Where the avoidance of accidents is in question, the test of a special
experimental method can seldom be made dependent upon a comparison
with practical results, as we do not want to wait until the candidate
has brought human life into danger. The ordinary way of reaching the
goal must therefore be an indirect one in such cases. For the study of
motormen the conditions are exceptionally favorable, as hundreds of
thousands of accidents occur every year, but another practical example
may be chosen from a field where it is, indeed, impossible to
correlate the results with actual misfortunes, because the dangerous
situations occur seldom; and nevertheless on account of their
importance they demand most serious study. I refer to the ship
service, where the officer on the bridge may bring thousands into
danger by one single slip of his mind. I turn to this as a further
concrete illustration in order to characterize at once the lengths to
which such vocational studies may advance.
One of the largest ship companies had approached me--long before the
disaster of the Titanic occurred--with the question whether it would
not be possible to find psychological methods for the elimination of
such ship officers as would not be able to face an unexpected suddenly
occurring complication. The director of the company wrote to me that
in his experience the real danger for the great ships lies in the
mental dispositions of the officers. They all know exactly what is to
be done in every situation, but there are too many who do not react in
the appropriate way when an unexpected combination of factors suddenly
confronts them, such as the quick approach of a ship in the fog. He
claimed that two different types ought to be excluded. There are ship
officers who know the requirements excellently, but who are almost
paralyzed when the dangerous conditions suddenly threaten. Their
ability for action is inhibited. In one moment they want to act under
the stimulus of one impression, but before the impulse is realized,
some other perhaps rather indifferent impression forces itself on
their minds and suggests the counteraction, and in this way they
vacillate and remain inactive until it is too late to give the right
order or to press the right button. The other type feels only the
necessity for rapid action, and under the pressure of greatest haste,
without clear thought, they jump to the first decision which rushes
to their minds. Without carefully considering the conditions really
given, they explode in an action which they would never have chosen in
a state of quiet deliberation. They react on any accidental
circumstance, just as at a fire men sometimes carry out and save the
most useless parts of their belongings. Of course, beside these two
types, there is the third type, the desirable one, the men who in the
unexpected situation quickly review the totality of the factors in
their relative importance and with almost instinctive certainty
immediately come to the same decision to which they would have arrived
after quiet thought. The director of the company insisted that it
would be of highest importance for the ship service to discriminate
these three types of human beings, and to make sure that there stand
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
subject to be experimented on then has to decide as quickly as
possible which of the factors is the relatively strongest one. As
usual, here, too, I began with rather complicated material and only
slowly did I simplify the apparatus until it finally took an entirely
inconspicuous form. But this is surely the most desirable outcome for
testing methods which are to be applied to large numbers of persons.
Complicated instruments, for the handling of which special training is
needed, are never so useful for practical purposes as the simple
schemes which can be easily applied. The form of which I finally made
use is the following. I work with 24 cards of the size of
playing-cards. On the upper half of every one of these cards we have 4
rows of 12 capital letters, namely, A, E, O, and U in irregular
repetition. On 4 cards, one of these vowels appears 21 times and each
of the three others 9 times; on 8 cards, one appears 18 times and
every one of the three others 10 times; on 8 cards, one appears 15
times and each of the others 11 times; and finally, on 4 cards one
vowel appears 16 times, each of the three others 8 times, and besides
them 8 different consonants are mixed in. The person to be tested has
to distribute these 24 cards as quickly as possible in 4 piles, in
such a way that in the first pile are placed all cards in which the
letter A is most frequent, in the second those in which the letter E
predominates, and so on. As a matter of course the result must never
be secured by counting the letters. Any attempt to act against this
prescription and secretly to begin counting would moreover delay the
decision so long that the final result would be an unsatisfactory
achievement anyhow. It would accordingly bring no advantage to the
candidate.
We measure with a stopwatch in fifths of a second the time for the
whole process from the subject's looking at the first card to his
laying down of the last card, and, secondly, we record the number and
the character of his mistakes, if cards are put into wrong piles. I
have made the experiment with very many persons, and results show that
those various mental traits which have been observed in the practical
ship service come clearly to light under the conditions of this
experiment. Some of the persons lose their heads entirely, and for
many of them it is a painful activity for which they require a long
time. Even if the number of mistakes is not considerable, they
themselves have the feeling that they are not coming to a satisfactory
decision, because their attention is pulled hither and thither so that
they feel an inner mental paralysis. Some chance letters stand out and
appear to them to be predominant, but in the next moment the attention
is captured by some other letters which bring the suggestion that
they are in the majority and that they present the most important
factor. The outcome is that inner state of indecision which can become
so fatal in practical life. Other subjects distribute the cards in
piles at a relatively high speed, and they do it with the subjective
feeling that they have indeed recognized at the first glance the
predominant group of letters. The exact measurement of the results,
however, shows that they commit many errors which would have been
improbable after quiet consideration. Any small group of letters which
catches their eye makes on them, under the pressure of their haste,
such a strong impression that all the other letters are inhibited for
the moment and the wrong decision is quickly made. Finally, we find a
group of persons who carry out the experiment rather quickly and at
the same time with few mistakes. It is characteristic of them to pass
through it with the feeling that it is an agreeable and stimulating
mental activity. In all cases the subjects feel themselves under the
unified impression which results from all those 48 letters of the card
together; and this is the reason why the qualitative manifoldness of a
practical life situation can be compared with these intermingled,
quantitatively determined groups of letters.
If I consider the general results of these experiments only with
reference to the time-measurement, I should say that a person who
completes the distribution of the cards in less than 80 seconds is
quick in his decisions; from 80 to 150, moderately quick; from 150 to
250, slow and deliberate and rather too deliberate for situations
which demand quick action; over 250 seconds, he would belong among
those wavering persons who hesitate too long in a life situation which
demands decision. The time which is needed for the mere distribution
of the cards themselves plays a very small rôle compared with the time
of the whole process, and can be neglected. In order to determine
this, I asked all the subjects before they made the real experiment to
distribute 24 other cards in 4 piles, on each of which one of the four
letters, A, E, O, and U was printed only once. Hence no comparison of
various factors was involved in this form of distribution. The average
time for this ordinary sorting was about 20 seconds. Only rather quick
individuals carried it out in less than 18 and only very slow ones
needed more than 25 seconds. This maximum variation of 10 seconds is
evidently insignificant, as the variations in the experiment amount to
more than 200 seconds. But it is very characteristic that the results
of the two experiments do not move parallel. Some persons, who are
able to sort the cards on which only one of the 4 letters is printed
very quickly, are rather slow when they sort the cards with the 48
letters for which the essential factor is the act of comparison. In
the first case the training in card-playing also seems to have a
certain influence, but in the second case, our real experiment on
decision, this influence does not seem to exist.
