Psychology and Industrial Efficiency Part 7

It is clear that this uncertainty which disturbs the whole trade cannot be eliminated as long as the psychological background has not been systematically studied. Mere talking about the attention of the customer, and his ability to decide and select, and of his observations and his habits in the spirit of popular common-sense psychology, can never secure exact standards and definite demarcation lines. The question is important not only where imitations of morally doubtful character are in the market. Even the most honest manufacturer is in a certain sense obliged to imitate his predecessors, as they have directed the taste and habits of the public in particular directions, and as the product of his company would suffer unnecessarily if he were to disregard this psychical att.i.tude of the prospective customers. The economic legal situation accordingly suggests the question whether it would not be possible to devise methods for an exact measurement of the permissible similarity, and this demand for exact.i.tude naturally points to the methods of the psychological experiment. E.S. Rogers, Esq., of Chicago, who has thoroughly discussed the legal aspect of the problem,[53] first turned my attention to the psychological difficulty involved.

When I approached the question in the Harvard psychological laboratory, it was clear to me that the degree of attention and carefulness which the court may presuppose on the part of the customer can never be determined by the psychologist and his experimental methods. It would be meaningless, if we tried to discover by experiments a particular degree of similarity which every one ought to recognize or a particular degree of attention which would be sufficient for protection against fraud. Such degrees must always remain dependent upon arbitrary decision. They are not settled by natural conditions, but are entirely dependent upon social agreement.

A decision outside of the realm of psychology must fix upon a particular degree in the scale of various similarity values as the limit which is not to be pa.s.sed. The aim of the psychologist can be only to construct such a scale by which decisions may be made comparable and by which standards may become possible. The experiment cannot deduce from the study of mental phenomena what degrees of similarity ought to be still admissible, but it may be able to develop methods by which different degrees of similarity can be discriminated and by which a certain similarity value once selected can always be found again with objective certainty. After many fruitless efforts I settled on the following form of experiments, which I hope may bring us nearer to the attainment of the purpose.

A group of objects is observed for a definite time and after a definite interval another group of objects is offered for comparison.

This second group is identical with the first in all but one of the objects, and this is replaced by a similar one. The question is how often this subst.i.tution will be noticed by the observers. I may give in detail a characterization of the set of experiments in which we are at present engaged. We are working with picture postal cards, using many hundred cards of different kinds, but for each one we have one or several similar cards. As postal cards are generally manufactured in sets, it is not difficult to purchase pairs of pictures with any degree of similarity. Two cards with Christmas trees, or two with Easter eggs, or two with football players, or two with forest landscapes, and so on, may differ all the way from a slight variation of color or a hardly noticeable change in the position of details to variations which keep the same motive or the same general arrangement, but after all make the card strikingly different. The first step is to determine for each pair the degree of similarity, on a percentage basis. To overcome mere arbitrariness, we ask thirty to forty educated persons to express the similarity value, calling identical postal cards 100 per cent and two postal cards as different as a colored flower piece and a black picture of a street scene O. The average value of these judgments is then considered as expressing the objective degree of similarity between the two pictures of a pair.

After securing such standard values, we carry on the experiments in the following form. Six different postal cards, for instance, are seen on a black background through the opening of a shutter which is closed after 5 seconds. The six may be made up of a landscape, a building, a head, a genre scene, and so forth. After 20 seconds the same group of postal cards is shown once more, except that one is replaced by a similar one, instead of one church another church building, or instead of a vase with roses a vase with pinks. If the subst.i.tuted picture has the average similarity value of 80 per cent and we make the experiment with 10 persons, the subst.i.tution may be discovered by 7 persons and remain unnoticed by 3. We can now easily vary every one of the factors involved. If instead of 6 cards, we take 10, it may be that only 4 out of 10 persons, instead of 7, will discover the subst.i.tution, while if we take 4 cards instead of 6, perhaps 9 persons out of 10 will recognize the difference under these otherwise equal conditions. Only an especially careless observer will overlook it. But instead of changing the number of objects, we may change the periods of exposure.

