If a man about town should drop into the Harvard psychological
laboratory and see an operator in rough clothes slowly turning a small
crank and calling off disconnected letters of the alphabet while a
changing panorama of squares and digits passed by beneath a glass plate,
he might think that this was the university’s day off and that here was
a new game for the amusement of the employes. But if he should ask
“What’s the ante?” and want to sit in, he would soon discover his
mistake. He would learn that he was looking at one of the few
experiments yet contrived for picking the right man for the right job.
He might even be told that this was one of the wee beginnings of a new
science which, by systematically placing the psychological experiment at
the service of education and industry, may some day prevent the tragic
waste of misfit starts in life and go far toward solving the problem of
vocational guidance for the schools. The observer would probably be
warned, however, against construing what he saw as any endorsement of
the social desirability of guiding children into this vocation or that.
The device of the changing panorama is designed to test a man’s fitness
to be a motorman on an electric street car. Worked out under the
direction of Prof. Hugo Munsterberg,[5] it is calculated to discover
powers of attention, discrimination and adjustment with respect to
rapidly moving objects, some going at different rates of speed parallel
to the line of vision, others crossing it from side to side. While
Professor Munsterberg undertook to transplant the activity of the
motorman into laboratory processes, he did not try to reproduce a
miniature of the exact conditions under which the motorman works. As the
crank is turned, a series of cards slips by under a glass plate, each
card having two heavy lines down its center to represent a street car
track. Along the sides of this track, between it and the curbstone at
the edge of the card, are scattered various digits which have
arbitrarily fixed movements, like the pieces on a chess board, though
not so complex. The job of the person being tested is to pick out, as
the cards slip by, the precise points on the track which are threatened
by the moveable digits in the street. Some of these numbers represent
pedestrians, some horses and some automobiles.
Footnote 5:
Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, by Hugo Munsterberg. Houghton,
Mifflin Co. 320 pp. Price $1.50: by mail of THE SURVEY $1.62.
Tried motormen, says Professor Munsterberg, agree that they really pass
through this experiment with the feeling they have on the car. Though
the test is not regarded as yet perfected, its results are thought to be
fairly satisfactory when compared with actual efficiency in service.
Efficiency, in this connection, means chiefly ability to avoid
accidents. Some electric railroad companies have as many as 50,000
accident indemnity cases per year which involve an expense amounting in
some instances to 13 per cent of the annual gross earnings. Professor
Munsterberg believes that it may be quite advantageous later on to
subject applicants for the position of motorman to tests based on the
principle involved in the one here described. Even in this inadequate
form, he thinks, the test would be sufficient to exclude perhaps
one-fourth of those who are nowadays accepted for service.
In a public address recently Leonard P. Ayres, director of the Division
of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation, brought together all the
psychological tests in vocational guidance which, so far as he has been
able to discover, are being used in any completed form. Besides the
simpler tests for vision, hearing and color discrimination to which
pilots, ship officers and railroad employes are usually subjected, there
are only three, he said, which have for their object the more difficult
task of selecting from among all the applicants those best fitted to
perform the work. One of these is Professor Munsterberg’s test for
motormen.
Another is a test used in a bicycle ball factory, where girls inspect
the small polished steel balls for flaws by rolling them over and over
on one hand with the fingers of the other and examining them under a
strong light. S. E. Thompson, the employer, soon recognized that the
quality most necessary in the girls, besides endurance and industry, was
a quick power of perception accompanied by quick responsive action. He
therefore subjected his girls to the laboratory test which measures in
thousandths of a second the time needed to react on an impression with
the quickest possible movement. The final outcome was that thirty-five
girls did the work formerly done by 120; the accuracy of the work was
increased by 66 per cent; the wages of the girls were doubled; the
working day decreased from 10½ to 8½ hours; and the profits of the
factory were increased.
The third example which Mr. Ayres found of the application of
psychological tests to the selection of employes in industry is a series
of tests for telephone operators. These also were conducted by Professor
Munsterberg at Harvard. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company
employs 23,000 operators. Applicants for positions are given a
preliminary training of three months in the company’s schools. During
this time they receive salaries. So many eventually prove unfitted for
the work that more than a third leave within six months. Not only does
this involve financial loss to the company but it is a heavy handicap to
young girls who are trying to fit successfully into the industrial life
of the day.
