MEASURE YOUR MIND
_The Mentimeter and How to Use It_
BY
M. R. TRABUE, PH. D.
AND
FRANK PARKER STOCKBRIDGE
[Illustration]
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
IN TEXT
GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK, TORONTO
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
The publishers offer this book primarily as a popular treatise on the
measurement of intelligence by scientific methods.
Every effort has been made to conform to the soundest scientific
principles, both in the preparation of the Mentimeter tests, around
which the volume is largely written, and in the introductory and
explanatory chapters, in which the principles of applied psychology, as
they bear upon mental tests, are stated in popular language.
The Mentimeters are based upon Doctor Trabue’s experience (1) as
Assistant in Educational Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia
University, (2) as psychological investigator of the intellectual status
of inmates of charitable institutions and of pupils in the public
schools, (3) as author of various intellectual and educational scales,
widely used by psychologists and educators, (4) as Chief Psychological
Examiner in two of the largest Army camps, directing the intellectual
examination of more than a hundred thousand soldiers, (5) as Captain in
the Adjutant General’s Department, U. S. Army, measuring the
intellectual abilities of men in the Aviation Service, and (6) as
Assistant Professor in Columbia University, giving instruction in the
theory and practice of intellectual measurements and directing the
application of such measurements to tens of thousands of school pupils.
Frank Parker Stockbridge, Doctor Trabue’s collaborator, is an author and
journalist of a high order. As managing editor of _Popular Mechanics_
and contributor to the _World’s Work_, _Harper’s_, _Popular Science
Monthly_, etc., he has been thrown into contact with important affairs
in the world of science so that he is especially equipped to work with
Doctor Trabue in presenting this interesting subject. As director of the
publicity campaign of the American Library Association War Fund his
contact with the Army and the results of the biggest experiment in the
way of psychological tests that the world has ever seen was invaluable
to him in this work. The publishers feel that the collaboration is a
particularly happy one.
The success of the scientific method of testing intelligence among both
officers and men in the Army has directed widespread attention to the
general subject. The Mentimeter is the first comprehensive system of
tests, applicable to the whole range of educational and industrial
requirements, to be offered for general use.
To employers and those in charge of the selection, grading, and
promotion of workers of every class, in factories, offices, and stores;
to teachers of all grades, from kindergarten to university; to parents
who are interested in ascertaining, and watching the growth of their
children’s mental development and to young men and young women striving
for self-improvement and advancement and desirous of learning something
of their own mental capacities and limitations as a guide to the
intelligent choice of vocations or professions, the publishers offer
this book in the confident belief that it will be found of real service.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I SCIENCE VERSUS GUESSWORK 3
II THE APPLICATIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS 16
III WHAT THESE TESTS MEASURE 23
IV STANDARDS FOR MENTAL TESTS 33
V DIFFERENT TYPES OF MENTAL TESTS 44
VI MENTAL TESTS IN THE ARMY 53
VII PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS IN EDUCATION 63
VIII MENTAL TESTS IN INDUSTRY 76
IX HOW TO USE THE MENTIMETER TESTS 88
X THE MENTIMETER TESTS 109
XI TRADE TESTS OR TESTS OF SKILL 274
APPENDICES 287
MEASURE YOUR MIND
CHAPTER I
SCIENCE _VERSUS_ GUESSWORK
There are two ways, and only two, in which we can find out what a
machine is capable of doing. One of these is to try it out, to “put it
through its paces” by using it for every sort of work which it is
expected to perform and observing whether or not it does what we want it
to do. The other way is to measure it (or to take the measurements of it
as supplied by its responsible manufacturer) and compare these with the
measurements of the essential parts of machines with the performance of
which we are already familiar.
Unless it is a brand-new type of machine, designed to do something that
has never before been done by machinery, or to do it by a different
mechanical method, there is obviously a great saving of time and money
in buying a machine from specifications that insure the correct
performance of its expected duty over the other plan of first buying the
machine and then trying it out in practice to see whether it will do
what we want done.
The manufacturer or business man who would purchase machinery of any
sort without first making certain that its dimensions, speeds, weight,
power-consumption, controls, and the materials used in its construction
were such as to adapt it precisely to the work he expected to do with it
would speedily bankrupt his business. It takes but a moment’s thought
for the reader to prove this to himself.
On the other hand, however, we find business men constantly employing
men and women to perform specific duties without applying any tests or
measurements, other than the most rudimentary ones, to determine in
advance whether the person so employed is fitted for the work he or she
is expected to do. And as every employer knows, one of the most costly
wastes in almost every business or manufacturing establishment is the
expense of constantly “breaking in” new employees to take the places of
those who have left or have been dismissed because they were found,
after trial, not to be fitted for the duties to be done.