We have emphasized from the start that it is no less important to give
consideration to the number of mistakes. A mere rapidity of
distribution with many mistakes characterizes, as we saw, a mental
system which is just as unfit for practical purposes as one which acts
with too great slowness. But it would not have been sufficient simply
to ask how many cards were put into wrong piles. The special
arrangement of the cards with four different types of combinations was
introduced for the purpose of discriminating among mistakes of unequal
seriousness. When one letter appeared 21 times and the three others
only 9 times, it was surely much easier to make the decision than when
the predominant letter appeared only 15 times and the other three each
11 times. The easier the right decision, the graver the mistake. Of
course the valuation of these mistakes must be rather arbitrary. We
decided to value as 4 every mistake in these cards on which the
predominant letter appears 21 times; as 3, a mistake in the 18 letter
cards; as 2, a mistake in the 16 letter cards; and as 1, a mistake in
the most difficult ones, the 15 letter cards. If the mistakes are
calculated on this basis and are added together, a sum below 5 may
indicate a very safe and perfectly reliable ability for decision; 5 to
12, satisfactory; 12 to 20, uncertain; and over 20, very poor. In
order to take account of both factors, time and mistakes, we multiply
the sum of the calculated mistakes by the number of seconds. If the
product of these two figures is less than 400, it may be taken as a
sign of perfect reliability in making very quick, correct decisions,
in complex life situations; 400 to 1000 indicates the limits between
which the ability for such decisions may be considered as normal and
very satisfactory; 1000 to 2000, not good but still adequate; 2000 to
3000, unreliable, and over 3000, practically absent. It is clear that
the real proof of the value of this method cannot be offered. This is
just the reason why we selected this illustration as an example of the
particular difficulty. Wrong decisions, that is, cases in which the
man on the bridge waits too long before he makes his decision and thus
causes a collision of ships by his delay, or in which he rushes
blindly to a decision which he himself would have condemned after
quiet deliberation, are rare. It would be impossible to group such
men together for the purpose of the experiment and to compare their
results with those of model captains, the more as experience has shown
that an officer may have a stainless record for many years and yet may
finally make a wrong decision which shows his faulty disposition. The
test of the method must therefore be a somewhat indirect one. My aim
was to compare the results of the experiments with the experiences of
the various individuals which they themselves reported concerning
their decisions in unexpected complicated situations, and moreover
with the judgments of their friends whom I asked to describe what they
would expect from the subjects under such conditions. The personal
differences in these respects are extremely great, and are also
evident in the midst of small groups of persons who may have great
similarity in their education and training and in many other aspects
of their lives.
Among the most advanced students of my research laboratory, for
instance, all of whom have rather similar schooling and practically
the same training in experimental work, the product of mistakes and
seconds varied between 348 and 13,335. That smallest value occurred in
a case in which the time was 116 seconds and the sum of the mistakes
only 3, inasmuch as 3 cards of the most difficult group where the
predominating letter occurred only 15 times were put in the wrong
piles. The shortest time among my laboratory students was 58 seconds,
but with this individual the sum of the mistakes, calculated on the
basis of the valuation agreed upon, was 13. The largest figure
mentioned resulted in a case in which the student needed 381 seconds
and yet made mistakes the sum of which amounted to 35. It is
characteristic that the person with the smallest product felt a
distinct joy in the experiment, while the one with the largest passed
through painful minutes which put him to real organic discomfort. If
we arrange the men simply in the order of these products, of course we
cannot recognize the various groups, as those who are quick but make
mistakes and those who make few mistakes but act slowly may be
represented by the same products. The coincidence of the results with
the self-characterization is frequently quite surprising. Every one
has at some time come into unexpected, suddenly arising situations and
many have received in such moments a very vivid impression of their
own mental reaction. They know quite well that they could not come to
a decision quickly enough, or that they rushed hastily to a wrong
decision, or that in just such instants a feeling of repose and
security came over them and that with sure instinct they turned in
the direction which they would have chosen after mature thought. The
results of the experiments in sorting the cards confirmed this
self-observation in such frequent cases that it may indeed be hoped
that a more extended test of this method will prove its practical
usefulness. It is clear that the field is a wide one, as these
different types of mental dispositions must be of consequence not only
in the ship service, but also to a certain degree in the railroad
service and in many other industrial tasks.
We have emphasized from the start that as a matter of course such a
tested function, while it is taken in its complex unity, is
nevertheless not the only psychophysical disposition of significance.
This is as true for the ship officer as it was for the motorman of the
electric car. If we were to study all the mental dispositions
necessary or desirable for the ship officer, we should find many other
qualities which are accessible to the psychological investigation. The
captain of the ship, for instance, is expected to recognize the
direction of a vessel passing in the fog by the signals of the
foghorn. But so far no one has given any attention to the
psychological conditions of localization of sound, which were for a
long while a much-studied problem of our psychological laboratories.
We know how this localization is dependent upon the comparison of the
two ears and what particular mistakes occur from the different
sensibility of the two ears. Yet there are to-day men on the bridges
of the ships who hear much better with one ear than with the other,
but who still naïvely believe that, as they hear everything very
distinctly with one ear, this normal ear is also sufficient for
recognizing the direction of the sound. It is the same mistake which
we frequently see among laborers whose vision has become defective in
one of their eyes, or one of whose eyes is temporarily bandaged. They
are convinced that the one good eye is sufficient for their industrial
task, because they are able to recognize everything clearly and
distinctly. They do not know that both the eyes together are necessary
in order to produce that psychological combination by which the visual
impression is projected into the right distance, and that in the
factory they are always in danger of underestimating the distance of a
wheel or some other part of the machine and of letting the hand slip
between the wheels or knives. The results of experimental psychology
will have to be introduced systematically into the study of the
fitness of the personality from the lowest to the highest technical
activity and from the simplest sensory function to the most complex
mental achievement.
X
EXPERIMENTS IN THE INTEREST OF TELEPHONE SERVICE
Our plan was to illustrate the possibility of applying psychological
experiments to the selection of fit applicants also in cases in which
not one characteristic mental function stands out, but in which a
large number of relatively independent mental activities are in play.
