Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/285

Rh occasion of falsification. The more dependent and easily influenced a man is, the more a question put to him operates as an imperative: You have to know something about this. And as he has usually exhausted in his narrative his store of clear and distinct ideas with reference to the experience, he hunts now among the remaining indistinct and fragmentary recollections for something wherewith to meet the question. This is true of all questions, but in an increased measure of suggestive questions, i. e., of those for which a particular answer is readier than others. For the question, "Was the cloth not red?" the answer "Yes" is always readier than the answer "No." The naive human being is much inclined to affirm any idea presented to him, that is, to credit it with an objective existence. Suggestive questions of this sort operate with especial force in the case of young and uneducated persons; more with women than with men.

The suggestive question is only a special case of suggestion in general, the importance of which in normal psychology has only recently begun to be recognized. We define suggestion, from the standpoint of the person influenced, as "the imitative assumption of a mental attitude under the illusion of assuming it spontaneously" (Nachahmung einer Stellungnahme unter dem Scheme des eigenen Stellungnehmens).

Besides the influence of interrogation there are still others which falsify testimony: hearsay, reading about the occurrence, discussion with others who have shared the experience, etc.

6. Practical Consequences for Pedagogy. These are of a threefold sort:

a. In school and at home one has constantly brought before him reports by children as to experiences which they have had or stories which they have heard. It is clear that these reports are not worthy, off-hand, of full credence; the above mentioned sources of error must be reckoned with. It is clear also that a report demonstrably false is not necessarily to be regarded as a lie and punished accordingly. The unconscious factors of falsification play a far greater role than is commonly supposed; and if one condemns in the case of little children every mistake and every harmless tale of fancy as a lie, he usually succeeds in giving to the child in this way a conception of which the child would otherwise perhaps have remained in ignorance.

b. Since a large part of the falsification in the report is usually a result of questioning, the questioner is himself coresponsible for the false report of the child. These falsifications are for the most part unconscious; and yet they may, under certain circumstances, give place to conscious falsifications, since the child sometimes knows no other way of escaping