Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and Methods Part 11

THE DETERMINANTS OF VOCATIONAL APt.i.tUDE

Without attempting to distinguish between the different detailed occupations, either on the basis of materials dealt with, the social or individual purposes realized, or the special qualifications demanded, we can still divide vocations broadly into five general types, depending on the degree to which they are likely to call for complete and normal psychological equipment. Such a cla.s.sification is of little service in the concrete guidance of individuals, since the general types include work of the most diverse sorts; but it may be useful in suggesting the various types of qualities that are of vital importance in determining apt.i.tude for any work at all, and may in this way aid in outlining the work of further investigation.

1. In the first place there are many useful and remunerative types of labor which can be performed by a domesticated animal or an imbecile, when working under constant or close supervision. Hauling loads, mowing gra.s.s, felling timber, sawing wood, digging holes, breaking stone, weaving doormats, and the simple types of work commonly performed in inst.i.tutions for the mentally deficient are instances. The detection of individuals thus poorly equipped, their congregation and segregation under supervision, and their useful employment, are at once psychologically easy and economically desirable, as has already been indicated in detail in Chapter III.

2. Somewhat more abundant and diversified are those forms of employment for the unspecialized mental competent. This requires only a sufficient degree of intelligence to enable the individual to escape cla.s.sification as a mental incompetent. One who is capable of earning a living under favorable circ.u.mstances, in the absence of aggressive compet.i.tion and without close supervision, can find his or her level in the "blind alley" occupations.

These offer no prospects of promotion to positions of responsibility and skill, and by definition, this group of individuals afford suitable workers for these occupations. They fill the gap between the feeble-minded and that degree of intelligence which the most moderately endowed _average_ individual typifies. Rough clerking and attending, simple personal and domestic service, delivering goods of small value, laundry work of the mechanical sort, supervised manual and agricultural labor, waiting on domesticated animals, standardized and mechanical factory operations, wrapping, cleaning, polishing, petty shop-keeping, running errands and freight elevators, street cleaning, janitorial a.s.sistance, etc., are forms of work about equally difficult and satisfying. They do not involve the acquisition of special skill or technical knowledge and they are capable of performance, in the main, by almost any physically able person above the status of feeble-mindedness. We may expect that in the very near future there will be provided standardized scales for the determination of general intelligence of this degree. Even now it is fairly easy to select from a group of children those who, while not positively mentally defective, are nevertheless slow of comprehension, stupid, unable to acquire new knowledge and skill with facility, and perhaps disinclined or unable to form the moral and social habits of honesty, cleanliness, promptness, truthfulness and economy. Since these can fill the "blind alley" occupations with fair satisfaction they should be "guided" into the first available positions of this kind.

Thorndike has advocated a series of tests, experience with which leads him to say:

"Suppose that the general intellectual ability of the dullest men who are able to support and look after themselves (men who though temperate and strong earn say $400 a year in good times in New York City) be represented by a and that of Aristotle or Goethe by _a_+_b_, the difference, _b_, being 100. Then the amount of such ability a.s.signed by the tests alone would not, on the average, vary from the individual's true amount by more than 5; and would not vary therefrom by more than 14 in one case out of a hundred. The 5 and 14 are very cautious estimates, 4 and 11 being probably nearer what such an experiment would in fact reveal."

He further remarks, "There is excellent reason to believe that it is literally true that the result of two hours' tests properly chosen from those already tested gives a better diagnosis of an educated adult's general intellectual ability than the result of the judgments of two teachers or friends who have observed him in the ordinary course of life each for a thousand hours."[14] Interesting applications of tests of this general character have been reported by Scott. Workers of various kinds, such as salesmen and clerks, were graded by their employers or supervisors on the basis of their actual ability at their task. It was possible in some cases to get very accurate objective measures of ability to sell goods, etc., by keeping records of achievement over a considerable period of time. These objective measures have been compared with the results of psychological tests administered at the time the men were employed.

