Cross-Roads of Success or Failure
No man ever rose very high who did not possess strong reserves of emotional energy. Napoleon said, "I would rather have the ardor of my soldiers, and they half-trained, than have the best fighting machines in Europe without this element."
Emotional energy of the right kind makes one fearless and undaunted inthe face of any discouragement. It is never at rest. It feeds on its own achievements. It is the love of an Heloise and the ambition of an Alexander.
The Life of Effort
It is this emotional energy that makes business passion, that makes men love their business, that brings their hearts into harmony with their undertakings, and that gives them splendid visions of commercial greatness.
The Motive Power of Progress
Through all the ages great souls have drowsed in spiritless acquiescence until some tide of emotional energy swept over them, "as the breeze wanders over the dead strings of some Aeolian harp, and sweeps the music which slumbers upon them now into divine murmurings, now into stormy sobs." And then,and then, these Joans of Arc, these Hermit Peters, these Abraham Lincolns, these Pierpont Morgans, these warriors, statesmen, financiers, business men, salesmen, these practical crusaders and business enthusiasts, have sent out their influence into measureless fields of achievement.
Emotional energy generated on proper lines, and based on the support of a fixed intent, is a force that nothing can withstand, and we tell you that every idea that comes into your mind has its emotional quality, and that by the intelligent direction of your conscious "thinking" you can call into your life or drive out of it these powerful emotional influences for good or evil.
The Value of an Idea
As Mr. Waldo P. Warren says, "Who can measure the value of an idea? Starting as the bud of an acorn, it becomes at last a forest of mighty oaks; or beginning as a spark it consumes the rubbish of centuries.
"Ideas are as essential to progress as a hub to a wheel, for they form the center around which all things revolve. Ideas begin great enterprises, and the workers of all lands do their bidding. Ideas govern the governors, rule the rulers, and manage the managers of all nations and industries. Ideas are the motive power which turns the tireless wheels of toil. Ideas raise the plowboy to president, and constitute the primal element of the success of men and nations. Ideas form the fire that lightsthe torch of progress, leading on the centuries. Ideas are the keys which open the storehouses of possibility. Ideas are the passports to the realms of great achievement. Ideas are the touch-buttons which connect the currents of energy with the wheels of history. Ideas determine the bounds, break the limits, move on the goal, and waken latent capacity to successive sunrises of better days."
Even without our telling you, you know that whenever a man makes up his mind that he is beaten in some fight his very thinking so helps on the fatal outcome.
The Hard Work Required to Fail
The truth is,It takes just as much brain work to accomplish a failure as it does to win success—just as mucheffort to build up a depressive mental attitude as an energizing one.
Creative Power of Thought
Take for granted that you have the courage, the energy, the self-confidence and the enthusiasm to do what you want to do, and you will find yourself in possession of these splendid qualities when the need arises.
Consciously or unconsciously, you have already trained your mind to discriminate among sense-impressions. It perceives some and ignores others. For each perception it selects such associates as you have trained it to select. Have you trained it wisely? Does it associate the new facts of observation with those memory-pictures that will make the new ideas useful and productive of fruitful bodily activities?
Conscious and Unconscious Training
If not, it is time for you to turn over a new leaf and habitually and persistently direct your attention to those associative elements in each new-learned fact that will make for health and happiness and success. Train your mind deliberately, and day by day, to such constant incorporation of feelings of courage and confidence and assurance into all your thoughts that the associated impulses to bodily activity will inevitably influence your whole life.
At the outset of every undertaking you are confronted with two ways of attacking it. One is withdoubt and uncertainty; the other is withcourage and confidence.
Two Ways of Attacking Business Problems
The first of these mental attitudes ispurely negative. It is inhibitory. It is made up of mental pictures of yourself in direful situations, and these mental pictures bring with them depressing emotions andmuscular inhibitions.
The second attitude is positive. It is inspiring. It is made up of mental pictures of yourself bringing the affair to a triumphant issue, and these mental pictures bring with them stimulating emotions and the impulses to those bodily activities that willrealize your aims.
