Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and MethodsHollingworth, Harry L. (Harry Levi)
Science
Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and Methods
Hollingworth, Harry L. (Harry Levi)
Psychophysiology
Another way of expressing these constant tendencies is to give in each case
the number of people in the group of fifty observers who tend in each
direction. These figures are given in the last two columns of the above
table. It is clear at once that in the case of the first four traits the
tendency is predominantly in the direction of overestimation; in the next
three traits the two tendencies are evenly balanced, while in the last two
the general tendency is strongly toward underestimation.
It is of course difficult to say, in this connection, just how accurately
the figures given portray the real self-estimation of the different
individuals, and to what degree they indicate merely what the individual
will do with her own name in the case of such an experiment. Natural
modesty might easily lead one to place her own name lower in the scale for
a given trait than she really believed herself to belong. If this were the
case, we might then infer that the figures we have presented, although
qualitatively suggestive, were not quantitatively reliable. They would, in
other words, express smaller degrees of overestimation and underestimation
than were really present in the consciousness of our observers. Here, as in
all the results of this investigation, the figures are given only as
indicating what individuals actually do when asked to rank themselves among
their associates. Our conclusion on this point is that they tend to
overestimate or to underestimate themselves, according to the
"desirableness" or "undesirableness" of the trait in question. Individual
differences in these tendencies are everywhere apparent. Thus, in neatness,
individuals S and H stand about equally high (S being ninth and H being
thirteenth), but S underestimates herself by thirteen places, while H
overestimates herself by ten places.
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