erected; and yet nearly every one, on being tested, will agree that
the middle is the best point. These are merely a couple of sample
results from the numerous studies in this field.

Social Perception

By the senses we perceive the motives and intentions of other people,
their sincerity, goodness, intelligence, and {445} many other traits.
We see them angry or bored, amused, full of energy. To be sure, none
of these human characteristics is directly and fully sensed, but that
is the case also with many characteristics of inanimate objects which,
nevertheless, we perceive by aid of the senses. We perceive anger or
sincerity in much the same way that we perceive moisture or smoothness
by the eye. To experience the anger of another person is a complex
experience, but a single element from this experience may come to
serve as the sign of the whole condition. A good share of the child's
undirected education consists in learning to perceive the intentions
and characteristics of other people by aid of little signs. He learns
to read the signs of the weather in the family circle, and he learns
in some measure to be a judge of men.

I once saw an instructive little incident, in which an older boy
suddenly grabbed the cap from a little boy's head, and held it out to
the driver of a passing automobile, as if giving it to him. The man
saw the joke, and drove on laughing, but the little boy took it
seriously and was quite worried for fear the man would carry off his
cap. An older child would have "seen into" the situation readily; he
could not have been teased in that way. Many social situations which
are "all Greek" to a little child are understood readily by an older
person.

It would be very valuable if psychology could succeed in analyzing out
the signs by which such a trait as intelligence or "will power" is
perceived, so as to reduce such perception to a science; but it is
very doubtful if this can be done. Some persons who probably have
themselves a keen perception of such traits have put forward systems,
based upon the shape of the face, etc. They probably think they
perceive human traits according to their systems, but the systems fail
in other hands, and are undoubtedly {446} fallacious. No good judge of
character really goes by the shape of the face; he goes by little
behavior signs which he has not analyzed out, and therefore cannot
explain to another person.

You can tell very little regarding a person's intel