PSYCHOLOGY IN INDUSTRY 



as yet been demonstrated, and even here such data must 

 always be appraised in relation to all the relevant facts 

 obtainable about the person's previous experience, social 

 and economic status, success in school, health, tempera- 

 ment, emotional balance, and the like. Employment 

 psychology, let me hasten to add, has provided a scientific 

 procedure for determining what relative weight should 

 be given to each of the several items considered, in hiring 

 for those occupations in which the number employed is 

 sufficiently large. 



A man's success in an occupation is obviously conditioned 

 by many factors, both internal and external. His determina- 

 tion to succeed, and his degree of interest in the particular 

 work to be done, may be as crucial as is his ability to per- 

 form the tasks required. Can such aspects of human nature 

 actually be pinned down and measured? An uninformed 

 vocational interest is notoriously volatile. Interests shift 

 with knowledge and experience. Deep-lying antipathies 

 can sometimes be overcome. And yet it is almost axiomatic 

 that satisfactory adjustments to one's work are enduring 

 only when that work is of a kind that matches natural 

 tastes as well as abilities. So industrial psychology has 

 eagerly watched the development of scientific means for 

 ascertaining fundamental preferences or bents. The road 

 has been long and the end is not yet. Beginning with 

 Miner's check list of occupational preferences for use in 

 the vocational-counseling interview, the first milepost was 

 a statistical comparison of likes and dislikes among groups 

 of salesmen and engineers in Yoakum's seminar at Carnegie 

 Institute of Technology ten years ago. Moore's research 

 for the Westinghouse Electric Company, on the differentia- 

 tion of graduate engineers into those who would eventually 

 become successful engineering salesmen rather than de- 

 signers or supervisors of production, is classic. Freyd 

 developed a still better instrument and used it in his 



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