542 



AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



good judgment and value the trait highly in 

 ourselves and in others. Thus most people 

 complain that they have a bad memory, but 

 I have never heard any one acknowledge that 

 he had a bad judgment. It appears that the 

 measurement of the reliability of judgment 

 of individuals may have wide-reaching appli- 

 cations in civil service examinations and in 

 all cases where individuals are selected for 

 special purposes, a balanced judgment being 

 nearly always more important than the kind 

 of information that can be tested by a written 

 examination. I have measured the accuracy 

 of observation and memory* and Dr. F. B. 

 Sumner has measured the validity of beliefs. 7 

 When we learn to look upon our observations, 

 recollections, beliefs and judgments object- 

 ively, stating in numbers the probability of 

 their correctness and assigning probable errors 

 to them, there wi 1 ! be an extraordinary change 

 in our attitude in religion, politics, business 

 and all the affairs of life. 



There are two cases in which these judg- 

 ments were subject to special conditions which 

 it may be worth the while to notice that in 

 which a man of science gave his own position 

 and that in which he gave the positions of his 

 immediate colleagues. In sending out the 

 slips, nothing was said as to whether it was 

 expected that a man should include his own 

 name. Of the 120 who made the arrange- 

 ment, 34 gave positions to themselves; 20 

 assigned positions to themselves lower than 

 that resulting from the average judgment, 

 twelve higher positions and two the same posi- 

 tions. On the other hand, 22 gave themselves 

 positions higher than the average grade (which 

 is lower than the position, being related to it 

 somewhat as the average is to the median), 

 ten lower and two the same. The judg- 

 ments were somewhat more accurate than 

 the average judgments. In 21 cases the 

 departures from the mean were less than the 

 average departures and in 13 cases they were 



"Measurements of the Accuracy of Recollec- 

 toin," SCIENCE, N. S., 2: 761-6, 1895. 



' " A Statistical Study of Belief," PsycJiol. Rev., 

 5: 616-31, 1898. 



larger. It thus appears that there is on the 

 average no constant error in judging our- 

 selves we are about as likely to overestimate 

 as to underestimate ourselves, and we can 

 judge ourselves slightly more accurately than 

 we are likely to be judged by one of our col- 

 leagues. We can only know ourselves from 

 the reflected opinions of others, but it seems 

 that we are able to estimate these more cor- 

 rectly than can those who are less interested. 

 There are, however, wide individual differ- 

 ences; several observers overestimate them- 

 selves decidedly, while others underestimate 

 themselves to an equal degree. 



We tend to overestimate the positions of 

 our immediate colleagues, though the de- 

 parture from the average judgment is not 

 considerable. Here again there are decided 

 individual differences; thus one man assigned 

 positions to six of his colleagues, all of which 

 were above the average, and another assigned 

 positions to five of his colleagues, all of which 

 were below the average. Most of us also 

 overestimate those whose lines of research are 

 similar to our own. 



These factors affect the order of the names 

 in the list but slightly, though they increase 

 the probable errors. A more considerable vari- 

 ation is due to the fact that the names were 

 divided among twelve sciences, whereas the 

 lines between the sciences are artificial. A 

 man's work may not fall naturally in one of 

 these conventional sciences, or it may fall in 

 two or more of them. In such cases he is 

 likely to receive a lower position than he de- 

 serves. It is not clear how this difficulty 

 could have been avoided, for if more depart- 

 ments of science had been used, the over- 

 lapping would have been greater. 



Table V. gives the cases in which the thou- 

 sand scientific men were given places in the 

 lists of two or more sciences, even though in 

 the science in which they were given the lower 

 position they did not come within the thou- 

 sand, but only in the 1,443 who made up the 

 total list. The horizontal lines of the table 

 give those who were assigned the higher posi- 

 tion in the science named, and the vertical 



