EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
1 
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10 ! 
“il or _ 
Vety goodwmatured. Agreeable Rather gjum and Grouchy and unpleasant Very ill-naturea 
‘Has, winning manner unresponsive and uncivil, ~~ 
Figure 13: Distribution of self-judgments of 100 college students in answer 
to the question “Are you good-natured or ill-natured?” (55). The base line 
of the figure corresponds with the line of the graphic rating scale. At first 
glance it would appear-that the men had overrated themselves, but the 
reason for the skewed distribution is more likely to be found in the fact 
that the central phrase does not represent the average of the ability. The 
two phrases to the right are so extreme that their use is avoided altogether. 
cretely the ability is expressed the greater is the expectation 
that the various raters will be judging the same thing. 
Be sure that the ability is not a composite of several 
abilities that vary independently. 
Decide definitely upon the extremes of the ability which 
will probably occur among the persons to be rated. 
The end phrases should not be so extreme in meaning that 
their use is completely avoided by raters. An example of a 
scale which errs in this regard is shown in Figure 13. 
Place in the center of the scale the phrase describing the 
neutral or average or typical degree of the ability. Figure 
13 shows also what happens when this is not done. Half 
of this scale is useless. No fine discrimination in ability is 
made. Figure 14 shows a better distribution of ratings, due 
to a better selection and placement of phrases. 
Usually not more than five nor less than three descriptive 
phrases are used to mark the steps on the scale. 
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