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