If we show the 6 cards only for 2 seconds instead of 5 seconds, the number of those who recognize the difference may sink from 7 to 5 or 4, and if we make the time considerably longer, we shall of course reach a point where all 10 will recognize the subst.i.tution. The same holds true of the shortening or lengthening of the time-interval between the two presentations. The third variable factor is the similarity itself. If instead of one church, not another church, but a theatre or a skysc.r.a.per is shown, that is, if the similarity value of 80 per cent sinks down to a similarity of 60 per cent or 50 per cent, the number of those who recognize the subst.i.tution will again become larger; if, on the other hand, the subst.i.tuted card shows the same church, only from a slightly different angle, bringing the similarity value up to 90 per cent or 95 per cent, the number of observers who recognize the subst.i.tution may sink to 2 or 3. To make the experiments reliable, it is also necessary frequently to mix in cases in which no subst.i.tution at all is introduced.

If these experiments are varied sufficiently and a large ma.s.s of material brought together, we must be able to secure definite formulae.

We may find that if the critical card appears among 6 cards, is shown for 5 seconds, and the group is again exposed after 20 seconds, 80 per cent of the subjects will recognize the subst.i.tution of a similar card, if the degree of similarity is 30 per cent, but only 60 per cent will recognize it if the degree of similarity is 70 per cent, and only 30 per cent will recognize it if the degree of similarity is 90 per cent. These are entirely fict.i.tious figures and are only to indicate the principle. If such an exact formula were definitely discovered, we should still be unable to say from mere psychological reasoning what similarity value is legally permissible. If the rules against infringement are interpreted in a very rigorous spirit, it may seem desirable to prohibit imitations which are as little similar as those postal cards which were graded as 40 per cent in our similarity scale, and if the interpretation is a loose one, it may appear permissible to have imitations on the market which are as strongly similar as our postal cards graded at 80 per cent in our similarity scale. All this would have to be left to the lawmakers and to the judges. But what we would have gained is this. We could say: if our object exposed for 5 seconds in a group of 6 other objects is replaced after an interval of 20 seconds by an imitation and this change is recognized by 8 persons among 10, the degree of similarity is 30 per cent and if it is recognized by 3 out of 10 subjects, the degree of similarity is 90 per cent. In short, from any percentage of subjects who under these conditions discovered the subst.i.tution, we could determine the degree of similarity, independent of any individual arbitrariness. If such methods were accepted by the trade and the courts, it would only be necessary, to agree on the percentage of similarity which ought to be permitted, and all uncertainty would disappear. There would be no wrangling of opposing interests; it would be possible to find out whether the permitted limit were overstepped or not with an exact.i.tude similar to that with which the weight or the chemical const.i.tution of a trade commodity is examined. Certainly the experiment establishes here conditions which are very different from those of practical life. The customer who wants to buy a particular picture postal card which he saw once before and to whom the salesman offers a similar one, suggesting that it is the same, is facing only one card and not a group of six. But in practical life the card which be has seen was not observed with the definite intention of keeping the memory picture in mind, and months may have pa.s.sed since it was seen. The memory picture which the customer has in his consciousness when he seeks the particular card is much weakened by this circ.u.mstance too. We secure this weakening artificially by the arrangement of the experiment in placing the card in a group of six or ten and exposing them for a few seconds only. The force of attention and the corresponding memory-value are by this distribution diminished in a definite degree in the case of every single card.

The investigation must include a careful study of the size of the groups, of the time-relations, of the percentage of correct answers, all under the point of view of greatest fitness for practical application. In the Harvard laboratory the research has been carried on partly with such picture material, partly with word material, and partly with concrete objects.[54] Whatever the details of the outcome may be, we hope that the work will lead to results which may, indeed, make such a psychotechnical use possible. Its principles and formulae might easily be adjusted to any marketable material. As a matter of course, if in future the courts were ever to accept such psychological, experimental methods, it would be intolerable dilettantism if such experiments were carried on by lawyers and district attorneys. It is as true of this economic legal question as of many other legal psychological problems that its introduction into the courtroom can become desirable only when psychological experts are engaged and called in the same way as chemical or medical experts are invited to the court. On the other hand, there is surely not the slightest desire on the part of psychologists to be dragged into humiliating performances like those which not only handwriting experts, but even psychiatric specialists have had to undergo repeatedly in sensational court trials. The day for the expert activity in the courtroom will came for the psychologist only when the country has attached the expert to the court and has eliminated the expert retained by the plaintiff or the defendant. But this general practical question as to the position of the psychologist in the courtroom and as to the need of a psychological laboratory in connection with the courts would lead us too far aside.

