Employment psychology

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1028407564

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-47263

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Link, Henry Charles; Thorndike, Edward L. http://d-nb.info/gnd/118802127

Title:: Employment psychology

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: MacMillan

Year of publication:: 1924

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XII, 440 Seiten)

Digitisation:: 2018

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part I. Psychological tests

Collection:: Economics Books

IOO EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY of the difficulties in convincing individuals of the scientific significance of the psychological method. Most individ uals have no conception whatsoever of the statistical method and of the importance of basing judgments on a large number of cases rather than a small number of isolated instances. In the experience of the writer it has seemed as if not one business man in a hundred were able to free himself from the compelling magic of the isolated dramatic instance. Mention has already been made of the impression made upon a group of hard-headed business men by a wild guess that one of the group was a Cornell man. To be right with respect to a single applicant has sometimes done as much to convince a certain official of the value of tests as an entire experiment, covering forty or fifty individuals, and involving the most accurate and painstaking statistical work. On the other hand, one or two failures have often done more damage than a similar experiment could repair. The power of the dramatic instance—called dramatic because it happens at the time being to monopolize the entire stage in the mind of the individual—is one of the chief obstacles to the pioneering psychologist. “That may all be true;” one hears an individual say after an experi ment or a follow up covering fifty or a hundred applicants has just been explained to him, with the correlations which were found and the high percentage of agreement between the verdicts of the tests and those of the foremen or those obtained from actual production figures; “but there is Miss . Now I know her and her work very well- She has been with the company for five years and during that time has given perfect satisfaction in the place where she works; and yet, according to your tests, she would not be considered good for the work she is at. Then,

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