The Project Gutenberg eBook ofVocational Psychology: Its Problems and MethodsThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and MethodsAuthor: Harry L. HollingworthLeta Stetter HollingworthRelease date: February 23, 2012 [eBook #38962]Most recently updated: January 8, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Bryan Ness, Josephine Paolucci and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (Thisbook was produced from scanned images of public domainmaterial from the Google Print project.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY: ITS PROBLEMS AND METHODS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and MethodsAuthor: Harry L. HollingworthLeta Stetter HollingworthRelease date: February 23, 2012 [eBook #38962]Most recently updated: January 8, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Bryan Ness, Josephine Paolucci and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (Thisbook was produced from scanned images of public domainmaterial from the Google Print project.)
Title: Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and Methods
Author: Harry L. HollingworthLeta Stetter Hollingworth
Author: Harry L. Hollingworth
Leta Stetter Hollingworth
Release date: February 23, 2012 [eBook #38962]Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Bryan Ness, Josephine Paolucci and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (Thisbook was produced from scanned images of public domainmaterial from the Google Print project.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY: ITS PROBLEMS AND METHODS ***
WITH A CHAPTER ONTHE VOCATIONAL APTITUDES OF WOMENByLETA STETTER HOLLINGWORTH,Ph.D.CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST, BELLEVUE HOSPITAL,NEW YORK CITYD. APPLETON AND COMPANYNEW YORK LONDON1922Copyright, 1916, byD. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
TOTHADDEUS L. BOLTONFRIEND AND VOCATIONALCOUNSELLOR OF YOUTH
It is our business to make both a science and an art of human nature. As in the physical world we select first the material suited to our purpose, then turn the iron into steel and temper the steel for the knife, so in the world of human action we must learn to select the right man, to educate him and to fit him for his exact task. This indeed we try to do in all our social institutions, religions, commerce, systems of education and government. But we work by the rule of thumb—blind, deaf and wasteful. The nineteenth century witnessed an extraordinary increase in our knowledge of the material world and in our power to make it subservient to our ends; the twentieth century will probably witness a corresponding increase in our knowledge of human nature and in our power to use it for our welfare.—J. McKeen Cattell, "Homo Scientificus Americanus,"Science, April 10, 1903.
This book has developed from the material presented in a course on "Psychological Tests in Vocational Guidance and Selection" which the writer was invited to conduct in Teachers' College, Columbia University. The widespread interest in vocational psychology which has grown up in recent years, the eagerness with which even the most superficial and absurd systems of "character analysis" are being adopted and tried out, and especially the lack of references, offering conservative evaluation, to which inquirers may be directed, have made it seem advisable to publish the material in systematic form. The book is essentially a presentation of the problems and methods of that branch of applied psychology which deals with individual differences in mental constitution. In the present instance only those differences are considered which may seem to be significant in determining the individual's choice of a vocation, or in influencing the selection of workers from among a group of applicants or candidates. It is the writer's hope that the book may be suggestive to the individual who seeks to know himself better, helpful to the student and parent who may desire to avoid the wiles of the charlatan, encouraging to the investigator or counsellor who is engaged in carrying forward the solution of vocational problems, and useful to the practical man who may be mainly interested in surrounding himself with competent associates and employees. To all those whose published works are referred to in the bibliography, as well as tomany not therein mentioned, the writer is under heavy obligations. He is especially indebted to Professor F. G. Bonser, of Teachers' College, for the original invitation to formulate the material, and to Professor Joseph Jastrow, editor of the "Conduct of Mind" series, for most patient and helpful editorial criticism and suggestion.
H. L. Hollingworth.Columbia University.
CHAPTERPAGEI.—Motives and Antecedents of Vocational Psychology1II.—The Search for Phrenological and Physiognomic Principles21III.—The Development of Psychological Tests57IV.—The Psychographic Methods80V.—Special Vocational Tests and Methods109VI.—Self-analysis and the Judgment of Associates122VII.—Experimental Study of Self-analysis, Estimates of Associates and the Results of the Tests143VIII.—The School Curriculum as a Vocational Test174IX.—The Determinants of Vocational Aptitude208X.—The Vocational Aptitudes of Women222XI.—Theory and Principle of Psychological Tests as Applied To Vocational Analysis245XII.—Conclusion266Appendix275Tests, Blanks, Standards, Forms283Index303
In the present volume Professor Hollingworth makes a distinctive and notable contribution to applied psychology. The problem is an ancient one: that of determining the qualities of men with reference to their fitness for the work of the world. The general problem precedes the special one alike in theory and in practice. The earliest solutions were in the nature of ambitious attempts to read the ear-marks of mental ability in outward signs; under the incentive of the growth of science these gave way to such systems as phrenology and physiognomy. Such revelations, decisive if sound, proved to be vain hopes or hopelessly irrelevant. The impressionistic verdicts gained from actual experience reflected the cumulative acumen of discernment which ever was and remains the issue of wisdom, empirical but authentic. It furnishes suggestive clues to investigation and a check upon its results. The problem came to its own when the modern science of psychology gave it its setting in the rapid accumulation of knowledge and technique for the interpretation of mental qualities. It at once established the futility of ambitious leads and the necessity of careful, patient and discerning analysis. The present volume surveys the field of attained results and the method of their attainment, in this engaging research.
Central in interest and promise stands the psychological test. In so far as psychology has laid bare the fundamental qualities upon which achievement depends,its application has developed a series of tests to determine how the individual compares with the others or with the average in respect to this, that, and the other constituent quality. Professor Hollingworth presents the results of such analysis, both in relation to the variety of human traits and in the grading of individuals by reference to the measure of the quality which each possesses. The enumeration is at best provisional, but in its totality cannot go far wrong in establishing the measure of a man. It includes the qualities which can hardly be determined otherwise than by an impressionistic judgment, as well as those appraised by actual achievement under test. There results a mental scale of general ability, adequate to gauge normality and to suggest practical standards of superiority or deficiency.
