Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and Methods

by Harry L. Hollingworth; Leta Stetter Hollingworth

The discussion will take the form of five general questions, together with the answers which are to be made to each in the light of experimental psychology: (1) Are there innate sex differences in average intelligence? (2) Is either sex more variable than the other in mental traits? (3) Are there any special causes of intellectual inefficiency affecting one sex but not the other? (4) Are there any sex differences in affective or instinctive equipment which would naturally lead to vocational differentiation of the sexes? (5) What explanation is to be given of the traditional division of labor between the sexes?

It will be necessary at the outset to draw a clear distinction between the literature of opinion and the literature of fact. The literature of opinion includes all written statements, made by scientific men and others, not based on experimental evidence. The literature of opinion on the subject of sex differences in mental traits is voluminous. It appears in the writings of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Mill, Möbius, and others. By the literature of fact is meant those written statements based on experimental data, which have been obtained under carefully controlled conditions, and which may be verified by anyone competent to understand and criticize them. In this chapter we shall seek the answers to the propounded questions in the literature of fact alone, neglecting as irrelevant to the discussion the entire literature of opinion.

Since the discussion is limited to the literature of fact, it will of necessity refer only to literature of a comparatively recent date. Until about fifteen years ago there had been practically no attempt to collect precise data on the subject of sex differences in mental abilities. Before experimental data were sought the hypothesis was accepted that human females are, by original nature, different from and inferior to human males, intellectually. The factor of sex determined everything; the way to discover whether a given individual was capable of any given intellectual task was not to let the individual undertake the task and to judge by the result, but to indicate the sex of the person in question.

Coincident with the intense controversy which rose in the nineteenth century over the higher education of women, a number of statistical studies were carried on by the questionnaire method. These were followed by experimental studies, and at the opening of the twentieth century several experiments were being made to investigate the matter of sex differences in intellect. About this time also the idea began to gain headway that whatever differences exist between the sexes as we find them in the world may be due to training and not to original nature; and it began to be pointed out that this aspect of the matter complicates even experimental investigation in ways difficult to control.

We may speak here of the experiments on brain weight which were published and much discussed about thirty years ago. Romanes, among others, insisted that the male brain was, on the average, several grams heavier than the female brain, and for a time it was supposed that the fact of innate female inferiority had been thus satisfactorily established. However, it was later demonstrated that relative to total body weight the female brain is as heavy as the male brain. It was also found that no positive correlation can be established between brain weight and intellect.

In 1906 Helen Bradford Thompson published her dissertation, from Chicago University, entitled "The Mental Traits of Sex." This volume gives a summary of the scattered bits of experimental work done previous to that time, and presents her numerous experiments on a group of men and a group of women at Chicago University. The result of her tests in various mental traits is that the differences between the sexes were in no case as great as the individual differences within either sex. Men differed from each other in these experiments (as did women also, among themselves), as much as men differed from women. In only two of the many traits tested was a reliable difference found between the central tendencies of the sexes. In speed of voluntary movement (tapping) men were quicker than women, and in memory women were superior to men. On the whole, however, the result indicated equality of mental ability between the sexes.[15] It will be enough for the present purposes to say that after about twenty years of collecting data by scientific experiment, the hypothesis that there is any innate sex difference in average intellectual ability has been abandoned by all psychologists who base their statements on scientific evidence. For example, Dr. E. L. Thorndike, in the most recent edition of "Educational Psychology" (1914), writes as follows, in summing up the experimental work on sex differences in average intellectual ability:

"The most important characteristic of these differences is their small amount. The individual differences within either sex so enormously outweigh any difference between the sexes that for all practical purposes any such difference may be disregarded.... As is well known the experiments of the past generation in educating women have shown their equal competence in school work of elementary, secondary and collegiate grade.... The psychologist's measurements lead to the conclusion that this equality of achievement comes from an equality of natural gifts, not from an overstraining of the lesser talents of women."

Thus our first question, Are there innate sex differences in average intelligence, which would call for differentiation of vocations on the ground of sex? may be thus answered: So far as the literature of fact tells us, we know of no considerable sex differences in average mental ability. The evidence of experimental science (and on this point there is now a large amount of evidence available) shows that by the test of averages the sexes have equal ability to perform mental tasks.

Our second question, Is there a sex difference in variability in mental traits which would call for a differentiation of vocation on the ground of sex? has not been so long, nor so thoroughly investigated by experimentalists as has the first question. What we are trying to discover here is whether, when tested in any given mental trait, a group of boys will differ more from one another than will a group of girls (similarly selected and equal in number) differ from one another. In other words, are the members of one sex very much alike in tastes, interests and abilities, while the members of the other sex differ over a wide range of tastes, interests and abilities? Obviously this might be the case, though the two groups yielded an average exactly the same in such traits. The answer to this second question will be of decided significance for vocational guidance. For example, if it were shown by experimental data that human females are, by original nature, rather closely alike, whereas human males differ from one another by wide extremes, we should have scientific grounds for concluding that social justice and social economy are well served by the present policy of guiding all females into a single occupation, while males are encouraged to enter the greatest possible variety of callings.

The first discussion of the comparative variability of the sexes was broached about a century ago by an anatomist, Meckel. It is very interesting (as well as amusing), in view of subsequent ideas about variability, to note what Meckel said. He thought the human female to be more variable than the human male, and he opined that, "since woman is the inferior animal and variability is a sign of inferiority," the conclusion was justified! Fifty years later, when Darwin put a different face upon variability, showing it to be an advantage and a characteristic affording the greatest hope for progress, the greater variability of the male began to be affirmed everywhere in the literature of opinion. Karl Pearson alone took issue with this view, which was current in the nineteenth century and is still widely credited, and pointed out that there existed as yet no literature of fact regarding comparative variability (though men of science had not on this account restrained themselves from uttering the most positive statements concerning it). Pearson thereupon actually gathered and computed hundreds of measurements of human beings, and presented his results in 1897, in a comprehensive article entitled "Variation in Man and Woman." He clearly demonstrated that there is, in fact, no indication of greater male variability, when actual anatomical measurements of adult human beings are treated with mathematical insight. Immediately Havelock Ellis, whose opinions were chiefly affected by Pearson's article, replied that when adults are made the subject of investigation, no information is gained regarding the matter of inherent or original differences in variability. Since birth, life and death, on account of social customs, etc., affect the sexes unequally, no one can say, in the case of adults, how much may be due to environment and how much to original nature. If Ellis had thought of this criticism before he wrote his own book, "Man and Woman," his chapter on "The Variational Tendency of Men" would certainly not have been published. However, his criticism of Pearson's material is no less just because he failed to apply it in his own case. It is true that measurements of adults do not tell us what might be the case with infants, who have not yet been subjected to the formative and selective influences of environment and training. Yet Pearson's article remained practically the only literature of fact regarding the comparative anatomical variability of the sexes until the year 1914. In 1914 Montague and Hollingworth published in the American Journal of Sociology an article setting forth in full the measurements of two thousand new-born infants, one thousand of each sex. The statistical result shows no difference whatever in variability between the sexes.