I choose as an illustration of such cases the work of the employees at
the telephone switchboard. A study of the psychological factors in
this work is strongly suggested by the practical interests of the
telephone companies, and may be looked on here exclusively from this
point of view. The user of the telephone is little inclined to
consider how many actions have to be carried out in the central office
before the connection is made and finally broken again. From the
moment when the speaker takes off the receiver to the cutting off of
the connection, fourteen separate psychophysical processes are
necessary in the typical case, and even then it is presupposed that
the telephone girl understood the exchange and number correctly. It is
a common experience of the companies that these demands cannot be
satisfactorily fulfilled when a telephone girl has to handle more than
225 calls in an hour. The official statistics show that this figure is
exceeded in not infrequent cases,[13] in extreme cases the number may
even rise beyond 300. Moreover, in short periods of reinforced demands
it may happen that for a few minutes even the rapidity of 10 calls in
a minute is reached. Normally the burden is divided among the
employees in such a way that about 150 calls fall to each one in an
hour, and that this figure is passed considerably only in one morning
and one evening hour. A skillful distribution of pauses and ample
arrangements for rest, usually together with very excellent hygienic
conditions, make it possible for the fit persons to be able to carry
on this work without over-fatigue from 8 to 9 hours a day. On the
other hand, it is only natural that such rapid and yet subtle activity
under such high tension, where especially the quick localization of
the correct hole is a difficult and yet indispensable part, can be
carried out only by a relatively small number of human nervous
systems. The inability to keep attention at such a high point for a
long while, or to perform such rapid movements, or to retain the
numbers correctly, does not lead to fatal accidents like those in the
case of the unfit motormen, but it does lead to fatigue and finally to
a nervous breakdown of the employees and to confusion in the service.
The result is that the company is continually obliged to dismiss a
considerable proportion of those who have entered the service and who
have spent some months in going through the training school of the
company. As one single company, the Bell Telephone Company, employs
16,000 operators, the problem is an expansive one, and it has bearing
on the health of the employees as well as on the patience of the
subscribers. But above all it refers to the economic interests of the
company, inasmuch as every girl who satisfies the entrance conditions
of hearing and sight, of school education and general personal
appearance, receives some salary throughout the months of training in
the telephone school. Since during the first half-year, in which the
employee still works entirely under supervision, more than a third of
those who had originally entered leave, partly on account of
unfitness, and inability, partly on account of over-fatigue or similar
reasons, the economic disadvantage to the company is evidently a very
great one. The candidates are paid for months of mere training, and
they themselves waste their energy and time with practice in a kind of
labor which cannot be serviceable to them in any other economic
activity. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that one
city system approached me with the question whether it would not
interest me from a scientific point of view to examine how far the
mental fitness of the employees could be determined beforehand through
experimental means.
After carefully observing the service in the central office for a
while, I came to the conviction that it would not be appropriate here
to reproduce the activity at the switchboard in the experiment, but
that it would be more desirable to resolve that whole function into
its elements and to undertake the experimental test of a whole series
of elementary mental dispositions. Every one of these mental acts can
then be examined according to well-known laboratory methods without
giving to the experiments any direct relation to the characteristic
telephone operation as such. I carried on the first series of
experiments with about thirty young women who a short time before had
entered into the telephone training school, where they are admitted
only at the age between seventeen and twenty-three years. I examined
them with reference to eight different psychophysical functions. In
saying this, I abstract from all those measurements and tests which
had somewhat anthropometric character, such as the measurement of the
length of the fingers, the rapidity of breathing, the rapidity of
pulse, the acuity of vision and of hearing, the distinctness of the
pronunciation, and so on. A part of the psychological tests were
carried on in individual examinations, but the greater part with the
whole class together.
These common tests referred to memory, attention, intelligence,
exactitude, and rapidity. I may characterize the experiments in a few
words. The memory examination consisted of reading to the whole class
at first two numbers of 4 digits, then two of 5 digits, then two of 6
digits, and so on up to figures of 12 digits, and demanding that they
be written down as soon as a signal was given. The experiments on
attention, which in this case of the telephone operators seemed to me
especially significant, made use of a method the principle of which
has frequently been applied in the experimental psychology of
individual differences and which I adjusted to our special needs. The
requirement is to cross out a particular letter in a connected text.
Every one of the thirty women in the classroom received the same first
page of a newspaper of that morning. I emphasize that it was a new
paper, as the newness of the content was to secure the desired
distraction of the attention. As soon as the signal was given, each
one of the girls had to cross out with a pencil every "a" in the text
for six minutes. After a certain time, a bell signal was given and
each then had to begin a new column. In this way we could find out,
first, how many letters were correctly crossed out in those six
minutes, secondly, how many letters were overlooked, and, thirdly, how
the recognition and the oversight were distributed in the various
parts of the text. In every one of these three directions strong
individual differences were indeed noticeable. Some persons crossed
out many, but also overlooked many, others overlooked hardly any of
the "a's," but proceeded very slowly so that the total number of the
crossed-out letters was small. Moreover, it was found that some at
first do poor work, but soon reach a point at which their attention
remains on a high level; others begin with a relatively high
achievement, but after a short time their attention flags, and the
number of crossed-out letters becomes smaller or the number of
unnoticed, overlooked letters increases. Fluctuations of attention,
deficiencies, and strong points can be discovered in much detail.