The question at once arises: how far are the qualities desirable for this or that vocation of a general order, and how far are they specific in their demands. In this respect vocations differ widely. The musical vocation exemplifies a specialized profession depending upon a proficiency that is largely a dower of heredity; yet within this field the psychological test has proved its efficiency by determining the still more specialized facilities that jointly compose the psychology of the musician. In further pursuit of insight the psychological laboratory has undertaken to analyze the qualities needed for the several specialties of modern vocational life, by setting up "test" counterparts of practical occupations, by reducing them to their underlying facilities, by testing the correlation of quality and achievement, and by combining the clues or verdicts of several methods. Conclusions depend for their value upon logical caution and the technical methods which have been developed tomeet these applications. All this is as yet but a program or a limited beginning in its execution; but it is a program well founded in principle and already in part available in practice.
A group of collateral interests supports the enterprise and yields valuable results. The interest in unusual men has led to the psychograph or psychological analysis of the qualities of great men, as an individual study. Men fall into types, by temperament and achievement, by heredity and career. The type makes definite the larger contours of human differences and reveals their specific combination; the charm of biography is psychological as well as historical. The vital import of heredity—practically expressed in the eugenic movement—finds recognition in the study of correlation of traits in those near of kin. Evolution leads to prediction; early taste, talent, achievement, precocity foreshadow ultimate capacity; we learn how far the child is father to the man, how far we may see the future in the early expressions and with what limitations the environment molds character. The most valued because most authentic type of biography is autobiography. Self-analysis is intimate if unreliable, but by this token worthy of study. Professor Hollingworth's contribution to the measure of reliance to be placed upon one's judgment of self in comparison with one's judgment of others and others' judgment of him forms an interesting original study—one of many—incorporated in these chapters.
Of distinctive status are the tests of ability presented by life itself and by the conventional institutions which compose the social environment. The processes of education, the rate of advance, the comparative readiness with which one or another discipline is absorbed and mastered:these are at once preparations for life and accredited tests of ability. For these reasons such "school" qualities are subjected to a special study; and fairly conclusive results indicate to what measure they must be supplemented, if not superseded, by the designed psychological test, to meet the conditions of actual selection and employment of men. At this point the several methods converge; for the vocations have a vital interest in the school, as has the school in vocational application of its discipline and training. The actual comparison of results, especially by the method of correlation, has already established the degree of relation—and eventually of coöperation—to be expected of the two. In all these ways has painstaking method supplemented and replaced impressionism, haphazard opinion been supported or overturned by accumulation of fact, and the scientific approach to the study of vocational fitness become firmly established. The road from theory to practice, if it is to be well built and enduring, must be laid on careful foundation. To such an end this volume is a worthy contribution.
No question of vocational fitness has been more eagerly discussed than the contrasted fitness of men and women, and the consequent basis of differentiation of career desirable or necessary for the two, both as wage-earners and in every other relation of life. A discussion of this problem from the point of view of this volume is wisely included, and in turn a definite negative conclusion reached. It is shown that in the main capacities tested—with several and significant exceptions—men and women, boys and girls, are comparable; individual differences outweigh sex differences. The interpretation of this result will not be uniform, even when due allowance ismade for the range of tests responsible for the conclusion. The biologist will continue to insist upon the significance of fundamental differences; the experiences of life reinforce as they express the fact that men and women live with as well as upon a different perspective of psychological equipment; the psychologist may suggest that the tests and comparisons—based in large measure upon comparable and derivative facilities—naturally bring forth the parallel measure in which secondary qualities yield similar issues. It must be noted how largely a large share of conventional vocations call upon specialized and late varieties of intellectual traits; for these precisely, men and women may have comparable fitness, while none the less psychologically contrasted in realms closer to natural function. Women have proved that they are as fit to study—and, if you like, to vote—as are men; as fit to enter and succeed in vocations in terms of tested qualifications. How far the less measurable and collateral qualities make them fit and successful on a different basis, and still leave them contrasted in fundamental reactions, is a very different question. It is well to understand the bearing as well as the range of the ascertained facts of the case.
The modern man and the modern woman live upon the upper ranges of their qualities, and in no respect more momentously than in respect to those qualities exercised and demanded by vocational fitness. In the biological sense they are all highly specialized, refined, derivative, secondary issues of qualities that had a limited scope in the primitive form of life in which the race achieved its maturity and established its psychology. The problem of civilization is to train these original traits of man to the specific cherished purposes of thework of the world. The life of the mind is as highly artificial as the life of the cities; for such is the condition of the twentieth century. Yet the primitive man survives and asserts his own; life is not all vocation. Social and industrial complexity dominates the expressions of human psychology. To unite a comprehension of their foundations with skill in applying their demands is the business of the "applied" psychologist. The present contribution, it is hoped, will prove a helpful aid to those who are striving to understand as well as to those who must apply with what wisdom they command, the available resources of human nature.
Joseph Jastrow.
Among very primitive people we find the recognition already established that the course of the individual's fortune depends on two distinct factors: external forces and personal characteristics. Individuals similar in type experience different fortunes because of the different external events that attend their respective careers. Equally, individuals of however diverse characteristics suffer the same fortunes at the hands of some common or identical external occurrence. Two combatants of equal skill and valor are rendered unequal by a defective lance; two runners equally swift are made unequal by a pebble in the path; a vigorous babe fails to mature properly because of pestilence, war, or famine. On the other hand, both old and young, weak and strong,stupid and cunning, are alike reduced to helplessness in the face of flood, earthquake, and forest fire.
Primitive thinking, in its attempts to control the course of personal fortune, thus had its attention directed to two groups of factors, each of which it sought to control by such means as it could at the moment devise. A very early stage of such thinking took the form of the belief thatdesirecould impress itself on the course of physical events and also on the development of personal characteristics. The expression of desire, either of the individual immediately concerned or of others more remotely involved, was consequently invoked and declared in more or less emphatic and overt form as a determining factor in personal fortune. In many cases this expression was given some indirect or symbolic form, as in gesture, ritual, tableau, masquerade, and imitative portrayal.
