Applied Psychology: Driving Power of Thought Part 4

"After these cla.s.s experiments, I turned to individual tests.

"First, every girl had to sort a pack of forty-eight cards into four piles as quickly as possible. The time was measured in fifths of a second, with an ordinary stop-watch.

[Sidenote: _Test for Accuracy of Movement_]

"The following experiment which referred to the accuracy of movement impulses demanded that every one try to reach with the point of a pencil three 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TESTING STEADINESS OF MOTOR CONTROL--INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENT PRIVATE LABORATORY, SOCIETY OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY]

"The last individual experiment was an a.s.sociation 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, with an ordinary stop-watch, as subtler experiments, for which hundredths of a second would have to be considered, were not needed.

[Sidenote: _Results of Experiments_]

"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 ten digits. We took the results only of those with eight, nine and ten digits. There were fifty-four possibilities of mistakes. The smallest number of actual mistakes was two, the largest twenty-nine. 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 two, the largest 135; but this last case of abnormal carelessness stood quite isolated. On the whole, the number of overlooked letters fluctuated between five and sixty. If both results, those of the crossed-out and those of the overlooked letters, are brought into relations, we find that the best results were a case of 236 letters marked, with only two overlooked, and one of 257 marked, with four 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 twenty-two of the twenty-four words. The smallest number of words remembered was seven.

"The mistakes in the perception of distances fluctuated between one and fourteen millimeters; the time for the sorting of the forty-eight cards, between thirty-five and fifty-eight seconds; the a.s.sociation-time for the six a.s.sociated words taken together was between nine and twenty-one seconds. The pointing experiments could not be made use of in this first series, as it was found that quite a number of partic.i.p.ants 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 seventh place in the memory experiment was in the fifteenth place with reference to the number of letters marked, in the third place with reference to the letters overlooked, in the twenty-first place with reference to the number of word pairs which she had grasped, in the eleventh place with reference to the exact.i.tude of s.p.a.ce-perception, in the sixteenth place with reference to the a.s.sociation-time, and in the sixth 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. * * *

"With this average rank list, we compared the practical results of the telephone company after three months had pa.s.sed. 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 cla.s.s 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 partic.i.p.ants 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.

[Sidenote: _Theory and Practice_]

"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 psychological 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."

[Sidenote: _How to Identify the Unfit_]

a.n.a.lytical test studies such as the foregoing form an almost infallible means for finding out the unfit at the very beginning instead of after a long and costly experimental trying-out in vocational training-school or in actual service.

Whatever your line of business may be, you may rest a.s.sured that an a.n.a.lysis of its needs will disclose numerous departments in which specific mental tests and devices may be employed with a great saving in time and money and a vastly increased efficiency and output of working energy.

[Sidenote: _Means to Great Business Economies_]

Suppose that you are the manager of a street railroad employing a large number of motormen. Would it not be of the greatest value to you if in a few moments you could determine in advance whether any given applicant for a position possessed the quickness of response to danger signals that would enable him to avoid accidents? Think what this would mean to the profits of your company in cutting down the number of damage claims arising from accidents! Some electric railroad companies have as many as fifty thousand accident indemnity cases per year, which involve an expense amounting in some cases to thirteen per cent of the annual gross earnings. Yet a comparatively simple mechanism has been devised for determining by the reaction-time of any applicant whether he would or would not be quick enough to stop his car if a child ran in front of its wheels.

[Sidenote: _Round Pegs in Square Holes_]

The general employment of this test would result in the rejection of about twenty-five per cent of those who are now employed as motormen with a correspondingly large reduction in the number of deaths and injuries from street-car accidents. And on the other hand, the general use of psychological tests in other lines of work would make room for these men in places for which they are peculiarly adapted and where their earning power would be greater.

If, for example, the applicant responds to the signs of an emergency in three-fifths of a second or less, and has the mental characteristics that will enable him at the same time to maintain the speed required by the schedule, he may be mentally fitted for the "job" of motorman; while if it takes him one second or more to act in an emergency, he may be a dangerous man for the company and for the public.

[Sidenote: _The Danger in Two-Fifths of a Second_]

Two-fifths of a second difference in time-reactions may mark the line between safety and disaster. How absurd it is to trust to luck in matters of this kind when by means of scientific experimental tests you can accurately gauge your man before he has a chance to involve you or your company in a heart-breaking tragedy and serious financial loss!

You can readily see that very similar tests could be devised to meet the needs of the employer of chauffeurs, as, for example, the manager of a taxicab company, or the requirements of a railroad in the hiring of its engineers.

[Sidenote: _Picking a Private Secretary_]

You should not employ as private secretary a person whose reactions indicate a natural inability to keep a secret. This quality of mind can be simply and unerringly detected by psychological tests.