You have only to start the thing off with the right mental attitude and hold to it. All the rest is automatic. Think this over.
Put this same idea into your business. Analyze your business with referenceto itsmental attitude. Of course, you know all about its organization, its various departments, its machinery and equipment, its methods, its cost system, its organized efficiency. But what about its mental attitude? Every store, every industrial establishment has an air of its own, an indefinite something that distinguishes it from every other. This is why you buy your cigars at one place instead of at another.
Cutting into the Quick
Look behind the methods and the systems and all the wooden machinery of your business and you come to its throbbing life. There you find the characteristic quality that governs its future. There you find the attitude, the mental attitude, that pulls the strings determining the conduct of clerks andsalesmen, managers and superintendents, and this attitude is in the last analysis a reflection of the mental attitude of the executive head himself—not necessarily the nominal executive head, but the real executive head, however he be called.
Executives Real and Sham
Does the truckman whistle at his work? Is the salesman proud of his line and his house? Does he approach his "prospect" with the confident enthusiasm that brings orders? Does the shipping clerk take a delighted interest in getting out his deliveries? They must have this mental attitude, or you will never win. Are you yourself "making good" in this respect? Remember that, whether you know it or not, your inmost thoughts are reflected in yourvoice and manner, your every act. And all your subordinates, whether they know it or not, see these things and reflect your attitude.
Mental Attitude of One's Business
Therefore, in all you do, and in all you think, do it and think it with courage and with unwavering faith, fearing nothing.
Later on we shall instruct you in specific methods that will enable you to follow this injunction. For the present we must be content with emphasizing its importance.
Psychological Engineering
In what follows in this book we shall bring forth no new principle of mental operation, but shall illustrate those already learned by reference to certain practical uses to which they can be applied. Our purpose in this is to impressyou with the immense practical value of the knowledge you are acquiring, and to show you that this course of reading has nothing to do with telepathy, spiritism, clairvoyance, animal magnetism, fortune-telling, astrology or witchcraft, but, on the contrary, that in its revelation of mental principles and processes it is laying a scientific basis for a highly differentiated type of efficiency engineering.
[Pg 54][Pg 55]HOW TO SELECT EMPLOYEES[Pg 56]
HOW TO SELECT EMPLOYEES
HOW TO SELECT EMPLOYEES
In the preceding volume, entitled "Making Your Own World," you learned that reaction-time is the interval that elapses between the moment when a sense-vibration reaches the body and the moment when perception is made known by some outward response.
A Clue to Adaptability
Reaction-time can be made to furnish a clue to the adaptability of the individual for any business, profession or vocation.
To determine the character, accuracyand rapidity of the mental reactions of different individuals under different conditions, various scientific methods have been evolved and cunning devices invented.
Mapping the Mentality
There are decisive reaction-time tests by which you may readily map out your own mentality or that of any other person, including, for instance, those who may seek employment under you.
Have you been harboring the delusion that "quick as thought" is a phrase expressive of flash-like quickness? Have you had the idea that thought is instantaneous? If so, you must alter your conceptions.
The fact is that your merely automatic reactions from sense-impressions can be measured in tenths of a second,while a really intellectual operation of the simplest character requires from one to several seconds.
An important thing for you to know in this connection is that no two people are alike in this respect. Some think quickly along certain lines; some along other lines.
The Kind of "Help" You Need
And the man or woman that you need in any department of your business is that onewhose mind works swiftly in the particular way required for your business.
How rapidly does your mind work? How fast do your thoughts come, compared to the average man in your field of activity?
How fast does your stenographer think? Your clerk? Your chauffeur?Are they up to the average of those engaged in similar work? If not, you had best make a change.
Tests for Different Mental Traits
A large number of tests and mechanical devices, some of them most complicated, have been scientifically formulated or invented to measure the quickness of different kinds of mental operations in the individual.