Positive correlations ranging in several instances as high as .80 to .90 were secured. This means that ability in the performance of the particular mental tests used was a very reliable sign of ability in the field. Various instances similar to these have already been described in Chapter 5.

3. If, as seems quite likely, it be ultimately demonstrated that there are some characteristics, apt.i.tudes and capacities that depend directly on congenital endowment, special nervous and sensory characteristics of a valuable kind, we may mark off another group of occupations for which particular individuals are well adapted, though not exclusively so, by original nature. Among the traits which have been said to occur in some such direct hereditary way, or as the result of unexplained mutation or deviation from type, are: mathematical apt.i.tude, ability in drawing, musical composition, singing, poetic reaction, military strategy, chess playing. Maternity, as a vocation, is of course strictly s.e.x limited.

Pitch discrimination seems to depend on structural factors which are not susceptible of improvement by practice. The same may be said of various forms of professional athletic achievement. Color blindness seems to be an instance of the conspicuous absence of such a unit characteristic. "Poets,"

it is said, "are born, not made." Many of these apparent unit characteristics are so relatively independent that they often occur in quite surprising degree in individuals who are otherwise imbecilic.

Mathematical, musical, graphic and decorative apt.i.tudes, mechanical memory, and certain types of manual dexterity and mechanical cunning are frequently exhibited by the _idiot savant_. By the _idiot savant_ is meant an individual who is in most respects mentally defective, who perhaps cannot dress himself, cannot adequately learn to speak or write, but who possesses some particular ability to a surprising degree. Such individuals may be able to perform on various musical instruments, to compose music, to sketch designs and objects in an imitative manner, to remember long lists of disconnected names or numbers, to weave acceptably such articles as rugs and scarfs, or to construct complicated mechanical objects such as furniture, pumps, and sailing vessels.

Cases of rare possession of unit characters const.i.tute the "genius" of ordinary conversation. These seem to present no problem for vocational psychology. Their marked unusualness renders them sufficiently obvious, even to the individual who does not systematically a.n.a.lyze himself. Such a prodigy requires a generous friend and an opportunity rather than a vocational expert.

4. There remain two further types of work, in which vocational psychology really finds its true task. There are on the one hand a large number of occupations that require neither unusual intelligence, special apt.i.tude, nor technical training, such as those of the small tradesmen, responsible clerks, collectors, watchmen, agents, solicitors, motormen, conductors, soldiers, cashiers, cooks, nursemaids, etc. Above all, these types of work require the moral and social virtues, such as honesty, courtesy, truthfulness, patience, promptness, cleanliness, etc. Their lack of need of special technical knowledge is indicated by the apprenticeship method by which most of them are commonly begun. Also, the absence of simple and direct tests of the presence of these moral and social virtues and habits requires that for a long time to come this method of trial, combined with the judgments of a.s.sociates in the form of testimonial, personal recommendation, etc., must be continued. If psychology, in the immediate or remote future, shall ever discover or invent expedient tests for the measurements of these moral characteristics, it will have done a work that is at present equaled only by the formation of the various graded scales for measuring more strictly intellectual capacities. At present no such tests are vouched for by even the most enthusiastic of prophets.

5. Finally, and closely related to these occupations calling mainly for moral habits and social reactions, come the bulk of the world's occupations, those adequately performed by and const.i.tuting the permanent task of the man or woman of average intelligence. By average intelligence we do not of course imply any uniform or standardized h.o.m.ogeneous equipment. We mean those varying degrees of intellectual proficiency, educative docility, social cooperativeness and instinctive adequacy which fill the major section of the curve of distribution, that between the feeble-minded and obviously stupid, on the one hand, and on the other the genius, with special and distinguished traits or capacities.

In these occupations the degree of intelligence is by no means the sole determinant of either successful or satisfactory performance.

