 A style which appears to the spectator to be unique may have been 

 imparted by a teacher, though to it the pupil usually adds some personal 

 touches. 



Types (3) and (4) shade into each other, though in (4) an aspect implicit 

 in (3) is emphasised. Probably these are in the minds of the protesters 

 against the standardisation of industrial tasks. '^ 



(5) Creative Skill. — This is no place to discuss the psychology of 

 creative genius. But in this realm two kinds of creation may be dis- 

 tinguished. One is unconscious, or nearly so, as when a pioneer declares 

 that his work finds its way out of him. Perhaps we may call it the 

 artistic kind. The other results from deliberate analysis of earlier attempts, 



" Of. H. S. Person, ' Scientific Management." Report of First Triennial Congress 

 of International Association for the Study of Human Relations in Industry, July 1928, 

 pp. 29-43 { Javastraat 66, The Hague). 



''■■ Of. R. M. Fox, The Triumphant Machine, London, 1928, and list given in Pear, 

 Fitness for Work, pp. 146-7. 



1928 N 