On the side of physical factors this attempt took the form of crude magic, adjuration, sacrifice, and incantation, all of which were calculated to dispose the physical elements favorably toward the individual concerned in the ceremonials. Crude ritual observances and ceremonies, such as sacrifice, mimicry, and tableau, were believed to influence in some occult way the growth of crops, thechanges in weather, the health of enemies, the movements of game, the supply of fish, etc. A typical fishing expedition among the natives of the Caroline Islands aptly illustrates this point of view. The chief official is not an expert boatman nor a fisher, but the medicine man of the tribe. He owes his authority not to his knowledge of the habits and haunts of fish, but to his store of incantations and exorcisms. Various rites are conducted before embarking. The fishermen must leave the island without speaking; and especially, the purpose of the expedition must not be mentioned aloud. A "luck" formula is pronounced over the boat. Sacrifices of special foods are offered, lest the lines be broken by sharks or tangled in the rocks. In Mexico, an elaborate pantomime, representing the harvesting of crops, was staged annually at a religious festival. This was believed sufficient to produce the good crops which were desired for the next season. Special dances were performed by persons representing the various vegetables which were particularly coveted.
Among primitive races in almost every part of the world one finds magical properties attributed to a sort of toy which anthropologists call the "bull roarer." It consists merely of a flat stick, attached to the end of a cord. When whirledaround it produces a roaring or humming sound which easily reminds one of the rumble of wind, the roll of thunder, or the distant cry of an animal. In various quarters this instrument is used in a ceremonial way. Since its sound resembles thunder, it is used as a charm against that form of physical violence. Because of its resemblance to both thunder and wind, it is incorporated in elaborate rain-making mysteries. Sometimes it is used to drive or call wild or domesticated animals, and hence comes to be used as a means of bringing luck to hunters. Figures and emblems, carved on the slab of wood, are supposed to specify the particular kind of luck or fortune which the individual seeks.
On the side of personal characteristics the same endeavor took the form of blessings, incantations, dedications, curses, prayers and petitions, the wearing of symbolic charms and the submission of the infant or youth to a variety of prenatal and childhood experiences and ceremonials. Thus it is believed that by appropriating a dead man's spear and thereby expressing a desire for his skill and valor, these traits of character will pass to the new owner. Boys are tossed into the air to make them grow tall, and rubbed with crystals and snake-skins to make them clever and intrepidmedicine men. By scratching lifelike sketches of bison, deer, and fish on rocks, walls, and weapons, the savage hunter sought to acquire otherwise unattainable adroitness and success. "Disease or death may be produced by operating on the cuttings of a person's hair, the parings of his nails, or the remains of his food, when the person himself is far away. By wearing tiger's teeth a man may make himself brave and fierce." By drinking the blood of bulls he may become stalwart and powerful. The Ojibway Indian, in order to hurt his enemy and thus further his own interests, makes a small image of him and pierces it with a needle in the faith that the enemy will suffer. In order to terminate the latter's career he burns or buries the effigy, uttering magic words as he does so.
Remnants of this primitive magic still persist in the "psychological underworld," and many an old-wives' practice and incantation is in various quarters still believed or professed to further the course of the individual's fortune, or to jeopardize it, by rendering natural forces more benign or malignant, or by exerting some occult molding influence on the infantile abilities and propensities. Thus it is not at all uncommon, even in these days, for children to be dedicated at birth to the ministry,the missionary field, the service of the king, or to some particular cause or propaganda. A woman of the writer's acquaintance, solicitous for the future welfare of her babe, read solid and serious books during gestation in order to balance the emotional influences due to her absorption in music teaching during that period. Many practices of the most superstitious kind are resorted to in order to predetermine the sex, and hence the vocational prospects, of children yet unborn. Reliance on prayer as an effective agent in changing the course of events or the disposition and habits of some other individual is by no means confined to savages. Petitions that a neighbor may lose his appetite for drink, recover his lost eyesight, or find his wallet are as current in modern times as are official days of prayer for rain. Seeking to influence public opinion by the passing of formal resolutions, and modifying character, curing diseases and prolonging life through "absent treatment," the laying on of hands, the contemplation of relics, visitation of shrines, and concerted supplication, are practices which find high warrant in contemporary life. The essential idea behind all these practices seems to be the simple faith that nothing will interfere with the realization of desire, if only that desire is indicated by a methodwhich has official or traditional sanction. The true nature of cause and effect and the conception of natural law are not yet realized on this level of thought.
A more advanced stage in the development of such thinking is indicated by the recognition that both the series of physical events and the individual endowment follow laws which transcend the personal desires of men. Nature comes to be recognized as a system of facts and connections. Both control and foresight henceforth seek to base themselves on the utilization of these stable laws and relationships. Instead of willing the individual's fortune to be thus and so, there is an earnest endeavor to seek for signs and clues of what that fortune is inevitably destined to be. Fortune-making becomes fortune-telling. The accidents and accompaniments of birth, the momentary positions of the planets, the calendar incidents, the hour or day of birth, the local meteorological conditions, birth-marks, stigmata, physiognomic and anthropometric characteristics, the folds of the flesh, the lines of the hand, the mode of birth: every fact that can participate in a relation of coincidence with the birth of the individualis selected as a sign of some future state of affairs, desirable or untoward, in the fortune of the individual, of his personal, domestic and occupational career.
Thus, in a recently published guide to character analysis based on ancient astrological pretensions, the following characteristics are asserted to belong to those who are born in the month of February:
"Those born in this month are very intuitive and good judges of character and human nature. They are successes in mercantile interests and enterprises. It is said that the best wives are born in this month, being always faithful and devoted. Great sincerity and power are possible for those born in this month. They rise to great heights and on the other hand are inclined to sink to the lowest depths. At times they are inclined to be melancholy, a tendency which they may overcome.
"Most February persons have good taste, are quick at absorbing information, and intuitive. One of their great faults is that they are inclined to be intolerant and cannot make themselves think from another's point of view.