One very simple test which we give merely to illustrate the principle is called the "Test of Uncontrolled Association." All the materials needed for this test are a stop-watch and a blank form containing numbered spaces for one hundred words.
Test of Uncontrolled Associations
Give these instructions to the person you are examining: "When I say 'Now!' I want you to start in withsome word, any one you like, and keep on saying words as fast as you can until you have given a hundred different words. You may give any words you like, but they must not be in sentences. I will tell you when to stop." You then start your stop-watch with the command "Now!" and write the words on the blank form as fast as they are spoken. Mere abbreviations or shorthand will suffice. When the hundredth word is reached, stop the watch and note the time.
The average time for lists of words written in this fashion is about 308 seconds.
Test for Quick Thinking
This is a fair test of the rapidity of the associative processes of the mind. It will reveal many strange and characteristicidiosyncrasies. On the other hand, considering the vast number of words available, it is remarkable to note the degree of community to be found in the words that will be given by a number of persons. Thus, "in fifty lists (5,000 words) only 2,024 words were different, only 1,266 occurred but once, while the one hundred most frequent words made up three-tenths of the whole number."
Professor Jastrow, of Wisconsin University, has found also that the "class to which women contribute most largely is that of articles of dress, one word in every eleven belonging to this class. The inference from this, that dress is the predominant category of the feminine (or of the privy feminine)mind, is valid, with proper reservations."
Measuring Speed of Thought
Another method of testing speed of thought is to pronounce a series of words and after each word have the subject speak the first word that comes to him. The answers are taken down and are timed with a stop-watch. About the quickest answers by an alert person will be made in one second, or one and one-fifth seconds, while most persons take from one and three-fifths to two and three-fifths seconds to answer, under the most favorable circumstances. Puzzling words or conflicting emotions will prolong this time to five and ten seconds in many cases. Much depends upon the kind of words propounded to the subject, starting with such simplewords as "hat" and "coat," and changing to words that tend to arouse emotion. A list of words may be carefully selected to fit the requirements of different classes of subjects.
Range of Mental Tests
By appropriate tests, the quickness of response to sense-impressions, the character of the associations of ideas, the workings of the individual imagination, the nature of the emotional tendencies, the character and scope of the powers of attention and discrimination, the degree of persistence of the individual and his susceptibility to fatigue in certain forms of effort, the visual, auditory and manual skill, and even the moral character of the subject, can be more or less clearly and definitely determined.
TESTING SHARPNESS OF HEARING WITH ACOUMETER. PRIVATE LABORATORY, SOCIETY OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
It is possible by these tests to distinguish individual differences in thought processes as conditioned by age, sex, training, physical condition, and so on, to analyze the comparative mental efficiency of the worker at different periods in the day's work as affected by long hours of application, by monotony and variety of occupation and the like, and even to reveal obscure mental tendencies and to disclose motives or information that are being intentionally concealed.
Tests for Army and Navy
Among the simplest of such tests are those for vision, hearing and color discrimination. Tests of this kind are now given to all applicants for enlistment in the army, the navy and the marine corps, and more exacting tests of thesame sort are given to candidates for licenses as pilots and for positions as officers of ships.
Tests for Railroad Employees
Employees of railroads, and in some cases those of street railroads, also, are subjected to tests for vision, hearing and color-discrimination. In the case of trainmen the color-discrimination tests result in the rejection of about four per cent of the applicants. The tests are repeated every two years for all the men and at intervals of six months for those suspected of defects in color discrimination. In all of these cases the tests have for their object the detection and rejection of unfit applicants.
What One Factory Saved
One of the earliest instances of work of this kind was the introduction a few years ago of reaction-time tests inselecting girls for the work of inspecting for flaws the steel balls used in ball bearings. This work requires a concentrated type of attention, good visual acuity and quick and keen perception, accompanied by quick responsive action. The scientific investigator went into a bicycle ball factory and with a stop-watch measured the reaction-time of all the girls then at work. All those who showed a long time between stimulus and reaction-time were then eliminated. The final outcome was that thirty-five girls did the work formerly done by one hundred and twenty; the accuracy of the work was increased by sixty-six per cent; the wages of the girls were doubled; the working day was shortened from ten and one-half hoursto eight and one-half hours; and the profit of the factory was substantially increased.