Temperamental characteristics, such as those enumerated by Schneider and by Thorndike, the local and wandering inclinations, active and sedentary dispositions, tendencies to compet.i.tiveness, imitation, suggestibility, sympathy, curiosity, and the entire series of instinctive propensities, dominant original or acquired types of satisfaction and annoyance, att.i.tudinal, volitional and emotional differences, and the moral and social traits, such as persistence, frankness, piety, loyalty, zeal, all these may be expected to combine in varying relations of compensation and reenforcement, subst.i.tution and facilitation. What one lacks in quickness it is often possible to make up in persistence; what another lacks in ambition and compet.i.tiveness he may supply in the form of loyalty and zeal; relative intellectual inferiority is often and easily balanced by the display of social charm; persistent, well-directed and enthusiastic effort or even a good vocabulary may enable one to compete successfully with the exceptional genius who does not display these incentives or advantages.

In the proposals to direct individuals into their proper life careers, the advocates have quite commonly failed to make sufficient allowance for the overwhelming importance of incentive, motive, att.i.tude and purpose, and the large role they play in determining the possible achievements of a nervous system. It is well enough to test the memory span, attention type, and reaction time of an applicant for a job as motorman on a street car. It is still more important to learn the strength of his instinctive compet.i.tive reactions, to measure the degree of his belief in h.e.l.l or in socialism, or the firmness of his intention to effect the higher education of his children. By "more important" I mean better calculated to reveal his fitness for the work. I would rather trust my life and limb to a motorman whose feeble memory span is reenforced by a loyal devotion to the comfort of his grandmother than to a mnemonic prodigy whose chief actuating motive in life is to be a "good fellow."

These comments should not be construed as an underestimation of the usefulness of the simple intellectual test as a preliminary precaution in engaging employees or in detecting extreme departures from the mode or average. The use of such tests in discovering such departures and variants as idiocy, imbecility and general stupidity has been amply justified by experience with them. But we are primarily concerned here with the determination of individual differences and qualifications within the large middle range of the curve of distribution. My conviction is that, in the case of the average individual, we must either:

1. Demonstrate that these important non-rational determinants of vocational apt.i.tude and satisfaction correlate very, very closely with more strictly intellectual capacity;

2. Postpone the entire work of vocational guidance in these cases, on the basis of psychological examination, until that distant day when these characteristics can be approached by means of scales and norms; or

3. Otherwise guidance must rest, as it now largely does in democratic communities, on the broad knowledge of opportunity afforded by industrial and pre-vocational training, the encouragement of thorough and systematic self-scrutiny, and the method of repeated trials.

The first of these alternatives has scarcely been attempted; the second will probably not occur in our immediate generation; the third we have had always with us.

It is important to note that the employments here referred to are not "blind alley" occupations. They all offer possibilities of promotion and advancement which in the main are so open to compet.i.tion that the individual inevitably tends to reach that level of responsibility, independence, opportunity and remuneration which his total equipment merits. It is also important that promotion or advancement by no means implies the continued use of the particular traits which distinguished the individual from his fellows on the lower levels of achievement. Thus the boy who enters business as a responsible clerk may often move on through the work of sales management, buying, general promotion, superintendency, and ultimate partnership. The capable artisan or mechanic may proceed from the work of general helper to that of special expert workman, foreman, superintendent, inspector, contractor, and commissioner of public works or postmaster general. Marked boyhood propensities for wood-work indicate neither that the lad is capable of moving through these very diverse steps of promotion, nor, on the other hand, that he must forever remain a journeyman or an expert workman.

Progress in these vocations does not then imply, in fact almost never does imply, merely increasing the quant.i.ty or quality of the work at which one starts. The promotion of a teacher is often from teaching and disciplining cla.s.ses satisfactorily, to clerical a.s.sistance in the princ.i.p.al's office, the princ.i.p.alship, general school superintendence, administrative counselling and public lecturing, or the college or national presidency.