"Their most common diseases are of the nervous and rheumatic orders. They should guard their actions on the ninth and sixteenth day ofeach month. Luck day, Saturday. Favorite colors, all shades of blue, pink, and Nile green. Lucky stones, sapphire, opal, or turquoise. Lucky numbers, 5 and 7. They will excel in music and art, and should marry with those born in October, January, or June."
Hardly less common than faith in the horoscope is belief in the detailed prophecies of palmistry. The following is a direct reproduction of paragraphs from a well-known metropolitan American newspaper, of the year 1915 (A. D.), headed, "What Your Fingers Mean:"
"Shorter palm and longer fingers, these show an aptitude for doing small things well. Their owners analyze everything, are supersensitive over trifles, often feeling unintentional slights. When these fingers are slim, as well as longer than the palm, they give to one the quality of diplomacy. Card sharps and gamblers have these long, slim, smooth fingers. The average-length fingers with an ordinary-sized palm show a well-balanced mind, with a thoroughly commonplace nature. When long fingers (with shorter palm) are knotted at the joints we find an extreme love for the minor parts of construction, whether it be in the building of a bridge or the endless tasks pertaining to a kitchen."
The same thing happens in the case of the individual's own acts. Every petty move and caper is taken to be significant of his future disposition, powers, or achievements. The first word the child utters, the first object for which he reaches, the animal he first imitates, the form of his earliest play activities, nothing that can be identified and described but comes to possess, in someone's mind, some peculiar significance and prognostic value. "Homely in the cradle, lovely at the table," is an oft-quoted maxim among hopeful mothers. "Happy is the bride that the sun shines on," has doubtless served to postpone more than one nuptial ceremony, and being "born under an unlucky star" has equally often afforded a certain consolation for personal awkwardness. A father of the writer's acquaintance believed his boy destined to follow the career of a druggist or pharmacologist, because, as a child, "he was so fond of playing with bottles and of pouring water from one into the other." Any lack of submissive devotion to a rubber doll is calculated to fill the parent's heart with apprehension and dire forebodings for the domestic peace of his daughter. War-babies and infants born on the high seas are envied for their romantic prospects. Illegitimate children are expected to be idiotic or else to be especiallygifted with some poetic form of talent.
Belief in vocational magic and clairvoyance is clearly not entirely confined to medieval days. Nor is it true that such instances as those just cited arise only as material for frivolous conversations or as journalistic space-fillers in a dearth of more serious copy. So firmly are these superstitions established among large classes of people that special legislation is required to prevent their exploitation at the hands of crafty fakers. The fortune-teller is far from being a romantic and vestigial institution; and the type of prophecy which medieval clairvoyance represents continues to provide many with a substitute for more rigorous and less exciting inquiry.
However, as knowledge develops, a third stage is reached, in which we may be said to be moving, even though somewhat slowly, in our own scientific and educational work. This stage is marked by relative inattention to the series of physical events and by special emphasis on the original nature of the individual and on changes wrought in that original nature through the experiences of school life and other forms of educational process. The conditions and environmental factors of lifehave become so plastic that individuals can fairly easily find congenial environment and occupational material near at home or far from it, if only they know for what environment and material their natural powers are best adapted. Modern life, whether in city or in country, has become so diversified and labor so divided, that a small community affords the vocational variety which only a few years ago was quite unfamiliar to it. Moreover, the various avenues of communication, transportation and coöperation have become so elaborate that workers in one part of a nation can with little difficulty profit by activities and opportunities existing in distant places. Each branch of industry, commerce and art, as well as each professional and occupational activity, provides not only for a larger number of workers but for a greater variety as well. There is thus a tendency for the individual at an early point in his career, not only to adapt himself to an environment already provided, but to a certain degree to select that environment for which his abilities and interests seem best to fit him.
Attempts at controlling fortune, as now exercised, are neither magical nor clairvoyant. They take the rational, selective form of fitting the individual to the place for which his natural aptitudesbest adapt him, so far as these facts of adaptability are discoverable, and so far as the environment is plastic or optional. This is at least the description of the process in democratic conditions of society. In countries in which hereditary aristocracy and caste systems still exist, the fortune of the individual is determined to a considerable extent by his birthright, by the occupation of his father, above all by sex—all dominated by tradition. Within this field of guidance and selection, activity has developed rather independently in two different directions. There has been on the one hand the notion that all the individual needs for a satisfactory occupational adjustment is knowledge of available opportunities, and appropriate technical training for the occupation of his choice. This point of view is seen in our own country in the popularizing of general education.
Under this conception general education, instead of being the prerogative of the ruling or moneyed class, is urged as a common right, a social duty and an economic necessity. Learning is not limited to those who expect to enter the theological, medical, legal, or academic professions. A certain amount of elementary school-knowledge, or at least of school-attendance, comes to be requiredof every prospective worker. Even the feeble-minded are labored with in the attempt to bring them up to their highest possible academic level. Boys and girls alike are not only urged but compelled to equip themselves with the knowledge of the elementary formal subjects; and the community taxes itself to furnish the teachers, the books, and the necessary physical paraphernalia. In this earlier form of educational theory little effort is made to give immediate applicability to the subject-matter of the curriculum. Classical studies with very little relevance to contemporary life; dead languages, with only a feeble claim to concrete serviceability; formal exercises in designing and constructing useless bric-a-brac; trivial geographical, astronomical, anatomical, and military details: these are the subject-matter of the "general education." Back of their selection lies of course the doubtful conception that the general powers or faculties of the student are thereby cultivated, and that these may then be brought to bear effectively on any vocational activity which may be chosen.
The subject-matter is selected, not because of its interest or its utility, but mainly because of its difficulty and its formal character. Parental compulsion, vague social tendencies and impulses,petty personal rivalries, fondness for the teacher, and general cultural aspiration are relied on to facilitate the work of administration and to provide incentive. The "life-career" motive is but little utilized, and tends on the whole to be discouraged as sordid and commercial. But it is nevertheless believed that the grammatical, geographical, historical, and arithmetical elements will in the long run enable the pupil not only to enjoy life but to find it as well, or at least to be of the greatest possible service in the work into which he or she drifts. Only in the case of those who are utterly incompetent to deal with the general subject-matter, the feeble-minded, the blind, and the deaf, is this formal education willingly abandoned in favor of some definitely serviceable "industrial" training.