The third test which was tried with the whole class referred to the
intelligence of the individuals. Discussion of the question how to
test intelligence in general would quickly lead us into as yet
unsettled controversies. It is a chapter of the psychology of tests
which, especially in the service of pedagogy but to a certain degree
also in the service of medicine, has been more carefully elaborated
than any other. Often it has been contested whether we have any right
to speak of one general central intelligence factor, and whether this
apparently unified activity ought not to be resolved into a series of
mere elementary processes. The newer pedagogical investigations,
however, speak in favor of the view that besides all special
processes, or rather, above all of them, an ability must be recognized
which cannot be divided any further, and by which the individual
adjusts his knowledge, his experiences, and his dispositions to the
changing purposes of life. The grading of the pupils in a class
usually expresses this differentiation of the intelligence; and while
the differences of industry or of mere memory and similar secondary
features may sometimes interfere, it remains after all not difficult
for an observant teacher to grade the pupils of his class, whom he
knows well, according to their general intelligence. The psychological
experiments carried on in the schoolroom have demonstrated that this
ability can be tested by the measurement of some very simple mental
activities. The best method would be the one which would allow the
experimenter, on the basis of a single experiment, to grade the
individuals in the same order in which they appear in the record of
the teacher. Among the various proposed schemes for this purpose the
figures suggest that the most reliable one is the following method,
the results of which show the highest agreement between the rank order
based on the experiments and the rank order of the teachers.[14] The
experiment consists in reading to the pupils a long series of pairs of
words of which the two members of the pair always logically belong
together. Later, one word of each pair will be read to them and they
have to write down the word which belonged with it in the pair. This
is not a simple experiment on memory. The tests have shown that if
instead of logically connected words simply disconnected chance words
are offered and reproduced, no one can keep such a long series of
pairs in mind, while with the words which have related meaning, the
most intelligent pupils can master the whole series. The very
favorable results which this method had yielded in the classroom made
me decide to try it in this case too. I chose for an experiment 24
pairs of words from the sphere of experience of the girls to be
tested. Two further class experiments belonged rather to the periphery
of psychology. The exactitude of space-perception was measured by
demanding that each divide first the long and then the short edge of a
folio sheet into two equal halves by a pencil mark. And finally, to
measure the rapidity of movement, it was demanded that every one make
with a pencil on the paper zigzag movements of a particular size
during the ten seconds from one signal to another.
After these class experiments I turned to individual tests. First,
every girl had to sort a pack of 48 cards into 4 piles as quickly as
possible. The time was measured in fifths of a second. The following
experiment which referred to the accuracy of movement impulses
demanded that every one try to reach with the point of a pencil 3
different points on the table in the rhythm of metronome beats. On
each of these three places a sheet of paper was fixed with a fine
cross in the middle. The pencil should hit the crossing point, and the
marks on the paper indicated how far the movement had fallen short of
the goal. One of these movements demanded the full extension of the
arm and the other two had to be made with half-bent arm. I introduced
this last test because the hitting of the right holes in the
switchboard of the telephone office is of great importance. The last
individual experiment was an association test. I called six words like
"book," "house," "rain," and had them speak the first word which came
to their minds. The time was measured in fifths of a second only, as
subtler experiments, for which hundredths of a second would have to
be considered, were not needed.
In studying the results so far as the memory experiments were
concerned, we found that it would be useless to consider the figures
with more than 10 digits. We took the results only of those with 8,9,
and 10 digits. There were 54 possibilities of mistakes. The smallest
number of actual mistakes was 2, the largest, 29. In the experiment on
attention made with the crossing-out of letters, we found that the
smallest number of correctly marked letters was 107, the largest
number in the six minutes, 272; the smallest number of overlooked
letters was 2, the largest, 135; but this last case of abnormal
carelessness stood quite isolated. On the whole, the number of
overlooked letters fluctuated between 5 and 60. If both results, those
of the crossed-out and those of the overlooked letters, are brought
into relation, we find that the best results were a case of 236
letters marked, with only 2 overlooked, and one of 257 marked, with 4
overlooked. The very interesting details as to the various types of
attention which we see in the distribution of mistakes over the six
minutes were not taken into our final table. The word experiments by
which we tested the intelligence showed that no one was able to
reproduce more than 22 of the 24 words. The smallest number of words
remembered was 7. The mistakes in the perception of distances
fluctuated between 1 and 14 millimeters; the time for the sorting of
the 48 cards, between, 35 and 58 seconds; the association-time for the
6 associated words taken together was between 9 and 21 seconds. The
pointing experiments could not be made use of in this first series, as
it was found that quite a number of participants were unable to
perform the act with the rapidity demanded.
Several ways were open to make mathematical use of these results. I
preferred the simplest way. I calculated the grade of the girls for
each of these achievements. The same candidate who stood in the 7th
place in the memory experiment was in the 15th place with reference to
the number of letters marked, in the 3rd place with reference to the
letters overlooked, in the 21st place with reference to the number of
word pairs which she had grasped, in the 11th place with reference to
the exactitude of space-perception, in the 16th place with reference
to the association-time, and in the 6th place with reference to the
time of sorting. As soon as we had all these independent grades, we
calculated the average and in this way ultimately gained a common
order of grading. It is evident that this kind of calculation contains
accidental factors, especially as a consequence of the fact that we
give equal value to every one of these results. It might be better,
for instance, to attribute a higher value to the attention experiment
or to the intelligence experiment. This could be done by multiplying
the results of some of these grades by 2 or by 3, which would bring
the high or low grade of a girl for a particular function to stronger
influence in the final result. But in this first trial I contented
myself with the simplest uniform scheme in order to exclude all
arbitrariness, and therefore considered the mere average of all the
grades as the expression of the experimental result.
With this average rank list, we compared the practical results of the
telephone company after three months had passed. These three months
had been sufficient to secure at least a certain discrimination
between the best, the average, and the unfit. The result of this
comparison was on the whole satisfactory. First, the skeptical
telephone company had mixed with the class a number of women who had
been in the service for a long while and had even been selected as
teachers in the telephone school. I did not know, in figuring out the
results, which of the participants in the experiments these
particularly gifted outsiders were. If the psychological experiments
had brought the result that these individuals who stood so high in
the estimation of the telephone company ranked low in the laboratory
experiment, it would have reflected strongly on the reliability of the
laboratory method. The results showed, on the contrary, that these
women who had proved most able in practical service stood at the top
of our list. Correspondingly, those who stood the lowest in our
psychological rank list had in the mean time been found unfit in
practical service and had either left the company of their own accord
or else had been eliminated. The agreement, to be sure, was not a
perfect one. One of the list of women stood rather low in the
psychological list, while the office reported that so far she had done
fair work in the service, and two others to whom the psychological
laboratory gave a good testimonial were considered by the telephone
office as only fair.
