37° 
EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
to memory to help him remember them for the next occa 
sion. 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 innu 
merable 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 indi 
viduals. 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 devel 
oped 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 individual- 
activity record is largely an impersonal and objective 
record of the history of a worker. The items in this his 
tory 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.