XXIII

BUYING AND SELLING

The effects which we have studied so far were produced by inanimate objects, posters or displays, advertis.e.m.e.nts or labels and packings.

The economic psychotechnics of the future will surely study with similar methods the effects of the living commercial agencies.

Experiments will trace the exact effects which the salesman or customer may produce. But here not even a modest beginning can be discovered, and it would be difficult to mention a single example of experimental research. The desired psychological influences of the salesman are not quite dissimilar to those of the printed means of propaganda. Here, too, it is essential to turn the attention of the customer to different points, to awaken a vivid favorable impression, to emphasize the advantages of the goods, to throw full light on them, and finally to influence the will-decision either by convincing arguments or by persuasion and suggestion. In either case the point is to enhance the impulse to buy and to suppress the opposing ideas. Yet every one of these factors, when it starts from a man and not from a thing or paper, changes its form. The influence becomes narrower, it is directed toward a smaller number of persons; but, on the other hand, it gains just by the new possibility of individualization. The salesman in the store or the commercial traveler adjusts himself to the wishes, reactions, and replies of the buyer. Above all, when it becomes necessary to direct the attention to the decisive points, the personal agent has the possibility of developing the whole process through a series of stages so that the attention slowly becomes focused on one definite point. The salesman observes at first only the general limits of the interest of the customer as far as it is indicated by his reactions, but slowly he can find out in this whole field the region of strongest desires. As soon as he has discovered this narrower region in which the prospects of success seem to be greatest, he can systematically eliminate everything which distracts and scatters the attention. He can discover whether the psyche of the individual with whom he is dealing can be influenced more strongly by logical arguments or by suggestion, and how far he may calculate on the pleasure instincts, on the excitement of emotions, on the impulse to imitate, on the natural vanity, on the desire for saving, and on the longing for luxury. In every one of these directions the whole play of human suggestion may be helpful. The voice may win or destroy confidence, the statement may by its firmness overcome counter-motives or by its uncertainty reinforce them. Even hand or arm movements by their motor suggestion may focus the desires of the customers, while unskillful, erratic movements may scatter the attention and lead to an inner oscillation of the will to buy.

At every one of these points the psychological experiment may find a foothold, and only through such methodological study can the haphazard proceedings of the commercial world be transformed into really economic schemes. Indeed, it seems nothing but chance that just this field is controlled by chance alone. The enormous social interplay of energies which are discharged in the selling and buying of the millions becomes utterly planless as soon as salesman and customer come into contact, and this tremendous waste of energy cannot appear desirable for any possible interest of civilization. The time alone which is wasted by useless psychophysical operations in front of and behind the counter represents a gigantic part of the national budget.

Even the complaints about the long working day of the salesgirls might be eliminated from the debit account of the national ledger, if the commercial companies could study the psychical processes in selling and buying with the same carefulness with which they a.n.a.lyze all details in preparing the stock and fixing the prices. In the army or in the fire department, in the railroad service, and even in the factory, all necessary activities are so arranged that as far as possible the greatest achievement is secured by the smallest amount of energy. But when the hundreds of millions of customers in the civilized world want to satisfy their economic demands in the stores, the whole dissolves into a flood of talk, because no one has taken the trouble to examine scientifically the psychotechnics of selling and to put it on a firm psychological foundation.

