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 II. Trade tests and other applications of employment psychology

Collection:: Economics Books

THE OBSERVATIONAL METHOD 2 43 to substitute for the scales and the yardstick his own unverified observation. It is impossible to build up a science of observation in any field except by getting away from observation as such, and supplementing it with scientific tests or measures like those which have been already discussed. But, even if observation were accurate and reliable, it would still be under a great handicap. For example, what a great change in the shape of a man’s head and the height of his forehead is made by a hair cut. A man who, to the observer, looks like a ferocious round-headed simian one day, may become a mild-featured, sedentary, long-headed bookkeeper the next—after a hair cut and a shave. What a remarkable difference may be wrought in the texture of the skin by a hot bath! How compara tively easy it is to govern one’s appearance and to act the part for which one is aspiring. The practical significance of this contention is shown by the substitution of the Bertillon finger-print method for the photographic method of identifying individuals. The former is far the more accurate. Even if the three weaknesses outlined above did not exist, there would still remain the following great difficulty. The method which we have been discussing judges char acter by analyzing and comparing the parts of an in dividual with other parts of the same individual. Is the head long in proportion to its width? Is it high in propor tion to its length? These and similar questions show how the individual is compared with himself instead of with other individuals. There is no standard of shapes and sizes to which the observer can compare individuals and "with reference to which he can form his conclusions. There is nothing to correspond with the exact standards set by

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