Royce, J. (1903). Docility. B. Assimilation. In J. Royce, Teachers' professional library. Outlines of psychology: An elementary treatise with some practical applications (pp. 229-247). New York, NY, US: MacMillan Co.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/13699-010
All our higher intellectual and voluntary processes depend upon the general laws of habit in ways which still need a further characterisation. This characterisation must consider three aspects of the ways in which our habits become organised, and of the external and internal conditions which determine such organisation. The first of these aspects may be expressed in the following formula: New habits tend to become assimilated to older habits. The result is that all new events in the conscious realm tend, in consequence of the workings of the associative process, to be assimilated in type to the conscious events which have already occurred. The more special results of this tendency are seen in the fact that our intellectual life is an interpretation of new data in terms of already formulated ideas. A parallel consequence appears in the fact that our new fashions of behaviour tend to superpose themselves upon our former habits in such wise as to produce a minimum of change in these latter. All forms of conservatism, both in the life of the individual and in the life of society, illustrate this principle. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)