But it is evident that certain disagreements would have occurred even
with a more ideal method, as on the one side no final achievement in
practical service can be given after only three months, and because on
the other side a large number of secondary factors may enter which
entirely overshadow the mere question of psychophysical fitness. Poor
health, for instance, may hinder even the most fit individual from
doing satisfactory work, and extreme industry and energetic will may
for a while lead even the unfit to fair achievement, which, to be
sure, is likely to be coupled with a dangerous exhaustion. The slight
disagreements between the psychological results and the practical
valuation, therefore, do not in the least speak against the
significance of such a method. On the other hand, I emphasize that
this first series meant only the beginning of the investigation, and
it can hardly be expected that at such a first approach the best and
most suitable methods would at once be hit upon. A continuation of the
work will surely lead to much better combinations of test experiments
and to better adjusted schemes. But it would be most desirable that
such studies be undertaken at various places according to various
schemes in order to come nearer to the solution of a problem which is
economically important to the whole public and to many thousands of
employees. As soon as methods are really perfected it would seem not
at all impossible that by a short experiment of a few minutes
thousands of applicants might be saved long months of study and
training which are completely wasted. For us here the detailed
analysis of this particular case did not mean a suggestion to use
to-day in the telephone offices of the country the special scheme
which we applied, but it stood only as a clear, simple illustration
of a method by which not the specific work itself is tested, but by
which the industrial work of the individual is resolved into a long
series of parallel functions each one of which is tested
independently. The experimental aid which the laboratory has to supply
in such cases is not a newly invented device, such as we needed in the
case of the motormen, but simply the methods well known as so-called
mental tests.
The experiments with such tests by which single mental functions are
measured approximately in short quick examinations, has been much
discussed in psychological circles. For a long while the thorough
scholars remained very reluctant to accept such an apparently
superficial scheme, when these tests were proposed especially for the
pedagogical interests of the schoolroom. It was a time in which the
scientific efforts were completely devoted to the general problems of
the human mind and in which individual differences were very little
considered. Moreover, the questions of applied psychology still seemed
so far distant that the true scholar instinctively took his standards
from the methods of purely theoretical research. Seen from such a
point of view, it could not be denied that the tests were not
sufficient to give us a complete scientific analysis of the
personality in its subtler structure. The theorists knew too well that
if the reactions, or associations, or memories, or tendencies of
attention, or emotions of a subject were measured really with that
scientific thoroughness which is the ideal of research, long months of
experiments would be needed, and little could be hoped for from tests
to be performed in half an hour. But this somewhat haughty reserve
which was quite justified twenty years ago has become obsolete and
would be meaningless to-day. On the one side the methods themselves
have been multiplied; for each mental act like memory, attention, and
so on, dozens of well-studied tests are at our disposal, which are
adjusted to the finest ramifications of the functions.[15] On the
other side the interest in individual differences and in applied
psychology has steadily grown, and through it an understanding for the
real meaning of the tests has been gained. Their value, indeed, lies
exclusively in their relation to the practical problems. Where
theoretical questions are to be answered and scientific studies
concerning the laws and variations of the mind are to be undertaken,
the long series of laboratory experiments carried on with patience and
devotion are indispensable and can never be replaced by the short-cut
methods of the tests. But where practical tasks of pedagogy or
jurisprudence or medicine, or especially of commerce and industry, are
before us, the method of tests ought to be sovereign. It can be
adapted to the special situations and can succeed perfectly, if the
task is to discover the outlines of the mental individuality for
particular practical work.
The only real difficulty of the method lies in the ease with which it
can be used. A device which presupposes complicated instruments deters
the layman and will be used only by those who are well trained.
Moreover, the amateur would not think of constructing and adapting
such apparatus himself. But when nothing is necessary but to use words
or numbers or syllables or pictures, or, as in those experiments which
we just described, newspapers and so on, any one feels justified in
applying the scheme or in replacing it by a new apparently better one
according to his caprice. The manifoldness of the proposed tests for
special functions, is therefore enormous to-day. What is needed now is
surely much more that order be brought into this chaos of
propositions, and that definite norms and standards be secured for
certain chief examinations, than that the number of variations simply
be increased.
The chief danger, moreover, lies in the fact that those who are not
accustomed to psychological laboratory research are easily misled.
They fancy that such an experiment can be carried out in a mere
mechanical way without careful study of all the conditions and
accompanying circumstances. Thereby a certain crudeness of procedure
may enter which is not at all suggested by the test method itself. The
psychological layman too seldom recognizes how many other psychical
functions may play a rôle in the result of the experiment beside the
one which is interesting him at that moment. The well-schooled
laboratory worker almost automatically gives consideration to all such
secondary circumstances. While his experiments may refer to the
process of memory, he will yet at the same time carefully consider the
particular situation as to the emotional setting of the subject, as to
his attention, as to his preceding experience, as to his intelligence,
as to his physiological condition, and many other factors which may
have indirect influence even on the simplest memory test. Hence the
real performance of the experiments ought to be undertaken only by
those who are thoroughly familiar and well trained in psychological
research. And they alone, moreover, can decide what particular form
such an experiment ought to take in a given practical situation. It
must be left to them, for instance, to judge in which cases the mental
function of economic importance ought to be tested after being
resolved into its components and in which it ought to be examined in
its characteristic unity.
XI
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MEN OF AFFAIRS
While the psychologists have to perform the actual labor, the
representatives of practical life are much better able to indicate the
points at which the psychological levers ought to be applied. In the
past year I have sought contact with several hundred large concerns in
America which belong to many different industrial realms. My time did
not allow me personal observation in so many cases, but everywhere I
begged for information from the leading men. I asked in individual
letters for the particular psychological qualities which from the
standpoint of the management seemed essential for the various kinds of
labor in their establishments. I always inquired to what extent
consideration was given to such psychological points of view at the
appointment of applicants, and asked for material concerning the
question how far individuals who proved to be unfit for one kind of
labor showed fitness at other kinds of work. The replies which I
received from all sides varied from a few meaningless lines to long
documents, which in some cases were composed of detailed reports from
all the department chiefs of a particular concern. The common
fundamental turn was decidedly a feeling of strong interest in the
formulation of the question, which was practically new to all of them.
Whether the answer came from paper mills or machine shops, from
meat-packing houses or from breweries, from electrical or chemical
mills, from railroad or mining companies, from department stores or
from publishing houses, everywhere it was acknowledged that they had
given hardly any conscious attention to the real psychological
dispositions of their employees. They had of course noticed whether
their men were industrious or lazy, honest or dishonest, skillful or
clumsy, peaceful or quarrelsome people, but I had emphasized from the
start in all my letters that such points of view were not before my
mind. The mental qualities for which I asked were the psychological
functions of attention, memory, ideas, imagination, feeling, volition,
suggestibility, ability to learn, ability to discriminate, judgment,
space-sense, time-sense, and so on. It would lead too far here to
discuss why these two groups of characteristics indeed belong to two
different aspects of mental life, and why only the latter is strictly
psychological. The way in which the management is accustomed to look
on their men is the practical way of ordinary life, in which we try to
understand our neighbor by entering into the meaning of his mental
functions and by seeking to grasp what his aim is. But such an
interpretation of the other man's mind is not a psychological
analysis. It gives us the purposes of his inner life, but does not
show us its structure and its component parts. We can abstract from
interpreting and appreciating in order to describe the elements of the
mind which in themselves have no meaning and no value, but which are
the only important factors, if we are to determine psychologically
what we may expect from the individual.