Because the installation of machinery of any kind involves an initial
outlay of money, it long ago became apparent to everybody that the
“trial and error” method of buying machines or other commodities was
wasteful and ruinous. It was not until recent years, however, that the
closer study of operating costs disclosed the fact that the expense of
“labour turnover,” that is to say the proportion of employees in any
given business whose places have to be filled annually, is one of the
heaviest avoidable drains on income. This was long overlooked because no
capital investment is involved in the initial employment of labour. The
cost of training new employees is much larger, it is now learned, in
most businesses, than is generally understood, not only in the direct
outlay in salary or wages before the new employee has mastered the
duties of the new position as well as he or she is able, but in loss
through spoiled materials, reduced individual output, and often in the
slowing down of an entire chain of manufacturing operations through the
inability of the inexperienced worker to maintain the pace of the rest
of the links in the chain.
If, then, as so often happens, it is found after experiment that the new
employee is not capable of performing the work efficiently, the whole
process must be repeated. The employee who has failed leaves, is
dismissed, or is transferred to another department, and a new and
equally inexperienced worker employed to fill the vacancy, with the
whole cost of training to be incurred over again. Even though the new
worker may be experienced in the particular class of work to be done,
there is an appreciable loss due to the unavoidable frictions and
hesitations that occur whenever a worker is being fitted into a new
environment.
There is, moreover, no guarantee that even an experienced person in a
special sort of work is fitted to do that particular work as well as it
can be done or should be done. He or she may have got into that sort of
work by accident. That is usually the way in which a boy or girl begins
a business or industrial career. He or she may have continued in it
merely because the experience gained in the first job enables its
possessor to pass the superficial scrutiny of foremen, managers, or
others who employ “help” in the first instance. But just as all the
experience and training in the world will not make a Paderewski out of a
person who was not born with the precise combination of sensory and
nervous qualities that the master musician possesses, though almost any
one with ten fingers and an ear for harmony can be taught to play the
piano after a fashion, so it is true that while in the all-important
business of earning a living almost anybody can be trained to do most of
the ordinary manufacturing and business operations, after a fashion, it
is only those who were born with certain combinations of nerve endings
and sensory apparatus who can be trained into first-rate salesmen, or
expert tool-makers. And this holds true all the way down the line, to
the simplest and most automatic operations necessary in business
industry.
Individuals themselves are seldom aware of their own capacities; even
less generally of their own limitations. Occasionally, by accident, a
man or a woman finds at the right time the opportunity to do precisely
the things he or she is best fitted to do. Often the individual’s strong
personal instincts or inclinations lead him or her to seek opportunity
to do certain kinds of work without any clear understanding why that
sort of work appeals while other kinds do not. Few human beings analyze
their inclinations closely. Yet it may be and frequently is the case
that the work one most strongly desires to undertake is not that in
which he or she is best fitted to succeed. The inclination may be
counterbalanced by inhibitions of which neither the possessor nor his or
her employer becomes aware until repeated failure has demonstrated the
lack of adaptability, sometimes after it is, or seems to be, too late to
take up another occupation. Then the worker usually drifts into the
ranks of “casuals,” constantly moving from job to job, chronically “out
of work”; the ready dupe of agitators and the prophets of social unrest
and revolution; disheartened, anti-social, and perennially unhappy; the
most expensive sort of an employee in any position, no matter how small
the wage—yet a human being, and, as such, entitled to liberty and the
pursuit of happiness!
That is an extreme picture. Yet if such tragedies occur (as every reader
knows from his own observation and experience they _do_ occur too often)
among those who have voluntarily chosen their own lines of work, how
much more frequently must they occur among those whose daily occupations
have been determined for them, not through any voluntary choice or
intelligent guidance but solely through the accident of having been
“thrown into” certain jobs when they were young?
That is the way in which the vast majority of individuals have their
careers shaped for them. The world of business and industry and of the
professions is full of blacksmiths who ought to be carpenters,
indifferent lawyers who would have made good dentists, teachers who are
failures because they should have been trained as stenographers, good
cooks who have been spoiled to make mediocre shop attendants, and so on
through the list of possible occupations. Within every business
organization, moreover, there are grades and degrees of requirements and
responsibilities into which some employees may fit perfectly, others
less perfectly and others not at all, though all be drawn from the same
group or from those performing the same general class of service. Here,
as in the matter of original employment, the general custom of dealing
with the human element in industry is the wasteful “hire-and-fire”
system, analogous to the purchasing of machinery or equipment without
first ascertaining whether it will do the work, and scrapping it when it
fails.
