EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
I36 
matter of general intelligence were the results of some of 
our occupational and trade tests. When we began giving 
these tests we believed in general intelligence and we used 
to include so-called intelligence tests. However, we soon 
found out that our idea of intelligence and the kind of 
intelligence required by a certain job did not agree at all. 
And in all of our tests, we found that some people did 
specially well in one kind of test while others did well in 
another kind. 
Mr. L: Well, that agrees with my experience. As I 
just said, we in the employment work have to hire people 
on the basis of their ability in one particular line. We 
can’t expect them to be generally intelligent. 
Mr. W: But how about imbeciles and idiots, Mr. Lam 
bert? Certainly you could weed them out by means of an 
intelligence scale. 
Mr. L: Miss Nelson and Miss Hurlbut can tell you 
more about that than I because they have been giving 
tests for that very purpose. 
Miss N: Yes, we used to think it very important to 
eliminate people of that kind and we gave tests with that 
in mind. But out of over six thousand applicants we have 
tested in the last year, only three were morons, as they are 
called; and as it takes from an hour to an hour and a half 
to give only a part of the intelligence-scale tests, we soon 
gave up using them. It is possible to detect morons 
roughly by almost any test, and especially by means of the 
directions which go with the test. If the ordinary tests 
prove too much for them we can make use of the in 
telligence scale. 
Mr. W: What became of the morons you found? 
Miss N: We assigned them to some simple machine 
work and they turned out to be excellent operators. They