Conation - Early 20th Century

Early 20th Century

American psychologist William McDougall was conation's primary proponent in the early 20th century.

As Ernest R. Hilgard notes in "The Trilogy of Mind: Cognition, Affection and Conation" (1980), McDougall "assumed that his reader was familiar with the classification of cognitive, affective and conative as common-sensical and noncontroversial."

In McDougall's "Outline of Psychology" (1923), he refers to the three-faculty concept as "generally admitted." He also described the creative process of these three parts of the mind working together in mental processes, explaining,

"We often speak of an intellectual or cognitive activity; or of an act of willing or of resolving, choosing, striving, purposing; or again of a state of feeling. But it is generally admitted that all mental activity has these three aspects, cognitive, affective and conative; and when we apply one of these three adjectives to any phase of mental process, we mean merely that the aspect named is the most prominent of the three at that moment. Each cycle of activity has this triple aspect; though each tends to pass through these phases in which cognition, affection and conation are in turn most prominent; as when the naturalist, catching sight of a specimen, recognizes it, captures it, and gloats over its capture."

However, McDougall was not the only one. C.F. Stout (1913) said that conation, as goal-directed striving or purposive activity, involved two meanings of the goal or end of the striving. "One is the obtaining of means and the other making affective use of the means."

Kurt Goldstein (1963) included conation in his concept of "Coming to Terms with the World." He called conation "self-actualization," the matrix of all motivation of "basic drive" which accounts for all human activity.

In Freud's theory of the conative nature of character, he recognized that the study of character deals with "the forces by which man is motivated. That the way a person acts, feels and thinks is, to a large extent, deemed by the specificity of his character and is not merely the rational response to realistic situations. That man's fate is his character."

Yet while the concept of conation and the importance of volitional action were recognized, these thinkers also knew science did not yet have a way of empirically studying this part of the mind. McDougall, as so many others aware of conative traits, expressed the need for giving them specificity, writing:

"...at the standpoint of empirical science, we must accept these conative dispositions as ultimate facts, not capable of being analyzed or of being explained. "When, and not until, we can exhibit any particular instance of conduct or of behavior as the expression of conative tendencies which are ultimate constituents of the organism, can we claim to have explained it (the purposive process)."

R.S. Woodworth added his voice with a call for the need to study willful action, writing in his 1926 investigation into volition that:

"An impelling interest attaches to the study of Human Volition. No other of man's activities reaches so far in its consequences, both to the individual and to society, as does that of his Will. History is a record of its strivings and achievements and failures. The social and ethical sciences are founded on it. Its importance in education can scarcely be exaggerated. Culture, civilization itself, depends on the regulated volitions, repressions, and inhibitions of individuals and nations. All these activities come under the meaning of the term 'Will' as it has been sanctioned by long and universal usage. It is vital, therefore, that our knowledge of Will-activity should be as exact and scientific as possible. Yet there is no field of psychology so slightly tilled as that which deals with volition."

Yet even as calls to study the concept were made, investigation of the conative faculty began to shrink. Many of McDougall's contemporaries were beginning to champion use of cognitive measurements, which rose to prominence as the conative diminished, eventually threatening acceptance of the concept altogether. See Snow & Jackson, Individual Differences in Conation: Selected Constructs and Measures, 1997; Gerdes, Conation: the Missing Link in the Strengths Perspective, 2006; Militello, Gentner, Swindler & Beisner, Conation: Its Historical Roots and Implications for Future Research, 2006. Hilgard traces the retreat from discussion of the three-faculty concept directly to McDougall:

"With McDougall the history of the trilogy of the mind appears to have ended..."

"When we look at contemporary psychology from the perspective of cognition, affection, and conation, it is obvious immediately that cognitive psychology is ascendant at present, with a concurrent decline of emphasis upon the affective-conative dimensions ... some price has been paid for it. Information processing and the computer model have replaced stimulus-response psychology with an input–output psychology. In the process, some dynamic features such as drives, incentive motivation, and curiosity have been more or less forgotten."

Woodworth also noticed the other faculties taking precedence, stating, "We have nothing in this line that can compare with the immense amount of work done on the relation of perception to the stimulus perceived, or ... that can compare in completeness with the work done and still being done in all departments of sensation."

But the 20th century interest in the cognitive cannot fully explain the retreat from discussion of the conative, for it was back in 1878 that Mark Hopkins, who served as president of Williams College, wrote "An Outline Study of Man" (1878), in which he expressed concern about an overemphasis of cognition.

"Until the intellect is placed by the community where it belongs; and made subordinate to the sensibility and the will, we shall find that mere sharpness, shrewdness, intellectual power, and success through these, will be placed above those higher qualities in which character consists, and success through them."