We found out long ago that we couldn’t afford to do that sort of thing
with machinery. We are just beginning to find out that it is even more
expensive to do it with the human element in industry.
It would perhaps be going too far to claim that the whole problem of the
“labour turnover” arises from the effort to fit square pegs into round
holes, but it is certain that a very large share of all human troubles,
industrial unrest, discontent, inefficiency and unhappiness is traceable
to the lack of proper adjustment between the man and the job, and this
in turn is due in large part to the failure to determine in advance the
fitness of the particular individual for the particular task.
What is needed, obviously, is a measure of human capacities, just as we
have means of measuring every phase of the machine’s capacities.
Just as we measure a machine by the most precise gauges and tests
available, why not measure the human individual by the most precise
means we are able to apply?
The word “measure” in the preceding paragraph does not mean, either in
the case of the machine or of the man, the gross dimensions of length,
breadth, and thickness; these are equally immaterial, in most cases,
whether the subject of measurement be a man or a machine. One measures a
machine to determine its _capacity_ for certain work, and is little
concerned about its characteristics that have no bearing upon those
qualities that fit it for those particular duties. So the measurements
of a human being whose capacity for certain duties is to be determined
must be of those qualities which enable him or her to perform according
to a certain pre-determined requirement.
These qualities, in man, woman, or child, can be measured; not with the
precision with which an engineer measures the parts of a machine that
must fit within a thousandth of an inch, but with sufficient accuracy to
determine quickly, inexpensively, and simply whether a given individual
has the capacity to learn and perform any given task or class of work.
To explain how these tests can be made, how science can be and is being
substituted for guesswork in the selection of human beings for jobs and
of jobs for human beings, just as science has displaced guesswork in the
selection of material commodities, is the purpose of this book.
Let us first point out clearly the difference between science and
guesswork. The vast majority of jobs are filled by guesswork. The farmer
who hires a field hand, the housewife who employs a cook, the foreman
who takes on a new “hand” in the factory, and even employers hiring
persons for more responsible positions, all do it, to a greater degree
than they imagine, by guesswork. They may make inquiries, more or less
thorough depending upon the compensation and responsibility involved, of
persons who are reputed to know by observation something of the
candidate’s qualifications. Unless the individual under consideration be
flagrantly and patently unfit the reports thus obtained are almost
always favourable. In many cases no effort is made even to obtain such
reports.
Many persons who regard themselves as intelligent employ men and women
for all sorts of delicate operations and confidential and responsible
relations as a result of observation alone; yet observation alone will
tell no more about a man or a woman than it will about an automobile—the
shape and the colouring.
When you observe a human being you can determine certain physical
characteristics, such as size, complexion, colour of eyes and hair,
soundness of teeth, shape of body and head, contour of face, features,
and expression. You make up your mind that you like the person or you do
not. But as for determining by means of anything your unaided
observation discloses whether or not the person under examination is
qualified either to perform or to learn how to perform efficiently a
given task or set of tasks, you might as well expect to discover the
hillclimbing power of an automobile by merely looking at it.
Yet that is precisely the way in which, in the vast majority of cases,
the supremely important work of fitting individuals and jobs together is
done in the world of business and industry.
True, the prospective employer usually asks a few questions, but the
applicant’s manner and tone of voice have usually as much to do with the
final decision as the actual replies.
Men and women are usually hired, in short, on their looks and on the
impressions made at a single short interview. That it is too much to
expect persons so selected to fit into even the simplest sort of a
business or industrial organization should be obvious to every
intelligent person; that sometimes they do fit should be no less
obviously recognized as largely accidental.
We do not recognize the absurdity of this method of selecting persons
for particular positions, partly because this is the only way most of us
have ever known and partly because there is in almost every human being
a secret or subconscious belief in his own peculiar powers of judging
others by means of surface indications.
The fallacy of the belief that one may arrive at accurate conclusions as
to individual capacity and characteristics by merely looking at the
individuals concerned has been well set forth by Prof. L. M. Terman of
Stanford University. Much of the popular belief in the efficacy of this
method, Doctor Terman believes, is due to the fact that the public does
not know that the pretensions of the pseudo-science of “phrenology” were
long ago shown to be unwarranted. According to phrenology, definite and
constant relations are believed to exist between certain mental traits
and the contour of the head. Phrenologists teach, for example, that
one’s endowment in such traits as intelligence, combativeness, sympathy,
tenderness, honesty, religious fervour, and courage may be judged by the
prominence of various parts of the skull. While the sincerity of Gall,
the French physiologist of a century ago who invented the so-called
science, and of his followers, is not to be questioned, the pretensions
of phrenology itself have been thoroughly exploded. It has been
demonstrated that traits like those above mentioned do not have separate
and well-defined seats in the brain and that skull contour is not a
reliable index of the brain development beneath.
