THE DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS OF MOOD

There is some question in our minds as to whether the appearance at the end of this monograph of the only 1 of the 8 papers that deals exclusively with human subjects was planned as a climax or as an anticlimax. There is probably little question that the ultimate goal of research with drugs is to increase the understanding and control of human behavior and functioning. We have used human subjects, but good experimental work with complex human behaviorinvolving, as it does, incomplete control of the subject, his life history, and his environment-is difficult, tantalizing, and frustrating. We of ten wonder if there must always be an inverse relationship between the magnitude and importance of a problem in behavioral science and the adequacy of the scientifis methodology by means of which it can be attacked. The rapidly growing list of publications on drugs and human behavior attests to the wide interest in and need for research in this area, but it leaves much to be desired from the point of view of methodology. Those of us who are rash enough to investigate these problems a t the human level usually find that whenever we succeed in getting certain variables under reasonable control we merely highlight the importance of still other variables. Bridges from the work with animals to the work with human beings must be built, however. We shall discuss here some of the difficulties that we have encountered in the use of human subjects, and we shall suggest some ways in which these difficulties might be overcome. In brief, we shall consider here: (1) a sample of the work on drugs done in the Department of Psychology a t the University of Rochester; (2) the way in which our statistical analyses repeatedly reveal the operation not only of a variety of main effects due to specific factors, but also the almost overwhelming influence of these factors in complex interaction with each other; and (3) our use of an old but newly defined concept, the concept of mood, as the basis of a possible strategy by means of which research in drugs and research in other fields may fortify each other. Since 1951, G. R. Wendt and the authors, together with a number of collaborators, have been involved in a series of studies of the effects of moderate dosages of commonly used drugs such as amphetamines, antihistamines, and barbiturates on the social, emotional, and motivational behavior of college men under varying degrees of experimental control and in normal daily routines (Harwayet al., 1953; H. H. Nowliset al., 1953; andV. Nowlis, 1953). The part of these studies with which the present authors have been primarily concerned has involved groups of 4 men interacting in a variety of situations in the labora-