While the replies to my letters showed that hardly any attention had
so far been given to such problems of objective psychology in the
industrial concerns, it became evident that the managers felt
distinctly that here a problem was touched which must be of highest
importance for economic success. From many different sides willingness
was shown to study the problem of employment under the psychological
aspect. As my material came mostly from very large establishments in
which labor of very many different kinds is carried on side by side,
of course I frequently received the assurance that whenever an
industrious energetic man is unsuccessful in one kind of work, a trial
is made with him in another department, and that by such shifting the
right place can often be found for him. Young people, to whom, in
spite of long trial and the best will, it seems impossible to supply
certain automatic machines, become excellent workers at much more
difficult labor in the same establishment. Women who are apparently
careless and inattentive when they have to distribute their attention
over a number of operations do high-class work when they are engaged
in a single activity; and in other cases the opposite is reported.
I may mention a few concrete chance illustrations. In a pencil factory
the women in one department have to grasp with one movement a dozen
pencils, no more and no less. Some learn this at once without effort,
and they earn high wages; others never can learn it in spite of
repeated trials. If those who fail in this department are transferred,
for instance, to the department where the gold-leaf is most carefully
to be applied to the pencils before stamping, very often they show
great fitness in spite of the extreme exactitude needed for this work.
To show how often activities which appear extremely similar may demand
different individuals, if the work is based on different psychical
functions, I may refer to a report from one of the largest
establishments in the country. In the accounting department a large
number of girls are occupied with looking over hundreds of thousands
of slips from which the weekly pay-list is compiled. Each slip
contains six figures and small groups of twenty slips have to be
looked through to see whether those six figures on each correspond.
With moistened forefinger they turn up the slips one by one in much
the same manner that a bank clerk counts money. A good sorter will
turn up the slips so rapidly that a bystander is unable to read a
single figure, and yet she will not overlook an error in thousands of
slips. After the slips are sorted, the operation of obtaining the
totals on each order number is performed with the aid of an adding
machine. The machine operator rolls up the slips of the pile with the
thumb of her left hand and transfers the amount to the proper keys of
the machine. It has been found that the most rapid and accurate girls
at sorting are not seldom useless on the machines. They press the
wrong, keys and make errors in copying the total from the machine
indicators to the file-card. On the other hand, some of the best
machine operators are very slow and inaccurate at the sorting table.
Girls have been found very poor at the work at which they were first
set, and very successful and efficient as soon as they had been
transferred from the one to the other.
Examples of this kind might be heaped up without end. But while the
very large establishments demonstrate by such reports only that they
can find somewhere a fit place for every able workingman if they take
enough trouble to seek for it, after all the essential element of the
reports remains, that successful achievement depends upon personal
mental traits which cannot be acquired by mere good will and training.
In view of this fact it is much more important that by far the
majority of establishments have not such a great manifoldness of
activities under one roof. The workingman who is a failure in the work
which he undertook would usually have no opportunity to show his
strong sides in the same factory, or at least to be protected against
the consequences of his weak points. If his achievement is deficient
in quality or quantity, he generally loses his place and makes a new
trial in another factory under the same accidental conditions, without
any deeper insight into his particular psychical traits and their
relation to special industrial activities. But even in the large
concerns, in which many kinds of labor are needed side by side, it is
not the rule but a rare exception when the individual is
systematically shifted to the psychologically correct place. A whole
combination of conditions is necessary for that. If his mental
unfitness makes him unsuccessful in one place, the position for which
he is fit must happen to be vacant. Moreover, he himself must like
that other kind of work, and above all the foreman must recognize his
particular fitness. In a few model factories in which the apprentice
system is developed in the spirit of advanced sociological ideas, for
instance, in the Lynn factory of the General Electric Company, such
systematic efforts are being carried on and show fair results. But the
regulation plan seems to be a haphazard lack of plan, and even the
best endeavors probably fall short of what may be attained by the
introduction of scientific psychological methods. So far in most
factories the laborer who is not doing well simply loses his position,
and by such an unfortunate experience he is not mentally enriched but
impoverished, as he has lost much of his self-confidence and of his
joy in labor.
If this limitless waste of human material, this pitiable crushing of
joy in the day's work, and this crippling of the economic output is at
last to be reduced, indeed nothing is more needed than a careful
scrutiny of the various psychophysical functions involved in the work.
A mere classification of the industrial occupations according to the
classes of manufactured objects would be of no value for this need, as
often a small industrial concern may embrace occupations which, are
based on many different psychophysical functions. A harvester consists
of two hundred and fifty different parts, and almost every one of
these parts demands a long series of manufacturing, processes.
Thousands of different kinds of labor are thus combined in one factory
and each process demands for the best work particular psychophysical
traits, even though many of them can be carried out by quite unskilled
laborers. In a large manufacturing establishment the manager assured
me only recently that more than half a million different acts have to
be performed in order to complete the goods of that factory. On the
other hand, it evidently is proper to form larger groups in which
processes are brought together which are similar with reference to the
mental activity needed, while they may be dissimilar from the
standpoint of industrial technique.
This analysis of the special processes can be furthered best by the
coöperation of the experienced men of industry. Many of the replies
which I received contained quite elaborated contributions to such a
study of various industrial processes from a psychological point of
view. They sometimes covered the ground from the simplest activity to
the subtlest and most difficult economic tasks, and this, not only
with reference to the functions of the laborer, but also even with
reference to the function of the industrial manager. The outsider can
see these psychological requirements of the particular occupation only
in crude outlines. The subtler nuances of differences between tasks
can be gained only by an intimate knowledge of the industry. Again I
may give an illustration. In the case of a well-known typesetting
machine, thousand of which are in daily use, I had the impression that
the rapidity of the performance was dependent upon the quickness of
the finger reaction. The managers, on the other hand, have found that
the most essential condition for speed in the whole work is the
ability to retain a large number of words in memory before they are
set. The man who presses the keys rather slowly advances more rapidly
than another who moves his fingers quickly, but must make many pauses
in order to find his place in the manuscript and to provide himself
with new words.