“In the underworld of pseudo-science, however,” says Professor Terman,
“phrenology and kindred fakes survive. Hundreds of men and women still
earn their living by ‘feeling bumps on the head,’ reading character from
the lines of the hand, etc.
“But if the rating of men by pseudo-science is misleading, perhaps
science is still unnecessary. It may be argued that mental traits can be
rated accurately enough for all practical purposes on the basis of
ordinary observation of one’s behaviour, speech, and appearance. We are
constantly judging people by this offhand method, because we are
compelled to do so. Consequently we all acquire a certain facility in
handling the method. For ordinary purposes it is infinitely better than
nothing. A skilful observer can estimate roughly the height of an
airplane; but if we would know its real height we must use the methods
of science and perform a mathematical computation.
“The trouble with the observational method is its lack of a universal
standard of judgment. One observer may use a high, another a low
standard of comparison. A four-story building in the midst of New York’s
‘sky-scrapers’ looks very low; placed in the midst of a wide expanse of
one-story structures it would look very tall.
“Moreover, we are easily misled by appearances. The writer knows a young
man who looks so foolish that he is often mistaken by casual
acquaintances for a mental defective. In reality he is one of the half
dozen brightest students in a large university. Another man who in
reality has the mentality of a ten-year-old child is so intelligent
looking that he was able to secure employment as a city policeman.
“Language is a great deceiver. The fluent talker is likely to be
overrated, the person of stumbling or monosyllabic speech to be
underrated. Similar errors are made in judging the intelligence of the
sprightly and the stolid, the aggressive and the timid, etc. Our
tendency is also to overestimate the intellectual quality of our friends
and to underestimate that of persons we do not like.
“If the method of offhand judgment were reliable, different judges would
agree in their ratings of the same individual. When the judges disagree
it is evident that not all can be correct. When intelligence is rated in
this way wide differences of opinion invariably appear. Twenty-five
members of a university class who had worked together intimately for a
year were asked to rate the individuals of the class from 1 to 25 in
order of intelligence. The result was surprising. Almost every member of
the class was rated among the brightest by someone, and almost every
member of the class among the dullest by someone. Doubtless the judges
were misled by all sorts of irrelevant matters, such as personal
appearance, fluency of speech, positiveness of manner, personal likes
and dislikes, etc.
“The method of personal estimate is much better than the method of
external signs (phrenology), but to be reliable it must be supplemented
by a method which is _objective_, that is, a method which is not
influenced by the personal bias of the judge or by such irrelevant
factors as the appearance, speech, or bearing of the one to be rated.
Such is the method of intelligence tests.”
It would, of course, as Professor Terman points out, be absurd to
contend that it is impossible to arrive at a rough estimate of an
individual’s capacities and character by observation, as it is absurd to
pretend that accurate measurements of an individual’s capacities can be
made by the same method. There are men who have by long experience
learned to judge on very brief contacts the possibilities of applicants
for positions. Actually, what such employers do is to apply, though
crudely and unscientifically, a limited number of tests which might
fairly be classed as psychological. Out of a long experience they have
accumulated an accurate knowledge of the work to be done and of the
general type of individual who has been found best qualified to perform
that work. This sort of ability, however, is acquired solely through
long experience, and even then it can only be acquired by men or women
who themselves possess certain mental qualities, which might easily be
gauged and classified, the possession of which enables them to
accumulate and utilize experience in this manner.
This sort of ability can by no means be transferred from one individual
to another by description or by mere training. It is precisely like the
ability which an experienced automobile repair man possesses, that
enables him to tell by a quick inspection and after only a few minutes
of observation what are the principal things the matter with a car and
what service it is probably able to perform. But a repair man cannot
tell anybody else how to size up an automobile at a glance, because the
only way any one can learn to do it is by going through the same process
of taking automobiles apart and putting them together again for a period
of years. And as everyone who has ever had occasion to deal with
automobile repairs is aware, the most experienced repair men are seldom
positive that they know just what is wrong and all that is wrong without
applying precise measurements and painstaking tests.