The object of the tests was to develop methods whereby the unfit girls
could be eliminated before instead of after entering the service. The
girls were examined with reference to memory, attention, general
intelligence, space perception, rapidity of movement, accuracy of
movement, and association. The results showed in general that those who
came out best in the tests were most efficient in practical service,
while those who stood at the foot of the list failed later and left the
company’s employ.
“It seems fair to conclude,” says Mr. Ayres, “that when such tests are
perfected, short examinations of a few minutes each will prevent
thousands of applicants from wasting months of study and training in
preparing for a vocation in which they cannot succeed.”
While these three tests have been used only on actual applicants for
positions, a fourth test has been applied to beginning students in
stenography and typewriting to determine which ones possess the
abilities likely to bring success. This has been worked out under the
direction of Prof. James E. Lough of New York University and consists
chiefly of putting the subject through slight movements with a view to
measuring his ability in habit formation.
In addition to actual tests Mr. Ayres found that experimentation is
going on with regard to other occupations. Munsterberg is experimenting
on tests for marine officers. Ricker of Harvard has constructed
apparatus for testing chauffeurs. Whipple of Cornell has done some work
with tests for motormen. Seashore of Iowa has published a careful study
of tests of the ability of a singer. So far as is known, no work in this
field is being done in Europe.
By the extension and amplification of such means as these Professor
Munsterberg deems it not at all unlikely that we may some day have a
real science of vocational guidance. That there is need for a far more
adequate way of linking up young people to their work in life he has no
doubt. “Society relies instinctively,” he says, “on the hope that the
natural wishes and interests will push every one to the place for which
his dispositions, talents and psychophysical gifts prepare him.” But
this confidence he regards as unfounded. To quote further:
“In the first place, young people know very little about themselves
and their abilities. When the day comes on which they discover their
real strong points and their weaknesses, it is often too late. They
have usually been drawn into the current of a particular vocation, and
have given too much energy to the preparation for a specific
achievement to change the whole life-plan once more. The entire scheme
of education gives to the individual little chance to find himself. A
mere interest for one or another subject is influenced by many
accidental circumstances, by the personality of the teacher or the
methods of instruction, by suggestions of the surroundings and by home
traditions, and accordingly even such a preference gives rather a
slight final indication of the individual qualities.”
On the other hand, Professor Munsterberg recognizes that a valuable
start toward enabling young people to make wiser selection of their work
has been made by the agencies for vocational guidance already existing
in Boston and elsewhere. But he says that most counselors engaged in
studying the qualities of boys and girls about to enter industry seem to
“feel instinctively that the core of the whole matter lies in the
psychological examination,” and that for this they must wait until the
laboratories can furnish them with really reliable means and schemes.
They may then, he thinks, become the appropriate agencies for applying
the methods of psychology. He instances the long list of questions which
the late Professor Parsons, usually referred to as the father of
vocational guidance, employed with the idea of finding out something
definite about the mental traits of young people. Replies to questions
of this kind says Professor Munsterberg,
“can be of psychological value only when the questioner knows
beforehand the mind of the youth, and can accordingly judge with what
degree of understanding, sincerity, and ability the circular blanks
have been filled out. But as the questions are put for the very
purpose of revealing the personality, the entire effort tends to move
in a circle.”
Of course Professor Munsterberg does not undertake to pass judgment on
the social desirability of vocational guidance of any sort. That, he
declares, is not the business of the psychologist. His concern is with
means solely, not with ends. If the laboratory develops a way of telling
who are fit for stenography and who are not, that does not mean that all
the fit should be urged to become stenographers. The vocation may be
overcrowded. Again, if a test be devised for discovering what qualities
are essential to the successful operative in a particular industry, it
does not follow that all who want to enter that industry and have the
needed qualities should be advised to do so. Conditions as to health,
wages, hours, and a score of other things may suggest that another trade
ought to be chosen. So that vocational guidance, if it shall ever be a
closed and perfected system, will yet demand the supplementary services
of the labor investigator, the sanitary expert, the industrial
technician and whoever else can contribute to any phase of the problem
of why this calling should be followed instead of that.