The idea of scientific management must be extended from the industrial concerns to the commercial establishments. The questioning and answering, the showing and replacing of the goods, the demonstrating and suggesting by the salesmen, must be brought into an economic system which saves time and energy, as has been tried with the laborer in the factory. Wherever economic processes are carried out with superfluous, haphazard movements, the national resources have to suffer a loss. The single individual can never find the ideal form of motion and the ideal process by mere instinct. A systematic investigation is needed to determine the way to the greatest saving of energy, and the result ought to be made a binding rule for every apprentice. How the smallest influences grow by summation may be ill.u.s.trated by the experience of a large department store, in which the expense for delivery of the articles sold was felt as too large an item in the budget. The hundreds of saleswomen therefore received the order after every sale of moderate-sized articles not to ask, as before, "May we send it to you?" but instead, "Will you take it with you?" Probably none of the many thousand daily customers observed the difference, the more as it was indifferent to most of them whether they took the little package home themselves or not. In cases in which it was inconvenient, they would anyhow oppose the suggestion and insist that the purchase be sent to them. Yet it is claimed that this hardly noticeable suggestion led to a considerable saving in the following year, distinctly felt in the budget of the whole establishment.

We must not forget, however, that the process of buying deserves the same psychological interest as that of selling. If psychotechnics is to be put into the service of a valuable economic task, the goal cannot possibly be to devise schemes by which the customer may easily be trapped. The purpose of science cannot be to help any one to sell articles to a man who does not need them and who would regret the purchase after quiet thought. The applied psychologist should help the prospective buyer no less, and must protect him so that his true intention may become realized in the economic process. Otherwise through his suggestibility, the determining idea of his goal might fade in his consciousness and the appeal to his vanity or to his instincts might awaken an anti-economic desire which he would be too weak to inhibit. The salesman must know how to use arguments and suggestions and how to make them effective,[55] but the customer too must know how to see through a misleading argument and how to resist mere suggestion.

The postulate that the psychical factors in commercial life are to be carefully regarded is repeated in more complex form in the wholesale business and in the stock exchange. It is a perfectly justified and consistent thought which recently led a large credit bureau to an effort to base its information on psychological a.n.a.lysis. It is well known that there are bureaus in which the ledger experiences of a large circle of companies in the same commercial line are collected, tabulated, and recorded, thus affording an automatic review of the occurrences, focusing early attention on doubtful accounts and pointing out weaknesses in the customers' conditions, as they develop, as well as evidences of prosperity. The ledger experience which a single company has with all its customers is tabulated without revealing its ident.i.ty to the a.s.sociates, who get reports containing it, and the many combined ledgers become a valuable guide. Yet all such methods can show only actual movements in the market, and cannot allow the prospects of future development to be determined, simply because they cannot take into account the personal equations. Only an acquaintance with the character and the temperament, the intelligence and the habits, the energy and the weakness, of the head of a firm can tell us whether the company, even with satisfactory resources, may go down, or whether, even though embarra.s.sed, it may hold out. The psychological pioneer, therefore, aims not only toward an exchange of ledger accounts, but toward a real psychological diagnosis and prognosis. If a member of a firm is personally known to some scores of business men who have had commercial dealings with him, and each one of them, without disclosing his ident.i.ty to any one but the central bureau, sends to it a statement of personal impressions, a composite picture of the mental physiognomy can be worked out. Of course all this has been often done in the terms of popular psychology and in a haphazard, amateurish way. The new plan is to arrange the questions systematically under the point of view of scientific descriptive psychology. Regular psychograms, in which the probability of a particular kind of behavior is to be determined in an exact percentage calculation, are to replace the traditional vagueness, as soon as a sufficient number of reliable answers have been tabulated.

Commercial life as a whole finds its contact with psychology, of course, not only in the problem of how to secure the best mental effect. Those other questions which we have discussed essentially with reference to factory life and industrial concerns, namely, how the best man and the best work are to be secured, recur in the circle of commercial endeavors. It seems, indeed, most desirable to devise psychological tests by which the ability to be a successful salesman or saleswoman may be determined at an early stage. The lamentable s.h.i.+fting of the employees in all commercial spheres, with its injurious social consequences, would then be unnecessary, and both employers and employees would profit. Moreover, like the selection of the men, the means of securing the most satisfactory work from them, has also so far been left entirely to common sense. Commercial work stands under an abundance of varying conditions, and each may have influences the isolated effects of which are not known, because they have not been studied in that systematic form which only the experiment can establish. The popular literature on this whole group of subjects is extensive, and in its expansion corresponds to the widespread demand for real information and advice to the salesman. But hardly any part of the literature in the borderland regions of economics is so disappointing in its vagueness, emptiness, and helplessness. Experimental psychology has nothing with which to replace it to-day, but it can at least show the direction from which decisive help may be expected in future.