[Sidenote: _Finding Out the Close-Mouthed_]

One quality entering into the ability to keep a secret is the degree of suggestibility of the individual. That person who most quickly and automatically obeys and responds to suggested commands possesses the least degree of conscious self-control. The quality referred to is ill.u.s.trated by the child's game of "thumbs up, thumbs down," and "Simon says thumbs up" and "Simon says thumbs down." Those persons who are unable to wait for the "Simon says," but mechanically obey the command "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" would be those least able to resist a trap artfully laid to compel them to disclose what they wished to conceal. Like efficiency in observation, attention and memory, however, suggestibility is specific, not general, in character--that is to say, persons may be easily influenced by certain kinds of suggestion while possessing a strong degree of resistance to other kinds. Consequently actual tests of this quality cannot be limited to one method.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DETERMINING SUGGESTIBILITY BY PROGRESSIVE LINE TEST PRIVATE LABORATORY, SOCIETY OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY]

For purposes of ill.u.s.tration, here is a simple form of what is known as the "line" test for suggestibility. The subject is seated about two feet away from and in front of a revolving drum on which is a strip of white paper. On this strip of white paper are drawn twenty parallel straight lines. These lines begin at varying distances from the left-hand margin. Each of the first four lines is fifty per cent longer than the one before it, but the remaining sixteen lines are all of the same length.

[Sidenote: _A Test for Suggestibility_]

The examiner says to the subject, "I want to see how good your 'eye'

is. I'll show you a line, say an inch or two long, and I want you to reproduce it right afterwards from memory. Some persons make bad mistakes; they may make a line two inches long when I show them one three inches long; others make one four or five inches long. Let's see how well you can do. I shall show you the line through this slit. Take just one look at it, then make a mark on this paper [cross-section paper] just the distance from this left-hand margin that the line is long. Do that with each line as it appears."

The lines are then shown one at a time, and after each is noted it is turned out of sight. As the lines of equal length are presented, the examiner says alternately, "Here is a longer one," "Here is a shorter one," and so on. The extent to which these misleading suggestions of the examiner are accepted and acted upon by the subject in plain violation of the evidence of his senses tests in a measure his suggestibility, his automatic, mechanical and immediate responsiveness to the influence of others and his comparative lack of strong resistance to such outside influences. Inability to satisfactorily meet this and similar tests for suggestibility would indicate an unfitness for such duties as those required by a private secretary, who must at all times have himself well in hand and not be easily lured into embarra.s.sing revelations.

[Sidenote: _Selecting a Stenographer_]

You should not employ as stenographer a person whose time-reactions indicate a slowness of auditory response or an inability to carry in mind a long series of dictated words, or whose vocabulary is too limited for the requirements of your business.

[Sidenote: _Tests for Auditory Acuity_]

The quickness of auditory response may be determined either by speech tests or by instrumental tests. In either case the acuteness of hearing of the applicant is measured by the ability to promptly and correctly report sounds at various known ranges, the acuity of the normal ear under precisely similar conditions having been previously determined. Speech involves a great variety of combinations--of pitch, accent, inflection and emphasis. Consequently a scientific speech test involves the preparation of lists of words based upon an a.n.a.lysis of the elements of whispered and spoken utterance. This work has been done, and such lists and tests are available.

[Sidenote: _A Test for Rote Memory_]

For testing the ability to remember a series of dictated words the following lists of words are recommended:

_Concrete_ _Abstract_ _Concrete_ _Abstract_ _Concrete_ _Abstract_

street scope coat time pen law ink proof woman aft clock thought lamp scheme house route man plot spoon form salt phase floor glee horse craft glove work sponge life chair myth watch truth hat rhythm stone rate box thing chalk faith ground cause mat tact knife mirth

The examiner should repeat these lists of words to the subject one at a time, alternating the concrete and abstract lists. To insure the presentation of the words with an even tempo, a metronome may be had by simply swinging a small weight on a string, having the string of just sufficient length so that the beats come at intervals of one second. Each word should be p.r.o.nounced distinctly in time with the beat of the metronome, but without rhythm. After each list has been p.r.o.nounced, have the subject write the list from memory. The lists thus made up by the subject from memory are then to be inspected with reference to the following points:

1. Memory errors (omissions and displacements), concrete lists.

2. Memory errors (omissions and displacements), abstract lists.

Every omission counts two errors; every displacement counts two-thirds when the displacement is by one remove only, one and one-third when by more than one move.

3. Insertions. These are words added by the subject. They count for two errors each, unless the added word resembles the word given in sound, in which case it counts one and one-third.

4. Perseverations. These are reproductions in a given series of words already given in a previous series. If frequent, this indicates a low order of intelligence, with weak self-control and poor critical judgment. Each perseveration counts four.

5. Subst.i.tution of synonyms, when a word of like meaning but different sound is subst.i.tuted for the word given; counts one and one-third.

[Sidenote: _A Test for Range of Vocabulary_]