Quickly following this effort of the public schools to guide every boy and a few girls into successful careers through general education, came the realization that literary, linguistic, and mathematical information alone is inadequate to this task. It was felt by many that industrial or vocational education, calculated to fit the individual directly for his or her life occupation, shouldbe begun at a much earlier age than that at which the group choosing the professions entered upon their further studies in the higher technical schools. It became obvious that many pupils terminated their public-school education as soon as they had satisfied the minimal requirements of the compulsory education law. These engaged at the earliest possible opportunity in some immediately gainful occupation. The occupations into which they commonly drifted were such as called for only a slight amount of intelligence and promised proportionately little by way of further equipment or promotion. They have come to be called "blind alley" occupations, and refer to such work as that of errand boys, elevator and telephone operators, small clerks, domestic servants, nursemaids, messengers, delivery boys, and teamsters.
Meanwhile those who had continued in school and completed the high-school curriculum emerged without special vocational fitness, and even without any knowledge of the vocational possibilities of their age and locality. The further development of vocational and industrial education of special sorts was then supplemented by general instruction in the vocational opportunities available. Vocational surveys were initiated for the purpose of acquiring information which could beplaced in the hands of pupils and of those in charge of their training. These surveys made systematic inquiry into the vocational opportunities afforded to young people by the industries and enterprises of the vicinity. The assistance of employers was sought in the effort to learn the requirements of the various types of work; the nature of the labor involved; the wages; the general conditions, such as healthfulness, danger, companionship, and instruction; the rate of promotion; the prospect of future advancement. Such information has in many cases been published in pamphlets and bulletins and thus made accessible to teachers, pupils, and parents.
Along with this tendency went the attempt to give the pupil some first-hand knowledge of and immediate experience with the materials, implements, and products of the various industries from among which he or she might be expected to choose after leaving the school. This has been a difficult step to bring about, partly because of the various technical and administrative difficulties which it involved. Occasional hasty visits to mills, factories, stores, shops, offices, laboratories, and similar busy places give the pupil but a superficial notion of the actual work of the operations there observed. More extended and intensiveobservation, on the other hand, with perhaps an actual trial at the work, means a corresponding limitation of the range of institutions inspected. Talks by managers and foremen are likely to give only a dramatized view of the facts. School industries, on the other hand, cannot easily be organized and conducted in a manner technically complete and industrially representative. The result has been a growing tendency to push the vocational training further and further back into the earlier years of the curriculum, thus displacing much of the purely formal subject-matter. With this change have come various experiments in study-practice methods, in which part of the day or term is spent at the general academic work, and part in actual service in a tentatively chosen form of industrial or commercial activity.
In this movement but little recognition was given to the psychological differences and peculiarities of the individuals concerned. Knowledge of personal aptitudes and capacities, interests, and satisfactions, was more or less taken for granted in each case, or at least left to develop in its own way. It was assumed either that any individual could satisfactorily pursue any vocation in which he might become interested, or else that industrial and vocational information alonewas needed in order to enable the individual to make a suitable choice. Nor was there any doubt that the work which the youth found interesting and attractive at the time was the work in which he might find a maximum of ultimate success, satisfaction, and serviceableness. With the vocational surveys, the industrial schools, and the part-time practice methods of education we shall not be concerned, in what is to follow. They represent a movement of tremendous social and educational significance, but their development does not immediately concern that other field of work which we have designated "vocational psychology." They proceed mainly by giving the individual a knowledge of the external series of facts and events, thus replacing the era of fortune-telling and clairvoyance, with its search for signs and omens, just as fortune-telling had, in its own day, replaced the practices of crude objective magic. But the methods of industrial and occupational training have been found to solve only one aspect of the vocational problem; and it is more and more coming to be realized that a thorough understanding of the aptitudes which the individual brings to his work is as important as the knowledge of the opportunities which the environment affords. In the remainder of this bookwe shall be concerned with the various systematic efforts that have been made or are now being made to study the individual himself, and to judge from a determination of his mental characteristics the type of vocational activity which he is best fitted to undertake with success.
The primitive magic, directed toward the formation of individual character, was displaced by the personal clairvoyance which attempted to diagnose the individual's mental and moral constitution on the basis of his own early acts, expressions, and physical characteristics. This soon gave way to a tendency to abandon, for the most part, such signs as did not relate in some actual or fancied way, to the individual's brain. This limitation of the field of significant signs may be related to the widespread interest in human physiology, historically associated with the knowledge of anatomy. The invention of the microscope, Harvey's proof of the circulation of the blood, the discussion centering about the automaton theory of Descartes, and the rapid development of surgical technique, brought about a most interesting spread of curiosity concerning the nature and mechanism of the human body. Ballsand tournaments gave way to dissections and demonstrations as means of courtly entertainment. Celebrated surgeons exhibited their skill and knowledge, and lectured on the facts of physiology and anatomy in the formal presence of royalty and society. Court painters executed pictures such as "The Anatomy Lesson," some of them now cherished as famous masterpieces.
Especially keen became the interest in the skull and brain in which, as Descartes taught, might be found the seat of the soul. Among the earliest of the rough discoveries was that concerned with the localization of special sensory and motor functions of the organism in particular regions of the brain. It was observed that irritation of certain parts of the surface or "cortex" of the brain, in cases where a portion of the skull had been removed, was followed by movement of particular parts of the body, and that individuals who had suffered from injury to certain parts of the brain seemed, on recovery, to be quite their usual selves, except that certain special capacities, as for instance the function of speech, were interfered with or quite destroyed. The unitary soul, described by Descartes as probably having its seat in the pineal gland, now bade fair to disintegrate into various minor faculties, each with its separatebrain mechanism and its particular abode in some region of the skull.
