Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and MethodsHollingworth, Harry L. (Harry Levi)
Science
Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and Methods
Hollingworth, Harry L. (Harry Levi)
Psychophysiology
Probably never before have such diverse ways been employed in attempting to
get intensive measurements of the individuality. The material enables us
to throw preliminary and suggestive light on many of the questions we have
already raised. It should of course be fully recognized that the results of
this little investigation cannot be generalized into final conclusions
which will be true in other cases, without further verification of them.
The results show only what happened in this case, and only to that degree
do they suggest what we may expect to be generally true. Many similar
studies must be made, under all sorts of conditions and by a variety of
methods, before we shall have the final answers to our questions. But the
results are no less valuable because of their lack of finality. Tentative
as they may be, they nevertheless show what happened in the only recorded
attempt to find answers to the questions we have been considering. If the
reader will now turn back to page 124 he will note how numerous, important,
and complex these questions are, and how little is at present known about
them.
Turning now to our experiment, it will be observed that only in the case of
intelligence do we have what purport to be objective measures of a trait,
viz., the results of the psychological tests and the academic records. But
we have, in the average of the judgments of the twenty-five individuals,
in the case of this and also of the various other traits, what constitutes
as valid a measurement as it is possible to secure under the circumstances.
Neatness, conceit, humor, beauty, etc., are not to be conceived as
substances of which the different individuals possess different amounts.
These traits are mainly ways of behaving or ways of impressing our
neighbors. No better measure of them exists than the actual statement of
what this impression is. Just as the value of a commodity depends entirely
on what, as a matter of fact, people can be persuaded to pay for it, so the
beauty, conceit, neatness, etc., of an individual are mainly constituted by
the kind of impression the individual makes on those about him. At least we
may be sure that only to the degree that such traits actually manifest
themselves and thus determine the reactions of others toward the individual
concerned, only to that degree do the traits have vocational significance.
Lovableness is just the degree to which people actually have affection for
us; eminence is just the degree to which the individual becomes approvingly
known; and kindliness and benevolence are present to just the degree that
people are actually gratified and comforted by our conduct.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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