The factors which are to be brought into correlation are, accordingly,
first, the actual experiences of the managers, secondly, the
observations of skilled psychologists in the industrial concerns,
thirdly, psychological and experimental investigations with successful
and unsuccessful laborers, and, fourthly, experimental studies of the
normal variability. If such a programme is to be realized in detail,
it will be necessary to discriminate carefully, between those mental
traits of the personality which must be accredited to a lasting
inherited disposition and such as have been developed under the
influences of the surroundings, by education and training, by bad or
good stimuli from the community. While those acquired traits may have
become relatively lasting dispositions, their transformation is, after
all, possible, and the limits in which changes may be expected will
have to be found out by exact studies. Individual psychological
rhythm, attention and emotion, memory and will energy, disposition to
fatigue and to restoration, imagination, suggestibility and
initiative, and many other features will have to be examined in their
relation to the special economic aims.
Too much emphasis cannot be laid on another function as well, the
experimental testing of which has only recently been started. I refer
to the difference in the individual ability of men to profit from
training. If we test an individual at a certain point in his life with
regard to a variable ability, our result must be dependent upon three
factors, the original disposition for the performance, the original
disposition for the advance by training, and the training itself
actually passed through up to that moment. A small amount of
antecedent training for the particular task together with a high
ability to profit from repetition may be a better reason for the
appointment of a man than a long training with small ability to profit
from schooling, in spite of the fact that his actual achievement at
this time may be in the first case smaller than in the second. He will
do less at first, but he promises to outrank the other man after a
period of further training. Special experiments must be carried on and
have been actually started to determine this plasticity of the
psychophysical apparatus as an independent inborn trait of the
individual.[16]
This invasion of psychology into the field of economic activities is
still so little advanced that the thought of a real distribution of
the wage-earners among the various commercial and industrial positions
on the basis of psychological tests would lead far beyond the present
possibilities. Moreover, many factors would interfere with its being
carried out consistently, even if a much higher stage of experimental
research were reached. The thousands of social and local reasons which
influence the choice of a vocation to-day would to a certain degree
remain in force also in a period of better psychological analysis.
Moreover, the personal inclinations and interests naturally would and
ought to remain the mainspring of economic action. This inclination,
which gives so much of the joy in labor, is by no means necessarily
coincident with those psychophysical dispositions which insure the
most successful work. Political economists have found this out
repeatedly from their statistical inquiries. Very careful studies of
the textile industry in Germany carried out in recent years[17]
yielded the result that the intelligent, highly trained textile
laborer often dislikes his work the more, the more he shows ability
for it, this ability being measured by the wages the individuals earn
at piecework. The wage and the emotional attitude were not seldom
inversely related. Those who were able to produce by far more than
others and accordingly earned the most were sometimes the very ones
who hated the work, while the less skillful workers earned less but
enjoyed the work more. The consulting economic psychologist will,
therefore at first reasonably confine himself to warning the misfits
at an early time. Even within these limits his service can be useful
to both parties, the employers and the employees. He will only slowly
reach the stage at which this negative warning may be supplemented by
positive suggestions, as to the commercial industrial activities for
which the psychophysical dispositions promise particular success.
A real assumption of responsibility for success of course cannot be
risked by the psychologist, inasmuch as the man who may be fitted for
a task by his mental working dispositions may nevertheless destroy his
chances for success by secondary personal traits. He may be dishonest,
or dissipated, or a drinker, or a fighter, or physically ill. Finally,
we ought not to forget that all such efforts to adjust to one another
the psychological traits and the requirements of the work can never
have reference to the extreme variations of human traits. The
exceptionally talented man knows anyhow where he belongs, and the
exceptionally untalented one will be excluded anyhow. The
psychological aid in the selection of the fit refers only to the
remaining four fifths of mankind for whom the chances of success can
indeed be increased as soon as the psychological personal equation is
systematically and with scientific exactitude brought into the
calculation of the life development. How far a part of this effort
will have to be undertaken by the school is a social problem which
must be considered from various points of view. Its discussion would
lead us beyond the limits of our present inquiry, but it seems
probable that the real psychological laboratory experiment in the
service of vocational guidance does not belong in the schoolroom
itself, but ought to be left to special municipal institutions.
XII
INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS
One point here must not be overlooked. The effort to discover the
personal structure of the individual in the interest of his vocational
chance does not always necessarily involve a direct analysis of his
individuality, as material of some value can be gained indirectly.
Such indirect knowledge of a man's mental traits may be secured first
of all through referring the man to the groups to which he belongs and
inquiring into the characteristic traits of those groups. The
psychology of human variations gives not only an account of the
differences from person to person, but studies no less the psychical
inequalities of the races, of the nations, of the ages, of the
professions, and so on. If an economic activity demands a combination
of mental traits, we may take it for granted that an individual will
be fit for the work as soon as we find out that he belongs to a group
in which these required mental traits habitually occur. Such a
judgment based on group psychology can of course be no more than a
mere approach to a solution of the problem, as the psychical qualities
may vary strongly in the midst of the group. The special individual
may happen to stand at the extreme limit of the group, and the traits
which are usually characteristic of it may be very little developed or
entirely lacking in his special case. We may know that the inhabitants
of a special country are rather alert, and yet the particular
individual with whom we have to deal may be clumsy and phlegmatic. The
interests of economy will, therefore, be served by such considerations
of group psychology only if the employment, not of a single person,
but of a large number, is in question, as it is most probable that the
average character will show itself in a sufficient degree as soon as
many members of the group are involved.
