Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and MethodsHollingworth, Harry L. (Harry Levi)
Science
Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and Methods
Hollingworth, Harry L. (Harry Levi)
Psychophysiology
In these occupations the degree of intelligence is by no means the sole
determinant of either successful or satisfactory performance.
Temperamental characteristics, such as those enumerated by Schneider and
by Thorndike, the local and wandering inclinations, active and sedentary
dispositions, tendencies to competitiveness, imitation, suggestibility,
sympathy, curiosity, and the entire series of instinctive propensities,
dominant original or acquired types of satisfaction and annoyance,
attitudinal, volitional and emotional differences, and the moral and social
traits, such as persistence, frankness, piety, loyalty, zeal, all these may
be expected to combine in varying relations of compensation and
reenforcement, substitution and facilitation. What one lacks in quickness
it is often possible to make up in persistence; what another lacks in
ambition and competitiveness he may supply in the form of loyalty and zeal;
relative intellectual inferiority is often and easily balanced by the
display of social charm; persistent, well-directed and enthusiastic effort
or even a good vocabulary may enable one to compete successfully with the
exceptional genius who does not display these incentives or advantages.
In the proposals to direct individuals into their proper life careers, the
advocates have quite commonly failed to make sufficient allowance for the
overwhelming importance of incentive, motive, attitude and purpose, and the
large role they play in determining the possible achievements of a nervous
system. It is well enough to test the memory span, attention type, and
reaction time of an applicant for a job as motorman on a street car. It is
still more important to learn the strength of his instinctive competitive
reactions, to measure the degree of his belief in hell or in socialism, or
the firmness of his intention to effect the higher education of his
children. By "more important" I mean better calculated to reveal his
fitness for the work. I would rather trust my life and limb to a motorman
whose feeble memory span is reenforced by a loyal devotion to the comfort
of his grandmother than to a mnemonic prodigy whose chief actuating motive
in life is to be a "good fellow."
These comments should not be construed as an underestimation of the
usefulness of the simple intellectual test as a preliminary precaution in
engaging employees or in detecting extreme departures from the mode or
average. The use of such tests in discovering such departures and variants
as idiocy, imbecility and general stupidity has been amply justified by
experience with them. But we are primarily concerned here with the
determination of individual differences and qualifications within the large
middle range of the curve of distribution. My conviction is that, in the
case of the average individual, we must either:
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