The case of the teacher of biology who becomes the princ.i.p.al of a commercial high school is not at all unprecedented. For occupations of this character and for this main group of average individuals it is indeed hopeless to seek for vocational psychographs. It is here if anywhere that the general principle holds that one who does anything well could have done almost anything else well if he had cared to try. But the degree to which one _cares_ is not measured by reaction time or cancellation tests. The question of the degree to which ability of one sort implies ability of other sorts is one of the several matters to be considered in a later chapter.

This fivefold division of the vocations is based on the degree to which the tasks involved require complete and normal psychological equipment. The foregoing consideration of these five main occupational groups may be said to const.i.tute a brief summary of the present outstanding results of vocational psychology. The mentally incompetent can easily be discovered at an early age by the use of the graded intelligence scales. Their subsequent direction into forms of useful work appropriate to their degree of defect is not a psychological enterprise, but, rather, a civic obligation and industrial economy. The apparently small group of individuals who are by original nature fitted for the pursuit of work involving special or unit characters will, whether otherwise incompetent or generally capable, commonly demonstrate their unique abilities without the application of psychological technique. The much larger group of unspecialized workers, requiring rather higher degrees of mental competence, may be chosen without difficulty with the aid of the standard mental scales and norms, their academic records, and the judgments of their a.s.sociates. These may be guided into such tasks as involve mainly a moderate degree of intellectual capacity and make no notable demand for the exercise of the social and moral virtues. The vocational psychology of the future will find its chief problems in dealing with the numerous and permanent tasks requiring workers who, in addition to their varying degrees of strictly intellectual proficiency, possess particular or complete instinctive, emotional and volitional equipment, and who are amenable to those social and educational agencies which seek to impress upon them the moral virtues of their community and age.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] The series of tests proposed, and an especially clear discussion of the problems, methods and characteristic results of these tests, is to be found in Science, Jan. 24, 1913, pp. 133-142, in Thorndike's article on "Educational Diagnosis."

CHAPTER X

THE VOCATIONAL APt.i.tUDES OF WOMEN

By

LETA STETTER HOLLINGWORTH, PH. D.

_Bellevue Hospital, New York City_

It is customary for authors, in discussing vocational problems, to a.s.sume that the vocational future of girls is determined in advance by the fact of s.e.x. Not infrequently the lack of provision for domestic training in our high schools and colleges is indicated at length, and suggestions for establishing the domestic arts and sciences on a firmer basis in the educational system are advanced. Some paragraphs may be devoted to a discussion of the statistics which show that thousands of girls go from school into industry, and to an inquiry as to what training is best fitted to a.s.sist them in earning a living for the period intervening between graduation and matrimony. With this the discussion of vocational problems ends, so far as girls are concerned, and the remaining s.p.a.ce is given over to more adequate consideration of the vocational apt.i.tudes and guidance of boys.

It is the purpose of this chapter to inquire whether there are any innate and essential s.e.x differences in tastes and abilities, which would afford a scientific basis for the apparently arbitrary and traditional a.s.sumption that the vocational future of all girls must naturally fall in the domestic sphere, and consequently presents no problem, while the future of boys is entirely problematical, and may lie in any one of a score of different callings, according to personal fitness. We shall try to determine whether the present expectation that all women will follow the same vocation, i.

e., housekeeping, is founded on any fact or facts of human intellect, or whether it arises merely from ideas of traditional expediency connected with the care of the young, and whether it leads to a waste of energy and of intellectual talents.

The discussion will take the form of five general questions, together with the answers which are to be made to each in the light of experimental psychology: (1) Are there innate s.e.x differences in average intelligence?

(2) Is either s.e.x more variable than the other in mental traits? (3) Are there any special causes of intellectual inefficiency affecting one s.e.x but not the other? (4) Are there any s.e.x differences in affective or instinctive equipment which would naturally lead to vocational differentiation of the s.e.xes? (5) What explanation is to be given of the traditional division of labor between the s.e.xes?