XXIV

THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF ECONOMIC PSYCHOLOGY

Here we may stop. From those elementary questions concerning the mental effects, the path would quickly lead to questions of gravest importance. What is the mental effect which the economic labor produces in the laborer himself? How do economic movements influence the mind of the community? How far do non-economic factors produce effects on the psychical mechanism of the economic agents? But it would be idle to claim to-day for exact psychology, with its methods of causal thought, regions in which so far popular psychology, with its methods of purposive thought, is still sovereign. Our aim certainly was not to review the totality of possible problems related to economic efficiency, but merely to demonstrate the principles and the methods of experimental economic psychology by a few characteristic ill.u.s.trations. As all the examples which we selected were chosen only in order to make clear the characteristic point of view of psychotechnics, it is unimportant whether the particular results will stand the test of further experimental investigations, or will have to be modified by new researches. What is needed to-day is not to distribute the results so far reached as if they were parts of a definite knowledge, but only to emphasize that the little which has been accomplished should encourage continuous effort. To stimulate such further work is the only purpose of this sketch.

This further work will have to be a work of cooperation. The nature of this problem demands a relatively large number of persons for the experimental treatment. With most experimental researches in our psychological laboratories, the number of the subjects experimented on is not so important as the number of experiments made with a few well-trained partic.i.p.ants. But with the questions of applied psychology the number of persons plays a much more significant role, as the individual differences become of greatest importance. The same problems ought therefore to be studied in various places, so that the results may be exchanged and compared. Moreover, these psychological economic investigations naturally lead beyond the possibilities of the university laboratories. To a certain degree this was true of other parts of applied psychology as well. Educational and medical experimental psychology could not reach their fullest productivity until the experiment was systematically carried into the schoolroom and the psychiatric clinic. But the cla.s.sroom and the hospital are relatively accessible places for the scientific worker, as both are anyhow conducted under a scientific point of view. The teacher and the physician can easily learn to perform valuable experiments with school children or with patients. This favorable condition is lacking in the workshop and the factory, in the banks and the markets. The academic psychologist will be able to undertake work there only with a very disturbing expenditure of time and only under exceptional conditions.

If such experiments, for instance, with laborers in a factory or employees of a railway are to advance beyond the faint first efforts of to-day and are really to become serviceable to the cultural progress of our time with effective completeness, they ought not to remain an accidental appendix to the theoretical laboratories. Either the universities must create special laboratories for applied psychology or independent research inst.i.tutes must be founded which attack the new concrete problems under the point of view of national political economy. Experimental workshops could be created which are really adjusted to the special practical needs and to which a sufficiently large number of persons could be drawn for the systematic researches. The ideal solution for the United States would be a governmental bureau for applied psychology, with special reference to the psychology of commerce and industry, similar to the model agricultural stations all over the land under the Department of Agriculture.

Only when such a broad foundation has been secured will the time be ripe to carry the method systematically into the daily work. The aim will never be for real experimental researches to be performed by the foreman in the workshop or by the superintendent in the factory. But slowly a certain acknowledged system of rules and prescriptions may be worked out which may be used as patterns, and which will not presuppose any scientific knowledge, any more than an understanding of the principles of electricity is necessary for one who uses the telephone. But besides the rigid rules which any one may apply, particular prescriptions will be needed fitting the special situation.

This leads to the demand for the large establishments to appoint professionally trained psychologists who will devote their services to the psychological problems of the special industrial plant. There are many factories that have scores of scientifically trained chemists or physicists at work, but who would consider it an unproductive luxury to appoint a scientifically schooled experimental psychologist to their staff. And yet his observations and researches might become economically the most important factor. Similar expectations might be justified for the large department stores and especially for the big transportation companies. In smaller dimensions the same real needs exist in the ordinary workshop and store. It is obvious that the professional consulting psychologist would satisfy these needs most directly, and if such a new group of engineers were to enter into industrial life, very soon a further specialization might be expected.

