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

THE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS I93 an actual trial. The psychologist who presumes to apply tests to kinds of work which he understands only super ficially to groups of men whose work is alike only in superficial details, and in cases where the reliability of the results rests not upon an impersonal record of actual work but upon a concoction of personal opinions, is indeed taking a very grave risk of bringing his medium into dis repute among those whose business it is to be familiar ■with the complexities and intricacies of employment work. No doubt all of these faults have occurred in the experi ments described here; but they are recognized as weak nesses and the results discounted accordingly. The virtue of the psychological method consists in a pplying to the abilities of people certain scientifically accurate tests, tests whose value has first been deter mined by means of experiments which meet the conditions described. The superiority of such measures over the ordinary haphazard measures of common sense is ob vious. However, this very virtue is also the weakness of the psychological method or, in fact, of any scientific method. Tests and measures are only significant when applied to cases which conform to standard conditions. The diagnostic tests applied by the physician, for instance, e nable him to determine the nature of an illness like measles which, because of its invariable symptoms, we may call standard. However, as soon as an extraordinary dlness occurs, his tests become useless. They do not enable him to diagnose the nature of the disease, and it becomes necessary to call in specialists who, in many cases, are also unable to determine the exact nature of the trouble. The more complicated and exceptional the disease, the less applicable are the ordinary laws and measures °f the physician. Exactly the same condition prevails in

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