It will be necessary at the outset to draw a clear distinction between the _literature of opinion_ and the _literature of fact_. The literature of opinion includes all written statements, made by scientific men and others, not based on experimental evidence. The literature of opinion on the subject of s.e.x differences in mental traits is voluminous. It appears in the writings of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Mill, Mobius, and others. By the literature of fact is meant those written statements based on experimental data, which have been obtained under carefully controlled conditions, and which may be verified by anyone competent to understand and criticize them.

In this chapter we shall seek the answers to the propounded questions in the literature of fact alone, neglecting as irrelevant to the discussion the entire literature of opinion.

Since the discussion is limited to the literature of fact, it will of necessity refer only to literature of a comparatively recent date. Until about fifteen years ago there had been practically no attempt to collect precise data on the subject of s.e.x differences in mental abilities. Before experimental data were sought the hypothesis was accepted that human females are, by original nature, different from and inferior to human males, intellectually. The factor of s.e.x determined everything; the way to discover whether a given individual was capable of any given intellectual task was not to let the individual undertake the task and to judge by the result, but to indicate the s.e.x of the person in question.

Coincident with the intense controversy which rose in the nineteenth century over the higher education of women, a number of statistical studies were carried on by the questionnaire method. These were followed by experimental studies, and at the opening of the twentieth century several experiments were being made to investigate the matter of s.e.x differences in intellect. About this time also the idea began to gain headway that whatever differences exist between the s.e.xes as we find them in the world may be due to training and not to original nature; and it began to be pointed out that this aspect of the matter complicates even experimental investigation in ways difficult to control.

We may speak here of the experiments on brain weight which were published and much discussed about thirty years ago. Romanes, among others, insisted that the male brain was, on the average, several grams heavier than the female brain, and for a time it was supposed that the fact of innate female inferiority had been thus satisfactorily established. However, it was later demonstrated that relative to total body weight the female brain is as heavy as the male brain. It was also found that no positive correlation can be established between brain weight and intellect.

In 1906 Helen Bradford Thompson published her dissertation, from Chicago University, ent.i.tled "The Mental Traits of s.e.x." This volume gives a summary of the scattered bits of experimental work done previous to that time, and presents her numerous experiments on a group of men and a group of women at Chicago University. The result of her tests in various mental traits is that the differences between the s.e.xes were in no case as great as the individual differences within either s.e.x. Men differed from each other in these experiments (as did women also, among themselves), as much as men differed from women. In only two of the many traits tested was a reliable difference found between the central tendencies of the s.e.xes. In speed of voluntary movement (tapping) men were quicker than women, and in memory women were superior to men. On the whole, however, the result indicated equality of mental ability between the s.e.xes.[15] It will be enough for the present purposes to say that after about twenty years of collecting data by scientific experiment, the hypothesis that there is any innate s.e.x difference in average intellectual ability has been abandoned by all psychologists who base their statements on scientific evidence. For example, Dr. E. L. Thorndike, in the most recent edition of "Educational Psychology" (1914), writes as follows, in summing up the experimental work on s.e.x differences in average intellectual ability:

"The most important characteristic of these differences is their small amount. The individual differences within either s.e.x so enormously outweigh any difference between the s.e.xes that for all practical purposes any such difference may be disregarded.... As is well known the experiments of the past generation in educating women have shown their equal competence in school work of elementary, secondary and collegiate grade.... The psychologist's measurements lead to the conclusion that this equality of achievement comes from an equality of natural gifts, not from an overstraining of the lesser talents of women."

Thus our first question, Are there innate s.e.x differences in average intelligence, which would call for differentiation of vocations on the ground of s.e.x? may be thus answered: So far as the literature of fact tells us, we know of no considerable s.e.x differences in average mental ability.

The evidence of experimental science (and on this point there is now a large amount of evidence available) shows that by the test of averages the s.e.xes have equal ability to perform mental tasks.

