Full text: Procedures in employment psychology

EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
school or in a clerical position. There are abilities tapped 
by the examination which undoubtedly are components of 
relative success in a wide variety of activities and occupa- 
tions. Are these identities to be explained solely by the 
hypothesis that all these activities and occupations present 
situations which call out some of the very same specific 
abilities as the examination? Or is it better to assume that 
some one general ability is demanded in greater or smaller 
degree by all these situations? 
This question is a debatable one. Spearman and his fol- 
lowers, while insisting on the importance of specific abilities, 
hold that they have demonstrated the presence among these 
abilities of a general common factor. Indeed they main- 
tain that there is not only a single common factor, intelli- 
gence, determining in part our responses; but that other 
pervasive determinants can be distinguished and measured, 
such as character or perseverance. Output of energy is still 
another characteristic which seems to some psychologists to 
be general—to be, in other words, to some extent typical 
or characteristic of a person’s behavior irrespective of the 
direction of his activities. 
Psychologists in developing the most dependable measures 
of such characteristics as mental alertness, ability to learn, 
or general intelligence, have sought to assemble a wide 
sampling of varied tasks. They have included in their bat- 
tery those tests which correlate highly with the criterion 
selected, but which intercorrelate least with each other. In 
this way they have tried to reduce to a minimum the contri- 
bution to the final score made by the several specific abili- 
ties. They have aimed to disclose the more pervasive ten- 
dencies of adjustment, the more general ability. Some of 
them have called the ability measured by these tests, general 
intelligence. Others call it conceptual intelligence, or mem- 
tal alertness, or, merely, ability to do this kind of test! 
It is fortunate that the investigator in vocational selection 
does not have to wait until this controversy about general 
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