37°
EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY
to memory to help him remember them for the next occasion.
The psychologist, as we have seen, may begin in
the same way, by imagining a situation or a number of
possible situations and then working out a set of directions
for the test accordingly. However, once the work of his
imagination is complete he may give these directions
twenty or fifty different times and in the course of this
work he may change the structure of a sentence at one
time, the turn of a phrase at another, the position of a
word, of a comma, or of an accent. He may make innumerable
changes before he arrives at a set of directions
which meet, with a reasonable degree of success, the
varying viewpoints and ideas of a large number of individuals.
In other words, he is not satisfied to obtain
another’s viewpoint by imagination or guesswork alone,
but must try out his assumptions by means of careful
experiments in order to find out how they work in actual
practice.
The recognition of self-esteem and self-interest and their
corollaries, courtesy and fair play, is still further developed
in the individual-activity record. The fundamental
qualities of the individual can not be properly gauged or
recognized as long as the task is left to the uncertain and
capricious judgment of ordinary human beings, whether
they be gang bosses or general managers. The individualactivity
record is largely an impersonal and objective
record of the history of a worker. The items in this history
are various, but they all contribute to the estimate
of the total value of that individual both in the eyes of
his employer and in his own eyes. Where such a record
is kept the worker who esteems himself and is confident
in his abilities need not fear that some caprice on the part
of his superior will be able to oust him from his position.
