From a list of about one hundred and fifty students in their third college year each member of the group was asked to indicate by marking, as 3, 2, 1, or 0, the degree of her acquaintance with each of the others. From the total list a group of twenty-five were selected, all of whom were acquainted with one another. At intervals varying from two weeks to a month each individual was given twenty-five slips of paper bearing the names of these acquaintances and including the individual's own name. She was asked to arrange the members of the group in order of merit, on each occasion, according to their degree of possession of some one trait, such as neatness, humor, intelligence, conceit, etc. Thus in the case of neatness, for example, the twenty-five persons were to be placed in a series with the neatest at one end, the most slovenly at the other end, and all the others arranged in their appropriate intermediate positions, as based on the judge's personal opinion of them. The judge was to include her own name in the series, placing herself where she believed herself to belong in relation to her twenty-four acquaintances. The record was then handed in, in an apparently anonymous way, but, unknown to the individuals, accurate record was kept, identifying each arrangement. This was done in order that the judges might be encouraged to the greatest degree of frankness both in judging their acquaintances and in recording their self-estimates. The different arrangements were separated by considerable intervals of time, so that the judgments of the various traits should be influenced as little as possible by the memory of where the different individuals in the list had been placed for other traits on previous occasions.
In addition to this part of the experiment, each person was put through a series of seven psychological tests, all of which had been rather generally found to give results which revealed, to a very high degree of correctness, the general intelligence of people when this was determined in other ways, as by mental age, school grade, academic marks, opinions of teachers, judgments of friends, etc. The particular tests used were the Graded Completion Test, described in a previous section, and six so-called Association Tests, recommended by the Committee on Standardization of Tests of the American Psychological Association. They are usually known as Directions Test, Opposites Test, Supraordinate Concept Test, Whole-Part Test, Action-Agent Test, and Mixed Relations Test. Copies of the forms used in these tests are given in the Appendix.
All of these tests involve the demand for the quick and accurate perception of and reaction to the relations of things or ideas to each other. Everything indicates that this ability is most important and determining in the composition of that characteristic which we vaguely call "general intelligence," especially if we are dealing with people with school experience.
Furthermore, the academic marks of scholarship assigned to these twenty-five students by their instructors in different college branches during three terms of college work were secured from the official records. Judgments of the degree to which the different students had been prominent in extra-academic activities during their college career were made by officers of the college who had known them during this time. Photographs of the twenty-five persons, of the same general style and size, were secured also, as well as characteristic specimens of their handwriting.
This experiment having been completed, a similar investigation was undertaken with twenty-five members of the senior class. The same method of procedure was followed as in the first case, the same traits judged, the same tests administered, etc. This second investigation thus affords a check on the results of the first study. When the results from the two investigations are averaged we have figures of considerable reliability, and fairly accurate data on numerous interesting questions.
Probably never before have such diverse ways been employed in attempting to get intensive measurements of the individuality. The material enables us to throw preliminary and suggestive light on many of the questions we have already raised. It should of course be fully recognized that the results of this little investigation cannot be generalized into final conclusions which will be true in other cases, without further verification of them. The results show only what happened in this case, and only to that degree do they suggest what we may expect to be generally true. Many similar studies must be made, under all sorts of conditions and by a variety of methods, before we shall have the final answers to our questions. But the results are no less valuable because of their lack of finality. Tentative as they may be, they nevertheless show what happened in the only recorded attempt to find answers to the questions we have been considering. If the reader will now turn back to page 124 he will note how numerous, important, and complex these questions are, and how little is at present known about them.
Turning now to our experiment, it will be observed that only in the case of intelligence do we have what purport to be objective measures of a trait, viz., the results of the psychological tests and the academic records. But we have, in the average of the judgments of the twenty-five individuals, in the case of this and also of the various other traits, what constitutes as valid a measurement as it is possible to secure under the circumstances. Neatness, conceit, humor, beauty, etc., are not to be conceived as substances of which the different individuals possess different amounts. These traits are mainly ways of behaving or ways of impressing our neighbors. No better measure of them exists than the actual statement of what this impression is. Just as the value of a commodity depends entirely on what, as a matter of fact, people can be persuaded to pay for it, so the beauty, conceit, neatness, etc., of an individual are mainly constituted by the kind of impression the individual makes on those about him. At least we may be sure that only to the degree that such traits actually manifest themselves and thus determine the reactions of others toward the individual concerned, only to that degree do the traits have vocational significance. Lovableness is just the degree to which people actually have affection for us; eminence is just the degree to which the individual becomes approvingly known; and kindliness and benevolence are present to just the degree that people are actually gratified and comforted by our conduct.
Let us turn at once to the actual results of our experiments. It will perhaps be best to ask specific questions about them and in the case of each question present the data and draw such conclusions as the figures warrant. In the figures which follow I have averaged together the results from the two investigations, so that our conclusions or suggestions may have the highest possible validity. In some other connection it would be interesting to compare the two sets of data, and to attempt to explain certain differences which are to be found between them. But in the present instance it is our chief concern to exhibit the method of procedure and to indicate the type of information which may be secured from such investigations. Many more such studies must be made before the results can be said to apply to human nature at large, or before the tendencies discovered can legitimately be expected to be present in the case of any particular individual.
I. How do the self-estimates of these fifty persons agree with the judgments passed on them by their acquaintances? The following table gives, in the case of each of the nine traits studied, the average deviation of the self-estimates of the various individuals from the median position assigned them by their twenty-four associates, and also the average deviation[9] among these twenty-four associates in their judgments of each individual. The figure given is in terms of the number of positions in the total scale of twenty-five possible positions. Thus, in the case of neatness, the figures mean that, whereas each individual, in the long run, displaces herself by 5.8 positions from her true or median position, the twenty-four associates deviate on the average by only 4.5 places in their judgments of another person. That is to say, the individual's error in judging herself is somewhat greater than the average error of her friends in their judgments of her. The individual does not judge herself as accurately as she is judged by her friends.