on the bridge of the ship only men who do not belong to those two
dangerous classes. He turned to me with this request, as he had heard
of the work toward economic psychology in the Harvard laboratory.

As the problem interested me, I carried on a long series of
experiments in order to construct artificial conditions under which
the mental process of decision in a complicated situation, especially
the rapidity, correctness, and constancy of the decision, could be
made measurable. I started from the conviction that this complex act
of decision must stand in definite relation to a number of simpler
mental functions. If, for instance, it stood in a clear definite
relation to the process of association, or discrimination, or
suggestibility, or perception, or memory, and so on, it would be
rather easy to foresee the behavior of the individual in the act of
decision, as every one of those other simple mental functions could be
tested by routine methods of the psychological laboratory. This
consideration led me to propose ramified investigations concerning the
psychology of decision in its relation to the elementary mental
processes. These studies by students of the laboratory are not yet
completed. But I soon saw that they would be unfit for the solution of
my practical problem, as we recognized that these relations between
the complex act of decision and the elementary functions of the
individual seem to have different form with different types of
men.[12] If I was to approach the solution of the practical problem,
accordingly, I had to reproduce in an experimental form the act of
decision under complex conditions.

It seemed necessary to create a situation in which a number of
quantitatively measurable factors were combined without any one of
them forcing itself to consciousness as the most important. The