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, accuracy 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, 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 one whose 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? 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 with 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 characteristic 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) 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 simple 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. 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 the 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 in 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 telephone 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, 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 psychology 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 of "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. The 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 which "The last individual experiment was Results of Experiments "In studying the results, so far as the memory experiments were concerned, we found that it would be useless to consider the figures with more than ten digits. We took the results only of those with eight, nine and ten digits. There were fifty-four possibilities of mistakes. The smallest number of actual mistakes was two, the largest twenty-nine. In the experiment on attention "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 participants "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 reference "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, in 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. 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 large Round Pegs in Square Holes The general employment of this test would result in the rejection of about twenty-five per cent of those who are now employed as motormen with a correspondingly large reduction in the number of deaths and injuries from street-car accidents. And on the other hand, the general use of psychological tests in other lines of work would make room for these men in places for which they are peculiarly adapted and where their earning power would be greater. If, for example, the applicant responds to the signs of an emergency in three-fifths of a second or less, and has the mental characteristics that will enable The Danger in Two-Fifths of a Second Two-fifths of a second difference in time-reactions may mark the line between safety and disaster. How absurd it is to trust to luck in matters of this kind when by means of scientific experimental tests you can accurately gauge your man before he has a chance to involve you or your company in a heart-breaking tragedy and serious financial loss! You can readily see that very similar tests could be devised to meet the needs 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, thumbs For purposes of illustration, here is a simple form of what is known as the 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; 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, 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 remember
The examiner should repeat these lists of words to the subject one at a 1. Memory errors (omissions and displacements), concrete lists. 2. Memory errors (omissions and displacements), abstract lists. Every omission counts two errors; every displacement counts two-thirds when the displacement is by one remove only, one and one-third when by more than one move. 3. Insertions. These are words added by the subject. They count for two errors each, unless the added word resembles the word given in sound, in which case it counts one and one-third. 4. Perseverations. These are reproductions in a given series of words already given in a previous series. If frequent, this indicates a low order of intelligence, with weak self-control 5. Substitution of synonyms, when a word of like meaning but different sound is substituted for the word given; counts one and one-third. A Test for Range of Vocabulary An approximate determination of the range of vocabulary of your prospective stenographer can be had by the use of the following comparatively short and simple test. Hand the applicant a printed slip bearing the list of one hundred words given here and ask him to mark the words carefully according to these instructions. Place before each word one of these three signs: (I) A plus sign (+) if you know the word. (II) A minus sign (-) if you do not know the word. (III) A question mark (?) if you are in doubt. When you have finished, count the marks and fill out these blanks, making sure that the numbers add to one hundred. By adding find the total number of "plus" marks on the applicant's slip. An absolute vocabulary of twenty thousand words or over may be graded as excellent; 17,500 to 20,000 words, good; 15,000 to 17,500, fair; and below 15,000, poor. You should not employ as train-dispatcher a person whose time-reactions indicate a tendency to confuse associated ideas. The associated ideas may be related in time, place or a variety of ways, and the memory of one who has an inherent tendency to substitute an associate for the thing itself is a treacherous instrument. The tendency to confuse associated ideas can be measured by psychological tests. Your own knowledge of the work of the world will suggest other employments besides that of train-dispatcher in which such a test could be used in hiring men to the improvement of the service. Crime-Detection by Psychological Tests The employment of psychological tests in the detection of crime is fast supplanting the brutalities of the "third degree." Thus, for example, by the use of highly sensitive instruments we are able to detect the quickened heart-beat, the shudder, and other evidences of emotion not otherwise discernible, but due to the deliberate presentation of the details and evidences of a crime. Though the subject may not himself be aware of the slightest physical expression The Factory Operative's Attention Power In some factories the operative is called upon to simultaneously keep watch over a large number of parts of a moving mechanism, and to note and quickly correct a disturbance in any part. Eye and ear must have a wide range, must be able to take account of a large number of operations widely separated in space. For the scientific determination of the operative's range of visual attention, the "disc tachistoscope," shown facing page 106, may be used. This is a form of short-exposure apparatus. The essential idea is to furnish a field upon which It matters not how painstaking the individual may be, he will fail in a test of this kind and at work of this kind if the type of attention that Nature gave him is unfitted for such an "expanded" Kinds of Testing Apparatus The kind of apparatus, the method to be employed and the place for the experiment are all matters that vary with the conditions of the special problem. The apparatus may be simple and easily devised, or it may be intricate and the result of years of investigation and a large expenditure of money. If there seems to you to be anything impracticable in the employment of tests in the manner we have indicated, please remember that for many years those seeking employment as railroad Analysis of Different Callings Every calling can be analyzed and the mental elements requisite for success in that particular line can be scientifically disentangled. Methods for testing the individual as to his possession of any one or all of the mental elements required in any given vocation may then be devised in the psychological laboratory. Furthermore, definite and scientific exercises can be formulated whereby the individual may train and develop special senses, faculties and powers so Exercises for Developing Special Faculties The use of the experimental method is new to every department of science. Crude and occasional experiments have marked the advance of physics, physiology and chemistry, but it is only with the recent innovation of the scientific laboratory that these sciences have made their greatest strides. The employment of this method in dealing with problems of the mind is particularly new. So far as we are aware there is no school in all the world that employs definite and scientific exercises in the discipline and training of its pupils in power of observation, imagination and memory. You have now completed a brief survey We shall now go on to consider the operations of these mental processes in connection with certain mental phenomena. Principles that Bear on Practical Affairs Our purpose in all this is not to teach you the elements of psychology as it is ordinarily conceived or taught. Our aim is to conduct you through certain Transcriber's Note:Illustrations have been moved from their original positions, so as to be nearer to their corresponding text, or for ease of navigation around paragraphs. Duplicate chapter headers have been removed from the text version of this ebook and hidden in the HTML version. The following typographical corrections have been made to this text: Contents: Changed UNCONCIOUS to UNCONSCIOUS (UNCONSCIOUS TRAINING) Page 106: Changed 102 to 106 (shown facing page 106), to reflect repositioning of illustration in this ebook. |