Professor Münsterberg's Experiments
To illustrate the methods employed and the importance of work of this kind, we quote the following from the recent ground-breaking book, "Psychology and Industrial Efficiency," by Professor Hugo Münsterberg, of Harvard University. This extract is an account of Professor Münsterberg's experimental method for determining in advance the mental fitness of persons applying for positions as telephone operators. Such information would be of immense value to telephone companies, as each candidate who satisfies formal entrance requirements receives several months' training in a telephoneschool and is paid a salary while she is being trained.
Tests for Hiring Telephone Girls
One company alone employs twenty-three thousand operators, and more than one-third of those employed and trained at the company's expense prove unfitted and leave within six months, with a heavy resulting financial loss to the company. The tests are numerous and somewhat complicated and require more time to conduct them than tests in other lines of work, but for these very reasons will be particularly illuminating. Professor Münsterberg says:
"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 psychological functions. * * * A part of the psychologicaltests were carried on in individual examinations, but the greater part with the whole class together.
Memory Test
Test for Attention
"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 the whole class at first two numbers of four digits, then two of five digits, then two of six digits, and so on up to figures of twelve 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 psychologyof 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.
Test for General Intelligence
"The third test, which was tried with the whole class, referred to the intelligence of the individuals. * * * 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. * * * 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. The experiment consists in reading to the pupils a long series ofpairs 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." (For example, "thunder" and "lightning" are words that "logically belong together," while "horse" and "bricks" are unrelated terms.—Editor's note.)
"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. Thevery 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 twenty-four pairs of words from the sphere of experience of the girls to be tested." (For instance, "door, house"; "pillow, bed"; "letter, word"; "leaf, tree"; "button, dress"; "nose, face"; "cover, kettle"; "page, book"; "engine, train"; "glass, window"; "enemy, friend"; "telephone, bell"; "thunder, lightning"; "ice, cold"; "ink, pen"; "husband, wife"; "fire, burn"; "sorry, sad"; "well, strong"; "mother, child"; "run, fast"; "black, white"; "war, peace"; "arm, hand."—Editor's note.)
Test for Exactitude
"Two class experiments belonged rather to the periphery of psychology.
"The exactitude of space-perceptions 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.
Test for Rapidity of Movement
"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 forty-eight cards into four piles as quickly as possible. The time was measured in fifths of a second, with an ordinary stop-watch.
Test for Accuracy of Movement
"The following experiment whichreferred 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.
TESTING STEADINESS OF MOTOR CONTROL—INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENT PRIVATE LABORATORY, SOCIETY OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
"The last individual experiment wasan 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, with an ordinary stop-watch, as subtler experiments, for which hundredths of a second would have to be considered, were not needed.
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 attentionmade 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 mistakesover 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 association-time for the six associated 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 participantswere 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 exactitude of space-perception, in the sixteenth place with reference to the association-time, and in the sixth place with referenceto 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 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, infiguring 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 beeneliminated. 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.
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 combinationsof test experiments and to better adjusted schemes."
How to Identify the Unfit
Analytical 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 assured that an analysis 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.
Means to Great Business Economies
Suppose that you are the manager of a street railroad employing a largenumber 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 hewould or would not be quick enough to stop his car if a child ran in front of its wheels.
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 enablehim 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.
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 needsof 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.
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.
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 illustrated by the child's game of "thumbs up, thumbsdown," 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.
DETERMINING SUGGESTIBILITY BY PROGRESSIVE LINE TEST PRIVATE LABORATORY, SOCIETY OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
For purposes of illustration, 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.
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 embarrassing revelations.
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.
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 analysis of the elements of whispered and spoken utterance. This work has been done, and such lists and tests are available.
A Test for Rote Memory
For testing the ability to remembera series of dictated words the following lists of words are recommended: