The use of oral and written recommendations, testimonials, "characters," and letters of introduction should be based on a careful study of these materials. Especially should we know more than we now do concerning the reliability of judgment in the case of the different traits, the likelihood that the verdict of a single judge will agree with the consensus of opinion, the relation of these judgments to the individual's self-estimate, and the accordance of both these with the results of objective performance. In the following chapter some of these questions will be further considered. FOOTNOTES: [8] Norsworthy, "The Validity of Judgments of Character," in "Essays in Honor of William James," p. 553. CHAPTER VII EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF SELF-ANALYSIS, ESTIMATES OF ASSOCIATES AND THE RESULTS OF TESTS As we have already remarked, it would be of scientific interest and of practical value in vocational psychology if we knew something more or less precise concerning the reliability of the individual's self-analysis. It would be of equal interest and value to know in what ways the results of such introspection compare with the judgments of friends and the results of actual measurement. By way of initiating investigations of these and related questions the following experiments have been carried out. The results to be reported are so suggestive as to make very desirable a continuation and extension of researches of this kind. 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