Psychology and Industrial Efficiency | Page 6

every one of these mental states can render service in many different
practical fields. The attention, for instance, is important in the
classroom when the teacher tries to secure the attention of the pupils,

but the judge expects the same attention from the jurymen in the
courtroom, the artist seeks to stir up the attention of the spectator, the
advertiser demands the attention of the newspaper readers. Whoever
studies the characteristics of the mental process of attention may then
be able to indicate how in every one of these unlike cases the attention
can be stimulated and retained. Nevertheless the opposite way which
starts from the tasks to be fulfilled seems more helpful and more
fundamentally significant. The question, then, is what mental processes
become important for the tasks of education, what for the purposes of
the courtroom, what for the hospital, what for the church, what for
politics, and so on.
As this whole essay is to be devoted exclusively to the economic
problems, we are obliged to choose the second way; that is, to arrange
applied psychology with reference to its chief ends and not with
reference to the various means. But the same question comes up in the
further subdivision of the material. In the field of economic psychology,
too, we might ask how far the study of attention, or of perception, or of
feeling, or of will, or of memory, and so on, can be useful for the
purposes of the business man. Or here, too, we might begin with the
consideration of the various ends and purposes. The ends of commerce
are different from those of industry, those of publishing different from
those of transportation, those of agriculture different from those of
mining; or, in the field of commerce, the purposes of the retailer are
different from those of the wholesale merchant. There can be no limit
to such subdivisions; each particular industry has its own aims, and in
the same industry a large variety of tasks are united. We should
accordingly be led to an ample classification of special economic ends
with pigeonholes for every possible kind of business and of labor. The
psychologist would have to find for every one of these ends the right
mental means. This would be the ideal system of economic psychology.
But we are still endlessly far from such a perfect system. Modern
educational psychology and medical psychology have reached a stage
at which an effort for such a complete system might be realized, but
economic psychology is still at too early a stage of development. It
would be entirely artificial to-day to aim at such ideal completeness. If

we were to construct such a complete system of questions, we should
have no answers. In the present stage nothing can be seriously proposed
but the selection of a few central purposes which occur in every
department of business life, and a study of the means to reach these
special ends by the discussion of some typical cases which may clearly
illustrate the methods involved.
From this point of view we select three chief purposes of business life,
purposes which are important in commerce and industry and every
economic endeavor. We ask how we can find the men whose mental
qualities make them best fitted for the work which they have to do;
secondly, under what psychological conditions we can secure the
greatest and most satisfactory output of work from every man; and
finally, how we can produce most completely the influences on human
minds which are desired in the interest of business. In other words, we
ask how to find the best possible man, how to produce the best possible
work, and how to secure the best possible effects.


PART I
THE BEST POSSIBLE MAN

IV
VOCATION AND FITNESS
Instead of lingering over theoretical discussions, we will move straight
on toward our first practical problem. The economic task, with
reference to which we want to demonstrate the new psychotechnic
method, is the selection of those personalities which by their mental
qualities are especially fit for a particular kind of economic work. This
problem is especially useful to show what the new method can do and
what it cannot do. Whether the method is sufficiently developed to

secure full results to-day, or whether they will come to-morrow, is
unimportant. It is clear that the success of to-morrow is to be hoped for,
only if understanding and interest in the problem is already alive
to-day.
When we inquire into the qualities of men, we use the word here in its
widest meaning. It covers, on the one side, the mental dispositions
which may still be quite undeveloped and which may unfold only under
the influence of special conditions in the surroundings; but, on the other
side, it covers the habitual