Our second question, Is there a s.e.x difference in variability in mental traits which would call for a differentiation of vocation on the ground of s.e.x? has not been so long, nor so thoroughly investigated by experimentalists as has the first question. What we are trying to discover here is whether, when tested in any given mental trait, a group of boys will differ more from one another than will a group of girls (similarly selected and equal in number) differ from one another. In other words, are the members of one s.e.x very much alike in tastes, interests and abilities, while the members of the other s.e.x differ over a wide range of tastes, interests and abilities? Obviously this might be the case, though the two groups yielded an average exactly the same in such traits. The answer to this second question will be of decided significance for vocational guidance. For example, if it were shown by experimental data that human females are, by original nature, rather closely alike, whereas human males differ from one another by wide extremes, we should have scientific grounds for concluding that social justice and social economy are well served by the present policy of guiding all females into a single occupation, while males are encouraged to enter the greatest possible variety of callings.

The first discussion of the comparative variability of the s.e.xes was broached about a century ago by an anatomist, Meckel. It is very interesting (as well as amusing), in view of subsequent ideas about variability, to note what Meckel said. He thought the human female to be more variable than the human male, and he opined that, "since woman is the inferior animal and variability is a sign of inferiority," the conclusion was justified! Fifty years later, when Darwin put a different face upon variability, showing it to be an advantage and a characteristic affording the greatest hope for progress, the greater variability of the male began to be affirmed everywhere in the literature of opinion. Karl Pearson alone took issue with this view, which was current in the nineteenth century and is still widely credited, and pointed out that there existed as yet no literature of fact regarding comparative variability (though men of science had not on this account restrained themselves from uttering the most positive statements concerning it). Pearson thereupon actually gathered and computed hundreds of measurements of human beings, and presented his results in 1897, in a comprehensive article ent.i.tled "Variation in Man and Woman." He clearly demonstrated that there is, in fact, no indication of greater male variability, when actual anatomical measurements of adult human beings are treated with mathematical insight. Immediately Havelock Ellis, whose opinions were chiefly affected by Pearson's article, replied that when adults are made the subject of investigation, no information is gained regarding the matter of inherent or original differences in variability. Since birth, life and death, on account of social customs, etc., affect the s.e.xes unequally, no one can say, in the case of adults, how much may be due to environment and how much to original nature. If Ellis had thought of this criticism before he wrote his own book, "Man and Woman," his chapter on "The Variational Tendency of Men" would certainly not have been published. However, his criticism of Pearson's material is no less just because he failed to apply it in his own case. It is true that measurements of adults do not tell us what might be the case with infants, who have not yet been subjected to the formative and selective influences of environment and training. Yet Pearson's article remained practically the only literature of fact regarding the comparative anatomical variability of the s.e.xes until the year 1914. In 1914 Montague and Hollingworth published in the _American Journal of Sociology_ an article setting forth in full the measurements of two thousand new-born infants, one thousand of each s.e.x.

The statistical result shows no difference whatever in variability between the s.e.xes.

It may seem irrelevant to dwell upon anatomical data, when the purpose of this chapter is to deal with mental apt.i.tudes. The pertinence of the data cited, however, lies in the fact that if any s.e.x difference in physical variability could be established, this would suggest (though it would not prove) the existence of a s.e.x difference in mental variability also. No experimental studies have ever been made for the express purpose of determining whether there exist s.e.x differences in mental variability. Such scattered data as we possess have come incidentally from studies made with some other chief purpose in view. Such data were collected and summarized in the _American Journal of Sociology_ for January, 1914. There was at that time very little evidence that could be cited on this subject, but such as there was gave no ground for maintaining the existence of any s.e.x difference in variability. Since 1914 Trabue's experiments, with "completion tests," performed on about 1,300 school children, have been published; the Courtis arithmetic tests on several thousands of school children in New York have been made public; Terman has tested 1,000 unselected children by the Binet-Simon tests; and Pyle has undertaken his study in the measurement of school children. The evidence from these extensive experiments is in all cases that there is no s.e.x difference in mental variability, as thus measured.