Even in this case the presupposition ought to be that the average
characteristics found out with scientific exactitude by statistical
and experimental methods, and not that they are simply deduced from
superficial impressions. I have found that just this race
psychological diagnosis is frequently made in factories with great
superficiality. Some of the American industrial centres offer
extremely favorable conditions for the comparative study of
nationality. I have visited many manufacturing establishments in which
almost all workers are immigrants from foreign countries and in which
up to twenty different nationalities are represented. The employment
officers there easily develop some psychological theories on the
basis of which they are convinced that they are selecting the men with
especial skill, knowing for each in which department he will be most
successful. They consider it settled that for a particular kind of
activity the Italians are the best, and for another, the Irish, and
for a third, the Hungarians, and for a fourth, the Russian Jews. But
as soon as these factory secrets have been revealed, you may be
surprised to find that in the next factory a decidedly different
classification of the wage-earners is in force. In a gigantic
manufacturing concern, I received the definite information that the
Swedish laborers are preferable wherever a steady eye is needed, and
in another large factory on the same street I was assured that just
the Swedes are unfit for such work. Sometimes this diversity of
opinion is the result of different points of view. In one factory in
which a certain industrial operation is rather dangerous, they told me
that they took no southern Europeans, especially no Italians and
Greeks, because they are too hasty and careless in their movements,
while they gladly filled the places with Irishmen. In a quite similar
factory, on the other hand, they had a prejudice against the Irishmen
alone for this work, because the Irish laborers are too willing to run
a risk and to expose themselves to danger. Probably both
psychological observations are on the whole correct, but in the first
factory only the one and in the second factory only the other was
recognized. Much more thorough statistical inquiries than those which
as yet exist, especially as to the actual differences of wages and
piecework for wage-earners of various nationalities, would have to
furnish a basis for such race psychological statements, until the time
arrives when the psychological experiment comes to its own.
In a similar way so far we have to rely on general theories of group
psychology when the psychological differences of the sexes are to be
reckoned with in economic interests. So long as laboratory methods for
individual tests are not usual, the mental analysis of the general
groups of men and women must form the background for industrial
decisions. To be sure, it is not difficult to emphasize certain mental
traits as characteristic of women in general in contrast to men in
general, and to relate them to certain fundamental tendencies of their
psychophysical organism. As soon as this is done, it is easy
theoretically to deduce that certain industrial functions are
excellently adapted to the minds of women and that certain others
stand in striking antagonism to them. If the employment of large
numbers is in question, and average values alone are involved, such a
decision on the basis of group psychology may be adequate. In most
factories this vague sex psychology, to be sure, usually with a strong
admixture of wage questions, suggests for which machines men and for
which women ought to be employed. But here again it is not at all
improbable that in the case of a particular woman the traditional
group value may be entirely misleading and the personality accordingly
unfit for the place. Only the subtle psychological individual analysis
can overcome the superficial prejudices of group psychology. The
situation lies differently when problems of economic policy are before
us. Such general policies as, for instance, colonial politics, or
immigration politics, or politics concerned with city and rural
communities, or with coast and mountain population, will always have
to be based on group psychology as far as the economic problems are
involved, inasmuch as they refer to the average and not to the
individual, differences.
Finally, another indirect scheme to determine the personal qualities
needed for economic efficiency may be suggested by the psychology of
the typical correlations of human traits. We have seen that group
psychology proclaims that a certain individual probably has certain
traits because he belongs to this or that nation or to this or that
otherwise well-known group. Correlation psychology proclaims that a
particular individual possesses or does not possess certain traits
because he shows or does not show some other definite qualities. A
correlation, for instance, which the commercial world often
presupposes, may exist between individual traits and the handwriting.
Graphologists are convinced that a certain loop or flourish, or the
steepness or the length of the letters, or the position of the _i_
dot, is a definite indication that the writer possesses certain
qualities of personality; and if just these qualities are essential
requirements for the position, the impression of the handwriting in a
letter may be taken as a sufficient basis for appointment. The
scientist has reason to look upon this particular case of
graphological correlation with distrust. Yet even he may acknowledge
that certain correlations exist between the neatness, carefulness,
uniformity energy, and similar features of the letter, and the general
carefulness, steadiness, neatness, and energy of the personality.
However, the laboratory psychologists nowadays have gone far beyond
such superficial claims for correlations of symptoms. With
experimental and statistical methods they have gathered ample material
which demonstrates the exact degree of probability with which we have
a right to expect that certain qualities will occur together.
Theoretically we may take it for granted that those traits which are
always present together or absent together ultimately have a common
mental root. Yet practically they appear as two independent traits,
and therefore it remains important to know that, if we can find one of
them, we may be sure that the other will exist there too. Inasmuch as
the one of the two traits may be easily detected, while the other may
be hidden and can be found out only by long careful tests, it would be
valuable, indeed, for the employment manager to become acquainted with
such correlations as the psychologist may discover: as soon as he
becomes aware of the superficially noticeable symptom, he can foresee
that the other disposition is most probably present. To give an
illustration: in the interest of such measurements of correlations we
have studied in the Harvard laboratory the various characteristics of
attention and their mutual dependence.[18] We found that typical
connections exist between apparently independent features of
attention. Persons who have a rather expansive span of attention for
acoustical impressions have also a wide span for the visual objects.
Persons whose attention is vivid and quick have on the whole the
expansive type of attention, while those who attend slowly have a
narrow field of attention, and so on. Hence the manifestation of one
feature of attention allows us to presuppose without further tests
that certain other features may be expected in the particular
individual.
The problem of attention, indeed, seems to stand quite in the centre
of the field of industrial efficiency. This conviction has grown upon
me in my observation of industrial life. The peculiar kind of
attention decides more than any mental trait for which economic
activity the individual is adapted. The essential point is that such
differences of attention cannot be characterized as good or bad; it is
not a question of the attentive and of the inattentive mind. One type
is not better than another, but is simply different. Two workingmen,
not only equally industrious and capable, but also equally attentive,
may yet occupy two positions in which they are both complete failures
because their attention does not fit the places, and both may become
highly efficient as soon as they exchange positions. Their particular
types of attention have now found the right places. The one may be
disposed to a strong concentration by which everything is inhibited
which lies on the mental periphery, the other may have the talent for
distributing his attention over a large field, while he is unable to
hold it for a long while at one point. If the one industrial activity
demands the attentive observation of one little lever or one wheel at
one point, while the other demands that half a dozen large machines be
simultaneously supervised, all that is necessary is to find the man
with the right type of attention for each place. It would be utterly
arbitrary to claim that the expansive type of attention is
economically more or less valuable than the concentrated type. Both in
English and in German we have a long popular series of pamphlets with
descriptions of the requirements and conditions for the various
occupations to which a boy or a girl may turn, but I have nowhere
found any reference to the most essential mental functions such as the
particular kind of attention or memory or will. These pamphlets are
always cut after the same pattern. Where the detail refers at all to
the mental side, it points only to particular knowledge which may be
learned in school or trade or work, or to abilities which may be
developed by training. But the individual differences which are set by
the particular conditions and dispositions of the mind are neglected
with surprising uniformity in the vocational literature of all
countries. The time seems ripe for at last filling this blank in the
consciousness of the nation and in the institutions of the land.