The third example which Mr. Ayres found of the application of psychological tests to the selection of employes in industry is a series of tests for telephone operators. These also were conducted by Professor Munsterberg at Harvard. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company employs 23,000 operators. Applicants for positions are given a preliminary training of three months in the company’s schools. During this time they receive salaries. So many eventually prove unfitted for the work that more than a third leave within six months. Not only does this involve financial loss to the company but it is a heavy handicap to young girls who are trying to fit successfully into the industrial life of the day.
The object of the tests was to develop methods whereby the unfit girls could be eliminated before instead of after entering the service. The girls were examined with reference to memory, attention, general intelligence, space perception, rapidity of movement, accuracy of movement, and association. The results showed in general that those who came out best in the tests were most efficient in practical service, while those who stood at the foot of the list failed later and left the company’s employ.
“It seems fair to conclude,” says Mr. Ayres, “that when such tests are perfected, short examinations of a few minutes each will prevent thousands of applicants from wasting months of study and training in preparing for a vocation in which they cannot succeed.”
While these three tests have been used only on actual applicants for positions, a fourth test has been applied to beginning students in stenography and typewriting to determine which ones possess the abilities likely to bring success. This has been worked out under the direction of Prof. James E. Lough of New York University and consists chiefly of putting the subject through slight movements with a view to measuring his ability in habit formation.
In addition to actual tests Mr. Ayres found that experimentation is going on with regard to other occupations. Munsterberg is experimenting on tests for marine officers. Ricker of Harvard has constructed apparatus for testing chauffeurs. Whipple of Cornell has done some work with tests for motormen. Seashore of Iowa has published a careful study of tests of the ability of a singer. So far as is known, no work in this field is being done in Europe.
By the extension and amplification of such means as these Professor Munsterberg deems it not at all unlikely that we may some day have a real science of vocational guidance. That there is need for a far more adequate way of linking up young people to their work in life he has no doubt. “Society relies instinctively,” he says, “on the hope that the natural wishes and interests will push every one to the place for which his dispositions, talents and psychophysical gifts prepare him.” But this confidence he regards as unfounded. To quote further:
“In the first place, young people know very little about themselves and their abilities. When the day comes on which they discover their real strong points and their weaknesses, it is often too late. They have usually been drawn into the current of a particular vocation, and have given too much energy to the preparation for a specific achievement to change the whole life-plan once more. The entire scheme of education gives to the individual little chance to find himself. A mere interest for one or another subject is influenced by many accidental circumstances, by the personality of the teacher or the methods of instruction, by suggestions of the surroundings and by home traditions, and accordingly even such a preference gives rather a slight final indication of the individual qualities.”
On the other hand, Professor Munsterberg recognizes that a valuable start toward enabling young people to make wiser selection of their work has been made by the agencies for vocational guidance already existing in Boston and elsewhere. But he says that most counselors engaged in studying the qualities of boys and girls about to enter industry seem to “feel instinctively that the core of the whole matter lies in the psychological examination,” and that for this they must wait until the laboratories can furnish them with really reliable means and schemes. They may then, he thinks, become the appropriate agencies for applying the methods of psychology. He instances the long list of questions which the late Professor Parsons, usually referred to as the father of vocational guidance, employed with the idea of finding out something definite about the mental traits of young people. Replies to questions of this kind says Professor Munsterberg,
“can be of psychological value only when the questioner knows beforehand the mind of the youth, and can accordingly judge with what degree of understanding, sincerity, and ability the circular blanks have been filled out. But as the questions are put for the very purpose of revealing the personality, the entire effort tends to move in a circle.”
Of course Professor Munsterberg does not undertake to pass judgment on the social desirability of vocational guidance of any sort. That, he declares, is not the business of the psychologist. His concern is with means solely, not with ends. If the laboratory develops a way of telling who are fit for stenography and who are not, that does not mean that all the fit should be urged to become stenographers. The vocation may be overcrowded. Again, if a test be devised for discovering what qualities are essential to the successful operative in a particular industry, it does not follow that all who want to enter that industry and have the needed qualities should be advised to do so. Conditions as to health, wages, hours, and a score of other things may suggest that another trade ought to be chosen. So that vocational guidance, if it shall ever be a closed and perfected system, will yet demand the supplementary services of the labor investigator, the sanitary expert, the industrial technician and whoever else can contribute to any phase of the problem of why this calling should be followed instead of that.