The discovery of these elementary facts of brain localization was at once hit upon with zeal by those most interested in the means of foresight into human fortunes. Ignoring the fact that the localized features were simply the control of other parts of the body, as eyes, ears, limbs, speech organs, and the like, these enthusiasts leaped to the conclusion that every trait of character and every mental aptitude, every virtue and vice, ability, interest and capacity, had each its own shelf or pew in the brain area. Moreover, it was taken for granted that the relative development of these various characteristics was indicated by the depressions, projections and proportions of the skull bones. Here was light indeed on the destinies of men, their fitnesses and propensities, their appropriate choice of work and play! The enthusiasm and ardor that went into the elaboration of the new clairvoyance of phrenology would have meant most valuable increase in our knowledge of brain physiology had it been directed exclusively toward further legitimate inquiry. But the urgent desire for control and foresight was too great for practice to keep the slow pace of scientific fact.
Hastily the prophets drew up complicated and minute maps of the surface of the cranium and assigned to each recognizable patch some "faculty" which stood for an important mental or moral trait. Casual examination of the skulls of friends who chanced to possess particularly marked traits to an extreme degree was in some cases relied on to give guidance in the assignment of these patches to the respective traits. In some of the schemes the human traits conceived were so numerous that the bilateral symmetry and functions of the brain were ignored, and the two sides of the skull were assigned quite different functions. Thus arose phrenology, one of the most persistent fallacies of vocational analysis. This movement was founded by Gall and Spurzheim, two physicians and anatomists, in the latter part of the eighteenth century.[1]With the customary naïveté of the medical science of their time, they overestimated the significance of casual observations and fragmentary discoveries, and thus gave impetus to the exaggerated and extravagant claims made by their enthusiastic followers. "Phrenologicalsocieties" developed so rapidly and so widely that the movement became relatively independent of the scientific investigations which should have served to qualify and criticize its doctrines. Its propaganda were so vigorous and the practical needs which it promised to satisfy were so insistent, that even today many people hold tenaciously to its dicta. Scores of professionals thrive on their lucrative practice of its dogmas, and university graduates smile in a guilty way when asked, "Do you believe in phrenology?"
The tenacious persistence of phrenology, the degree to which it is resorted to and paid for by inquiring and earnest seekers after satisfactory paths through life, make it seem worth while to present a brief statement of the numerous errors and flagrant stupidities on which the practice of phrenology is based. It may also be worth while to suggest some of the rather interesting subsidiary reasons for its persistence as a cherished popular delusion and even as a topic for current scientific discussions and papers.
Underlying all of the various phrenological systems were four common assumptions which briefly stated, were:
1. That such cerebral localization as exists is of fundamental and specific traits of character or types of ability, such as secretiveness, circumspection, love of babies, generosity, veneration, constructiveness, etc.
2. That the more developed any one of these given traits is, the larger will be the supposed area of the brain which contains its supposed organ.
3. That, since the skull fits fairly closely to the brain surface, the relative development of a given portion of the brain will be indicated by the relative prominence or size of the different parts of the cranium, so that the degree of possession of the trait may be judged from an examination of the exterior of the skull.
4. That the occasional casual observation of coincidence between particularly marked mental qualities and particular cranial characteristics is a sufficient basis for inferring universal and necessary connection between these two features.
Each of these assumptions involves obvious error and misapprehension in the light of what is now known concerning the nature of the human mind and the structure and functions of the brain. In order that these fallacies may be clearly disclosed the four main assumptions will be examinedindependently in the order in which we have here presented them.
1. In the first place, the only sort of localization of functions that has been authentically established is the projection, upon the brain structure, of the other parts of the organism, and the localization of sensory-motor centers which function in the connection of these various organs. Thus it is known that each of the principal groups of muscles of the body has its so-called center in the brain. From this part of the brain to the muscles concerned run bundles of motor-nerve fibers, so that activity in that particular part of the brain may result in the conduction of nervous impulses to these muscles, and in their consequent contraction. Thus the hand, the foot, the eyes, the speech-organs, etc., may be said to be functionally represented, and in this sense localized, in particular regions of the brain. The same thing is true of the sense-organs, as the eye, ear, etc. Each incoming sensory nerve tract runs to or through some portion of the brain. Injury to this part of the brain results in functional incapacity of the corresponding sense-organ. The cortex, or outer surface of the brain, may thus be conceived as a sort of terminal station for nerves from other portions of the organism, a sort of projection-centerwhich enables them all to take part in a functional unity of action. The functions which can be said in this sense to be localized in the brain are such sensory-motor capacities as the ability to raise the right arm, the ability to balance the body when standing erect with eyes closed, the ability to see, the ability to move the eyeball, the ability to feel pain in a certain area of the skin, the ability to articulate words, to understand spoken or written language, to call up a visual memory of a particular thing previously seen, etc.
The integrity of various parts of the brain is essential to the proper coördination of all the sensibilities and responses of the individual. Traits of character and types of ability, however, depend on the characteristic modes of reaction of the organism as a whole to the factors of its environment. Thus generosity as a human trait does not depend on the massiveness of any set of muscles, nor on the keenness of any sense-organ, but upon the characteristic type of reaction and motivation which the individual as a whole displays. Jealousy, love of children, destructiveness, etc., are characteristic modes of behavior of the whole organism, and depend upon reactions which the given situation evokes, and not upon some special organ.
