Excerpt from An Introduction to Applied Psychology

There is one fact about the study of human nature that causes every teacher no end of amazement. This fact is that the student, even of a book on applied psychology, will suppose that the events he reads about and the conclusions that are drawn must concern some Other person than himself. This very day, for example, the reader of these lines will have been attracted by an advertisement, signed for some insurance that he did not want, remarked the strange differences between himself and his friends, followed a custom, either in clothing, in political opinion, Orin social attitude, used an awkward method of learning an oration, given unreliable testimony about an accident, forgotten the name of a familiar person, suffered from some one of the many forms of maladjustment, or found himself ill-adapted to his curriculum; but when he reads about the psychological side of these various episodes, he will still not believe that he is discovering any information that pertains to his own conduct.

Nothing can be so plain as the fact that the persons who study this book are the persons of whom the experimental psychologist speaks and writes. That most of us do not know this to be true is due, in part, to our own lack of imagination and, in part, to the way in which the facts and principles of psychology are presented to us. So far as the student is concerned, every attempt has been made in the follow ing pages constantly to remind him that he is looking at a fairly ac curate photograph oi himself and of his doings. The only way to know What the science of human nature is about and how it can be applied to various situations is to remember the situations in which the reader himself has been placed or to imagine those in which he may be placed. He must remember, also, what he and others did and thought about them.

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