Some of these psychological engineers would devote themselves to the problems of vocational selection and appointment; others would specialize on questions of advertis.e.m.e.nt and display and propaganda; a third group on problems of fatigue, efficiency, and recreation; a fourth on the psychological demands for the arrangement of the machines; and every day would give rise to new divisions. Such a well-schooled specialist, if he spent a few hours in a workshop or a few days in a factory, could submit propositions which might refer exclusively to the psychological factors and yet which might be more important for the earning and the profit of the establishment than the mere buying of new machines or the mere increase in the number of laborers.

No one can deny that such a transition must be burdened with difficult complications and even with dangers; and still less will any one doubt that it may be caricatured. One who demands that a chauffeur or a motorman of an electric railway be examined as to his psychical abilities by systematic psychological methods, so that accidents may be avoided, does not necessarily demand that a congressman or a cabinet minister or a candidate for marriage be tested too by psychological laboratory experiments, as the witty ones have proposed.

And one who believes that the work in the factory ought to be studied with reference to the smallest possible expenditure of psychical impulses is not convinced that the same experimental methods will be necessary for the functions of eating and drinking and love-making, as has been suggested.

And if it is true that difficulties and discomforts are to be feared during the transition period, they should be more than outweighed by the splendid betterments to be hoped for. We must not forget that the increase of industrial efficiency by future psychological adaptation and by improvement of the psychophysical conditions is not only in the interest of the employers, but still more of the employees; their working time can be reduced, their wages increased, their level of life raised. And above all, still more important than the naked commercial profit on both sides, is the cultural gain which will come to the total economic life of the nation, as soon as every one can be brought to the place where his best energies may be unfolded and his greatest personal satisfaction secured. The economic experimental psychology offers no more inspiring idea than this adjustment of work and psyche by which mental dissatisfaction in the work, mental depression and discouragement, may be replaced in our social community by overflowing joy and perfect inner harmony.

THE END

NOTES

[1] The fullest account of the modern studies on individual differences is to be found in: William Stern: Die differentielle Psychologie in ihren methodischen Grundlagen. (Leipzig, 1911.)

[2] The practical applications of psychology in education, law, and medicine, I have discussed in detail in the books: Munsterberg: Psychology and the Teacher. (New York, 1910.) Munsterberg: On the Witness Stand. (New York, 1908.) (English edition under the t.i.tle: Psychology and Crime.) Munsterberg: Psychotherapy (New York, 1909.)

[3] Frank Parsons: Choosing a Vocation. (Boston, 1909.)

[4] M. Bloomfield: The Vocational Guidance of Youth. (Boston, 1911.)

[5] Vocations for Boys. (Issued by the Vocation Bureau of Boston.

1912.) Vocations for Boston Girls. (Issued by the Girls' Trade Education League. 1911.) Bulletins of Vocation Series. (Issued by the Women's Educational and Industrial Union. 1911.)

[6] F.W. Taylor: The Principles of Scientific Management. (New York, 1911.) H.L. Gantt: Work, Wages, and Profits. (New York, 1912.) And the books of Emerson, Gilbreth, Goldmark, etc., to be mentioned later.

[7] H. Emerson: Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages. (New York, 1912, p. 107.)

[8] H. Emerson: The Twelve Principles of Efficiency. (New York, 1912, p. 176.)

[9] H Emerson: The Twelve Principles, p. 156.

[10] H. Emerson: The Twelve Principles, p. 177.

[11] F.W. Taylor: The Principles of Scientific Management, pp. 86-97.

[12] The experiments are being conducted and will be published by Mr.

J.W. Bridges.

[13] Investigation of Telephone Companies: Bureau of Labor.

(Was.h.i.+ngton, Government Printing Office, 1910.)

[14] Ries: Beitrage zur Methodik der Intelligenzprufung. (Zeitschrift fur Psychologie, 1910, vol. 56.)