It is easy enough to determine that a delicate, small-boned, slender
person is not the best type to employ for digging coal, loading freight
cars, or other arduous manual labour. There are, of course, many classes
of occupations the fitness or unfitness for which of a particular
individual must be determined in the first place by that individual’s
physical characteristics. So far the observation method suffices. But
the very fact that every industry and business is full of misfits and
that it is a matter of common knowledge that the most difficult problem
the employer has to face is that of finding the right person for each
particular job that calls for anything more than mere physical strength,
is the best evidence that even the most experienced and accurate
observers are far from infallible in their judgments of individual
capacities.
For that matter, there is no infallible test. No true scientist claims
infallibility. The possibility of error is always present wherever the
human element is involved. It is a safe assumption that any method or
estimate that purports to be infallible is fraudulent. There is in
almost every human mind a lurking, subconscious belief in the
possibility of perfection. It is this which makes humanity credulous
when claims of infallibility are plausibly presented.
It is extremely difficult to satisfy by logic and reason the type of
mind that is strongly influenced by glittering generalities and
emphatic, though unsupported, assertions. It is equally difficult to
convince the skeptic whose mind is closed to the introduction of new
thoughts and who, in his self-satisfaction with his own mental
limitations, rejects every fact that does not tally with his
preconceived ideas.
This book is written neither for the super-skeptical nor the
ultra-credulous. It makes no pretension to infallibility, nor does any
scientifically trained psychologist pretend that there has yet been
evolved a method of measuring every dimension and capacity of the human
mind beyond the possibility of error. The methods described in this book
are the fruit of years of experiment, research, and practical
application of the results of experiment and research, and are designed
to reflect the development of the science of psychology in its
application to mental measurements as closely as it is possible to do so
within the limits of a single volume written primarily for the reader
who has no special scientific training along psychological lines.
The reader who is not prepared and willing to examine facts and at least
to take all the ascertainable facts into consideration before forming
his conclusions is not likely to be interested. The scientific method of
character analysis or mental measurement is based upon the comparison of
the largest possible collection of ascertained facts. Guess work has no
place in it. Psychology has small dealings with intuition and instinct
nor is it in any way derived from magic or concerned with the occult.
There are no unfathomable mysteries. There is no fact about the
operation of the human mind which cannot be subjected to scientific
investigation and measurement by any intelligent person. The scientific
method requires that every conclusion must square with the results
obtained by the experimental application of all related facts or be
discredited as worthless. Theories have no place in science, except as
something to be disproved if possible, and a single fact which does not
square with any theory disproves the theory.
The scientific method of mental measurement has passed the theoretical
stage. It has squared with the facts wherever it has been intelligently
applied. It has been demonstrated in a wide range of business and
industrial applications, in education and in its use in determining the
qualities and fitness of officers and men in the Army and Navy. What it
offers is the shortest, simplest, and most accurate means available of
determining human capacities and qualities.
Professor Terman has admirably summarized the advantages of the
scientific method of testing intelligence, as follows:
“1. It gives us a universal standard of comparison. The result is
absolutely uninfluenced by the general intellectual level of the group
with which the subject to be rated happens to be associated. It is like
measuring the height of a house instead of estimating it by comparison
with the height of surrounding buildings.
“2. It multiplies enormously the significance of mental performance. It
does this by making fine distinctions which would be overlooked by the
method of offhand judgment. It is like placing a smeared glass under a
microscope and discovering that the smear is a complicated network of
organic matter.
“3. The test method is objective; that is, free from the influence of
personal bias. It gives approximately the same verdict to-day, next
week, or next year. It does not change its opinion. More important
still, the verdict will be approximately the same whoever makes the
test, whether a relative, a stranger, a friend, or an enemy, provided
only that the rules of procedure be rigidly followed.
“4. The test result is little influenced by the subject’s educational
advantages. In this it differs greatly from offhand judgment, which so
easily mistakes the results of schooling for real intelligence. The test
method probes beneath the veneer of education and gives an index of raw
‘brain power.’ For example, a young woman who had been stolen in early
childhood by gypsies and had spent her life with them was given the
Binet-Simon intelligence test. She had never attended school a day in
her life and had only learned to read by bribing a little school girl to
teach her the alphabet; yet she made a higher score than the average
found for two hundred high school pupils who were given the same test.
“No wonder,” Professor Terman concludes, “mentality tests have acquired
such a wide vogue in the ten years since Binet gave to the world the
first successful intelligence scale. In that time they have demonstrated
their usefulness in the study of the feeble-minded, in the grading of
school children, in determining the mental responsibility of offenders,
and in the selection of employees. Their largest and most useful
applications have been in the mental classification of men in the United
States Army.”