2. As to the supposed correspondence between size and functional capacity, no evidence has been presented which demonstrates that even the strength of a muscle or the keenness of a sense-organ depends in any way on the absolute size of the brain-area concerned with it. Nor has evidence been presented to prove the existence, within any given species, of correlation between volume, shape, or weight of the brain-tissues and even the more general traits of character or ability. In the absence of such evidence we are led to believe that functional capacity depends on complexity of structure, chemical, molecular, and functional, rather than on the factors of mass or shape. But even the nature of these correlations is as yet largely unknown. The persistence of the faith in the significance of mass and shape probably rests in part on the apparent existence of such correlation when different species are roughly compared with one another. Thus, among the higher vertebrates there seems to be a relation between what we may call the general intelligence of the species and the erect carriage of the body. From the quadrupeds, with their horizontal position, through the apes, with their semiperpendicular mode of life, to the human being, with his erect carriage, there is also a progression in prominenceof the forehead, opposition of thumb and finger, relatively greater development of the cerebral mass, and also in mental capacity. The intelligent human being walks in a more erect posture than does the stupid ape. But no one has ventured to assert that a relation exists between erectness of carriage and mental ability when human beings are compared with one another, or when apes are compared with one another. Similarly in the case of the physical features of the brain, the crude relationships which exist empirically, as between different species, seem to be quite slight in significance when compared with the differences in chemical, molecular and functional complexity which are found among members of the same species. Attempts to discover correlations between mental and moral characteristics and various brain constants we may expect to continue for a long time. What discoveries may be in store for us we do not know. But the important point in the present connection is that, for the purposes of vocational psychology, the practices of phrenology are based on evidence no more relevant to its pretensions than were the "proofs" pointed to by palmistry, horoscopy, and prenatal magic. Through cranial measurements alone it is impossible to determine with certainty the race,age, or sex of an individual, or even, indeed, whether he was a prehistoric savage, an idiot, or a gorilla.
3. As for the third assumption of phrenology, namely, that brain development is reflected in the cranial size or protuberances, it should be sufficient to point out that even if this were so it would be meaningless for our purpose, since we are compelled to abandon the belief in a relation between mass of tissue and even the simplest sensory or motor capacity. But such further disproof as may be required is readily furnished by an actual attempt to remove from their cranial boxes the brains of various animals, and by noting that the shape and thickness of the bones gives little indication as to whether brain tissue, cerebrospinal fluid, or supporting tissues are to be found underneath a given protuberance or depression.
4. The fourth assumption of phrenology, that sparse and casual observation of striking cases is sufficient ground for generalization, we should be able to dismiss at once as utterly inadequate and miscalculated. It is impossible to find consistent recorded instances in which groups of individuals, selected at random, with definitely determined and measured mental or moral characteristics, have been shown to confirm, by their cranial geography,even the most elementary doctrines of that phrenology which still offers to diagnose the individual's psychic constitution and to commend to his future consideration the vocation of engineering, publishing, or preaching, as the case may be. Practicing phrenologists have repeatedly been invited to submit one bit of objective evidence for their pretensions, or to submit themselves to tests under controlled conditions. The invitations are refused, and the inquirer is referred instead to the dogma of some foreign and deceased authority. Such investigations as have been recorded have resulted in negative conclusions, or in contradictory data, or in coefficients with such high probable errors as to make the figures unreliable.
Very often practicing phrenologists and phrenological vocational experts seek to justify their operations and pretensions by pointing out that they do not rely solely on the cranial geography, but more often on other characteristics of the individual's body, such as the concavity or convexity of his profile, the shape of his jaw, the texture of his skin, the shape of his hands, the color of his hair and eyes, the proportions of his trunk, etc. Contemporary vocational counsellors who have enjoyedconsiderable vogue and commercial repute are especially given to citing these criteria; several recently published tables of these clues are available. Historically, the attempts to formulate principles of physiognomy antedate phrenology by many centuries. Logically, however, physiognomy follows phrenology, as a transition from the formulation of structure to the formulation of behavior. There is a very widespread belief that many mental and moral characteristics betray themselves in special facial items. The shifting eye, lofty brow, massive jaw, thin lips, large ear, protruding or receding chin, dimple, wrinkle, tilted nose, thin skin, prominent veins, and many other characteristics have come, in fiction and in table-talk, to symbolize specific characteristics. The same thing is true of the shuffling gait, the erect body, the protruding paunch, the curved shoulders, enlarged knuckles, stubby or elongated fingers, the short neck, the long arm, and the manner and rate of stride. It is but a step from these to the signs afforded by clothing, its selection, care, and mode of wearing.
Here is indeed a most confused mass of fact and fancy which finds credence in varying degrees on diverse occasions. Seldom has it been analyzed into the definite types of material which itreally contains, and its evaluation is commonly left to the haphazard opinion of each individual. There is no doubt that we all tend to form our opinion of a stranger's probable characteristics partly on the basis of these physiognomic, physical, and sartorial factors. To what degree can these items be formulated so as to afford reliable criteria in the analysis of personality, as in the case of vocational selection and employment? We may perhaps best answer this question by noting the various sources of the belief in the validity of physiognomic and similar signs.
1. It is first of all true that many of these marks are the result of habitual activity, and in so far as they originate in the expression of a trait, they may be said to be signs of it. That the studious come to be round-shouldered, the cheerful to have smooth countenances, the guilty to have furtive eye-movements, may well be expected. But it is quite another thing to reverse the proposition and to take stooped shoulders as a universal sign of academic interests, dimples as a sign of guilelessness, and nystagmus as the symptom of a criminal past. It is, however, often safe to use these traits as reliable signs of the established general habits and attitude which they express. We have all done this since earliest childhood; yet any attemptto classify formally the signs and effects of habit and constant expression would be pedantic. Unfortunately for the purposes of vocational guidance of youth, these expressions require for their formation habits of fairly long standing, and the critical period for psychological guidance is likely to be passed long before these settled habits have set the features into their identifiable molds.
Somewhat more hopeful is the reliance on expressive movements as indicative of passing and transient emotional states and attitudes. Not easily can we conceal from the astute observer the momentary passion that may be stirring us. Prolonged intimate acquaintance with an individual's emotional experiences and expressions may in time reveal to such an observer the deeper lying and more permanent affective trends, the moods and sentiments which indicate what we are accustomed to call the temperament of the individual. Insight into the nature of these expressive movements is one of the useful things to be derived from long and patient study of human nature, both at first hand and through the classical descriptions of emotional expression. The more one observes and the more individuals he observes, the more he is impressed with the final variety and informal complexity of these expressive movements,and their dependence on a vast detail of circumstance, which again forbid rule-of-thumb formulation.
