PSYCHOLOGY IN INDUSTRY 



nature of the various jobs, and of getting dependable 

 measures of the later occupational success of people hired, 

 was enough to draw the psychologist out of his labora- 

 tory into the works. Miss Pond, of the Scovill Company, 

 and Frazier, of Dennison's, for example, are typical of 

 many who have begun by investigating employment tests 

 and found themselves plunged almost at once into a con- 

 sideration of supervisory relationships and problems of 

 organization. Johnson O'Connor, of the General Electric 

 Company, who for eight years has consistently held him- 

 self to research on employment tests, previously had had a 

 background of industrial engineering and plant experience. 

 The industrial psychologist cannot arbitrarily isolate his 

 problems and concentrate his efforts on a single phase of the 

 task of occupational adjustment without reference to the 

 total setting. 



Intelligence and Length of Service. The methods and results 

 of employment psychology may be illustrated in somewhat 

 greater detail by a few typical studies, the purpose of 

 which has been to find the relationship between length 

 of service on the job and intelligence test score, amount 

 of schooling, and other variables obtainable at time of 

 hiring. 



Just what, for instance, is the relationship between 

 length of service in routine clerical work and the intelli- 

 gence of girls employed for such work? Can it be said that 

 the brighter they are, the more stable they will be? Or 

 does the opposite generalization hold, that the duller they 

 are, the longer they stick to this kind of routine work? As 

 a matter of fact, neither of these hypotheses is correct. 

 Over and over again it has been found that the relationship 

 between the two variables mentioned is not rectilinear. 

 Scatter diagrams of intelligence test performance plotted 

 against length of service show that routine clerical workers 

 who are at once competent and contented, are more often 



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