The nature of conduct.

Abstract
The truth is becoming apparent that no form of control has a greater possibility for influencing the happiness and well-being of society than the control of those biological reactions which we classify under the head of human conduct. In the control of the physical environment there are two persons at work: the scientist, who discovers laws; and the engineer, who applies the discoveries of the scientist to the actual manipulation of materials. So, in the realm of conduct, we have the psychologist, who studies the factors which influence behavior, and the educator, who uses these discoveries in actually molding the conduct of growing boys and girls. This book is designed to be of value to both of these persons: it offers a new viewpoint and a correlation of facts to the student of psychology, and it describes conduct as a guide for the educator in understanding more clearly the exact nature of the process it is his province to control. With the lessening of the influence of the home in the control of conduct, the school has become aware that one of its most important functions is to shoulder the burden of character development. The nursery-school movement has conceived as its primary objective the formation of early conduct trends. Habit clinics have grown up in our large cities to advise concerning troublesome problems of conduct. Extracurricular activities in high school have proved to be the natural environment for the development of modes of social behavior. On all sides today we hear discussed the large question of character education. It is my first purpose in this book to dispel any element of mystery in attempting to define conduct by starting with the basic conceptions of physiology and psychology. By studying all possible combinations of stimulus and response and the relation of these combinations to conduct, one is led inevitably to the conclusion that, after all, this elusive ideal, character, is really the organization of large numbers of habits. Such a conclusion removes the suspicion of sentimentality from character education and makes it instead a problem for scientific educational engineering. This book is addressed to important groups of such engineers—teachers, parents, social workers, and all who are interested in the problems of conduct formation and who wish to learn what modern psychology conceives to be the nature of conduct. Students of psychology will also find herein a new orientation of their material and novel applications to the applied problems of social control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)

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