Psychology and Industrial Efficiency | Page 7

traits of the personality, the features of the
individual temperament and character, of the intelligence and of the
ability, of the collected knowledge and of the acquired experience. All
variations of will and feeling, of perception and thought, of attention
and emotion, of memory and imagination, are included here. From a
purely psychological standpoint, quite incomparable contents and
functions and dispositions of the personality are thus thrown together,
but in practical life we are accustomed to proceed after this fashion: if a
man applies for a position, he is considered with regard to the totality
of his qualities, and at first nobody cares whether the particular feature
is inherited or acquired, whether it is an individual chance variation or
whether it is common to a larger group, perhaps to all members of a
certain nationality or race. We simply start from the clear fact that the
personalities which enter into the world of affairs present an unlimited
manifoldness of talents and abilities and functions of the mind. From
this manifoldness, it necessarily follows that some are more, some less,
fit for the particular economic task. In view of the far-reaching division
of labor in our modern economic life, it is impossible to avoid the
question how we can select the fit personalities and reject the unfit
ones.
How has modern society prepared itself to settle this social demand? In
case that certain knowledge is indispensable for the work or that
technical abilities must have been acquired, the vocation is surrounded
by examinations. This is true of the lower as well as of the higher
activities. The direct examination is everywhere supplemented by
testimonials covering the previous achievements, by certificates
referring to the previous education, and in frequent cases by the

endeavor to gain a personal impression from the applicant. But if we
take all this together, the total result remains a social machinery by
which perhaps the elimination of the entirely unfit can be secured. But
no one could speak of a really satisfactory adaptation of the manifold
personalities to the economic vocational tasks. All those examinations
and tests and certificates refer essentially to what can be learned from
without, and not to the true qualities of the mind and the deeper traits.
The so-called impressions, too, are determined by the most secondary
and external factors. Society relies instinctively on the hope that the
natural wishes and interests will push every one to the place for which
his dispositions, talents, and psychophysical gifts prepare him.
In reality this confidence is entirely unfounded. A threefold difficulty
exists. In the first place, young people know very little about
themselves and their abilities. When the day comes on which they
discover their real strong points and their weaknesses, it is often too
late. They have usually been drawn into the current of a particular
vocation, and have given too much energy to the preparation for a
specific achievement to change the whole life-plan once more. The
entire scheme of education gives to the individual little chance to find
himself. A mere interest for one or another subject in school is
influenced by many accidental circumstances, by the personality of the
teacher or the methods of instruction, by suggestions of the
surroundings and by home traditions, and accordingly even such a
preference gives rather a slight final indication of the individual mental
qualities. Moreover, such mere inclinations and interests cannot
determine the true psychological fitness for a vocation. To choose a
crude illustration, a boy may think with passion of the vocation of a
sailor, and yet may be entirely unfit for it, because his mind lacks the
ability to discriminate red and green. He himself may never have
discovered that he is color-blind, but when he is ready to turn to the
sailor's calling, the examination of his color-sensitiveness which is
demanded may have shown the disturbing mental deficiency. Similar
defects may exist in a boy's attention or memory, judgment or feeling,
thought or imagination, suggestibility or emotion, and they may remain
just as undiscovered as the defect of color-blindness, which is
characteristic of four per cent of the male population. All such

deficiencies may be dangerous in particular callings. But while the
vocation of the ship officer is fortunately protected nowadays by such a
special psychological examination, most other vocations are unguarded
against the entrance of the mentally unfit individuals.
As the boys and girls grow up without recognizing their psychical
weaknesses, the exceptional strength of one or another mental function
too often remains unnoticed by them as well. They may find out when
they are favored with a special talent for art or music or scholarship,
but they hardly ever know that their attention, or their memory, or their
will, or their intellectual apprehension, or their sensory perceptions, are
unusually developed in a