Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and MethodsHollingworth, Harry L. (Harry Levi)
Science
Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and Methods
Hollingworth, Harry L. (Harry Levi)
Psychophysiology
A group of collateral interests supports the enterprise and yields valuable
results. The interest in unusual men has led to the psychograph or
psychological analysis of the qualities of great men, as an individual
study. Men fall into types, by temperament and achievement, by heredity and
career. The type makes definite the larger contours of human differences
and reveals their specific combination; the charm of biography is
psychological as well as historical. The vital import of
heredity--practically expressed in the eugenic movement--finds recognition
in the study of correlation of traits in those near of kin. Evolution leads
to prediction; early taste, talent, achievement, precocity foreshadow
ultimate capacity; we learn how far the child is father to the man, how far
we may see the future in the early expressions and with what limitations
the environment molds character. The most valued because most authentic
type of biography is autobiography. Self-analysis is intimate if
unreliable, but by this token worthy of study. Professor Hollingworth's
contribution to the measure of reliance to be placed upon one's judgment of
self in comparison with one's judgment of others and others' judgment of
him forms an interesting original study--one of many--incorporated in these
chapters.
Of distinctive status are the tests of ability presented by life itself and
by the conventional institutions which compose the social environment. The
processes of education, the rate of advance, the comparative readiness with
which one or another discipline is absorbed and mastered: these are at
once preparations for life and accredited tests of ability. For these
reasons such "school" qualities are subjected to a special study; and
fairly conclusive results indicate to what measure they must be
supplemented, if not superseded, by the designed psychological test, to
meet the conditions of actual selection and employment of men. At this
point the several methods converge; for the vocations have a vital interest
in the school, as has the school in vocational application of its
discipline and training. The actual comparison of results, especially by
the method of correlation, has already established the degree of
relation--and eventually of cooperation--to be expected of the two. In all
these ways has painstaking method supplemented and replaced impressionism,
haphazard opinion been supported or overturned by accumulation of fact, and
the scientific approach to the study of vocational fitness become firmly
established. The road from theory to practice, if it is to be well built
and enduring, must be laid on careful foundation. To such an end this
volume is a worthy contribution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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