2. Another apparent source of these beliefs is in analogy. The clammy hand, the fishy eye, the bull neck, the "blotting paper" voice, the asinine ear, the willowy figure, the feline tread, and scores of such phrases indicate that these characteristics remind us definitely of various species or objects other than the human being, and that we expect to find back of them the characteristic traits, habits, and instinctive tendencies of those species. We seldom proceed so far as to check up our expectations with facts, under controlled conditions.
3. The affective value of these analogies and their incorporation in poetry, song, and fiction as adequate figures of speech lead us to react to these traits in ways determined largely by the traditional usage. We are humble before the "high-brow," merry in the presence of the dimpled, cautious and prudent before him of the shifting eye. In so far as human reactions are determined by the implied expectations of associates and the demands of immediate circumstances, we should be surprised indeed if the "high-brow" did not, on the strength of his cranium, evade our office-door sentinel, the dimpled one respond to ourfacetious comment, and he of the shifting eye be forced to steal for a living.
4. Another source of these notions is mainly responsible for such of them as refer to definitely undesirable traits. This is the belief, so well played upon by the school of Lombroso in criminology, that many of these characteristics, along with the so-called physical stigmata, are indicative of a degenerative or atavistic trend in the constitution of the individual. Among these stigmata were enumerated every conceivable extreme variation of every identifiable part of the human anatomy. Lombroso was inclined to believe not only that the presence of such traits was a certain mark of criminal propensities, but even that various types of criminals could be recognized by the cataloging of their stigmata, as thieves, murderers, forgers, etc. The history of the criticism of this view need not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that we now understand that the underlying truth of the matter is only that these stigmata are somewhat more frequent among the vicious, degenerate, and defective groups than they are among people selected on the basis of their morality and intelligence. The criminally inclined individual may possess no stigmata, while an Abraham Lincoln may possess several of them, and inmarked degree. To be sure, when an unusual number of stigmata are presented by an individual, we feel disposed to suspect that the abnormal condition is not confined to his bones and peripheral organs alone, but is probably so deep-seated as to involve his nervous system as well. But on the basis of these stigmata alone we are quite unable to decide whether he is an imbecile, a degenerate criminal, a pervert, a genius, or only an average man, with an undue burden of physical infirmity; still less can we diagnose his special mental or moral qualities.
5. A further source of these physiognomic beliefs may be discerned: namely, the fact that the features of a stranger are very likely to call more or less clearly to our memory some other acquaintance whose traits we know, to our sorrow perhaps, and whose features or manner or voice or apparel chance to be very similar to that of the stranger. At once we are inclined to endow the stranger with the character of the individual he resembles. We seldom accurately check up these impressions on the basis of subsequent discovery. Indeed we are much more likely to evoke the suspected traits by our own attitude and by our treatment of the stranger, and we are eager to pounce upon any act that may be construed asa confirmation of our snap judgment. It is obvious that these impressions will vary from individual to individual and that any attempt to formulate them would expose their fallaciousness.
6. Finally, in this analysis of the origin of our belief in the signs of physiognomy, is the mere insistence that as a matter of fact there are definite relationships discoverable and formulable between typical features and typical characteristics of personality. Beliefs of this dogmatic kind are most likely to be exploited by the professional counsellor, since they appear to the examinee to be unknown, mysterious, esoteric facts. The following formulations, taken from an account of the performance of one of the most widely advertised of professional vocational counsellors, may serve as an example of this type of dogmatic physiognomic doctrine.
"The sensitive, delicate-minded man usually has a fine-textured skin; the coarse-minded man a coarse-textured skin. It is an embryological fact that the skin was and is the original seat of all sensations, and that spinal cords and nerves are but modified and specialized in-turned skin. Of necessity a man's skin indicates the texture of his brain.
"Texture is a great classifier of humanity. Theindividual of fine hair, fine-textured skin, delicately chiseled features, slender, graceful body and limbs, as a general rule, is refined, loves beauty and grace, and likes work either purely mental in its nature or offering an opportunity to handle fine, delicate materials and tools. On the other hand the man with coarse hair, coarse-textured skin, and large, strongly formed features inclines as a general rule to occupations in which strength, vigor, virility, and ability to live and work in the midst of harsh, rough and unbeautiful conditions are prime requirements.
"It is no secret to observant employers of labor that blondes, as a general rule, are changeable, variety loving, optimistic, and speculative, while brunettes are consistent, steady, dependable, serious, and conservative."
"It turns out as one might naturally expect that the man who resembles the greyhound in form is quicker, keener, more responsive, and less enduring than the man who resembles the bulldog in form.
"A most cursory examination of the portraits of poets, educators, and essayists will show a marked tendency in them to resemble the triangle in structure of the head and body—both head and body wide above and narrower in the lower portions.An examination of the portraits of a hundred great generals, pioneers, builders, engineers, explorers, athletes, automobile racers, aëronauts, and others who lead a life of great activity will show a general tendency toward structure on the lines of the square—square face, square body, square hands. Reference to the portraits of great judges, financiers, organizers, and commercial kings will show a general tendency toward structure upon the lines of the circle—round face, rounded body and a tendency to roundness in hands and limbs.
"Anything which is hard in consistency has comparatively great resistance and persistence. That which is elastic in consistency is adaptable and seems to have spring, life, and energy within it. These principles have been found to apply to human beings."
The existence of quite definite beliefs in these relations between character and physiognomy is readily shown by experiments in which groups of ten people were asked to arrange twenty photographs of women in an order of merit. On different occasions and by varying groups of mature college students, these photographs were arranged on the basis of seven different traits, viz.: intelligence, humor, perseverance, kindness, conceit,courage, and deceitfulness. Different judges show quite striking agreement in their estimates of the characteristics suggested by a given photograph. Thus, if the average position assigned to each photograph be taken as the standard and the divergences of the ten judges from this standard be averaged in the case of all the photographs, the average divergences for the different traits are as follows[2]: