BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



experiments within the industrial situation and measuring 

 the results. Indeed it is the management engineer who must 

 be depended upon to see that the entire enterprise is so 

 organized and administered that the staff services of 

 industrial psychologists can function effectively. 



The industrial psychologist puts the individual first, out- 

 put or profits second. His training in the university labora- 

 tory and in office, store, or factory, where all sorts of 

 workers and supervisors are employed, has impressed upon 

 him the wide range of differences among people, in their 

 capacities, tastes, and requirements. He knows how great 

 is their susceptibility to training, even though they may be 

 well on in years — provided this training is individualized 

 and adapted to their separate needs. He has studied the 

 springs of action and the laws governing acquisition of 

 skill, modification of habit patterns, control of motives, 

 and improvement of social adjustments. He, too, uses the 

 interview, but has a predilection for checking its findings 

 against other data and supplementing them with objective 

 measures of performance. Indeed he is incorrigible in his 

 insistence upon full personnel records and concrete, measur- 

 able facts. His favorite instruments are the reaction key, 

 the kymograph, the test blank, the correlation chart. But 

 his primary goal is not, like that of his academic colleagues, 

 the advancement of understanding of general principles; 

 it is effective adjustment of individual workers within 

 their several work situations. He aims at steady increase 

 of their earning powers up to the limits of their capacity, 

 and at the contentment and satisfactions that can come only 

 to those who are happily, because fittingly, employed. 



The Physical and the Social Environment. Psychologists 

 have taken their techniques and point of view into mines, 

 factories, railways, advertising agencies, farms, printing 

 establishments, restaurants, hotels, and aviation fields. 

 They have studied workers and managers in textile mills, 



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