THE OBSERVATIONAL METHOD 
249 
himself. This is quite true. However, no employment 
process can ever get beyond this state of artificiality. Its 
degree of staginess can only be lessened. The important 
fact about the outlined procedure is that it stages the inter 
view or demonstration of an applicant in the field in which 
he is most at home. It enables him to act in the manner 
in which his trade or occupation has taught him to act, 
and, in this way, it greatly decreases the degree of nervous 
ness or embarrassment to which the applicant is subject. 
The logical culmination of this method is found in the 
psychological examination. This is the final step in 
choosing relevant actions on the part of the applicant and 
in placing the proper estimate upon these actions. First 
of all, the psychological method finds, by means of an 
experimental process, just what the relevant activities in 
an occupation or an operation are. This it does by means 
of tests which are tried out on workers whose ability is 
known and with whose work the tests can be compared 
and correlated. In this process, it also discovers the 
standard which ought to be met in the significant tests by 
those who wish to succeed at the kind of work in question. 
It then standardizes the manner in which these tests should 
be used, so that every applicant for a particular kind of 
work will be examined in exactly the same way, and his 
ability determined according to the same formula. In this 
way those uncertain factors due to the human equation 
which are present to a greater or lesser extent in all the 
methods described are largely eliminated; and the method 
of observation is finally supplemented in such a way as 
to make it indeed a science. 
From this discussion it becomes clear once more that 
the entire trend of employment psychology is to subordi 
nate irrelevant appearances to relevant actions, and the